Mystery at Bristol Square

By D.R. Avery

What were four skeletons doing in a pit out at the Bristol Square construction site?
Detective Danny Williams along with her lover, Monica Wilks-Jordan, take on the case though for different reasons. Danny becomes the lead detective in the multiple homicide investigation by being in the right place at the right time. It doesn't hurt that she is simply good at her job. Monica is a sometime journalist turned to blogging who is on the case because she happens to live with Danny and desperately needs a story. That their needs are mutually exclusive becomes painfully obvious. The major issue for both Danny and Monica is why would four bodies disappear and no one seem to notice? It is as if these four people fell off the edge of the world in 1967.

As the two women begin to pursue the identities of the skeletons with Dr. Chan Li, the state pathologist, it becomes clear that the skeletons came to the pit from different backgrounds and circumstances and have been buried for nearly 50 years. Clouding the issue are two retired police officers who clearly know more about the case than they are willing to admit and are determined to prevent Danny from associating them with the skeletons.
Chan Li and his team of pathologists sift through evidence gathered from the pit and pass their findings on to Danny who, with often uninvited help from Monica, begins to identify the skeletons. Each skeleton has a unique story that is revealed as it is associated with the artifacts found in the pit. The picture that emerges is of a violent social and racial environment little different from today in many ways.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.R. Avery
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370068609

D.R. Avery

D.R. Avery has been a journalist, editor, college professor, private detective, free lance writer, blues musician, and child of several other borderline savory pursuits. He holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Florida and an M.A. and PhD. in Journalism and Mass Communication from Southern Illinois University. The award-winning author of over 80 freelance and scholarly publications and invited presentations, many of which are concerned with history and the Civil Rights Movement, his background prepared him to research and write "Mystery at Bristol Square," in which the Civil Rights Movement and the riots of the 1960s figure prominently.He lives with his wife and the deer and the bear in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Book preview

Chapter 1

May 21, 1671

Zachary Bristol studied the small hole that had opened in the ground where the 12-foot corner pole for his new barn had been the night before. The mystery of where the pole had gone worried him less than the prospect of having to cut and peel a new pole from the forest surrounding his small acreage. Planting time was upon him and there was little leisure to build the barn to house the two oxen he had brought out from Wethersfield last month.

Zachary pulled off his great floppy hat to wipe away the sweat trying to drip down his face. The unusually hot May sun immediately passed through his close-cropped red hair and he could almost imagine steam wafting off his scalp. His head was not the only thing about him that was large. Unlike his father who had been short and thin, Zachary was a throwback to some giant northern ancestor. He had fought the fights of the Reformation and defended his family in the old country for few could challenge his size. The other Calvinists on the vast estate where the family lived offered some small degree of protection against those who followed other creeds. But then the Catholics came in all their religious fervor to take back what had been theirs for fifteen hundred years. His father died on the voyage to America and Zachary became the family’s first patriarch in America.

Kneeling, he could see the bottom of the post hole but nothing beyond. Holding his ear to the hole, it seemed he could faintly hear the sound of running water. Fumbling around the dirt dug from the hole, Zachery found a fist-sized stone and carefully dropped it into the hole. It fell a few feet and ended with a distinct thud; no water. The running water was deeper then. There must be a small cavern under the post hole, he thought. Still there was no time to explore further; there was a field to plow. He yoked the oxen and began to plow trying to remember where he had seen a tall, straight pole to replace the one he had lost. The mystery of the lost pole slipped from his mind as he worked the oxen to be replaced by the question of what to do about the hole.

He solved the problem simply. He moved the barn.

Chapter 2

June 8, 1824

John Bristol surveyed the old barn and the space where the new street had been laid out and saw in his mind’s eye how the dilapidated buildings of the farm eight generations of his family had occupied would shortly become Bristol’s Mercantile & Trade. No more wood to paint and rot but a virtually indestructible two story red brick storefront with a secure warehouse out back and a sidewalk out front. No more plowing fields and chasing errant animals out of the neighbor’s yards. He’d buy and barter produce and goods from the farms further out of town. That should make Anne happy. His new bride had not taken to living in the old farm house and the farming life. She had nearly danced when he sold off the farm except the half-acre where the new store would be located.

John still retained the raw-boned ruggedness of the men of his family and tended to dwarf those around him, particularly Anne who was short to the point of being tiny. One way in which John differed from his forefathers was the absence of most of his hair. Bristols as a rule had thick and bushy heads of hair of which they were inordinately proud. Somehow by his late twenties it was apparent that his thinning mop of hair might not carry John into middle age.

Construction was going well despite the minor surface collapse that had lowered the basement floor by several feet. He supposed he should have anticipated that something would happen. After all, he noticed the sagging surface of the ground in front of the old barn but it had been slowly subsiding all his life. The hole that appeared when his Irish crew dug out the basement wasn’t large but there was clear evidence of something larger and deeper below the bottom of the existing hole. He had pulled the crew off digging the basement and set them to tearing down the old barn. He was not about to waste money on idle workers while he decided what was to be done about the hole. Besides, with all the construction on both sides of the street, he needed to keep his work crew busy or he would lose them.

Bristol’s solution which he had arrived at the night before had been simpler than he expected. In fact, it was Anne eager to move into the store’s second floor who offered the suggestion although at the time it seemed painfully obvious to a man who rarely asked for advice.

Can it not be filled? his wife asked as they sat on the front porch looking out over the new construction.

Yes, he admitted grudgingly. But what would I fill it with?

Why, you have piles of dirt.

It must be used to level the surface under the warehouse or I will need to buy more dirt or rocks. They sat in silence for several minutes.

What will you do with the old barn?

Use or sell whatever is not rotted or broken, he said. They sat quietly for several more minutes.

Why don’t you fill the hole with that? she asked.

As the barn came down the crew filled the pit to within a foot of the planned basement floor with everything from the old barn that had no value. The new basement floor was leveled with dirt and packed. As the masons constructed the walls of the new store they covered the dirt floor with brick. His ancestor, Zachary Bristol, would have found it to be a simple solution. Generations of his family would have thought so as well.

Chapter 3

November 11, 1874

The new natural gas lines came into the world of Bristol’s Cash and Carry Market just as John Bristol, nearing ninety, was on his way out. A widower, Bristol fought old age and new technology with equal fervor. There was nothing he could do about his infirmities but he did not have to accept unsettling changes to the world around him. Besides, he had heard all the stories about how dangerous the new energy source was. A woman in Boston accustomed to kerosene lamps had absently blown out her new gas lamp one evening before going to bed just as she had always done with her oil lamps and her husband returning from a night’s carousing at the Patriot Tavern struck a spark to find the new gas light. The resulting explosion took out most of the tenement building. While he was sure he would never make the mistakes of others, he wasn’t sure of those in his family. Bristol knew the gas lights were too dangerous, but his son John Jr. seemed to argue with his father about everything, which was not surprising to most who said the younger John was the spitting image of his father right down to his piercing, argumentative eyes.

Over his strong objections, his son had convinced the old man to change the store’s name several years earlier to reflect a more modern form of commerce. Bartering was out and the new commerce was conducted mostly with cash. It had been a long fight between the old man and his son. Bristol had many suppliers who had been with him for decades and resisted his son’s efforts to modernize the business. Their clashes had become legendary. Whether they should connect to the new energy source was merely the latest disagreement between the two. It led ultimately to the only time in family history of the eldest Bristol son losing his inheritance.

They had fought almost daily over connecting to the new gas line which ran down the middle of the street. The elder Bristol had absolutely forbidden bringing gas into the house and store. The younger Bristol had argued that gas could not only provide light to the building’s darkest corners but could also provide a quiet and clean source of heat. While everyone on the street had hooked up and had bright and warm stores and homes, the Bristol’s continued with dim flickering light and mostly cold woodstoves for heat. The impasse might have continued indefinitely except John Bristol’s brother James died in New York and the old man took the train to be with the family and John Jr. took his father’s absence as an opportunity to defy the old man one last time. He had the gas lines connected and gas lights installed. For good measure he had a new gas furnace installed in the basement.

As was common in the 19th century, the Bristol family was large, two boys and eleven girls. The first born was John Jr. and the first girl was named Abigail. The second son was what was charitably called slow and died young. Where John Jr. had been a thorn to the old man most of his life, Abigail was her father’s favorite. Later in the year when Abigail married Robert Cotton, the old man did the unthinkable: he disinherited his son and gave his estate to his daughter and her new husband. With no inheritance, John Jr. faced the prospect of moving west or up the country to Canada as a pauper. Neither appealed to him and in a final fight with his father over the younger Bristol’s claim to at least some of the income he had earned running the store over the years, John Jr. made the mistake of striking his father a glancing blow with his fist. John Sr.’s response was swift and certain: he killed his first born with an ornate fire poker in the parlor of the store’s second floor. The fact that he was never charged had more to do with his age than justice. When John Sr. died a few weeks later, Abigail’s new husband promptly changed the store’s name to Cotton’s Cash & Carry.

Chapter 4

August 6, 1968 (1:30 p.m.)

When John Cotton stopped by the old store and warehouse to check on its condition, he really saw little that had changed in the past few months. Much of the neighborhood had deteriorated to the point that few of the buildings were useable except for warehouse space. Up until a couple of years ago he had rented out the second floor of Cotton’s Cash and Carry where several generations of the Bristol and Cotton families had lived and died. John was a short, stocky man whose frame had regressed to the mean and he was nothing like his giant ancestor who had brought his family to America in the 17th century. Even the flaming red hair earlier Bristols had possessed was gone to be replaced with a thin mealy mix of brown streaked with gray. The compact body of his youth had given way to lumps of fat that he had long since abandoned any attempt to control.

The Department of Health had basically condemned the old family property for a variety of health and safety code violations. John refused to perform the plumbing, electrical and structural work that would be required to meet the department’s codes believing it was throwing good money after bad. While he could ignore most of the Department of Health’s findings, he knew he should do something about the propane tanks stored in the old storefront. He had hauled the tanks from several of his rental units and stored them in the building. Most of the tanks still contained varying amounts of propane and the fact that they were beginning to rust didn’t help his peace of mind. The store and warehouse, which had not been occupied since the mid-fifties, now stood generally empty. The family had used the spaces for storage and over the years a motley collection of old furniture, building materials, and other junk coexisted with some of the biggest rats he’d ever seen.

He’d had visions of developing the old family homestead over the years, but the neighborhood did not lend itself to much more than rentals and warehouse operations. He’d put his money in developments in better neighborhoods and simply let the property fall into ruin. First he had turned off the water and electricity because no one lived in the building, then the natural gas because he did not need to heat it anymore. Finally, two years ago he had dropped the insurance on the building because it was almost impossible to get it covered and let the building fall off the grid except for property taxes. One day, maybe, he thought.

The civic unrest had been minor in the neighborhood and he expected another summer of noise but little smoke. Still, he wondered if he should not put a minimum amount of insurance on the place just in case. It could really work out. The spades could burn down the place and he could collect the insurance. A win-win situation. Maybe next week he could look into insurance again. Still he needed to get rid of the propane tanks he thought as he drove away.

Chapter 5

March 7, 2016

It was unusually cold and windy but Bristol Square Development Corporation had a deadline and forty million dollars waiting to be spent, too much of it Bristol Cotton’s money. Too much from backers who made demands Bristol wasn’t sure he could meet. He sat in his Lexus worrying about how he was going to pull off this miracle.

He carried his 62 years like a man half his age and had it not been for his gray hair that hair coloring could hide and the growing circle of baldness on the back of his head that nothing could hide, he would still feel like he did just out of college. He had thought about letting his hair grow out for a comb over but he had always kept his short even when everyone around him let their hair grow. He was too set in his ways to give in to fads. Still, it would be nice not to show his age. He could still score a one-nighters, although the women did seem to be getting older. Long divorced, with no children to carry on the name, Bristol was generally happy with the direction of his life. Still, Bristol Square was turning into a pain in the ass.

Damn economy! The deal had looked so sweet five years ago when he took options on the property adjacent to the old family store. But officials made it almost impossible to get the project off the ground. Well known to his employees and public officials for an explosive temper that had gotten his ass in a bind more than once, he had not helped his cause at times, either. It was hard to kiss anyone’s ass. Always with their hands out. Don’t get me started about the bankers and the unions, he thought. No wonder he’d cut every corner and greased every palm to keep the development moving forward. And now all that crap with the newspapers demanding to know why no one seemed to speak English at the site. Christ, he’d end up in jail if he wasn’t lucky. And then his project director, Andrew Brady, had called all secretive about something and needed to see him before the project could continue. He watched Andrew slog through the mud to the car window.

Hey, Andy, what’s up? he asked, not liking the hard corners to the man’s mouth.

You gonna need your boots, he said. I need to show you something.

Well, what is it? he said pointing to the boots he already wore.

Something that can screw us forty ways from Sunday, Andrew said as Bristol swung his feet out of the car.

We were digging the new foundation trench under where the old Cotton store used to be when . . ., he said, pausing as they walked up to the ditch where several workers were standing around looking into the pit. Look for yourself. Bristol looked over the edge and saw resting at the bottom of the twenty-five foot deep pit his nearly new John Deere excavator. The machine was tilted over forward with the bucket buried in dirt and broken bricks.

Jesus, Andy, that excavator cost me a hundred thousand bucks. Bristol was notorious for his explosive temper and Andy spoke quickly to head off a tantrum.

The machine’s okay, Boss. It just tilted over and slid in. No real damage. But look at what Hollis has, he said pointing to the giant black man standing next to the excavator in the bottom of the pit.

What is it?

It’s a human skull.

Is this an old grave yard or what? Bristol asked, dreading what he was about to hear. Oh, shit, I hope it’s not an Indian burial site. He’d run into one on a job in Massachusetts once and the state had stopped work for nearly a year. That was all he needed.

Let’s go down and take a look, Andrew said, moving over the edge of the excavation and calling out to the worker in the pit. Hollis, why don’t you leave that down there and come on up here, he said, then turned to the workers looking into the pit, And you boys get on back to work. The two men waited for Hollis to slog his way to high ground before they worked their way into the pit, slipping and sliding down the incline.

Where’d the bricks come from, Andrew asked.

From the old building, I guess, Bristol said, idly tossing several old bricks aside. Odd, many of the bricks were not broken. I guess you don’t know the story.

What story? Andrew said.

Back in the sixties there was some kind of riot or turf war or something fought around here. That’s when the old warehouse and store were destroyed, according to my Dad, he said, moving a piece of charred wood away from the excavator. He didn’t talk about it much but he said this whole block burned. He didn’t want to get tied up with the city so he just went out and leveled the whole thing with his bulldozer. They raised hell, he said, but he always operated under the theory that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Saved him a ton of money. Anyway, this area was blighted so nothing was ever built on the site.

Why didn’t you just sell it?

No way the old man was going to sell it, Bristol said, shaking his head. I tried to talk him into it but he wouldn’t even talk about it. After he died I just sat on the land, he said, fingering a 19th Century square headed nail. A few years ago I started thinking about developing it when they built those state office buildings down the street, he said waving vaguely to the south.

Andrew had retrieved the skull and sat it on the half-buried excavator wheel. He was kneeling next to the bucket digging in the dirt and trash with a long screwdriver he always seemed to have in his hip pocket. There’s something else here.

What, Bristol asked moving in closer to look.

Looks like more bones.

The rest of the skeleton?

Maybe, he said, pulling out two longer bones and reaching further into the hole.

It could be just one person buried here a couple hundred years ago, Bristol voiced his relief. We could just ignore that.

I don’t think so, Andrew said scraping mud off something that Bristol could not identify. He wiped the object on his pants then held it for Bristol to see.

Ah, shit! Bristol said much too loudly. Andrew held in his hand what was left of a wrist watch. He could just read Bulova Accutron through the dirty crystal.

I guess we need to call the cops, Andrew said handing Bristol the broken watch. This watch can’t be that old.

Wait a minute, Bristol said thinking. If they called the police his site would be shut down while they investigated and he could not afford the delay. Any delay was likely to be fatal. If his investors called in their loans, he was screwed. If the state looked too closely at finances underpinning the project, he was dead meat. He stood up and looked around the site. At least it wasn’t an Indian burial or even a cemetery. Still, at the depth they had found the skeleton and watch, the bones didn’t get there last week. Could he just ignore what they had found? Bristol knew there were several illegals working in the crew, but they couldn’t say anything. Hollis could be a problem. He’d need to do something about him. Andrew had been with him too long to give him up. The decision came as most did, full blown.

Get the excavator out of here and bury this crap. He said tossing the watch and bones into the deepest part of the pit. And get rid of Hollis as soon as you can without making it look like it had anything to do with this hole.

Chapter 6

August 7, 1968 (4:15 p.m.)

Police Commissioner Edward Garrison was not happy. The city had stayed cool all summer and now with the hottest election primary in history only five days away, it was threatening to blow wide open. And with Sen. Julius Ferguson in town for the Founders Day celebration and television cameras and newsmen everywhere to hear the firebrand civil rights leader, rock throwing and bottle tossing the past two nights threatened to boil over into a riot just for the television cameras. Edward glanced up at the American eagle holding a clock in its talons. A gift from the American Legion, it hung on his right. His day should be ending but it looked to be a long night.

Always seen in public smoking a giant cigar, he had a face that looked like someone had driven the stogie into his mouth and he never bothered removing it until only the stub was left. Short and stocky, the 55-year-old was an angry bulldog of a man with a unibrow over his eyes that made him look like a Neanderthal throwback. Liked on the street by his cops, he lived a solitary life usually one mistake away from being jobless or under indictment, he often joked. A widower, his wife having died 10 years earlier in a car accident when a carload of black youths out on a joyride ran a red light, he was a man with little sympathy for the public in general and black teenagers in particular.

Edward walked into the now empty day room where the vending machines were located. He fumbled around in his pocket for the thirty cents he needed for bottle of coke. As the bottle dropped into the hopper, Nate Bowen, a black beat cop he had hired to meet the mayor’s demands for a more diversified force, walked into the room.

How ya doing, Nate? he asked.

I’m doing good, commissioner, the tall, muscled officer responded.

How’s your partner, what’s his name?

Shorty Howell.

Oh, yeah, I remember, Edward said. Shorty had gotten his nickname because he was short and a little fat. A loose cannon, he’d heard.

I guess we both need to get back to work, Edward said heading to his office. He probably should do something about the department’s weight problem, he thought, as he returned to his paperwork.

The police commissioner's job was a tenuous one, depending upon staying ahead of political developments, and certainly being on hand to play both sides of the political fence was as necessary as keeping ward bosses happy. It was always worse in an election year and this looked like an election year when scorecards would be needed to keep up with the new faces. The mayor was being blown out of office by his own stupidity and there were a dozen men all set to bury him deeper than the U.S. marshals sent out from Boston to put together files on every detail of his life. Edward prided himself on being able to read the political wind and the latest Nor’easter told him that Mayor Frank Vocelli was finished and it was time to switch teams. But all he needed was for the situation in the North End to blow up. Other members of the administration had already been tainted by Vocelli’s mistakes and the Republicans would make sure that his problems landed squarely in the commissioner's office and Edward would be out of a job.

The North End needed no reason to explode. It always seemed to just happen. Although the streets had been relatively quiet during June and July, the local press had kept up a constant stream of blame over the Department’s handling of the occasional flare-ups and bottle throwing incidents in the North End during the summer. But Edward could point to civil disorder and other crime all around the country, so that charges of overreaction and police state tactics meant little to merchants grateful that they could remain open while their counterparts in other cities were being burned out. Nothing like success to muffle one's foes, he thought as he lighted a Havana Nugget, a short, fat cigar he special ordered from Tampa. Of course, that could all come apart, if he didn’t stay on top of things. He was not going to let that happen. He just hoped he would not need the drastic tactics other cities had used. Bad for business and politics.

Vocelli had been a reformer in the early days and had appointed Edward early in his administration. For a year after Edward's appointment, older officers said they never knew from day to day who their commanding officer was going to be or even if they were going to keep their jobs.

Immediately, a high school diploma was mandatory, affecting perhaps a third of the force. Everyone believed it was a move to create a department beholden to the commissioner. Some officers had quit outright while others tried going to night school, but many were too old to change and in the end Edward had created a virtually new department. The commissioner and the mayor had shared the responsibility for appointments in the beginning, but the mayor became too busy with other activities, with his underworld friends a few would add, and within three years, the commissioner's men were substituted for the mayor's hand picked officers so that the city's police department had been Edward's for almost eight years. Each and every appointment, each and every promotion and each and every dime spent by the various departments had to have Edward's stamp so that precinct bosses, whether Edward's men or the mayor's, chalked the commissioner's line or got short shrift in the budget. With Edward's control over appointments and promotions, the precinct captains were messenger boys between the commissioner's office and the beat cop on the street, deserving no loyalty and getting little. The mayor, however, had managed to hold onto one or two captains in the organization by keeping his men as liaison between the commissioner and the departments, not that they ever bucked Edward, a kind of tokenism designed to keep the mayor off his back.

The infighting within the department was well known to the 421 officers and it had not gone unnoticed by the local press which had taken to calling Edward The Little General, owing to his five foot four inch bullish frame. With shades of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in mind, one enterprising young reporter explained why Edward looked almost as tall as his new recruits who had to be at least five eight. Edward was said to stand on a box behind his desk when new recruits met the commissioner before receiving their appointments. What might have appeared as just a fetish took on shades of a neurosis under the reporter's pen as he pointed out that new recruits were schooled in just what to say to the commissioner. The rumor that a scale model of Edward’s office was kept at the Police Academy so there would be no mistakes added gravity. The story around the station house was that one unfortunate recruit had lost his appointment when he became confused and walked into the commissioner's bathroom when leaving the office.

The story had appeared early in Edward's tenure and a running battle between the commissioner's office and the newspaper had resulted in the newspaper's challenge of a shooting war with the commissioner being answered in kind. The publisher was a scion of one of the oldest families in the city and had a private view on arrogant upstarts like Edward that occasionally spilled over onto his editorial page. The challenge had been a backdoor affair with the newspaper saying editorially that only the ignorant got into shooting wars with the press, but that Edward fit the bill and probably would. And he did. The following year saw the newspaper's reporters and photographers thrown out of meetings, beaten, jailed and generally harassed by a police department which felt an attack on the commissioner was an attack on the beat cop as well.

How long the battle might have lasted no one could guess because the publisher, John Whitney Pendleton, died suddenly, probably puked to death from reading his newspaper, Edward said when he heard the news, and the new management decided that if it was going to survive in