Only the Wicked (32 page)

Harvey also remembered Edna's niece, Merrill, coming to visit shortly before Harvey herself had moved on. She didn't remember much, though the niece had mentioned that Edna's sister, her mother Dolly Lee, had passed on some time before. And no, she didn't remember what city Merrill was visiting from, but she was a pleasant woman, Harvey mentioned. After Grant segued into a story or two about his days on the LAPD, Harvey loosened up.

She did remember one additional fact: Merrill had flown in. And that the younger woman had mentioned there was snow already on the ground where she'd come from. It had been fall and cold, but there'd been no snow in Ohio yet, Harvey recalled.

Working backward, Grant developed a profile of eastern states with snow in that year, in that month of mid-November. Then he set the Rook Security Agency in motion again to track down Merrill Sarah Tigbee through change-of-address cards, employment records, DNW records, all the manner in which modern humans mark the compartments of their lives in the age of the number.

But more importantly to Monk, along the way Dexter uncovered a new fact that gave the case a whole new spin. Grant hadn't actually located Merill yet, but he didn't have to. Not right then, anyway.

Monk stood moving side to side in the just-breaking dawn morning of Vicksburg in his Levi's 501 jeans, watch cap and buttoned-up jean jacket. He was glad he'd put on a sweater underneath too. A police car had glided past him and he walked along like he always took his constitutional this time every day, even though he must look like what they figured OJ was wearing that fateful night.

Their stares said they didn't quite buy it, and he assumed they'd roll back his way soon. But the man he'd come to see was coming from around the rear of his house. He was dressed in dark blue cotton sweat pants, a tri-colored nylon top, with a matching hooded sweatshirt underneath. The soles of his black-and-white Nikes sounded like the fingers of hands in wet rubber gloves tugging at each other as he trod over the dewy lawn. He had on the same pair of shoes Monk had noticed the other day on the steps. The shoes that were too big for Cassie Bodar's smaller feet.

“Senator Bodar, I'm Ivan Monk.” He'd fallen in step beside the man as he began his jog.

“I was hopin' you were a persistent reporter, or just an early-rising mugger,” he said adroitly. Bodar kept his knees moving, and Monk was hoping he wouldn't take off. The senator was a tallish, solidly built man with a graceful build. If it got to be a foot race, Monk knew he'd lose. Good thing the lawmaker stopped.

“I haven't much to tell you, Mr. Monk.”

“Then if you don't mind, I'll try a few theories on you.”

A Corsica went past them and the driver honked. Bodar waved at the retreating vehicle. “Save it for the lecture hall, my friend.” He turned, preparing to take off.

Monk said simply, “I know who Ava Green really was.” A bird chirped in the tree above them.

Bodar snapped his head around at his unwanted workout partner. Finally, he said, “Let's go over to the park where I run, all right?” He didn't wait for a response, and began to walk briskly in a westerly direction.

“Why have you been lying so low?” Monk asked, concentrating to keep up. “You definitely seem to be back in the groove,” he huffed, condensation clouding from his mouth.

“Reasons,” Bodar replied tersely. He kept moving as if late for an appointment. Occasionally he'd look back and Monk would get nervous.

The two crested a low hill of wild grass and red clay and before them was a baseball field, basketball court and a well-maintained jogging track. Bodar descended the hillock and walked onto the basketball court. He circled about, hands on his hips like waiting to get called in. “What do you intend to do?”

“At the least try to get Creel a new trial.”

Bodar kept pacing. “That may not happen.”

“You wishing for that or assessing the situation?”

“This is not a chess game.”

“It's people's lives, Senator; I know exactly what it is,” Monk scolded.

Bodar passed a hand through his hair. “This is one of those matters that requires our delicacy in handling.”

“We've had four hundred some odd years of delicacy in handling the racial matter in this country, Senator. Besides, I am not one of your voters.” Monk was angry Bodar was pulling the politician's trick of seemingly chummy inclusion to throw him off guard. He pointed at the man. “And this isn't a matter for a senate committee; this can't be punted to them in order to bury the information. Somehow you found out about Ava, right, which put you onto Nancy Burchett who told you about her father's connection with the Southern Citizens League?”

Bodar gave a camera smile to a couple walking past them who were heading for the track. “Have you talked to Merrill?”

“I will,” Monk promised.

“She has no direct knowledge, you know, about Creel's case.” He was doing the elected official slip-and-slide.

“Really?” Monk whispered doubtfully.

Bodar shrugged. “It appears Merrill never told Ava. Or at least she does a good acting job.”

“So you told Cassie about your investigation into the Creel case?”

Bodar didn't say yes or no.

“Is your wife protecting you from yourself, Senator?”

Bodar scratched at his unshaven face. “You wouldn't believe this, but I set out to show that Mississippi could right its own racial wrongs, Monk. I set out to prove to the self-absorbed pundits on the Sunday shows and the smug columnists in
The Nation
and
Emerge
that being from Mississippi, and being conservative, didn't automatically make you a Kluxer.”

“And what better way to prove that than the Creel case?” Monk concluded. “Just looking into it got you national attention. And it was so long ago, who could find anything of value anyway?”

“You can be cynical, Monk,” Bodar said without animosity. “And yes, I'd be less than truthful to say I didn't have my eye on higher goals.” He was poised to go on, but held himself in check. “But that doesn't diminish the attempt.” He said it more to convince himself than the private eye.

“Speaking of your significant other—I love that term, don't you?—what's her deal with Tigbee? I checked with this trade newspaper called the
Chronicle of Philanthropy
and found out she's on the board a Merit-founded organization for youth interracial relations. It's doing quite well it seems, with multi-year grants.”

“You'd make a good living inside the Beltway, Monk,” the senator said appreciatively. “Contrary to opinion, there's some poor white folks down here, too.” Bodar began to walk again, and Monk followed him. The other couple was now circling the track. “My wife was one of them. I don't believe they had carpeting until she was twelve or thirteen. And the phone was off and on so much, she assumed it was that way in everybody's home.”

“It's you family-value boys who keep saying poverty is no excuse for crime.”

Bodar flared, “My wife has not committed a crime. It's not a certainty that Creel didn't kill those girls,” Bodar shot back. “Who Ava was doesn't answer for the deed.”

“But it does put into question the official story,” Monk corrected. “At least enough to look at it again.”

“I thought you wanted to find out who killed your cousin.”

“This looks to be in that direction, too.” They walked along on the outer edges of the track. “You get a call after your supposed accident? That's what scared you off?”

Bodar pulled on his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. “As I said, my wife came up hard. We met in college, Ol' Miss. Me, I was there because of family connections; she got there on actual ability. I'd never met someone with so much drive, vision really, I guess you'd call it.”

Monk let him talk.

“We went crazy for each other.” Bodar crossed his arms, looking off in the direction of his house. “I always knew what I was going to do, due in no small part to what my parents had set out for me as a child. Cassie's mom figured she'd do good to complete high school and maybe get a job with the city. It's not ‘cause she didn't want better for her, it's just what she'd come to expect from this world.”

“She's not the only one not to expect more.”

“Yes, I know,” the senator concurred. “You see, Monk, what I'm trying to say is Cassie and I are quite attached to each other. We both want to see that our work has value.”

“Do the demons of racism burden you more than her?” he asked sarcastically.

“That's not so surprising, is it, Monk? Haven't all the revolutions in the past century been led by members of the middle class? Aided by those of the upper class who turned their backs on their privilege, to rail against injustices.” He snorted self-mockingly. “Isn't the white working class of this country a contradiction in how it resonates with reactionary politics, yet any objective analysis would see they are in the same economic boat as working-class blacks?”

“Whites don't see themselves as working class. Anyway, all that class analysis is out-dated, isn't it, Senator? Plus, aren't you biting the hand? Those reactionaries voted you into office.”

“One can lead by example, Monk. That's what a politician should do, not simply play to the less sophisticated instincts of the electorate.”

“We have no argument on that. So what's been stopping you?”

Bodar clucked his tongue. “My wife and I have tried to have children for some time. You have kids?”

“No, I don't.”

“She finally got pregnant three years ago.” Bodar wiped at one eye with his fingertips. “The child, the fetus, wound up in her tubes. Needless to say, we were devastated.” He walked in big circles. “The child was going to be our anchor, Monk. We've been either shouting or avoiding discussion of race relations in this state for sometime. And the avoidance of that subject has become the unsaid subtext to me and Cassie not dealing with the matter of children, either. I guess if we can't discuss what kind of society we want, we can't separate out our entropy on the matter of children.”

Several more people were now jogging around the track.

“But when I latched onto the Creel case, well, that touched an unhealed wound.”

“But you'd sponsored legislation on racial tolerance; you yourself called for federal intervention when a number of questionable hangings of black and white prisoners took place in Harrison County jails a few years ago, and your wife's group helps kids of different races.”

Now it was Bodar's turn to remain quiet.

“Unless of course you're telling me she … No”—Monk snapped his fingers—“somebody she
knew
was involved in the Creel matter.”

Bodar pulled at his lip again. “I'll tell you, 'cause I can see the lid is off the box, and if it's not you, it's going to be somebody else who will spill the goods. Cassie's older brother was a hellraiser, had more than one run-in with the law. And it's fair to say, he never met a black person who could do anything for him 'cept stay out of his way.

“Well, it seems there was a rumor going 'round among some of them ol' boys he hung widi. Some were Klan, some just your regular fatback-and-greens-lovin' crackers—and some of these boys had done strong-arm work for the League. Now this is right after Creel was sentenced you understand, and the word was the girls' killing had indeed been a job sanctioned by the Citizens League.” Bodar fixed an eye on Monk. “That four men had done the deed.”

“And her brother is supposed to be one of these four.”

Bodar wrung his hands despite the sun having risen and the onset of the morning heat. “I didn't hear this from my wife, at least not initially. Remember, she was still a gap-toothed kid when he was damn near grown, and had already done a juvenile stint for assault.”

“But you got this from Burchett's daughter,” Monk said. “And what was Burchett's role in this?”

“She told me her father, as he died, confessed to her he was the strike leader, as he called it. He said the captain called the mission, and he'd followed orders like a good soldier.”

Monk knew Tigbee had been a lieutenant in World War II, and a captain when he'd re-upped in Korea. Burchett had also served in Korea. He'd also been, according to the service record Monk had read, in a prisoner of war camp called ChiHan near the province of Tunghwa.

“And Burchett named your wife's brother?”

“Yes. Rusty.”

Monk's head got light, and he tried to sound detached, professional. “Where is Rusty these days?”

“Doing ten to fifteen on what would have been an easier sentence for selling illegally converted guns, but he shot and wounded an ATF agent in the raid, so he's doing serious time down in Pensacola. And he's as hard as they come; he's not telling anybody anything.”

“Nancy Burchett name anybody else?”

Bodar shook his head. “She told me he went into another of his deliriums, and that was that.”

“Why she tell you this?”

“Nancy had worked in my campaign. She felt too burdened when her father had told her what amounted to his death-bed confession.”

“Was your accident rigged?”

“The Highway Patrol inspector can't rightly determine foul play. The steering knuckle had come undone, but it's not unheard of, them separating on that model of mine. Fact, they'd been recalled for that defect. I haven't received any calls at night, or gotten any unsigned letters since then.”

“But it was after your accident that Nancy got scared and split.” Monk put his hands in his back pockets. “And when you told your wife, she no doubt felt very conflicted, and has let you know that.”

Bodar gripped his temples in one hand, massaging the areas.

“Consciously or not, she also hasn't been pursuing the idea of children too much since then, either.”