studied it, crawled around under there and found some likely locations, and I poked my shovel in them.
Once I came up with a chunk of damp cardboard box dripping doodle bugs. In another spot I came up with more chicken wire. Over near the front of the house, just up under the rotten front-porch steps, we found an open grave about four feet long and two and a half feet wide and two feet deep. It was empty. I pushed at the steps with the shovel. They moved. They weren’t attached to the porch. I also noted that the steps were made of newer wood.
I thought about that. Whoever had made this graveyard had fixed it so they could get under here easy – through the trap in the kitchen or by sliding away the front porch steps. I thought too about this empty grave. Could this be where the skeleton in Uncle Chester’s trunk originally belonged?
“You looked hard enough, sifted through the dirt under here,” Leonard said, “I got a feeling you might turn up more of what we found in that first hole. In different degrees of disintegration.”
“I’ve had enough,” I said. “Let’s get some air.”
25.
We didn’t eat any lunch that day. When we got back to the house we took turns showering. There didn’t seem to be enough hot water and soap to make me feel clean. The smell from the grave was still with me. At least in my head.
While Leonard showered, I walked around the living room, nervous. I had put on jogging pants, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes, and I took advantage of the comfortable clothing to stretch and go through some Hapkido kicks in the living room. I shadowboxed at the air. I side-kicked the couch hard enough to slide it across the room.
After a while, Leonard came into the room. He had put on gray sweatpants and tennis shoes without socks. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. We looked at each other but didn’t say a word. He got one end of the couch and I got the other and we moved it to the far wall. We moved some chairs around. We had a little room now.
We started to spar, lightly, just tagging one another with control. We did that until we were sweaty and tired and needed showers again. But we didn’t shower. We got to work on the subflooring, and by late that afternoon we were finished. During that entire time, we hardly said a word, just something now and then about nails and boards and such.
When we finished, we sat on the subflooring for a while, sweating, letting time go by. I broke the silence.
“It’s gone far enough, Leonard. I love you like a brother, man, you know that. But Illium didn’t just drive off in that pond by accident. And under that house… no telling how many bodies there are. Your uncle’s diagram is probably just for what he located. Or maybe he put them there.”
“You’re back to that,” Leonard said, and he was angry.
“I’m not back to anything. I’m saying we don’t know. We’re not investigators. It’s time we call in the law.”
“The law has been on this case for years, Hap. We’ve found out more in a few days than they have in all that time. Or rather my uncle and Illium found it out and we picked up on it. We let Hanson in on this, he’s still got to mess with the system. I don’t even think it’s purely a black-white thing anymore. It’s more a thing makes the police force look stupid. Justice seldom overrides embarrassment.
“But black-white thing or not, white people run this town, and they’re going to be a lot more rested they think a nigger did it, and did it to little niggers. That fits in with the general thinking and keeps it out of their backyard. They don’t see anything black as being part of their immediate problem, even the liberals.”
“Leonard, most likely, all things considered, a black man did do it. It sure points that way. A white guy would have to be pretty clever to cruise around over here and not get noticed.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t a black man. You’re missing the point. Way it stands now, all we got to show the cops is certain proof my uncle killed those kids and hid their bodies at the Hampstead place, and that this Illium fellow was in on it. Shit, he’s got kid’s clothes and pornography setting on his couch, just waiting for the cops to eyeball it. Cops see that, they aren’t going to look any farther, and Hanson isn’t going to get the chance to look either. They’ll have it all solved. Couple old dead niggers did it, or rather my uncle did it and Illium got in on the business late. Case closed. And I ain’t having it. Uncle Chester’s the one taught me about pride and honor. Taught me not to care about color, one way or the other. Not to hide behind it, not to use it to roll over nobody.
“I was growing up, you hear a crime newscast, read a newspaper, they were always quick to point out when the criminal was a black, but not when they were white. I got the impression it was blacks did everything. It was my uncle showed me things straight. That people were people and there were good and bad, and to just look at a thing head on, not try and dress it up any. And that’s just a reverse way of saying it turns out to be a black man, it’s a black man. That’s no skin off my ass. I just want whoever it is nailed. But I don’t want to give the cops the easy way out. Uncle Chester was a good man, Hap. He had honor. Me and him, we had our problems, but he wasn’t a child killer. There’s no reason you got to believe in him, but I believe in him, and I want to see he gets a fair shake.”
“Thing is, Leonard, whoever killed these kids and did Illium in is still out there. Guys like that, they don’t stop. You know that. While we’re investigating, he could be planning to kill another child. That’s who he’s after. Kids. Illium only got aced because he got in the way, and somehow let on he knew something.”
“I realize that.”
“That first grave we dug into. That’s fresh, Leonard. You know that. It doesn’t take any time at all for a body to decompose. That one still had the stink on it. He’ll kill again, and I don’t want that on my head.”
“And I don’t want my uncle’s reputation destroyed, and I don’t think the cops are going to find who’s doing this anyway. Like I said, they got their suspects. Uncle Chester and Illium. They’ll close the book on this case so quick it’ll make your head swim.”
“I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.”
“Don’t say anything for a while. Don’t tell anybody.”
“Leonard, I already told Florida about Illium.”
“Goddamn you, Hap!”
“She won’t say anything. For a while.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. We had a deal. That goddamn pussy always did mess your thinking.”
“Watch it, Leonard.”
We sat there looking at each other like bad asses for a moment. Leonard smiled slowly. “Hell, Hap, I love you, man. We gonna fight?”
“’Course not.”
“That would be some fight, you know?”
“I couldn’t take you,” I said.
“I don’t know. I think you might. You hesitate now and then, you think you’re gonna hurt someone bad. You ain’t got that killer instinct, but you got mad enough, you’d be some bad business all right.”
“I couldn’t get that mad at you, buddy.”
“Yeah, we’re stuck with one another… Shit, Hap. It’s OK you told Florida. Hell, I know you got a head on you. She’s all right. I mean, you’re a dumb asshole, but what’s done is done, and she’s all right.”
“It just slipped out. A thing like that, it’s hard to keep under your hat.”
“It’s all right, bubba. It’s just I don’t know what to do exactly.”
“Me either,” I said.
26.
A few days went by. The recollection of those bodies burned my memories at night, found their way into my thoughts during the day. It was the same with Leonard. Not that he said much about it. But I could tell. I had known him long enough to see his feelings expressed in the way he moved or smiled or tried to laugh.
