Gray

By Jack Trammell

When Confederate bodies are accidentally excavated at a construction site, the peace in Richmond, Virginia is broken by a string of bizarre murders. All of the victims work for the northern construction firm building the new structure, which inadvertantly rests on the site of a mysterious Civil War tragedy. A jaded homicide detective, an energetic social worker, a nosy reporter, and two bickering historians all team up to solve a mystery in the present that started many years ago with the murder of an entire company of Confederate soldiers. With millions at stake for the northern firm, and a raging debate over the painful past and its symbols, the Civil War is fought again in "Gray."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 30, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462839599

Jack Trammell

Jack Trammell is an author, professor of sociology and researcher. His recent books include The Fourth Branch of Government and The Richmond Slave Trade. He is a recognized voice of Appalachia and a scholar of social history, disability and research design. Guy Terrell is a project manager, writer and educator. He recently coauthored The Fourth Branch of Government. He earned his BA at Hampden-Sydney College, an MBA from George Mason University and an MS in information systems from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is past president and treasurer of the Poetry Society of Virginia.

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Copyright © 2000 by Jack Trammel!.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 1

Many other places are worth seeing, but capitals only are worth residing at.

Lord Chesterfield

The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.

Euripides

How does one go about describing a preeminent city? he wondered to himself. Every city boasts of at least a few distinguishing features, whether it be beautiful architectural structures; broad, bustling thoroughfares; loud, crowded markets; sprawling mansions or palaces; or even just colorful ethnic districts. But those were generic characteristics common to almost all cities. They didn’t speak to the real significance of a particular metropolis.

What makes some cities great, while others somehow fall short of significance? What makes a city so trenchant that its citizens are elevated to a special condition simply because they reside, or hail from there? What makes a city that extraordinary? he demanded of the silence. What makes a city worthy of… . .murder?

Perhaps glory was grounded in the nobility of the citizenry itself; or maybe in the grandeur and historical importance of the architecture; or in the scale and symmetry of the boulevards and avenues; or perhaps it lay with the great men who hailed from there in the past. Perhaps it had something to do with sheer size and dimension, or strategic location. Perhaps it was measured in terms of economic wealth, or educational institutions. Perhaps it was related to the political functions of the city. Perhaps it was all of those things.

There could be no denying, he decided, that Paris, France, was a great city. Paris, Kentucky, on the other hand, was a place of relative insignificance, and the inhabitants of that small town would probably rather keep it that way.

Yet, there often seemed to be no predilection on the part of individuals, and the swirling sages of fate and fortune instead consummated the greatness of a city. Richmond was this type of notable city—molded by the invisible hands of destiny.

Situated on the fall line between the Piedmont plains and the marsh dotted Tidewater, Richmond wove the fabric of the first American colony together like a colorful patchwork quilt. It was a center for modern high-rises and fax machines, and a city of drug traffic and homicide. It was a city of collective tragedy, and a city of beloved, undying Southern culture. It was a city comprised of proud, hardworking, and occasionally angry citizens. It was a city of fluttering colonial flags and restive spirits. It was a city of marble men and refugee seagulls.

Richmond had survived perhaps more than any other American city, and in its own way, created and preserved more than any other city. It didn’t have the population of New York—being comprised of only nine-hundred thousand inhabitants in the metropolitan area—but it would take two-hundred Paris, Kentucky’s to equal it in that sense; many more, in other senses.

The city had originally been a small river village when Williamsburg was the Royal Capitol of Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, however, Williamsburg proved too close to British loyalists to be a safe seat of government, and after a brief but heated debate, Richmond was designated the new capitol of Virginia. Losing out to Richmond by a margin of just one vote, the small town of Columbia several miles to the west missed by a hairs-breadth of taking its own place in history. Beautiful and ironic, he decided.

This was the perfect place for his mission.

Thomas Jefferson had been the first governor to serve there. He had designed the capitol building still in use today—patterning it after a classical Greco-Roman temple.

A few years later, Richmond was even considered as a location for the national capitol of the newly united colonies. Petty bickering among the various states, however, resulted in the creation of Washington D. C. instead.

Richmond was also the capitol of the ill-fated Confederate States of America. Perhaps here Richmond had reached its greatest heights of glory, and its lowest depths of despair. In the same capitol building that Thomas Jefferson had designed and worked in for the advancement of Virginia, the driven, though frustrated Jefferson Davis had toiled to prolong the life of the doomed Confederate nation.

Yes, the city had survived even that experience—though countless of her inhabitants did not—going on to become so many important, but often forgotten things to the region and the nation. It was a fascinating place to study! Even a better place for a great tragedy …

Richmond was once the flour capital of the world. Richmond was once the railroad center of Mid-Atlantic America. Richmond was, and still remained, the tobacco capital of the world.

Richmond was the first city to use electric trolleys. Richmond was one of the earliest cities to nurture the union movement (although it lasted only a short while). Richmond was, and still continued to be, a deep-water ocean port. Richmond also owned one of only twelve Federal Reserve Banks.

Richmond was also a city of less tangible monuments; a city of ghosts and fleeting shadows. A train and over one-hundred crewmen still remained buried beneath Church Hill, where a sudden cave-in trapped them forever. On either end of the sealed tunnel he read the solitary inscription: 1926. George Wythe, a founding father of the country, was buried nearby, poisoned by his jealous nephew. Countless underground mazes still ran underneath buildings near the river. Two U.S. Presidents, nineteen Confederate Generals, and many other prominent Americans were laid to rest in the silent hills of Hollywood Cemetery, overlooking the rocky James River.

The list went on and on. But of all those things, only one of the afore mentioned was really important—one might even say critical—to his understanding of the very heart and soul of the city. Beyond the modern super highways; beyond the smell of manufactured tobacco; beyond the decaying inner city and historic Fan district; beyond everything, the years 1861-65 loomed much larger than life, their shadows darkening everything.

Of all the things that Richmond was, the root metaphor remained hidden somewhere in the events of those frightening, destructive, gut-wrenching revolutionary years. No one could understand, or appreciate Richmond without completely absorbing the staggering significance of those times.

He understood far too well. Richmond was the focus of his ambition; the outlet for his vast energies. Richmond was the perfect stage for his Shakespearean tragedy. Richmond was ripe for a massacre.

* * *

On a wide boulevard running north out of the city toward Ashland and Fredricksburg, at the corner of a major east-west turnpike, the ground was being churned up by bulldozers and back-hoes. Across the street, lunchtime traffic at a Burger King was brisk.

The surrounding environs were not particularly attractive. Though the neighborhood had once been one of the wealthiest in the city, it was now suffering that fate peculiar to most of the Victorian areas that were too close to the old city center—it was turning into a rundown, dangerous, and depressed home for the poor and afflicted.

The construction crew, however, was mostly indifferent. The cheapest land for development was often this type, and the city offered tax breaks for businesses locating within the city limits. It made economic sense for all of the parties involved.

Standing out from the bustle of activity were three men in tan slacks and blue oxford shirts. Two carried clipboards and survey blueprints, and wore that tired look of men who worked too hard and moved from one job to the next in a matter of twenty-four hours or less. The other man, however, wore a hardhat and was dressed in more expensive business clothing. He carried himself with an unquestioned authority and was obviously the one in charge of the work.

We should be able to move in right on schedule, he said to his companions. We have Interstate access to downtown in six minutes; the airport in thirteen minutes; to Washington in two hours; New York in five hours. On the whole, I think this is an excellent site.

How far to Pittsburgh? one of the others asked with a trace of bitterness. The man in charge slapped him on the back, laughing sharply and completely ignoring the subtle complaint.

Don’t worry about that kid of yours, Frank. I’ll fly you back anytime you need to go. Or I’ll fly him down here.

He’s in school right now.

A man yelled nearby, and the trio paused momentarily to watch a large, rusting tank rising out of the earth. A putrid, brown liquid was gurgling out of a dozen holes in its side.

What the hell are you doing? Morgan Crumb yelled, pushing the two foremen with him aside roughly. What the hell is that thing doing there? He approached other men near the machine, who were gaping at the suspended tank like it was some kind of fossilized dinosaur on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History.

Why’d you pull that out? Crumb demanded of the crew. We don’t handle that kind of stuff! Shut down that lift and stand back! Damn, damn, damn. We’ll have to call someone on this one.

Take it easy, Morgan, the closest foreman said, holding his hands up. It’s just an old gasoline tank. It probably won’t hold things up that much.

Crumb was not mollified. This is Virginia. We don’t know how things work here. It may not be just an old gasoline tank. How much other crap is still in the ground? I thought the whole site had been cleared!

It has been, the foreman, named Clark, said quietly. Clark was only five foot seven, and he was not especially imposing—particularly while standing next to the towering Crumb, who still looked like the semi-pro football star he had been almost twenty years ago. Clark was obviously uncomfortable in the face of Crumb’s anger. He shifted his feet uneasily. The city papers certifying that are in my truck.

Well, Crumb continued, unfazed, the site is obviously not clean! Get on the horn with our city people and get it taken care of. I’m not going to pay for any cleanup after they certified it! There’s no telling how many more of the damn things are buried here.

The city might hold us up some, Clark warned quietly, knowing full well that the city would not respond as promptly as Crumb would like.

Not if you call them now!

Clark scurried off obediently, looking less like a construction foreman and more like a messenger boy looking for his bicycle. Crumb, for his part, stared at the tank angrily and cursed the ineptitude of governments everywhere. They wouldn’t last a minute in this business! he muttered to himself. But we’re going by the book here.

The men had started to congregate to gawk at the tank again, and Crumb busily shooed them away. There was no point in letting them breathe in noxious lead fumes.

What other surprises would they unearth here? He turned to Giamotto—the other foreman—and stared him in the eyes. Sam, I want you to go down to city hall and get me a complete history on this site. I mean, complete! If there was an outhouse here fifty years ago, I want to know about it.

Giamotto nodded and trotted off. This was the first time Crumb had spent in Richmond—or even Virginia for that matter—and he was not predisposed to rate it highly at this point, though everything had looked so very good on paper.

Morgan Crumb did not like his construction projects held up for any reason. He was well known for having many extreme obsessions, but punctuality was first and foremost among them. He had once dropped his advertising account with a prominent Madison Street firm when the representative had been ten minutes tardy for a working lunch. His watch was set practically every other day or so to the official time registered with the Federal Weather Bureau in Pittsburgh.

If time was his religion on one hand, then money was his god on the other. As president of the largest national bank conglomeration in Pennsylvania, he had amassed a fortune well beyond the seven million he had inherited from his father. He embodied the spirit of capitalism and the profit motive more completely than anyone since the days of Standard Oil and the Robber Barons. The only constraints on his ambition were the smothering banking laws still in effect after the 1981 reforms, and even those he had targeted for conquest sometime in the distant future. In short, there was nothing that he felt he couldn’t accomplish, given enough time and money to see it through.

He had displayed the same sort of haughty determinism on the gridiron in his younger days. He had been a four year letterman at Fox Chapel High School, and an All-American at the University of Pittsburgh. He was said to have had the finest pair of hands ever seen in a tight-end, and he could throw a block that would crush opponents fifty pounds heavier than himself.

Like so many minor sports legends, however, his trip to the Steelers’ training camp had been cut short by a freak knee injury. A short stint in the semi-pros had ended in frustration, but not failure. He was given another tryout—with the Redskins this time—but he had the sense to see where his career was heading. He left the team unaware, and not caring, that he had made the final cut for the regular season. His powerful intuition told him that he had lost his physical edge, and he refused to play as anything less than the best tight-end in the game.

Instead, he moved on to an arena where his minor physical limitations would not hold him back one inch—the world of high finance and glittering fortunes. His knee never bothered him in the arena of expensive suits and multi-million dollar deals.

PAB (The First Bank of Pennsylvania) had been on the verge of collapsing when he took over the reigns from his father. The choking steel industry had nearly taken PAB with it in its death throes. Several years later, however, he had strengthened it to the point where he could have taken over at least half of the other banks in the country (though that wasn’t legal, yet.) Instead, he turned his powers to those projects he could undertake within the full protection of the law to grow in financial muscle.

The Richmond project was the latest, and the most crucial. He already envisioned it as a watershed moment in his business career. For the first time, he had decided to move into the nebulous arena of interstate mergers where interpretations of the complex, often inadequate interstate banking laws could result in defacto hostile takeovers. His plans flirted with the legal boundaries intentionally, and he had already mapped out the entire campaign. He had a team of over one-hundred lawyers on his payroll, covering every known action, and anticipating many other possibilities.

This construction project was absolutely critical. The schedule for its completion was the fulcrum on which the fate of his entire future hinged. If this small operation succeeded, it would pave the way for deals that involved one hundred times the money.

He was determined that the gasoline tanks would not interfere.

* * *

Clinton Isaac woke in the middle of the night weeping, his hands trembling uncontrollably. It took several minutes for him to comprehend that he was in his own bed, in his own house.

When he did realize it, he leapt up angrily, fighting down nightmare apparitions, wiping tears off the beard stubble on his cheeks. He turned down the darkened hall toward his son’s room. Inside, Jeremy’s clown night light was glowing softly beside his bed, an idiotic grin frozen on its cretin plastic face.

Jeremy was sleeping tranquilly. His ten-year-old face held no discernible expression, but Isaac wondered what he was dreaming about. This night had been one of the worst Isaac could remember—even more terrible than the night Jeremy’s mother had left—and Isaac was grateful to a small degree that his son seemed to be taking things better than his father was. But then again, perhaps the innocent face belied what Jeremy was really dreaming about.

Isaac could not get the terrifying images out of his mind. It had been about seven in the evening when Jeremy had run into the living room and pulled his father’s paper down. Tears were streaming down his reddened face.

Daddy, Daddy! he screamed. Daddy!

Isaac jumped up, confused since Jeremy had appeared perfectly unharmed, and followed him out the front door. Jeremy pulled him frantically by the arm down the driveway to the road, still screaming in anguish. When Isaac looked out on the highway, his heart momentarily stopped beating.

The German Shepherd pup was a gift from O’Malley down at the station. Jeremy named it Fritz, having heard a German called that in an old black and white rerun of Hogan’s Heroes. Fritz was in the center of the road, his tongue hanging out too far, his body turning in slow, agonizing circles. He was limping in a pool of bright red blood that appeared to have erased the double-yellow line for several feet. His eyes were still shining, though his spotted black and brown fur was matted with shiny liquid blood.

Down the road a quarter of a mile, a semi-truck pulled off along the ditch, its four-ways flashing in the Halloween half-light of dusk. A man climbed out and was staring at the scene as if he didn’t know what to do.

Do something! Jeremy demanded. Daddy, do something!

Tears were still streaming down his young face. Save him, Daddy!

Isaac found himself paralyzed. There was no way the dog could live. No animal could lose that much blood and hope to live more than a few minutes. That was not even taking into account any internal damage …

Jeremy, he finally said, his voice choking, go in the house.

Jeremy shook his head, his lower lip sticking out. No! Help him, Daddy.

I said, go in the house!

That precipitated a new burst of tears, and the boy ran into the house shrieking and flailing his arms.

Isaac walked out to the dog cautiously while the truck driver waved for cars to stop. He felt the blood sticking to the soles of his tennis shoes and tried to ignore it. Come here, boy, he whispered. Fritz whimpered once and crawled to him. Isaac could now see that it was worse than it looked. There was a broken hip bone that had splintered and punctured the skin, and somehow, there was still more blood flowing.

Goddammit! he screamed in his head. How had the dog gotten out of the back yard? Ignoring the slick mess, he cradled the puppy in his arms and turned back to the house. He could already feel his T-shirt getting sticky.

The truck driver was suddenly chasing after him. He was in his mid-forties, a frightened, helpless figure. He yanked his cap off and pulled at his grayish, messy hair. He tried to apologize, but it didn’t come out right.

Isaac knew in one corner of his mind that it wasn’t the driver’s fault, but he was not in a forgiving mood. I’ll take care of it, he said simply, not intending for his voice to sound as angry as it did. He left the speechless man in the driveway to sort it out for himself.

Isaac called his veterinarian, but the dog did not live another five minutes. Two hours later, he buried Fritz in the backyard, a good distance from the swing set, since he didn’t wanted Jeremy reminded constantly, and then tried to make sense of it.

It wasn’t as if he’d never seen blood before—or even death, for that matter. After all, he was a city homicide detective. He saw blood nearly everyday in his line of work. But this was different. This wasn’t fair. He couldn’t compare the value of a drug dealer lying dead on the street—full of bullet holes—to the value of his own son’s pet lying on the pavement, dying an agonizing, confusing death.

What had Fritz been thinking in those last painful, disorienting moments? Had he realized how much he was loved by that little boy? Had he understood the bright headlights blinding him as he dragged himself through his own spilt body fluids? Did he realize that he was going to die?

Isaac