But what kind of secrets were you keeping, Jeff? Titus thought as he started the SUV.
Titus didn’t have the heart to tell Darlene that no one told anyone all their secrets. Even the people we loved kept pieces of themselves hidden away from the light.
FIVE
Harold Bigelow met him at the door when he got to the Maynard Funeral Home. Maynard’s was the funeral home most white people in the county used. Spencer and Sons was the one most Black folks patronized. Titus thought the only place where segregation was practiced without reproach besides the church on Sunday morning was a funeral home. Both were the last bastions of Ole Southern social conventions.
“Hello, Sheriff. I wish we didn’t always have to meet under these circumstances. God, I can’t believe we’ve had a school shooting here in Charon. You always think those things happen in other places,” Harold said.
“People in other places think the same thing, Harold. Can you take me to Spearman?” Titus asked. Harold nodded and led him through the sparse yet elegant lobby and down the hall to the prep room. Harold unlocked the metal double doors marked PRIVATE and stepped aside as Titus entered the room.
The prep room was as sparse as the lobby but not quite as elegant. There was a stainless-steel embalming table in the center of the room. To the right against the wall was a dressing table, also stainless steel. To the left was a rolling metal tray with numerous scalpels, clamps, and tools of the mortuary trade. Next to the dressing table was a stretcher with a black body bag strapped to it.
“Has anyone got in touch with his brother yet? Last I heard he was in North Carolina,” Harold said.
Titus shook his head. “That’s part of the reason I’m here. I need to see if I can unlock his phone and get a number for a next of kin.” That wasn’t an outright lie. He did need to notify Spearman’s next of kin. Titus knew Spearman had dated a few women in the county over the years, but he was still a bachelor. His brother would have to take charge of the remains and the funeral arrangements. But that wasn’t the main reason Titus was here. Not by a long shot. For what felt like the umpteenth time that day, Titus put on a pair of latex gloves and unzipped the body bag.
Spearman’s face was fixed in a wide-eyed rictus of surprise. It was as if at the moment Latrell’s bullet had entered his skull, he’d finally realized he was indeed mortal. Titus pulled the evidence bag out of his pocket and retrieved the phone.
“I don’t mean to tell you your business, but you probably won’t be able to open it with his thumbprint now. Body temperature affect—” Harold said, but Titus cut him off.
“It affects the shape of the swirls on a fingerprint. I know. But Jeff had his phone set with a cold-weather app. So I’m betting it will still work,” Titus said. He grasped Spearman’s right hand. Rigor mortis was slowly settling into his limbs, so Titus had to wrench on the arm to turn Spearman’s hand around to get to the thumb.
Harold looked on as Titus pressed Spearman’s thumb against the lock screen of his phone.
The phone remained locked.
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but…” Harold trailed off. Titus didn’t respond. He grabbed Spearman’s left hand, pried the fingers apart, and pressed the thumb to the screen.
This time the screen went from red to green.
Titus said, “I don’t like saying I told you so either.”
* * *
Titus went back to his truck. Sitting in Maynard’s gravel parking lot, he started scrolling through Jeff Spearman’s phone.
His daddy would have told him to pray for strength before he started scrolling, but Titus hadn’t prayed since the day his mama had died.
Jeff Spearman must have been an avid fan of the Grateful Dead. His screen saver was the band’s whimsical dancing bear mascot. Titus dragged a gloved finger over the screen and went to photos. There were photos in two different apps. One was a Google app that could be accessed on the phone or the computer.
The other app was specific to the phone and could only be accessed on this device. Titus went there first. He didn’t think Spearman would put anything that could get him arrested on an app that could be hacked.
The first few pictures were relatively benign. Spearman on a hike. Spearman under the marquee of a concert venue. Titus kept scrolling. There were more innocuous pics. Then he saw a tab within the photo app titled “Favorites.”
Titus touched the file icon.
“Oh God,” Titus said.
He never realized he had called on the deity.
* * *
Titus’s SUV came flying down Jeff Spearman’s crush-and-run-gravel-covered driveway. Titus pulled up next to Davy’s cruiser. He got out and immediately made a beeline for Spearman’s small white and gray rancher. He ignored the few neighbors who were milling around in their front yards trying to pretend they weren’t interested in what the sheriff was doing at Spearman’s home. He’d called Davy and Carla after he’d finished scrolling through Spearman’s phone and told them to forget about witness statements and meet him at Spearman’s place. He’d given them the basics of what he’d found on the phone. The basics were enough to make both of them go silent.
He’d put the phone back in the evidence bag after fighting the urge to put it under his front tire and roll over it five or six times, then set it on fire. Titus had seen his share of horrific things in his twelve years as an FBI agent. The ability of one human to visit depravity upon another was as boundless as the sea and as varied as there were grains of sand on a beach.
The images on Jeff Spearman’s phone were the worst he’d ever seen.
He kept thinking about purification by immolation. It seemed like that was the only thing that could remove the stain of those images from his mind, his heart, his soul. Burn the phone. Scald his eyes with hot oil. Put Spearman and Latrell on a pyre and reduce them both to ashes, then scatter those ashes to the four winds. Erase all proof of their existence and the things they had done. But the children in those pictures deserved to have their story told. They deserved justice. Whatever that was these days.
Looking at the pictures Jeff Spearman kept within easy reach, Titus had done what they had trained him to do at the Academy. Focus on the details. Force the pain and the perversion to the periphery and zero in on what could be used to make the case. He’d noted that there were usually two people in the pictures. At times it was two individuals wearing leather wolf masks like Latrell had been carrying on the steps. Titus knew one of the individuals was Spearman. He saw his gray ponytail trailing down his back in a few of the pics. Other times it was Spearman with no mask and Latrell. And at other times it was Spearman and a third person. This person never removed their mask. This person wore all black. This person always wore gloves and affixed the gloves to the ends of their sleeves with duct tape.
In the pictures Latrell was present but didn’t seem to be participating in what Spearman and the last wolf were doing to the children. And they were children. Titus guessed they were teenagers, the youngest looked about thirteen or fourteen, the oldest no more than seventeen. All of them Black or Brown. Every one of them helpless.
Titus felt any sympathy he’d had for Latrell dry up like ditchwater in August. Latrell might not have been participating, but he hadn’t tried to stop what had happened to those kids either. What would they find on his phone?
Titus swallowed hard.
What had been done to those children in those pictures was nothing less than an abomination. An atrocity before a God that didn’t seem interested in forestalling the actions of his most accursed creations as they attacked his most innocent ones.
If Titus had harbored even a flicker of belief, those pictures had extinguished it. He’d called Mack Bowen and gotten him to agree to write up a search warrant for Spearman’s house.
“Is it bad, Titus?” Mack had asked. Titus knew, in addition to being the commonwealth’s attorney, Mack was the president of the local Rotary Club. They’d given Jeff Spearman an award last spring. He’d been their Teacher of the Year.
“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be calling,” Titus had said.
* * *
“What you got so far?” Titus asked Davy.
“We got his computer, but it’s password-protected,” Davy said.
Carla stepped out of the house carrying a plastic milk crate full of correspondence.
“This was in the back room. It looks like he used it for an office. I figured we should go through it,” she said. Titus had never been to Spearman’s home. He’d called Cam for the address. He could have gotten it through the DMV database, but Cam was faster and didn’t put him on hold.
“Is there a shed or something in the backyard?” Titus asked.
“No. It’s just woods,” Davy said.
Titus put his hands on his hips. “Where’s Steve?”
“He said he was coming. Had to make sure his boy was okay,” Carla said.