The Simple Truth (33 page)

“He never hurt anyone that I know of. A real gentle giant. When I heard about the little girl I couldn’t believe it. Now, if it had been Josh, I wouldn’t have blinked twice, but not Rufus. But with all that, the evidence was clear as could be.”

“Did Josh keep living there?”

“Well, now you take me to a particularly troubling part of this town’s history.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d rather not say.”
Sara thought quickly. What was the journalistic phrase?
“It can be off the record.”

“Is that right?”
Barker sounded wary.

“Absolutely. It’s off the record.”

“I want you to know that I just recorded what you said. So if I read in some newspaper what I’m about to tell you, I’ll sue you and your paper for every last cent you got,”
he said sternly.
“I’m a journalist, I know how these things work.”

“Mr. Barker, I promise that whatever you’re about to tell me will not be used in any way for a story.”

“All right. Actually, I guess so much time has passed that it doesn’t matter anymore — legally, anyway. But you can never be too careful in this old world.”
He cleared his throat.
“Well, the story of what Rufus had done got around town, no way it wouldn’t. A bunch of boys started drinking, got together and decided to do something. Now, they couldn’t do anything to Rufus, he was in the custody of the United States Army. But they could do something about the other Harms living here.”

“What did they do?”

“Well, what they did was they burned Mrs. Harms’s house to the ground.”

“Good God! Was she in it?”

“She was until Josh pulled her out. And let me tell you what, Josh went after those boys. They went at it right up and down the town’s streets. I watched it from my office. You know, it must’ve been ten against one, but Josh put half of them boys in the hospital, until the rest beat him up bad, real bad. Never seen anything like it, hope I never do again.”

“It sounds almost like a riot. Didn’t the police come?”

Barker coughed in an embarrassed fashion.
“Well, just so happens that it was rumored that a couple of the boys that were in on it, you know, who had burned the house down — ”

“Were the police,”
Sara finished the sentence for him. Barker didn’t say anything.
“I hope Josh Harms sued for all the money the town had,”
she said.

“Well, actually, they sued
him.
I mean, the boys he put in the hospital did. Josh couldn’t prove anything about the fire. I mean, I had my speculations, but that was all. And the police sort of put together this story about him resisting arrest and all. It was ten people’s word against one, and a colored’s word at that. Well, the long and the short of it was he spent some time in jail and they took everything he and his momma had, little enough that it was. She died soon thereafter. What happened to both her boys, I guess, was too much for her.”

It was all Sara could do not to start screaming at the man.
“Mr. Barker, that is the most disgusting story I have ever heard,”
she said.
“I don’t know much about your town, but I do know I would never want anyone I cared about to live there.”

“It has its good points.”

“Really — like welcoming home a war hero like that?”

“I know. I thought about that too. You fight for your country, get shot up and then come home to something like that, probably makes you wonder what the hell you were fighting for.”

“You sound like you knew the truth. Didn’t you use the power of the press that time?”

Barker sighed deeply.
“This has always been my home, Ms. Evans, and you can only offend the powers that be so many times, even if they deserve it. Now, I can’t say that I’m any great friend of the blacks, because I’m not. And I wouldn’t lie to you and say I championed Josh Harms’s cause, because frankly I didn’t.”

“Well, I guess that’s partly what the courts are for:to keep people like those in your town from screwing people like Josh Harms. Please call me back with the name of Harms’s lawyer.”

She hung up the phone. Her whole body was tingling with rage from what she had just heard. But then, how many blacks had she known growing up in Carolina? The generations of squatters down the road? Or during harvest time when her father would bring in the part-timers to help? She had watched these men from the porch, sweat soaking the thin fabric of their shirts, their skin growing ever darker under the bite of the sun. She and her mother would bring them lemonade, food. They would mumble their thanks, never making eye contact, eat their meal and toil on into the darkness. Sara’s school had been all white, despite the string of Supreme Court cases demanding otherwise. These cases were the twentieth century battlefields of racial equality, replacing the Antietams, Gettysburgs and Chickamaugas of the last century. And some would argue with equal futility. And here at the Court there was one black justice, who occupied the so-called Thurgood Marshall seat, and currently one black clerk, out of thirty-six. Many of the justices had never had a minority person clerk for them. What sort of message did that send? At the highest court of justice in the land?

As she hurried down the hallway in search of Fiske, Sara wondered if they would ever really find out the truth. If the Army caught up to the Harms brothers before anyone else, the truth might very well die with them.

Fiske was standing outside his brother’s office while Chandler was overseeing the progress of his evidence-collection team under close supervision of the Court’s staff counsel. However, with now two dead clerks, concerns over confidentiality had taken a back seat to finding the killer or killers. When they finished with Michael Fiske’s office, they would go down the hallway and start on Steven Wright’s.

Fiske looked over at his brother’s office door and then back at Wright’s. He did so a couple more times as an idea began to percolate through his head. He went over to Chandler.

“Exactly where was Wright’s body found?”

Chandler flipped open his notebook and started looking through his notes.
“By the way, I got your car out of impound. It’s at my office in a nice, legal parking space.”

“Thanks for doing that for me.”

“Don’t thank me. With the tow and fine and all, it’s gonna cost you about two hundred bucks.”

“Two hundred bucks? I don’t have that kind of money for a lousy parking ticket.”

“Is that right? Well, maybe I can pull a few strings, you know, do you a favor. But you’ll have to work it off. I got some painting that needs to be done at my house.”
Chandler cracked a smile and then stopped leafing through his notes.
“Okay, here we are. Wright lived about a block from the Eastern Market metro station. His body was found in Garfield Park. That’s at F and Second Streets. It’s about a half dozen blocks from the Court.”

“How did Wright usually get to and from work?”

“According to several people here, he either walked, took a cab or occasionally the metro.”

“Was this Garfield Park on his way home?”

Chandler tilted his head as he studied his notes.
“Not really. Normally he would’ve hung a left from Second onto E to go home. He wouldn’t have continued on down to the park.”

“Did he have a dog or anything? Maybe he went home and then took it for a walk in the park.”

“He did have a dog, but he hadn’t been home. At least we don’t think he had. And if he was going to walk his dog, Marion Park is a lot closer to his home.”

“That is strange.”

Chandler’s eyes narrowed as he thought of something.

“But Marion Park has something that Garfield doesn’t.”

“What’s that?”

“A police substation right across the street.”

“Whoever killed him might have known that.”

“The substation’s not exactly a big secret. We want our presence known there as a deterrent to crime.”

“Does it look like he was killed at the park, or maybe somewhere else and dumped there?”

“The grass had blood on it. No shell casings — that we found yet, anyway. Shooter probably would’ve used a silencer, unless it was some random robbery. A silencer on a revolver is too tricky. If he used a semiautomatic, then we should find a shell casing unless it was picked up.”

“Bullet still in the body?”

Chandler nodded.
“Hope we lay our hands on a gun to match it against.”

“Considering what happened at Mike’s apartment, you should probably have someone posted at Wright’s.”

“Gee, now, why didn’t I think of that.”

“Sorry. Any idea when Wright left the Court last night?”

“We’re still checking on that. After regular hours there’s only one door open for entering and exiting. That door is constantly guarded and it closes up at 2 A.M. After that you need a guard to let you out. You can leave via the garage too, but it’s also secured. However, Wright didn’t drive, so the garage is irrelevant.”

“Then someone must have seen him leave.”

“My people are checking with the guards on duty last night.”

“Doesn’t this place have surveillance cameras?”

“You mean in the courtroom?”
Chandler asked with a smile.
“The answer is yes, but not everywhere and unfortunately not along this part of the hallway. But we’re checking the tapes right now to see if there’s anything relevant on them.”
Chandler scanned his notes once more.
“At that time of night, really the only activity on this floor would have been a clerk working late.”

“Anything in Wright’s background helpful?”

Chandler shook his head.
“No skeletons that we found so far. Motive is going to be tough on this one.”

“But his wallet was missing.”

“Yeah, I thought about that. A little too convenient.”

“Like somebody wants to make us think both murders are connected?”

“You know, it actually could be some nut with a grudge against the Court.”

“I believe the murders are connected but not for the reasons everyone probably thinks,”
Fiske said.

“How do you mean?”

“If Mike was killed for a reason someone doesn’t want us to find out about, then killing another clerk and making it look related would be a great way to divert our attention.”

Chandler looked intrigued.
“So what’s the
real
reason someone killed your brother and is trying to cover it up?”

Fiske hesitated again. Keeping the stolen appeal a secret was beginning to become very awkward.
“I don’t know, but I might have an idea why Wright was killed.”

“Other than as a red herring?”

“Let’s say his death might have served a dual purpose.”

At that moment Sara joined them, trying very hard to conceal her excitement.

“John, can we talk for a minute?”

“Ms. Evans,”
Chandler said with a broad smile,
“I hope your drive to Richmond was pleasant and uneventful.”

“Let’s just say it was different,”
she said quickly.
“John, I really need to talk to you.”

“Can I catch up with you later, Buford?”

“And you can tell me your theory.”

As they walked off together, Chandler’s smile faded. He was wondering if he had just lost his
“unofficial”
partner to Sara Evans.

*    *    *

Minutes after Sara had left her office, Justice Knight had stopped by to see her. She started to leave a written message when she saw the
Chance
bench memo with Wright’s attached note. She sat down in Sara’s chair and read the note. After she finished, it suddenly dawned on Knight what she had done. She had instructed Wright to work late, all night if necessary. He had done so, left the building late and someone had killed him. Her precious bench memo. She had never really focused on this chain of events before. A gush of air came out of her lungs so hard it almost choked her. She put the memo down and rushed from the room.

A minute later she raced past her astonished staff and locked the door to her office. She looked around the spacious, beautiful room, with even its own fireplace. Here she had sat and contemplated her little strategies, her philosophies of life. And it had cost a young man his life. She threw off her pumps, collapsed in a corner, covered her face and wept.

Back at her office, Sara spent the next thirty minutes filling Fiske in on everything she had found out.
“When Barker calls back with the attorney’s name, we can talk to him and maybe really start getting somewhere.”

“That would be nice.”

“Do you believe Michael went to see Harms in prison?”

“It really complicates matters that the guy’s escaped.”

Sara had a sudden terrifying thought.
“You don’t think Michael was somehow mixed up in that, do you?”

“My brother would not be part of anything illegal.”

“I didn’t mean intentionally.”

“According to the newspaper reports, Harms escaped from a hospital in Roanoke
after
Mike’s body was found. But I’m not saying that the timing is just coincidental.”

“Do you have any brilliant deductions?”

“I think I know why Wright was killed.”

“Why? Because he knew about Harms? About what Michael had done?”

“No, he was killed because he saw something. Something he shouldn’t have.”

Sara drew her chair closer to his.
“What do you mean?”

“Wright’s office —
your
former office — is right down the hallway from Mike’s. Wright was going to be working all night.”

Sara slumped in her chair.
“Right. Because I told him he had to.”

“No, because Knight told you to tell him he had to. Well, his body was found in a park that wasn’t on his way home. Chandler told me that he was killed between midnight and two last night. If he was working all night here, what was he doing in that park?”