I could sense their urgency, feel the pull of the excitement and energy, but I didn’t move.
We sat there a long moment, neither of us saying anything. After a while, he nodded. I looked over at him. When he looked back at me, I nodded, then got out.
R
emaining behind at the crime scene, Dad sent Jake to the landing to pick me up. When I stepped into the boat and saw how visibly shaken Jake was, I realized part of the reason Dad sent him was to get him away.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever …”
Since joining search and rescue, Jake had lost some weight and gotten some color, and he more closely resembled the handsome high school quarterback he had been a decade ago. His green deputy’s uniform no longer strained to hold in his gut and his face had regained some of its angularity.
“Can you tell me about it?” I asked.
“Be better if you see it. It’s just a few minutes away.”
Along the banks of the river, campers and permanent residents had come out of their cabins, trailers, and campers and were standing on their docks straining to see what was happening.
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
“Close to where we were yesterday. Not far from where the inmate escaped.”
“It’s not him, is it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Could be.”
“Whatta you mean could be? Did you look at him or not?”
“The victim?” he asked. “Hell, I thought you meant the perpetrator. He ain’t the victim. The victim’s black.”
“Got an ID on him yet?”
“Not when I left. Hard to tell just by looking at him. He’s in bad shape.”
We were in a different, smaller search and rescue boat that bounced over the wakes of the larger boats in the olive-green waters. The sun was low in the sky, just barely above the tree tops to the west, its light and heat less relentless now, and as we rounded the last bend and I could see the other emergency services boats tied to trees along the bank, I wondered how long we had until it would be too dark to see beneath the thick trees.
Jake pulled up beside one the game warden’s boats, cut the engine, and I jumped out onto the damp sand with the bow line. The wake from our boat created large ripples that rolled in and receded like waves, slapping at the banks, tree bases, and the hulls of the boats. After securing the boat to the exposed roots of a cypress tree that would be under water if the river was higher, I looked over at Jake.
“I’m gonna wait here a minute,” he said.
I nodded. “You okay?”
“Will be.”
I hesitated a moment.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “Go on. I’m fine.”
I nodded, then turned, climbed the bank, ducked beneath the crime scene tape strung around the trees, and walked toward the horror waiting for me in the woods beyond.
I
t was like so many old photographs I had seen—gray, lifeless body, elongated, stretched neck, unnaturally up-tilted head.
A rope had been thrown over a large oak limb, then pulled around the trunk of the tree for leverage. Its noose held a naked black man high above the ground, his feet and hands bound, the ashen skin of his swollen body filled with cuts and gashes.
It was one of the most horrific things I had ever seen.
It wasn’t just the death but the degradation. Not only what had been done to the body but the way it was displayed. His nakedness in particular, the indecency of his indignity. The raw, exposed, unflattering way his soft belly and breasts hung, the way his long, hard, yellowish toenails protruded from his wide, flat feet, and most of all the way his flaccid phallus dangled lifelessly for all beneath him to see.
Disquieting. Unsettling. Disturbing. Truly traumatizing.
In the near silence the shocking scene elicited, the only sounds beside whispers were those of the stretching rope straining against the tree and the torpid, rhythmic creaking of the branch as a breeze slowly swung the body side to side.
When Dad saw me he walked over.
“Can you believe this?”
I shook my head. “It’s as shocking as it’s meant to be.”
We were standing alone inside the wide circle of deputies, search and rescue, EMTs, and game wardens.
“We’re waiting on FDLE to process the scene,” he said. “They’re heading over now from the landing.”
“Any idea who he is?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No one here recognizes him so far.”
“You find his clothes?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “No clothes, no shoes, no boat, no nothing.”
The body was hanging from a large oak tree in the midst of a hardwood hammock, surrounded by a thick canopy of magnolia, pine, oak, and cypress trees, beneath which grew a dense web of weeds, ferns, grass, and bamboo. Scattered all around were fallen trees, limbs, and leaves, very little light penetrating the full August foliage.
“Who found him?” I asked.
“COs from the prison looking for the escaped inmate.”
“You find anything to indicate it might have been a mob or the Klan?”
He shook his head. “No markings or symbols on the ground or trees. And not a single footprint.”
I looked past the body at the seemingly impenetrable woods beyond.
“How far to the nearest road?” I asked.
“A few miles,” he said, following my gaze. “No way he brought him through there.”
“Unless the killer didn’t bring him. They could have walked together.”
He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but it’s more likely they came by boat.”
I nodded. “Why do it in such an isolated area?” I said. “He killed him in a way that is meant to be seen––to shock and horrify.”
He looked to be thinking about it, then said, “That’s what I want you to figure out.”
FDLE arrived and began to process the scene. As they took pictures and set up their equipment, Dad gathered all the local law enforcement together.
“What we’ve got here is a murder,” he said, “and that’s what we need to call it. This investigation will require far more sensitivity than most.”
As Dad spoke, I looked around the group of mostly men listening to him. Between the deputies, the search and rescue team, and the correctional officers, there were three men present who were running for sheriff. Standing next to Todd, Shane, Sandy, and Jake who had just joined us, Fred Goodwin looked bored with what Dad was saying and distracted by the FDLE techs behind him.
“I realize what this looks like,” Dad was saying, “but for now this is just a murder. Until we’re absolutely certain, I don’t want to hear anything about race or mobs or lynching. Understand?”
I looked to see the reaction of the handful of African-Americans mixed in among all the white faces. There wasn’t one—beyond drawn faces, hollow eyes, and clenched jaws.
“And one more thing,” he said. “I realize this is an election year and some of you here want my job. That’s fine. If you win and get it, I’ll shake your hand and help you in any way I can. You can count on that. But until that happens, I’m still the sheriff and I’m in charge. Understand?”
Only a few within the crowd nodded or gave any indication they were even listening.
“We’re all professional law enforcement officers first,” he said. “You clear everything through me. You bring everything to me—no matter how small it may seem. And I better not hear of anyone trying to use this or any other case for political purposes. This isn’t political. This is life. This is death. The man hanging up there in that tree is someone’s son, maybe someone’s husband or father. He deserves the best we can give him, not what we can get from him.”
Fred Goodwin began clapping slowly. “Well said, Sheriff,” he said. “Well said. Now let’s all work together to catch the son of a bitch who did this, and this time let’s share the credit for solving the case when we’re done.”
Chapter Thirteen
“C
ould your inmate have done this?” Rachel Mills asked.
I looked over at the body. Having processed the scene, FDLE was now lowering it and I could see it better.
“My inmate?”
“The one you let escape,” she said with a smile.
It was dark now. Large halogen lights powered by generators partially illuminated the crime scene, but next to me much of Rachel’s short frame, pale skin, straight blond hair, and light blue eyes were in shadow.
“From the little I’ve learned about him so far I’d say no.”
An aggressive FDLE agent, who was now a friend, Rachel had once investigated me because of allegations made by the wife of an inmate—allegations she was sure were true. It’s how we met. In this case, Rachel would serve as FDLE’s lead investigator and liaison to the sheriff’s department.
Having sent most of the other law enforcement agencies home, Dad had only a few deputies posted around the perimeter of the crime scene, and he, Fred Goodwin, Jake, and Robert Pridgeon stood together opposite Rachel and me on the other side of the body.
As the sheriff’s department’s lead homicide detective, Fred Goodwin would head the investigation, and as the senior game warden, Robert Pridgeon would represent the game and freshwater fish commission on the makeshift task force.
“If not him, who?” Rachel asked.
I shrugged.
“Of course, where would he get the rope?” she said.
“A camp. Houseboat. May belong to this guy.”
“So you think it’s possible?” she asked.
I nodded. “No one expected him to escape.”
“And if it’s not him?”
“Somebody with a boat,” I said.
“That’s half the population around here,” she said.
We were quiet for a moment.
Eventually she said, “Could be the brother or father of the white girl he was dating.”
She was right. It could be.
FDLE had lowered the body so that the feet were just above the ground and were now studying and photographing it. As bad as the body had looked hanging high above the ground, it looked even worse now. In addition to the bloodless cuts and gashes in the gray and bloated skin around the head and chest, everything was swollen to grotesque proportions.
“I hate to be the one to point this out,” she said, “but shouldn’t his hands be covering his genitals?”
I took a closer look at the body.
She was right. His bound hands would have covered most of his swollen genitals if they had been allowed to fall naturally. Instead, the killer had tied a length of rope around his neck to the one binding his hands so that they rested higher on his body than they normally would.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Think it’s intentional?” she asked.
I nodded.
We were quiet for another moment, each of us looking at the atrocity inflicted on this man.
“Any Klan around here?” she asked.
“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t exactly be on their mailing list.”
She laughed.
“There may not be an organized Klan,” I said, “but there’s plenty of Klanishness.”
“Klanishness?” she said.
I nodded.
It was difficult to tell from here, but it appeared that the front of the victim’s body held the faint purplish tint of fixed lividity. The body had suffered so much trauma and was so swollen, we might not ever know for sure.
“You dating anybody?” she asked without looking at me.
I shook my head. “Not at the moment.”
“You still hung up on what’s-her-name? The lawyer’s wife?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“FDLE bitches,” she said. “Are you?”
“Trying not to be,” I said. “But so far they haven’t come out with a patch for that.”
“If you want to go out sometime,” she said, “just for fun or some amazing sex … let me know.”
“How amazing?” I asked.
She laughed.
As inappropriate as it was, I was grateful for the diversion. I really needed it at the moment and suspected she did too.
“You often ask guys out at crime scenes?”
“Not just guys,” she said. “And if I didn’t I’d never get laid. It’s sort of like being an actor on location.”
I nodded. “So what’re you doing Friday night?”
She looked up at me. “Really?”
“You like Cajun food?”
She nodded. “Love it.”
Dad walked over to us.
“How long will it take you to solve this thing little lady?” he said to Rachel.
“Hoping to have it wrapped up by Friday,” she said. “Got plans Friday night.”
He looked at me. “Can you believe this?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t want this to be my last case,” he said.
“It won’t be,” Rachel said. “We’ll clear this in no time and give you all the credit. You’ll win by a landslide.”