Swift Justice: The Southern Way (10 page)

“Okay, I’m sorry. Let me back up a minute. Leon says that Lucky and the boys were trying to hang him, but someone, dressed in a white hood and completely clothed, came out of nowhere and shot all three of them.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, here,” interrupted Archie. “This is crazy. Are you saying that a mystery person shot our boys?”

“I’m not saying that,” replied the Sheriff. “I’m just relaying what the niggers are saying. It’s their story.”

“Well, what do you think happened?” asked Archie.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, here. I wanted to give you all the information, then we can decide as a group. But since you asked, I don’t believe their story. I don’t believe some mystery person killed our boys. I believe that it was Leon’s brothers and friends.”

“Okay, Archie,” said the Judge. “These are good questions, but let the Sheriff continue.”

“Sure,” replied Archie.

“Okay, so Sam brought Leon to the scene,” continued the Sheriff, “with his brothers, his father, and that other nigger. Now, Junior and I didn’t know that they were coming because we already discovered the crime scene. So Junior ran across them, and we put two and two together and figured that these were the guys who killed our boys. So we immediately handcuffed them all and brought them to jail.”

“Okay, tell us what you saw at the crime scene,” asked the Judge.

The Sheriff continued. “First of all, there were no gun shells at the crime scene, so whoever shot them was smart enough to pick up the gun shells.”

The Judge nodded for him to continue.

“Lucky’s car is still there.”

“Was anything stolen?” asked Archie.

This question stumped the Sheriff. He never thought about checking to see if the perpetrators stole anything. “Um, I don’t know.”

“What about footprints?” asked the Judge.

Damn, the Sheriff realized that he should have checked for any footprints, as well. He was not off to a good start at investigating. In an effort to recover, he said, “No, we’re still looking at that. We have the area sealed off.” The Sheriff paused. “There was rope and a torch—”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted the Judge. “You need to get rid of that rope. You need to get it out of there. We can’t have that rope and torch there. The media is going to get a hold of this, and they’re going to see that we were trying to hang this guy. Just get the rope out of there. Our guys were shot. No one needs to know anything about that rope.”

“Okay,” said the Sheriff. The Sheriff was worried that he should have thought of that in the first place. He realized that he wasn’t thinking on his feet.

The Judge, with a perturbed look on his face, nodded for the Sheriff to continue.

The Sheriff sighed. “All right, this Leon guy turns himself in this morning at the crack of dawn. Then, by around eleven o’clock, he miraculously gets an out-of-town Jew attorney from Austin from the ACLU or whatever the heck that is to represent him. I don’t know how he arrange that so quickly.”

“You’re kidding me,” said the Judge. “I know that ACLU. They’re always after me.”

“Well, this attorney came here with a state trooper, like it is his personal bodyguard,” said the Sheriff.

“What’s the state trooper’s name?” asked the Judge.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Find out what his name is because I’ll talk to the governor, and I’ll get this guy removed.”

The Sheriff continued. “This attorney has got me kind of worried, actually. He says that an Austin newspaper reporter is already coming up here and the national media will probably be interested. This is big news—three white guys being killed by Negroes. He also said that the FBI will probably be coming as well because Leon was kidnapped, which is a federal crime.”

“He’s bluffing,” said the Judge. “First of all, it is not a federal crime unless Leon was taken across a state line, which he wasn’t. Second, even if Leon was taken across the state line, the FBI doesn’t care about a nigger being kidnapped anyway. They’re so focused on the Communists in this country. They don’t have time for a local matter. The Jew attorney is full of shit, but the Austin newspaper reporter coming does worry me.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said the Sheriff.

“Okay, Sheriff, why don’t you go back and describe what you think happened,” said the Judge.

“Sure.” The Sheriff paused to gather his thoughts. “I think it’s pretty clear that one of Leon’s brothers, maybe his dad, must have saw Leon being captured by Lucky. So Leon’s cohorts followed Lucky, and
they
did this to Lucky, Tom and John. I mean who else could it be. I don’t think it was one person as Leon claims. It was a group of niggers. They kicked Lucky, Tom, and John. You know, we can’t allow this happen.”

“You’re right,” said Acton. “We have to do something. We have to take immediate action.”

“I agree,” said the Judge. The Judge paused to think. “Okay, where is that Jew lawyer staying at?”

“I don’t know,” the Sheriff said.

“You need to call the white hotel owners and tell them not to rent to this nigger-loving, Jew lawyer. If he loves them so much, he can stay at the nigger hotels.”

“I agree. What about the state trooper?”

“Hmm,” moaned the Judge. “Maybe we should allow him to stay at the white hotels. This way we can separate the two.”

“Sounds good to me,” replied the Sheriff.

“Okay, Judge, but how are we going to retaliate? How do we inflict swift justice?” asked Acton.

“Let me think about this for a minute,” replied the Judge. The Judge paused and then spoke slowly but deliberately. “There’s a couple of things I want to do, and I want to do it one by one. I think we need to kill one of Leon’s brothers. Which one should it be? Which one is causing the most problems?”

“Without a doubt, Deron,” the Sheriff replied promptly. “His other brother’s name is Reggie, but Deron is more of a troublemaker.”

“Okay, so we go after Deron,” said the Judge.

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Archie. “Come on, guys, are you sure you want to do this so soon after our guys have been murdered? I mean they haven’t even been buried yet. Shouldn’t we wait until things calm down—until the newspaper people gets out of here?”

“Are you kidding?” replied Acton. “We have to respond immediately. If we don’t, we show weakness to the niggers. They will continue their onslaught on us. We have to take swift action.”

“All right, but I think it is a mistake,” said Archie.

“Archie, your point is well taken,” said the Judge. “We don’t make this decision lightly. It has to be done right this time.” The Judge gazed over to Acton and the Sheriff. “Acton, do you have any ideas on how to go about eliminating Deron?”

“Um, why don’t we just release him like we always do in the middle of the night? Then we smack him in the head, put him a trunk, and then bury him somewhere. We don’t want a hanging—we don’t want him on public display. We could say that he fled the area because he was the killer.”

The Judge intervened. “Hmm, I don’t like it. I mean I like the overall goal of killing Deron, but the plan has problems. We have to iron out how we are going to release him, so he doesn’t escape.”

“I have a suggestion,” said the Sheriff.

“What’s that?” asked the Judge.

“One of my officers will release him in the middle of the night. We’ll tell him that he has a female visitor, so we have to handcuff him and leg cuff him. When we get him away from the others—” The Sheriff paused. “Wait, this isn’t going to work.”

“No, no,” said the Judge. “You’re on to something. I know where you’re going with it. You want to get him away from the station into some secluded area.”

“Yes, I was thinking of the warehouse that we always use.”

“I got it!” Action said. “Don’t tell him he has a visitor. Instead, tell him that you need to question him. He’ll be suspicious and so will the other niggers—but who cares. Make sure to cuff him and leg cuff him. When he gets outside the cellblock area, tell him that you need to question him offsite. If he starts screaming or yelling, gag him—maybe even knock him out. In any event, get him to the warehouse, and we will have a wrecking crew lined up to finished him off and dispose of his body for good.”

Junior interjected. “I have a suggestion.”

The Sheriff was perturbed that his son was speaking up, again. He gave him a stern look. “What is it?”

Junior continued. “Instead of taking out Deron first, why don’t we take Leon out of the cell, cuff him, and leg cuff him. We say that we are just going to question him, and that he’ll be right back. They’ll be suspicious. But when we return him shortly thereafter, they’ll be more accepting when we then take Deron for questioning.”

“That’s a really good idea,” said Acton.

“Yeah, I like that,” said the Judge. “Let’s do that. You guys work out the rest of the details.”

“Judge, you said that you wanted to take care of things one by one,” said Acton. “What did you have next in mind?”

“Well, we’re going to start burning down the whole south side, of course.”

While the Klan was having their planning meeting, Dodge County was unraveling. Crowds were forming in the streets by the police station—demanding answers from the police. Tensions were building among the Negroes and the whites in the downtown areas and in the industrial areas where the whites and Negroes had to coexist. The Negroes and the whites were bunkering down for a battle—a potential race riot.

Word had gotten out that there were suspects in custody, and the white people wanted them hung immediately. But the Negroes were demanding that the cops release them.

To make matters worse for the Klan, a reporter from Austin had arrived and met up with Goldstein. Goldstein, the State Trooper, and the reporter already drove out to the crime scene and were inspecting it. They quickly discovered the noose. The reporter took a picture of it along with the torch.

“Ryan, what do you think about this?” Goldstein asked the reporter while pointing at the rope.

Ryan Ward was a skinny, tall man in his forties. “Well, it looks like someone was going to be lynched or was lynched.”

“Hmnn, this is consistent with Leon’s story,” replied Goldstein.

“So your client is saying that someone came out of nowhere and shot the white guys up?”

“Yes.”

“This is huge news. This will definitely make the radio news broadcast this evening and the newspaper tomorrow. I’m going to phone it in. I wouldn’t be surprise if it makes the national news either.” Ward paused. “It must have been a Negro don’t you think. I mean a white guy is not going to protect a Negro.”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure that Leon had nothing to do with it.”

“What about his family and friends?”

“No, I don’t think so. I met them all, and they don’t have the knowledge or the resources to pull something like this off.”

“Let’s take a look at the car,” suggested Ward.

“Wow, I can’t believe they left this car here,” replied Goldstein. “For that matter, I can’t believe that they left the crime scene unattended. Shit, now that I think of it, we might get into trouble and be accused for tampering with a crime scene.”

“Yeah, we better get out of here, but I want to quickly check out this car.”

“Yeah, I want to check out the trunk, especially. Did they leave the keys?”

Ward checked the ignition and sure enough, they were there. “Man, the police in Dodge County are really dumb.” Ward grabbed the keys, walked back to the trunk, and opened the trunk.

“Look, there some traces of blood,” said Goldstein.

Ward took out his camera and took a picture of the inside of the trunk where there was blood.

“Come on, we better get out of here.”

They closed the trunk and returned the keys to the ignition.

They walked back to their cars. They each brought their own cars and drove separately to the police station.

~~~~

As soon as their Klan meeting ended, the Sheriff and Junior walked back to the police station, which was about a two-block walk. Once they made their turn onto Main Street, they saw a crowd of about fifty people emerging.

Oh shit, the Sheriff thought. The Sheriff wanted to get out to the crime scene to get the noose and torch out of there, but now it looked like he had to prevent a riot. The white people knew better than to start a riot without the Klan’s blessing, but the Negroes could provoke the white people into a riot. The Sheriff had to calm things down, so they could implement their ultimate plan of killing Deron.

The first people that the Sheriff and Junior approached were the white people.

“Sheriff, what you going to do with these niggers shooting our boys up?” asked a local white man.

“Yeah, Sheriff, you can’t let these niggers get away with this,” said another white man.

Then, Mama Brooks weaved her way through the crowd. “Sheriff, please let my boys and my husband and Mr. Stevens go. They didn’t do anything.”

Junior was holding out his arms to separate the blacks from the whites and to protect his father.

“Wait!” The Sheriff shouted as he threw up both hands into the air. “Everyone back away.” He walked up to the top of the police station’s stairs and turned around to face the crowd. “Now, everyone calm down,” he ordered. “A tragedy happened last night, and we are investigating it.” He now directed his gaze to the white side of the crowd, spoke sternly, and pointed his finger at them. “Y’all need to go home right now. I can assure you that we are investigating the crime, and I can assure you that the people responsible will be properly punished.”

“Sheriff, you already have the niggers who did this in custody,” said the original white man who spoke. “What else do you have to do?”

“No, no, no,” repeated Mama Brooks. “My boys did not do this.
They
tried to hang my boy.”

“Bull shit!” shouted another white man.

“Stop it!” shouted the Sheriff. “All of you.”

“I’m not leaving until you release my family,” ordered Mama Brooks.

The Sheriff sighed. “Excuse me,” said the Sheriff while looking at Mama Brooks with a threatening look. “Look, your family has been arrested for the murders of three white men. You are in no condition to make demands on me.”