“I’m just trying to wrap my head around why was he there? Like, if he wasn’t, ya know, getting off to this stuff, why was he even involved?” Davy asked.
Titus put his finger to his lips for a moment before he answered.
“I think Latrell was an extremely damaged young man. I think Spearman and the third man took advantage of that. I think they used him as bait,” Titus said.
“Bait? How do you mean?” Steve asked.
“They were two white men. How you think they got close to those kids under the weeping willow tree?” Trey said.
The room went quiet until Titus ended the meeting.
“All right, get on it. We’ll meet back up at three P.M.,” Titus said. Everyone got up and filed out of the office.
“Hey, Trey,” Titus said. Trey stopped and stood by the door.
“Close it,” Titus said. Trey did as he was asked and stood in the middle of the floor.
“I know I’ve put a lot on your plate, with the investigation of the shoot and everything, but I need a—”
“You need a favor,” Trey said with a smirk.
“Yeah. I need you to go over to the Citizen Mercantile Bank and go see Fraser Woodall first thing in the morning.”
“The bank manager?”
“Yes. This morning I got Mack Bowen to write up a subpoena for the bank records of everyone in the department that participated in raids on the Watering Hole. That’s Roger, Steve, Pip, Carla. I need you to look into deposits they made in the week of or before a raid. Look for any larger-than-normal deposits,” Titus said.
Trey frowned. “Titus, are you sure you want to handle this in-house? I mean, I’ll do it, but I’m still going through the reports for the shooting. You sure you don’t want to turn this over to the state police?” Trey asked.
“Not yet. Look, I got you to investigate the shoot because you’re smart, thorough, and I trust you. Right now you’re the only person I can trust with this.”
“You really think one of them is dirty?” Trey asked.
Titus drummed his fingers on his desk. “I hope I’m wrong. But I rarely am,” he said.
* * *
Titus banged on the church door again. Locked tight. “Elias!” he called, taking the frustration of the morning out on the door one more time.
“Saw you over here the other day. I was hoping you’d come to shut them down,” a three-pack-a-day female voice said. “But I haven’t seen Elias today.”
Titus turned and saw an older white woman sitting on a small porch attached to a single-wide trailer across the slender ribbon of road. Titus pulled off his shades and walked to the edge of the road. “Have you seen something illegal going on over there?”
The woman chuckled ruefully. She ran a hand through her wild mane of white hair that was peppered with brown streaks. Titus walked across the road and put his foot on the bottom step of her porch and leaned on the handrail. He put her around mid-sixties, but her bright green eyes sparkled with a younger woman’s audaciousness.
“Those goddamn freaks have been hollering and screaming and acting like the second coming of the Peoples Temple since I moved here in ’89,” the woman said.
“Most people on the island aren’t come-heres, Ms.…?”
“Griselda. Griselda Barry. I came out here in ’89 when I married my husband, Otis Barry. He died in ’95. I decided to stay on. If for no other reason, I know it annoys Pastor Cult Leader and his band of merry lunatics. Charlie’s people were original island folk. They didn’t much care for the wild hippie girl he married from West Virginia and the feeling was pretty mutual, but when Otis drowned I kinda got stuck with them. Took care of them both till they went into the Lake Castor Nursing Home over in Red Hill.”
“You were a good daughter-in-law,” Titus said.
“Shit, I didn’t have anywhere to go either. So it was thumb it back to Wheeling or make them soup and help them not to break their hips.”
“My father broke his hip last year,” Titus said.
“Jesus, it’s the worst. You never really get right after that.”
“What have you seen over there that makes you think they should be shut down?” Titus asked. His gut was whispering to him that what this former wild child had to say was important. The former FBI agent in him noticed that Griselda had an obvious ax to grind. That was often how crimes were solved. Animus was a great motivator for vigilance.
“Well, they’re crazy, everyone knows that. But there’s always been terrible shit going on over there. You don’t know about the boy who used to live there, do you?” Griselda asked.
“What boy?” Titus asked.
“Hold on, this is gonna take a minute,” Griselda said. She pulled a pack of Pall Malls out of the pocket of her tie-dyed hoodie. She pulled a cigarette from the pack and produced a wooden match from her pocket as well. She struck the match against the heel of her brown Hush Puppies and lit her cigarette in a smooth, practiced motion. She inhaled deeply and exhaled two gray plumes of smoke through her nostrils like a dragon.
The breeze stirred the leaves of the blue hydrangeas that surrounded the porch. Griselda crossed her legs.
“Must have been in ’88 or ’89. Otis was still alive. His parents had a little bungalow just down the road a piece. Every Sunday they would try and get us to go to church with them, and finally Otis convinced me to give in. That was a mistake. You ever been to one of those hooting-and-hollering services over there, Sheriff? It’s like watching End Times, the Musical. Then they bring out them damn snakes. I told Otis that was my first and last time attending a service at Holy fucking Rock. That Sunday just happened to be the same day Elias and Mare-Beth tried to pass off that boy as their own,” Griselda said.
“A boy? He wasn’t their child?” Titus asked.
“Fuck, no. Mare-Beth was fertile as a rabbit, but she carried her children heavy. Always gained a lot of weight, then burned it off chasing all those kids or Holy-Ghost-dancing down the aisles on Sundays. But she hadn’t gained an ounce before that baby showed up that Sunday.”
“Where did they get a newborn from? Did one of their daughters have it?” Titus asked.
Griselda shook her head. “I used to think that, but all them girls take after Elias. Skinny as a rail, and they stayed that way while they was still at home. No, I don’t know where that boy came from, but I wish he could of gone back,” Griselda said.
Titus sucked at his teeth. “They were hard on him?”
“Huh, that’s one way to put it. Or you could say they kicked that boy around like he was a stray dog. I watched them treat him like a redheaded bastard for twelve years. They worked him like he was a goddamned peasant. Made him cut the grass with a reel mower when he was nine years old. Had him painting the steps during the hottest part of the day during the hottest month when he was ten. I made Otis go say something to Elias when I saw him slap that boy across the face for dropping some wire for his crab pots. I even called the old sheriff a few times. But nobody gave a damn about what was happening with island folk. Especially a mixed-race child that was being homeschooled by the goddamn Heaven’s Gate.” Griselda took another drag off her Pall Mall.
“The boy was mixed? You sure about that?” Titus asked.
“Yeah. They started cutting his hair in a crew cut when it started coming in kinky. In summertime he got what I’d call a deep tan, but that hair gave it away. Drove Elias crazy,” Griselda said.
“Yeah, I can see that. Elias doesn’t strike me as the most racially tolerant fella around. But that begs the question, where did the boy come from?” Titus asked.
Griselda grunted. “I figure some poor fool girl gave that boy up thinking she was giving him a better life. Boy, was she wrong. Elias is to the right of David Duke. When he isn’t hooting and hollering over here at his church, he goes to Charon proper to cry with the rest of the good ol’ boys still mourning Lee’s ass-whooping. I think if that child had belonged to one of his girls, he would have killed him.”
Titus raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“He talks an awful lot about God and the Bible, but my mama always said the devil can quote the Good Book as well as any angel. And Elias is as close to the devil as I wanna get.” She took a long drag off her cigarette.
“Then there was Elias’s brother Henry,” she said. Her tone was similar to one his father used when he spoke about rats getting into his bird seed.
“What about Elias’s brother?” Titus asked. He didn’t push too hard. He could tell this was a story Griselda had been wanting to tell for quite some time.