Only the Wicked Page 25

  Monk said simply, “I know who Ava Green really was.” A bird chirped in the tree above them.

  Bodar snapped his head around at his unwanted workout partner. Finally, he said, “Let’s go over to the park where I run, all right?” He didn’t wait for a response, and began to walk briskly in a westerly direction.

  “Why have you been lying so low?” Monk asked, concentrating to keep up. “You definitely seem to be back in the groove,” he huffed, condensation clouding from his mouth.

  “Reasons,” Bodar replied tersely. He kept moving as if late for an appointment. Occasionally he’d look back and Monk would get nervous.

  The two crested a low hill of wild grass and red clay and before them was a baseball field, basketball court and a well-maintained jogging track. Bodar descended the hillock and walked onto the basketball court. He circled about, hands on his hips like waiting to get called in. “What do you intend to do?”

  “At the least try to get Creel a new trial.”

  Bodar kept pacing. “That may not happen.”

  “You wishing for that or assessing the situation?”

  “This is not a chess game.”

  “It’s people’s lives, Senator; I know exactly what it is,” Monk scolded.

  Bodar passed a hand through his hair. “This is one of those matters that requires our delicacy in handling.”

  “We’ve had four hundred some odd years of delicacy in handling the racial matter in this country, Senator. Besides, I am not one of your voters.” Monk was angry Bodar was pulling the politician’s trick of seemingly chummy inclusion to throw him off guard. He pointed at the man. “And this isn’t a matter for a senate committee; this can’t be punted to them in order to bury the information. Somehow you found out about Ava, right, which put you onto Nancy Burchett who told you about her father’s connection with the Southern Citizens League?”

  Bodar gave a camera smile to a couple walking past them who were heading for the track. “Have you talked to Merrill?”

  “I will,” Monk promised.

  “She has no direct knowledge, you know, about Creel’s case.” He was doing the elected official slip-and-slide.

  “Really?” Monk whispered doubtfully.

  Bodar shrugged. “It appears Merrill never told Ava. Or at least she does a good acting job.”

  “So you told Cassie about your investigation into the Creel case?”

  Bodar didn’t say yes or no.

  “Is your wife protecting you from yourself, Senator?”

  Bodar scratched at his unshaven face. “You wouldn’t believe this, but I set out to show that Mississippi could right its own racial wrongs, Monk. I set out to prove to the self-absorbed pundits on the Sunday shows and the smug columnists in The Nation and Emerge that being from Mississippi, and being conservative, didn’t automatically make you a Kluxer.”

  “And what better way to prove that than the Creel case?” Monk concluded. “Just looking into it got you national attention. And it was so long ago, who could find anything of value anyway?”

  “You can be cynical, Monk,” Bodar said without animosity. “And yes, I’d be less than truthful to say I didn’t have my eye on higher goals.” He was poised to go on, but held himself in check. “But that doesn’t diminish the attempt.” He said it more to convince himself than the private eye.

  “Speaking of your significant other—I love that term, don’t you?—what’s her deal with Tigbee? I checked with this trade newspaper called the Chronicle of Philanthropy and found out she’s on the board a Merit-founded organization for youth interracial relations. It’s doing quite well it seems, with multi-year grants.”

  “You’d make a good living inside the Beltway, Monk,” the senator said appreciatively. “Contrary to opinion, there’s some poor white folks down here, too.” Bodar began to walk again, and Monk followed him. The other couple was now circling the track. “My wife was one of them. I don’t believe they had carpeting until she was twelve or thirteen. And the phone was off and on so much, she assumed it was that way in everybody’s home.”

  “It’s you family-value boys who keep saying poverty is no excuse for crime.”

  Bodar flared, “My wife has not committed a crime. It’s not a certainty that Creel didn’t kill those girls,” Bodar shot back. “Who Ava was doesn’t answer for the deed.”

  “But it does put into question the official story,” Monk corrected. “At least enough to look at it again.”

  “I thought you wanted to find out who killed your cousin.”

  “This looks to be in that direction, too.” They walked along on the outer edges of the track. “You get a call after your supposed accident? That’s what scared you off?”

  Bodar pulled on his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. “As I said, my wife came up hard. We met in college, Ol’ Miss. Me, I was there because of family connections; she got there on actual ability. I’d never met someone with so much drive, vision really, I guess you’d call it.”

  Monk let him talk.

  “We went crazy for each other.” Bodar crossed his arms, looking off in the direction of his house. “I always knew what I was going to do, due in no small part to what my parents had set out for me as a child. Cassie’s mom figured she’d do good to complete high school and maybe get a job with the city. It’s not ‘cause she didn’t want better for her, it’s just what she’d come to expect from this world.”

  “She’s not the only one not to expect more.”

  “Yes, I know,” the senator concurred. “You see, Monk, what I’m trying to say is Cassie and I are quite attached to each other. We both want to see that our work has value.”

  “Do the demons of racism burden you more than her?” he asked sarcastically.

  “That’s not so surprising, is it, Monk? Haven’t all the revolutions in the past century been led by members of the middle class? Aided by those of the upper class who turned their backs on their privilege, to rail against injustices.” He snorted self-mockingly. “Isn’t the white working class of this country a contradiction in how it resonates with reactionary politics, yet any objective analysis would see they are in the same economic boat as working-class blacks?”

  “Whites don’t see themselves as working class. Anyway, all that class analysis is out-dated, isn’t it, Senator? Plus, aren’t you biting the hand? Those reactionaries voted you into office.”

  “One can lead by example, Monk. That’s what a politician should do, not simply play to the less sophisticated instincts of the electorate.”

  “We have no argument on that. So what’s been stopping you?”

  Bodar clucked his tongue. “My wife and I have tried to have children for some time. You have kids?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “She finally got pregnant three years ago.” Bodar wiped at one eye with his fingertips. “The child, the fetus, wound up in her tubes. Needless to say, we were devastated.” He walked in big circles. “The child was going to be our anchor, Monk. We’ve been either shouting or avoiding discussion of race relations in this state for sometime. And the avoidance of that subject has become the unsaid subtext to me and Cassie not dealing with the matter of children, either. I guess if we can’t discuss what kind of society we want, we can’t separate out our entropy on the matter of children.”

  Several more people were now jogging around the track.

  “But when I latched onto the Creel case, well, that touched an unhealed wound.”

  “But you’d sponsored legislation on racial tolerance; you yourself called for federal intervention when a number of questionable hangings of black and white prisoners took place in Harrison County jails a few years ago, and your wife’s group helps kids of different races.”

  Now it was Bodar’s turn to remain quiet.

  “Unless of course you’re telling me she … No”—Monk snapped his fingers—“somebody she knew was involved in the Creel matter.”

  Bodar pulled at his lip again. “I’ll tell
you, ’cause I can see the lid is off the box, and if it’s not you, it’s going to be somebody else who will spill the goods. Cassie’s older brother was a hellraiser, had more than one run-in with the law. And it’s fair to say, he never met a black person who could do anything for him ’cept stay out of his way.

  “Well, it seems there was a rumor going ’round among some of them ol’ boys he hung widi. Some were Klan, some just your regular fatback-and-greens-lovin’ crackers—and some of these boys had done strong-arm work for the League. Now this is right after Creel was sentenced you understand, and the word was the girls’ killing had indeed been a job sanctioned by the Citizens League.” Bodar fixed an eye on Monk. “That four men had done the deed.”

  “And her brother is supposed to be one of these four.”

  Bodar wrung his hands despite the sun having risen and the onset of the morning heat. “I didn’t hear this from my wife, at least not initially. Remember, she was still a gap-toothed kid when he was damn near grown, and had already done a juvenile stint for assault.”

  “But you got this from Burchett’s daughter,” Monk said. “And what was Burchett’s role in this?”

  “She told me her father, as he died, confessed to her he was the strike leader, as he called it. He said the captain called the mission, and he’d followed orders like a good soldier.”

  Monk knew Tigbee had been a lieutenant in World War II, and a captain when he’d re-upped in Korea. Burchett had also served in Korea. He’d also been, according to the service record Monk had read, in a prisoner of war camp called ChiHan near the province of Tunghwa.

  “And Burchett named your wife’s brother?”

  “Yes. Rusty.”

  Monk’s head got light, and he tried to sound detached, professional. “Where is Rusty these days?”

  “Doing ten to fifteen on what would have been an easier sentence for selling illegally converted guns, but he shot and wounded an ATF agent in the raid, so he’s doing serious time down in Pensacola. And he’s as hard as they come; he’s not telling anybody anything.”

  “Nancy Burchett name anybody else?”

  Bodar shook his head. “She told me he went into another of his deliriums, and that was that.”

  “Why she tell you this?”

  “Nancy had worked in my campaign. She felt too burdened when her father had told her what amounted to his death-bed confession.”

  “Was your accident rigged?”

  “The Highway Patrol inspector can’t rightly determine foul play. The steering knuckle had come undone, but it’s not unheard of, them separating on that model of mine. Fact, they’d been recalled for that defect. I haven’t received any calls at night, or gotten any unsigned letters since then.”

  “But it was after your accident that Nancy got scared and split.” Monk put his hands in his back pockets. “And when you told your wife, she no doubt felt very conflicted, and has let you know that.”

  Bodar gripped his temples in one hand, massaging the areas.

  “Consciously or not, she also hasn’t been pursuing the idea of children too much since then, either.”

  “Have you tried to find Nancy Burchett?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “But you could if you wanted.”

  “And what would it come to, Monk? I end my marriage over hearsay and supposition? Burchett’s dead and I can assure you, Rusty Ibers isn’t naming names this side of the grave. And why should he? There’s nothing beyond Nancy’s word tying him to the murders.”

  “But I’ve just found out who Ava really was, and I intend to let it be known.”

  “You don’t live here, Monk. You aren’t going to bear the brunt of your reckless actions. And believe me, it will be your people who will feel it the most in the long run.”

  He was tired of white men telling him how careful you had to be about exposing racist crimes. It wasn’t as if black folk weren’t already bearing the brunt of inaction. It was as if he should just let the wickedness slip by him like newspaper carried on a sudden gust of wind to clog a drain already clogged with weak excuses to let it be. That somehow if you just did nothing, it would all work out on some future unspecified date, when the reality was that history only moved forward when you made conscious effort, and sacrifice, to make it so. Yes, he didn’t live here, yes, he could in a sense walk away, and goddamnit, probably nothing would happen to Tigbee. The irony being if there was truly justice in this world, something should happen to the old cracker—something of a violent and painful nature for all that he’d caused to others over the decades.

  “The whispered dwell here in Mississippi, Monk. Older than the Natchez, more ancient than our mighty river, or before anyone chopped the first tree here. What has been kept hidden has festered and infected us. We have been among the worst when it came to race relations. I only wanted to see if we could be among the best, too. But it’s so hard.”

  “Thanks for your candor, Senator.” Monk began to walk away from the man, the joggers and their cozy park.

  “You going home, Monk?”

  He knew he didn’t mean his motel room. “Yes, I am.” He didn’t add that he was going to call McClendon before he left and tell him what he’d learned about Ava Green. Monk looked up to see Cassie Bodar coming over the hill. She looked svelte in her coordinated workout sweats and running shoes that matched her husband’s. There was a ruddiness in her cheeks which dissipated as she saw Monk.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she all but screamed.

  Her eyes became slits and her right hand a shaking fist.

  Monk looked through her. Silently, he walked past the woman on the hill, and down toward their house, where he’d parked his car.

  Chapter 23

  “This is Nancy Burchett. I need to see you.”

  Monk sat on the edge of the bed, the phone next to him, the handset in his left hand. “I’m surprised you called me.”

  He’d placed his father’s .45 close by on the night stand. He’d lubricated the rebuilt parts of the ACP 1911 model late in the afternoon after talking with McClendon and getting a four a.m. flight out of Memphis. The Colt was in cocked-and-locked mode, the hammer pulled back and ready to drop should he have reason to pull the trigger. He’d noticed some pull with the slide assembly shooting at the range a few weeks ago. Therefore, he’d paid close attention to any burrs along the edges of the metal or fatigue in the spring when he’d disassembled and oiled the weapon.

  “I gotta talk to you, Mr. Monk. I gotta be done with this.” Her voice had a slight quake in it from apprehension.

  “Bodar call you?” Outside, the floorboards of the walkway creaked. Muffled voices floated in to him through the walls.

  “He said we couldn’t duck this any longer.” There was a resigned quality in her voice. Like she’d reached a boulder in the road blocking her after a long and fruitless journey. There was something else there, too, a suggestion in her tone that one of McClendon’s reporters was right about his hints concerning Bodar’s crack-up.

  “Are you two lovers?”

  “What you want to know, mister? You want to know what my daddy told me or you want to be on Jerry Springer?”

  “So you decide to call me now at”—he glanced at his watch—“damn near nine-thirty.”

  “Shit, mister, I didn’t call you up just to hear you be sour. Frankly, I think it does make better sense for me to stay gone.”

  It was a chump play, but what if she was for real? He couldn’t let a chance at a valuable link in this affair simply slip away. “Come on out to the airport in Memphis.”

  “All right,” she agreed, surprising him. “It’ll take me a couple of hours from where I’m at. Make it twelve-thirty, tonight, okay?”

  “I’ll be at the Southwest section. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll know you.” She severed the line before he could say anything else.

  He wondered who she’d talked to, but would go with the flow. Monk finished packing and, having sett
led his bill with his credit card, exited the room. He put his bags in the back of the pickup truck and got out on Highway 61, heading north. He’d wait around at the airport to see if the woman would actually show. As he drove through Gator, a stationwagon pulled out from an access road behind him. The car remained steady on him and Monk periodically kept watch on the vehicle in his rearview mirror. Crossing the state line, the wagon’s driver put on his turn signal, and went east. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

  He returned the truck at the National stall set aside for after-hours dropoffs. The shuttle took him to his terminal. He was walking in just as a kid with long stringy hair, a baseball cap emblazoned by a silver AC/DC logo jammed on his head, came toward him. The teenager had been standing in the recess of the automatic doorway. He was sniffling like he had a head cold, and had passed Monk before he spoke.

  “This is for you.”

  Monk whirled, dropping his bags as his right hand went for the belt holster beneath his jean jacket. The kid wasn’t facing him and was trotting away across the lanes toward the parking structure. Near where he’d been was a six-by-nine manila envelope on the ground.

  Inside the envelope was a single Polaroid. The woman sitting in the chair in the shot had her top ripped off, in shards about her waist. Her mouth and eyes were covered over by duct tape. A gloved hand was grabbing one of her breasts in her plain bra, the fingers sunk deep in the ample flesh. The arm extended into the frame of the close shot, the face, of course, not seen, but he didn’t think this was Nancy Burchett’s idea of fun. He went inside.

  He was being paged to a courtesy phone over the PA system.

  “She gets butt-fucked with my shotgun, then her brains will be blown out, nigger boy,” the voice on the other end of the line gleefully informed him after he’d picked up. “You got an hour.”

  “I turned in my truck.” Monk was calculating how long it would take him to convince the cops to believe him.

  “You got fifty-nine minutes, Snowball,” the voice advised. “Go back south on Sixty-One.”

  Monk got back to the rental stall and shot the lock off the strong box holding the keys. He took off in the pickup truck. Back below the border the same station wagon that had been behind him earlier—a ’70s-era LTD Country Squire with numerous rust spots and peeling fake wood grain—got close and zoomed ahead of him. It was a moonless night, and the lights along this stretch of the road were spaced far apart. The wagon took a turn onto a gravel road barely discernible among the maples and poplars, and Monk followed.