“Who?”
“My mother.”
I hooted with laughter and relief.
Emily Bryant is one of my favorite people. She has bright orange hair and drives a purple TR—a real catbird. But she’s also the highly effective principal of Zachary Taylor High School, and her word carries weight.
“What about the other two boys?” I asked. “Raymond Bagwell and Charles Starling?”
“We’re looking into that,” he said repressively.
Normally I would have badgered him for more details but right now it was enough to know that A.K. wasn’t involved and that I could drive back to Dobbs with a lighter heart and, with a little luck, maybe even get to court on time.
Provided Dwight or a highway patrolman didn’t follow me, of course.
? ? ?
Cotton Grove’s a twenty-minute drive to the west of Dobbs if you follow the posted speed limits, and with most of Colleton County’s law enforcement agencies buzzing around out there, directing traffic around the two churches, Dobbs itself was relatively calm when I got back.
There was much head shaking in the courthouse halls and everyone had a theory. One of the records clerks postulated that the fire had been set by skinheads on their way back to Fort Bragg. “You know how violent they are.”
My nominal boss, Chief District Court Judge F. Roger Longmire, was sure it would turn out to be kids high on drugs.
“No, no,” said attorney Ed Whitbread. “The first fire might have been done out of white racism, but what if these last two were copycats looking to stir up more excitement?”
“Or,” said a white bailiff, and here his voice dropped almost to a whisper, “what if they was set by somebody to make it look like things are bad here for colored folks?”
“By
He shrugged and hitched up his pants. “It happens. Besides, I hear they can’t find the guy they had living over at Mount Olive to take care of the place. Maybe he really
We heard.
“On the other hand,” said Roger as we walked down the hall to our respective courtrooms, “we both know weirder things have happened. Did you see that sexton yesterday? Pickled worse’n Peter’s peppers. Louise Parker told me that Ligon was going to recommend that the deacons fire him. Maybe he did get mad and decide to get even.”
All I could think about was that green spray paint and the fact that the fires began well after A.K. and his cohorts were released from jail at five o’clock yesterday afternoon.
And then there was Dwight’s evasive answer to my question.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when lunch time rolled around and a bailiff told me that Bagwell and Starling were on ice downstairs in Sheriff Bo Poole’s office while Ed Gardner was hunting up a U.S. magistrate to sign an arrest warrant. The newly enacted Anti-Church Arson Act makes burning a church a federal offense now, so ATF had jurisdiction.
“They were drunk as skunks and got themselves thrown out of a shot house at eight-thirty last night, less than three miles from Mount Olive,” the bailiff said. “And nobody saw them after that. They say they went straight to Starling’s trailer and slept it off there, but it’s down at the very end of the trailer park and our people canvassed the place. So far, none of the neighbors can put Starling’s car there before ten o’clock.”
“Same green paint they used in the Crocker family graveyard?” I asked.
“Same green, same lettering. Good thing your nephew wasn’t hanging with ’em last night.”
By the time Starling and Bagwell were actually bound over in a federal courtroom so jammed with reporters that all cameras were banished, the charges had escalated. Under the new and tougher laws, death as a result of deliberate arson was now a capital offense and they were being held in our local jailhouse without bail.
As Ed Gardner described it for me later, the investigation had started in earnest that afternoon after all the coals cooled off enough and everybody’d gathered at Mount Olive.
“It was a real team effort,” Ed said, ticking the participants off on his finger.
In addition to Ed and an ATF Special Agent In Charge who’d helicoptered over from Charlotte with the resident FBI agent, there were about twenty other ATF agents (twenty-one if you counted four-legged accelerant-sniffing Special Agent Sparky), two SBI arson investigators, a handwriting expert from the SBI who would measure and photograph the new graffiti and compare the results with the Polaroids taken at the graveyard—“He was sure wishing your brother hadn’t made those boys clean it up so fast”—a couple of detectives with arson experience from Sheriff Bo Poole’s department and a couple of members of the local volunteer fire department.
“What about Buster Cavanaugh?” I asked. “Don’t tell me our county fire marshall wasn’t there?”
“Yeah, well, we sorta forgot to call him and his nose was bad out of joint when he caught up with us.”
Patrol officers kept reporters and cameras back behind the lines, but they couldn’t do much about the two news helicopters that circled overhead all day.
“Least they didn’t fly into each other and crash down on our heads,” Ed said dryly.
They began with a physical examination of the whole exterior, paying particular attention to the graffiti, then moved over to the most damaged area of the fellowship hall, trying not to disturb any evidence that might still be there.
“Ol’ Sparky hit on accelerant right away. We took samples from the floor and wall areas. This time there was
