Swift Justice: The Southern Way

by R. P. Wolff

  “Okay, what makes you think that?”

  “Well, um, they knew where the bodies were, and we just weren’t sure.”

  “Okay, my understanding is that this Leon guy says that these three white guys tried to hang him according to our reports.” Perry said this while looking over the report.

  “I don’t know anything about that. He does say that. He claims that they kidnapped him and were going to hang him, and then someone came from out of nowhere and shot the three people. Some Negro we think.”

  “Why do you think it was a Negro?”

  “Well, come on, guys, do you think it would be a white guy?”

  Perry just realized something that was odd. The Sheriff and his son must have been very close to the actual crime scene. Plus, he didn’t ask him how they actually found the bodies.

  “Let me back up a minute, here,” said Perry. “How did you find the bodies?”

  “Well, we had Leon show us where the bodies were at.”

  “How far was it from where you met the suspects?”

  “Um … not too far because they already told the other policemen where to go.”

  “Wow, you and your father were really close,” Perry said with slight hint of suspicion.

  “Well, we were searching for a long time.”

  At that point, Perry knew that both the Sheriff and his son were definitely involved in the murders some way. Perry figured that they probably knew that the guys were going to try to hang Leon Brooks.

  “Hey, I’m not here to get interrogated. I’m just here to fill you in on our local matter. I don’t have to speak to you.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry if I seemed like I was interrogating you. You know, us cops can’t help it.”

  “Yeah. Okay what else do you want to know?”

  It was at this point that Hall would step in if the witness was getting tense. Hall was supposed to step in and calm things down.

  “Again, we’re sorry,” said Hall. “So is the only person who saw the three men being killed, Leon Brooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what does he say?” asked Hall.

  “Well he says that he couldn’t identify the guy. He couldn’t tell whether he was black or white, and the guy was all covered.”

  “What do you mean … ‘covered’?”

  “Well, he had a white hood on, overalls, and a long-sleeve shirt. He was completely covered per Leon. He couldn’t tell. Plus, it was dark.”

  “So what happened after that?”

  “The guy shot everyone twice and kicked them too.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Again, this is Leon’s version.”

  Hall nodded for Junior to continue.

  “The guy gave Leon the keys, and Leon was able to free himself from the cuffs. He then ran all the way home. … Okay, then he came to the police station. And what’s suspicious is that he already has an attorney.”

  “So why did you arrest them? Or who did you arrest?”

  “Well, we arrested all those guys. We thought that … and we still think this that Leon’s brothers, family, and friends followed them somehow and killed everyone. If it’s not them, then it has to be another set of Negroes. We really like you guys help us find the Negroes that did this.”

  “Okay, so tell us about the other crime.”

  “The other crime happened at the warehouse.” Junior pointed to it on the map. “Okay, I know very little about this one. This just happened last night. We’re not even close to being done investigating either of these crimes. They just happened. We have so much more to do. But anyway, two of the three Sawyer brothers were shot and killed. They weren’t kicked this time. The other Sawyer brother got away, but he was shot getting away. So he’s a survivor, and he’s in the hospital right now.”

  “Now, why were they at the warehouse?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that we have two dead bodies at the warehouse. We don’t know why they were there.”

  “What about this Deron Brooks. We hear that your father has reported to the newspapers that Deron Brooks has escaped, and the police are looking for him. They suspect that he is the killer.”

  “You know, again, this just happened. You’re going to have to speak to my dad about that. I wasn’t the one that said that. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what to tell you about that.”

  Perry decided to change the subject and to retake over the questioning. “So what kind of clues or evidence do you have?” asked Perry.

  “Well, at the first scene, the shooter picked up all the gun shells. So that was kind of interesting, but he definitely used a shotgun. But at the second crime scene, the shooter didn’t pick up the gun shells presumably, because maybe he was in a rush. The gun shells look like they were from a rifle versus a shotgun.”

  “So you think it was a he?”

  “Yeah, the guy that got away said that it was probably a guy, and even Leon said that he thought it was a guy. Leon said that the person wasn’t real tall but taller than a woman.”

  “Do you have the gun shells here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we have it? We can check the fingerprints on the shells.”

  “Sure, but, oh shit.”

  “What?” asked Perry.

  “My father and I picked up the shells and our fingerprints are probably on it.”

  Perry wanted to fucking scream. How could they be so stupid? This was basic detective work, and they blew it. Nevertheless, Perry didn’t want to rattle the witness anymore, so he calmly said, “Okay, let us check it anyway. Maybe we might get lucky and still get the print of the killer.”

  “Okay,” replied Junior.

  Again, Perry flipped through the file folder. “We understand that there was a noose at the first crime scene,” said Perry. “Can you explain that?”

  “No, your guess is good as mine.”

  Yeah right, thought Perry. A noose is only use for one thing—hanging people, especially Negroes. “Do you know why they would want to hang Leon Brooks?” asked Perry.

  “Okay, I don’t know if that really happened. That’s what Leon says.”

  “Why do you think those guys were at the warehouse?”

  “Again, I don’t know, but we are going to find out,” Junior said irritably. Junior continued forcefully. “Again, this is a local matter. We’ll use your assistance on some things, but we are in charge of this investigation.”

  “Okay, I understand,” replied Perry. Perry paused and decided to switch gears to the Chief Justice guy. “Um, can you tell us a little bit about this Atwood Baker? What’s his role?”

  “Boy, that question is way out of left field.” Junior paused. “I know him. Everyone knows him here. He is the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, but why do you ask?”

  Now was the big question, so Perry had to be careful how he asked. “Did he have any involvement in any of these crimes? Was he involved at all?”

  “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Perry. “I’m just trying to figure it out. Who do you think was behind it?”

  “I have no idea. We think it is a Negro, and we would like you to help us find the Negro that did this.”

  Perry decided to downplay their role. “Well, again, if this is a local matter, we will be on our way. While we are up here, we will be glad to assist you. Why don’t you give us the evidence box, and we will see what we can discover from it? We have some fancy tools that may be able to shed some light.”

  “Well, I would have to check with my father before I could hand something like that over.”

  “Well, why don’t you just give us the gun shells for starters, and we will wait for you to get approval from your father.”

  “Okay.”

  Junior left and returned shortly afterwards with a small brown envelope with the gun shells.

  “Thanks, we’ll be back for the Sheriff later,” said Perry. “Oh, by the way, are the bodies still at
the morgue?”

  “Yes,” answered Junior.

  ~~~~

  Hall and Perry walked out of the police station. Now, there was substantial activity outside the police station. There was a CBS and NBC truck parked outside with numerous reporters and cameramen. An apparent reporter noticed Hall and Perry and quickly darted over to them.

  “Are you the FBI?” asked the reporter.

  Apparently, walking around with dark suits, white shirts, black ties, and short haircuts revealed that they were with the FBI. Perry did not want to speak to the media at this early stage. They may use them later once they had a handle on things. But Perry couldn’t completely ignore them. “Yes, we are with the FBI,” said Perry, but he still kept walking away.

  “Are you investigating the murders?” asked the same reporter.

  Perry noticed that other reporters noticed them and were all practically running towards them. “I’m sorry; we can’t discuss that right now.”

  “Then, why are you down here?”

  “Sorry, we have to go,” replied Perry. Perry and Hall quickly got into their car and drove away.

  “Man, things are starting to heat up,” Perry said to Hall in the car.

  “What did I tell you—the calm before the storm,” replied Hall. “This thing is really going to heat up.”

  “Yeah,” said Perry. “What did you think of the Sheriff’s son?”

  “Well, he’s definitely holding things back. He’s not telling us the whole story. When we listen to the tape, maybe we’ll find an inconsistency that we may have missed.”

  “Okay, so what’s our next step? What do you think we should to?”

  Hall responded. “Well, I think we should check into our hotel before the media guys get all the rooms. We need to try to stay at the Walnut Lane Hotel because that is where Howard Goldstein is staying, and I think we need to speak to him next. This way we could kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Okay, great,” replied Perry. “We’ll get our room, go to his room, and interview him. He says he has this Deron Brooks. We’ll have to get Deron Brooks.”

  “How are we going to do that?” asked Hall. “I mean these guys are foaming at the mouth for this Deron according to our reports.”

  “Well, we’ll have to be careful, but we need to speak to him. We need to speak to Leon Brooks. Let’s make a list.”

  Hall took out his notepad and a pen while Perry drove, and Hall started writing. Hall spoke while he was writing. “Okay, we need to speak to Howard Goldstein, Deron Brooks, Leon Brooks, the guy in the hospital—”

  Perry interrupted, “Man, I would like to get to the guy in the hospital first before the Klan gets to him.”

  “Yeah, me too. We have so many fucking things to do in a short amount of time.”

  Perry continued. “Okay, we also need to go to the crime scenes, the morgue. What else?”

  “Oh, we need to come back and interview the Sheriff. Then, we’ll have to go from there and see where everything leads us.”

  ~~~~

  Junior approached his father, who was sleeping on a davenport in his office. He nudged him gently. “Dad, dad—”

  “What! You keep waking me fucking up.”

  “Dad, look, you got to wake up. I’m sorry. The media is here. I looked outside, and there is a CBS and a NBC truck. They’re coming in. They want to speak to someone.”

  “Fuck them.”

  “I know that. We got more problems than that, though. The FBI is asking a lot of question about Deron. They want to know why he was kidnapped.”

  “What did you tell him,” asked the Sheriff abruptly.

  “I just told them what you said. I didn’t know anything, and that you got to talk to them.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay, but here’s the interesting thing: they asked about Atwood.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “What did they ask?”

  “They asked whether he had any involvement in the murders. It was as if they knew. It was weird.”

  “Oh shit,” said the Sheriff. Secretly, he was surprisingly pleased with this news. It would be nice if the Judge was suddenly under attack by the federal government. The Sheriff was getting pissed off with the stupid decisions that the Judge made in the past few days. It was about time that the Judge started getting his own hands dirty instead of pawning everything off on the Sheriff. Maybe the Sheriff could be the new Imperial Wizard.

  “But anyway, Dad—”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them that he didn’t have any involvement at all. I don’t know why they were even asking it, but they’re definitely on to something there.” Junior paused. “Dad, we need to decide what to do about Deron. We have to have a good answer.”

  The Sheriff was groggy and not thinking straight. He hated to ask his dopey son for advice, but he had no choice. He couldn’t think of any ideas, so he swallowed his pride and decided to ask his son for advice. “Son, what do you think we should do?”

  “I think that we just say that we released Deron like we did all the others except we released him earlier, and he did not escape. The reporter got it wrong. He misquoted you, and Deron was released, and he’s free to do whatever he wants.”

  “Yeah, but they got that quote on me.”

  “Well, I know that. But if we say he escaped, then we got to explain what the heck happened at that warehouse, and we can’t do that. So let’s just say we released him.”

  “Where did we release him?”

  “Say we released him out the back.”

  “Okay, let’s talk to the Judge.”

  The Sheriff got the Judge on the phone and spoke to him while Junior sat nearby. “Judge, it’s Jefferson.”

  “What’s up?” asked the Judge.

  “Well, the plans in place. The FBI has actually arrived, and Junior just spoke to them. We just wanted to give you an update.”

  “Okay.”

  “They claimed that they will leave if they determine that this is a local matter. They’re really asking a lot of questions about Deron, and Junior here thinks that we should just say that we released him. We say he did not escape, and the reporter miss quoted the Sheriff.”

  “I see. Not a bad idea. Junior, steps up to the plate again. That’s phenomenal. Okay, go with that. What else?”

  “A lot. Junior says that NBC and CBS are here.”

  “Oh, did anyone speak to them?”

  “No, not yet, but there is something more important than that.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, the FBI was asking about you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, they specifically asked your name, and they want to know if you had any involvement in the murders.”

  “What did Junior say?”

  “Well, of course, Junior told them nothing. Told them that you had nothing to do with the murders and that he was surprised that they would even ask a question like that.”

  “Ah … that’s not good news. I don’t like that. I must be on their radar screen. I don’t like the sound of that one bit.” The Judge paused. “We need to get them out of this town.”

  “But what about our plan?” asked the Sheriff. “Do you think we should still go ahead with the Social Club idea?”

  “What do you think?” asked the Judge.

  “Yeah, I do,” replied the Sheriff. “I think burning down the Social Club will serve two purposes. It will distract things and get the FBI to start investigating the Negroes instead of us.”

  “Okay, let’s stick with it then. Have Junior do it as soon as possible before the FBI gets too far. I’m getting a little nervous, here. I don’t like the FBI crawling up my ass.”

  “I wouldn’t like it either,” the Sheriff said. How does it feel, motherfucker, thought the Sheriff? The Sheriff liked hearing the Judge scared.

  “Well, they’re going to be crawling up your ass with this Deron thing. They’
re not going to just let that go especially with your quote to the media. They’re going to still question you on that.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be ready for them, though. I’ll just say he didn’t escape.”

  Chapter 18

  “Okay, tell us what you know,” Perry said to Goldstein.

  Perry and Hall sat across from Goldstein at a table in Hall and Perry’s room. They arrived at the hotel and saw a state trooper guarding the hotel from the lobby. They ran into some problems checking into the hotel with the clerk because the person didn’t want to rent a room to them. Hall and Perry convinced the person otherwise by making threats of a federal arrest if they didn’t cooperate. Once they checked into their room, they called for Goldstein to come to their room. This way they could easily set up their recording devices inside the room instead of in their briefcases. The recordings were crucial because they always discovered things that they didn’t noticed before, or they could go back and listen to something based on new information that they may have received subsequent to the initial interview.

  This was a delicate situation for the FBI agents. Their leader, Edgar Hoover, openly hated the ACLU and accused them of being a secret Communist organization. But Hall and Perry would effectively be working with an attorney for the ACLU for their current assignment. They had to be careful on how they handled this situation. They needed to make sure that the media didn’t get a hold of this secret meeting. They did not want this to get back to Hoover.

  Goldstein spoke. “First of all, I want to say thank you so much for coming up here. I know that your boss, Edgar Hoover, does not like our organization, but I can assure you that we are not Communists. We’re just trying to help disadvantage people, especially Negroes.”

  “Okay, whatever,” said Perry. “You’re right; my boss doesn’t like your organization. Because of that, you cannot let anyone know that we spoke. If you do, we will leave right away. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay, just tell us what happened.”

  Again, both Hall and Perry took studious notes while Goldstein explained the situation to them.

  “Okay, a lot has happened in two days,” said Goldstein. “It is amazing what has gone on. I have several clients. Leon Brooks was the first victim. He was kidnapped.”