TWO HOURS HAD PASSED, and I was in the precinct’s main conference room, staring at a flyer for an event at Reverend Webster’s church called “Remembering Our History.”
I’d drafted Abe Kaplan onto our team. Then I’d sent Remy and Abe to do the notification at the Websters’ home. We’d decided as a group not to inform the parents about the rope around their son’s neck.
Remy stood in front of me, her voice betraying a tremor as she tried to sound professional.
“After we told them,” she said, “the parents broke down, P.T. Real shock. Real tears.”
“And this was on their fridge?” I asked, keeping Remy focused on the flyer she’d handed me.
“Yeah.” She nodded.
The picture in the center of the paper was from 1946. It showed a black man hanging from a tree. The date for the lecture was two days ago. The same night Kendrick had gone missing.
I thought about the impossibility of coincidence. Of this horror happening to Kendrick the same night his parents hosted this lecture.
Abe came in. He wore a linen suit over a black shirt. A porkpie hat covered his head.
While Remy and Abe had done the notification, I’d taped sheets of brown craft paper on the conference room windows that faced into the precinct.
Abe motioned at the paper. “You expecting leaks from our own people?”
Out the opposite window, raindrops slapped off a line of red dogwoods. The door was a few inches ajar, and I pushed it closed.
“I’m expecting a shit storm,” I said. “So lock this door when one of us isn’t here, and plan on late nights.”
Abe was a veteran. He nodded. Remy sat up straighter.
“Tell me about the boy’s momma and daddy,” I said.
“Dad’s thirty-eight. A preacher,” Remy said. “Reggie’s his name. Mom is Grace and works at the church. Volunteer programs mostly.”
I grabbed a chair and turned it backward. In any other situation, I would’ve done the notification myself, to read the parents’ faces as they received the worst news of their lives. But the gravity of race and this crime motivated a different course. Plus, I was fortunate we had two great black detectives on the squad.
“Mom is young,” Abe said. “Must’ve been nineteen when she had Kendrick.”
“They were devastated, P.T.,” Remy said.
“What do we know about Kendrick?”
“Only child.” Remy consulted her iPad. “Fifteen. His best friend, Jayme, had a sleepover Saturday night. Apparently Kendrick biked there and texted his mom when he arrived.”
I grabbed a pen and turned, facing the craft paper. I had a second use for it, in addition to privacy. I wrote TIMELINE across the top and marked a series of dots along a horizontal line. Above the far left dot, I wrote Kendrick texts mom. At sleepover.
“When was that?” I asked.
“Quarter to six Saturday night,” Abe said, looking at his reporter’s notebook. “Apparently the kid hosting became a little shit.”
“The best buddy?” I asked.
“Jayme McClure.” Remy said. “The kid’s mom stepped in, canceled the sleepover, and sent her son’s two friends packing. That was around seven p.m.”
Remy waited until I was done putting this on the timeline.
“The following morning,” Remy continued, “Grace Webster’s texts to Kendrick go unanswered.”
“This is Sunday morning?” I confirmed.
Remy nodded. “The mom called over to the McClure house. Found out about the thing being canceled—”
“Kendrick never came home, and his BMX bike is missing,” Abe said.
I took this all in. “You said two kids were at the sleepover.”
Remy scrolled through her iPad. “Eric Sumpter’s the other one. Lives in Falls West and made it home Saturday night by seven forty-five. Safe and sound.”
“Eric’s a black kid or a white kid?” I asked.
“Eric’s black like Kendrick,” Abe said. “The McClure kid hosting is white. Kendrick’s mom started driving the streets then. It’s Sunday morning around church time, and she’s looking for him. Calling his phone. We’ve requested Kendrick’s cell records.”
“An Amber Alert went out at ten-twenty a.m.,” Remy said.
Outside, a gust of wind blew the dogwoods southward.
“But in Kendrick’s case, it was all for nothing,” I said. “If he was burned in a fire Sunday morning at five-thirty a.m., Kendrick was dead hours before his mom even met with patrol.”
Everyone nodded. Which brought us back to our timeline. Sometime between seven p.m. Saturday night and five-thirty a.m. Sunday morning, fifteen-year-old Kendrick Webster had been abducted and lynched.
“Let’s start with where he went missing.” I stood up. “Who saw him last?”
“The McClures,” Remy said.
“And the other murder?” Abe asked. “You think our dead Nazi Virgil Rowe is connected to Kendrick’s death?”
I stared at a picture of Kendrick on the wall, and my son’s face flashed in my head. Jonas and me, playing with toy cars on his bed.
“What?” I said.
Abe stared at me. “The Rowe case, P.T. You think it’s related to this kid?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do we know if Mr. Rowe was affiliated with any local hate group?” I motioned at the flyer with the lynching photo. “The shortest distance between two points.”
Remy tapped at a picture of the 88 ink on Virgil Rowe’s biceps. “Well, we saw this.”
“Sure, but that’s a statement about the master brand,” Abe said. “That’s not a local membership badge.”
Abe and I were thinking the same way: the tattoo just meant that he was a neo-Nazi. “So maybe there’s other ink on his body we haven’t seen yet but the M.E. has,” I said.
“I’ll check with Sarah,” Abe said. “So how do you want to handle these two cases?”
“For now, let’s assume the crimes are related, but separate. Tape everything for Virgil Rowe on the east wall and everything for Kendrick Webster on the west.”
I handed Abe a photo of a bike print in mud. “This was found after you guys left for the notification. About thirty yards from the body.”
“A motorcycle?” Remy asked.
“Judging by the tread of the tire, it’s a crotch rocket,” I said. “A speed bike. But the mud was too wet to cast. Unger said that kids come onto the farm all the time. Ride through the unplanted fields. For all we know, it’s nothing.”
I grabbed my satchel. “Remy and I will head to the McClures’ while you set up here,” I said to Abe.
It was at that point in the investigation when anything was possible, and hope was at its apex. But Remy still sat there, her iPad on her lap.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Kendrick went missing at seven on Saturday night,” she said. “But he wasn’t abducted on Unger’s property.”
I turned and stared at the timeline.
“He was brought there to die,” Remy said. “But grabbed somewhere else. And there’s ten hours in between. We’re still short one crime scene.”
I nodded. Remy was right.
“Let’s find it then,” I said. “Even more reason to start at the McClures’, where he was last seen.”