Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel by Kris Nelscott Read Free Book Online Page B

sitting so close.
    “I think it’s possible, but not likely , that the person responsible is still alive,” I said. “Those bodies are so well hidden that only a handful of people could have even known about them. Baird, Hanley, your father maybe , or—”
    “Someone else at Sturdy,” Laura said. “My father’s been gone a long time now.”
    “You’re thinking Cronk and the bastards,” I said.
    “Cronk and the bastards” was Laura’s term for the team her father had appointed to run Sturdy Investments after his death.
    She opened her hands, a simple gesture that meant the implications were obvious.
    “That would solve some problems for you, wouldn’t it?” I said. “If you can show criminal activities under their watch, activities that occurred after your father died with no benefit to the corporation.”
    “I can get rid of all their cronies,” Laura said. “I can do a clean sweep of Sturdy without getting in trouble with the stockholders or any of our clients.”
    I took a bite of pie. It was sweet, with just the right amount of cinnamon. “And here I thought you were being altruistic.”
    “I am.” She spoke loudly again.
    The students stopped their arguments over which chapters to study and looked at us again. When we glanced at them, they looked away.
    Laura sighed as if she were exasperated at me. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing we just left them there. And I’d want to know what happened, not just because of my family connection, but also because they were people. Someone loved them once. Someone cared. Someone probably still wants to know what happened to them.”
    I followed my second bite of pie with a sip of coffee. I was stalling before I answered her. She really wasn’t aware of all that this entailed.
    “If we discover that this happened after your dad, and we bring it to the proper authorities, then we could get into trouble,” I said.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Tampering with a crime scene,” I said.
    “An old one.”
    “Not that old,” I said. “Not in this kind of case.”
    She bit her lower lip.
    “If it predates your father, then the authorities might not care that we’ve been digging around down there. But they might, particularly if they want to go after you for some reason.”
    “Shit,” Laura said.
    I raised my eyebrows at her. She rarely swore.
    Her cheeks flushed slightly. “It’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
    “Yes, it is,” I said.
    “But you said you’d think about it,” she said. “You said you’d have a plan.”
    “It’s risky,” I said. “But here’s what I think we should do.”
    Laura listened while I laid out my plan. It was based on things I’d seen in the South before the Civil Rights M ovement had gotten national attention.
    Often murders of blacks, particularly in rural counties, got covered up or were committed by the law enforcement agencies in the area. Sometimes the families and friends of the victims were able to do some investigating themselves. They soon learned that no one would pay attention the investigation if it wasn’t conducted properly — with documentation, correct evidence - handling procedures, and accurate autopsies.
    Soon white law enforcement learned to restrict access to those crime scenes, but for a brief window, a number of higher - profile cases had got northern newspaper coverage because the victims’ families had photographic or physical evidence that contradicted the stories the authorities told.
    “Emmett Till,” Laura said, citing a famous case from 1955. Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy, had been visiting relatives in Mississippi when he supposedly whistled at a white woman. I never believed that part of the story. I always figured he had just looked at her and smiled, with that directness most Northern children had and all black Southern boys had learned to avoid.
    For his crime — whatever it was, smiling or whistling or just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong