The next day was Saturday. I’d made kind of a late night of it, celebratin’ my big find the previous evenin’, so I wasn’t feelin’ my best. Still, I’d just about finished writin’ up all the reports on Headless, when Nina called me to report “trespassin’ an’ vandalism” at the post office. Normally all that would constitute a major crime wave in West Wheeling, an’ I’d rush over to investigate, but with all that’d gone down in the last week, I wasn’t real enthusiastic. I finished my report an’ locked the files an’ photos in the safe ’fore I left the office.
I found Nina standin’ on the porch with her hands on her hips, starin’ daggers at a poster stapled to the post office wall. It was one of those things you can have made up from your own negative, an’ showed Rufus “Ruthless” Groggins an’ four of his henchmen standin’ in a line, showin’ off their artillery: M16s, sawed-off shotguns, even a Molotov cocktail. The writin’ at the top said “KKK,” an’ underneath the pi’ture it said, “THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE READY.”
Contrary to popular belief, most of the black folks in Boone County work three times as hard for half the pay as most whites, so I try to cut ’em some slack in my dealin’s with ’em. An’ I do what I can to keep a lid on the Klan. Ruthless heads up our local chapter, though it ain’t any great shakes. Years back, shortly after Ben Rooney become sheriff, Ruthless tried to head up a big rally. He called on the local press an’ put flyers up all over town, but he didn’t reckon on my ma, who—at the time—was town librarian. She axed everybody who come in for a book, “What if the Klan held a rally and nobody came?” All three of the local ministers picked up on that an’ told their congregations to stay away, an’ the sheriff pretty much suggested to everybody who drifted into town to gawk, that they might find some fine bargains over at the Wal-Mart. Then he called up the Wal-Mart manager an’ dropped the hint that Klan Rally Day’d be a fine day for a sale—even promised to advertise it free.
I missed the show ’cause Sheriff Rooney sent me to work crowd control at the west end of town an’ divert everybody to the big sale. The sheriff deputized my ma an’ Nina’s to do the same at the east end, so they pretty much missed the action, too. However, the long an’ the short of it was nobody showed up at the rally but the Klan, an’ the sheriff, an’ Abner Davis, our only local reporter. What he reported was a major traffic jam at Wal-Mart. Still, Ruthless never gives up.
Nina pointed at the poster. “Can’t you do somethin’ about that, Homer? They’re really givin’ our friendly town a bad name.”
“I don’t know, Nina. Not unless one of them weapons is illegal to possess. Their right to assemble an’ run off at the mouth is protected by the First Amendment.”
Nina studied the poster. “Would you say a Molotov cocktail is a destructive device?”
“I guess it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”
“Then go get that ATF feller that’s been snoopin’ around an’ tell him we got some business for him.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
She said, “Come here once.” She ducked inside the post office an’ reached a red paperback book out from under the counter—ARSON: The Complete Investigator’s Manual. She opened it an’ stabbed page six with her pointin’ finger. “It says here. Title II requires that various ‘destructive devices’ be registered with the ATF in order to be legally possessed…..” She hitched her thumb at the offendin’ poster on the porch. “Wanna bet that there’s registered?”
“Not really. Anyway, they’d just say it was fake, an’ how’d you prove it wasn’t?”
“Get a search warrant an’ eggsamine it.”
“You must think I got nothin’ better to do.”
“I know you got nothin’ better to do, Homer.”
“Yeah, right. I got two unsolved homicides an’ truants runnin’ rampant, I ain’t located our missin’ missionary yet, but I got time to harass the Klan?”
“Maybe if you’d go talk to Ruthless, you’ll find he’s mixed up in them other things.”
“The Klan didn’t kill our Boone farm victim—he weren’t black or Jewish.”
“How’d you know he weren’t Jewish?”
“I was at the autopsy.”
She didn’t get it ’til I gave her a just-think-about-it look. Then she did an’ blushed. Finally she said, “There ain’t nothin’ more you can do about all them other things, so you may as well do somethin’ about Ruthless.”
Her mind was made up; there was no confusin’ her with facts. I decided to hit her up with one of her own tactics—misdirection. “Where’d you get that book?”
“It come in the mail.”
“Yeah? Addressed to who?” It was the same book I’d ordered an’ sent $19.50 for, includin’ shippin’ an’ handlin’. I hadn’t got my book yet, an’ it was too much of a coincidence to believe Nina’d somehow thought to order the same one.
“Well, all right. It’s yours. The package was ripped an’ I ain’t got round to repackin’ it yet.”
I thought I had her. “Ain’t there some regulation ’gainst postal employees readin’ people’s mail?”
But she just handed me her postal regulations book an’ said, “You’re welcome to look.”