Swift Justice: The Southern Way (19 page)

“Thanks, we’ll be back for the Sheriff later,” said Perry. “Oh, by the way, are the bodies still at the morgue?”

“Yes,” answered Junior.

~~~~

Hall and Perry walked out of the police station. Now, there was substantial activity outside the police station. There was a CBS and NBC truck parked outside with numerous reporters and cameramen. An apparent reporter noticed Hall and Perry and quickly darted over to them.

“Are you the FBI?” asked the reporter.

Apparently, walking around with dark suits, white shirts, black ties, and short haircuts revealed that they were with the FBI. Perry did not want to speak to the media at this early stage. They may use them later once they had a handle on things. But Perry couldn’t completely ignore them. “Yes, we are with the FBI,” said Perry, but he still kept walking away.

“Are you investigating the murders?” asked the same reporter.

Perry noticed that other reporters noticed them and were all practically running towards them. “I’m sorry; we can’t discuss that right now.”

“Then, why are you down here?”

“Sorry, we have to go,” replied Perry. Perry and Hall quickly got into their car and drove away.

“Man, things are starting to heat up,” Perry said to Hall in the car.

“What did I tell you—the calm before the storm,” replied Hall. “This thing is really going to heat up.”

“Yeah,” said Perry. “What did you think of the Sheriff’s son?”

“Well, he’s definitely holding things back. He’s not telling us the whole story. When we listen to the tape, maybe we’ll find an inconsistency that we may have missed.”

“Okay, so what’s our next step? What do you think we should to?”

Hall responded. “Well, I think we should check into our hotel before the media guys get all the rooms. We need to try to stay at the Walnut Lane Hotel because that is where Howard Goldstein is staying, and I think we need to speak to him next. This way we could kill two birds with one stone.”

“Okay, great,” replied Perry. “We’ll get our room, go to his room, and interview him. He says he has this Deron Brooks. We’ll have to get Deron Brooks.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Hall. “I mean these guys are foaming at the mouth for this Deron according to our reports.”

“Well, we’ll have to be careful, but we need to speak to him. We need to speak to Leon Brooks. Let’s make a list.”

Hall took out his notepad and a pen while Perry drove, and Hall started writing. Hall spoke while he was writing. “Okay, we need to speak to Howard Goldstein, Deron Brooks, Leon Brooks, the guy in the hospital—”

Perry interrupted, “Man, I would like to get to the guy in the hospital first before the Klan gets to him.”

“Yeah, me too. We have so many fucking things to do in a short amount of time.”

Perry continued. “Okay, we also need to go to the crime scenes, the morgue. What else?”

“Oh, we need to come back and interview the Sheriff. Then, we’ll have to go from there and see where everything leads us.”

~~~~

Junior approached his father, who was sleeping on a davenport in his office. He nudged him gently. “Dad, dad—”

“What! You keep waking me fucking up.”

“Dad, look, you got to wake up. I’m sorry. The media is here. I looked outside, and there is a CBS and a NBC truck. They’re coming in. They want to speak to someone.”

“Fuck them.”

“I know that. We got more problems than that, though. The FBI is asking a lot of question about Deron. They want to know why he was kidnapped.”

“What did you tell him,” asked the Sheriff abruptly.

“I just told them what you said. I didn’t know anything, and that you got to talk to them.”

“Good.”

“Okay, but here’s the interesting thing: they asked about Atwood.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“What did they ask?”

“They asked whether he had any involvement in the murders. It was as if they knew. It was weird.”

“Oh shit,” said the Sheriff. Secretly, he was surprisingly pleased with this news. It would be nice if the Judge was suddenly under attack by the federal government. The Sheriff was getting pissed off with the stupid decisions that the Judge made in the past few days. It was about time that the Judge started getting his own hands dirty instead of pawning everything off on the Sheriff. Maybe the Sheriff could be the new Imperial Wizard.

“But anyway, Dad—”

“So what did you tell them?”

“I told them that he didn’t have any involvement at all. I don’t know why they were even asking it, but they’re definitely on to something there.” Junior paused. “Dad, we need to decide what to do about Deron. We have to have a good answer.”

The Sheriff was groggy and not thinking straight. He hated to ask his dopey son for advice, but he had no choice. He couldn’t think of any ideas, so he swallowed his pride and decided to ask his son for advice. “Son, what do you think we should do?”

“I think that we just say that we released Deron like we did all the others except we released him earlier, and he did
not
escape. The reporter got it wrong. He misquoted you, and Deron was released, and he’s free to do whatever he wants.”

“Yeah, but they got that quote on me.”

“Well, I know that. But if we say he escaped, then we got to explain what the heck happened at that warehouse, and we can’t do that. So let’s just say we released him.”

“Where did we release him?”

“Say we released him out the back.”

“Okay, let’s talk to the Judge.”

The Sheriff got the Judge on the phone and spoke to him while Junior sat nearby. “Judge, it’s Jefferson.”

“What’s up?” asked the Judge.

“Well, the plans in place. The FBI has actually arrived, and Junior just spoke to them. We just wanted to give you an update.”

“Okay.”

“They claimed that they will leave if they determine that this is a local matter. They’re really asking a lot of questions about Deron, and Junior here thinks that we should just say that we released him. We say he did not escape, and the reporter miss quoted the Sheriff.”

“I see. Not a bad idea. Junior, steps up to the plate again. That’s phenomenal. Okay, go with that. What else?”

“A lot. Junior says that NBC and CBS are here.”

“Oh, did anyone speak to them?”

“No, not yet, but there is something more important than that.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, the FBI was asking about you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, they specifically asked your name, and they want to know if you had any involvement in the murders.”

“What did Junior say?”

“Well, of course, Junior told them nothing. Told them that you had nothing to do with the murders and that he was surprised that they would even ask a question like that.”

“Ah … that’s not good news. I don’t like that. I must be on their radar screen. I don’t like the sound of that one bit.” The Judge paused. “We need to get them out of this town.”

“But what about our plan?” asked the Sheriff. “Do you think we should still go ahead with the Social Club idea?”

“What do you think?” asked the Judge.

“Yeah, I do,” replied the Sheriff. “I think burning down the Social Club will serve two purposes. It will distract things and get the FBI to start investigating the Negroes instead of us.”

“Okay, let’s stick with it then. Have Junior do it as soon as possible before the FBI gets too far. I’m getting a little nervous, here. I don’t like the FBI crawling up my ass.”

“I wouldn’t like it either,” the Sheriff said. How does it feel, motherfucker, thought the Sheriff? The Sheriff liked hearing the Judge scared.

“Well, they’re going to be crawling up your ass with this Deron thing. They’re not going to just let that go especially with your quote to the media. They’re going to still question you on that.”

“Yeah, I’ll be ready for them, though. I’ll just say he didn’t escape.”

“Okay, tell us what you know,” Perry said to Goldstein.

Perry and Hall sat across from Goldstein at a table in Hall and Perry’s room. They arrived at the hotel and saw a state trooper guarding the hotel from the lobby. They ran into some problems checking into the hotel with the clerk because the person didn’t want to rent a room to them. Hall and Perry convinced the person otherwise by making threats of a federal arrest if they didn’t cooperate. Once they checked into their room, they called for Goldstein to come to their room. This way they could easily set up their recording devices inside the room instead of in their briefcases. The recordings were crucial because they always discovered things that they didn’t noticed before, or they could go back and listen to something based on new information that they may have received subsequent to the initial interview.

This was a delicate situation for the FBI agents. Their leader, Edgar Hoover, openly hated the ACLU and accused them of being a secret Communist organization. But Hall and Perry would effectively be working with an attorney for the ACLU for their current assignment. They had to be careful on how they handled this situation. They needed to make sure that the media didn’t get a hold of this secret meeting. They did not want this to get back to Hoover.

Goldstein spoke. “First of all, I want to say thank you so much for coming up here. I know that your boss, Edgar Hoover, does not like our organization, but I can assure you that we are not Communists. We’re just trying to help disadvantage people, especially Negroes.”

“Okay, whatever,” said Perry. “You’re right; my boss doesn’t like your organization. Because of that, you cannot let anyone know that we spoke. If you do, we will leave right away. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, just tell us what happened.”

Again, both Hall and Perry took studious notes while Goldstein explained the situation to them.

“Okay, a lot has happened in two days,” said Goldstein. “It is amazing what has gone on. I have several clients. Leon Brooks was the first victim. He was kidnapped.”

“How do you know this?” asked Perry.

“This is per my clients,” replied Goldstein.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“He works at a construction site. They kidnapped him—the three people who were ultimately killed. They hit him over the head with a club of some kind, put him in a trunk, and drove him to this secluded site in the woods. They burned him with a cigarette three times, one just under his eye. They had a noose around his neck and were ready to lift him up, and someone came out of nowhere and shot the three white guys dead. Shot them twice with a shotgun and then kicked them. The guy who killed them gave Leon the keys to get out of the handcuffs, so Leon eventually escaped.”

“Do you have any evidence besides Leon Brooks’s word?” asked Hall.

“Yes, a reporter from the Austin Gazette, Ryan Ward, and I went to the crime scene and found the actual noose. Ryan Ward took a picture of the noose. Plus, we saw blood in the trunk of the car, and Ryan took a picture of that as well.”

“Do you have any idea on who did it?” asked Hall.

“No, I have no idea. I’m not from this town. But I think it’s clear that the Klan, here, ordered the hanging of Leon, but it went against them in the end.”

“What do you know about the Klan, here?” asked Perry. They would switch off on their questioning of a true cooperating witness. Perry would now ask some questions.

“The ACLU knows a lot about the Klan in the State of Texas. We believe the leader of the whole Texas Klan is located right here in Dodge County.”

Hall and Perry exchanged glances at each other. “Who’s that?” Perry asked innocently as if he didn’t already know.

Goldstein sighed before he spoke and seemed scared, Perry noticed. “Well, it is Atwood Baker, the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. And we also believe that practically the whole Dodge County police force is part of the Klan.”

“Is that right,” Perry said suspiciously.

“Yes, but of course, I can’t prove any of this. The Atwood Baker theory is more of a hunch, but the police being part of the Klan is pretty clear. They allow the Klan to commit horrible crimes on the Negroes. And in some cases, like last night, they were directly involved in the crime.”

“How’s that?” asked Perry.

“Well, the crime that happened last night, the Sheriff drove Deron to the warehouse and locked him up to the table.”

“Yes, tell us about this other crime.”

“Well, I can give you the short version, but it would probably be best to speak to the actual witness of the crime, Deron Brooks.”

“Yes, we’re told that you have him,” said Perry. “Where is he at?”

Goldstein moved closer to the FBI agents and spoke in a whisper, “He’s hidden in a local church.”

“Okay, give us the short version, and then we’ll interview Deron Brooks,” said Perry.

Goldstein told them the story, as he knew it.

“Tell us about what the Sheriff said about Deron Brooks,” said Perry. This was a key question for the FBI, and Perry anxiously waited for an answer.

“Yes, he claims that Deron Brooks escaped and that he was probably the one who killed the two victims. He said that Deron was a suspect and asked us to see if we could find him.”

“He asked you?” asked Perry.

“Well, we had the state trooper with us. I think he was mostly asking the state trooper to help. But the state trooper’s boss called, and the state trooper has to go back today to Austin. He was planning on leaving as soon as you guys showed up.”

Perry realized that they needed more FBI agents because there was so much work to do. He and Hall would have to separate because one of them needed to go to the crime scenes and maybe get some fingerprints and other evidence, and the other needed to continue the interviews. He would need to strategize with Hall once they finished with Goldstein. Perhaps they could use Goldstein’s car.

Perry heard a loud noise from outside that sounded like a siren. Hall looked into the direction of the window, but the drapes were drawn.

“Hmm, I wonder what that is?” asked Hall.

“I hope it’s not another murder,” said Goldstein.

Perry stood up and peeked through the drapes but couldn’t see anything. The siren continued but was dissipating. It must have passed by, thought Perry.