She printed out all of these. One of the stories had a quote from the newspaper editor in Harms’s hometown. Using an Internet telephone directory, she looked up the man’s number. He still lived in the same small town near Mobile, Alabama, where both brothers had grown up.
The phone was answered after three rings. Sara introduced herself to the man, George Barker, still editor-in-chief of the local paper.
“I already talked to the papers about that,” he said flatly.
His deep southern drawl made Sara think of braying coon dogs and clear jugs of ’shine. “I’d appreciate if you could answer a few questions for me, that’s all.”
“Who are you with again?”
“An independent news service. I’m a freelancer.”
“Well, what exactly do you want to know?”
“I’ve read that Rufus Harms was convicted of killing a young girl on the military base where he was stationed.” She glanced at the news accounts she had printed out. “Fort Plessy.”
“Killed a little white girl. He’s a Negro, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Sara said curtly. “Do you know the name of the attorney who represented him at the trial?”
“Wasn’t really a trial. He did a plea arrangement. I covered the story some, because Rufus was local, sort of the reverse of the local boy makes good.”
“So you know the name of his attorney?”
“Well, I’d have to look it up. Give me your number and I can call you back.”
Evans gave him her home number. “If I’m not there, just leave it on the answering machine. What else can you tell me about Rufus and his brother?”
“Well, the most noticeable thing about Rufus was his size. He must have already been six-foot-three by the time he was fourteen. And he wasn’t skinny or lanky or anything. He already had a man’s body.”
“Good student? bad? In trouble with the police?”
“From what I recall, he wasn’t a good student. He never graduated high school, although he was real good with his hands. He worked at a little printing press with his daddy growing up. His brother did too. Why, I remember one time the press at my newspaper broke down. They sent Rufus over to fix it. He couldn’t have been much more’n sixteen. I gave him the manual for the machinery, but he wouldn’t take it. ‘Words just mess me up, Mr. Barker,’ he said, or something to that effect. He went in there and within one hour he had the whole damn thing up and running, good as new.”
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“And he was never in trouble with the police. His momma wouldn’t have let him. You got to understand, this is one small town, no more than a thousand souls have ever lived here, even fewer today. I’m pushing eighty, still run the newspaper. Nobody’s been here longer than me. Now, the Harmses lived in the colored section of town, of course, but we still knew ’em. Now, I don’t have colored folk over to my house, but they seemed like good people. She worked at the meat processing factory here just like most everybody else. Cleaning crew, not one of the good-paying jobs. But she took care of her boys.”
“What happened to their father?”
“He was a good man, not prone to drink or wild living like so many of their kind. He worked hard, too hard, because one day he just didn’t wake up. Heart attack.”
“You have a good memory.”
“I wrote out his obituary.”
“What about his brother?”
“Now, Josh was a different story. Around here, he’s what we call a bad black. Hotheaded, arrogant, trying to be better than he was. Now, I’m not prejudiced or anything and I don’t tolerate the use of the n word in my presence, but if I did use that particular word I’d use it to describe Josh Harms. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
“I read that he fought in Vietnam and was actually a war hero.”
“Sure, that’s right,” Barker conceded quickly. “He was the most decorated war hero to ever come out of this town, by a long shot. People were damn surprised about that, let me tell you. But he could fight, I’ll give the man that.”
“What else?”
“Well, Josh actually graduated high school.” Barker’s voice changed. “But where he really showed up everybody was in sports. I’m a one-man shop here and I cover all the news. Josh Harms was the greatest pure athlete I have ever had the privilege to see. White, black, green or purple, that boy could run faster, jump higher, stronger, quicker than anybody else. Now, I know the coloreds can do all that really well anyway, but Josh was truly special. He lettered in just about every sport there was. Do you know he still holds about a half dozen state athletic records?”He added proudly, “And you know Alabama’s got more than its share of great athletes.”
Sara sighed. “Did he play at the collegiate level?”
“Well, he got a slew of scholarship offers for football and basketball. Bear Bryant even wanted him at ‘Bama, that’s how good he was. Probably would’ve been a star in the NBA or the NFL. But he got sidetracked.”
“How so?”
“Well, you know how so. His government asked him to defend his country in the war against communism.”
“In other words, he got drafted and was shipped to Vietnam.”
“That’s right.”
“Did he come back home afterward?”
“Oh, sure. His momma was still alive, but not for long. See, right about that time was when Rufus got in all that trouble. I actually think Rufus volunteered for the Army because of Josh. Maybe he wanted to be like his older brother, you know, a hero. Really I think he just wanted something to go right with his life for a change. After his daddy died there wasn’t anything for him in this town. Of course, it ended up going about as wrong as it could. Anyway, Josh came to see me, to see if there was anything I could do. You know, the power of the press, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“Did Rufus killing the girl surprise you? I mean, had he ever been violent, that you knew?”
“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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
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?”