The Hollow Ones(21)
Sheriff Ingalls wore boots, walking a few paces ahead of Solomon. SAIC Macklin had covered his shoes with galoshes, which he usually kept in the trunk of his car.
Macklin was handing Solomon photos of the lynching. The victim, a white man named Harold Cawsby who went by the nickname “Hack,” hung from a noose fashioned of thick twine, the weight of which looked barely strong enough to support the body of an adult male. The limb was thick and low, Hack Cawsby’s toes—one shoe on, one shoe off—dangling not more than a foot off the ground.
“Chicken wire around his wrists behind his back,” said the sheriff, walking ahead of them. “His pants are down around his hips, but Hack didn’t wear no belt. Most likely he fought the noose once he was hanged, kicking and flailing, but that’s a fight few men win.”
Another photograph showed the man’s hands. The camera film had been black and white; the blood coating his palms and fingers looked like molasses in tone and texture.
“Up here, on the left,” said the sheriff, slapping at a bloodsucker on the back of his neck. Solomon rarely had a problem with mosquitoes; he was a shallow breather, and attributed his relative immunity to the low amount of carbon dioxide he emitted, which drew the insects. Earl Solomon was a low-resting-heart-rate kind of guy, all the way around.
Sheriff Ingalls stopped before a tree that was measurably larger and older than those surrounding it, resting his hands upon his hips. Solomon held up one of the crime scene photographs, comparing it with the tree. Yes, this was the one.
“Knotted one end around this low branch here,” said the sheriff, pointing, “slung the line over that thick branch there, and strung him up.”
Solomon took in the area, turning around once, looking skyward. He turned and faced the direction the corpse had been facing in the photograph. The last vision of a murder victim interested him more than last words. Especially the victim of a lynching: He was a young black man in the Deep South, badge or no badge. Forgetting he was being watched, he dipped his head to one side, angling his neck, replicating the final position of the corpse’s head. Wondering whom he looked at: who stood here and watched a man die. Hanging parties never leave until the deed is done.
Solomon turned back toward the tree, catching the end of a glance between Sheriff Ingalls and SAIC Macklin. Both men, but especially the sheriff, were predisposed to the characterization of black men as simpletons. Solomon pushed himself not to make the same mistake in his estimation of these two men.
“You have the rope?” he said.
“Sure, yup,” said the sheriff with a shrug.
Macklin said, “Common rope, and more so than that, old rope. Could have come out of the barn of any property within fifty miles of here.”
Solomon said, “You got the shoe?”
Sheriff Ingalls said, “The what?”
Solomon pointed to Hack Cawsby’s stocking foot. “The shoe.”
“Yeah, we got the other shoe. Was here.”
Solomon nodded. “He either walked here under duress, was tricked into it, or came on the back of an animal.”
Sheriff Ingalls wasn’t very interested in being helpful. “We did a search ’round this area. Didn’t see no hoof marks.”
Solomon looked at the charred debris at the foot of the tree, beneath where the corpse had swung. “Burned some of the ground, though. Maybe to cover up something.”
“I don’t think they was having a campfire,” said the sheriff, already bored. “You wanted to see the crime scene. You said them photographs weren’t enough for you. Well—here it is. Now what?”
Solomon kicked aside some of the blackened twigs and leaves, the part that was undisturbed, using the tread of his shoes to preserve the shine of the black leather. As he had noticed on the walk in, the ground was softer and wetter underneath.
The sheriff continued, directing his remarks to SAIC Macklin. “If you federal gentlemen are helpin’, I’m all ears. If you’re here to stir up more problems, thank you but we got plenty ’nough already. I need arrests and before that I need suspects. There’s a conspiracy of silence among the Negroes, and I know how to get people talking if I has to.”
Solomon crouched low on the balls of his feet. Preserved in the firm muck of the forest floor were indentations that didn’t read well looking down from directly above. But when Solomon reconsidered them from a low side angle, he made out what looked to him like the impression of a child’s bare foot.
Not unlike that of a young boy.
Solomon opened his mouth to bring this to the attention of the Jackson FBI official and the local sheriff. But he held his tongue. They were paying very little attention to him anyway. The sheriff was still complaining.
“If the federal government wants to spend some of my tax money on investigating this murder, well, that would be the first time I’ve ever got satisfaction from Washington, DC. Money well spent. But if you ain’t here about the killing, and is more interested in preserving and protecting a certain class of people’s civil rights and all that, then I got an actual crime to investigate while you all get wet spittin’ into the wind.”
Solomon straightened. He wished he had thought to bring a camera. “The victim here, Hack Cawsby, he was a bank manager?”
“He was,” said the sheriff.
“And the leader of the local Citizens’ Council?”