The Quiet Game

“I think I know,” Dad says.

“To find out who murdered my baby,” the old woman says, “The po-lice don’t want to do it. FBI don’t want to. The county lawyer neither.”

“The district attorney,” Althea corrects her.

“You’ve spoken to the district attorney about this?”

Althea nods. “Several times. He has no interest in the case.”

Dad emits a sigh easily interpreted as, Big surprise.

“We hired us a detective too,” Georgia says. “I even wrote to that man on Unsolved Mysteries, that good-looking white man from that old gangster TV show.”

“Robert Stack?” asks my mother.

“Yes,” Althea confirms. “We got back one letter from the show’s producer expressing interest, but after that nothing.”

“What about this detective?” I ask. “What happened with him?”

“We hired a man from Jackson first. He poked around downtown for an afternoon, then told us there was nothing to find.”

“White man,” Georgia barks. “A no-good.”

“Then we hired a detective from Chicago,” Althea says in a tense voice. “He flew down and spent a week in the Eola Hotel—”

“Colored man,” the old woman cuts in. “A no-count no-good. He stole all our money and went back to Chicago.”

“He was very expensive,” Althea concedes. “And he said the same thing the first detective told us. The pertinent records had been destroyed and there was nothing to find.”

“NAACP say the same thing,” Georgia adds with venom. “They don’t care about my baby none. He wasn’t a big enough name. They cry about Martin and Medgar every year, got white folks makin’ movies about Medgar. But my baby Del in the ground and nobody care. Nobody.”

“Except you,” Althea says quietly. “When I walked out in my driveway this morning and picked up that paper—when I read what you said—I cried. I cried like I haven’t cried in thirty years.”

Dad raises his eyebrows and sends me one of his telepathic messages: You opened your damn mouth. See what it’s got you.

“I still gots some money, Mr. Penn,” Georgia says, clutching at a black vinyl handbag the size of a small suitcase.

I envision a tidal wave of one-dollar bills spilling out of the purse, like money at a crack bust, but Mrs. Payton has clutched the bag only to emphasize her statement. I cannot let this go any further.

“Ladies, I appreciate your thanks, but I don’t deserve them. As I said in the paper, I’m here for a vacation. I’m no longer involved in any criminal matters. What happened to your husband and son was a terrible tragedy, but I suspect that what the detectives told you is true. This crime happened thirty years ago. Nowadays, if the police don’t solve a homicide in the first forty-eight hours, they know they probably never will.”

“But sometimes they do,” Althea says doggedly. “I’ve read about murder cases that were solved years after the fact.”

“That’s true, but it’s rare. In all my years with the Houston D.A.’s office, we only had a couple of cases like that.”

“But you had them.”

“Yes. But what we had more of—a hundred times more of—was distraught relatives pleading with us to reopen old cases. Murder is a terrible thing, and no one knows that better than you. The repercussions reverberate through generations.”

“But there’s no statue of limitations on murder. Is there?”

Statue of limitations. I see no point in correcting her grammar; I’ve heard attorneys make the same mistake. Like congressmen referring to nucular war. “Everything hinges on evidence,” I explain. “Has any new evidence come to light?”

Her desolate look is answer enough.

“That’s what we were hoping you could do.” Althea says. “Look back over what the police did. Maybe they missed something. Maybe they buried something. I read in a book that sixty percent of the Natchez police force was Klan back then. God knows what they did or didn’t do. You might even get a book out of it. There’s a lot nobody knows about those times. About what Del was doing for his people.”

I fight the urge to glance at my parents for assistance. “I’m actually in the middle of a book now, and I’m behind. I—”

“I’ve read your books,” Althea breaks in. “All of them. In paperback, of course. I read them on the late shift, when the babies are resting well.”

I never know what to say in these moments. If you say, Did you like them? you’re putting the person on the spot. But what else can you say?

“I liked the first one the best,” Althea offers. “I liked the others too, but I couldn’t help feeling …”

“Be honest,” I urge her, dreading what will follow.

“I always felt that your gift was bigger than the stories you were telling. I don’t mean to be critical. But that first book was so real. I just think if you really understood what happened to Del, you’d have a story that would take all the gift you have to tell it.”

Her words are like salt on my soul. “I truly wish I could help you. But I can’t. If some new evidence were to come to light, the district attorney would be the proper man to see.” I look at my father. “Is Austin Mackey still the D.A. here?”

He nods warily.

“I went to school with Mr. Mackey. He’s a good man. I could—”

“He nothing but a politician!” scoffs Georgia Payton.

The old woman gets slowly to her feet, using her huge handbag as a counterweight. “He don’t care none. We come here ’cause we thought you did. But maybe you don’t. Maybe you was talking free in the paper ’cause you been gone so long you ain’t worried ’bout what people thinks around here. I told Althea, you must be like your daddy, a hardworking man with a good heart. But maybe I told her wrong.”

I flush again, suddenly certain that the men of the Payton family are intimately familiar with the guilt trip as a motivational tool.

Althea stands more slowly than her mother-in-law, as though lifting the weight of thirty years of grief. This time when she speaks, she looks only at the floor.

“I loved my husband,” she says softly. “After he was killed, I never remarried. I never even went with another man. I raised my boy the best I could and tried to go on. I don’t say it was hard, because everybody got it hard, some way. You know that, Dr. Cage. The world’s full of misery. But my Del got took before his time.” Her lower lip is quivering; she bites it to keep her composure. “He wanted us to wait to have children. So we’d be able to give them the things they needed. Del said our people hurt themselves by having too many children too quick. We just had one before he died. Del was a good boy who grew into a good man, and he never got to see his own baby grow up.”

The mournful undertone in her voice pierces my heart. All I can see is Sarah lying in her casket at age thirty-seven, her future ripped away like a cruel mirage. Althea Payton breaks the image by reaching into her purse and taking out a folded piece of paper, which she hands to me. I have little choice but to unfold it.

It’s a death certificate.

“When the ambulance men got to Del, he was already burned up. But they couldn’t get him out of the seat. The springs from the seat had blown up through his thighs and pinned him there. That’s why he couldn’t get out, even though he was still alive after that bomb went off.”

I stare at the brittle yellowed paper, a simple form dated 5-14-68.

“Look in the middle,” Althea says. “Under cause of death.”

I push down a hot wave of nausea. Thirty years ago, on the line beside the printed words CAUSE OF DEATH, some callous or easily cowed bureaucrat had scrawled the word Accidental.

“As long as I live and breathe,” Althea whispers, “I’ll do what I can to find out the truth.”