The Guardians(75)

Frankie finds the house at the end of a gravel road. A dead end. It has obviously been abandoned for some time. Weeds are growing through the sagging planks of the front porch. Some shutters have fallen to the ground, others hang by rusty nails. A thick padlock secures the front door, the same around back. No windows have been broken. The tin roof looks sturdy.

Frankie walks around it once and that’s enough. He carefully steps through the weeds and returns to his truck. He’s been sniffing around Dillon for two days and thinks he’s found a decent suspect.

Riley Taft’s day job is chief custodian at the Dillon Middle School, but his real vocation is ministering to his congregation. He’s the pastor of the Red Banks Baptist Church a few miles farther out in the country. Most Tafts are buried there, some with simple headstones, some without. His flock numbers fewer than a hundred and cannot afford a full-time pastor. Thus, the custodial job. After some phone calls, he agrees to meet Frankie at the church late in the afternoon.

Riley is young, late thirties, thickset and easygoing with a wide smile. He walks Frankie through the cemetery and shows him the Taft section. His father, the oldest child, is buried between Kenny and their mother. He narrates the family tragedies: his grandfather dead at fifty-eight from some mysterious poisoning; Kenny murdered; his father killed instantly on a highway; his aunt dead from leukemia at thirty-six. Vida Taft died twelve years ago at seventy-seven. “Poor woman went crazy,” Riley says with wet eyes. “Buried her three children and went off the deep end. Really off.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Yep. So why do you wanna know about the family?”

Frankie has already gone through the song and dance about Guardian, our mission, our successes, and our representation of Quincy Miller. He says, “We think Kenny’s murder didn’t go down the way the sheriff said.”

This gets no reaction. Riley nods to the back of the small church and says, “Let’s get something to drink.” They walk past the tombstones and markers of other Tafts and leave the cemetery. Through a rear door they step into the church’s narrow fellowship hall. Riley opens a fridge in a corner and pulls out two small plastic bottles of lemonade.

“Thanks,” Frankie says, and they settle into folding chairs.

“So what’s this new theory?” Riley asks.

“You’ve never heard of one?”

“No, never. When Kenny got killed it was the end of the world. I was about fifteen or sixteen, tenth grade I think, and Kenny was more of a big brother than an uncle. I worshipped him. He was the family’s pride. Real smart, going places, we thought. He was proud to be a cop but he wanted to move on up. God, how I loved Kenny. We all did. Everybody did. Had a pretty wife, Sybil, a sweet lady. And a baby. Everything going his way and then he’s murdered. When I heard the news I fell to the floor and bawled like a baby. I wanted to die too. Just put me in the grave with him. It was just awful.” His eyes water and he takes a long swallow. “But we always believed he stumbled across some drug dealers and got shot. Now, twenty-plus years later you’re here to tell me something different. Right?”

“Yes. We believe Kenny was ambushed by men working for Sheriff Pfitzner, who was counting his money with the drug dealers. Kenny knew too much and Pfitzner got suspicious.”

It takes a second or two for this to sink in, but Riley absorbs it well. It’s a shock, really, but he wants to hear more. “What’s this got to do with Quincy Miller?” he asks.

“Pfitzner was behind the murder of Keith Russo, the lawyer. Russo made some money as a drug lawyer, got flipped by the DEA and became an informant. Pfitzner found out about it, arranged the murder, and did a near flawless job of pinning it on Quincy Miller. Kenny knew something about the murder, and it cost him his life.”

Riley smiles and shakes his head and says, “This is pretty wild.”

“You’ve never heard this gossip?”

“Never. You gotta understand, Mr. Tatum, that Seabrook is only fifteen miles from here, but it might as well be a hundred. Dillon is its own world. A sad little place, really. Folk here just barely hang on, barely get by. We got our own challenges and we don’t have time to worry about what’s happening over in Seabrook, or anywhere else for that matter.”

“I understand that,” Frankie says and takes a sip.

“So, you did fourteen years for somebody else’s murder?” Riley asks in disbelief.

“Yes, fourteen years, three months, eleven days. And Reverend Post came to the rescue. It’s brutal, Riley, locked up and forgotten when you know you’re innocent. That’s why we’re working so hard for Quincy and our other clients. As you know, brother, lots of our people are locked up for stuff they didn’t do.”

“You got that right.” They drink in solidarity.

Frankie presses on. “There might be a chance, probably a slight one, that Kenny had possession of some evidence that was stored behind Pfitzner’s office in Seabrook. His former partner told us this recently. Kenny got wind of a plan to burn the building and destroy the evidence, and he removed some stuff before the fire. If Pfitzner indeed ambushed Kenny, then why did he want him dead? It was because Kenny knew something. Kenny had the evidence. There was no other reason, or at least none that we’ve come across, that explains Pfitzner’s motive.”

Riley is enjoying the story. He says, “So the big question is—what did Kenny do with the evidence? That’s why you’re here, right?”