The Killings (12 page)

Shit! Martin drew himself up. “It’s just that you’re bragging that he’s arrested three of those suspects for this murder series and none has been convicted by a jury. The other three he arrested the prosecutor didn’t want to file charges. Hell, Todd Henderson was acquitted in his murder trial, and Henry Huff was just found innocent in the murder of Sadie Holley.”

“And who the hell have
you
arrested?” Officer Lacey exclaimed. The expression on the younger officer’s face was all bravado and devil-may-care.

Martin ignored Officer Lacey. “I realize this isn’t a typical murder case. There are multiple victims, and some variations to how they’re killed. What’s not typical are the victims themselves. They’re all colored girls, and I should say most if not all of the women are mulattos or octoroons.”

“Why you gotta call them that?” Officer Lacey asked. “They’re all niggers, ain’t they?”

Detective Martin Douglas whirled on Officer Lacey. “If you open your big mouth one more time, I’m gonna smack the living Jesus out of you!”

“I’ll not have that talk in my office!” Chief Marshall barked. He stood up behind his desk, finally asserting his authority. “Officer Lacey, shut your trap. These murder victims may be coloreds, but we have to solve them lest we get the colored community riled up. They’re already riled up as it is, and if you ask me I think a lot of them are rarin’ to strike back after the 1906 riots.”

“Like to see them darkies try some shit,” Officer Lacey said. “I’ll hogtie them and feed them to the goddamn alligators.”

“Officer Lacey,” Chief Marshall said, “if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll feed you to the goddamn gators.”

Officer Lacey went silent. The tone of Chief Marshall’s voice had deepened. His very presence seemed to darken, become more serious. Chief Marshall glowered at the young officer. “You’re a fine officer, but you can be a goddamn piece of shit, you know that? Now shut the hell up and let me finish my meeting with Detective Douglas.” The chief turned to Martin. “Tell me what you’ve learned from your men on the street.”

Martin was still recovering from the exchange he’d just witnessed, but he slipped easily back into detective mode. “Well, I’ve got several colored men from the neighborhood getting tips on people. Most of what I’m getting is hearsay. I do have one young man who’s very perceptive. A young barber named Robert Jackson.”

Officer Lacey frowned at the mention of Robert’s name. Martin made a point to tuck that in the back of his mind before he continued. “Robert’s getting information from several sources that the suspect, or suspects, appear to be men who ... aren’t right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chief Marshall asked.

“According to Robert, he’s spoken to at least three, possibly even four potential witnesses. They all claim that shortly before or after the murders of several victims, a man fitting the general description of the suspect Miss Sharpe saw was seen in the general area. Furthermore, they say the man was acting different.” Martin hesitated here for a moment, not sure how to proceed. When he’d met up with Robert last night, he’d understood perfectly well what the young barber was telling him. Martin just found it hard to express it to his superior in a way that would make any kind of sense. “The men in question appeared normal on the surface. They walked casually, appeared normal in every outward appearance. But the way they moved ... all the witnesses told Robert they had the impression that the man they were seeing wasn’t really there. Like something was moving him along. Something was
controlling
him.”

“Controlling him?” Chief Marshall said. “I don’t understand.”

“I know,” Martin said. “Believe me, it’s hard for me to convey what Robert told me in words. But he was adamant that the suspect who was seen wasn’t behaving completely normal. Like they were sleepwalking.”

“Sleepwalking? That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard come out of your head, Detective Douglas,” Officer Lacey said. “You make it sound like he’s a damn golem or something.”

“A what?” Chief Marshall asked Officer Lacey.

“A golem,” Martin said, picking up on Officer Lacey’s train of thought. “Jewish myth. It’s a man made of clay that’s powered by a spell. It’s usually used to gain revenge.”

Chief Marshall frowned. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Martin got a burst of inspiration and seized on it. “It’s kinda like that movie you saw a few years ago you were telling us all about. That Edison film.
Frankenstein
.”

“Oh, that,” Chief Marshall said, the connection made. “Okay, I get it.” Chief Marshall was a big movie fan. He and his wife had been attending the main Nickelodeon downtown since it was installed in 1902. He was a big fan of the medium and was a bold enough supporter of it to predict it was going to replace vaudeville. The entire department thought he was damn nuts for even considering the notion.

“I didn’t see that movie, but I feel like I know the plot,” Martin said. “And from what I remember of it, the villain was a monster, created from spare body parts and was brought to life. The golem is a clay figure brought to life by magic. Well, the closest I can come to describing what Robert relayed to me was that the suspect of these murders appears normal in most aspects, but he moves as if he’s in a daze or under a spell.”

Chief Marshall frowned, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Under a spell?”

“The spell of alcohol most likely. You know how them darkies like to drink. They’s almost bad as Injuns.” Officer Lacey added.

“It is possible our killer may be behaving this way because he’s under the influence of some kind of intoxicant.”

Martin considered this and nodded. “That’s true. There’s a lot of speakeasies and roadhouses where cocaine and opium are used pretty openly. Maybe the killer is-”

“This man you’ve been getting this juicy information from, Robert Jackson” - Chief Marshall interrupted, focusing on Martin - “he knows quite a lot of colorful characters, don’t he?”

“Yes, sir, he does. He’s been very useful to me. The man isn’t afraid to go into most places, in the kind of joints must colored folks don’t want to venture into.”

“Do you know that Robert is friends with Henry Parker?”

Martin nodded. “Yes, I do know.”

The entire department knew about the exploits of Henry Parker. And there were rumors among many of the rank and file about Chief Marshall’s ties to the crime under lord. But now wasn’t the time or the place to broach that subject.

Chief Marshall turned to Officer Lacey. “I want you to pay close attention to Henry Parker’s activities.”

“Sure thing, Chief,” Officer Lacey said.

Martin’s frown deepened. “Why?”

“You’re a smart man, Detective,” Chief Marshall said. “Surely you know about Mr. Parker’s activities - prostitution, bootlegging, money laundering, opium and cocaine distribution - need I say more?”

“You think these killings are part of some kind of gang war?”

“Didn’t say that,” Chief Marshall said. The big man leaned back in his chair, regarding the younger officer and the veteran detective. “I just think he ... deserves a closer look.”

Martin let this settle in his system. He knew that Robert was friendly with the crime figure. He’d heard the two had grown up together, had been fairly close as boys. With age had come a fork in the road, with Robert taking the road traveled by most law-abiding citizens and Henry taking the rocky road down a life of crime. And with that thought, something sparked in Martin’s imagination.

Could Robert be feeding Henry information?

“I can see by the expression on your face that you agree with this.” Chief Marshall’s face was pensive, reflective.

Detective Martin Douglas placed his pen in his left breast pocket and folded his notebook shut. “I agree he needs to be watched,” Martin said. He glanced at Chief Marshall. “But I also think we need to be careful. You know Henry Parker’s reputation.”

“That I do.” Chief Marshall nodded at Officer Lacey. “Officer Lacey here can handle him, though. Right, Lacey?”

“You bet, Chief.” Officer Lacey grinned. And that grin told Martin everything he needed to know.

If what he had long suspected about Chief Marshall being somehow in league with Henry Parker was true, of benefiting in some way from his criminal enterprises, then this made perfect sense. Chief Marshall didn’t give a good goddamn about catching the fiend the newspapers had taken to calling the Atlanta Ripper. No, Chief Marshall wanted Henry Parker for his own reasons.

He wanted to save his own ass.

FOURTEEN

August 4, 2011, Atlanta, Georgia

Once again Carmen’s research had taken her back to the Atlanta Ripper murders of 1911. The first time she’d dismissed it as inconsequential. Later, it arose again when she was trying to confirm Wayne Williams’s assertion that there had been an unending string of serial murders in Atlanta’s African American community going back more than a century. It had been harder to dismiss then and even harder now after listening to what the old man had to say about Grandma Sable. Somewhere around 1911 is when the killings began. Now, knowing that Grandma Sable had been alive and active at that time, she decided to look at the murders again.

The basement in the
Atlanta Constitution
building was dark, musty, and cold. The rest of the building had been renovated several times in the last hundred years, including the basement, with an asbestos removal in the eighties, new drywall and paint at the turn of the millennium, and the recent addition of computers and compact fluorescent lighting.

Boxes and boxes of microfiche sat in countless rows from floor to ceiling on long metal shelves filling most of the room. Every issue the newspaper had ever published was stored here. Once it had housed thousands of newspapers; and then fifty years ago the newspapers had been painstakingly converted to microfilm. Now the microfilm was being converted to digital files, a task which was no less painstaking. The basement still contained the old microfilm readers, which was lucky for Carmen. The articles she was searching for had not yet been converted to digital files.

It took Carmen several tedious, painstaking hours to locate the article she was looking for. It was in a box marked “research” dated September 1911. The box contained several scraps of notebook paper with names and dates written on them along with a typewritten story that had never been published. Carmen briefly perused the story. It was about the murders and the arrest of a suspect named Henry Parker. The box also contained a yellowing newspaper clipping of a story published in the August 31, 1911 issue of a now defunct Black newspaper called the
Atlanta Daily Tribune
about a suspect who’d been arrested in connection with the killings.

The newspaper clipping mirrored the unpublished
Atlanta Constitution
story, detailing the arrest of one of the city’s most notorious Black gangsters in connection with the murders. The suspect had known several of the victims and that appeared to be the police’s only evidence aside from a history of violent crimes that included assault and attempted murder. Henry Parker had been accused of involvement in the killings. It was immediately apparent to Carmen that the arrest was bullshit. Henry didn’t fit the profile of a serial killer. He was a local thug who had a hand in almost every illegal activity that took place in Atlanta’s African American community back then, from alcohol to gambling to drugs and prostitution. He murdered for profit, not pleasure, and he was too well-known and high profile a figure in the Black community to have committed these murders without being identified. His arrest was an attempt by the local police to get another criminal off the streets.

Another article caught Carmen’s attention. A small three paragraph story beneath the story of Henry’s arrest mentioned a Black “citizen patrolmen” named Robert Jackson who was relieved of duty for “suspicious activity and insubordination” following Henry Parker’s arrest. The article described Robert Jackson as a tall, dark-skinned man who owned a barbershop in town and was a childhood friend of Parker’s. The police disbanded the entire citizen patrol force, which had consisted of a mere twelve Black men, with the statement that Robert’s “indiscretions” were proof that “Negroes were unfit for law enforcement.” It was a conclusion typical of the times, when Black people were still mostly relegated to manual labor and domestic jobs. But something about the article piqued Carmen’s curiosity. She had to find out what Robert Jackson’s “indiscretions” were.

Carmen began looking further into Robert Jackson’s past, feeling like she was getting off track and following a dead end but unable to curb her nagging curiosity. She found research gathered by the journalist who’d written the unpublished article, alluding to an assault against a police officer involving both Henry Parker and Robert Jackson. A scrap of notebook paper, attached to what looked to be an official police report, gave Robert’s account of the assault. He claimed that Officer Lacey was about to murder Henry Parker in cold blood when Robert intervened. His version of the incident was never reported in either the Negro newspaper or the
Atlanta Constitution
.

Despite the amount of research the reporter had obviously put into the case, it had gone no further. The
Constitution
hadn’t reported on Robert Jackson’s dismissal from the police force. Someone had killed the story. Carmen decided to look deeper into Jackson’s personal life to see how deep his friendship with Henry Parker went. Even having grown up in Atlanta all her life and having witnessed and reported on acts of horrendous police brutality and impropriety, even having borne witness to institutionalized racism at its most insidious, she found it hard to believe Jackson’s version of the story.
Why would a police officer try to murder Henry Parker for no reason?

Part of her, the part that could trace its ancestry back to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, answered that shit like that happened to people of color all the time. But another, larger part of her, the part whose ancestors immigrated to this country fleeing Castro’s regime to make a better life for themselves, the part that had gone to college on government grants and had once been engaged to a conservative White republican, could not accept racism as an answer.