Chapter 1
It was near noon when the Klansmen poured out of their cars. The television cameras, set up to record a peaceful march, captured the terror—people diving to the ground as the Klansmen opened fire with shotguns and pistols. It was over in two minutes. Five dead, ten wounded, and not a policeman in sight. There would be no Death to the Klan demonstration today.
Steve Logan had watched the footage when it was first broadcast on the news. He recorded it with his VCR and watched the tape numerous times. The trial was scheduled to begin next month, two years after the killings. This story would be more complicated than just another crime story. He needed to be there. He was anxious about seeing her again. Would she want to see him after all these years? He wanted to understand how she got here, how she had changed—how he had changed. She didn’t need this, more death. She had experienced enough death. She should be celebrating life and her new career.
He turned off the interstate, drove around the looped exit ramp, and took the right toward town.
Centerville, a Carolina mill town, was never really prosperous and now its downtown was on the verge of collapse. Steve had researched the demographics before he arrived—sixty percent white, thirty-five percent Black, and the rest… well, they were the rest. The textile mills were still the major industry, paying jobs and steady. It was 1981 and those jobs were beginning to move to Asia, making life uncertain. Some new jobs had opened in a chicken processing plant, but unemployment was high, education low, and resentment a notch below boiling.
He drove Front Street, the old backbone of the town, where the bank, dry goods, hardware store, and barbershop once would have pulsed with gossip. The Woolworth store, where young Blacks first sat down at the lunch counter, lay empty, the company name in stone over the front doors. When the Walmart opened on the edge of town, the small merchants disappeared.
There was a Plymouth police cruiser with a round cherry top sitting in front of a coffee shop. Steve pulled his car into the diagonal space in front of the store; no need to parallel park like up north. If the cops ate here, the food wouldn’t be bad.
Kentucky plates on his Volkswagen were better than having New York ones, but a pickup would be better than a Beetle. He had been through that drill while covering stories in Kentucky.
He bought a Centerville Post from the rack in front of the store; the front-page story was about the upcoming trial.
The coffee shop had three booths on each side of the door and a counter with red circular seats. On the counter was a raised pastry pan with a plastic cover and a decent-looking apple pie.
“I’ll have coffee and a piece of that pie,” Steve said to the man behind the counter as he sat on the end seat.
“Billy, more coffee,” a cop with a flattop haircut said from a booth. The cop was early thirties with a trace of acne. His partner was a woman in her early twenties with her blond hair pulled up tightly to fit under a hat. Steve looked at the unlikely pair. A woman cop. How things had changed over the years. When he had been a police officer, the brass would never consider a woman officer. He felt sorry for her, knowing that she was being hazed as well as regularly hit upon by other cops.
“Coming right up, Hal,” the counter man said as he took the carafe with the thick black liquid over to the booth. Must be the owner, Steve thought. Keep the cops happy first. That hadn’t changed; he was only a paying customer, unlike the cops.
“I’ll have some of it too,” Steve said to the man as he returned to the counter.
He stopped and pointed the coffee carafe at Steve. “You’re new in town.”
Steve didn’t take it as an accusation but rather an announcement for the cops and the other locals in the place.
“Just got here,” he said. “Came for the trial.” He pointed to the headline on the paper.
“Commie bastards. Got what they deserved,” the man said as he poured coffee into a well-used ceramic cup.
“Commies?” Steve said. “Russians, Chinese, Cubans?”
“You ain’t from around here.”
“No, from Kentucky. Came to cover the story for a magazine.” He didn’t want them to think he was from some foreign country like New York.
“Don’t say,” the flattop cop, his teeth cigarette stained, said as he got up and put on his Smokey the Bear hat.
“Sure thing,” Steve said drawing out the words as he had learned to since covering rural areas. He wasn’t trying to sound Southern; he just wanted to keep any New York accent disguised.
The cop stopped behind him. The round stool creaked rustily as Steve turned to face him.
“You’re from where?” He stuck his chin closer to Steve.
“Lexington.” Steve drew out the word.
“And you’re here for this trial?”
“Yes, sir.” Steve looked him in the eyes. “Lots of people interested in it. What’s your take on it, Officer Conroy?” He read the name over the right pocket.
“Commies came down here and tried to stir up trouble, and they sure did.” He moved toward the door. “What’s your name?”
“Logan,” Steve said.
“I’ll be seeing you, Mister Logan,” Officer Conroy said, reaching for the aluminum door handle.
“Hope so,” Steve said. “I’ll probably have a lot more questions.”
Conroy stopped and stared at Steve for a moment before he exited.
His woman partner had clear nail polish on bitten fingernails. She looked him up and down. Steve smiled and a faint turn of her lip acknowledged him. She put on her Smokey hat and tipped the brim without saying a word. Middleton, the name badge read. Steve wrote it in his notebook.
Friendly sort, Steve thought. Just trying to size me up. Just like I was her. He would have to get to know her.
Commies—there wasn’t any mention of them in any of the news stories he had seen. Radicals, yes. Commies? American Communists? Didn’t they disappear with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s when Hollywood was put on the stand? He would have to dig into it. How did she get mixed into the middle of it? Ten years ago, they were still lovers, idealist college kids. Now she was a doctor and a widow. He sipped the coffee as he looked at the paper. He had to find a place to stay and sort out his notes.
As he paid the bill, he knew he should try to find her, to let her know he was here. Would she want him here with what she was going through? There would be a right time, but it wasn’t now.
