Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (3 page)

“They can’t have it both ways, Dee,” I told him. “Their calling in the Bureau should take you off the hook.”

“You would think so,” he answered. “The thing is, I’m less than a year from full pension and the bastards are after me.”

“You’re the best man they have!” I protested. “They’d be crazy to let you go. Who’d get things done?”

“No one’s arguing that Barton’s sane,” he answered dryly. “The word I have is that one of his nephews needs a job.”

“You’re civil service,” I answered, but I knew that didn’t matter. The attorney general was well connected and most judges in the state were afraid of him. Nor did Dee choose to play the political game. There was no one more competent on a crime scene or on the witness stand, but he was out of his depth when it came to day-to-day politics. He simply couldn’t see how politics mattered, and if things went bad on this thing, the hacks would hang him out to dry. It must have been pretty blatant because Dee doesn’t normally pick up on this sort of thing.

“I need your help, Jazz,” he said. “Once I get by this one I’ll grab my pension and run, but I’m stuck with this one. They’re pulling the rug out from under me every step of the way.”

“You could always check into treatment,” I said, and we both laughed. That’s a common dodge of drug dealers who find they’re on the brink of getting busted. They check into treatment in a facility in another state, and the law can’t touch them until they’re out. That buys time until their lawyers can buy judges.

“That might be a hard sell.” Dee was known as the designated driver for the whole division. As far as I knew, he’d never taken a drink since coming into AA a dozen or more years before. Yet, very few were aware he had a problem with booze.

I thought about it a minute. This thing could really mess me up as an outside consultant and Dee knew it. He wouldn’t have asked unless he was desperate. “How about I just shoot you in the leg?” I asked. “We could both say it was an accident. It might be less painful.”

He laughed. “Don’t tempt me. But you might hit an artery and I’d hate them to slip you the needle. Nellie would never forgive me.”

“Well, let’s hit it then,” I answered, flagging the waitress for the bill. “No use putting it off.”

“Maybe I should take up drinking again,” he laughed as he followed me out. We both knew that was not an option. There is no problem in this world that drinking cannot make worse.

There was a distinct chill to my reception at the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was all right with my being there and greeted me warmly. “Damned good to see you again, Jazz,” he said. “I’m glad you came. The whole family is. Hope you don’t mind the arm twisting.”

The sheriff might have been glad to see me, but I could see the Fat Boys were not pleased at all. That alone damn near made it worth the trouble of driving down, but I was polite. Not looking at Dee or the sheriff, I spoke directly to them. “I didn’t know the Bureau was involved. When did this happen?”

Ken Spinks, the senior agent, answered me. “Well, we are, Phillips. So don’t get in our way.” Spinks and I go a long way back, too. I haven’t figured out which rubs me wrong the worse—his arrogance or his stupidity. I do know he’s well connected in national politics and I suspect that’s how he got by entrance screening at the Bureau. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

“What’s your basis for jurisdiction?” I asked. “This is a local murder.”

“Civil rights,” the other answered. He scowled. “Maybe conspiracy or a hate crime.”

“A hate crime?” I asked. “Against Smiley Jones? What suggests that?”

Spinks jumped in. “We’re the ones asking the questions here, Phillips. We’re the ones with jurisdiction. You’re here to answer our questions.”

“I’m here as a consultant to the Arkansas CID and the sheriff,” I shot back. Then I smiled. “Of course, if the Bureau is picking up the tab...?”

“The Bureau is not picking up your tab,” Spinks snarled.

“Well, maybe I should call Lonnie and see if we can figure out how this is going to work. Maybe I need to bow out.” Lonnie Schmidt is the FBI supervisor in Little Rock. He and I go back a long way, too.

I could see Spinks didn’t like this, either. He had been around long enough to know I have a solid reputation among the senior staff in the Bureau. He also knew that included Lonnie, who likes the results I get and doesn’t hesitate to say so. I didn’t know his partner very well, but Spinks was not about to risk getting his tits in that wringer. The two of them might freeze me out with little or no cooperation, but they were not about to go up against Lonnie.

“That won’t be necessary,” Spinks said.

“All right, then,” I told them. “But I expect full cooperation and full disclosure all the way. Any withholding on your part and I go right over your heads to Lonnie.” They nodded, but I knew Spinks would cut me dead in a New York minute if he could get away with it. I hoped fear would keep him in line. “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll do the same. Dee and I will work together and keep you up to date.”

I turned to the sheriff. “We’ll keep you in the loop, too, Sheriff. You know the drill. We’ll keep what we find among ourselves until the case breaks. Just the five of us.” He nodded. I knew there wouldn’t be a leak through the sheriff, even though he was Smiley’s cousin and would face a real grilling from the family. Then I decided it wouldn’t hurt to put the Fibbies on defense. When I asked the sheriff the next question, it was all he could do to keep from smiling. “Tell me, do you have any sense this was racially motivated?”

Spinks’ partner broke in and tried to answer, but I held up a hand. “Sorry for the confusion,” I told him. “I was after the sheriff’s gut feeling.”

“Well,” the sheriff drawled, taking his time and making the word a full three syllables. “I can’t say I do, Jazz. ’Course, I can’t rule race out, either. They is a lot of strange people out there nowadays. Seems they get stranger all the time.”

Spinks rolled his eyes, but the sheriff ignored it. “It’s not a family matter, is it, John?” I asked gently. Dee knows how I work and anticipated the question. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him watching the sheriff like a hawk.

The sheriff shook his head. “No, sir, it ain’t,” he said simply. “If it was, we wouldn’t a had to call you, would we?” He smiled sweetly.

I nodded, satisfied for the moment. I could see Dee was, too. Nor did he miss the message. Sheriff Tanner was telling us that if the death were a family matter, neither Dee nor I would have ever heard about it. Nor would it have gotten to court. The alleged killer would have undoubtedly been shot trying to escape the county jail. Arkansas justice may be rough at times, but it can be damned effective.

I smiled back. We understood each other. “I’ll want to see the crime scene and I’ll need a desk to look over the file.”

“Get real,” Spinks interjected. “Crime scene is a mess. Dozens of people have been through there since it happened. There’s nothing there.”

“Yeah, and it’s rained since then, too,” his partner piped in. “Twice. Any trace evidence is probably long gone.”

I didn’t bother to answer. It doesn’t matter how contaminated a crime scene may be. It always pays to look, even if all one gets is a sense of how things went down. There are some things neither time nor rain can wash away, and this was what I was after. Nor was it my job to train Bureau agents, even if they were open to it. Spinks and company were Lonnie’s problem, not mine.

The sheriff nodded. “We’ll set up an office for you over at the jail. We’ll keep the file there so you can get to it anytime you need. Just ask the jailer.”

“Thanks, Sheriff,” I told him. “We’re going to head out while there’s still good light.” Dee got to his feet, too, and we headed for the door. Then I stopped, turned back to Spinks. “Keep in touch, Ken,” I said, pointing a finger at his chest. Spinks face turned red, but he didn’t say a word.

Dee chuckled all the way to the car. “I forget what an asshole you can be,” he said as we climbed into his cruiser. “You sounded just like Lonnie.”

To give the devil his due, Spinks was right. The crime scene was a mess. The place where Smiley was shot was a small black settlement about a dozen miles out of Nashville. The houses were too spread out and too few to call a village, but there was a small complex of buildings more or less in the center of things and a paved state road wound its way north and south through the community, following the contours of the land. A hundred feet on either side of the road, the land fell off sharply, forming a long ridge that ran for miles.

This part of Arkansas has a lot of old stand pines left in places. Thinking they would probably be cheated by white loggers, the black people who had settled around Oak Grove used their pines for themselves. During the investigation, I learned the tractor powered sawmill standing to the east end of the central complex provided most of the lumber for the buildings, and what little was not needed was sold to lumber yards as far away as Hope. That’s where the money came from to buy hardware and glass for the community center which also served as a school before they started bussing. Now the pines that paid for this were giving way to kudzu, the Asian ground cover imported to stop soil erosion after clear-cut logging. I guess it did just that, but what it also did was stop the natural replacement of the pines. Kudzu spreads like wildfire and in places it has wiped out entire groves.
 

The community center, where the shooting happened, faced north. It was a big white building in need of fresh paint but otherwise in good repair.Large windows were evenly spaced along the east and west sides, but there were none in the front or back. The entrance was a wide double door hung in the middle of the broad gallery porch which ran all the way across the front. Unpainted benches sat along the wall of the porch. To discourage casual borrowing, they were nailed to the floor.

The state road that ran through Oak Grove passed a wide parking area on the west side of the community center. Across the road from the center, a small general store with an old gas pump out front sat at right angles to the center, facing the parking lot. A crude sign on the solitary pump told us there was no gas this week.

Just north of the general store, I could see an abandoned blacksmith shop and another building that was boarded up. These all faced what looked like a dusty town square that lay across the road and directly in front of the community center. Scattered around the square were crude wooden benches set in the shade of a small grove of oak trees. It was these trees, planted by one of the first settlers, which gave Oak Grove its name. Later in the investigation, I would learn it was called Oak Ridge, too.

On the north side of the grove was a dirt parking lot, well packed from years of use. Next to the parking lot, facing the community center across the square, sat a small white church fifty feet from the road.

There was no sign in front, but in this part of the world, it was safe to bet the church was Baptist. There was a bell in the steeple to call the faithful to worship, and over the lip of the narrow ridge, the tops of white crosses and gray headstones marked the cemetery.

Outsiders stand out like sore thumbs in settlements like Oak Grove, and I’m sure we did that day. Life in small towns is so unvaried that folks living there seem to sense when the smallest things out of the ordinary take place.That means anyone stopping for longer than a few minutes to enjoy the shade was sure to be seen, even if the watchers were not. Nor would the presence of a stranger fail to be discussed at length.

I knew the shooting would accelerate speculation. People would already be asking who might have done this, and I was sure names were being matched with unknown faces. The question was whether the family would choose to share this information with me or with anyone else from outside. Even though he was kin, the sheriff might not be in the loop on this one. He might hear about it weeks or months or years later, but not right away. No one likes a tattletale and, right or wrong, that’s how talking to outsiders would be seen. Any information we got would have to be drawn out patiently, one piece at a time.

Knowing this, Dee and I were both dressed in khakis, open neck print shirts, and hunting boots. That wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking we were country folks, but it could help. We might still be peckerwoods from Little Rock, but not city boys in suits, and in the eyes of rural folks, there is a difference. The way we dressed might give the Fat Boys reason to view us as hicks, but we stood a chance of getting information they never would.

I asked Dee to park his cruiser in the parking lot by the church, and we got out. From where we stood, it was less than a hundred feet to the porch of the community center, and I could see at least a dozen places where the shooter might hide. Given what I knew, one of the best spots would be right where we were standing.

The problem was that on the day Smiley was killed, a lot of people were in town. Some of them were strangers, but most were relatives of people living there or folks from similar little settlements within twenty or thirty miles. They were there to help Smiley celebrate his birthday, which actually took place three days before. That meant the bush telegraph was overwhelmed. There were simply too many different faces there at once, and it would take the Oak Grove folks months to sort them all out. Even then, some of these would certainly be overlooked.