Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (5 page)

“Yeah, if he was facing the outhouse.”

“How sure is the medical examiner about the throat wounds? Which was entry and which was exit?”

Dee shrugged. “That’s one of the main problems. Young Frankenstein at the mortuary really messed things up. The ME couldn’t say for sure. He thought it went in the front, but he also said there was at least a forty-nine percent chance it came through from the back.”

“Have you talked to the kid?”

Dee shook his head. “No. He’s only fifteen and his dad’s a lawyer. Refused to let us interview the kid at all. I’m working on getting him immunity, but the local prosecutor is being ornery. Apparently the kid’s dad beat him up pretty bad in court a couple of times.”

“Maybe we need to make the prosecutor an offer he can’t refuse,” I suggested lightly.

Dee laughed. “I’m not going to ask what you mean by that.”

I looked around. Between the pines and the oaks, the light was going fast. “I think I have enough for today. I need to read the file. We’ll come back in the morning.”

As we walked across the square, an old man came out of the church and hobbled down the steps. He raised his cane and waved at us, trying to flag us down, and we turned and walked over to him. He stopped when he saw us turn and waited, breathing hard.

“You the police?” he gasped, leaning on his cane and squinting at us. He was short and slight, bent almost double over his cane. His hair had turned white, and I could see enough of his eyes to see they were rheumy.

“I am,” Dee told him, holding up his identification. “What’s the matter?”

“Luther done it!” the old man declared. “He ain’t no damn good and he done it!” There were tears streaming down his face.

“Who is Luther?” Dee asked. “What did he do?”

“It was Luther shot that man!” His eyes were open now, wild.

I noticed another man appear in the doorway of the church. He looked around, then spotted us and walked toward us, limping.

“You mean Smiley Jones?” Dee asked.

The old man became even more agitated. “Who else done got shot?” he shouted, waving his free hand wildly. “Luther done it!”

The second man had reached us. He was tall and thin, with an air of quiet authority, and was dressed in a worn black suit. He took the older man by the arm. “Now Luther, you just calm down,” he said. “You go sit up on one of those benches and let me talk to these gentlemen.”

I thought the old man was going to argue. He glared at the tall man, as if trying to figure who he was, then nodded and hobbled off to the nearest bench.

“You’ve got to pardon Luther, gentlemen,” he said quietly. “He hasn’t been quite right in a long time.” His voice was rich and well modulated, soft and gentle, but giving the sense of being able to shatter windows were it raised.

Dee extended his identification which he had not put away. “I’m Stephen DiRado, from the Arkansas CID. Who are you?”

“I’m Albert Jones, Officer. I pastor the church here.” He looked at me. “Who is this?”

I introduced myself, extending a hand. The pastor took it. His grip was like his voice, firm and gentle with a hint of great strength held in check. “Dr. Phillips is our consultant on this case,” Dee explained.

“Yes,” the pastor murmured. “I’ve read a great deal about you in the papers, Dr. Phillips. You did very good things when you were with the CID.” He turned to Dee. “I read the same about you, too, Mr. DiRado. It’s a pleasure to meet you both, though I wish the circumstances were different. Poor Wilbur. Yet, with his condition, it may have been a blessing.”

While his manner was open and welcoming, I saw wariness in the reverend’s eyes. I also sensed there was also a lot more to this man than one would expect from a simple country pastor. It may have been the way he spoke, in his choice of words and the lack of any accent. Or it may have been the way he wore his once elegant suit, as if it were fitted to his body by a tailor. Despite his limp, he moved like a dancer, with purpose and no wasted motion.

“His condition?” Dee asked.

“Didn’t your medical examiner tell you?” the pastor asked. “Wilbur had bone cancer. He was facing a world of pain.”

“He told us, pastor,” Dee replied. “I just needed to know if we were singing from the same page. Are you suggesting this might have been suicide? Or a mercy killing?”

“Not at all, Mr. DiRado. Just that he was spared a lot of suffering.”

“How widely was his cancer known?” I asked. His eyes met mine directly, and I saw something there. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I recognized it as something I would not care to meet in a dark alley.

“I would imagine only four or five people knew. He asked me to keep quiet about it, not even put him on the prayer list.” The pastor shook his head. “He was a proud man. Said he didn’t want to trouble his family or be a burden.”

“Why did Luther tell us he did it?” Dee asked.

“He accidentally shot another cousin of ours,” Albert Jones told us. “We were all very young and it wasn’t his fault. It was someone else’s gun, and Luther didn’t know how to handle it properly. He hasn’t been right ever since.” He looked at the old man, now sitting quietly on the bench. “It might surprise you to know that Luther is actually younger than me. The accident aged him very fast.”

It was hard to believe this strong man talking to us was Luther’s senior. I had placed Albert Jones in his early sixties and Luther in his eighties. Now I realized I was at least a decade short. It also occurred to me the good pastor was someone who probably knew everything worth knowing about Oak Grove and its people. Whether he would choose to share this knowledge with us was another question. I decided to take the lead.

“I would like to know more about that accident, pastor,” I told him. I saw shutters go down behind his eyes. “I wouldn’t ask you to violate any professional confidence, but it would help to know anything you can tell us.”

I could see the man was torn. Nor was it fear that troubled him. Looking back, I think he was considering the lesser of evils. Talking to us might open up areas of the past he would rather stay closed. Yet, not doing so might prompt us to probe into other areas even more unpleasant. I think he decided that in talking to us he could steer the conversation along the least unpleasant line.

He pulled out a pocket watch. Like the suit, it was very old and very elegant. “I have a prayer service in a half hour and I need to get ready for that. Perhaps some other time.”

“We’ll be here tomorrow morning,” I told him. “Would that do?”

Albert Jones nodded. “Meet me here at the church at eleven.” Not waiting confirmation, he turned and walked over to Luther. When he said something, the old man got up and followed. Together they disappeared into the church.

Dee sighed. “He knows something. I can smell it.”

I nodded. “Finding out what it is may be a problem.” Later, as we drove out of Oak Grove and the church caught my eye, something fluttered around the threshold of awareness in my mind. There was a critical question I needed to ask the pastor. Yet, for the life of me I couldn’t figure what it was.

2. The Village Smithy

When Dee picked me up early the next morning, I had a better sense of the case. The motel was an easy walk from the jail and I spent a couple of hours going over the file. Then I went for a walk, something people don’t seem to do very much in Nashville. I only saw one other soul out walking, a young woman in a sweat suit leading an old German shepherd that was having trouble keeping up with her pace. She passed me like I was standing still, and I had a moment of sympathy for the old dog. I walk at a good pace, clocking in at three miles in an hour, but she was going half again as fast.

As she passed, I wondered, as I always do, what her hurry was, how she might use the time she may have saved. For me, walking is not exercise so much as a time to get away, a time to set aside the concerns of the day and simply be still for awhile. So I don’t wear headphones or listen to whatever it is people listen to as they walk or run. I listen to the sounds of the night, which is the time of day I prefer to be out, or to the music of the spheres. As I listen, I wait for whatever insights the universe may have to offer. The interesting thing is that answers to many of the hardest questions that develop in a case come to me while I walk. Moving my legs seems to get the gray matter going, too, and I read somewhere that this is true for most people.
   

Late October weather can go either way in this part of the world, but that night it was cool and clear, and there was a hint of winter ahead in the air. Like many small, rural towns, Nashville is one of those places where they roll up the sidewalks at dusk. The only night life I could see as I walked the town was at the drive-in burger barn.

Even there business was slow. Wednesday night is church night in rural Arkansas and I wondered why there were so few cars at the half dozen or so churches I passed. The tune from an old song drifted through my mind, but the times were not changing. They had changed a long time ago.

Other than that, no blinding insights into this minor mystery came to me on the walk. Nor were there any insights into the case. When I got back to the motel, I read for a while and went to bed relaxed. I slept well, feeling refreshed and ready for the day when I woke. By the time Dee arrived, I was dressed and hungry for breakfast. Dee, on the other hand, looked haggard. When I asked, he told me he had been on the phone half the night talking to Little Rock. However, he had found an AA meeting in town and seemed to be in pretty good spirits.

Among those he talked to the night before was the state medical examiner, and as we ate breakfast, Dee told me the results of tests that were just now coming in. Since it was such a politically sensitive case, the ME had asked the FBI lab to verify some of his findings, and that always takes a while. Nor were there any great surprises. The ME was simply covering his ass and did not expect anything new to be uncovered. What killed Smiley Jones was the bullet that passed though his eye, and the only real questions were who did it and why. Whether the fatal shot came second or third would only be important if there were a trial.

“What bugs me is where the bullets went,” Dee said, taking a sip of coffee. “We looked in all the obvious places, and some that weren’t so obvious. Nothing. It was like they evaporated.” He chuckled. “I even wondered if someone had come up with a way to make them out of ice.”

“Well, assuming it was a hand loaded .223, that might not be surprising,” I answered. “Suppose someone reloaded military shells and used the original solid nose bullets. If they didn’t hit a building or one of the trees close by, they’re probably lodged somewhere out under the kudzu. I doubt they’ll ever be found. Not that we should stop looking.”

Dee nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But you would think that out of three shots, we could find at least one.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t the city, Dee. There aren’t many buildings to catch them. Then, too, our shooter may have chosen his vector with that in mind.”

Dee smiled and I realized what I had just done. Calling the shooter as ours rather than his meant I had staked a claim. I was committed. They could fire me and send me packing, but other than that, I was in for the long haul. “Well, I hate to bring up the possibility of a pro again,” he said, “but can you see your average killer being that careful...?” He left the thought unfinished.

I cleaned my plate and grabbed the bill. Dee tried to argue but I told him it was on the Natural State and I asked the waitress to bring us a couple of foam cups and to fill my thermos. From what I’d seen, there wasn’t a place to get coffee in Oak Ridge. At least, there wasn’t for peckerwoods like us.

It was foggy that morning as we headed out of Nashville and things did not improve. By the time we got to Oak Grove, the fog turned into a heavy mist and we were having to use the windshield wipers. When we got there about nine, there was no sign of life in town. Those who had jobs in other places were long gone and the weather was not good for being out. I was glad I had thought to bring along my rain gear. Even so, we were likely to get soaked if we had to go tramping around in the brush. I wished I had brought a change of clothes, too.

As gray as it was, there was little point in going over the outhouse right then. So Dee and I sat on the porch of the community center, sipping coffee and talking about the case. I knew our presence had not gone unmarked, and after about a half hour I saw someone slip out the door of the store across the road. It was a child, a boy of nine or ten, wearing a dark rain slicker. When he saw me looking, he disappeared behind the corner of the community center.