Roots of Murder Read online

  That supplied the missing information. Nell was more than sure that Billy didn’t just happen upon the scene, but Lizzie had been catching a forbidden ride on the back of his bike.

  “So he called the ambulance. I tried to call you at work and at home. Then the ambulance showed up, and we came here and then Josh suggested I call you on Kate’s cell phone. And that’s the story.”

  Not quite. “How did you manage to keep up with Josh on his bicycle?” Nell asked directly. She had to admit that in this instance, Lizzie being on a motorcycle behind Josh had been useful, but it was still too large an infraction to go unnoticed.

  “Um … I was walking. Some of us decided to walk for a ways.”

  “Walking? How were you able to keep up with Josh on a bike?”

  “Well, uh, we started before he did, so he just happened to be passing us when it all happened.”

  “Ah, I see. You just happened to be in the same place where the hooligans attacked Josh. And it just so happened that Billy Naquin came riding up on his motorcycle at that same moment.”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “I would be very disappointed if I were to find out you had been riding a motorcycle, something both I and your father have forbidden.” Nell didn’t add “and with a grunge kid three years older like Billy Naquin.” She knew that might only serve to drive Lizzie into the time-honored teenage rebellion of dating someone her parents hated. “There are a few gaps in your story that make me suspicious,” she continued, “but right now the important thing is that you and Josh are okay. This one time you get away with it. Next time it’s three months detention.”

  Lizzie didn’t protest, which was the final proof that she’d been on the back of the motorcycle.

  “Can we go home now?” Josh asked.

  “Soon,” Nell said. “Lizzie, why don’t you get whatever from the vending machines while I go do the paperwork that’s required to get us out of here.” She dug in her purse and gave Lizzie a handful of change and some single bills.

  She left them with Lizzie reciting the possibilities from the drink and snack machines. Like the mercurial adolescent she was, Lizzie was now poised and mature, cheerfully taking care of her younger brother. Nell was abashed that it had taken only an apology and a candy bar to work her way back into her daughter’s good graces. Vaguely she wondered if this was the kind of thing that would surface twenty years later in therapy.

  The clerk was much more informed about billing procedures than where actual patients were and she gave Nell a stack of paperwork. Nell felt the familiar clench in her stomach as she calculated what this unexpected expense would do to the budget. Suddenly she felt a new stab of pain, as she realized Thom’s life insurance would keep them comfortable for a long time if she was careful. I guess not having to ask your mother for money is a benefit of your being dead, Nell thought bitterly. It still left her with the fucking paperwork. She signed the final line with a savage vengeance.

  After that, she found her way back to Josh and Lizzie.

  They were happily sucking down sodas, with two candy wrappers spread across the bed.

  “Okay, you’re sprung,” Nell announced. She and Lizzie had to exit the cubicle for Josh to dress. His biking shorts had been cut away, but he had his sweaty clothes from gym class in his backpack.

  Nell walked slowly as they left the hospital, to save Josh from having to admit he was sore and getting stiff. As they got in the car, she said, “We do need to report this. I’d like to stop by the police station if you feel up to it.” For Josh’s sake, she would have just gone home, but she wanted the cops hot on the trail of the Jones boys before they arrived at an address that was all too easy to find.

  Josh seemed most chagrined about being in his sweatsuit, and if he could worry about that, Nell decided he was well enough to make it through a trip to the police station.

  The sky was losing light, the day leaving and night coming. Nell pulled in front of the police station as the street lights glimmered on.

  “Okay, let’s do this. It’ll be pizza for supper when we get home,” she told them, hoping a pepperoni reward would make it less of an ordeal. As expected, they didn’t complain that they’d just had pizza.

  The Pelican Bay Police Station wasn’t a hotbed of activity. With the day people gone, only the night shift was on duty. Unfortunately, the night shift included one of the officers who had come out to the dig in the afternoon, the stony-faced one.

  “Can I help you, lady?” he asked.

  He also recognized her. She peered at his name tag and let him know it. “Officer Jenkins, I need to report an assault,” she stated calmly.

  “Yeah? No one looks too hurt,” he replied, hooking his hands in his belt loops, fingers pointing at his crotch. He was young, maybe early twenties, with the arrogance that came from the muscles bulging under his uniform. He had thick, heavy lips, brown hair curling over his collar a few weeks past-due for a haircut, and a nose that wouldn’t be kind to him after a few decades of drinking too much beer.

  Lizzie, still in her protector role, jumped in. “Some jerk drove by my brother Josh here while he was riding his bike and threw a broom handle into the spokes. We had to take him to the emergency room.”

  “Some kids playing pranks?” Officer Jenkins asked. It was close to a sneer.

  “No, it was some older guys in a truck,” Lizzie retorted.

  “Officer Jenkins, is there some reason you’re not taking this seriously?” Nell asked. She had learned to ask blunt questions and was willing to use the skill when needed.

  “Who said I’m not taking it seriously?” he said, openly sneering now.

  “You’re writing nothing down, you’re not asking any questions, you immediately dismissed the incidence as a kid’s prank. That gives the impression you don’t take this seriously,” Nell said. And you’ve got your hands pointing at your crotch, she thought, something you think you can get away with in front of a woman, a girl, and a boy.

  “You tellin’ me how to do my job, lady?”

  “I have no intention of telling you how to do your job, but I can recognize when you’re not doing it.” Nell guessed he was a bully, used to people cowering at his uniform and belligerent manner. She added, “Whiz Brown will retire in a few months.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  “You’re taking out his humiliation at the dig today on me, but he’s not going to be here much longer to protect you,” Nell spelled out for him.

  “Yeah, and so?” But his sneer wavered slightly.

  “Do I have to call the mayor and get him down here?” Nell threw out.

  “Mayor’s gone home for the day.”

  For an answer, Nell crossed around him and picked up the phone. She punched in a number, then said into the receiver, “Hi, Hubert? This is Nell McGraw, the Editor-in-Chief of the Pelican Bay Crier. I’m at the police station.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I’m very sorry to disturb you at home, but I’m trying to report an assault and the young officer on duty seems rather inexperienced …”

  “Shit.” Officer Jenkins reached for the phone from Nell.

  She spun away from him and continued. “I wonder if you would come down here and have a word with his boss. I know you want to show examples of your leadership to the people of Pelican Bay.”

  “I’ll take the report. Tell the mayor it’s all a misunderstanding. Just didn’t want to use the resources of the department without checking things out,” he said, loud enough for everyone in the room and on the phone to hear.

  “It seems to be a misunderstanding,” Nell said into the phone. “I do appreciate your concern, but I don’t think you need to come down here after all.” She paused again and then said, “You’re very kind to say that, Mr. Mayor. Give your wife my best.” She put the receiver down.

  Officer Jenkins retrieved a cl
ipboard and led them into an office. He asked, “Okay, so what happened?” He was sullen but doing his job.

  Nell let Lizzie and Josh tell most of the story, only occasionally prompting them or asking questions to make sure that everything was covered.

  As Lizzie was repeating the description of the truck, Chief Whiz Brown came into the room.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  Officer Jenkins looked as surprised as Nell to see his chief back on duty. He blurted out, “The mayor call you?”

  “The mayor? Why would the mayor call me?” Whiz Brown asked. He might have gotten away with that, but he had to follow it with, “Can’t the Chief of Police come into the station? Don’t need no politicians to tell me what to do.”

  Clearly someone is telling him what to do, Nell thought, given his protesting too much.

  Just as clearly, Whiz Brown didn’t like finding Nell McGraw in his police station. “What are you doing here? Ain’t made enough trouble for one day?”

  “I’m trying to report an assault,” Nell said, deliberately returning calm to his surliness.

  “Nothin’ happened out in the woods,” he stated.

  “Someone threw a stick into the wheels of my son’s bike as he was riding home from school,” Nell countered. “This has nothing to do with the dig in the woods.” Or did it? The Jones brothers were the most likely offenders, but three murdered bodies were high stakes.

  “Some joke?” Whiz Brown asked.

  “I didn’t find it funny,” Nell retorted.

  “No, someone joking on your son and just roughhousing too much,” he restated.

  Nell started to lose her temper at the pattern—don’t take women and children seriously. She noted where Office Boyce Jenkins had learned his methods. “Some adult men, in a red truck, threw a broomstick into his bike spokes, shouting that it was a message to me. We just got out of the emergency room,” she said in a cold voice. Much as she wanted to call him a fucking asshole, she didn’t think it would get her what she wanted—nor would it be a great example for Josh and Lizzie. But she couldn’t resist adding, “Or are you going to say that Government and Willow are out of your jurisdiction?”

  Whiz’s mouth compressed into a thin line. Speaking around her, he said, “You got the report, Boyce?”

  “Yes, sir,” the younger man replied.

  “That’s all we can do,” he told Nell bluntly. “’Less you happened to get a look at their driver’s license plate or something else that gives ID.”

  “How about a little logic, Chief Brown?” Nell retorted, trying to keep her voice the same cold neutral. “J.J. Jones is in jail and his brothers don’t like it. They drive a red truck. They’re not happy with me because I’m the chief witness to his drunken murder. They’re trying to scare me out of testifying in hopes he’ll get off. Or is it too much work for you to look at the logical suspects?”

  “Well, you may not like ’em, but that don’t mean they done you wrong,” Chief Brown said.

  “In other words, you’re too lazy to investigate.” Nell congratulated herself for leaving out the “fucking” in front of lazy. Ever the perfect mother example.

  His lips got even thinner. “Now, I ain’t sayin’ we won’t look into this, but your son don’t look too hurt and I ain’t gonna go after innocent men just ’cause you’re riled.”

  “Maybe I should go have a chat with the Jones boys,” Boyce Jenkins put in. Nell didn’t think he was on her side; it seemed more likely he wanted to be a tough cop with someone and the Jones boys would do.

  “And just say what?” Whiz Brown shot at him.

  “Doing some police work,” he answered. “Kid got hurt; we can’t have that here.” He clearly was imagining his picture on the front page of the paper. As Nell had pointed out, Chief Brown would be out of a job very soon. Part of him seemed to be enjoying his boss’s discomfort.

  “You wanna do some police work? Run a trace on every single red truck in the county. See if the Jones boys really got one. Get a list of anyone else with a grudge against Mrs. McGraw. Check the color of their trucks while you’re at it.”

  Nell watched the power struggle between the two men. “I can’t think of anyone besides the Jones boys who have a grudge against me,” she said, to get them focused on something besides who could piss a greater distance.

  “You sure, Mrs. McGraw?” Whiz Brown said. “You out there diggin’ up nigger bones in the woods and you don’t think you riled anybody up?”

  “I beg your pardon, Chief Brown,” Nell said, trying to keep the shock off her face that he would be so blatantly racist.

  “You got no business out in the woods digging up graves. It just upsets folks.”

  “Who? Who does it upset?” she asked.

  He finally seemed to realize what he was saying and mumbled, “Just people. You know, like people who go to the park. Don’t like thinkin’ about bones when they’re out enjoying nature.”

  “So some picnickers attacked my brother?” Lizzie interjected.

  Suddenly Nell wanted to get out of the police station. Whiz Brown was right about one thing: Someone was upset enough about the emergence of those forgotten bones to goad Whiz Brown into action. Someone didn’t want those bones found, and that someone could be added to the list of people with a grudge against the reporter who was about to put the story on the front page.

  “I need to get my children home,” Nell said. To Boyce Jenkins, she added, “You’ll let me know the results of your investigation.”

  He hooked his hands back over his belt and said, “Be glad to, Mrs. McGraw. I’ll come by your home in the next few days and let you know.” The look he gave her was sexual and not friendly. Another power game.

  “You might do better to see me at the office. I may be staying with friends for the next few days.”

  “That better not end up in the paper,” Whiz Brown told her.

  “What better not end up in the paper?” Nell asked, her hand on Lizzie’s shoulder, steering her and Josh out.

  “You know. What I said.”

  It would have been safer to have given him that, but something in her wouldn’t back down. “I don’t tell lies in my paper. You didn’t go off the record, Chief.” She hurried Josh and Lizzie out of the station. They seemed to catch her fear, or at least her intent to get out of there with haste.

  Nell didn’t even let them properly get their seat belts on before pulling away.

  “Those cops are jerks,” Lizzie said as Nell turned onto the street.

  “Think they’ll really do anything?” Josh asked. He sounded tired. And hurt. There was enough pain in his voice for Nell to know this was all too serious.

  “I think Officer Jenkins will be willing to throw his weight around and the Jones boys are the kind of people he’ll be comfortable doing it with,” Nell answered. The night was too dark, as if the moon and the stars had conspired to create deep pools of black that could hold a monster. One that would attack children.

  “He’s still a jerk,” Lizzie said. “Are you going to call the mayor again? Tell him his top cop is a major jerk.”

  “The mayor?” Nell said, then remembered. She decided not to lie, even if it meant giving Lizzie and Josh a subterfuge she hadn’t learned until her mid-twenties. “I didn’t call the mayor. I called our house and acted like I was talking to the mayor.”

  “Mom!” Lizzie let out, but there was a touch of admiration in her voice that her stodgy mother could be capable of such guile.

  “Besides, I know enough about the politics in this city to know there’s no love lost between Mayor Pickings and Chief Brown. The mayor will never know he wasn’t called, and Chief Brown won’t dare bring it up.” Nell did know they didn’t socialize together; Whiz was more comfortable downing beers and watching sports at Ray’s Bar, while the mayor liked good bourbon at the country club
. But that didn’t mean they weren’t connected in the ways that men in power found useful.

  She felt an odd stab of relief as she turned the corner that would bring them home. The street lights were shining, several houses were lit up; the black of the night seemed to lift as if this were a normal evening.

  But something had sent Whiz Brown out to the dig and back into the office tonight, and someone had attacked Josh this afternoon. Having just the Jones brothers to worry about was bad enough, but now Nell couldn’t dismiss the possibility someone else might have thrown the stick.

  “Do we really have to stay with Grandmom?” Josh asked from the back seat.

  “Stay with Mrs. Thomas?” Nell echoed.

  “You said we might be staying with friends. And she’s the only one we’ve stayed with,” he said. A broken air conditioner had driven them into the cool comfort of her in-laws’ house for almost a week last summer and they’d also stayed there when they repainted the bedrooms, opting for a few nights away from the paint fumes.

  Nell started to say they weren’t going to do that, but she realized it might be an option. She tried to think of a friend she could call up and say, we’re camping out at your house until it’s safe.

  There was Jane, of course, but she was in Chicago. Only a few locally came to mind, but they were Thom’s friends more than hers. How would they take it if the widow McGraw, one month after her husband’s death, suddenly appeared at their doorstep claiming people were after her and her children? They would take her in; Southern politeness demanded that, but they might also shake their heads behind her back and quietly make phone calls about getting her help.

  Nell turned into their driveway, going more slowly than usual, letting the headlights sweep across the lawn and into the backyard. None of the shadows seemed out of place.

  “Not tonight, anyway,” she said as she turned off the car. Maybe I’m rationalizing, she thought, but I can’t see us any safer at Mrs. Thomas’s house. If they know where we live, they easily know where she lives.

  “My bike!” Josh suddenly cried as he started to get out.