Those Bones Are Not My Child (69 page)

Dowell put in another dime and called home. He’d leave a message that he could be counted on. While he waited for his wife to pick up, he watched Marzala and Preston head for the door. They were going outside to compare notes. As he waited, Dowell wondered what connection there might be between the Marquette Club, the house on Gray Street, Bowen Homes, the vehicles Lafayette was tracking, his team’s assignment, and the films they’d watched all afternoon.

“What was that?” Vernon whirled around and glued his eyes to the shaggy part of the bank. Roots and withered weeds hung down in mud-caked fringe where solid dirt had dropped away. The bulged-out part of the gorge looked like a buffalo head.

“Beavers, Vern. They beat the water with their tails.” Lafayette led the way down into a culvert, directing Vernon to shine the light where the swamp punk had been crushed flat. “Thought so.”

“Building dams this time of night? Some crazy-ass beavers.”

“I don’t know their business hours, Vern. Building dams was your story. Look, I think we got a make on a boat, if not a car.”

Vernon leaned down and nodded. “Drag marks. Looks like someone hauled a boat up from here.” They both turned and Vernon tossed Lafayette the flashlight. “I’ve got three flashes left on the Instamatic.” He followed behind as Lafayette moved toward the storm drain, pausing at intervals to inspect the ground covering, shrubs, and branches that were shoulder height.

“That wagon train we’ve been tracking was in this vicinity, but where?” Lafayette saw no signs. “No stakeout either,” he added, looking toward the bridge. With a broken-off twig, he fished around in the storm drain and came up with one very muddied shoe. They inspected it, then moved up the slippery bank. “Watch it—soil’s thin in through here.”

“I see it.” Vernon stopped when another faint splash sounded from somewhere around the bend. He stared into the dark until the surface of the river was smooth again. “If the Chattahoochee could talk.”

“Moving to higher ground.”

“Right behind you.” Hand over hand, Vernon pulled himself up behind Lafayette until they ran out of shrubs to grab onto. He sensed his buddy go taut. A second later, fixing on a scatter of rusted beer cans caught in a tangle of roots at his feet, and concentrating, Vernon heard it too: footsteps.

“The teacher.” Lafayette dug into the mud with the tips of his boots and moved up the rest of the bank sideways like a skier.

“How can you tell, Sherlock?”

“Loafers. Loose around the instep. Ground’s wet. Squish.”

“You’re making it up,” Vernon said, his voice low. He allowed himself to be pulled up by the wrist to level ground.

“1 think I got left behind.” Vincent looked only partially relieved in the darkness.

“They probably heading for Plaza Drugs. The wife of one of Spencer’s army buddies left a package for pickup. Any news from your end?”

Vernon hunched Lafayette in the back as Vincent gave his report, distractedly, casting his eye around the wooded area and clearly afraid.

“So they think Innis split after all?” Lafayette used his stick to point
out what they’d been investigating. “A boat was down there where you see the weeds bent and broken. And up there.” He waited for the teacher to swing around in the direction of the hill terraced by wind and rain. “A boat was there and it was heavily weighted.”

“Pretty long boat,” Vincent said, gauging the length of the lines cut into the grass and mud up above.

“Drag marks. Where the lines cut in deep is where the rowboat was sitting. At least three people were in it to make that depression.”

“A rowboat?” Vincent looked from the hill, where a three-foot-wide swath cut through the greenery to the bank, and then to the river, iridescent with filth. He turned to follow the two vets up the hill to take pictures.

“Watch it,” Lafayette called over his shoulder.

“I see it.” Vernon waved the teacher away from a patch of leaves.

Vincent stopped, patted the leaves with his foot, and jumped back when the leaves and dirt caved in. He was still leaning over looking into the pit when a flash went off on the hill, and then the two vets returned and squatted down by the hole.

“This was dug,” Lafayette said, shining a light. The hand he reached in with was swallowed up by the dark.

“Big enough to hold a body?”

Vernon looked across the ditch at the schoolteacher. “You don’t look like you want an answer to that.” He took the stick, measured the diameter, then held it down and reached way in to demonstrate the pit’s depth again.

Vincent looked from one man to the other. “What outfit were you two in?”

It was Vernon who answered. Lafayette was rubbing his head again and swiveling around squinting at the bank area and the crushed-grass swath up above. “Twenty-fifth Infantry, Easy Company. That’s a laugh. You?”

“Sat that one out. Volunteer?”

“You could say so. Thought I’d get me an athletic scholarship to college like my buddy here,” he said as Lafayette stood up and began lining up the three target areas with the stick. “Ole Laf here left me behind. So I tried ROTC. Figured I’d work during my freshman and sophomore years, then buy my way out of the contract. But I didn’t read the fine print. Break your contract with the army, there are two possible
paybacks, service or cash. Only, the choice ain’t the cadet’s, it’s the army’s. Lay your chickenshit savings on the table, they hand you a uniform. Dar Tieng.” Vernon stared off into the thickets where Lafayette had disappeared.

“Those were some films this afternoon.”

Vernon nodded, listening for telltale signs. Either his buddy was taking a piss or he’d found something.

“Kind of makes you want to camp out in the woods.” Vincent’s laugh was forced. He couldn’t make out Vernon’s expression, but he seemed attentive squatting there, his back straight, his neck pulled up.

“You’ve probably seen these pamphlets that’re all over the place calling for action,” Vincent continued, dropping his voice. “Clearly a bunch of misfits, but I want some action too. I think we all do. And when you’re feeling impotent, your first recourse is to want to take over.”

“First a good fuck,” Vernon said, turning his head when a twig snapped. Vincent could see the cords were bunched in his neck now.

“When it looks like the leaders aren’t going to move, your own sense of impotence gives you crazy ideas. You find yourself thinking about—”

“Running for office.”

Lafayette had returned and was squatting down, twirling the stick in the pit.

“Try to line all three areas up in one shot, Vern, so we can picture what might have happened here.” He led the way up the hill, jumping over a patch of brush flowers.

“I see them.” Vernon veered around the purplish flowers, pulling his Nikon out of his bag and fitting a telephoto lens on.

Vernon didn’t skirt the flowers, he walked straight through, bending down to scratch his ankles. “What do you two make of that cop from Florida?” He turned his face away when the flash went off.

“Everyone’s got their own angle,” Lafayette said, leading them down the slippery hill again.

“And what’s your angle, or the others’?” Vincent asked. “I don’t know how to say this, but Logan and I were remarking that there’re a lot of vets and ex-cons in this outfit. Were either of you struck by that?”

Lafayette turned Vernon around by the elbows and held him steady on the slanted bank while he took pictures. “People who’ve lived in hell
maybe have a stake in seeing things set right. Lower, Vern—try to get the storm drain in the lineup too.”

“Egos and dollars about covers everyone else. In the city, I mean,” said Vincent.

“I know what you mean.” Vernon swung his camera bag to the ground. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for politicians to say ‘No comment.’ They think they got to mouth off about how the killers are trying to test their philosophy or ruin their career. If the killers were all that interested in challenging them, they’d go after them and leave the children alone.”

“Sells papers, I suppose. But the sad part is, many of these sheriffs believe what they’re saying. It’s not just an opportunity to put their record before the public. I find I agree with McClintock—people are making careers out of this crisis.”

“Nobody in their right mind wants these killings to go on,” Lafayette said quietly. “Not even the most cutthroat opportunist. Give the Atlanta brass some slack.”

“But notice how you qualify it—‘in their right mind.’ That’s the rub. Nobody is in his right mind in Atlanta. Nobody’s thinking clearly. People keep interpreting phenomena in terms of their own careers. And the public’s buying it. Soon the focus will be on Maynard and the others—they’re the victims, not the children. And that’s a dangerous cast of mind. It’s not unlike the misguided people we saw interviewed in the films today. Do you know what I mean? I mean, by the time any of us discover who knew what and covered it up, people will be predisposed to forgive and forget. ‘Poor guy, his career would have been ruined.’ ”

Lafayette pulled Vincent to his feet and held on to his arm while Vincent slipped the back of his loafers snugly over his heels. “None of which is the point. Is it?”

“I’m not saying that we are in a dangerous frame of mind. But have you stopped to think what frame of mind the people we’re tracking are in? Who’s to say how frustrated they might be feeling? Who knows what their agenda is?” He bent to scratch his ankles.

“Which is still not the point. Is it? Let’s get over to the state police barracks and see what Mason’s found out.”

Lafayette was immediately moving up the bank, his body on a slant; then he was swallowed up in the thickets, his clothes brushing up
against the leaves the only clue to his whereabouts. Vernon took one last look at the Chattahoochee and the buffalo head, then pulled himself up hand over hand to level ground before he trotted off. Vincent took a deep breath and followed, sprinting in the direction of noisy traffic. Cars bumping and rattling over the metal grids of the Jackson Bridge muffled the sound of his squishy loafers.

“What’ve we got?” Mattie was still buttoning her crinkly dark gray jumpsuit as she pulled out of the parking lot past the all-night drugstore. Sue Ellen’s car turned for Briarcliff and beeped twice—goodbye, good luck. Mattie freed her hand and beeped thanks, then turned up Ponce de Leon.

“A hand-drawn map,” Clara said from the backseat. The rest of her answer was inaudible as she pulled her dress up over her head.

“A map?” Mattie leaned back in the seat. “Does it include the building where they found the altar?” She pressed further back, then looked in the rearview. Clara was pulling a dark T-shirt down over her head. “Asterisk … whereabouts …” was all Mattie could make out.

Ever since she’d learned that the first two bodies had been dressed all in black, in clothing the families of the Hope and Evans boys did not recognize, Mattie Shaw had suspected cult involvement in the murders. And although other theories held weight, supporting, as time went on, a multiplicity of patterns, it was the combination pattern of cult-Klan/cult-porn/cult-drugs that swayed her. “There are four times as many adult porno shops as McDonald’s,” B.J. Greaves used to say, but she too was coming around to a Klan-cult-porn view. Even Dave Morris, the last to hold out for a single-pattern theory, was revising his position.

“I want to see that map,” Mattie called out, turning up Peachtree and heading for the print shop. “I think we all will want our own copies of the material.”

“Well, be quick about it,” Clara said, pulling her slacks up over her hips. “I’ll see if there’s any indication of the building you mentioned.”

At the precinct in February, Mattie Shaw had gotten only a glimpse of the Bible being held as possible evidence. Closed flat for over a month, the torn paper around the knife hole no longer folded in or out, so offering no clue as to where the knife had been driven through, Isaiah
or Ezekiel. Even those who’d seen it nailed to the wall were no longer certain which part of the book had been facing out, only that it had been folded open so that the front and back covers were on the same side. Whether it was right side up or upside down was still being debated.

In either case, Isaiah or Ezekiel or both, Mattie was sure of its meaning. A cult defector had surfaced, not to bid for the reward but to build an altar in a place not far from the Mathis home and at a time when the area was being scoured for the still-missing boy. The defector had brought a Bible along, knowing the sight of it nailed to the wall would make the papers. The defector was not communicating anything to the public but was using the media to send a message to friends, members of a cult—shape up or face judgment. There’d probably been other messages left, overlooked, misinterpreted, or kept hidden from the press.

Mattie pulled past the green minibus parked in front of the motel, beeped but got no response. She saw the motel sign in her side view and remembered its importance on the big map.

“If we don’t locate Innis, I hope we can connect at least with the woman who’s been driving James Baldwin around. Like him, she’s well versed in Scripture, Clara. She’s an expert too on its use by cult groups.” Mattie got no response until she backed into a space across from the Cameo Lounge and asked, “Decent?”

“I see Mr. Sanders has changed too,” Clara said, closing her door.

Up ahead, walking with a determined step, was Bible Man. His long-sleeve, dark-green shirt was bunched in the center of his back where his suspenders crisscrossed. He wore his pants high, and the cuffs flapped around the tops of his shoes.

Mattie smiled at Clara. The top four buttons of her cotton jumpsuit were open. “Aren’t you hot?”

Clara had changed from all white to all blue. She wore a jacket over the T-shirt and jeans. She pushed up her sleeves in response and they walked into the Greyhound bus station.

Logan was standing on line behind two men arguing loudly about the recent McIntosh case—so loudly, several passengers on line at gate 3 turned around and strolled over.

“I thought Logan was supposed to be on Memorial Drive with your good-looking friend from the barbershop.”

Mattie shrugged. “We’ve been changing cars so fast at the check-points.
 … Or maybe he tracked a car here on one of Dowell’s range finders.”