Fallout (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

“You been at it all night” Joshua asked.

“Yep, been processing the latent prints from the knife and comparing them to the ones they faxed in here a couple of days ago. They’re a match for the one that killed the others. I wish we had a better way of tracking, well, a faster way of tracking fingerprints from state to state. It would make my job a lot easier.”

“What would make all our jobs easier is if folks quit killing one another,” Stokes replied seriously.

“Oh yeah, that’d make it real easy, Sheriff, but that’s not going to happen. If anything, the crime rate just keeps climbing higher and higher.”

“Yeah, it does, John. Every year it seems to get worse. Did you learn anything else from the crime scene?”

“Yes, Sir, The coroner says that Mrs. Vice was molested. He took a swabbing to compare, said something about being able to test the blood type of the perpetrator. We want to do that because I found two different blood types in the kitchen area. We believe one to be the killers. In his rage of stabbing Mrs. Vice, he may have cut himself. Ola’s blood type was O positive; the other type I found was very rare - it is AB negative. Only 1% of the population has that blood type.”

“What about Jesse’s blood type? It could have been his blood in the kitchen.”

“No, sir, I checked that. Jesse was also O positive. Sheriff, if we catch this man I think it would be easy to convict him on that basis alone. AB negative is extremely rare.”

“That would be good; keep me informed, John. I have several people I am going to talk to about migrant workers, see if maybe he is still hanging around here. He might have decided to stay a while since this is a nursery and farm town. There are lots of jobs to do this time of year.”

“Yes, Sir, I will check back with you later.”

Joshua hung up the phone, refilled his cup, and then walked out onto the porch. He sat down and lit a smoke. The squirrels and birds were busy as bees gathering nuts, berries, and twigs for nests. It was still mating season. Joshua liked the spring season with its blooming flowers and the smell of fresh cut grass and hay. The wisteria vines that ran through the trees south of his cabin were beginning to bloom. He liked the scent they give off. Suddenly Joshua was a little boy again. He remembered carrying a cluster of them in his hand, petals dropping off them as he ran up the walkway to his house; however, that was all. The memory was gone before it was fully remembered.

He must have been taking the flowers to his mother…

Fall was Joshua’s favorite time of year. He loved the aroma of fall, wood smoke rising from chimneys, frosty mornings, and the smell of apple cider brewing when he walked into Miller’s Grocery. He finished his smoke, rinsed his cup and unplugged the coffee pot. He had slept in his clothes, but felt no need to change; he had showered just before putting them on the night before. He grabbed his hat, locked the door behind him and left. By 9 a.m., he was sitting in front of the office of Edgewood Nursery. The owner, Bill Thrower, was coming down the steps when Joshua got out of his cruiser.

“What can I help you with, Sheriff?”

“Nothing, Bill, I stopped by to talk to Kitty about Joe Dyas,” Joshua replied, saying the first thing that come to mind.

“It’s a shame what happened to Joe. He was a good worker and a good man.” Bill said. “I thought y’all got the fella that killed him… it was Tom Stringer wasn’t it. At least that was what I heard. I hear you had to kill him when you tried to arrest him for it.”

“Yes, I did,” was all Joshua said. He did not feel like discussing it.

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t get away with it. Tom always was an arrogant sort.”

“Yeah, he was, and I hate Joe got caught up in it. We’ve been taking up a collection for his widow and young’uns. I thought maybe Kitty could help with the distribution of it and make sure it got into the widows hands.”

“She’s in there, Sheriff, just go on in,” Bill replied getting into his pickup.

Joshua took the steps two at a time and tapped on the door before opening it. Kitty Christian was sitting at a desk that faced the door. She looked up and smiled. Kitty was a pretty woman and Joshua like her temperament and personality. If she was not married to one of his deputies, he might go after her himself. She was one of those natural dark beauties. From what he had heard, her grandma was a full-blooded Cherokee. He would not doubt it either; you could see the Indian in her, her kinfolk too.

“What can I do you for, Sheriff,” Kitty asked cheerfully.

“Well, Hon, I wanted to talk to you about migrant workers, like the Mexicans that come in here every year; the hiring practices and so forth. I was wondering if you knew which nurseries hired them and so on.”

“I can tell you for sure that Bill Thrower doesn’t hire any Mexicans, Sheriff. He will hire migrant workers during potting and trucking season, but only white or coloreds. He refuses to use Mexicans even though several other owners have told him that they’ll work harder and cheaper than the others will.”

“Is that right”

“His exact words are - ‘whites and niggers belong here, Mexicans don’t; they belong in Mexico.’ He says they come here to work and then don’t want to leave. When they start renting houses out here where the work is, because most don’t have vehicles, they’ll pile ten to twelve to a house. They hang out in front of local businesses watching our womenfolk then the next thing you know, you got little Mex-Aricans running all over the place; they damn sure won’t leave then. Bill says it makes everything of value go down, real estate, quality of life, everything. Those are his exact words, Sheriff. He gets angry just talking about them.

Now, I do know of several owners that truck them in and rail them in for ‘certain’ seasons; but there are many nurseries, like Pages, that work them year round. They set up housing, if you can call it that, for them. After they started using Mexicans to work their nurseries and farms, they won’t even hire whites or niggers except if they need bosses to show the Mexicans what to do and stay on them out in the fields. They drive those Mexicans the way they did the slaves back in the 1800s.”

“Do you know which nurseries besides Pages use them regularly?”

“It’s not just nurseries, Sheriff. Many of the farmers use them on a continual basis too. W. C. Vice is one of them. You know he plants hundreds of acres in vegetables and watermelons. He told Daryl Powell that he could not keep white or Negro workers in his fields. He says they’re too damn lazy. He said that most don’t last a full day in an okra patch. Boney Maples says the same thing; he can’t keep local workers either. Boney and W. C. are two of the biggest producers around here besides Bohannon’s and Tanner.”

“That gives me a few leads to run down. Enough to keep me and my deputies busy for a while.”

“Are y’all still looking for the Mexican that murdered Jesse and Ola? Jim told me about it last night. He said it was bad; bad enough to ‘gag a maggot’ was his exact words. I haven’t said anything about it to anyone.”

“They had been dead a couple of days,” Joshua replied, but did not care much for his deputy’s description of the crime scene. It was somewhat callous to his way of thinking to describe it as so. “We don’t want
that
out any more than necessary.”

“Mum’s the word” Kitty winked. Joshua thanked her for her help then left. He drove straight to W. C. Vices to talk with him. When he got there, W. C. was driving a tractor away from his produce barn, pulling a trailer load of workers. He hollered and told Joshua that he would be right back; he was just taking them to the pea patch.

Joshua got out and lit a smoke then walked over to the produce barn. Several women, black, white, and Hispanic sat shelling peas into large bowls in their laps.

“Morning, Ladies” Joshua nodded.

“Morning, Sheriff” several replied. Joshua recognized one of the women; she was Faye Pack. He was well acquainted with her father Carlos. Carlos had a passel of young'uns; at least a dozen. As soon as they became teenagers, he put them to work. Their income paid the brunt of the bills and fed them. Although he probably could have received help from the state to feed his large brood, Carlos did not believe in welfare. He had told Joshua that he was raised in a family where they didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but everyone worked or they did not eat; that was how he intended to raise his children. He said he did not want them to be a bunch of freeloaders like most of his kinfolk on the reservation were these days. The Creek Indian reservation where he was reared was about sixty miles north of Mobile.

Thinking of the reservation reminded Joshua of his mother. If she was from the reservation, Carlos may have known her. He decided that he would have to ride by and talk with Carlos as soon as he got a chance to do so. He knew that Carlos had left the reservation to join the military during WWII and had not returned when he was discharged from the service.

Carlos was badly wounded in Germany and had walked with a cane ever since. He had met his wife Carlene, while hospitalized when sent home from the war. She was working as an aide at the VA hospital in Biloxi. He and Carlene had lived in the same place since 1945 when they married. The little house was crowded but Joshua had never seen a house any cleaner. Carlene kept its wood floors swept and scrubbed and there was always laundry hanging on the line when he drove by.

“How
are
your mama and daddy doing,” he asked Faye. “I haven’t seen your father out and about in a while,” he said, as he honestly had not seen Carlos in a while.

“Daddy’s been up on the reservation for about a month. He’s been visiting with his mother, Sheriff. It don’t look like she will be in this world much longer. He wanted to see her and spend some time with her before she died.”

“I hate to hear that. When he gets home I need to talk with him about something.” Faye gave him a strange look, probably wondering why he needed to talk to her father.

“Do you ladies know if W. C. has hired any Mexicans in the last several days?” he asked. Faye and the two Negro women glanced toward the Hispanic women, but the Hispanics had not even raised their eyes from the bowls in their laps.

“He just got a batch in, Sheriff” one of the colored women replied.

“Hush up, Vera!” the other Negro woman whispered after kicking Vera’s foot.

“Why is you a askin’ if you don’t mind telling me? Is dey bad?” Vera asked, ignoring her companion.

“Why do you ask if they’re bad?” Joshua asked quickly. It seemed odd to him that she asked the why of it.

“’Cause deys one of 'em dat give me da willies. He be a lookin’ at me all funny like. I done like dat one bit.”

“Was he on that wagon, the one that just left for the fields?”

“No, sir,” Vera responded. “He out grassing da okery patch, da one over on da sixteenth section, dare on Moffett Road.”

Joshua knew that grassing meant hoeing the grass from the fields.

“He say his name be Avellino Rodrigo’s.” When she said that, the two Hispanic women looked up from their bowls. The fear in their eyes warranted Joshua’s scrutiny.

“Do either of you speak English?” he asked. They both shook their heads no, but he knew they understood enough to deny they understood it. “I can bring an interpreter out here and get a statement if I need too.”

“No, Sher’riff, I speak some Engleish” the younger one replied. “But I done know Este hombre, Avellino. Hermano dice que se mantenga alejado de él. These man has no life in hes ojos, ah, eyes.”

Joshua did not understand all she said, especially when she dropped back into Spanish, but he did understand that she said her brother told her not to do
something
. He suspected he told her not to talk to this Avellino.

“Es un hombre peligroso” she said quickly.

Joshua took Spanish in high school and knew that peligro was the word for danger and hombre was man, however his Spanish was rusty as all get out. He had rarely to use it, but figured he got the gist of what she was saying.

“What is she saying?” Faye asked.

“She was saying that he was a dangerous man,” Joshua informed Faye.

“Well, anyone with eyeballs can tell dat!” Vera exclaimed. “Da dude has dat look about him. I shore wouldn't wanna meet up with him out by myself, no sir, he freaky!”

“You women be watchful and stay away from him.” Joshua heard the tractor coming in from the fields. He lit another cigarette and walked out into the yard. W. C. had aged a good bit in the last twenty years. He was probably only ten years older than Joshua was but looked at least seventy. Joshua reckoned it was from working out in the hot sun day after day. The sun tended to bake a persons skin, wrinkling it and turning it into leather… W. C. drove right up beside Joshua, stopped, killed the ignition, and then asked what the reason of his visit was. Joshua cleared his throat of dust stirred up by the tractor and told him that he was interested to know if any new workers had shown up in the last several days looking for work. W. C. gave him a funny look and replied “Why sure they have; it’s that time of year! They start coming in by the truckloads and stay until the harvest is over, that’s when they get the brunt of their pay. What is this all about?”

“I’m looking for one Mexican in particular. His name may be Avellino Rodrigo. He would have showed up just in the last two days.”

“It wouldn't be that Rodrigo’s feller then, ‘cause he’s been here for a week straight. Not too friendly, but I haven’t had any trouble out of him yet. A few of them, the single ones, they like to drink a little on the weekends. Do you know that these Mexicans can take a pound of beef, a bag of flour, and a bag of beans and feed fifty people off it! Most of them skimp and save while they’re here; much of what they make working here is sent to Mexico. One of 'em working here in the states can take care of a houseful in Mexico… that’s why they’re here, Joshua. There ain’t any money to be made down there; folks are starving.”

“Any show up the last couple of days that was questionable?”

“As a matter of fact, one of the regulars that’s been working for me for several years brought a little feller with him yesterday morning; he said he was looking for work. My crew is full though, so I told Giuseppe to tell him to go talk to Jimmy Page about working there. This feller spoke English though, better than some of the ones that have been working here for several years spoke it. He said he was working his way back to ‘Medico.’ He didn’t look like a full-blood; I believe he was mixed with white.”

“What made you think he was mixed, besides speaking good English?”

“He had green eyes. These full bloods eyes are almost black.”

“Did he have any other distinguishable features?”

“Besides being a little short fellow, about five feet two or three, he had an odd tattoo on his forearm, and he was walking with a limp. The limp could have been from an injury though because he had a bloody bandana tied around his leg, about six inches above his knee. He said he healed really fast, when he thought that was the reason I did not hire him, but that had nothing to do with it; my crew is full.”

“Tell me about the tattoo; you said it was
odd
looking.”

“Yeah, it was some kind of star in a circle-maybe one of them nautical stars. There was some sort of writing on it, but I couldn’t read it, it looked like foreign writing.”

“Like the ones the fishermen in Bayou La Batre wear on their forearm?”

“I haven’t ever been to Bayou La Batre, Sheriff, so I don’t know about that.”

“I have already sent deputies to the nurseries and farms to ask questions. Now that I have a description, I can give that to them so they can be on the lookout for him at the nurseries and while they’re out there driving around too. You’ve been a big help, W. C.”

“What are you looking for him for, if you don’t mind me a asking?”

“He’s a person of interest in a case I’m working on, nothing set in stone yet.”

“This ain’t about Jesse and Ola, is it? I heard they were murdered. Jesse is-was my first cousin. It’s a crying shame what this world is coming to when folks can’t even feel safe in their own homes!”

“Yes, it is” Joshua agreed, feeling somewhat responsible because of his title. W. C. must have sensed Joshua’s mood change because he said, “It ain’t your fault, Sheriff. Folks is gonna do what they gonna do, but if it was that there Mexican, he ought to have his neck stretched!”

“I agree,” Joshua said. “I appreciate it, W. C. just keep your eyes open and if you see him again, give us a call. Maybe we can corral him up so he won’t be bothering folks. He’s a dangerous man to have around, I hate to cut it short but I do need to get going. I want to put out an All Points Bulletin using the description you gave me. I still have many places to check out.”

They said their goodbyes, Joshua got into his patrol car and left. He lit a smoke and inhaled deeply. He wished he had a joint or a bottle of whiskey with him; he needed to mellow out. He was about to shove his Steppenwolf tape in and cruise the back roads, but decided to see what was playing on the radio. As he turned off Cuss Fork onto Georgetown Wilmer Road, a song came on that got his attention. The singer’s voice spoke to Joshua’s soul, maybe it was the music or the mood he was in, but he turned the volume wide open and listened. The words were sad but in an odd way, soothing.