Where Southern Cross the Dog (5 page)

Every day Kalman thought about that night; every day it haunted him. Time and maturity had eased the fear he felt that night, but the pain was still there. Although he had been in Jackson for only a year, he was starting to wonder if these Mississippi cases would be what he needed to earn a promotion and thus a return to Washington.

“Keep going,” said the division chief.

“There was a murder in Greenville,” Thompson said. “Actually, that was a lynching. Seems like the Klan is getting active up there.”

“That's the third one this year around Greenville,” Kalman said.

“But we couldn't link the others to the Klan,” said Mulevsky. “So they weren't recorded as lynchings, just homicides.”

“Just,” Thompson said.

“Continue,” Kalman said. He lit another cigarette.

“And one in Hattiesburg,” said Thompson.

“All last week?”

“Last two weeks,” Thompson said.

“Busy couple of weeks,” Mulevsky said. “But we've had worse.”

Thompson flipped a page in his file. “Oh, and I almost forgot,” he said. “There was another one in Clarksdale.”

“Anyone want more coffee?” Mulevsky said. He got up and walked to the table in the corner.

They all shook their heads.

“How many does that make in Clarksdale?” Mulevsky asked.

“Four in a month and a half,” Kalman said.

“You want us to head up there and find out what's going on?” asked Thompson. He threw the files back on the table.

“We already know what's going on.” Mulevsky smirked.

“What's that?” asked his boss.

Thompson rose from the table, walked over to the door, and leaned against it. “Most likely a bunch of peckerwoods,” he said. “I'll bet you a month's pay. Or maybe it was just some bad blood over a card game. It's cotton-picking season. The money's flowing, people are feeling pretty—what's the word—uppity. We can drive up, if you want.”

“No,” Kalman said. “We've got too many other investigations. Let Collins and his gang handle it. They prefer it that way. What could we really do anyway?”

“Probably nothing,” Thompson said. “And if we start asking questions, we won't get another witness to anything, ever. Collins will gag that town so fast. We have to look at the long-term implications of getting involved. Down here, murders occur periodically, and no one ever thinks twice about it. If we start getting involved in this investigation, Collins will be in front of the local judge complaining, and you think any judge is going to side with us? We'll never be able to investigate in Coahoma County again.”

“We could get a federal judge,” said Kalman. “We've got the authority.”

“Not worth it,” Thompson said.

“What if we just start with the blacks?” continued the boss, sipping his coffee.

“Come on, Russ,” Thompson said. “The first person who talks will be the last. People will know we're in the county before we open our mouths.”

“What about bringing them to Jackson?” Kalman asked.

“Who?” Thompson said. “Everybody who thinks they might have seen something on some particular night? We'll have everybody in the county visiting at our expense.”

“My first instinct was right. It's Collins's investigation,” observed the chief as he extinguished his cigarette in a coffee cup on the table. “Let's break up this little social—we've got work to do.”

Thompson opened the door.

Kalman squinted as the bright sunlight burst in from the outer office. He took a breath of the fresh air pouring into the room. Then he walked out of the small, smoky conference room into an office buzzing with phone messages and secretaries beckoning for him to come here or go there. He couldn't tell his men all that he knew about Clarksdale—not just yet.

Going down to the courthouse.

—Sam Collins

A FEW DAYS LATER, AFTER THE REPORTS HAD BEEN written, Bill Montgomery and Sheriff Collins walked the short distance to the district attorney's office. Sam Tackett had practiced a few years in Jackson before moving to Clarksdale. On a whim, and at the advice of a friend, he had run for DA on a platform focused on the planters' agricultural concerns. He won by a landslide and was halfway through his term.

They opened the door labeled “District Attorney” and proceeded past the secretary, whom they acknowledged with a brief hello.

They took seats at the small conference table in Tackett's office. Copies of the various documents and findings were in front of each seat. Tackett quickly rose from his desk and joined them at the table. He wasn't sure if he was ready for this meeting.

“Well?” Tackett asked.

“Well, what?” the sheriff said.

“We've got a hell of a problem.”

“There's no doubt about that.”

“We have four homicides, and no suspects or leads,” Tackett said. “What was the cause of death on the last one?”

“Well, he certainly experienced trauma from the burns and contusions,” Montgomery said, “but it's hard to say exactly what killed him. He had a significant amount of dirt in his nose and mouth so I reported asphyxiation.”

“I suppose it really doesn't matter exactly how he died, or how any of them died,” Tackett said. “The point is, they're dead, and they were murdered.”

He sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.

“Well, I'm inclined to just leave this one alone,” Collins said. “So we got four black bodies. Who cares? We can't get all wrapped up in some investigation and be concerned with who did what, when, and where. The fact is, we're probably never going to know who did this, and we're better off spending our time doing something else. If we had some leads, that'd be one thing, but we don't have anything. How do we know it wasn't just a few lynchings?”

Tackett stared out the window, his hands still interlocked behind his head.

“We don't know anything, and that's the problem,” Tackett said. “We need some answers.”

“Sam's right,” said Montgomery. “We need an investigation. There are just too many bodies to ignore.”

“Too many bodies?” Collins said. “Are you kidding me? There aren't near enough for my taste.”

“Frank,” Tackett said, “as Clarksdale's district attorney, I'm expecting you to do your job. I don't want to have to do it for you. I've been elected to do
my
job, remember, which is to ensure that justice is done, regardless of someone's color or religion, regardless
of whether they are rich or poor. I think these dead souls need some peace, and we should do our part to help them get it.”

“We have any more homicides in this county, Frank, and something tells me we'll be hearing from community leaders—black and white,” Montgomery said. “We don't need that problem in addition to what we already have.”

“That's right,” Tackett said. “We help ourselves in a number of ways by getting started on these cases.”

Collins looked down at his shoes to avert Montgomery and Tackett's gaze. “I don't know. Seems to me, for as long as I can remember, a few darky field hands in the wrong place at the wrong time was nothing to get all worked up about.”

“Times change, Frank. Besides, it's especially important to keep the peace during harvest,” Tackett said. “You know as well as anyone that your boss and mine, those planters out there, will make our lives miserable if they can't find enough folks to work in their fields and clean their houses. They're already mad they have to send recruiting agents out to get hands. If they think some killer is keeping their day labor from getting to Clarksdale or, God forbid, chasing them North—because they're already fuming over all the hands they've lost to Yankeeville—and if we could've done something about it—well, then, your tenure as sheriff and mine as district attorney will be considerably shorter than we'd like.”

Collins sat in silence, looking out the window, his arms folded across his burly chest. “All right,” he said, “we'll look into it, but I'm not guaranteeing we'll find anything.”

Tackett sensed the dissatisfaction beneath the sheriff's
acquiescence.

“I'm only putting one man on the job,” Collins said. “Don't figure on the whole office working these cases.”

“But he's got to get out and talk to folks,” Montgomery said. “He can't just sit and review the files for eight hours a day.”

Collins grabbed his hat and stood up to go. “I don't like this, boys. They just black, that's all.”

“Maybe we'll get some leads, and we can wrap this thing up quickly,” Tackett said. “Oh, by the way, did either of you two speak to anyone down at the paper? Did you see the short article on the murder?”

“I saw the article, but I didn't talk to anybody,” Montgomery said.

“You don't need to ask me, do you?” said Collins.

“Someone down at the paper is getting information that only a few people know,” Tackett said. “I didn't think much about the first couple of articles on the other murders, but if we're going to start pursuing this, we can't have the details of our investigation published in the paper every day. I'll go down and have a talk with. Wilson this week to see if he'll stop printing stories about the homicides.”

“That's a good idea,” Montgomery said. “We don't want anything getting out too early. We need to kill the source—so to speak.”

“I'll make sure to keep it quiet on our end,” Collins said. He opened the door and left.

Tackett saw Montgomery to the door. “He always comes around.”

“Yeah,” Montgomery said, “but he makes it so hard.”

That night, after the offices were closed and everyone had gone home, Moses Hooperman stood at the side door of the courthouse, tossing his keys around in his hand looking for the one that unlocked it. The door led to a small room that held his cleaning supplies. Finding the key, he opened the door, went inside, and then locked the door behind him.

He changed into his work clothes: his stained shirt bore a few small holes, the result of ashes dropping off his cigarettes; the knees of his pants were torn beyond mending.

Moses had been the night custodian of the courthouse for a dozen years. Usually, he came in at eleven at night and worked until about five the next morning, when county workers began to arrive. He always liked to be out of the building before the first one got there.

Starting on the top floor and working his way down, Moses diligently emptied trash cans, mopped the floor, cleaned the restrooms, and swept the seemingly endless hallways.

A little after midnight, he entered Bill Montgomery's office and started to dust. He passed his dust rag over the desk and noticed a report dated the previous day. He finished dusting and started to mop the floor, beginning in the far corner. Halfway done, he set the mop aside and returned to the desk. Making careful note of where the report was and how it was situated on the desk, Moses picked it up, read the cover, and leafed through the pages, reading a few thoroughly and scanning the rest. He laid the report down, picked up the phone, and dialed a number.

After two rings he heard, “Hello.”

“Mr. Murphree,” Moses said, “I'm down at the courthouse. You might want to come down and have a look at something.”

“I'll be down in a minute,” was Murphree's immediate reply.

Murphree hung up and staggered to his feet, still half asleep. He squinted at the clock. Two-twenty. He dressed quickly, grabbed his briefcase, and headed for the stairs.

“Lewis? Be back soon?” his wife murmured, barely stirring in the bed.

“Soon,” he said. After ten years of marriage to the newspaper's assistant editor and chief reporter, she was accustomed to these late-night outings. He descended the stairs and quietly shut the front door behind him.

Murphree walked the short distance from his house on Court Street to the courthouse. A block away, he made a detour so that he could approach the building from the rear. He crept in the shadows,
ensuring that no one saw him, and slowly made his way to the side door where Moses had originally entered. He glanced around, making sure his presence was still unnoticed, and tapped on the door.

From the other side came a familiar voice: “Mr. Murphree, that you?”

“Yes,” came the whispered reply.

Moses shut off the light in his small room and gently opened the door. Murphree slipped in, and Moses closed the door behind him.

The two men exchanged greetings and started up the stairs to the coroner's second-floor office.

“How'd you find it?” was the reporter's first question.

“I was cleaning up and there it was, big as life, just lying on the desk. I'm always surprised folks don't lock things up, or at least put things away. They ought to try and be a little more careful.”

“Well, lucky for us they're not.”

“Most people know I clean the courthouse. Don't they think I might see something on somebody's desk? I guess they just forget I'm here. Like I'm invisible or something.”

“They probably don't know you can read.”

“Now that's true,” Moses said. He grinned at Murphree. “Yeah, I try to keep that a secret. Between you and me.”

“And we'd better make sure that's how it stays. We'd sure have a lot of explaining to do if someone found out different.”

They approached the office and picked up their pace. Moses had left the door ajar, and he pushed it aside as they stepped in. He pulled it nearly shut so he could listen for noise in the hallway. They walked past Ruth's desk into Bill Montgomery's office.

“It's on the desk, there on the left,” Moses said, pointing to the report.

Murphree picked up the document and started to read. After a moment, without removing his gaze, he opened his briefcase, removed a pad of paper and a pencil, sat down, and began to make notes. Moses picked up where he had left off cleaning the room.