“Maybe houses isn’t the best description; they’re in pretty sorry condition, that’s a fact. But there’s maybe a half-dozen or so, unpainted, leanin’ over like they’s in a strong wind, straight out Route 3. We were wonderin’ who lived there.”
Jo smiled in slow recognition. “I know what you mean, Sugar. Them’s houses all right, least theys used to be, but not the sort of houses that a man like you would need to be a-botherin’ with.”
“Not farmers?” Levine interjected into the conversation.
Joletta looked at him as if he was on display in a store window. “There was plenty of oats sowed out there, lots of other things as well, but they weren’t no farmers doin’ the sowin’.” She paused to make sure that they were receiving the message on a single wavelength. “When I was growin’ up, that was a little colored village out there. Few Mexicans and some white trash as well. Women set up near the railroad tracks. But it weren’t only railroad men that kept them in business.” She smiled at the information she was revealing to outsiders. “Plenty of good Split Tree citizens knew the way there without a flashlight. You hear me?”
“And this was goin’ on…when…in the sixties, seventies?” Kel asked in between bites of syrupy pie.
“Oh my, started in the thirties or forties, I suspect—well before the war. But yes, they was still active in the early to midsixties, don’t think it continued much into the late sixties though, if at all. Big Ray shut it down ’bout then. Course the railroad was about dead already so it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyhow. Cotton business was startin’ to die too.”
“Ray Elmore?” Levine again interrupted. “You said Big Ray? You mean Ray Elmore?”
“One and the same. Only one Big Ray. Story is he went out there one weekend and persuaded all them women to move their business elsewhere. You know—move, take it elsewhere, as in, anywhere but in Locust County.”
Levine looked at her with new interest. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Wasn’t that outside his jurisdiction? He was city police, that’s county land, isn’t it?”
“Honey, back then there wasn’t nothin’ that was outside Big Ray’s business.”
Chapter 17
Vietnam War Memorial, The Wall, Washington, D.C.
FRIDAY, JUNE13, 1986
Big Ray Elmore had traveled the Pacific for almost three years. He’d been wounded twice, the last time by a kamikaze at Iwo Jima, and he’d spent almost a year in a string of navy hospitals, ending up in one in Pensacola where they rebuilt his hip with metal plates and screws. He’d emerged a better man from the crucible of war—a slight limp notwithstanding—and like Dorothy, Big Ray Elmore had discovered what only someone lost far from his roots could ever really understand; there’s no place like home.
He had returned from the war to find much of his world changed. Not the town of Split Tree. Split Tree was inert. It was his world that was different. The one true love of his life was married to another; she had a child and a life free from his involvement; his father had died; his mother had aged and been broken by world events beyond her control; his younger brother, Ruell, was buried in a small town in Belgium whose name he couldn’t pronounce. But Split Tree was eternal. It was a pole star to his heart. And it was at that moment—at the moment when he first returned home—that he vowed never to stray from its easy borders again.
In the almost forty years since then, he had come very close to keeping that vow. Aside from an occasional, short, day journey to Memphis or Little Rock, Big Ray Elmore had left Split Tree only twice; once, to St. Louis, in 1966, and now, twenty-one years later, to Washington, D.C.
Big Ray Elmore was not alone among his generation in his dislike of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Like Split Tree, he was a simple man of great complexity. To him, monumental architecture meant rearing horses, and grim-faced men, their eyes ablaze with righteous determination and gritty resolve. He could not fathom an abstract shape memorializing anything as frankly pragmatic as young men dying horrible, painful, lonely deaths far from home and family.
Yet he had to come.
Jimmie Carl Trimble was gone. So was young Ray Junior. Not gone the way they should have, but gone nonetheless, and it was a blister on his soul that had not healed in two decades. It festered and boiled and galled. It was rubbed raw and painful every morning when he awoke. And so he had come, one more futile attempt to salve the wound.
He had asked Grace Trimble to accompany him. She hadn’t. He had known that she wouldn’t, but he had asked her anyway. To her, the loss of Jimmie Carl Trimble was every bit as fresh and open and just as resistant to healing as the loss of young Ray Junior was to him. And it would be every bit as fresh and just as sore and just as unhealed tomorrow and the next day, and the next one after that.
No visit to an abstract block of inscribed granite would change that.
An hour or so before he left for Memphis to catch his plane to Washington, she had called him, though. “No,” she told him, she would not go with him, but could he do her a favor? A friend had told her of the practice of making a rubbing of the engraved names on The Wall. Would he do that for her? Would he make a rubbing of Jimmie Carl’s name?
He agreed.
Big Ray Elmore was a practical man prone to solving problems by sheer force of will. Certainly he could manage a rubbing by himself, but for some reason he found himself wanting to watch others make rubbings before attempting it himself. He watched for over an hour. Long after he knew the procedure. There was some sense of finality that he was reluctant to confront. He stalled.
He also took his time locating Jimmie Carl’s name; second panel right of center, 2E, eighth row, third entry. It was high up, but Big Ray Elmore was a tall man, and he reached it easily enough. The rubbing was managed quickly.
Afterward, Big Ray Elmore walked slowly up the small, grassy berm behind The Wall. It was warm and the air was close and the atmosphere noisy, and he needed shade, and space, and silence. He paused at the top, as much from exhaustion as from a profound sense of emptiness that robbed him of direction, before continuing down the backside, where he found a bench. He sat, melted in his sorrow and exhaustion, and looked at the sooty rubbing in his hands, the one bearing the imprint ofJimmie C. Trimble . He thought of his son, young Ray Junior. He thought of the last letter that he had received from Vietnam. Ray Junior had apologized for letting him down, for not being there, for leaving his mother and brother, for everything and anything and all things. It was the only letter Big Ray Elmore had saved. The rest he had thrown away—not even something as symbolic as burning—simply thrown them away.
All except the last letter; he had kept that one.
Big Ray Elmore was not a religious man, but the letter was there, at home in Split Tree where young Ray Junior should be. It was beside his bed where he could look at it, not daily, but often enough. He didn’t need to read it, just touch it, rub his hand over it. Reassure his heart that it was there.
It was tucked in his Bible.
Chapter 18
Split Tree, Arkansas
THURSDAY, AUGUST18, 2005
Kel paid their bill at the restaurant, being sure to leave Joletta a memorable tip, and joined his now-partner in the car.
As he started the engine, Levine began anew to pick at the scab of their conversation.
“I’m not sure I’m fully getting the significance of what you were asking the waitress back there,” Levine said. He had become sufficiently familiar with the town that he now drove quickly and with confidence.
Kel screwed his face into a concerted frown and stared at Levine. “I want to see some ID…are you sure you’re in the FBI?”
“Depends if you’re asking me or the Bureau.”
“Look, farmers are one thing. But the people who were livin’ in those houses weren’t farmers. They were workin’ girls. Follow? Different groups, farmers and prostitutes, definitely different work habits.”
“I’m still not fully tracking. You thinking witness
es?”
“Think about your files. Farmers get up early, work hard, and, yes, go to bed early—like your reports said. If they were farmers, maybe they don’t see any shit that happens late at night. Though try tippin’ one of their cows once and see how good their hearin’ is. But these weren’t farmers, were they? Do I need to remind you how hot it is durin’ the summer down here? I didn’t see any air-conditionin’ on those buildings, did you? It has to be over a hundred in those shacks durin’ the day. More. So where do you suppose those women were?”
Levine diverted his eyes from the road long enough to look at Kel. He said nothing.
“Not workin’, that’s for damn sure. They were out swimmin’ or shoppin’ or workin’ off hangovers or sleepin’ in the shade, but they definitely weren’t on the meter durin’ the day in those sweatboxes, and if they’re not there durin’ the day then that means work, work, work at night, and that means they weren’t asleep.”
“You’re right. So they should have seen something.”
“What’d the waitress say? ‘Lots of folk knew their way out there without a flashlight.’ No shit. It’s not the sort of place good Split Tree citizens would announce their arrival at by honkin’ their horns and flashin’ their car lights, and that means the girls would be on the lookout. Hell, they probably knew you were there before you did.”
“Which means they saw something, but told the agents they didn’t.”
“Maybe they saw somethin’, maybe they didn’t,” Kel replied. “If they did see somethin’, they probably weren’t real anxious to talk to cops, especially federal agents. This was small-town nowhere and it was 1965. Then again, maybe I don’t have a clue what I’m talkin’ about. Maybe they really didn’t see anythin’. Sounds like those bodies were buried pretty shallow out in that field; that means it was probably done quick. Maybe someone was discreet.” He shrugged.
“Yeah, and maybe not.”
Kel shrugged again.
“And then of course, there’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?” Kel asked.
“That maybe they did see someone—someone they knew they weren’t supposed to see.”
The police chief’s office was located, as one of the customers in the diner had informed them, in the “new” city hall, diagonally across the square from the courthouse. It was singularly unspectacular in appearance, a flat, featureless, one-story, taffy-colored concrete box—with all the charm and character of a roach motel. Blooms on the azalea bushes on either side of the entrance had long burned off.
Levine parked the car in a diagonal space in front of the courthouse. He got out, shut the door, and locked it.
“You sure you want me along?” Kel asked as they started across the street. He had dealt with enough FBI agents in the past to know that they typically have a very low opinion of non-FBI personnel being involved in anything, let alone one of their cases. Yet here he was, following behind Levine on a leash.
“Sure. Why, you got something better you need to be doing?”
If he were playing along, Kel could list a good dozen or so things he’d rather be doing, but what would be the point. He opened the glass door of the new city hall and held it open for Levine.
The inside of the building was as uniformly unspectacular as the outside. There was a small common room with a couple of low wooden desks, state surplus by the looks of them, and a row of filing cabinets covered with refrigerator magnets—all cats, Levine noted; somebody liked cats. Several of the acoustic tiles in the suspended ceiling looked as if someone had somehow spilled coffee on them. The walls of the room were paneled with the sort of cheap, wood-finished pasteboard paneling that one normally expects to find in mobile homes. In fact, the room gave the impression of a trailer except for its square configuration.
“Come on in; you Mr. Levine?” A young man, maybe twenty-five years Levine’s junior, wearing a black, pleated police officer’s uniform shirt, was poking his head around the door opening off to the far right corner, the one next to a calendar that extolled Arkansas as “The Natural State.” He was medium height but clearly spent time with weights, and his high-and-tight haircut hinted at prior military service, or at least a desire to have served. “Edd Forrest, chief of police for Split Tree. Come on, come on, take a seat.” He motioned them into his office and pointed at two padded metal folding chairs in front of his desk. On the wall behind his desk was a framed diploma from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.
“Mike Levine, FBI,” Levine said. He took a seat, introducing Kel as he sat down. “Thanks for meeting with us. This is Dr. Robert McKelvey of the Army Central ID Lab.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Levine. Doctor. CID?”
“No, no,” Kel quickly corrected. “C-I-L. The Central Identification Laboratory.”
“The fellas that identify the MIAs?”
“That’s right,” Kel acknowledged.
Chief Forrest nodded as he took his seat behind his desk. “I read about y’all in the papers. Well, what can I do for you boys?”
“Chief, I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll get to business. What do you know about the murder of Leonidas Jackson? Ring a bell?”
Chief Edd Forrest looked at Levine for several seconds while he reached forward and removed a pen from a large coffee mug on his desk that doubled as a pencil holder. “Not much, really,” he finally replied as he rocked back into his chair. He commenced tapping the ballpoint pen on a report lying on his desk, and he watched the point intently while he accessed his memory. “Let me see, summer of 1965, I think. Black civil rights activist from…Mississippi—Jackson or Natchez—got the ACLU snoopin’ around down here for a while. Last seen at a church rally over in Helena, West Helena, maybe. Local kid finds his body washin’ out of a fallow field. Clear homicide. Your office implicated the Klan, but no indictments were ever handed down, and no one was ever convicted, as I recall. Body of a white kid found nearby a couple of months later. Other than that, don’t remember much, I’m afraid.”
Levine was surprised that he had remembered that much. He hadn’t even been born when the murder had occurred. “That’s more than anyone else around here seems to remember, Chief; I’m impressed.”
Edd Forrest smiled and took these two men in. “Not everyone sees the virtue in rememberin’ the past, Mr. Levine.”
“So I gather.”
“I also have a bit of an advantage. To be honest, we read about that case in a criminal justice class I had in college. Bein’ from here and all, I took notes.”
Levine nodded. “Chief, the reason we’re here is that the Bureau has decided to reopen the investigation. Where it will lead, if anywhere, is anybody’s guess right now. My interest is in what your office might be able to contribute.”
The chief laid his pen down and leaned farther backward in his chair, tipping it onto its hind legs, propping his brown, alligator-grained cowboy boots onto his desk. “Hate to disappoint you, Mr. Levine, but that occurred in Locust County, not in Split Tree. I’m afraid that’s outside my jurisdiction. You need to talk to the sheriff.”
“Understood, Chief. But to be honest, Sheriff Elmore doesn’t seem to be a great deal of help in this matter.”
“As I said, Agent Levine, not everyone sees the virtue in rememberin’ the past. You’d really do well to remember that. But now let me ask you a question.” He shifted his focus to Kel. “What’s this case got to do with Ray Elmore?”
“Ray Elmore?” Kel had been daydreaming and wasn’t running at full speed with regard to the conversation. “I’m not sure I understand your question.”
“Well,” Chief Forrest replied, cocking his head to one side. The expression reminded Kel of a bird dog he’d had when he was growing up that used to give him that same look when he was pondering something important. “I assume that if the CIL is involved, it must have somethin’ to do with Ray Elmore. I mean, the sheriff’s brother is still missin’ in Vietnam. Correct? Two of our boys died over there. The V
FW hall is named after one of them—Jimmie Trimble—he’s the big-time hero around these parts, Navy Cross and all. His body came home, but Ray Elmore never returned. Not sure of the details. He was in the navy, I know, but the Elmores were always kinda quiet about the matter. All I know is that he got killed and didn’t come back. They say Big Ray took the loss real hard. Ray Junior was his absolute pride, you know? Idolized that boy. His wife never did recover, kind of stove her up permanent. Mental case.”
“When’d it happen? You remember?” Kel asked.
“You mean when’d he die?” Edd Forrest took a deep breath as if it would help clear the cobwebs from his memory. He slowly exhaled and stared closely at his folded hands resting on his belt buckle. “Don’t know. Maybe six months, year after Jimmie Carl Trimble’s death. Truth is, don’t really know. Before my time. Probably not too long after that Jackson fella’s death.”
Levine wanted to get the conversation back on track. “This visit doesn’t involve the sheriff’s brother. Dr. McKelvey is here to support the Bureau, not as a representative of the army’s lab. My intent, once we locate the remains of the John Doe—the white kid—found with Mr. Jackson, is to reanalyze them and possibly do some DNA work. That’s the game plan, anyway. The Bureau requested Dr. McKelvey’s assistance in taking a fresh look at the remains. That’s all.”
Edd Forrest nodded and smiled. “Guess I jumped to a conclusion.”
“The Trimbles and Elmores close?” Kel broke in. He didn’t intend to sidetrack the conversation any more than it had already strayed, but the memory of their meeting with Grace Trimble and the photographic shrine in her living room pricked his train of thought. “We visited Mrs. Trimble and saw a photograph of her son and Big Ray Elmore on the wall,” he added as if by way of explanation.
The chief stretched out his arms and then clasped his hands behind his neck; he tilted his head slightly back so that he was sighting down the length of his long nose at Kel. “You want facts or gossip?”
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