For NaNoWriMo: The Field of Blood, part 15

The view of the case from James Varick IV, editor-in-chief of the Lofton County Free Voice, the Black newspaper that has been shaking up Lofton County and is doing its own investigation of Mr. Oscar Rett's death, and then the opening of the case to both Captain Hamilton in the midst of his family and to Mr. Varick in the midst of his ... You can get caught up on part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, and part 14 to catch up on all the twists and turns!

To be the eye of the hurricane, spun off the coast of West Africa and following the path of the Triangular Trade, following the currents that had carried the slave ships and their human cargo in order to visit the shores settled by the descendants of the enslaved and the slavers, visit in unbridled rage except in that eye – to be the calm around which all the mighty power rotates and revolves – that core that, should it lose its calm, would also cause the storm itself to dissipate and lose its focused power to change the landscape …

James Varick IV, editor-in-chief of the Lofton County Free Voice, wondered about such things in the company in the publisher, Harvey Harrison, and the chief funder, Thomas Stepforth Sr.

“Stay the course,” Mr. Stepforth was known to say. “We have indeed unleashed hurricane-force winds in speaking loudly and clearly about the last fifty years of evils done in Lofton County toward our people, and now that news and other organizations are paying attention, the storm may grow. Yet stay the course. We have just now resisted unto blood.”

Mr. Stepforth shared the general opinion of the Black population of Lofton and surrounding counties – that Mr. Rett, owing to his position in the Lofton County Black Historical Preservation Society, had been lynched as revenge for the trouble the society had caused both Tinyville and the Topia Development Group, and that the spot of the 1967 massacre had been chosen to make the point.

Given that the Black community of Lofton County had absolutely no confidence in any of the police departments outside Tinyville, the three founders of the Lofton County Free Voice had been greatly relieved when reporters who had been first to the scene of Mr. Rett's hanging had reported that Captain Hamilton had quashed Sheriff Nottingham's attempt to snatch jurisdiction from Tinyville in favor of the county. That had opened up a slim possibility for a fair investigation – although the Free Voice did not count on it coming from the Tinyville police department.

Mr. Varick and Mr. Harrison had ordered a non-interfering investigative journalism response, their confidence in Captain Hamilton extending far enough to count on him to be permissive so long as their investigation did not interfere with his. The Free Voice had ten times as much staff to devote to the case, and at Mr. Varick's request, his friend and revered private investigator Jetson Black came down from Charlottesville to coordinate the investigation. Mr. Black had also brought a copy of Morton Data Master with him, licensed and prepared for the Free Voice as a gift from Victor Morton, founder of Morton Technologies.

The Lofton County Free Voice investigation ran on different lines than Captain Hamilton's – he was concerned with the one issue of Mr. Rett's death, while the Free Voice sought to cover all the related issues and exactly how they related – for example, Sheriff Nottingham's attempt at a cover up had led to the pull of all available information about the 1967 massacre and the surfacing of all of it, including the role the sheriff and his elder brothers had played. The mishaps of Topia Development Group also made for important news, for it allowed the Free Voice to publicly put forth the case the Lofton County Black Historical Preservation Society had lost in court and also put forward the possibility that the case had been lost in court only due to Topia's corruption.

The latter portion of the newspaper's work had borne fruit at exactly 10:15am, when the Tinyville City Council had voted to void the development deal with Topia Development Group. It took ten minutes for the news to get to Mr. Varick where he was – and for him to know how long to let the celebration around him last and then to tamp it down.

Something had happened – more or less – that Sheriff Nottingham and many other corrupt law enforcement officers in Lofton County now jailed or dead might have wished to have happened in the summer: the Lofton County Free Voice at last had settled into a central location. Such a large investigation and the management of all the data being acquired and processed under such circumstances required a place, although not much of a place. Five church basements were serving as host, a different one every day – people who were meant to be at the spot had to come and leave under cover of darkness for the safety of the churches and the people. Food and water and other supplies had all been laid in on Sunday.

Mr. Black stayed wherever the investigative center was for the day, giving guidance to the investigative reporter teams, directing their activity based on data received, and working up the growing data set in Morton Data Master after it had been discussed with the editors assigned to decide what data was strong enough to present to he public, and thus get sent on to the editorial staff. Mr. Black was assisted ably in many things by Mrs. Ella Varick, wife to the editor-in-chief, and the widowed Mrs. Hettie Varick Drake, the heartbroken but resolute beloved of Mr. Rett.

Mr. Varick talked with Mr. Harrison and Mr. Stepforth about the necessity of remaining calm and keeping everyone on an even keel, but it was never harder than when working with Mrs. Drake … she was so beautiful even in her extreme grief, and still so willing to work with others, that it was hard not to fall to pieces for her sake, because everyone knew how much she was hurting. Mr. Rett had been the first happiness in her life since the death of Mr. Drake – then her son had threatened suicide and then Mr. Rett had died so terrible a death. Even Mr. Stepforth, who was probably the calmest and coldest of all, found it difficult to retain his composure when he considered what Mrs. Drake had to be going through. Mr. Varick, who had grown up very close to his cousin, found it next to impossible.

Yet the next to impossible had to be done, as the death of Mr. Rett remained the horrible center around which every other development orbited. “Don't let them sweep it under the rug,” one was always reminding another. “1967 but never again!” So, on a parallel track to Captain Hamilton, but taking full advantage of his permissive stance toward their gleaning information from tracking him, the Lofton County Free Voice was also building up a huge store of data, and, by Wednesday, Mr. Black could see what direction the data was pointing in for some things.

“It's that darned coroner's report, sitting there like a lead weight,” Mr. Black said to Mr. Varick about it. “It forces the development of an alternative explanation of the facts – and in reality, what Mr. Rett told you the last time you spoke only makes the necessity of developing the alternative even more necessary.”

And thus, that too was being developed as another level to the corruption of Topia – Mr. Varick had heard from several other grassroots organization heads in and around Lofton County that Captain Hamilton had asked about the possibility that Topia had a paid informant who had infiltrated their organizations and weakened them against Topia's lines of attack. Mr. Varick had called some others: there were 32 organizations in total. Captain Hamilton had been quite industrious with his lieutenant … but Topia, too, had been quite industrious and must have had an industrious informant.

What Mr. Black had been referring to had been what Mr. Varick had meant to share with Captain Hamilton when the call about Mr. Hancock had come through: in their last conversation, Mr. Rett had told Mr. Varick that Topia had gone too far and had revealed some information to him by mistake, and that the Lofton County Free Voice and the Lofton County Black Historical Preservation Society should prepare one last counterattack against Topia and Tinyville – “One mo' again, like our foreparents used to say,” he had said. He had been laughing when he hung up the phone, the sounds of his guests at the party he was having that night sounding just as cheery.

The next afternoon, Mr. Varick and his cousin Mrs. Drake had chatted – she had called to tell her cousin that “J.O. said we still have a lever that can't be touched” – and they had found out that Mr. Rett had confided in each of them the same thing. They were still discussing this, although they had not known it, at the very time of Mr. Rett's death.

The next conversation had been after the news had hit. Mr. Varick didn't call his cousin; he and his wife had gotten into their cars and driven over to see Mrs. Drake to tell her. She had staggered backwards into the arms of her son Dell – “They got him! They got J.O.! Oh, God, what are we supposed to do with this?”

Mrs. Drake was sincere in her Christian faith; she had maintained her chastity to Mr. Rett's affectionate frustration, and actually, although the fact had not been divulged to Captain Hamilton, the romantic portion of the relationship had ended because Mrs. Drake had sensed Mr. Rett was not faithful, at least not to the Lord. “He loves the world too much,” she had confided in her cousin Mr. Varick. However, the two had remained friends, and Mr. Rett had come quickly when he had heard that Dell was threatening suicide. Mrs. Drake had remembered how strong Mr. Rett had been for her; Mr. Varick had remembered how, after Mrs. Drake and Dell were settled in at the Varicks' home, he had put his head down on a table and wept, bitterly.

The Varicks had invited their cousins into their home because they knew both Dell and his mother needed more support given that Dell was depressed enough to consider suicide and was blaming his mother. The two had worked that out; the mother had been working and trying to get life back together for both of them, and had fallen in love along the way but that was over, and the son confessed how lonely and overwhelmed he felt and didn't even know where to turn without his father. He also confessed that he really did not like Mr. Rett – “it ain't my business, Mamma, and I know that, but, he ain't up to Dad's standard at all.” His mother had not liked that, although she had broken up with Mr. Rett, but the Varicks had intervened and encouraged counseling and for Dell to take his prescription medicine and for both to know they weren't alone and that the whole Varick family was there for them – and Mr. Varick had taken over with Dell, adding him to all the other Black young men to which he provided father-love.

Delford Drake III – that was Dell's full name – was a special case for Mr. Varick. He was the son of the beloved cousin Hettie, of course, but he was also a Drake, and the Black Drakes of Lofton County were known for both their emotional fragility but also their sensitivity to real things. Mr. Varick had talked to Dell quite a bit in the week after Dell had come into his home. He was wrong in what he had planned to do, but there was something to his perspective, unclouded by romantic love. He was only 16 … but he was a Drake man at that age, albeit very young and immature. One dismissed the viewpoint of a Drake man at one's peril – and, in fact, his grandfather Delford Drake Sr. had in his last decision saved the lives of a dozen people who had listened to him and gone the way he suggested while he held off all those that he could.

But of course, “They got J.O.!” was the narrative of the day, and it drove Mrs. Drake to not want to be alone waiting for Dell to get home but to go with Mrs. Varick to work on all the issues around the investigation of Mr. Rett's death. Dell too volunteered to work for the Free Voice, and was with the cheering crowd and cheering the loudest when the word came down that the Tinyville City Council had given up on paving over the site of the 1967 massacre and putting up merry-go-rounds with Topia, but instead had voting to void the contract, thus ending all plan to develop the field.

Mr. Rett had known – he knew how it would come out, because he knew something was going on with Topia. They had not been able to stop it after all by stopping him – Mrs. Drake had wept in the arms of her son for quite a long time, and they were completely reconciled on this day.

But, there was the alternative, and it had to be developed, and was being developed … as Wednesday went on, and the news came that Mr. Hancock had been released, Mr. Varick sighed while others raged, and worked with Mr. Black to get control of the situation – “Look, folks, Mr. Hancock is five feet two and already has a huge black eye from the first time he tried to mix it up with Mr. Rett. You think that little squirt could have lynched Mr. Rett, who was almost as tall and large as I am?”

“Not by himself,” someone shouted back.

“Right,” Mr. Black said. “Now we're on the right track – who else? Stay calm and keep working.”

Yet to Mr. Varick, near the end of the day, Mr. Black said, “There is an answer. Nobody is going to like it, but, you had better get prepared to deal with putting it out. One alternative is stubbornly stuck at 80 percent probability. The other has now crossed the 97th percentile, and lacks just one or two facts to be at 99.9 percent probability. Now, we're not machines nor bound by machine opinions – but I've looked at all of the data and you've looked at most of it. Barring the presence of some huge fact we are overlooking, that data is pointing in one direction.”

Mr. Varick was to be at the investigation center all day, and so had time for Mr. Black to walk him through how Morton Data Master worked and made its determinations. The time for him to get the next day's paper together was approaching quickly, so he printed a list of key known facts and the coroner's report and put them in his briefcase to examine again at home.

By the time Mr. Varick and Mr. Black ascended into darkness from the basement of Gacey Memorial AME of Tinyville, Captain Hamilton was just leaving the office after a day of exhausting tedium. “The twin canaries,” as Lieutenant O'Reilly had dubbed Tom Hancock and Tom Dillard, had ratted out everybody at their level, and so Captain Hamilton and Lieutenant O'Reilly and Captain Lee had spent the day rounding them up, questioning them, and sorting them out for whether other warrants would earn them a trip down to the county jail or whether they would have to be released. All that had yielded nothing of value. All three lawmen were frustrated.

“Okay, but, how long are we going to keep trying to prove a negative?” Lieutenant O'Reilly was saying as Captain Hamilton locked the door to the police office.

“We are not trying to prove a negative,” Captain Hamilton said. “There are two outcomes that are possible – two plausible outcomes. We have to conclusively eliminate one, and if we don't either find a piece of conclusive evidence or make sure we have dotted every I and crossed every T, significant portions of this community will feel that justice has not been done – either that time was expended and huge economic opportunity was squandered on a simple suicide to appease social justice zealots, or that a lynching has been done and covered over again. We have to keep pushing, Lieutenant – whatever the alternative proves out to be, we must show that we acted in accordance with the best principles of our profession. What we are doing – what you especially are doing – are showing a new generation a better example of how to handle such matters without communities having to continue the cycle of nothing being solved and the resentment just building with no possible resolution. We can reach the truth, and reach it in a way that can be accepted by all reasonable people. We are peace officers. We must always work toward what way will tend toward peace in the community we serve.”

“Say that again for the aging Lee warrior,” Captain Lee said, “who could have gotten through this day a lot faster than we did dealing with the people we have dealt with.”

“Oh, when you are the Angel of Death, things go quickly,” Captain Hamilton retorted, “but as peace officers, we do want the peace of living people alive to enjoy it with each other, not the quiet of the dead … although the living were tiresome today.”

“I see why Topia fell,” Captain Lee said. “Toward the end, their standard in hired criminals went right down – smoked up the money for quality like Mr. Rett.”

“It is amazing how much he was recognized and given awards by people who had no clue what he was doing to them,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said.

“That is part of the package with some types of minds,” Captain Lee said. “A desire to be recognized, to stand apart, even in their evil deeds or the good deeds they do as accessory to the evil.”

Again, a bell went off in Captain Hamilton's mind, connected to another clue – but he had seen so much data since the beginning that the reference would not come back to him at the moment.

All three officers went to dine at the Hamilton home, all three having put their money in together to bring in a great deal of the food that would laid out and eaten for the whole family and their guests. That home, full of light and love, was Captain Hamilton's mainstay, and had plenty of light and love for all who came through – there was always enough and a little more, no matter who the Lord sent through.

Lieutenant O'Reilly greatly enjoyed the time spent with the Hamilton family, and enjoyed watching his commander and his cousin relaxing … home gave them strength … but then Lieutenant O'Reilly thought of all the Black families who lived in Tinyville, who for 52 years had not known such security in their own homes, and nothing had been done about it. John Nottingham, who had lit the lynching fires although he had not killed anyone in the 1967 massacre, had been sheriff of Lofton County for 20 years – almost as long as the lieutenant had been alive.

And that was why the case had to be finished to the finish. It came to Lieutenant O'Reilly just as a Black family that was friends with the Hamiltons dropped in, and Ira and Agnew squealed and half-crawled, half-toddled to the open arms of their Black baby playmates. It had to be finished to the finish so all the little ones of every color would have the best chance that the grown folks could give them at living together in harmony and peace.

Captain Lee's thoughts were equally grave … he thought of his wife, whose family was from Lofton County, who even in New York could not leave the fear behind for decades. Vanessa Morton Lee, as much as she had loved and trusted her husband, had not left the fear behind until she had closed her eyes, with her son, and opened them in Glory. That had been the truth for far too many Black people for 400 years, for the evil of men of Captain Lee's name and class. The tears came, but they had passion greater than just sadness behind them … there was anger, a righteous fury against that evil that pushed Captain Lee to the point that he did not care what the cost of getting it right was.

Captain Hamilton was present with his family … they had guests and of course all his children needed to reconnect with him every day and the teenagers and middlers and the littler ones all had different needs, and then there was his wife, who needed him to play host role to her hostess. There was no real break for Captain Hamilton until he went to bed … but work at home re-energized him as he worked, and when he had finished passing all the way through to civilian life, it would be enough, what with Ham It Up Jewelry and Black, Hamilton, and Lee Consulting, LLC going on in partnership with Morton Technologies keeping him going to and from the house … it would be more than enough.

Yet, as Captain Lee also felt, Captain Hamilton knew the Lord had made no mistake in sending men skilled in dealing with terrorists and hard-core military law enforcement back to their roots in Lofton County to take jobs offered to them in police work. Until the Commander-in-Chief gave them new orders, police officers they would remain. Captain Hamilton had actually laughed at Captain Lee in October when Captain Lee had shared with him that Big Loft's police department had written him and his division out of the budget.

“Has the Captain of the hosts of the Lord changed your orders, Harry?” Captain Hamilton said.

“Not that I know of, although circumstances are changing.”

“Then no matter what happens to your division, you'll have a job in January in the Big Loft force, or, come down here – I need another lieutenant!”

Captain Lee had come, indeed, not at all disturbed in being subordinate to an officer he had once out-ranked … Harry Lee had never cared about any such thing, happy to play whatever role he could best play, so long as he could be working alongside those he loved. Both of them thanked God that, as they left active duty for the Reserve, their orders from far higher had allowed them both to live and work in the same field in Lofton County, in this critical time.

Yet in the middle of all this, bells were softly ringing in the back of Captain Hamilton's mind – they had multiplied. He could not put all the pieces together, but he knew: a conclusive close had to be possible. It had occurred to him as he had been coming home that he had never completed his search of Mr. Rett's apartment – he was not sure what he had missed, but he was sure it was there, somewhere. All he awaited was light on what he should be looking for.

Captain Hamilton's youngest daughters, six-year-old twins Ilene and Allison, asked for a favorite bedtime story when it was time for all that.

“Could you please tell us the story about Mary and the Lord Jesus and the perfume box?”

“Of course!”

That was from John 12 … a supper had been made for the Lord at the home of Simon the (obviously former) leper. Lazarus, raised from the dead, had been there, and many people had come to see him … Martha, his grateful sister, had served everyone her wonderful dishes … and at this point Ilene and Allison always liked to imagine their favorite dishes by their mother and aunties and family friends … but then came the part they loved, how grateful sister Mary had taken an entire alabaster box of perfume and used it all on the Lord Jesus. Somehow, at six years old, that made sense to them.

“Well, you don't just spray on a hug when you love someone!” Ilene said about it. “Your hugs have got to be full huggy – so, if you're going to use perfume on someone you love, you've just got to use the whole box.”

“Yeah,” Allison said. “That's why the food in the restaurants sometimes isn't good – you've got to use the whole seasoning, like Momma does.”

“You've got to love folks all the way,” Ilene said.

That, of course, left the door open for Captain Hamilton to speak with his little girls about how the Lord Jesus had loved them all the way to His death on the cross for their sins, and then out of the grave three days later to be their living Savior. They did not fully understand it, but they were eager to learn as much about the Savior as anyone would tell them, and they were content as their father tucked them in and kissed them good night.

However, upon exiting the girls' room, the bells clanged in Captain Hamilton's mind, louder and louder.

“Lord, I know that the song says 'Jesus is the answer,' but for this type of question?”

But, then Captain Hamilton went and read all of John 12, including the parts he would not share with his youngest daughters until they were a little older.

“Of course – that need for significance, in the midst of wrongdoing, needing to be seen as righteous – of course.”

Captain Lee had settled into the guestroom when Captain Hamilton knocked and came in, holding out his Bible.

“Read this – do you see what I see?”

“Ilene and Allison wanting to hear about Mary and the alabaster box again, Ham?”

“Always – but keep reading.”

Captain Lee read to the end of the chapter, thought for a moment, and then sighed.

“I see it. And, all things considered, there must be some evidence we have overlooked.”

“Some of it Lieutenant O'Reilly and I actually saw in the car, and it struck my attention but it wasn't clear until now. We have to go back to the apartment tomorrow, and see if there is any more.”

Across the little town of Tinyville, James Varick IV sat tiredly looking at the coroner's report and associated documents on the couch in his living room, Mrs. Varick sitting by him, her head on his shoulders while she dozed.

Mrs. Hettie Varick Drake, his cousin, came in, and sat down on the other side of him.

“Found anything new, Jimmy?”

“Nothing but new notes I have penciled in, Hettie,” he said. “The coroner's report is what it is. As for the other information, I did get a new piece – our reporter Frank Sims made a note that we didn't consider for the paper, and I'm just now seeing it. Mr. Sims heard about what Captain Hamilton and Lieutenant O'Reilly found in the glove compartment: just his phone, turned off, and his wallet, with $30 in one-dollar bills.

Mrs. Drake froze.

“How much?” she gritted

“$30.”

“In 30 bills?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Drake sank onto her cousin's other shoulder, unconscious after a strangled whisper: “That's just Sunday School … we all learned this in Sunday School!”

Mr. Varick thought about it, and then, at last, it all came together. But that was just a pointer – not focused enough – probably just enough to encourage a search … so, he would get the spare key from Mr. Rett's mother, and go to the apartment to search for the rest the next day. But meanwhile, because his spirit was as crushed as his two shoulders between Mrs. Varick and Mrs. Drake, he just put down the papers, closed his eyes, and went to sleep before the weeping could take him. There would be plenty of time and company to keep while dealing with that, later – for the moment, the key part was pushing to the finish.

Part 16 is up