Authors: Michael Malone
“Wait a minute. When was he released? I thought it
was
a couple of months ago.”
“Well, would have been. Let's see. Been about a week, I guess.”
“A week! Like last Thursday? Russell got out last Thursday?”
“Let's see. Yeah, that's right. Thing was, prisoner in the kitchen pulled a knife on him.”
Zeke Caleb had just opened my door with a bag of doughnuts, a quart of coffee, and Martha, whom he’d taken for a stroll to the ladies’ room (the parking lot). Zeke looked at me funny, I guess because I was slapping the wall, in fact, smacking Elvis on the face. I said into the phone, “Zackery, you say a
knife
fight? Was Russell scarred? Across the back?”
“That's right. You hear about it? Back and side. Fifty-eight stitches.”
Carpenter said he’d have somebody call back with the north Georgia address. The rest of the information I wanted—including a record of Winston Russell's visitors during his time at Dollard—he said he’d “see” about. I said, “Let me ask you this, Zackery—just off the record, okay? Why’d Governor Wollston stop the Hall execution? Folks were saying all along, no chance in hell he was going to. You think he really had second thoughts, or, one theory is, it was out of respect for Cadmean's dying. Scared there’d be an incident.”
Carpenter said, “I heard there was an incident anyhow. Because of the brother's murder….Got a line on that one yet? Hell of a thing. Racial?”
“Maybe. So what about Governor Wollston? What did Lewis tell you?”
“Just that the governor was granting a stay. Next morning the official call came and confirmed. Off the record, Cuddy, I was glad to get it.”
“Why send Lewis out here in the rain when Wollston could just call?”
“I don’t guess that's my business.”
“What was he doing in there for almost an hour?” I didn’t get
an answer to this. “Or you don’t guess that's
my
business?”
“I guess it's not.”
We talked a little more, not to leave it at that, then I wished him a Happy New Year and hung up.
Zeke shoveled a mound of my gum wrappers into the trash as he gave me a hard look. “Chief, you oughta take a shower. I mean,” he blushed, “you don’t look too good.”
Jelly squirted out of my doughnut and ran down my unshaven chin. “Looks aren’t everything, Sergeant. You get in touch with Purley?”
“Not yet. Otis Newsome, he's in Fayetteville with his wife's family, but Purley's not with them.”
“Find him. And call Nancy, tell her to get that kid Wally back over here.” Zeke, who made rooms look small and furniture flimsy, sprang across the carpet in a couple of steps. “Zeke, hold up. You never mentioned—have a good Christmas?” He blushed again. “You do like I told you and ask Nancy to dinner?”
“Sort of.” He wrung the door handle awhile. “We ate there at the bowling alley.”
“Took her to the bowling alley, huh? Well, that's pretty romantic. You give her a present?”
He brightened. “I got her one of those Water-Pik kits for her teeth. She don’t take real good care of her teeth.”
I said, “I bet you told her that, too. Cherokee, you gotta learn a little more of the white man's forked-tongue approach.”
He looked puzzled. “Well, she oughta take care of ’em.” He tapped his own perfect teeth. “She's something. She bowled two sixty-four. Just clean wiped me up and down like a old floor mop.”
“Not exactly going the Annie Oakley route, is she?” “Nancy? Naw, she's a terrible shot.”
“That's not what I meant. Annie Oakley deliberately blew her match with her boyfriend ’cause you can’t get a man with a gun.”
Now Zeke really blushed. “Nancy's not trying to get a man; you oughtna say that, Chief.”
“It was an
Indian
gave Annie Oakley that advice. In the movie anyhow.”
He frowned, confused, made a part with his hand in his stiff
black hair, shook his head, and left to call the unsuspecting love of his life. I took a shower.
Most of the morning on Boxing Day, as Mrs. Marion Sunderland liked to refer to December 26, I listened to reports from the team I’d assigned to what I was now thinking of as the Cooper and George Hall case. First, John Emory had checked out the names in Coop's address book. Coop knew a lot of people, but most of them were the people you’d expect him to know—relatives, school friends, and the Piedmont area's young left-leaning social conscience—what there was of it: other civil rights activists, social workers, teachers, union types, pro bono lawyers, ex-SDSers like Molina, liberal Democrats like Alice. “Three of these people,” said Emory tersely, close-shaved black chin tucked into immaculate khaki collar above painfully tight black tie, “at least three are known Communists. These three.” He pointed at his list. “The woman, sir, has an arrest record. She spoke to me with some violence.”
I looked at the names. “Yep, they’re Commies. A dying breed. Fact, Janet Malley here's been the Communist candidate for city council the last four elections. Placed tenth out of ten every time. I tell you this, maybe she's a little, well, strong-tongued, but we could use ole Janet on that council.”
Emory's nostrils reacted like I’d uncorked some ammonia under his nose. “Yes, sir. All three had alibis for the time Hall was shot.”
“Well, John, I hadn’t really been figuring them for prime suspects.”
“I considered the possibility that they might want to create a martyr situation.”
“It's an interesting notion, but a little harsh for Janet's style. Look here, John, when are you ever going to take that sergeant's exam so I can promote you into using that brain more than those feet?”
“I’m studying. I don’t feel I’m prepared yet.”
“Um hum. I wish you’d study with your partner. Nancy's already flunked once, due to not cracking a book, be my guess. How y’all getting along?”
He took a deep breath, and confessed, “She's…reliable, and
very committed to the job, and I think she's…smart.”
“But how’re y’all getting
along?
…Mmm? That bad, huh?” His handsome face was contorted in a struggle to find something polite to say. I let him off. “Well, you’ll get used to each other. Now, let's forget Janet Malley's fondness for Fidel. What about these names here?”
The predictability of Cooper's address book made a few entries in it stand out like Shriners at an anti-nuke rally. Two I’d noticed before: Billy Gilchrist, drunk con man and missing Episcopal convert. And the deceased paper salesman Clark Koontz, whose card with “Newsome” on the back seemed a funny thing for Coop to hang on to, especially when
With Liberty and Justice
had never, as we now knew, done business with Fanshaw Paper Company. But there were other odd names there, like Hamilton Walker. Him, I knew personally. He’d been the king of East Hillston pimps for a decade, having inherited the title from his mentor, the late great Woodrow Clenny, who was stabbed to death by a jealous prostitute after a long flamboyant reign. His successor, Ham Walker, ran the business
as
a business. It was impossible to imagine Cooper Hall as one of his customers.
Another name, Bunny Randolph, I knew only by reputation. He was Atwater's son, and presumably the busty Blue Randolph's father. According to Justin (who could appreciate it), Bunny was the black sheep of his family, apparently because of his drinking escapades. Seemed like Justin had once mentioned that Atwater had fired Bunny, his only son, from his only job, but still paid his alimony for him and kept him at a distance on an allowance.
I looked up at Emory, who was studying my blackboard. “You asked those two how and why Coop Hall might have had their phone numbers?”
“Yes, sir. Hamilton Walker said—” Emory took out his notepad. “I’m quoting Walker now. ‘How the blank would I know? Half the blank-blank males in this blank-blank town know my blank phone number.’ He persisted in that.”
“I bet.”
“Yes, sir. Bunny Randolph is really Atwater Randolph the third. Lives in Southern Pines. He said he had contributed to the George
Hall Defense Fund, and Cooper Hall had telephoned to thank him.”
“Um hum. Hard to believe.” I rattled the list of names at Emory. “Now, John, what's the
most
interesting name you came across in that address book?”
His chin worked back and forth. “Cadmean?”
“Right. Ole Mister B.M. himself, hanging down there in the lobby right this minute. Why interesting?”
Emory just about smiled. “Because that's his home number. And it's unlisted.”
“Right.”
“You knew that, sir?” He tried hard not to look surprised.
“I was a friend of the family. For a while.” The desk phone rang; it was Etham down in the lab, and I said I’d call him back in a second. “Okay, John. What I want you to do—You have people in East Hillston, don’t you?”
His eyebrow flickered. “I suppose it's easy to assume, sir.”
“Hey, come on. Not everybody in East Hillston's black. Everybody's just poor. I grew up there, on Mill Street. Nancy grew up on Maplewood.”
He said the first person-to-person thing to me since he’d come to HPD. “
Almost
everybody in East Hillston's black. It tends to go along with being poor.”
I tossed my pencil down, and leaned my chair back. “You’re right. It sure does.”
He blew out an audible breath. “I have family in Canaan, yes.” “Any teenagers that might know Martin Hall? The kid we had in here on—”
“I know who he is.”
“Talk to him. Get out of the uniform. Forget the manual. I want to know everything Martin, or anybody Martin can get you to, can think of about Cooper that can help us. Including anything about Hamilton Walker. Anything about Smoke's Bar.”
Emory nodded, fingering his belt of bright polished equipment as if it’d be hard to do without it. “As per who might have shot him?”
“And behind that. ‘As per’ what happened the night Coop's
brother shot Bobby Pym. For now, let's say the Cooper Hall case is also the George Hall case.”
Then I returned Etham Foster's call from the lab. And that's when the Cooper and George Hall case became the Hall and Slidell case, because that's when Etham reported that the bullets removed from Willie Slidell's chest had been fired from the same .38 pistol as the bullet that had killed Cooper Hall. And a bullet the boy Wally had taken from the target-practice coffee can outside the farm had come from that gun too. I made it clear to everybody that this news was not to become news, if we could possibly keep it that way. We hadn’t even released a statement that the body we’d recovered from the river yesterday was full of slugs, much less those particular ones.
Next, Dick Cohen, sniffling with a cold, came in to report that Slidell had been dead at least three days before Wally had found him. Saturday or Sunday was his best guess. If Wally hadn’t been so desperate to save his B.B. gun, chances were, in so inaccessible a part of the river, the body could have sat in that car underwater until time and fish had stripped it of anything personally recognizable. Whoever put the body there must have counted on that likelihood, since Slidell's pockets had been carefully emptied. Darlene at the DMV reported that it might not be possible to trace the ownership of the white Ford, from which someone had not only removed the license plates, but chiseled off the metal ID number.
“Slidell? Not shot at close range,” Cohen added, zipping up a padded coat he could have crossed the North Pole in. “Fantastic placement, though. Bam, bam, bam. Tight as a bull's-eye.”
“Before or after Cooper Hall was shot?”
He shrugged. “I’m a doctor, not a Ouija board.”
“Come on, Dick, help out here! What's your best bet?”
“Within the same thirty-six hours.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Anytime.” He checked the sky out my window. “You think they could use a good medical examiner in Miami? It's in the eighties there today.”
“It's warm a lot of spots they could use a good M.E. How ’bout El Salvador, Honduras, around there? They get heaps and heaps of bodies need examining.”
“Don’t speak Spanish. By the way, Slidell was on coke.”
“Down in these parts, that usually means Coca-Cola, but I bet you’re talking about the other kind.”
“Sure am.” He pulled on some fat ski gloves and waved good-bye like he was leaving to walk to Canada instead of the parking lot.
After Cohen left, Nancy White came in with the young boy, Wally. She took him into the squad room to look through a stack of photographs I had ready for her. The stack included every picture Dave Schulmann at the FBI could give us of known or suspected KKKers, or any other fraternal order of white supremacists, including two yahoos Justin had identified from the Carolina Patriots gathering where he’d met Willie Slidell. It also included the photo I’d removed from Winston Russell's HPD file. An hour later, Nancy reported that Wally (whom Zeke was now taking on a tour of the department) had considered all the photos carefully, and finally admitted that he’d really been too far away to be sure he could recognize the man he’d seen target-practicing unless maybe he saw him in person.
I asked Nancy, “He pay any special attention to the shot of Russell?”
She pulled her gold neck chain up over her chin, and bit on it. “That kid paid ’bout five minutes special attention to every one of them! When he got done, I pointed to Russell and asked him directly, but he wouldn’t make the ID. Then he goes through the whole stack again! That kid's beginning to remind me of Hemorrhoid Emory.”
“Caution's a virtue.” It would have been nice if Wally’d pulled Russell's ten-year-old photo right out of the bunch, but I didn’t really need Wally to convince me it was Winston Russell who’d been staying out at Slidell's. I’d been working my way to Russell all night, even before Zackery Carpenter’d confirmed it with the news about the knife scar.
But Wally did make one positive ID while taking his tour. He identified the “kind of big shot” who’d taken Cooper Hall for a plane ride just an hour before he was killed. Wally saw the man on the campaign poster Brenda Moore had put up on a bulletin board outside the squad room. In this poster, Andrew Brookside looked
like St. George with a high I.Q. and a great tailor.
Now, I’d already had a report that the red mud embedded in the tire treads of Coop's Subaru was compatible with the mud at Lake Road Airport, though no one at the airfield appeared to have noticed Coop Hall out there boarding a plane. And I’d had a report that of nine private planes that had logged flights that Saturday, one of them, a Cessna, belonged to Andy Brookside. So I was prepared. But still surprised.