American Ghost (25 page)

Jolie straightened up. “You mean Mr. Frazier? He's still here?”

Faye answered with her earlier strain, as if again stretching her neck, this time to watch him leave. “Yeah. Needed to check his e-mail. I sent him back to Tad's.”

This kind of accommodation was typical for Faye, who was a student of the old Southern School of Feminine Charm, where if a rich man asked you to saw off your leg, you'd oblige with a smile. Jolie didn't bother to curse, just slapped down the phone and ran to Tad's jumbled desk, where his computer was returned to the screen saver.

She brought up the search history, where the digital trail she'd blazed was still there:
Kite+Ott Hoyt+Hendrix
; then
Kite+Melissa Cuffey Wright+Hendrix
; and last but not least
Raymond Hoyt+Hendrix+Henry Kite.
Below were two additional searches that Frazier must had done himself, both people searches in Hendrix, one for
Ott Hoyt
; the other,
Melissa Cuffey Wright,
along with her address on Wright Circle. When
Jolie saw them, she did something that as a daughter of Raymond Hoyt she was seldom known to do: she used the Lord's name in vain, briefly and sincerely, the emphasis on the
damn.

She deleted it all, then went back to retrieve her purse and coat, pausing at the clerk's counter long enough to tell Faye, “Ask Carl to meet me at the church.”

“His church?” Faye asked, feeling for a pencil.

“No, Daddy's. Tell him it's an emergency. I have one stop first, then I'll be there—in an hour, or two at the most. Tell him I'll be in the shed.”

Faye paused in her jotting. “The
what
?”

Jolie repeated herself and assured Faye: “He'll know what I mean.”

S
am Lense had been an officer in financial services so long that he had seldom considered the implications of the pile of raw data he had boxed up and sent to the Florida Museum of Natural History sometime at the end of his storied days in Hendrix. His father still dutifully forwarded any inquiries to Sam's old research that appeared in Len's mailbox in Coral Gables, but Sam had never bothered to open them, much less given permission for the research to be posted online.

He couldn't imagine how it had come to light, and when Hollis Frazier left, he ducked out of his afternoon meeting and, with minimum effort, found the gaudy aggregate site on the Five Civilized Tribes, where his work had been dumped with senseless abandon: copies of the census; rough drafts on the Creek application; clues to the location of Camp Six; bits of transcribed notes from his interviews with two dozen people, mostly anonymous. The Creek data was jumbled together, lost in minutiae, while the Hoyts were lavishly dissected with great testosterone-fueled delight, down to a few fanciful theories of origin, tossed out in a tone of mild self-righteousness. Their participation in the Kite lynching was offered without question, the last paragraph so smug and incendiary that he rubbed his neck when he was done and thought, No wonder they shot me.

He was spooked enough to get up and lock his office door before
he read it again, wondering how Henry Kite had come to be so prominently figured. God knows he'd never gone to any pains to exonerate the murderous bastard. He couldn't even remember who'd told him the nasty little detail about the severed fingers—either Lena or one of Jolie's Hoytling cousins, surely. Then he remembered.
Damn,
it was Travis
Hoyt.

Sam found this a
very
interesting detail and sat back in his chair a long moment, absently tapping his pencil on his desktop in something akin to honest regret, thinking, poor Jol—she could run, but she couldn't hide. He almost pitied her there on her hard-won perch at City Hall in Cleary, the picture of modern woman-power in a photo that had run in the
Democrat
when her cityscape had won some sort of national award. They'd photographed her on the square in downtown Cleary, surrounded by an adoring band of white-haired ladies and a square-jawed old man in a European-cut suit—the hundred-year-old boyfriend whose itch she was apparently still scratching.

To Sam, she was a far cry from the Jolie of their youth, dressed in a pin-striped, Julia Sugarbaker power suit, as dark-haired and milk-skinned as ever, filled out to a handsome, formidable-looking woman. Her fragile self-image had been cured by a high-dollar haircut, her outsider sulkiness replaced by an insider confidence that was nearly as Teflon-slick as her brother's, as was her personal charisma, which had won her many friends. The legislators of the state of Florida were aging out, and both parties were desperate for new blood and new faces to fill the seats of the Old Capitol. Possible names were often bandied about, and even in the cavelike honeycombs of DCF Sam had heard rumors of a dark-horse up-and-comer from Cleary, who had the backing of both Old Money and the Religious Right, but was somehow not a Republican, but a social-justice, yellow-dog Democrat, right out of the church, if such a thing was possible. There was talk of her running for higher office, a state Senate seat, or maybe her appointment to the chairmanship of something or other; something to get her out of the backwoods and to the national stage.

Sam never added to the discussion, even to admit that he knew her, though a few loose ends and a nagging air of irresolution remained between them—not to mention four miles of healed-over chest scar. The old man's implacable quest for justice shamed him, made him wonder if he had quit too soon in his search for his own family justice. God, when was the last time he'd thought of old Morris, moldering in an unmarked grave in some backwoods Baptist cemetery, grass-grown and unmarked? Had Sam ever even taken the time to tell Brice the sad and sordid little story? God, he was getting as bad as his father. Consciously or not, he was deep-sixing his son's history.

The thought was far from pleasant, and Sam was still sitting there, absently tapping his desk, when the phone buzzed on an outside line. He figured they were trying to shame him into joining the meeting and let it buzz a few rounds till it was so annoying he answered with a brisk “Yeah.”

The line was silent a moment, then a woman asked in a small, slightly Southern accent, “May I speak to Sam Lense?”

He blinked at the accent and sat up straighter. “Jolie?”

“No,” she murmured, her voice muted, as if on a speakerphone. “It's Lena. Lena Hoyt—Carl's wife,” she added, as if she and Sam were slight acquaintances. “My father ran the campground—Vic Lucas.”

Sam had never for a moment forgotten any of the characters of his old folktale. “Yeah. Lena. Sure. What's going on?”

His briskness seemed to intimidate her, as there was another silence, then a small, tentative question: “Did Jolie call you?”

“No, haven't talked to her. Why d'you ask?”

After a small exhalation of breath, almost a sigh, Lena made a subtle attempt to backpedal. “Oh, nothing. Just—how have you been? Are you good?”

“I'm great,” he snapped, impatient with the evasion. “What's this about? The bullet in my back, or the Hendrix Lynching?” For a moment the line was open, suspended in some palpable emotion, dread or shock or fury, which only made Sam more aggressive. “They're onto it, Lena.
People are making inquiries. The cat is out of the bag.” He was drawing his breath to ask to speak to her husband when she hung up on him, just like that, in a way that was just so very Hoyt and cowardly and
bullshit
.

He slammed the phone on its cradle and wiped the contents of his desk to the floor in an angry swipe of impatience—a not-uncommon gesture in the world of public finance that drew no attention at all on this end of the building. While the papers were settling, he tapped around on the computer and found a number for Cleary City Hall and, with a concerted effort at civility, sat back in his chair and asked to speak to the mayor.

He was ready to go to war, by phone, if necessary, but the clerk, who spoke in a nearly indecipherable South Georgia accent, informed him that the
may-yah
was out of the office. “Is this Brutha Caal?” she asked brightly. “Returning her call?”

Sam lied without compunction, “No, this is his assistant. He is momentarily unavailable, but needs to speak to her badly. Would you mind giving me her cell number? Carl seems to have lost it again,” Sam rumbled good-naturedly.

The ruse seemed to work, as she murmured, “Well, none that would work in Hendrix. That's where she was headed. She left him a message”—she paused—“for him to meet her by the shed. Or rathah,
in
the shed.”

Sam sat up. “You mean her father's shed? The old tobacco barn? Behind the church?”

Something in his curiosity must have alerted her, as she was suddenly less forthcoming, though relentlessly cordial, drawling, “And what did you say yo-wah name was?”

Sam was already standing for his coat and, in a moment of devilry, answered, “Henry Kite. You can tell her I called.”

W
ell, you sho made a mess of thet” was Charley's only comment after Hollis returned to the car and described in some heat and detail his sharp little clash with the mayor.

Enough wisdom was in the statement that Hollis didn't bother to reply; it would only lead to an argument. He wasn't proud of himself for losing his cool and wanted to follow his leads before the mayor could make any phone calls to Hendrix and warn anyone he was coming.

When the light changed, he wheeled the Lincoln around in a complete U-turn, so abruptly Charley grabbed the hand grip and asked, “Where we headed?”

“Hendrix.”

“Good,”
Charley replied, with such satisfaction that Hollis smiled despite himself.

Of all their kinsmen who'd survived the Trouble, Charley had been the least affected, due in part to his innate courage, and in part to his not having been home for most of it, but deep in the swamp, indulging in a youthful passion for fishing. He was on the far end of the swamp, seining fish and drying them on a spit, when Mr. Goss was shot and was still there two days later when the whole town exploded. He had seen not a trace of blood or gore. But he had come home that evening at dusk, exhausted and ready for bed, only to be hustled on the Camp Six train
by his hysterical mother, who put a knapsack of corn bread in his lap and told him to look after Hollis, who was yet a boy in knee britches.

Charley had never run from a fight in his life and was big enough to have planned to jump the train in Cleary, with or without his crybaby brother, but a sawyer from the mill, a big Irish man, with a gimpy arm and a face of terror, read the plan in his face and begged him not to return to Hendrix, for his father's sake if not his own. “Nothing for you back thar, young man,” he advised, wringing his withered hand in his good one, “and no place for a chile.”

The man's fear was a terrible thing to behold, and the old train thumped and struggled along, stopping time and again to pick up stragglers along the narrow spur of railroad that serviced Camp Six, which was so far into the swamp the tracks were usually deserted. Now, they were lined by desperate faces, shouting out with beseeching voices—the voices of desperate women in nightclothes and aprons, who foisted their nursing toddlers on strangers who had a seat and begged the conductor to take more. The gimpy-armed Irishman gave up his seat to a clutch of damp-dressed, hysterical women from the Camp, who told a disjointed story of a freakish turn of evil brought to them by the hand of Henry Kite.

Charley was finally afraid when he heard the name, as Kite was a familiar character around town. Light-skinned and feckless, he had been raised by a mother and an aunt who were devoted to him and his white skin and brought him up to believe he could do no wrong. He'd taken them at their word and never worked a steady job, but drifted in and out of trouble, a gambler and provocateur, who rode about town on a fine gentleman's horse, with an air of invincibility that to black Hendrix was an invitation to trouble. Camp Six tolerated him because of his good looks and devoted mother, but white Hendrix had no use for him at all, and when the first frost fell, he'd been dogged by rumors that he was filling his mother's smokehouse with other men's hogs.

It all came to a head the afternoon Charley left to go downstream, when Kite had walked into the company store before closing to buy
cigarettes from the German, who hardly spoke English and greatly depended on his son as his translator. Some said Kite had drawn. Others whispered it was the opposite—that the German had shouted at Kite, who had sworn an oath he'd never take another word from a white man and dropped him with a single shot. In any case, the German had died before he hit the floor, and Kite had lit out for his mother's house, that place of historical refuge. Such was his insolence, Kite had stayed to eat supper, or so the rumor went, and when Mr. Goss and his deputy came for him, Kite talked them into letting him go inside for his shoes to wear to jail. They had somehow agreed, and when he emerged from the bedroom, he had a gun in hand and shot Mr. Goss just as he had the shopkeeper, at point-blank range, scattering bone and brain over his shrieking mother's hearth.

Such were the rumors Charley heard that night on the packed, hysterical train, though the worse news came when he found Tempy waiting at the station in Montgomery, a neighbor's bawling child in one arm, her own baby in the other. She was hardly more than a child herself, and tears ran down her cheeks as she told him how his papa had been caught that morning, in his own fields. The men from Camp had run him down with their horses, had accused him of hiding Kite. When he denied it, they'd laid his hand on a tree stump and cut off the middle fingers with one swipe of the ax, trying to make him talk. They would likely have killed him or taken him to town and thrown him in jail with the rest, but a doe had been flushed out by his scream, a distant flash of white they'd mistaken for Kite, making a break through the brush.