Sam Lense had been an officer in financial services so long that he had seldom considered the implications of the pile of raw data he had boxed up and sent to the Florida Museum of Natural History sometime at the end of his storied days in Hendrix. His father still dutifully forwarded any inquiries to Sam’s old research that appeared in Len’s mailbox in Coral Gables, but Sam had never bothered to open them, much less given permission for the research to be posted online.
He couldn’t imagine how it had come to light, and when Hollis Frazier left, he ducked out of his afternoon meeting and, with minimum effort, found the gaudy aggregate site on the Five Civilized Tribes, where his work had been dumped with senseless abandon: copies of the census; rough drafts on the Creek application; clues to the location of Camp Six; bits of transcribed notes from his interviews with two dozen people, mostly anonymous. The Creek data was jumbled together, lost in minutiae, while the Hoyts were lavishly dissected with great testosterone-fueled delight, down to a few fanciful theories of origin, tossed out in a tone of mild self-righteousness. Their participation in the Kite lynching was offered without question, the last paragraph so smug and incendiary that he rubbed his neck when he was done and thought, No wonder they shot me.
He was spooked enough to get up and lock his office door before he read it again, wondering how Henry Kite had come to be so prominently figured. God knows he’d never gone to any pains to exonerate the murderous bastard. He couldn’t even remember who’d told him the nasty little detail about the severed fingers—either Lena or one of Jolie’s Hoytling cousins, surely. Then he remembered. Damn, it was Travis Hoyt.
Sam found this a very interesting detail and sat back in his chair a long moment, absently tapping his pencil on his desktop in something akin to honest regret, thinking, poor Jol—she could run, but she couldn’t hide. He almost pitied her there on her hard-won perch at City Hall in Cleary, the picture of modern woman-power in a photo that had run in the Democrat when her cityscape had won some sort of national award. They’d photographed her on the square in downtown Cleary, surrounded by an adoring band of white-haired ladies and a square-jawed old man in a European-cut suit—the hundred-year-old boyfriend whose itch she was apparently still scratching.
To Sam, she was a far cry from the Jolie of their youth, dressed in a pin-striped, Julia Sugarbaker power suit, as dark-haired and milk-skinned as ever, filled out to a handsome, formidable-looking woman. Her fragile self-image had been cured by a high-dollar haircut, her outsider sulkiness replaced by an insider confidence that was nearly as Teflon-slick as her brother’s, as was her personal charisma, which had won her many friends. The legislators of the state of Florida were aging out, and both parties were desperate for new blood and new faces to fill the seats of the Old Capitol. Possible names were often bandied about, and even in the cavelike honeycombs of DCF Sam had heard rumors of a dark-horse up-and-comer from Cleary, who had the backing of both Old Money and the Religious Right, but was somehow not a Republican, but a social-justice, yellow-dog Democrat, right out of the church, if such a thing was possible. There was talk of her running for higher office, a state Senate seat, or maybe her appointment to the chairmanship of something or other; something to get her out of the backwoods and to the national stage.
Sam never added to the discussion, even to admit that he knew her, though a few loose ends and a nagging air of irresolution remained between them—not to mention four miles of healed-over chest scar. The old man’s implacable quest for justice shamed him, made him wonder if he had quit too soon in his search for his own family justice. God, when was the last time he’d thought of old Morris, moldering in an unmarked grave in some backwoods Baptist cemetery, grass-grown and unmarked? Had Sam ever even taken the time to tell Brice the sad and sordid little story? God, he was getting as bad as his father. Consciously or not, he was deep-sixing his son’s history.
The thought was far from pleasant, and Sam was still sitting there, absently tapping his desk, when the phone buzzed on an outside line. He figured they were trying to shame him into joining the meeting and let it buzz a few rounds till it was so annoying he answered with a brisk “Yeah.”
The line was silent a moment, then a woman asked in a small, slightly Southern accent, “May I speak to Sam Lense?”
He blinked at the accent and sat up straighter. “Jolie?”
“No,” she murmured, her voice muted, as if on a speakerphone. “It’s Lena. Lena Hoyt—Carl’s wife,” she added, as if she and Sam were slight acquaintances. “My father ran the campground—Vic Lucas.”
Sam had never for a moment forgotten any of the characters of his old folktale. “Yeah. Lena. Sure. What’s going on?”
His briskness seemed to intimidate her, as there was another silence, then a small, tentative question: “Did Jolie call you?”
“No, haven’t talked to her. Why d’you ask?”
After a small exhalation of breath, almost a sigh, Lena made a subtle attempt to backpedal. “Oh, nothing. Just—how have you been? Are you good?”
“I’m great,” he snapped, impatient with the evasion. “What’s this about? The bullet in my back, or the Hendrix Lynching?” For a moment the line was open, suspended in some palpable emotion, dread or shock or fury, which only made Sam more aggressive. “They’re onto it, Lena. People are making inquiries. The cat is out of the bag.” He was drawing his breath to ask to speak to her husband when she hung up on him, just like that, in a way that was just so very Hoyt and cowardly and bullshit.
He slammed the phone on its cradle and wiped the contents of his desk to the floor in an angry swipe of impatience—a not-uncommon gesture in the world of public finance that drew no attention at all on this end of the building. While the papers were settling, he tapped around on the computer and found a number for Cleary City Hall and, with a concerted effort at civility, sat back in his chair and asked to speak to the mayor.
He was ready to go to war, by phone, if necessary, but the clerk, who spoke in a nearly indecipherable South Georgia accent, informed him that the may-yah was out of the office. “Is this Brutha Caal?” she asked brightly. “Returning her call?”
Sam lied without compunction, “No, this is his assistant. He is momentarily unavailable, but needs to speak to her badly. Would you mind giving me her cell number? Carl seems to have lost it again,” Sam rumbled good-naturedly.
The ruse seemed to work, as she murmured, “Well, none that would work in Hendrix. That’s where she was headed. She left him a message”—she paused—“for him to meet her by the shed. Or rathah, in the shed.”
Sam sat up. “You mean her father’s shed? The old tobacco barn? Behind the church?”
Something in his curiosity must have alerted her, as she was suddenly less forthcoming, though relentlessly cordial, drawling, “And what did you say yo-wah name was?”
Sam was already standing for his coat and, in a moment of devilry, answered, “Henry Kite. You can tell her I called.”