“Evidence makes convictions, your gut gets you to the heart of the case,” Ezekiel Wiggins, the only other Black agent in the Indiana Field Office, was fond of saying. Titus thought the truth was somewhere in the middle. Evidence could be tainted. Your gut could lead you astray. You had to find a balance between technique, intuition, and the truth.
The truth here was that Latrell had walked into Jeff Spearman’s classroom, shot him, then walked back out and died on the same steps he’d been running up four years ago as a senior. The evidence was in the rifle, in Jeff Spearman’s cranium, and maybe on Jeff Spearman’s phone.
“Titus, what the hell is going on here?”
The sound of Scott Cunningham saying his name made Titus want to grind his teeth like a grist mill. He took a breath and turned to face Scott.
“There was a shooting, Scott. I’m gonna need you to get back behind the tape,” Titus said.
Scott put his hands on his hips and jutted out his chin. Titus had seen him do this at Board of Supervisors meetings when things weren’t going his way, which in all honesty wasn’t that often.
“Who was shot? See, this is why I been saying we should let the teachers arm themselves,” Scott said.
“Scott, I’m gonna tell the whole county everything I can once we get the scene cleared and get the shooter and the victim moved and their families notified. But right at this moment you’re in the middle of my crime scene stepping on evidence, and I’m gonna need you to step back. Now,” Titus said.
Scott looked down at his feet. He was standing in the middle of a puddle of Latrell Macdonald’s blood.
“Goddamn it. Shit to hell,” Scott groaned with disgust. He took two large steps backward before scraping the soles of his shoes on the grass to the side of the front steps.
“Behind the tape,” Titus said.
“I’ll expect a full report,” Scott said. He waited a beat before he started walking back to his truck. Titus knew he wanted to make it seem like it was his decision to leave.
“Scott, you’re the chairman of the board. You’re not my boss. You’ll get the same report the rest of the county gets,” Titus said.
Scott blanched, then just shook his head. “I’m not your enemy, Titus.”
Liar, Titus thought.
When Titus had announced his candidacy, Scott Cunningham had thrown all his considerable influence behind Cooter. Titus knew Scott’s reasons for supporting Cooter had nothing to do with Cooter’s law enforcement philosophy, which in its purest form could be articulated as “harass Black and Brown people and anyone who voted Democrat.”
It had everything to do with Scott’s desire to have his own personal puppet in the sheriff’s office. A sheriff who wouldn’t look the other way, per se. but perhaps could be counted on to squint when the need arose. And what better marionette than the son of the former sheriff? A man best known for three things: roughing up teenagers caught necking down at the river, shaking down folks for cash or weed during traffic stops, and once getting into a fight with a goat. If you got Cooter the slightest bit tipsy, he’d regale you with stories about how the goat suckered him with a head butt out of nowhere. The goat, as was the tendency of victors, didn’t comment on the altercation.
When the election results had come in Titus was nearly as shocked as Scott. In the past year they had butted heads more than Titus thought was necessary for a county the size of Charon. Things really reached a turning point when Titus arrested Alan Cunningham, Scott’s cousin and the county building inspector. Jamal Addison had made a complaint that Alan was denying well permits for Black families without cause. Titus had investigated and found an almost comically inept conspiracy between Alan Cunningham and Reece Kanter, a local real estate developer. The two had conspired to keep Black families from building homes on land that Reece coveted near the Conyers’s Beach for a new subdivision. Alan had received a kickback for each refusal.
Scott had been the titular figurehead for the collective rage of the Cunningham family. But there was nothing he could do for his cousin. Whether through arrogance or stupidity, Alan had left a paper trail Wrong Way Corrigan could have followed.
Titus didn’t usually enjoy arresting people, but slapping a pair of bracelets on Alan Cunningham had been the highlight of his week and the nadir of his relationship with Scott.
“Uh-huh. And I’m not yours. I’m also not one of your cutters at the flag factory or one of your crab pickers at the fish house. My department will handle this. You wanna help, get the board to approve some funds for counseling for everybody that was here today. You do your job and I’ll do mine,” Titus said. He turned his back on Scott and took the evidence bag from Carla. On any other day the constant dick-swinging contest that Scott Cunningham was convinced they were both participating in wouldn’t garner a second thought from him, but people had died this morning. Their bodies were still warm even as their blood cooled on the steps and the walls of Jefferson Davis High. Men like Scott, men consumed by their egos and their desire to assert dominance at the top of hierarchies only they could see, didn’t have the capacity to set aside their petty aspirations even in the face of death.
They craved power and control in any quantity or amount they could find. Titus thought you could offer Scott the job of head shit shoveler at a manure farm and he’d take it if it meant he got to tell someone else what to do. Scott’s small-town megalomania was fed by equal parts hubris and tradition. The Cunninghams were one of the biggest families in a county where they owned the two largest companies that were the county’s two largest employers. By most metrics they ran Charon County.
Except one.
Titus was the sheriff and they weren’t, and today, of all the days since he’d pinned that badge on his chest, was not the day he was going to indulge their feudal fantasies.
“If Spearman has his phone on him, bag it up too and take them both back to the office,” Titus said to Carla as he handed her the evidence bag. Carla had been his second hire behind Davy. She was a short slim woman who had a blue belt in jiujitsu and dreams of joining the FBI herself. Davy was friendly and loyal, but Carla was smart and tenacious. One day in the future Davy might be sheriff himself. One day in the future Carla might be halfway across the country leading cartel members on a perp walk.
“Got it, boss. I’ll take care of it,” Carla said.
She paused.
“This is gonna get bad, isn’t it? The shoot, I mean. Most of those kids back there were recording it. I … I thought he was surrendering, then he just … it looked like he was running at us. I mean, that’s what it looked like, right?” Carla said.
“Right now I just need you to get that phone. We’ll deal with everything else later,” Titus said. Carla nodded and went off to rifle through Spearman’s pockets. Behind his mirrored sunglasses he closed his eyes and ran his tongue over his teeth without opening his mouth. How long would it take for one of the kids’ or staff members’ videos to go viral? A day? An hour?
At the final debate before the election, he and Cooter were given a chance to make their case one last time to the citizens of Charon County with a closing statement.
Titus had gone up to the lectern in the cavernous East Charon Ruritan Club and shared a fraction of his guilt disguised as a personal mission statement.
“George Orwell wrote that we sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who do us harm. I just want a sheriff’s department that makes sure those rough men don’t visit violence on the people they are supposed to keep safe. I was born here, graduated from high school here. Grew up swimming in Fiddler’s Bay, learned to drive on Route 15. Had my first taste of liquor over behind the Watering Hole. Charon is my heart and my home, but I know that those rough men have not always been judicious with their violence. I think the least a sheriff can do is make sure those rough men are bound by the same rules they are sworn to enforce. Because we all know it hasn’t always been that way,” Titus had said. As far as closing arguments went, he’d thought it was rather eloquent, especially since Cooter’s final statement had consisted of ursine grunts that sounded like a bear trying to say the words law and order and border control. Even though Charon was two thousand miles from the southern borders. When Titus had returned to his seat a few people clapped, but everyone had listened.
Now his rough men had visited violence upon Latrell Macdonald. Latrell had visited violence upon Jeff Spearman. But could there have ever been any other outcome?
In Titus’s penance-driven mind he’d thought so, but now he realized that was the height of naivete. You pick up an axe, you’re going to chop down a tree. You pick up a gun, whether you are wearing a star or not, eventually you’re going to chop down a man.