Grievances Page 11

  “I don’t think he was the type of kid to be throwing firebombs,” Brad said. “And if he was, why wouldn’t the store owner just say what happened? It would clearly be a case of self-defense.”

  “Wallace Sampson didn’t have a firebomb when he was shot,” I pointed out. “There’s no reason to think the firebombing and the killing were even connected.”

  Before we went to bed, we agreed we’d go see Pennegar the next day and try to track down Watson, although we had no idea where to start since it was clear the store had been closed a while. Brad suggested we also talk with Mary Pell.

  Three leads. Three days left.

  The next morning Brad and I found Mary Pell on the back porch off the kitchen of the Big House, hunched over a game table next to a brown wicker basket of shotgunned doves. Their small, limp bodies showed surprisingly little blood.

  “Mornin’, Mary Pell,” Brad said with an uncharacteristic hint of a drawl.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Brad.” She wiped her hands on her apron and nodded at the basket of doves. “Your daddy and his guests had a big day yesterday.”

  “So I see.”

  Brad told her we were trying to track down some information about when Wallace Sampson was killed and specifically if she could tell us about Raeford Watson, the man who ran De Sto.

  Mary Pell turned to the table and picked a dove out of the basket. With quick fingers she tore the feathers from the carcass and tossed it on the table. “De Sto was a bad place,” she said. “Raeford Watson was a bad man.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Gouged people. De Sto was the onliest place people from the community who didn’t have a car could shop. He could charge whatever he wanted. Then he’d let you run credit and charge on top of that and folks could never get out of hock.” She picked up another dove, stripped it in seconds and tossed it beside the first.

  “Is that why De Sto was firebombed?”

  She paused for a moment. “Don’t know nothin’ about any of that.”

  “Mary Pell, where can we find Mr. Watson?” Brad asked.

  “Burnin’ with the devil, I imagine. He passed on probably five or six years ago.”

  This was certainly a setback. “Mary Pell, could Raeford Watson have shot Wallace Sampson?”

  “I’ll tell you this. A lot of folk have wondered the same thing.”

  Back at Brad’s house, I called the Charlotte Times library and asked Miss Nancy to search the clips for anything on Raeford Watson. Then we hashed over the morning with Bullock. While we spent time with Mary Pell, he had tracked down the location of the residence of Olen Pennegar Sr.

  “It’s on Brown’s Ferry Road,” he told Brad. “You know where that is?”

  “About ten miles from here,” Brad said.

  We left town on the main highway, headed toward the Savannah River under the scorching South Carolina sun. The road cut through stands of slash pine alternating with plots of cleared land that had been planted in soybeans, milo, and one house trailer per plot. Of the crops, only stubble remained and a gusting wind kicked up dust devils that danced through the parched, dead stalks and merged into the cloud of dust that trailed the Dodge.

  “It should be on the right,” Brad said, consulting his notes. “Just up ahead. This is it.” A dirt driveway led up to two house trailers that sat in a field of soybean stubble—a single-wide with a picture window on one end and a small deck built onto the front and, maybe fifty feet directly behind it, a faded white model with a quilted aluminum skirt that sagged and rose like an uneven hemline.

  By the mailbox, where the driveway met the road, an old man in a floppy straw hat and overalls sat in a lawn chair, his right hand raised in what seemed to be a greeting.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Brad said out the window when the Dodge had come to a stop. “We’re looking for the Pennegar home.”

  The man made noise that sounded like “unh.”

  We got out of the car and I looked more closely at the old man. Large wire-framed glasses magnified bright blue eyes that stared without ceasing. The left side of his face drooped and a trail of spit curled from the left side of his mouth. His left arm dangled limply at his side, possibly the result of a stroke. He kept his right hand raised, like a Boy Scout taking his oath. We introduced ourselves and I asked him if he remembered the killing of Wallace Sampson.

  “Unh.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be much help,” Bullock said.

  I asked the old man if he could speak.

  “Unh-unh.”

  “I can’t tell if he’s saying yes or if he’s saying no,” Brad said in frustration.

  “I think ‘unh’ is yes and ‘unh-unh’ is no,” I said. “Is that right, Mr. Pennegar?”

  “Unh,” he said.

  I asked if he had considered Raeford Watson a suspect or had interviewed him about the shooting. Each time, he indicated he hadn’t. I pulled out my reporter’s notebook and began taking notes.

  “Uh-oh,” Bullock interrupted. “Here comes trouble.” The Hirtsboro town patrol car sped down Brown’s Ferry Road trailing a cloud of dust. It skidded to a stop and Olen Pennegar Jr. jumped out and shouted, “Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?” Without waiting for an answer, he hurried to his father and wiped the drool from his lips. “Papa,” he asked, “are you okay?”

  “Unh,” Olen Pennegar Sr. said.

  “What’s this about?” his son demanded.

  “We were interviewing him about the Wallace Sampson case,” I said.

  “For God’s sake, he’s a sick old man. He can’t even talk.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brad said. “We didn’t know that.”

  “What gives you the right anyway?” he demanded. “Look what you’ve done to him.” Olen Pennegar Sr. had begun to cry.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s the public’s right,” I said. “Your father was working for the people. You are, too.”

  “Ain’t working for you. You’re not even from around here.” He spat in the dirt.

  “The only reason we’re down here is that your police department didn’t get the job done. No one’s ever solved Wallace Sampson’s murder. Not your father. Not anybody else since. And not you.”

  Olen Pennegar Jr. lunged at me with a right cross. I bobbed back and he hit me square on he neck, right on the jugular. I saw stars. Bullock grabbed Pennegar. Brad grabbed me.

  “Get off our property!” Olen Pennegar Jr. screamed.

  I broke free of Brad and took two steps back onto the shoulder of Brown’s Ferry Road.“I’m not on your damn property. I’m on a public right-of-way.”

  “Take it easy, Matt,” Bullock said.

  I shoved my reporter’s notebook into my back pocket. “Don’t think we’re gonna stop,” I shouted. “The public has a right to know.”

  “And you don’t give a damn about hurting an old man while you do it,” he shouted back.

  The truth shouldn’t hurt, I was about to respond, before Bullock said, “It’s time to go.” Reluctantly, I got into the Dodge.

  “Uffing,” I heard Olen Pennegar Sr. say.

  Bullock pulled a U-turn on Brown’s Ferry Road and we headed for home.

  Chapter Nine

  On the antique game table in the front hall, we found a message from Nancy Atkinson, the newsroom librarian. We called her from the kitchen as Mary Pell busied herself cutting tender shoots of bamboo.

  “Looks like we’re eatin’ panda food again,” Bullock whispered as he dialed. “I’m for goin’ out tonight . . . Hey, Miss Nancy. It’s Ronnie and Matt Harper. Anything turn up?”

  Bullock waved frantically and made a writing motion. I handed him my pad and a pen. He flipped to a blank page and began taking notes as he talked. “Holy shit,” he said softly. “That’s right. Watson. When? How long?”

  I struggle
d to make sense of his scrawl. I could read dates but that’s all. He flipped the page and kept scribbling.

  “Where? Where’s that? Okay.”

  “Ronnie, what is it?”

  “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holyyyyyyyyyyyy shit!”

  “What is it?” I was practically jumping up and down. “What the hell is it?”

  Bullock made more notes. “Is that it?” he asked. “If it’s the same guy, it’s just what we’re looking for. Do me a favor and keep the clips out. We’re coming right back. Better yet, take them over to the newsroom and put them in my top desk drawer.” A pause.

  “OF COURSE I’LL BRING THEM BACK!” he yelled.

  Bullock hung up and turned to Brad and me with a smug smile. “Raeford Watson once did time for clubbing a civil rights marcher nearly to death in Columbia. He was one of the Grand Dragons in the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan.”

  “Holy shit,” said Brad.

  “Holy shit,” I chimed in.

  “Anybody around here could have told you that,” said Mary Pell. “I said De Sto was a bad place.”

  In an hour, Bullock and I had packed our things, said good-bye to Brad, Mary Pell, Tasha, and Maybelle, and were speeding back to Charlotte. Brad would continue searching the police reports at Town Hall for any sign of a follow-up investigation while Bullock and I worked on the background of Raeford Watson, starting with the clips.

  “We got lucky,” Bullock said when we hit the interstate.

  “I can’t believe she found Raeford Watson in the clips.”

  “That, too. But I’m talking about getting out of Windrow before dinner. Who the hell eats bamboo?” He shuddered. “What say we stop for a thick juicy steak once we get to Rock Hill?”

  “Done.”

  Bullock reached over the sun visor, extracted a cigarette and lit it. “Okay,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke that took a sharp left turn at the steering wheel and rushed out the driver’s side window. “So what do we know?”

  I uncapped my pen, flipped to a new page in my reporter’s notebook and made notes as we reviewed what we had learned so far. When we finished Bullock flicked the cigarette out the window and his eyes narrowed to slits. I could see his mind churning.

  “Okay,” he said. “There’s racial unrest in Hirtsboro. Lots of milling around. De Sto’s a target because the owner gouges the community. Not only that, it’s known that he’s big in the Klan. Somebody firebombs De Sto. It doesn’t go off but Wason isn’t taking any chances. He decides to spend the next night at De Sto.”

  “In that room out in the back.” I could see where Bullock was going with this.

  “Sometime after midnight the next night, Wallace Sampson walks by. Maybe he actually threw the firebomb the night before and he’s coming back for a second shot. Or maybe he’s just a thirteen-year-old kid coming home from a date who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doesn’t matter. Watson decides to shoot first and ask questions later. Wallace Sampson goes down.”

  “Which explains why Vanessa Brown didn’t see anyone leaving the scene.”

  It all came together, no question. The firebomb gave Raeford Watson motive. Being the operator of the store probably gave him opportunity. And the Klan connection and beating of the civil rights marcher showed he was capable and had a history.

  “There’s just one problem,” I said. “Raeford Watson’s dead. We can’t interrogate him. We have no witnesses. It’s all circumstantial unless we find someone that places Raeford Watson at the scene with a gun. And even then, we’ll never know his motive. Maybe he’s a killer Klansman. But maybe he’s just a scared store owner trying to protect his property.”

  “By killing an unarmed thirteen-year-old? Gimme a break.” Bullock was silent for a while. He grabbed another cigarette from the sun visor.

  “That’s your second cigarette of the day. You said you limited yourself to one. This is your second.”

  “Yeah, but I gotta think now. I think better when I smoke.” Bullock took a deep drag. “The reason we’ll never know about Raeford Watson was that no one ever asked him, right? The shooting wasn’t investigated.”

  “That’s what Hall says. Obviously, no one ever got charged. So far, there’s no evidence of any follow-up investigation.”

  “What did Pennegar say?”

  I flipped back a few pages in my notebook and reread my notes. “I don’t think we actually asked him how much he investigated.” I said. “We did ask him if he’d ever interviewed Raeford Watson about the killing.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said ‘no.’ Actually, he said, ‘unh-unh.’ But it was ‘no.’”

  We both thought it at the same time but Bullock said it first. “That’s the story!”

  “Right. It’s not a story about who killed Wallace Sampson. It’s a story about how authorities didn’t adequately investigate the killing. A story about official accountability. It’s our back door into this thing.”

  I started writing in my notebook and talking at the same time. “Police didn’t . . . scratch that . . . never . . . Okay, here’s the lede. Police investigating the killing of a thirteen-year-old never questioned a Ku Klux Klan member who operated a store near the shooting.”

  “Failed to question,” Bullock interrupted. “Make it failed. Failed is stronger than never.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Police investigating the killing of a thirteen-year-old failed to question a Ku Klux member who operated a store near the shooting, the Charlotte Times has learned. How’s that?”

  “Almost,” Bullock said. “We need to mention that the store had been firebombed the night before and we need to get in that the store owner had been convicted of racial violence in a separate case.”

  “And we need to say the kid was black,” I added.

  “The lede’s gonna be fifty words long,” Bullock moaned. “Walker’s gonna go crazy.”

  I didn’t answer because I was already reworking the lede in my notebook.

  “Texas Roadhouse is eight miles ahead,” Bullock said reading from an interstate billboard. “Great steaks.”

  My hunger had disappeared, suppressed by the adrenaline that raced through me as I wrote. “Let’s wait until Charlotte,” I said. “I’m on a roll.”

  By the time Bullock pulled into the newspaper’s parking lot, I had it. We sat under the yellow glow of the vapor lights as I consulted my notebook.

  “Okay, here it is. The lede’s gonna take two sentences but it works. Dateline Hirtsboro, South Carolina. By Matt Harper and Ronald L. Bullock.”

  “I want top billing,” said Bullock.

  “Forget it, Ronnie.”

  “Alphabetical. I’ll settle for alphabetical.”

  “Dateline Hirtsboro, South Carolina. By Matt Harper and Ronald L. Bullock. Police investigating the killing of a black teenager following civil rights protests here failed to question a Ku Klux Klan member who operated a store near where the shooting happened. Paragraph. The store had been firebombed during the protests. The owner had been convicted of beating a black civil rights marcher in another incident.”

  “Son,” Bullock said with a grin. “I think we got us a news story. Now let’s go get that steak.”

  The next morning, Bullock and I, temporary members of the dayside staff, rolled into the newsroom ready to write.

  The newsroom is a different place in the day, more crowded, more normal. Executives and their assistants come and go on regular schedules, untethered to the whims of the news. Every newsroom department is fully staffed and bustling, including Features, the home of the garden writer. I knew better than to look. When Brad had shown me Venus flytraps at Windrow, I recognized her immediately—a cute little man-eating carnivore luring the unwary with her come-hither beauty.

  “Damn, even the coffee’s better dayside,” Bullock said as we sat in my cubicle
in front of my computer. I was at the keyboard and Bullock was to my left—just the way I wanted it. Bullock could report but it was well known that writing wasn’t his strength. Walker used to say that every Ronald L. Bullock byline should carry the addendum “as told to Walker Burns.”

  Our goal was to get a first draft to Walker well before 4:00 p.m. when he went into a meeting where the content of the big Sunday paper would begin to be shaped. The front page is the most valuable real estate for any story and we wanted a piece of it.

  Bullock looked at the notes we had made in the restaurant and winced. “You know, I’m not sure we improved things at all during dinner.”

  He was right. I began typing, starting with the original lede.

  “I think the next graf ought to go back to the beginning,” Bullock said. “Something like ‘Wallace Sampson was shot with a deer rifle shortly after midnight on May 5. The shooting followed several nights of civil unrest in Hirtsboro . . .’”

  For most of the next four hours, I sat glued to my chair and the keyboard, the yellowed newspaper clippings detailing Raeford Watson’s past piled to my left, my own notes to my right. Bullock stayed with me—verbally editing as I wrote and patrolling the perimeter of my cubicle like a nervous Marine, protecting me from nosy members of the projects team who cruised by to see what we were working on, and from the newsroom’s story-tellers, wandering reporter minstrels who stroll from desk to desk in search of an audience while they await the arrival of The Muse or the next assignment from Walker Burns. Occasionally Bullock would eject me from the chair and slam out a few grafs himself. In the interest of our partnership, I tried to preserve his phrasing even as I trashed his paragraphs.

  Instinctively and without effort I stuck to the three basic rules of journalism that seemed to be part of my genetic code, stuff my father and every other professor of journalism drilled into first-year students.

  1) Don’t make any sentence longer than thirty words. (Supposedly, thirty words is all the average newspaper reader can digest at one time.)

  2) Don’t make any paragraph longer than three sentences. (Long paragraphs of dense gray type are not easy on the eye. Creating white space is more important than following the rules of grammar.)