Black Light

professionalism of all involved.

Of course one name was missing. It had to be, for it was not and could not be committed to paper; but Red realized instinctively what the ledger documented: the key moment in Bama family history, when the Bama gang ceased to be a gang and his father ceased to be a gangster, but in which it began its climb toward legitimacy, public power and glory and the bastions of respect and admiration it—he—now commanded.

Red poured himself another cup of coffee. He called the office, checked his voice mail, talked to his secretary. He called the Runner-up and told her he’d be late and she reminded him that his son Nick had a swimming meet that night and he said he’d go directly. He thought he’d get there by Nick’s event, the 100-meter backstroke, as that probably wouldn’t run until 9:30 and they could stop on the way back for barbecue.

Then he cleared his mind and began to study the documents that Duane Peck had procured. It seemed clear that they related to some other event of 1955, occurring almost in the same time period as the murder of Earl Swagger. What was the connection? No, wait: that wasn’t important. What, rather, did Bob Lee Swagger and the boy think was the connection, for what they thought would guide how they behaved.

The one document was a preliminary report from the Polk County Prosecutor’s Office on a bail hearing for one Reggie Gerard Fuller, Negro, seventeen, of such and such an address, Blue Eye, on a charge of murder in the first degree against one Shirelle Parker, Negro, fifteen, of such and such an address, Blue Eye. Shirelle must have been Lucille’s, the letter writer’s, daughter. The prosecutor, Sam Vincent—Red winced, thinking of Sam on those steps, an old man whose time was up—Sam was arguing that the crime was so serious that no bail be set and the defense lawyer, one James Alton of the County Public Defender’s Office, pled nolo contendere to the prosecution request, so of course the suspect was held in lieu of bail.

So: a murder, presumably of a black child by a young black man, July 1955.

Then he read the letter itself: two years later, the mother of the murdered girl pleads with Sam to reopen the case because she claims that this Reggie could not have done it.

Strange? You’d think a mother would want vengeance, not justice.

Perplexed, Red consulted his Rolodex and came up with the name of assistant city editor of the Southwest Times Record and put in the call. He got voice mail, left a message and got a call back in seven minutes.

“Mr. Bama, what can I do for you?”

“Jerry, don’t y’all keep all your old papers on file?”

“Yes sir. On computers since 1993, and over in the library before then on microfilm rolls.”

“Good scout. Now, can you do me a half an hour’s worth of digging?”

“Yes sir. You know I can.”

“The kids okay, Jerry?”

“Just fine, sir.”

“Where you going on vacation this year?”

“Ah, well, sir, we’re thinking about Florida. Daytona Beach.”

“Oh, Jerry, you know I own part of the Blue Diamond Resort on Sanibel Island. Very nice place.”

“Yes sir. I could never afford Sanibel. Daytona’s it for us this year. I’ve got to pay for braces and—”

“Jerry, you want to take the wife and kids to the Blue Diamond? A mile of beach. Three heated pools. Very nice rooms.”

“Well, I—”

“Jerry. Nineteen fifty-five. July. A murder. Polk County. Shirelle Parker. Committed by a Reggie Gerard Fuller. I want to know everything about it and I want to know it fast. Got that?”

“Git right on it, sir.”

“Jerry. You know my fax number. And Jerry?”

“Yes sir?”

“Ocean side or pool side?”

“Ah—well. Ocean side. The kids love the ocean.”

“The last two weeks in August?”

“Well, that’s fine, sir.”

“You’ll get the reservations tomorrow.”

He sat back and waited. An hour passed. Then the fax machine began to hum and soon enough it had spewed out four dense hand-printed pages, a chronology of the Shirelle Parker case, running from the discovery of the body, the trial, the appeal and the execution.

He read it carefully, then a second, then a third time. The salient feature was that the body was discovered by Earl Swagger the day he died and the Times Record had a brief editorial in 1957 noting with pleasure the execution of Reggie Gerard Fuller and the closure of the heroic state policeman and Arkansas war hero’s last case.

But that wasn’t the last entry in the summary of the Times Record’s coverage. That came five years even later, with the information that a life sentence had been delivered against a white man named Jed Posey for the first-degree homicide of the father of convicted murderer Reggie Fuller, a former undertaker named Davidson Fuller, who had become stridently active in the West Arkansas Civil Rights Movement. It was the first time a white man had been convicted of first-degree murder against a Negro in the state’s history, the report said, and the prosecutor, Sam Vincent, was to be congratulated for forging ahead with the prosecution even against death threats and the sure reality that in pressing forward, Vincent was dooming his own reelection, which would cost him a job he’d held for eighteen years.

Red chewed all this over. Obviously, Sam had come to the conclusion that there was some connection between the death of Earl and the death of the girl. Had he told them? Was it their idea? What did they know in the first place?

He didn’t know. But something else he did have to know.

Jed Posey. What had happened to him?

It took a phone call to find out that after thirty-five years in prison, the old man named Jed Posey resided still on Cell Block D at the state penitentiary at Tucker.

Now, that was useful. That was very useful.

A plan began to form in his mind.

The more he thought, the more excited he got. I like it!

30

H

e was a little early but it was better to be early. He’d worn better suits too, but when you buy a suit at the Fort Smith Wal-Mart at eleven o’clock to wear to an appointment at one, you can’t expect to make the pages of GQ.

Can I do this? Russ thought.

Then he thought: Yes, I can do it.

Bob dropped him at 12:55. It was a nondescript building, sheathed with new siding that cut off all windows, promising fluorescent dankness inside. It wore the odd sign

DONREY HOUSE

over the single grim entrance. Certainly there was no old-newspaper feeling to it, and nothing in it harkened back to glorious old days when cigar-stomping or tobacco-chewing reporters smart-assed or exaggerated their way into national reputations while having a hell of a good time.

No, the offices of Southwest Times Record, like the offices of most newspapers in America, looked as if they headquartered a smaller insurance company or a medical supply house or a catalog service.

He went into a foyer that was blankly efficient if unprepossessing and told the receptionist that he had an appointment at one o’clock with the city editor and the copy chief. He was asked to wait until a very young black woman came down and gave him a cool professional greeting and escorted him up. It was only one story and the trip took them through the newsroom—lit with bright fluorescents, as he had guessed, messy, filled with troglodytes