The Simple Truth (32 page)

Suddenly she had a mental flash: the letter
R
sticking in her mind. Harms’s first name started with an
R
; she had seen that in the filing. It was maddening that she couldn’t remember anything else.

She stood, and that’s when it caught her eye. She had just grabbed a stack of files with her abrupt move and hadn’t noticed it until now. It was the
Chance
bench memo. The one she had told Wright he had to work on last night until he finished. A handwritten note was attached asking Sara to review it.

She sat down and her head sank to the desktop. What if there really was some psychopath targeting clerks? Was it just chance that Wright had been killed instead of her? For a minute she sat there, frozen. Come on, Sara, you can beat this. You have to beat this, she urged herself. Using every bit of resolve she could marshal, she stood and walked out the door.

A minute later, she entered the clerks’ office, and went over to a clerk who was manning one of the Court’s computer database terminals. The question she was about to ask was one she had asked earlier, but she wanted to be absolutely certain.

“Could you check and see if there’s any case at the Court with the name Harms as one of the parties?”

The clerk nodded and started tapping buttons. After about a minute he shook his head.

“I’m not finding anything. When was it filed?”

“Recently. Within the last couple of weeks or so.”

“I’ve gone back six months — there’s nothing coming up. Didn’t you ask me about this a while ago?”

Before Sara could answer, another voice spoke.

“Did you say Harms?”

Sara stared at the other clerk.
“Yes. Harms was the last name.”

“That’s strange.”

Sara’s skin started to tingle.
“What?”

“I got a call early this morning from a man asking about an appeal and he used that name. I told him we didn’t have any case filing with that name.”

“Harms? You’re sure?”
The clerk nodded.
“How about a first name?”
Sara asked, trying to suppress her excitement.

The clerk thought a moment.

“Maybe starting with an
R
?”
Sara prompted.

The clerk snapped his fingers.
“That’s right. Rufus, Rufus Harms. Sounds like a hick.”

“Did the caller identify himself?”

“No. He got pretty upset.”

“Anything else you can remember?”

The man thought a bit longer.
“He said something about the guy rotting in a stockade, whatever that meant.”

Sara’s eyes opened wide and she started to race out.

“What’s this all about, Sara? Does this have anything to do with the murders?”
the clerk asked. Sara kept going without answering. The clerk hesitated for a moment and then looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then he picked up his phone and dialed a number. When it was answered, he spoke quietly into the receiver.

Sara almost sprinted up the stairs. The reference to the
stockade
had shown her that there was a big hole in Fiske’s list. She reached her office, grabbed a card from her Rolodex and dialed the number. She was calling Military Police Operations. Fiske had covered both the federal and state prison populations, but he had not thought of the military. Sara’s favorite uncle had retired from the Army as a brigadier general. She knew very well what a stockade was: Rufus Harms was a prisoner of the United States Army.

She got through to Master Sergeant Dillard, the corrections specialist on duty.
“I don’t have his prison ID number, but I believe he’s incarcerated at a military facility within four hundred miles or so of Washington,”
she said.

“I can’t give you that information. The official procedure is to send a written request to the deputy chief of staff for operations and plans. Then that department, in turn, will send your request to the Freedom of Information Act people. They may or may not answer your request depending on the circumstances.”

“The thing is, I really need the information now.”

“Are you from the media?”

“No, I’m calling from the United States Supreme Court.”

“Right. How do I know that?”

Sara thought for a moment.
“Call directory assistance for the general number for the Supreme Court. Then call the number they give you and ask for me. My name is Sara Evans.”

Dillard sounded skeptical.
“This is highly unusual.”

“Please, Sergeant Dillard, it’s really important.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds.
“Give me a few minutes.”

Five very long minutes later the call was put through to Sara’s phone.
“You know, Sergeant Dillard, I’ve gotten information from your office before about military prisoners without going through the FOIA process.”

“Well, sometimes the people here are a little generous with the information.”

“I just want to know where Rufus Harms is, that’s all.”

“Actually, it wouldn’t really be a problem with any other prisoner.”

“I don’t understand. Why is Rufus Harms so special?”

“Haven’t you been reading your newspaper?”

“Not today, no, why?”

“Maybe it’s not real big news, but the public ought to know, for its own safety if nothing else.”

“The public ought to know what?”

“That Rufus Harms escaped.”
In concise sentences, Dillard filled her in on the details.

“Where was he incarcerated?”

“Fort Jackson.”

“Where is that?”

Dillard told her and Sara wrote down the location.

“Now I got a question for you, Ms. Evans. Why is the Supreme Court interested in Rufus Harms?”

“He filed an appeal with the Court.”

“What sort of appeal?”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Dillard, but that’s all I can tell you. I have rules to go by too.”

“All right, but I tell you what. If I were you, I’d hold off working on his appeal. The courts aren’t open to dead people, are they?”

“Actually, they can be. What exactly did the man do?”

“You’ll have to check his military file.”

“How do I do that?”

“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t do a lot of work with the military.”

She could hear him muttering a bit over the phone.

“Since he’s a prisoner of the military, Rufus Harms is no longer technically in the United States Army. Along with his conviction he would have been given either a dishonorable or a bad-conduct discharge. His military records would have been sent to the St. Louis Military Personnel Records office. Hard copies are kept there. It’s not on a computer database or anything. Harms was convicted about twenty-five years ago, so his records should have been transferred to microfilm, although the personnel office is a little behind on that process. If you or anyone other than Harms wants his records, you have to use a subpoena.”

Sara wrote all of this down.
“Thank you again, Sergeant Dillard, you’ve been a huge help.”

She had map software on her computer. Sara brought the screen up and, using her mouse, drew a distance line from Washington, D.C., to the approximate location of Fort Jackson.

“Almost four hundred miles exactly,”
she said to herself. She hurried upstairs to the Court’s third-floor library and went on-line via one of the computer terminals there. None of the law clerks’office terminals were connected to phone modems for obvious reasons of security and confidentiality. But the library terminals had on-line access. Using an Internet explorer service she typed in Rufus Harms’s name. She looked around at the hand-carved oak paneling as she waited for the computer to sprinkle its technological pixie dust.

A few minutes later she was reading all the latest news accounts on Rufus Harms, his background and that of his brother. 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?”