Roots of Murder (39 page)

“He's not there,” Nell told him, stopping him from running out the door. She quickly explained what had happened, including that they'd retrieved Marcus's papers. Just as she finished her explanation, the wail of a fire truck grew loud, then suddenly cut off as it reached its destination.

“Let me go look,” Jacko said, and he slipped out. Nell waited inside, near a window where she could watch their cars and the cargo in them.

Jacko returned in a few minutes. The black truck was no longer there.

“Shit!” Nell let out. “I hope he's safe. I hope to hell he's safe.”

“Should we tell the police about the truck?” Jacko asked.

Suddenly Nell wondered if the police already knew; if they were in on it. Could she trust the sheriff? This is what it had been like when black people knew they would get no justice from any white lawman. “What do we really know? I saw a black truck, or maybe dark blue. Didn't get the make, forget a license plate number. Two white men got out. I only saw them in my mirror and they were half a block away.”

Jacko could add little to that, but he said, “Let's try the anonymous call trick.” He went to the pay phone at the bar, dialed the police station, and said, “I don't want to get involved, but I saw a big black truck, with two white men in it, parked just outside when the house on Calhoun Street caught on fire.” He added, “Sorry, that's all I know,” and put the receiver down.

Nell gave the bartender business cards and asked him to call if he heard from Marcus.

Then she headed home, taking extra corners to make sure no one was behind them. Jacko followed, and she motioned him into the house. She wanted to see if Marcus had called, and if he hadn't, to call him. She pulled her cell phone out. No call. Then she went upstairs to check on Josh and Lizzie. They both were still awake, although they'd dutifully gone to bed. With a kiss and hug for each, Nell assured them she was okay.

She went downstairs and tried Marcus's cell phone. Voicemail. She and Jacko brewed a pot of coffee and she kept trying his phone for the next two hours, but all she got was the voicemail. Jacko suggested that Marcus might have headed home and was now busy with the fire. His cell battery might be dead, and with no house, he had no landline or place to recharge his cell. Nell finally gave in and called the sheriff's office, giving them a quick rundown of what had happened and the make and model of Marcus's car. After that there was nothing to do. Jacko was slim enough she could give him a
T-shirt
and sweatpants of hers to crash in. While he was in the bathroom, she hastily changed the sheets in the guest bedroom.

They said a weary good night, and then Nell crawled into bed.

twenty-two

Nell glanced at the
clock. It
s green numbers had changed enough to show she had dozed, though her waking proved it wouldn't be a night with real sleep. She listened carefully, wondering if she had been awoken by something othe
r than tension and worry.

She strained, listening, but heard no sounds out of the usual. Just as she started to relax, willing herself a few more hours of sleep, the phone rang. Nell quickly grabbed it, to still its ringing from waking anyone else.

“Who is it?” she said, preparing herself for whatever a call this late could mean.

“Nell, I'm terribly sorry for waking you.”

It was Marcus. Nell felt relief flood through her at the sound of his voice. “I was awake,” she quickly informed him.

“Not on account of me, I hope,” he gallantly offered.

“Of course on account of you. Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'm somewhere in the wilds of Mississippi, around Poplarville. That was the last exit sign I noticed. As a teacher I did a lot of driving kids to athletic games, spelling bees, you name it. The Negro schools weren't located on the main drags, so I learned a lot of back roads. Took those boys following me on a merry chase. Shook them just a bit ago. But I was so busy with my eyes on the road, I didn't keep my eyes on the gas gauge.”

“You ran out of gas?” Nell couldn't believe this awful night could have such a prosaic ending. She almost started laughing, but managed to turn it to a cough instead.

“Sitting on the side of
I-59
with the night critters,” Marcus said. “Interested in being a knight errant and rescuing me?”

“Much better than sleeping and worrying.” Then Nell remembered the fire. “Do you want the bad news now or later?”

“How bad? Who's hurt?”

“No one. But … I'm sorry, they burned your house.”

He was silent. Then he hissed out a terse, “Damn. Damn them.” Another pause, and he said, “Before you got there?”

“No, after. We got everything.” She then added, “All the boxes, that is.” He'd lost everything else.

“I'm glad you got the boxes. I hope there's something there, something to hang the sons and the fathers.”

“And the daughters. Hate is equal opportunity,” Nell added.

“This battery's not going to last much longer and I can't recharge it.” Marcus quickly gave her directions. As a final comment, he muttered, “I needed to redecorate anyway … damn them.”

Nell swung out of bed as she hung up. No one else was awake. As she dressed, she debated waking Jacko. Both of them couldn't go, and Nell wasn't about to leave Josh and Lizzie alone. She halfway hoped he would solve the debate by waking, and she also hoped she could use his sleeping as her reason to be the one to go.

Holding her shoes in her hand, she eased out of her bedroom. Let them sleep, Nell decided. She was awake and perfectly capable of driving to get Marcus. She hastily scribbled two notes, one for Jacko with a more complete rundown of what she was doing and one for her kids that she had to cover a story. She slipped the note for Jacko under his door and left the one for her kids on the kitchen table. She and Thom had both gone off frequently enough at odd hours that this wouldn't seem too out of place to them.

Nell slipped out of the house. It was black night, with shadows, but dawn was close; it would be daylight by the time she got back. Nell hastily shifted some of the boxes out of her car to free the passenger seat.

At this
pre-dawn
hour, traffic was light.
I-10
, the conduit for the coast with its casinos, still had cars, but after Nell exited, she only occasionally saw another vehicle. It seemed to be just her and the small area illuminated by her headlights.

Nell glanced to her watch. It had been
forty-five
minutes since Marcus had called. She noticed the dark was beginning to turn a dense gray. She slowed; Marcus would be on the other side and she'd have to pass him, go to the next exit, and turn around, but she wanted him to see her and know his wait was almost over.

There were no trees separating the two sides of the highway, but it was still dark enough that Nell had to carefully scan the far lane for any sign of him. She slowed even further as another minute ticked away on the dashboard clock.

Suddenly, Nell felt apprehension. What if they'd found Marcus stranded by the side of the road? What would happen to an inconvenient old man in the dark of the night?

She crested another rise and still saw no sign of him. She admonished her fears, told herself to be sensible; they couldn't spirit his stranded car away.

“It can't be daylight soon enough,” she muttered aloud as she came to the top of another rise in the road.

Then she saw him. Sensibly, he had a flashlight and was slowly blinking it on and off. She couldn't make out more than a murky shape, a man and a flashlight next to it. But the slow, deliberate way he moved told her it was Marcus. Nell slowed even further, flashing her headlights in answer.

He saw her and his flashlight blinked rapidly, as if saying, “Glad you could make it.”

She slowed and pulled to the shoulder, scanning the median to see if there was the remotest chance she could drive through the grass. There was a ditch in the center, too deep to risk her sedate family car. On to the next exit, then, Nell decided. But she pulled to a halt, wanting to shout at least a hello across the divide.

Suddenly looming out of the darkness, a truck appeared on Marcus's side. Nell felt a sharp stab of fear. It's just a truck, she told herself, but her brain interpreted what her instincts knew. This truck had no lights on, like a hunter stalking prey in the
pre-dawn
.

“Goddamn you!” Nell shouted, twisting the steering wheel of her car so it pointed directly where Marcus was. She hit her headlights to high beams, throwing a harsh, starkly shadowed light on the scene.

The truck slowed, and whatever last hope she had that they were good Samaritans disappeared as it swerved at Marcus. He jumped out of the way as the truck sideswiped his car. It stopped, and Nell saw the two men wearing ski masks get out.

She pounded on her car horn, making sure they knew there were witnesses.

Marcus flung the flashlight away and was running for the woods. But the attackers quickly closed the distance.

Nell shoved open her car door, still leaning on the horn. Her immediate impulse was to run across the road, to fight. But she hesitated—what were her chances against two men armed with what looked like a baseball bat?

She saw an arm arc up and then come down. Marcus crumpled to the ground.

“I've called the police!” she shouted. “They're a minute away!”

The arm was raised again, but hesitated at her words.

Damn it! Nell silently cursed. Why don't I have a gun? She frantically punched 911 on her cell phone. Her fingers slipped and fumbled.

She looked again at the median separating them, the deep ditch in the middle. She was tempted to roar her car over it anyway. It was at least some kind of a weapon.

“I can see their lights now!” she shouted.

The second blow didn't land. Instead, the two men scrambled back to their truck. They hadn't even turned off the engine.

They were a black ghost against the gray dawn. Then they were gone.

Nell sprinted across the highway, jumping the ditch in a leap she thought she had left behind in her twenties.

Marcus lay on the wet grass at the edge of the woods. He wasn't moving.

“Goddamn it, old man, you're not going to die like this!” Nell shouted, more to the gods than to him.

But she thought she heard a weak answer, a murmured “Yes, ma'am.”

Nell hastily bent down beside him. Blood was pouring from a head wound. “You'll be okay,” she said gently, willing the anger out of her voice. She had failed Thom; she hadn't kept him alive. She couldn't let it happen again.

She quickly dialed 911, this time looking at the numbers.

The call was brief; someone needed immediate medical attention, the location.

“You just take it easy, I'm going to take care of you,” Nell assured Marcus.

“Um … Nurse Nell,” he muttered.

“I took care of my mother while she died of cancer, I can take care of you. Now save your breath. Back in a minute.” Nell ran to his car, looking for anything she could use as a bandage and to cover him up. She found an old towel thrown in the back seat, but that was all.

Nurse Nell indeed, she thought as she trotted back. At least I'm wearing a fairly new sports bra, she thought as she pulled off her
T-shirt
.

She covered him with the towel and very gently pressed the
T-shirt
against the bleeding. She didn't want to risk hurting him more. He groaned softly.

“Don't go into shock on me, okay? You've got a hard head and you're going to be fine.” Nell gently eased her other arm under his head; she wanted to elevate it to help staunch the flow of blood. She slowly lowered herself beside him, so she was next to him. It probably looked odd, but she could keep him warm with her body, keep the pressure on his wound, and also cradle his head so it was off the ground.

“You're going to be okay,” Nell softly told him. “You just concentrate on taking care of yourself.”

His eyelids fluttered; he opened the one eye that wasn't covered with blood for a quick glance at her. “In the old days, they used to kill black men for doing less with a white woman,” was his comment.

“This is a new day.”

“Too bad I got such a headache.” Then his one good eye closed and he was quiet.

Nell heard the faint wail of a siren.

“You're going to be okay,” she told him as it grew louder. She cocked her head up and was now able to see the flashing lights.

The ambulance jerked to a stop next to Marcus's car.

“Over here,” Nell called. The light was still gray and dense. There was a light fog rolling in from the woods.

The two attendants quickly responded to her voice. The seemed unfazed by the sight of her without a shirt on.

“He was attacked and hit in the head. I think that's his only injury,” Nell told them.

As they got close, Nell saw that one of the EMTs was a black man, the other a white woman. She helped them move Marcus onto the stretcher. He groaned as he was moved but said little. His silence worried her.

The woman EMT handed her the bloody
T-shirt
back.

A highway patrol car joined them. Unlike the EMTs, the two young,
crew-cut
men did stare at her. Nell used the
T-shirt
to wipe off the blood she had gotten on herself. But the shirt was too bloody to do much more than smear it around. She hoped the troopers would realize she'd taken off the
T-shirt
and wasn't just traipsing around in her bra.

To avert their stares, Nell loosely held the shirt in front of her chest. Even so, they did spend most of the time staring at her upper body as she was telling them what had happened.

As she finished, she realized they weren't unkind, just young and unsure how to react to a
half-dressed
woman telling them of a ghost truck that stopped in the night and attacked an old man. She hadn't used the words “ghost truck” but she might as well have. A dark truck. Not enough light to get the make and model, let alone a license plate. Two men? Could she even be sure they were men? No, not in any rational way. Two people, medium build, wearing ski masks. She thought they were white, but she couldn't be sure. And she didn't know if she thought they were white because she thought they were the Jones brothers or if she'd registered their hands as light.

But why would the Jones brothers attack Marcus? They were after her. They seemed to have become her universal boogeyman.

The patrol men asked if she could identify them if they pulled over dark trucks. Nell admitted she couldn't. They would have taken off the masks by now, probably thrown them and whatever they had used to strike with into some patch of woods.

She felt a flare of anger as she pictured them sitting calmly drinking morning coffee, congratulating themselves on getting away with it.

Other cars had pulled over, gawkers trying to see what was going on. And to stare at my chest, Nell thought cynically.

The ambulance carrying Marcus left. Nell could think of little more to tell the young patrol men. One of them offered her his jacket, but she declined. An old sweatshirt, used for a windshield rag, lived in the trunk of her car. She hoped it was still there and that Lizzie or Josh hadn't purloined it for another purpose.

One of the patrolmen walked her back across the median, even going so far as to help her across the ditch. It was light enough Nell noticed his blush as he pulled her up and got a good view of her cleavage.

He even helped her move several of the boxes still in the trunk to find the sweatshirt. Smeared with grease and dirt as it was, Nell was relieved to put in on. The day was chilly enough that the patrolman had gotten not only cleavage, but erect nipples.

I should be a reporter, Nell thought as she realized she wasn't sure of the highway troopers' names. The one who had walked her to her car was Merton; his last name, she assumed. But I'm too tired to be a reporter, she realized. She slid into the driver's seat. Her car had been running the whole time. Good thing my tank was almost full. One of the patrolmen was arranging for Marcus's car to be towed. They wanted to check it for fingerprints on the
off-chance
that the attackers had touched it.

Checking her rearview mirror, Nell pulled back onto the road. She was tired, and the drive home was a long way. The coursing adrenaline and anger that had brought her here were gone, replaced by bone weariness beyond the physical.

What if I didn't save Marcus either?