Ozzie sat down and ordered pancakes and sausage. As they drank coffee and waited, Tatum said, “Not a bad campaign stop, huh, boss?”
“I never think about politics.”
Tatum suppressed a laugh and looked away. “You know, boss, if you came here once a month and had breakfast, you’d get every vote.”
“Don’t want every vote. Just seventy percent of them.”
The waitress laid a copy of the Sunday edition of the Jackson paper on the table and smiled at Ozzie. Tatum grabbed the sports section, and to pass the time Ozzie read the state news. His eyes drifted above the print and he noticed the wall to his right. In the center were two large 1990 football schedules, one for Ole Miss, one for Mississippi State, and around them were banners for both teams and framed black-and-white photos of yesterday’s heroes in various action poses. All white, all from another era.
Ozzie had starred at Clanton High and dreamed of being the first black player at Ole Miss, but he wasn’t recruited. There were already two blacks in the program and Ozzie had always quietly assumed that, at that time, two were enough. He signed instead with Alcorn State, started for four years, got drafted in the tenth round, and made the L.A. Rams roster his rookie year. He played in eleven games before a knee injury sent him back to Mississippi.
He studied the faces of the old stars and wondered how many of them had actually played in a professional football game. Two other players from Ford County, both black, had made it professionally, but their photos were not on the wall either.
He lifted the newspaper an inch or two and tried to read a story, but he was distracted. The conversations around him were about the weather, a coming storm, the bass biting in Lake Chatulla, the death of an old farmer they all knew, and the latest stunts by their senators in Jackson. He listened carefully as he pretended to read and wondered what they would be discussing in his absence. Would they dwell on the same subjects? Probably so.
Ozzie knew that in the late 1960s the Sawdust had been the gathering spot for white hotheads determined to build a private school in the wake of the Supreme Court’s betrayals on desegregation. The school had been built on some donated land outside of Clanton, a simple metal building with low-paid teachers and cheap tuitions that were never cheap enough. It folded after a few years of rising debts and intense pressure for countywide support of the public schools.
The pancakes and sausage arrived and the waitress refilled their cups.
“You ever had venison sausage?” Tatum asked. In his forty or so years he had barely set foot outside of Ford County, but he often assumed he knew far more than his boss, who had once traveled coast to coast in the NFL.
“My grandmother used to make it,” Ozzie said. “I watched her.” He took a bite, considered it, said, “Okay, a bit too spicy.”
“I saw you lookin’ at those photos on the wall. They need one of you, boss.”
“Not really my hangout, Tatum. I can live without it.”
“We’ll see. It ain’t right, you know.”
“Drop it.”
They dug into their tall stacks of pancakes, each enough for a family of four, and enjoyed a few bites. Then Tatum leaned in and asked, “So what’re you thinkin’ about a funeral and such?”
“I’m not family, Moss, in case you haven’t noticed. I suppose that’ll be up to his parents.”
“Yeah, but you can’t just have a service and lower him into the ground, right? Hell, he’s a law enforcement officer, Ozzie. Don’t we get parades and marchin’ bands and drill teams and rifle salutes? I want a crowd and I want some folks really tore up and carryin’ on when they bury me.”
“Probably not goin’ to happen.” Ozzie lowered his knife and fork and slowly took a drink of coffee. He looked at his deputy as if he was in kindergarten and said, “A slight distinction, Moss. Our buddy Kofer was not exactly killed in the line of duty. Indeed, he was off-duty and in all likelihood had been drinkin’ and carousin’ and who knows what else. It might be rather difficult to drum up support for a parade to send him off.”
“What if the family wants a show?”
“Look, they’re still takin’ pictures of his dead body, so let’s worry about it later, okay? Now eat. We need to hustle over there.”
* * *
—
BY THE TIME they arrived at Stuart’s house, Earl Kofer and his nephews were gone. At some point, they got tired of waiting and were probably needed back with the family. The driveway and front yard were crowded with police cars and official vehicles: two vans from the state crime lab, an ambulance waiting to haul Stuart away, another one with a crew just in case they were needed; even a couple of volunteer fire department vehicles were in place to assist, as usual, with the congestion.
Ozzie knew one of the state investigators and got a quick briefing, not that it was needed. They looked at Stuart again, in exactly the same spot as before, the only difference being the darkened shades of the blood on the sheets around him. The stained and spattered pillows were gone. Two technicians in head-to-toe hazmat garb were slowly lifting samples from the wall above the headboard.
“Fairly cut-and-dried, I’d say,” the investigator said. “But we’ll take him in anyway for a quick autopsy. I take it the kid is still in jail.”
“Yep,” Ozzie replied. Where else would the kid be? As always at these crime scenes, Ozzie found it difficult to stomach the arrogance of the state boys who rolled in with their airs of superiority. He wasn’t required to call them to the scene, but in murder cases that led to murder trials he had learned that jurors tend to be more impressed with experts from the state police. In the end, nothing mattered but convictions.
“Has he been printed?” the investigator asked.
“No. We thought we’d let you guys do that.”
“Good. We’ll go by the jail and fingerprint him and scan for gunshot residue.”
“He’s waiting.”
They stepped outside where Tatum fired up a cigarette and Ozzie took a paper cup of coffee from a fireman who’d brought his thermos. They loitered a bit, with Ozzie trying to delay his next stop. The front door opened again and a technician began backing out slowly, pulling the gurney with Stuart wrapped tightly in sheets. They rolled him down the brick walkway, lifted him into an ambulance, and closed the door.
* * *
—
EARL AND JANET Kofer lived a few miles away in a low-slung 1960s-style ranch house where they had raised three sons and a daughter. Stuart was their oldest child and because of this had inherited from his grandfather ten wooded acres and the house where he lived and died. The Kofers as a clan were not wealthy and did not own a lot of land, but they had always worked hard, lived frugally, and tried to avoid trouble. And there were plenty of them, scattered around the southern part of the county.