Chapter 1
Sheriff Hunter Harley spotted the red and blue lights from Deputy Rocconi’s squad car as they flashed in the distance. In the thick darkness of midnight, those bright colors reflected off the torrid streaks of rain falling from the sky onto the pavement. Combined with the glow from the spotlight shining toward a scene of some sort of crime, the situation caused Harley to suspect he was driving toward a deranged rainbow. He moistened his lips. What the hell is going on? Something serious. He pressed his foot on the brake, taking a sharp left turn next to an abandoned gas station. His brain whirled as he thought about what awaited him when he reached his destination.
If a crime could have happened in the worst of places during the worst of times, this was it. The place was outside the jurisdiction of the City Police Department, so the Sheriff’s Department had to take the call. The conditions were equally distressing. It had rained for weeks in Cleveland, Mississippi and everything was saturated. Mud and water filled up every creek, riverbed, and low spot in Bolivar and Sunflower County.
Delta State students who lived in the apartment complex on the outskirts of town during the summer term made a game of the situation. They floated in inner tubes in the five-foot-deep water at their front doors. Others didn’t venture out. More cautious, they knew that without a car or truck with four-wheel drive, it was safer to stay home.
Why now and why me? thought Hunter as he turned right onto an unnamed, unpaved road, trying to get closer to the scene without throwing more mud about with his patrol car. His back wheels spun in the slick mud. Just nine more months here and I’ll have a job in Jackson or Mobile. He had left his home in Dallas, Texas three months ago to take this job. He expected it to be quiet, giving him time to recover. His unsolved serial killer case back in Dallas was almost the end of him. Failure had never been acceptable for Hunter Harley. He sighed, remembering the dark night when he stared at his service gun, thinking it was the only way out.
He didn’t go through with the suicide, but he needed a change, and this appeared to be a good one. A small Mississippi town, no one knew his history, next to zero murder rate, and an easy job compared to the one in the big city. He sighed as he dodged a mud hole big enough to swallow his police cruiser. He sucked in his breath. Is everything about to change? If blues music was born of bad circumstances, then I think I’m about to have one.
Hunter had not anticipated how blues music and lifestyle it fostered had infiltrated and soaked into the bones of the Mississippi Delta. He considered himself to be one hell of a detective, but this local culture was way beyond his Texas-based understanding. However, it had its benefits, such as tempting food. He rarely passed by the local Delta Diner at lunch time without stopping. Once he went inside and got a whiff of chicken frying, he’d pass up other items on the menu to enjoy that fare. He had already let his belt out one hole to compensate.
However, his job was enforcing the law. He was grateful to Deputy Sheriff Zita Rocconi for walking him through some unexpected rough patches. Crime rates were low, but Cleveland had its share of unsolved mysteries. He soon discovered small towns have surprises if a person digs around a little.
He had not lived in Cleveland one whole week before he heard of the mystery of Goldie Parsons, the famous blues singer of the Mississippi Delta. It seemed that everyone else knew about this legendary bluesman. His one and only solo record was still a bestseller, the tune a staple for musicians today, and any first editions found in attics, basements, or estate sales made those who discovered one feel rich. Parsons disappeared in 1941–less than a month after he made that record–and was never seen again. Most people assumed he was dead since no trace of him had ever been found.
Goldie sightings came close to the number of Elvis sightings, and someone was always claiming to see the blues singer’s ghost floating somewhere in the Delta. However, those witnesses had little credibility. They tended to be drunk, high on drugs, a toxic combination of both, or people with vivid imaginations who were always seeing things.
Hunter didn’t buy into all of this speculation. This missing Goldie Parsons had probably been dead for decades. He could not help but wonder why the dead and the buried could not just stay that way. All the myth and mystery happened long ago. He took a deep breath. Now, with whatever was going on, chances were that things were going to be stirred up. Hunter had had enough of being the headlines. He still cringed whenever he Googled his own name to see what would flash across the computer screen. And he never liked what he saw. He came to this easy little town to escape that mess. Checking the battered watch he’d earned after being a cop for ten years in Texas, neon hands telling him it was fifteen minutes after midnight, he wondered what time had in store for him.
Hunter pulled up to another narrow, unnamed road in front of the old Tollar plantation, took a right turn just before the great oak tree, and passed the old cotton bin. He dodged the deep mud holes, but his car bounced around, splashing mud and water everywhere. Deputy Rocconi’s squad car lights guided him to the bank of the Sunflower River like a landlocked lighthouse. He stopped next to her patrol car and saw her walking around with a flashlight’s beam reflecting off the raging river below.
The rain came down harder. Hunter had encountered rainstorms like these back home, but they didn’t occur as often as they did here. When he got the call, he had settled for bed. No time to put on his uniform, so he slipped a t-shirt and Wrangler jeans over his pj’s, then he grabbed his Stetson cowboy hat, the last vestige from his time in Texas, and pulled on his well-worn boots.
Deputy Rocconi saw him driving up in the distance and walked toward his car. Hunter could barely see the Sunflower River through the downpour, but he could hear it churning against its edges when he opened the door. An odor of damp and rotting vegetation filled the air. He heard water lapping against the pylons of an old pier. They’d been put there for boats to dock before reaching the Mississippi River. Taking in the scene amidst torrents of water falling from the sky, he gritted his teeth when he spotted the remains of a body, human bones to be exact, sticking out of the mud. He had not worked a night this bad in a long time. A memory of a similar case in Dallas flashed through his mind and he forced it away.
Yet, despite the chaos, Zita Rocconi appeared in her standard-issued mud boots, seemingly oblivious to these horrible conditions. Conservative in her attire and make-up, she always wore Opium perfume but never enough to be offensive or overwhelming. With a whiff of it, Hunter’s thoughts were diverted from the crime scene for a moment. Of all the women he had been around, both in Texas and Mississippi, short of his mamma, Zita impressed him the most.
Tall and dark, the Italian blood running strong through her veins, Zita was tough enough to be an effective deputy. She helped him adjust to the Mississippi Delta and its subtle ways more than any other officer might have done. Her connection to the community also aided him in getting answers when normal policy could not. In the Delta, an outsider stayed an outsider for life. Harley was fine with this since he planned to be in this town for only a year, but he was glad sad circumstances had turned lucky for him. He was hired to fill in after the sudden death of the longtime sheriff, Johnny Grimes, the son of Husk Grimes.
But he wasn’t the first choice. The sheriff the townspeople of Cleveland, Mississippi really wanted was a local man, another member of the Grimes family, Richard Grimes. However, it happened that Richard, the “Chosen One,” was unavailable since he was still in graduate school determined to finish his forensics training before going into service.
* * *
Richard and Harley had met at a field training exercise near Dallas and made a connection that turned into a friendship. When Johnny Grimes died, it was Richard, his son, who suggested that Harley take the job of sheriff until he, himself, finished training and could run for the position at the next election.
“Hunter, I know the town is small, and not what you’re used to, but if you want it, I have influence with the Board of Supervisors and I can convince them to make you sheriff,” he said when they sat at a bar drinking a beer one night. Richard knew the Dallas Chief of Police had given Hunter an ultimatum: resign or else. That had left Hunter struggling with what to do and where to do it.
“This job as interim sheriff will be good for you. It’s temporary, like you’re looking for,” Richard said. “When I am done with training, you will have some new experience. It’s a little different there. You’ll see the way police work in the deep South. When you learn our ways, you can work anywhere in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia.” It sounded like the perfect situation for a man with nowhere to go.
* * *
Sheriff Harley braced himself for the steady downpour as he got out of the car and stepped into the deep mud. It covered his boots up to the silver buckles on the sides. He slipped on his Stetson hat and thick drops of rain ran down the brim of it. Uncovered parts of his shirt became soaked, allowing his hard muscles to show through the white fabric. Zita Rocconi looked at him, blushed, and glanced away. Hunter smiled as the chill from the shower ran down his spine as he walked over to where Deputy Rocconi stood.
Zita said, “I hated having to call you out on a night like this, but I thought you would want to see this for yourself. Have you ever heard the famous blues singer’s story?” He looked at her. He could see the excitement deep in her brown eyes, but he also saw her struggle to stay professional. He nodded, realizing what story she meant–the story of Goldie Parsons. She was right. Like it or not, he needed to be here.
Trying to distract his thoughts from the macabre scene, he focused on Zita’s hair and how it fell loose below her shoulders. Hunter liked it best that way, he could see the drops of rain running in little rivers through her thick locks and down her police-issued raincoat. The bright yellow of the slicker made her look like a beacon in the night. He narrowed his eyes. So she suspects the same thing I do. What laid at their feet, however, was no ghost, legend, or a product of Delta mythology. “Yes,” he replied. “I know the story’s been around forever, but I didn’t think that so-called legend about Goldie Parsons was real.” Hunter cocked his head.
“Neither did I…until now.” Zita’s spotlight beamed through the darkness and rested on a skull. Hunter didn’t have enough forensics training to determine race from a skull, but he could tell it belonged to a male. What made this skull different from all others? He couldn’t miss the one gold tooth shining up at them. Although it happened far in the past, the tooth brought to mind the signature always associated with Goldie Parsons, the famous missing blues man of the South.
“Who found the remains?” Hunter asked, hoping against hope it wouldn’t be a local. If so, the town would know before the sun rose and the media would be alerted before breakfast. He glanced toward the nearby patch of woods by the dirt road that led to a bunch of old row houses, and other possible places someone might hide. He didn’t want anyone there as his officers examined the crime scene.
“Three Delta State kids, out here on a dare. Can you believe it? They knew the story, only they thought Goldie was a ghost haunting the river. They came out here to see. Freaked out when they saw a femur bone sticking up out of the mud, they ran. They didn’t even see the skull. I found it by looking around. The kids called 911 when they got back on campus.” A hint of laughter infiltrated her voice. She focused her flashlight over to more bones near the skull.
“Do you think they associated the bones with the legend?” Hunter asked.
“Well, if they have not put the two together by now, they will soon. I would say we have a few hours to come up with something to tell the reporters. This is going to be big…really big. Kind of like finding Jimmy Hoffa big.”
“Hopefully, it is Hoffa,” the sheriff quipped back.
The driving rain made it next to impossible to uncover anything in the mud at their feet. “Sir, where do we start?” Rocconi stood in place as Sheriff Harley walked in the mud and surveyed the scene. He was glad she’d learned to watch and wait for him to answer her questions. She told him once, “I know when to keep my mouth shut. You deep thinkers need quiet moments to gather your thoughts and assess the situation and I admire you for it.” It was nice to be understood.
Hunter looked down at the skull at his feet. Its empty sockets where eyes once were glared back at him demanding he find who did this. He watched a slight smile form on Zita’s face and wondered if she realized her name would go down in history as one of the people who found the great missing blues man, Goldie Parsons, if these bones proved to be his. She probably wanted to call home and share the gossip but she would wait. A professional, her job came first. So she did her job and tromped all around the area searching for clues.
“Rocconi,” he said, “we need to mark off a five hundred feet perimeter around the crime scene. This should cover the bank of the river and down into the water. Call the station; tell them to bring plenty of crime tape, and get Deputy Chan to come out here.”
“Chan is going to be very excited to see this, Sir.” Rocconi replied.
“Good, because Chan is going to guard the scene tonight. Do not say who we think the victim might be until he arrives. We have got to try to keep the word from spreading as long as possible. We also need to do our best to secure this scene and process it properly.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned and walked toward her squad car.
“Oh, and Rocconi,” Hunter said.
She stopped and stared back at him, “Yes, sir?”
Hunter’s face suddenly became tight. His lips formed into a straight line. Emerald green eyes shining in the lights, he told her, “Remember this, we are not only answering to the public in regards to this crime, if this is Parsons, we’ll end up answering to history, I want it done right. Call the forensic office in Jackson. Tell them what we suspect and say we need a forensics crime team up here as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.” Zita vanished beyond the headlights.
Hunter walked back to the skull and stooped down, sinking his knee into the Delta muck.
What happened to you? Harley stared at the skull. He turned, allowing light from the spotlight to shine on the bones, giving him a better view. He heard Rocconi requesting assistance, her radio chatter indistinct in the background.
A slight beam of light shone on the skull resting in the Delta mud. A single, circular hole rising halfway out of the mud caught his eye. Gunshot, very interesting.
He then rose and walked around the skull, wondering what other remains might exist. The femur bone the Delta State students said they first saw poked up out of the mud like a cryptic flagpole. He then walked closer to the river, headlights from Zita’s patrol car still filling the area.
Large rib bones, clearly belonging to the rest of the remains, glistened in the deep mud. It was a miracle they were still grouped together. Hunter walked to them, somehow churned up from their previous resting place. He bent closer for a better look. He could see a deep, circular scrape on the edge of the otherwise smooth area of the rib bone. Another gunshot,right through the ribs. It was clear this was a murder investigation.
Sheriff Harley stood and walked back to the skull. He stared at the vacant eyes and asked, Goldie, if this is who you really are, who wanted you dead?
Harley’s heart skipped a beat. He would have sworn he saw a twinkle in the empty sockets where the eyes should be.