Cutter's Run (18 page)

He nodded. “She mentioned that. Certainly worth checking.”

I told him about visiting William Keith and how I’d be meeting with Ellen Sanderson that evening.

“That’s good work, Deputy,” said Dickman. He reached down and picked up a manila envelope from me deck beside his rocking chair. “I wanted to show you this.” He handed it to me.

I opened the flap and slid out half a dozen nine-by-twelve glossy black-and-white photographs. I flipped through them quickly. They were grainy and blurry, as if they’d been shot hastily from a great distance through a poorly focused telephoto lens, but they were plenty clear enough for me to see what was going on.

They had captured a sequence of the same general scene: a milling crowd, several uniformed policemen, a dozen or so men wearing white robes with their fists raised, some of them waving hand-lettered signs. The signs bore clever slogans such as “Segregation Forever,” “End Affirmative Action,” “Christians Against Queers,” “White Supremacy.”

In the background I recognized the plaza in front of the JFK Federal Building in Boston’s Government Center.

I looked up at Dickman. “The KKK?”

He nodded. “This was a few years ago at some kind of civil rights rally. There were several arrests for disorderly conduct.”

“I remember,” I said. “It was big news in our city for a day. The Klan came from Illinois or somewhere, proclaiming their constitutional rights to free assembly and free speech. Hateful sons of bitches, of course, but they knew their rights, by God, and they knew a juicy publicity opportunity when they saw it. They were hoping they could antagonize the good Boston liberals, make them lose their cool. Which they did. There were fights and arrests. As I recall, none of the white sheets got arrested.”

“No, they didn’t,” said Dickman. “They’re quite crafty that way. But it was still a productive event for the FBI, because when the melee started, several of the ‘robed demonstrators’—which is what Alex’s paper delicately called the assholes—had their hoods ripped off their heads. Look.”

He leaned toward me, paged through the photos until he came to the one he was looking for, and tapped it with his finger. “Indiana,” he said. “It wasn’t Illinois, though there are Klans there, too. But this contingent was from Indiana. A month before they arrived, they told the press they were coming to Boston, and the Associated Press picked up the story. It was in most of the papers. They drove all the way in private automobiles with ‘KKK’ painted on the doors and Confederate flags flying from the antennas, and they arrived the night before the rally. They stayed in the Marriott in Newton, apparently quite disappointed that they weren’t turned away. A couple of them actually wore their robes into the restaurant, and they weren’t turned away there, either.”

“Which must’ve pissed them off,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Nothing the Klan loves better than being the victims of prejudice and discrimination. Anyway, it seems that there are at least a few New Englanders who yearn for a better-organized Klan around here. Some of them suited up and joined the Indiana contingent there at Government Center that day. Here. Look at this.”

Dickman’s finger moved over the photo and came to rest just beneath a blurry face.

I bent close and squinted at it, then looked up at him. “Should I recognize him?”

“Try this one.” Dickman found another photo, peered at it for a minute, then jabbed his forefinger at another face.

I studied it, then looked up at him. “How in the world did you—?”

“The FBI ID’d him,” he said quickly. “You recognize him, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “I met him the other day. He rented out his hunting cabin to Charlotte Gillespie. That’s Arnold Hood.”

“A
RNOLD HOOD,” REPEATED DICKMAN
. He laid his head against the back of the rocker and gazed up at the puffy afternoon clouds. “Forty-one years old. Never married. Born in Garrison, Maine, where he’s lived all his life in the same house. Calls himself self-employed on tax returns, on which he has never declared an income over seventeen grand a year. Honorably discharged from the Army, 1981, having attained the exalted rank of corporal. Both parents dead. Belongs to the VFW and the Dublin Rod and Gun Club. Arrested twice for drunk and disorderly, ’82 and ’84, no convictions.”

“Arnold Hood is in the Klan?” I said. “I find that hard to believe.”

Dickman tapped the photograph. “See for yourself.”

“I didn’t exactly take him for a genius or a philosopher,” I said. “But he seemed like a nice enough guy. Quiet-spoken, kind of ingenuous. Simple, really.”

“Probably a pretty accurate profile of your typical Klansman, if the truth were known. Look,” said the sheriff, leaning toward me. “This is unlikely to be a coincidence. I mean, those swastikas, Ms. Gillespie being African-American, and Mr. Hood wearing sheets to Klan rallies. Agreed?”

I nodded. “Agreed.”

“You’re worried about her,” he said, “and I’m worried about her, too. I’m also very interested in skinheads and Klansmen. So. Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

“Pay Mr. Arnold Hood a visit, of course.”

“You and me?”

“Sure. The two of us. We’ll double-team him.”

I smiled. “I’m no cop, Sheriff. I’ve never double-teamed anybody.”

“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Never cross-examined anyone? A hostile witness, maybe?”

“Sure.”

He lifted the palms of his hands up in front of him. “Easy as that.”

“A cross-examination is never easy.”

“Then you should find this a snap.” Dickman pushed himself up from the rocker. “Besides, it’s about time a deputy sheriff learned some tricks of the trade.” He put his hands on his hips, arched his back, and groaned. “Before we drop in on Hood, I want you to take me to that cabin. I’d like to see these swastikas for myself.”

I went inside. I could hear writing sounds from Alex’s cubicle—the hum of her computer’s fan, the muffled clack and clatter of keys being tapped, the squeak of her swivel chair. I tiptoed past her and up to the bedroom, shucked off my mud-stained fishing clothes, and pulled on a clean pair of chino pants and a light cotton shirt. Then I went back downstairs. I hesitated, then peeked over the bookcases into Alex’s workspace. She was sitting there with her back to me, stiff-necked, tense and alert, with her head jutting forward at her computer. “Hey,” I said softly.

“Hi,” she mumbled without turning around.

“The sheriff and I are going to do some sleuthing. I’ll be back, but I’ve got to be in Portland at six, don’t forget. Will you be okay?”

Still peering at her monitor, she lifted one hand and waved backward at me. “Have fun, Deputy.”

“I’ll lock the doors behind me,” I said.

I stood there for a moment, looking at her, thinking of what I had to tell her.

But not now.

I locked the slider onto the deck, grabbed two apples and two cans of Coke from the refrigerator, and joined Dickman in the driveway, locking the front door behind me. I gave him an apple and a Coke. “Lunch,” I said.

He nodded and took a bite out of his apple.

“What car do you want to bring?” I said.

“Oh, definitely mine. It’s got a big light bar and a classy official logo on the door. Let’s make an impression on that boy.”

Heavy wire mesh separated the backseat of Dickman’s cruiser from the front. He had a cellular phone and a police radio for entertainment and a pillow to sit on. The floor under my feet on the passenger side was littered with Styrofoam cups and candy bar wrappers and Dunkin’ Donuts bags. Typical cop car.

“I dropped in on the animal hospital on the way over this morning,” he said, as we headed for Charlotte’s cabin.

“I thought you said you didn’t have the time or the resources to investigate cases of petty vandalism and nuisance phone calls.”

He shrugged. “So I changed my mind. I talked to that Betsy. She’s either a scatterbrain or she’s scared. Hard to say which. She told me what she told you—that the man who came for the dog was wearing sunglasses and a hat. That’s as much as she’d say.”

“Like a disguise,” I said.

“Like someone who didn’t expect to be recognized in the first place,” he said, “but was taking no chances.”

“A dead end, then?”

He shrugged.

I directed Dickman down the dirt road to Charlotte’s driveway, and he stopped directly beside the No Trespassing sign. It still sported its big red swastika. He gazed at it for a minute, then shook his head. “I guess if you don’t understand what it means,” he said quietly, “it is just petty vandalism.”

“Throw it into four-wheel drive,” I said. “We can drive in a ways further. When I left my car here, it ended up with its own swastika.”

“Nobody would dare vandalize the sheriff’s vehicle,” he said. He glanced sideways at me. “Joke,” he said.

I nodded.

He drove down to the rocky streambed and parked there, and we walked the rest of the way. When we arrived at the meadow that sloped down to the beaver dam on Cutter’s Run, my stomach flipped. I had been here just this morning. With Susannah Hollingsworth. Right down there, toward the bottom of the slope, was where I had kissed her, lying on her gray blanket. It all came flooding back, all those complicated and contradictory feelings, and I was reminded again that I had not yet confessed to Alex.

Dickman headed around to the back of the house where, his logic told him before I had the chance to, he’d find the outhouse. I followed him, and when we rounded the corner I caught a glimpse of orange and white flitting through the bushes along the meadow’s edge. It was one of Charlotte’s cats.

The cat stopped, crouched, and peered at us from under a bush, then squirted away and disappeared into the woods. I looked for others, but saw none.

Dickman stood there with his arms folded and peered at the big swastika on the outhouse door. He gave his head a little shake, but said nothing, and neither did I. After a minute we headed back to the cabin.

“You searched the place?” he said.

“Twice,” I said. “I went in there again this morning. Nothing has changed.”

He went to the cabin door, knocked loudly, paused, and pushed it open. Then he bent down, picked up the note I’d left, glanced at it, and put it down again. He stuck his head inside and called, “Ms. Gillespie? Charlotte? Are you home?”

She wasn’t.

Dickman turned to me. “Just take a peek, tell me if anything looks different.”

“I told you. I went in this morning. Nothing had changed.”

“Humor me,” he said.

I went inside and moved slowly from room to room. Nothing looked different.

“She hasn’t been back,” I said when I rejoined Dickman outside. “Everything’s exactly as it was.”

He nodded. “Then let’s mosey over to Mr. Hood’s house, see what he’s got to say for himself.”

We didn’t talk during the stroll back to Dickman’s car. After we climbed in, he sat there with both hands gripping the steering wheel, staring out through the windshield. Then he blew out a long breath and patted his shirt pocket. “Got a smoke?” he said.

“Didn’t know you smoked, Sheriff.”

“I don’t anymore. Gimme one.”

I took out my pack and held it to him. He plucked out a cigarette, lit it, exhaled through his nose, and said, “I lost an uncle and an aunt and an infant cousin at Buchenwald. I have trouble being objective about certain things.”

“Forgivable,” I said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Depends.”

“You don’t intend to arrest Arnold Hood, do you?”

He shook his head. “No. Not unless he’s broken the law. But if he’s got anything to do with those terrible symbols, by God, I’ll be sorely tempted to do something.”

“I may be a lowly deputy,” I said, “but I’m also a lawyer. If you feel compelled to take action, you should consult me regarding Mr. Hood’s civil liberties first.”

He turned to me, grinned quickly, and started the car, and ten minutes later we pulled up in front of Arnold Hood’s big square farmhouse.

His Dodge pickup truck was parked in the same place beside the house and Hood was up on the roof, just as he had been two days earlier when I’d come here with Susannah and Alex. In fact, it looked like he was still tacking down the same shingle he’d been working on then. Arnold Hood was a slow worker.

When Dickman and I slid out of his Explorer, we heard a woman bleating a country tune—or western, I never did know the difference—at full volume. The music had apparently drowned out the sound of our arrival, because Hood did not look down at us as we approached the house.

“The radio’s on the windowsill in the kitchen,” I told the sheriff. “I’ll go turn it off. That’ll get his attention.”

I moved around to the side of the house. The kitchen window was open and an elderly black plastic plug-in radio sat on the sill, about chest high from the ground. I reached up to switch it off, then hesitated as I glanced into Arnold Hood’s kitchen.

A Confederate flag hung on the wall over the table.

The lawyer in me tried to recall precedent, old cases that might be used to argue whether something seen through a window would constitute admissible evidence, or would be thrown out as me product of an illegal search. My recollection of civil liberties case law was too fuzzy to produce an answer.

It was a moot question anyway. There was no law against nailing a Confederate flag to your kitchen wall. As far as I knew, there was no law against wearing a sheet in public, either.

I turned off the radio and went around to the front of the house, where the sheriff was gazing up at the roof.

Hood was shading his eyes and looking down at us. “What do you boys want?” he said mildly. “I was listenin’ to that.”

“I need to talk to you, Mr. Hood,” said Dickman. “Come down here.”

“Come back when I ain’t working,” he said. He turned and tacked down a shingle.

“Don’t make trouble for yourself,” said the sheriff.

Hood did not respond. He pounded in another shingle tack.

Dickman stood there with his hands on his hips for a minute, staring up at Arnold Hood. Then he turned to me. “Come on.”

I followed him to where Hood’s paint-spotted aluminum ladder rested against the gutter above the second-floor windows. “Give me a hand,” said the sheriff, grabbing onto the ladder.