Black, White, and RED All Over, Epilogue 1

For those of you who have been following my accidentally SEMI-EPIC-LENGTH tale built around Captain Ironwood Hamilton, the detective who can solve any crime in five minutes -- or at least as part of a five-minute #freewrite (thank you @freewritehouse, for adopting me two weeks ago... you see the inspiration just going on and on and on!), there were two loose ends left out there...

For those of you who are new ... here are parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.

The arc of the story, without spoilers: a new, confrontational Black newspaper comes to Lofton County, VA and upsets both the majority of the county's people and all police departments in the county but one: Captain Hamilton's own in Tinyville. He decides to not work against the new paper, but quickly learns that rogue elements in neighboring departments have a different plan. He, his lieutenant, and his police captain cousin in the city of Big Loft discover that plan and dramatically counter it; the clash brings fire and blood to the county and the pages of news across the country!

Two loose ends remained at the end of the clash in part 11; a big problem for Captain Hamilton of going back to his own church with his family when that church hosted the meeting of the bad guys in the clash, and a equally big problem for his cousin, Big Loft captain H.F. Lee, who may or may not be put on administrative leave at work after having to do just a bit more than was expected in the interests of justice. How that situation began is in part 9.

The aftermath for Captain Lee and his department is here in epilogue 1, right after my old dividing graphic...

In the life of many persons and institutions, there comes a moment of contact with a person or persons that forces a rethink of life and a re-examination of even the most deeply held beliefs.

Such a moment was inevitable for the new acting commissioner of police after the Gilligan House Burning weekend, because nobody had gotten around to putting Virginia's very own Angel of Death on administrative leave, and the angel was coming back to work on Monday …

In brief: the Gilligan House Burning had occurred because a bunch of rogue officers from Big Loft – including the commissioner and his two deputies – had conspired with a whole bunch of rogue officers across Lofton County to destroy the Lofton County Free Voice newspaper and all the information it had demanded and received on incidents and arrests involving Black citizens of Lofton County.

The captain of police in Tinyville, VA, where the Gilligan House was located, wasn't having it. Ironwood Hamilton had worked with the Lofton County Free Voice and the 28 percent of Tinyville that had an interest in the Free Voice to figure out what was going on and to plan and successfully execute a counter-strike. The Gilligan House had been lost in the process, but so too had been 46 rogue officers, with 73 more captured and jailed.

That left Commissioner Thomas of Big Loft and Deputy Commissioners Solton and Pulliam, comfortably in their beds as the Free Voice put out a recording they had received showing how the commissioners had conspired with the captain of police in Littleburg to arrange the attack on the Gilligan House … comfortably asleep until the man they had agreed to hire as a new captain went and got warrants, snapped up the two deputies, and killed the commissioner while he was resisting arrest!

No one had seen that coming. The new captain was indeed a marble model gentleman of the old cut, quiet and unassuming, coolly calm and composed, and with a profound capacity for work. He was deferential to authority as befit his military training, respectful to his peers, and firm yet intensely supportive to his subordinates, although all of this showed more in his actions than his few words.

Only if you thoroughly knew the histories of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and then looked carefully at the new captain's service record since his graduation from West Point might you realize that there might be much more to Colonel Henry Fitzhugh Lee, in his new career as police captain, than the marvelous marble mask that met the eye.

Acting Commissioner Pendleton's head spun as he considered the sequence of the week before the Gilligan House Burning. On Tuesday, Commissioner Thomas had invited Captain Lee out for a drink, and according to the commissioner it had gone very well, although the captain had only ordered a fancy limeade. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the two men had interacted professionally and courteously, many, many times around the Woodard case and the release of the FOIA information.

Not that everything had been sunshine and roses to that point. Despite his gentlemanly manners, Captain Lee had made plenty of enemies. He had closed a case left open for 24 years in his first full week on the job, and from then on averaged closing a case every 10 days. His closes were brilliant, and his expositions of how things actually fit together flawless.

The problem was that Captain Lee thus showed up every officer who had worked those cases before him, and the department as a whole. His brilliance overcame the coldness of the cases, but the speed indicated that others could have closed those cases in a reasonable time with a little more attention to their work. This led to the question of what folks had been doing all that time, a question made exceedingly dangerous when the Lofton County Free Voice requested the information that contained the answers.

Then, Commissioner Thomas had handed that same Captain Lee access to that ten years of reports and associated data for the FOIA request the Lofton County Free Voice wanted on incidents and reports involving Black citizens. Wiser heads had advised the commissioner not to do that, but he ignored them, not believing that an officer so good at small cold case puzzles would be equally good at solving the big puzzle of why Big Loft's police department was so inept in some areas and so efficiently wrong in others while preparing the release for the Free Voice.

Terrified but also mastered people – for even with his mild-mannered ways, Captain Lee was still just as obviously the kind of man you didn't want to cross – have limited options. Obstruction, and gossip: those were the two biggest ones.

Still, Captain Lee walked above it all. He never complained about anyone, always found complimentary things to say about his fellow officers and their work, always gave scrupulous attention to orders from above and in passing those orders down, always passed credit around and took responsibility for what he could have done better. He remained the consummate professional officer of middle rank, at all times, and kept closing cases, week after week after week..

Thus, the commissioner had been mostly comfortable – mostly, because he relieved himself of his deeper fears by occasionally engaging in the silliness of gossip around Captain Lee as well. Yet after Thursday morning, the commissioner had convinced himself: all would be well. Even General R.E. Lee ultimately had been contained; his great-great-great nephew H.F. Lee would pose no exception. The department would get over the FOIA bump, and back to business as usual soon enough.

The commissioner was wrong, of course. The FOIA bump was not to be gotten over after the Gilligan House Burning, and business, whatever the new norm was going to be for it, would go right on without Commissioner Thomas in the world to be part of it.

The man who had ushered his boss into eternity was in his office on Monday morning, probably juicing his lemons and limes, doubtless deep in his data-crunching … working because nobody had told him not to come to work. Dutiful man was H.F. Lee, dutiful, inscrutable, and, even as a glorified data manager in what should have been a quiet, bloodless job, still worthy of his nickname on both sides of the Army he had spent 23 years in: the Angel of Death.

“What am I going to do about it?” Acting Commissioner Pendleton said to the walls of his new office. “The last three bosses that crossed him are in jail or dead!”

The Fear of Lee, come home to roost in Virginia, was a real and terrible thing.

Between the constant pressure of the press and boxing up Commissioner Thomas's things and trying to comfort the utterly hysterical Mrs. Thomas and her 24 counterparts, Monday went right by Acting Commissioner Pendleton. When he came in the next day, he went and checked who had clocked in. Captain Lee had clocked in at his usual time: 7:45am, early enough to greet the night crew and janitors as they departed, to greet the day staff and get the freshest coffee, to leave nice notes for staffers who had been helpful to him the day before, and to get settled in before the the general rush of day shift arrival.

By the time the acting commissioner arrived, the captain had been entrenched for two hours already, the wake of his presence still visible in the happiness of the staffers whose smallest contributions had been recognized, and the preternatural calm of the small hallway leading to his small office, out of which issued the captain's choice of music, or, periodically, a junior officer, full of encouragement and confidence, going to carry out the captain's orders.

Acting Commissioner Pendleton thought about going down that hallway to Captain Lee's office and telling him to turn off his computer, put his badge and gun on the desk, turn in his door fob to security, and not to return until sent for. But, the acting commissioner's feet ran the exact opposite course from his head, and he found himself in his office not even knowing how he had gotten there.

Tuesday got away. So did Wednesday and Thursday. Acting Commissioner Pendleton was running around like a man trying to put out a fire with a toy pail of water – the department was short 42 men under the worst imaginable circumstances, and the press would not let up. The Big Loft Bulletin by itself would have been bad enough, but it and the local TV news stations were being led around by the Lofton County Free Voice, which had started kicking the Big Loft police department where it really hurt. The paper had the FOIA data to show why the department's top men had gotten involved a criminal conspiracy to destroy the paper, and the paper started putting it out, every day of the week, along with its other related stories.

All the while, H.F. Lee came to work at 7:45am, left at 5pm, and then filed a report on Thursday showing that he estimated closing the Godfrey case by Friday – eight days after closing the Woodard case, without even a procedural hiccup caused by the Gilligan House Burning and all that went with that. Captain Lee was on schedule, while everything was collapsing around him and he was part of the reason for the collapse.

At last, this was too much for the acting commissioner. On Thursday at 6, when he returned after a grueling day to the office and found a copy of Captain Lee's newest report, he said to the report everything he wanted to say to the person who had written it, in a tirade of cursing and swearing not heard in the office since segregation had ended in Virginia. After that, the acting commissioner began to make phone calls – something was going to have to be done.

Acting Commissioner Pendleton got up early on Friday just to observe … the Angel of Death walked to work most days, and sure enough, around the corner he came at 7:35am, his long stride efficient but unhurried. He had ten minutes to work with at that point, and took two minutes of that time to carefully remove a copy of the Lofton County Free Voice from the community poster board across the street, fold it twice, put it in in his inside pocket, and then cross back to the side the station was on. He then waited, and then smiled, broadly, as a little old woman, well-dressed and looking purposeful though slow-moving, came to the corner.

“This is the part of my day that encourages me the most!” she said. “Thank you for always being here, Captain Lee!”

“My pleasure and honor, Judge Brown,” he said gently, and offered his arm to her to help her across the street and then up the steep stairs into the county courthouse.

Four minutes left: Captain Lee came lightly down the courthouse stairs and again crossed the street, and then walked into police headquarters, tagging his fob to the proper place – clocked in, 7:45am. After that and only after that – 8:00am – did the men from Internal Affairs arrive to start looking over the situation. The acting commissioner wanted everything arranged before bringing Captain Lee to face them.

8:45am – new problem. The Free Voice that day had released names of Big Loft officers involved in some of the worst of the harassment and false arrests of Black citizens in Tinyville. None of them were on administrative leave. The protesters and reporters from all available news agencies were in front of headquarters by 8:45. They began reading the passages from the Free Voice aloud for the rest of the press. Everybody coming to work at the regular time had to wade through that to start their day – including some of the men whose firing the protesters were clamoring for.

Inside, the acting commissioner had to spend half of his day getting that whole situation under control, including interviewing the officers named and putting them on administrative leave.

Finally Captain Lee was summoned; the acting commissioner could hardly believe his own ears as he said into the phone, “Captain Lee, could you just please step over to my office when you have a convenient moment?”

The men from IA just stared in surprise, but, they didn't understand – yet.

If Captain Lee had not had a convenient moment until the world ended, the acting commissioner had just given him an out. However, his response was typical: “I am even now on my way, Commissioner.”

It took all of five minutes – the door of the office was open – before Captain Lee's measured step was heard on approach, and he was glimpsed through the door, in the secretary's office outside. Just at that time, there was a woman's cry, and the sound of many things beginning to fall. Captain Lee's figure darted to his right, and the falling noises stopped.

“Oh, Captain, thank you!” cried Ms. Thornton, the commissioner's secretary. “I've been telling people that this serving table for coffee and refreshments has been literally on its last legs for weeks, but nobody in grounds and facilities has been paying attention! That would have been such a mess, and I just can't take any more messes right now ... thank you!”

“My pleasure and honor, ma'am,” he said. “While I am holding this end, move the heavier items off, and it will balance itself. Then, put those items back here, and here. The table will hold up a little while longer, and I will call down to grounds and facilities on your behalf.”

“OK … oh, my, that worked well!”

“Do you have copies of what you sent, and how long ago you began?”

“Yes, sir, right here.”

“Thank you … hello? This is indeed Mrs. Thornton's desk but this is Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee speaking. With whom do I have the honor to speak? Mr. Marsh? Good afternoon. I am on my way to the commissioner's office, but had to turn aside to spare Mrs. Thornton serious injury and the outer office serious need for cleaning because this table she has been asking to have replaced for several weeks is not replaced … No, Mr. Marsh, I am not going to do another requisition in writing because you have nine requisitions in writing from Ms. Thornton, and you have kept her waiting, in clear and present danger to both her and the commissioner and his guests, for five weeks, two days, four hours and fifty-five minutes. You have exactly five minutes to get that table here, Mr. Marsh.”

Five minutes later, just as Captain Lee checked his watch, two men from grounds and facilities came in with Ms. Thornton's new serving table, and in ten minutes, she was all set up again and happy.

“Captain Lee, you are an angel!”

“Since the word for angel is really an old word for messenger-servant, I accept your sweet compliment in the spirit in which you intend it, ma'am.”

“I'd kiss you, but we're on duty!”

Captain Lee checked his watch with a smile.

“Two hours, fifty-nine minutes to wait.”

Ms. Thornton giggled like a young girl.

“Oh, Captain Lee, you're so timely and sweet! Anyway, the acting commissioner is in, with some other folks.”

“Thank you, Ms. Thornton.”

Captain Lee then headed for the inner office, but stopped as he heard what everyone else heard – rapid footsteps coming toward the outer office, and a door flung open.

“Captain Lee! Captain Lee!”

The captain turned around in the doorway of the inner office.

“Yes, Lieutenant Longstreet?”

“You were right, sir – I followed up on that tip you gave me, and I found old Mrs. Goddard in a tiny nursing home in Smallwood! She's willing to be interviewed from her hospice bed!”

“Go do the interview, Lieutenant.”

“What? But I thought –?”

“Under normal circumstances I would do it, but there is a reason I have spent half the week preparing you to do it if the tip bore fruit. I may be placed on administrative leave, in which case Captain Hayes will have to take over the Florence case. But he cannot get to it until Monday.

“Mrs. Goddard is dying, Lieutenant – her condition and medications are constantly in flux and trending downward. There is no guarantee she will be in condition to think and speak clearly or even be alive by Monday. So, you go do it, Lieutenant, and report to me if I am still here or to Captain Hayes on Monday. I have every confidence in you: go do it.”

“Yes, sir, Captain Lee!”

Lieutenant Longstreet went running, only to be recalled by his captain.

“Do you have your tape recorder, Longstreet?”

“I'll go to my desk and get it.”

“Save time. Here's mine.”

“Oh, wow – thank you, sir, yes, indeed, I'm going now!”

The footsteps retreated as swiftly as they had come, and at last, Captain Lee turned around and faced those who were about to decide his professional fate.

“My apologies, sirs. A break in the Florence case, at last.”

Handshakes and introductions all around, while the acting commissioner's discomfort grew and the IA men began to understand. It was like the day Captain Lee had come in for his interview; he was cordial and easy of manner, but you just knew he had sized everyone up before he sat down to talk, and knew he could take or leave them. At some point in that sizing up, he had decided he could take any one of those men to the grave if necessary. All the men presently in that office knew that, and it destroyed the power dynamic they should have enjoyed.

The acting commissioner and the IA men had their questions ready; they had made sheets up, sheets that they suddenly were too sheepish to show. Something about Captain Lee, and the easy way he drew out his pencil and notepad, unnerved them.

“Oh, you won't need those, Captain,” the acting commissioner said. “I don't have any orders, exactly. We just want to ask a few questions about last Saturday.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Lee said. “I stand ready to answer any questions you may have, Commissioner and gentlemen.”

No statement could have been made more appropriately, in a more mild-mannered way. There was nothing in his body language that betrayed any sign that he was acting a role. Yet it was the exact same answer he had given during his interview – and four months later, he had destroyed three of the seven men who had heard him say it the first time.

It would be four, in the end, for Acting Commissioner Pendleton did what everybody knows you're not supposed to do with the Angel of Death. On the other hand, you can't interview someone without looking them in the face, and in the eyes.

The vision was among the most beautiful any Virginian could hope to see, of a handsome and idolized face come once again to life, in calm, peaceful repose, the marble slightly tinted with lively rose, the dark eyes bright, the firm mouth, square chin, and huge cranium as solid as one might have imagined them being, the hair still mostly dark because of youth, for this Lee was in still in his middle forties.

Yet since one had to accept that this Lee, meek and mild on a Friday afternoon, had swept away three of his superiors and a goodly portion of his department six days and 12 hours before, and still could present this meek and mild, then one had to accept other realities … how Washington, and Jefferson, Madison, and two Lees could have been mild-mannered gentlemen, loving to their friends and loved ones, generally personable to everyone they met, and still brutalizers of their slaves – torturers, rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and, at the last, traitors to their own nation in a futile attempt to maintain the right to continue brutalizing Africans in America.

To Acting Commissioner Pendleton, the world as he understood it – including his own proudly held view of Confederate General Pendleton, his great-great-grandfather – depended on things being just one way. His foreparents had to be heroes, gentlemen, patriots, loving fathers and husbands – all that was good. Admit for one moment that Black people were right, and that accurate historians in the North and West were right – accept any evidence that such men could be all of what they were described as being, and the whole thing went up like a puff of smoke.

Captain Lee was looking back across Commissioner Pendleton's desk. The colonel-turned-captain – this exceedingly mild-mannered modern officer and gentleman who in a night turned on and swept away the most powerful men in his own department when they crossed the line – was real. This was the true cause of the terror the acting commissioner felt about Captain Lee. Accept him for all of it, and one also had to accept his ancestors and Virginia and America for all of it. He was living, breathing, irrefutable evidence of how that all could be – and was – true.

One hour later, Lieutenant Longstreet returned to find Captain Lee at his desk, writing his report on the close of the Godfrey case.

“What happened, sir?”

“You tell me – what did Mrs. Goddard have to say?”

“She said everything you said she was going to say! She killed Mr. Florence and had that trailer park built over and around him after filling his shallow grave with formaldehyde from Mr. Goddard's job, and she said she killed him because he was molesting her great-niece and nobody in the family was willing to turn him in!”

“That was what the evidence suggested,” Captain Lee said, “and is the only explanation that fits the facts. How long does she have?”

“The doctor says she has until Wednesday.”

“Transcribe the interview now and write your report Monday, and when she dies, we will officially close the Florence case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well done, Lieutenant Longstreet.”

“Thank you, sir – but what happened? You're still here. What happened with Commissioner Pendleton and Internal Affairs?”

“Just as we were about to begin, the acting commissioner pitched forward over his desk, unconscious.”

“Did he make it?”

“Sadly, Lieutenant, he did not. He died right in front of us, of a massive heart attack.”

Captain Lee sighed heavily, and his marble composure dissolved into a look of deep sorrow.

“It has been a terrible week,” he said, “and my decisions are a large part of how terrible.”

Lieutenant Longstreet looked both ways and behind him, and Captain Lee reached over and turned up the volume on the Piedmont blues.

“That's why you keep all that on?” the lieutenant said, with a slight smile.

“Partially,” the captain said. “It serves many purposes.”

The lieutenant sat down at the other side of his captain's desk, and spoke in a low voice.

“Somebody had to do it, Captain Lee. Somebody had to. When I came here six months ago, I thought police work was about community and justice and doing the right thing. Then I came here, and the corruption and weakness was suffocating. The turnover in this department is huge because of it.

“I was going to leave, but then, you came, Captain Lee, and you weren't about feathering your own nest, but about getting things done right. Many hate you here, because of that, but I and a bunch of others feel differently, and our feelings didn't change last weekend. Somebody had to do it, Captain Lee. Too many people have been getting away with too much for too long. Somebody had to do it, and I thank God that it was you.”

Captain Lee's face suddenly colored up in a flush of strong emotion. He did not say anything for a few minutes, but the lieutenant could tell he had touched something deep inside his senior officer's soul.

“Lieutenant,” he said at last, “what you have said makes the consequences no easier, but that they are easier than what came before for you and your oncoming cohort of young officers does provide me some much-needed perspective.”

The bud of a smile touched his lips.

“Well, since we will both be here at least through Monday, I had better finish my report and you had better transcribe Mrs. Goddard's confession with your notes. When that is done, we can get out of here and rest this weekend before tackling Donato and Keys.”

“Actually rest this weekend – sounds good to me, Captain.”

“And to me also, Lieutenant, believe me!”