Natchez Burning (52 page)

Kirk reaches into the truck and brings up more wet newspaper. “Three more in here. I think the whole skeleton is down in the Jericho Hole, but it’s got a car sitting on it.”

“What make of car?” Henry asks sharply.

Kirk purses his lips. “I’m not sure. I was focusing on the bones. It was a convertible, I know that.”

Henry’s eyes bug halfway out of his head. “Luther Davis drove a 1957 Pontiac Bonneville convertible!”

“Did it look like a Pontiac?” I ask.

Kirk snorts in derision. “It looked like a big hunk of rust lying upside down.”

“Were the bones just loose on the bottom?” asks Henry.

“Hell, no. The river would have scoured any loose bones out long ago. The only reason I found these is because they were in the car. The femur was fastened to the steering column with barbed wire. I had to dig my hand up from under to reach it.”

“Oh, man,” Henry breathes. “Oh, shit. After all this time.”

“Check this out,” says Kirk, his eyes flashing. From the new bundle of paper he brings out another brown piece of bone. This one is long and thin, with a rusted piece of barbed wire still embedded in it.

A rush of adrenaline flushes through me.

“Jesus Lord,” Henry breathes. “Morehouse was telling the truth. That’s Luther Davis.”

“Maybe,” I say with caution born from experience. “Boys, we are in dire need of expert help.”

Henry gazes reverently at the find as though at a perfect new specimen of
Australopithecus
. “Were there enough bones under that car to be two people?”

“You’ll have to move it to find out. But you guys haven’t seen the showstopper yet.” He removes what looks like a fossilized vertebra from the newspaper. “This was buried under a couple of inches of mud. Looks like part of a backbone to me.”

“What’s special about it?” Henry asks.

Kirk rolls the bone over in his fingers and points to a small, dark protrusion with his other hand. “See this?”

Henry squints at the bone like an orthopedic intern. What is it?”

“A bullet.”

The reporter’s hand flies to his mouth.

“Can you tell what caliber it is?” I ask.

“No, but it’s small.”

“Nine millimeter?”

Kirk scrapes the encrusted projectile with a fingernail. “Closer to seven, I’d say. Hard to tell with the mineralization. But the owner of this vertebra was definitely shot in the spine.”

While Henry looks stricken, Kirk says, “You want me to go back down there and try to bring up some more? With that landowner on the lookout, I’d have to make a night dive.”

“No!” his girlfriend snaps from the passenger window. “You heard Penn. It’s time to bring in the law.”

“I didn’t say that exactly,” I point out. “But we probably don’t have any choice.”

Henry appears torn. “I don’t like the idea of turning this over to Sheriff Walker Dennis.”

“I know, but this parish is his jurisdiction, first and foremost. We ought to give Walker a shot at doing the right thing.”

“Even if Sheriff Dennis is honest, I worry about leaks in his department. He’s got some deputies with family connections I don’t like. I know an expert down at LSU that even the FBI consults in murder cases. They call her the Bone Lady. Nobody in the world could tell us more about these bones than she could, and we wouldn’t have to show the sheriff anything until we were sure.”

Henry’s past experiences with law enforcement have obviously left him cynical. “Let’s talk about the FBI for a second. Last night you said you needed me to run interference for you. What’s your relationship with the Bureau?”

Henry cocks his head like a man who can’t make up his mind. “For a long time they ignored me. Then they started warning me about talking to witnesses in what they called ‘open’ cases. I laugh at that now. If the public ever finds out how the Bureau dragged its feet on those murders, there’ll be hell to pay. Now, of course, field agents call me every week. They basically want to use me as a de facto investigator.”

“Who’s your main contact with them?”

“I’ve dealt with a dozen different agents. The FBI has jurisdictional problems within its own agency. Different field offices or resident agencies handled the various original cases, so the records are spread out, and each agent only has a few pieces of the puzzle. They’ve got a cold case squad, but not even those people have access to all the data. It’s ridiculous.”

“Do you trust any of them?”

“There is one guy I like,” Henry concedes. “He works out of the New Orleans field office now, but he’s no suit. He’s a Vietnam vet named John Kaiser. That’s who I called about Morehouse last night.”

The agent’s name tweaks something in my memory.

“Kaiser’s not officially responsible for any of these cases, but he’s got a personal interest. He trained under some of the agents who originally worked the murders, and he’d like to solve them, if he can. He’s helped get me in touch with old-timers when I needed to. If we’re duty bound to share information with somebody official, I’d prefer to deal with Kaiser.”

“I’m glad you’re open to somebody in the Bureau, but we’ve got to at least give Walker Dennis a chance.”

“What if the bones disappear? More than bones disappeared out of that office in the old days.”

Henry is referring to several ice chests that reportedly held the decomposing flesh of two civil rights murder victims in 1965. Like a lot of other evidence from that era, those coolers vanished without trace.

“We’ll only show him one,” I promise. “Remember, Walker was probably in kindergarten during the bad old days.”

Kirk Boisseau’s eyes have been moving back and forth between us like those of a grunt watching two officers argue strategy. “Don’t worry, Henry,” he says, “there’s a lot more bones where those came from.”

“After you talk to the sheriff,” Nancy interjects, “where will
we
stand? Kirk and me? We took these bones off private property.”

“If these bones are what we think they are,” I tell her, “that won’t matter. You might be asked some questions to establish exactly where you found them, but no one’s going to press trespassing charges. They’ll be too busy trying to keep out of trouble themselves.”

“What if they’re
not
what you think?”

“Then your names will never come up.”

Nancy breathes a little easier after this, but her jaw remains set.

Henry tugs anxiously at his mustache. He’s clearly afraid to let these bones out of his personal custody, and after all the work he’s done on these cases, I can hardly blame him.

“Sheriff’s an elected position,” Kirk reminds us. “Walker Dennis won’t want any part of this tar baby.”

“I don’t want you to say a word to him about my sources,” Henry says.

“No chance,” I promise. “And Kirk is probably right. Walker will want to punt this to the feds to protect his own ass. But at least we’ll know where we stand with him.”

Henry slaps the side of Kirk’s truck. “Screw it. It’s been thirty-seven years since those boys disappeared. Let’s find out what the sheriff’s made of.”

I take the carefully wrapped bones from Kirk and give him sober thanks, but the marine just laughs and shakes his head. “Beats the shit out of working for a living.”

Nancy clearly has a different opinion.

Twenty seconds later, the parking lot is empty again.

THE CONCORDIA PARISH SHERIFF’S
Office occupies the lower floor of the parish courthouse, an incongruously modern building constructed in the 1970s. Partially faced with brown reflective windows tilted back at an angle, the stucco building looks onto the junky sprawl that lines Highway 84 from Vidalia to Ferriday. The presence of the sheriff’s department is evidenced by clusters of white cruisers to the left of the courthouse, augmented by rescue boats and a mobile command post parked under metal shelters at the rear.

I called Sheriff Dennis as soon as Henry and I pulled out of the music store parking lot, and he agreed to meet us with the understanding that I would explain why we needed a deputy to escort us out of Ferriday last night. When we arrive at the basement motor pool, we find a brown-uniformed deputy waiting to lead us up to the sheriff’s office.

After walking a gauntlet of good old boys in uniform, we find Walker Dennis seated behind his desk, watching CNN on a TV mounted in an upper corner of the room, as in a hospital. Like Sheriff Billy Byrd, Walker wears a Stetson, but he’s younger than Byrd (maybe forty-seven) and in slightly better shape. In my youth, I played a few baseball games against Vidalia teams that starred Walker Dennis, but unlike me, he went on to play college ball. Walker’s default expression is a smile of private amusement, as though he’s in possession of information others are not. As Henry and I take the seats he offers us, I note the usual artifacts of political office around the room: framed photos with local dignitaries and sports stars, memorabilia from notable cases, and citations from various civic and professional groups.

I know nothing of Sheriff Dennis’s politics, but no sheriff in North Louisiana gets elected for being liberal. This is hard-shell Baptist country, as red as Mississippi when it comes to political litmus tests. On the other hand, 40 percent of this parish is black, and the city of Ferriday has a much higher black-white ratio than that. Walker couldn’t do his job if he didn’t know how to walk the tightrope between the races.

Before he speaks, the sheriff leans back in his chair and gives us an expansive smile, distorted by the dip of snuff packed beneath his lower lip. “I’m mighty honored to have the mayor of Natchez over here,” he says, obviously meaning to begin with small talk, the Vaseline of political interaction in the South. “Must be important business.”

“It is,” I say flatly.

The sheriff’s smile vanishes like smoke. “Let’s hear it, Penn.”

I lay the wet newspaper on his desk and open it to reveal the dark bone with rusted barbed wire set in it.

“What’s this?” Dennis asks, leaning over his desk.

“Looks like a piece of ulna to me.”

“A what?”

“An arm bone.”

The sheriff clears his throat. “Who’d it belong to?”

“Luther Davis, probably,” Henry says.

The sheriff’s cheeks lose three shades of color.

“Luther was a big man,” Henry says, “much bigger than Jimmy Revels. We also found a leg bone, and it’s big, even for a femur. These bones were found underneath a convertible, which is what Luther Davis drove before he disappeared. Those bones almost certainly belong to Luther Davis.”

A sheen of sweat has formed on the sheriff’s scalp and forehead. “And where is this convertible?”

“At the bottom of the Jericho Hole,” Henry says with a touch of resentment. I’m guessing he’s asked Walker Dennis to investigate that body of water before. “We didn’t even have to look hard.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Dennis almost moans. “Did you have a federal warrant or something?”

I shake my head. “We didn’t find this bone, Walker. A local scuba diver did. A recreational diver. Under a rusted convertible, as Henry said.”

Walker Dennis closes his eyes and shakes his head. “That’s not a bone. That’s a stick of dynamite. And it could blow us all to hell.” He gives me a sharp look. “Especially you and me.”

“Well, we’re not putting it back under the water. And there are a lot more where this came from. We’ve even got one with a bullet embedded in it. This is a very important find, Sheriff. A major discovery, both historically and legally.”

Dennis takes off his hat and rubs his thinning hair. “Jesus H.
Christ,
Penn. What do you propose I do with this?”

“Drain the Jericho Hole,” Henry says, as though proposing that the sheriff empty a horse trough with a sump pump.

“
Drain
the …? Shit, you’re crazy.”

“It’s probably going to have to be done,” I tell him. “Unless you bring an expert team of divers in here, and heavy salvage equipment. The only question is, will it be done under a state warrant or a federal one?”

Sheriff Dennis lifts an Ole Miss coffee mug off the desk and spits tobacco juice into it. “I like spitting on the Rebels,” he says distractedly.

“I have a feeling I know which warrant it’s going to be,” Henry says. “Let’s go, Penn.”

“Damn it, Henry,” the sheriff says wearily. “Take it easy. You boys sure know how to screw up a pretty day.”

“We just wanted to give you the chance to take the lead on the investigation,” I tell him. “If you wanted to.”

Walker stares at the bone another few seconds, then looks up with rueful eyes. “I sure appreciate it, Mayor. But I wouldn’t want to take all the credit for something like this. Besides, my office isn’t equipped to handle it. The logistics alone are overwhelming. And then the forensic side … No, I think the FBI is the proper outfit for this case. This is right up their alley. I’ll be glad to lend all the support they ask for, but they definitely ought to be the lead agency on this.”

In any other circumstances, this answer would be stunning. For a local sheriff to voluntarily cede jurisdiction to “the feds” is almost unprecedented. But the subtext here is plain:
civil rights murder
. In a parish with these demographics, Sheriff Dennis’s decision is the prudent one Kirk Boisseau predicted.

I give him a knowing smile. “I hear you, Walker. But there’s one other thing I’d like to discuss with you. Henry already knows about it, so consider this a private conversation. This problem is a lot more suited to your … outfit.”

Dennis looks downright afraid now. “What’s that?”

“You’ve got a serious meth problem in this parish. Not just users, but meth labs. Major labs, and suppliers, too.”

Sheriff Dennis stares warily back at me, and even Henry looks puzzled by my digression. “What’s the local meth trade got to do with these bones?”

“More than you might think.”

After glancing at his office door as if to make sure it’s completely shut, Walker speaks softly. “What the hell’s going on here, Penn? You walk in my office out of the blue and start talking about
our
meth problem? You think you don’t have crystal meth over in Natchez?”

“Of course we do. I’m not interested in the meth. I’m interested in the men who make and sell it.”