Crossroads

Mississippi, Late AUGUST 2014

My lucky day, he thought, every cop in the area seems to be taking a siesta.

Adam Pittman continued pressing the gas, blasting through rural Mississippi. Getting closer to his destination as he raced the setting sun.

Later he would learn luck had nothing to do with it; every cop in the area was at a murder scene.

Pittman had flown into Memphis earlier in the day, then caught a charter flight to Mississippi, landing at Jackson Municipal Airport. There he rented a Ford Focus and pointed the car southwest. The landscape he drove lay flat as a deflated balloon, with clusters of trees, an occasional shopping mall and, dotting the terrain here and there, a small business: tire store, fence installer, welding shop. But most of it seemed like an endless stretch of green foliage.

Fifteen miles from the airport, the air conditioning had conked out but instead of turning back, Pittman had rolled down the windows and pressed on. It would be only another thirty minutes or so till he hit his destination. The air coming through the window was hot and sticky. Late August in the South.

He kept wiping his brow to keep the sweat from stinging his eyes. Pittman wasn’t used to such weather, having grown up in San Francisco where sea breezes cooled everything down. Even the heat in Iraq had been hot and dry. Sometimes a sand storm would blow in and made him feel as if his skin was being stripped from his bones. But it was never so humid that Pittman felt as if he were swimming through an invisible sea. Like here.

To the west the sun was turning the stringy clouds red. But even the coming dusk didn’t promise much relief from the heat.

A road sign appeared, announcing the town of Hazlehurst. Pittman took the off-ramp and soon spotted the Loveless Motel. The name brought an ironic chuckle as he thought of how many illicit affairs must have been committed inside its walls over the years.

Gravel crackled under his tires as Pittman pulled into the parking lot. He nosed the Ford into a spot near the motel’s office. Got out and stretched his legs. Twisted at the waist, first left, then right, hearing his spine pop as he loosened up from the long drive.

As Pittman stepped inside the office a little bell atop the door chimed. Like in some old movie from the forties or fifties. But it didn’t seem to alert anyone. Pittman stepped to the front desk, found a bell on the counter and hit it a couple of times. Still no one stepped from the back room.

A TV was bolted to one wall, tuned to the local news.

“The police aren’t saying much,” a reporter said on the TV. She was standing in front of an old church cemetery. “But we do know that the victim was female.”

Pittman froze. I got here too late!

Just his luck—the girl he was searching for and the dead body, they’d turn out to be one and the same.

“She was stabbed to death and her body was discovered here, inside St. Jude’s Cemetery,” the reporter added. The reporter looked young to Pittman, as if she’d just graduated from high school. First job, evidently, the ink on her degree in journalism hardly dry. Her low-cut red blouse too sexy and inappropriate for a graveyard murder. “Whether or not the desecration of the cemetery and the woman’s death are connected is not known at the moment but it’s assumed they are.”

The screen split, adding a news anchor, a chubby middle-aged man in an olive green suit. “Have the police been able to identify the woman?”

“No ID was found on her,” the reporter said. “All the police seem to know at this moment is that she’s white and believed to be in her late thirties.”

Pittman sighed with relief. Not his girl.

He grabbed the remote from the counter and hit the mute button. Then he glanced around the drab motel office and hit the bell on the counter a couple of more times.

There was an empty food wrapper on the counter with the remains of a KFC meal. Next to it sat a half-eaten donut and a near-empty Diet Coke. So it appeared someone had been around moments ago.

“Hey,” Pittman called out, “anyone here?”

No one answered. He stepped around the counter to see if anyone might have fallen asleep in the back room. Then a fat guy stepped out with a rolled up magazine in his hand. He gave Pittman a practiced smile but his eyes appeared on-guard.

He tossed the magazine onto the chair behind the counter but it rolled off and tumbled to the floor, unfolding as it fell. A photo with a smiling nude stared up at Pittman. The fat guy kicked the magazine under the chair and, as Pittman looked up, he noticed a Beretta on a shelf behind the counter. A hidden automatic seemed excessive security for such a small rural town. But this was Mississippi, a concealed carry state. And, who knew, perhaps the news report of a murdered woman had made the clerk jumpy.

“Can I help you?” the clerk said and he moved to block Pittman’s view of both the magazine and the gun.

His words were drawn out as if they were taffy. Not an uncommon trait in rural Mississippi.

Pittman withdrew to the other side of the counter, pulled an 8 by 10 from the file in his hand and laid it on the counter. Tapping the photo he said, “You seen these kids?”

The 8 by10 showed three older teens. The one at the center had black spiky hair and stared sullenly at the camera. His name was Jeremy Sullivan, 19. Wore mascara around his eyes. His heavily tattooed arms encircled an electric guitar as if it were the woman of his dreams. Still, with one hand, he managed to give the “devil’s horns” hand gesture.

To Jeremy’s right stood a chubby redheaded guy: Tommy Hittleman, also 19. Tommy was holding drumsticks, had piercings in his ears, nose and eyebrow and grinned like someone had just offered him a free beer. Unlike Jeremy, Tommy only wore one tattoo, a star on his neck.

To Jeremy’s left stood Penny Myers. Seventeen years old but looked twenty-five with all the makeup she was wearing. Still, she was a stunning young woman with exotic features. In the photo she was wearing a blonde wig but Pittman knew her hair was black. One hand held a tambourine and the other was perched provocatively on her hip as she smiled sexily at the camera.

“Since this photo was taken,” Pittman said and pointed at Jeremy, “this skinny guy holding the guitar is reported to have grown a Van Dyke beard. He also now sports a nose ring and a ring at his left eyebrow. The pudgy guy next to him may or may not be wearing facial hair. The woman should appear pretty much as she does here, although she now wears a single tattoo of a butterfly that is sometimes—depending on what she’s wearing—visible above her right breast.”

The clerk blinked but his expression didn’t change.

“They ring any bells?”

The clerk gave a half-shrug as if no bells were ringing. As if his mind was still on the naked girls near his feet.

Pittman sighed, pulled out his billfold and laid a twenty across the photo. The clerk looked at it as if he didn’t recognize what it was. So Pittman laid a second twenty on top of it.

The clerk scooped up the bills and examined both as if Pittman were a known counterfeiter.

“C’mon, I know they were here. I traced the girl’s credit card to this place.”

“You a cop? You got cop eyes.”

“I’m not a cop. I’m just trying to find the girl for her father. He’s worried about her. Now did you see them or not?”

The clerk studied the photo, then looked up and asked, “So you’re what?—one of those private dicks, like on TV?”

“Yeah,” Pittman said with a smile. “That’s right; a private detective.” Although that wasn’t quite true. He didn’t have a license.

“What’d these kids do?” the clerk asked before taking a bite of his donut.

“Nothing. No one’s in trouble or anything like that. It’s just the girl is seventeen. Her father wants her home to get ready for college in the fall. That’s all.”

The clerk licked the leftover sugar from his fingers, then wiped them on his pants. Picking up the photo, he studied it with half closed eyes. Paused and washed the donut down with his Diet Coke.

“So, did you see her?”

The clerk scratched his thinning hair like an amateur actor feigning befuddlement, then opened his palm and stared at the forty dollars Pittman had given him. As if they were lonely and needed company.

“Hummm, I think I seen her. Hard to say for shore. Lotta folks come through here, y’know?” He spoke as if they were standing in New York’s Grand Central Station.

With a shake of his head, Pittman pulled out his billfold and dropped another twenty on the counter.

The clerk grinned back and picked up the money.

“Yeah, I seen ’em. Came through here ’bout two weeks back. Maybe less. Spent two—no, three nights. But the girl ain’t no blond like in your picture. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing. And she ain’t exactly white, if y’know what I mean.”

Pittman nodded, knowing her father was African-American and her mother was Japanese. He pulled out a 5 by 7 school photo of Penny. “She looked more like this then?”

“Yeah, hair color’s right. But she had on more makeup like in the other picture.”

“They say where they were heading when they checked out?”

The clerk shrugged and said, “Nope. I got a hunch though.”

“Yeah, why is that?”

“Cause they kept askin’ a bunch o’ questions ‘bout someone named Robert Johnson. First, I figured they wanted Bob Johnson, you know—guy who owns the hardware store at the corner o’ Main. Turns out they wanted some ol’ blues guitarist who died back in the 1930s.”

“So, they were looking for a gravesite?”

“Naw, wanted to talk to some ol’ timer who might’a known Robert Johnson when he was alive.”

“And were you able to help them out?”

The clerk looked at the twenties in his hand as if he now thought they still didn’t add up to his expectations. Pittman sighed and pulled another twenty out but when the clerk reached out to take it, Pittman held on.

“No, no,” Pittman said. “No more dribbling out your answers. You give me the information I need, then you get the money.”

The clerk said, “Yeah, shore, I helped ’em out. Sent ‘em to check out Sadie’s Juke Joint. They play lots o’ blues out there. Figured someone there might know somethin’, y’know?”

“And where is Sadie’s?”

“You never heard of Sadie’s?” he asked, as if the place was as famous as Disneyland.

“I’m not from around here.”

“I reckon not. It’s a colored joint a few miles south o’ here. They’ll let you in if you’re white though. Got me a friend, Bucky James. Me and him go there ever so often. Real toe-tappin’ music. Good fried chicken too.”

Pittman had the clerk give him directions. It didn’t sound far away. Then he finally released the twenty he’d been holding onto. The clerk quickly stuffed the cash into his pants.

As Pittman was turning to leave, the clerk asked, “Why’s everyone searchin’ for these kids?”

“Everyone?”

“Yeah, two other people come through here lookin’ for ’em. A big man and a woman—I think she was one of those lesbos, y’know.”

“Together?”

“Naw,” he said with a laugh. “Separate. Man came through maybe a week ago. Woman was, humm, four days back, I reckon.”

The other searchers struck Pittman as odd and he asked if the clerk knew why they’d been asking.

“No idea,” the clerk said. “But it’s becomin’ a good side business for me.” He patted the pocket where he’d stuffed the money.

When Pittman reached the door, the clerk called out, “Sadie’s ain’t gonna be open till ’round about nine tonight. How ‘bout rentin’ a room? Then y’all can listen to some blues, ask about them kids and mosey on back for a good night’s sleep.”