“You said, ‘There needs to be reason to believe’ that hate was a motive. I’d just like to get a clearer picture of what you mean by that.”
There was a pause. “Well,” she said slowly, “for example, if you were found bludgeoned to death in your office at the university, I wouldn’t be inclined to think that racial, sexual, or religious bias was the motive. Unless there’s a kinky side of you that seriously rubbed somebody the wrong way.” I felt myself taken aback. Was this Price’s odd way of having a bit of fun with me, or was there a passive-aggressive edge to her choice of example? “But if you were an African American pastor instead of a white professor, and your house was bombed, and a big cross was burned in your front yard, I’d say there was ample reason to believe we were looking at a hate crime.”
“I’d say so,” I agreed.
“Although we might find out that the real motive was something else entirely.”
“Such as?”
“Well, suppose the pastor were having an extramarital affair with one of his parishioners, and the woman’s husband found out he’d been cuckolded by the pastor. The husband might murder the pastor—a classic revenge killing—but make it look like a hate crime, to deflect suspicion. We’d start out investigating that murder as a hate crime, but pretty soon, I hope, we’d discover the real reason for the crime. Does that make it clearer?”
“It does,” I said slowly.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not unconvinced. I’m just thinking about evidence that’s not as obvious as a burning cross.”
“Dr. Brockton, are we talking hypotheticals here, or is there something specific on your mind? Because the Bureau doesn’t generally deal in hypotheticals.”
Here we go, I thought. Price was forcing me to lay my cards on the table, and I knew my hand was weak. “There’s a case—actual, not hypothetical—that I’m working on. A young man was chained to a tree in the woods. He was kept alive, possibly for weeks, and then finally killed by a bear. He’d been smeared with bear bait and raw bacon, so I’m thinking the killer wanted him to suffer a while first, then be attacked by the bear. By the time he was found, he was just bones. And not that many of ’em.”
“This was up in Cooke County?”
I was surprised, because I’d seen no news coverage of the murder. “You already know the case?”
“No,” she said. “I already know Cooke County. Where else would you find a crime like that?”
“Ah.”
“So what else can you tell me about the victim? He was young and male. Black, or white?”
She was already drilling into the nerve. “To be honest, we don’t know yet. Without a skull or intact long bones, it’s hard to make a determination.”
A pause. “So what makes you think you’re looking at a hate crime?”
“For one thing, the staging, if I’m using that term right. The victim was made powerless. Naked and chained. Fed like a dog. Smeared with bear bait and bacon grease. Seems like the killer wanted to humiliate him as much as possible. Make him less than human.”
“But that doesn’t prove bias or hate,” she said. “Just cruelty.”
“There is one piece of evidence,” I began. “A coin found at the scene. A collector’s item. A commemorative coin from 1925.”
“Commemorative of what?”
“Of the huge Confederate monument at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Giant carvings of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis—the heroes of the Lost Cause.”
“I know who they were,” she said. “And you take an old coin as evidence of a hate crime? You can’t even tell me the victim’s race, but—let me guess—you have a hunch that the victim was a black man, and that this is a weird twist on a lynching?”
“Maybe,” I said, flinching at the withering sarcasm I could hear in her voice. “This Confederate coin looks like it was worn as a pendant. Which could indicate that Confederate ideology—specifically, racism—was important to the killer.” I paused, but she left me hanging, so I added, “It’s the only thing we’ve got that might indicate motive.”
There was a long silence. “Dr. Brockton, if that’s the only thing you’ve got, you don’t have much. If the sheriff’s office or the TBI wants to put in a formal request for the Bureau’s assistance, we’ll certainly consider it. But from what you’ve told me, this just sounds like something out of Deliverance. A backwoods case of southern gothic depravity.”