The Exhumation Read online

  ‘Well you could’ve put it on the damn website. There’s been nothing.’ The mother retrieved her smartphone and scrolled through to the web page. The detective picked up her phone and glanced across the page, which stated it was open as usual.

  Vanessa apologised to the lady and returned to Darnell, who appeared flustered.

  ‘Get that tomb swept up as soon as possible. Close off the entrance to the grave itself and just say it’s having a facelift inside. We can’t have too much suspicion around this, we need to get the park open as quickly as possible.’

  ‘I’m not your PA, Detective Jackson.’

  ‘Listen, I’m the more experienced one here, so why don’t we just follow what I say for the time being. We can’t afford to mess this up.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m sure you can mess up the case just fine by yourself, so I hear anyway.’ Vanessa folded her arms, raised her eyebrow and shot Darnell a judgemental glare.

  ‘What did you just say?’ Darnell said between gritted teeth.

  ‘I know all about your reputation, Detective Jackson. When you’re not getting police officers killed, you’re storming into innocent people’s houses and dragging them out of the shower. How is Rebecca Fortune?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ A dribble of sweat poured down his receding hairline. He wiped his moist moustache, curled above his top lip.

  ‘I always research who I’m working with, detective. It didn’t take me long to discover your calamities. Don’t worry, neither the President, nor the State Senator are aware. They admire your achievements. But I hope this shows what a good detective I am and you’ll allow me to aid you in finding those responsible and bringing our president home.’

  Darnell loosened his tie and grabbed his chest. Vanessa’s findings stung harder than a wasp. He paced up towards the junior detective and leaned into her.

  ‘Well if you’re so damn smart, why don’t you try and solve this case yourself.’

  Darnell threw in the towel and stormed out of the cemetery, leaving his thirty-year career behind.

  Chapter 3

  Darnell returned home after posting his resignation into the commander’s pigeon hole. Whilst he dreaded the response from his boss, facing his wife and explaining to her that he no longer had an income or health insurance for their family would be a bigger challenge.

  A large drive led up to the red-bricked home, a rare feature for the area with his neighbouring houses typically being made of wood. To the side, a double garage protected their matching black Mercedes four-by-four cars with personalised licence plates. Three stone steps led up to the white arched entrance, the windows had turquoise shutters, and a large lawn sat on the rear of the house with an array of flowerbeds around the border.

  As the detective stepped out of his car, he heard a commotion inside. His wife, Jasmine, was arguing with their eldest son, Thomas. He’d acquired quite a temper since he turned eighteen, a surprise for the boy who’d always been so well behaved until he left school.

  Darnell walked into the house and found his wife, who remained beautiful to him despite the scorn which marked her face. Jasmine, with her unblemished dark skin, had maintained her youthful looks; an achievement for a woman who, like her husband, was approaching fifty. She stormed around the house in a white vest, white trousers and black heels. Her usually curly hair had been straightened and she appeared tired after a day of teaching biology at a local high school.

  The disturbance caused a temporary ceasefire. Thomas stormed into the kitchen and glared at his father. Darnell continued to search for any resemblance in their son, but it had long gone. If it was ever there at all. The truth was Thomas never really felt like his son. He was born a white boy with blonde hair. A surprise for the two African-American parents who questioned if the maternity ward had handed them the wrong baby.

  It had rocked the Jackson household, tormenting the newly-weds for weeks after he arrived. Darnell was convinced his wife had cheated on him but DNA tests proved her loyalty. Ruling out albinism, doctors explained that, while it was unusual, it was possible for black parents to create white children. There are a dozen genes that control the type of melanin which our genetic make-up consists of, therefore Darnell or his wife must have had some white ancestry for their child to look like he did, which was news to either of them.

  Despite their differences, they’d always shown him love and tried to make him feel like one of the family even if he didn’t look like either of them. The issues of his identity didn’t just cause problems at home. Every trip to the supermarket or through an airport when he was a child sparked suspicion from security, who asked Jasmine for evidence that she was in fact his mother. Strangers would ask if she was his nanny, or accuse her of kidnapping the child. It was a constant battle for the pair who already were in a war of race relations. And just as Thomas had settled, Aaron was born two years later, with little doubt over his identity as he was the spit of his parents, which left an unsavoury taste in Thomas’s mouth throughout his life. He couldn’t have been more of an outsider to anyone looking in on their nuclear family.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Darnell yelled. He turned to his son and wondered if that look of disgust had been permanently tattooed on his face. Little did Darnell know that it was a tattoo itself that had brought on an argument between his wife and their firstborn.

  ‘Show him your arm, Thomas!’ Jasmine cried. Thomas stood still, glaring at his mother and refusing to move. She stormed over to him and grabbed his arm, lifting up the sleeve on his black t-shirt. She held his arm up to into her husband’s eye-line. ‘Look what your son has done!’

  Upon his arm was a tattoo. It was cheaply done by an amateur, similar to the markings Darnell had witnessed on inmates down at the County Jail. They used improvised equipment, utilising mechanical pencils, radio transistors and sometimes staples to imprint the images on the subject’s skin. Thomas’s arm was red raw with black ink running down. Darnell winced as he considered the pain his son must have been through to achieve this piece of art. His arms were exposed in a tartan shirt which was torn at the sleeves and his ripped blue jeans barely covered his knees. He’d tried to grow himself a beard but just a few wisps sprouted from his chin.

  The amateurish nature of the tattoo proved Thomas had visited an underground artist or had one of his unsavoury friends create it; not surprising seeing he was underage. But it wasn’t his age which had upset his mother so much. It was the image itself. Thomas had upon his arm a swastika. Darnell glared at the Nazi symbol and felt his fist tremble.

  ‘How could you do this?’ Darnell lifted up his hand and smacked his son across the face. The impact threw Thomas back and he clung on to the red-tiled island in the middle of the kitchen to maintain his balance. ‘How can you do this to our family? Have you learned nothing in this house? Your ancestors died trying to give us the equal opportunities we have today. You would be a slave if they hadn’t bothered.’

  ‘You might be. But I wouldn’t be. Have you not noticed? I’m white.’

  Darnell slapped his son for a second time. A red mark grew across his face in the shape of his father’s handprint, which Thomas grabbed with his palm.

  ‘Get out of my sight, right now! Go on, get out, and don’t come back until that thing has been removed!’

  He pointed towards the door and his son obliged, slamming the door behind him. Darnell sat down on the chair and rested his head in his hands. He’d lost all faith in his son’s ability to finally become a decent human being. Thomas had problems, yes, but Darnell hung on to the hope that it was simply a phase. Now he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up in prison with the rest of the reprobates he had arrested over the years.

  ‘Did we do something wrong?’ He turned to his wife and kissed her cheek, before wiping away the tear which had trickled down from her eye.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. We got things right with Aaron. And Thomas was a wonderful child before he met those hooligans.’

  The
hooligans Jasmine referred to were a gang which Thomas had begun to hang around with after his father had been shot. Darnell was in hospital for weeks and the tight ship he’d previously managed in the household loosened, allowing Thomas to go out after his curfew and meet up with an undesirable crowd. Darnell had met his friends on a chance encounter; they were a group of white hip-hop artists who riffed with each other on street corners, whilst parading the Confederate flag and signing a gun shooting with their hands whenever people of colour crossed their path.

  Darnell found it quite ironic that they hated black people so much when it was they who had created the music they loved. Hip-hop had originated from the Bronx, made popular by African Americans, and brought into the main stream media during the eighties.

  ‘You can’t have the rhythm without the blues,’ Darnell whispered to himself, considering the wise words of the poet, Amanda Seales. Whilst he considered the group hypocritical, he found most bigotry to be so.

  He couldn’t understand why his son would hang around with a group who would persecute someone like him. Yes, he was white on the outside, but on the inside he was as black as his father. It was clear from his chance encounter with the group that Thomas had kept his heritage away from his friends. Darnell targeted them after reports of vandalism of a war memorial in downtown Champaign. It was erected for those who died in the two world wars, as well as Korea and Vietnam. Darnell approached his son, who feigned confusion at the sight of his own father in front of his friends. When Darnell informed his friends that he was in fact Thomas’s father, he heard his son mumble “Stepfather” as he walked away.

  ‘We need to stop him seeing those people,’ Darnell grumbled.

  ‘How do you stop an eighteen-year-old seeing his friends? He’s practically a grownup now. And you’ve just made it even harder by throwing him out.’ Jasmine sighed and patronisingly patted her husband’s balding head.

  ‘It’s amazing really that I can work the roughest streets in Illinois and yet I can’t keep control of my own son.’

  ‘Well let’s leave him for now.’ Jasmine wiped her eyes and changed the subject. ‘How was your day?’

  Darnell scratched his head as he considered how he was going to reveal to his wife that he’d quit his job, sacrificing their health benefits, security and potentially his pension. He looked into her sad eyes and knew that the last thing she needed was more upheaval.

  ‘Oh it was fine,’ he said instead. ‘I’m gonna take a shower.’

  As he walked up the stairs, he passed Aaron who had kept an eye on the family battle from the landing, hovering outside of his bedroom door. He stepped out and stopped in his father’s tracks. He lounged around the house in a salmon shirt, yellow jumper and a smart pair of Levis which fit neatly over his white Converse shoes.

  ‘Is everything OK with Thomas?’

  ‘Not now, Aaron.’ Darnell gently pushed his son aside and paced up to the bathroom. As he showered, he washed away the stress from his eyes, turning up the heat to clear the dust he felt embedded into his skin from Abe’s grave earlier in the day. It was like a building site down there and his asthma had been tickled by the rubble.

  He dried himself off and walked into his office. Switching on his computer, he browsed over his emails before his BlackBerry disturbed him with its vigorous vibrations. He looked down; it was Commander Hill calling, and Darnell reluctantly answered.

  ‘Jackson, what the hell do you think you’re doing throwing in the towel on a case like this? It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. And I’d thought you’d take it up as a last hurrah before your retirement.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I couldn’t work with that damn woman,’ Darnell replied. ‘She’s completely above her station. After thirty years, I refuse to be subjected to that kind of disrespect from someone who is effectively a graduate. She has no experience, she’s just all connections.’

  ‘That damn woman could save this case. She’s a smart girl and you could learn a thing or two from her, as could she with you. You both have so much to offer.’

  ‘I’m too old to learn, boss. I’m retiring soon, what’s the point?’

  ‘I thought this would mean more to you than this. I thought Lincoln was your hero? Isn’t this a chance to pay back everything he did for your family? For freeing the slaves?’

  ‘Hey, don’t play the race card with me.’

  ‘I’m not, I’m just trying to put things in perspective. You have an amazing opportunity and I think you’d do a good job.’

  ‘It’s a standard ransom case, anyone could do it. But I’m not having some juvenile incompetent cop tell me otherwise. And I certainly don’t appreciate some snitch giving out information about my previous slip-ups to her either. That hurt, Commander Hill. I can’t trust anyone in the department anymore. So enough is enough.’

  ‘Well that is a shame.’ Disappointment carried in his voice. ‘You were one of the best detectives I’d ever met before you got shot. I was hoping this might be a chance for you to prove yourself once again and end on a high before you retired.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Darnell said before hanging up. He was surprised by the compliment from his manager, who gave few out during their time together. Hill was old school in his management approach; his silence meant you were meeting his unreasonably high expectations, but boy did you know about it if you weren’t.

  He browsed through his emails before his employer ultimately switched off his access. Whilst he was no longer working on the case, he was still a little nosey. He also wanted to write a thank you note to those he’d worked beside for the past thirty years as he hadn’t had the opportunity to say goodbye before he stormed out of the precinct.

  Whilst perusing the emails, his attention was drawn to an email titled ‘Lincoln.’ All other communication to his email regarding the exhumation had been titled Oak Ridge to protect the nature of the case. Darnell double-clicked on the email which didn’t appear to be from the standard .gov address he was used to in the force.

  Looking for Lincoln, are you? Well you’ll have to go on a little journey first. Like any journey, you must start at the very beginning. As the song goes, it’s a very good place to start. Only then will you begin to see.

  In the header of the email was a symbol. The marking was of a tightly gripped fist above a laurel wreath. He didn’t recognise it, but he knew he had to get the email to his superiors at the precinct. With his heart racing, Darnell dialled his boss.

  ‘Sir, I take back everything I just said. I think I need to be back on the case.’

  Chapter 4

  The circular table mimicked that of King Arthur. The knights at this table did not seek to protect the King of England, but the former President of the United States. Detective Darnell Jackson, Commander Lewis Hill and Detective Vanessa Jamison were joined by a host of experts, swiftly drafted in to help return the body of Abraham Lincoln.

  Springfield had never seemed so quiet. An air of suspicion arose from the state capital as the most famous cemetery outside of DC had been closed to the public. Web analyst Robert Lawson had attempted to deter suspecting journalists by implementing a Closed for Renovation notice upon the Oak Ridge website. Their Twitter account was filled with complaints from those who had made a mammoth journey to see the historic site and they needed a fast response to appease their angry followers.

  Robert Lawson was exactly what you expected an analyst to be. He fit the stereotype of geek chic with his thick-lensed square glasses, gelled parted hair, stripy shirt and cords, which were held up by braces. His ability to communicate in person was limited, but when it came to computers, he was a smart cookie. He’d got the job after completing a coding game online, which followed up with a call from the CIA who had quickly assembled the best and the brightest talent in the country to join them.

  ‘Good job on the website, Lawson, but what excuse can we make for the Oak Ridge page not being updated ahead of time? The managing directors of this place are pretty on top of things l
ike this. There is no way the public will believe we simply forgot.’ Grieg Sommers of the Springfield Tourist Bureau commenced the debate. He was a round man with grey hair, stubbly beard and black designer frames. He spoke with a lisp. Finding clothes to fit him was clearly a struggle as what looked like a brown bed-sheet covered his body. ‘I still don’t understand why we can’t just put this out to the public? We’ll find this body in no time.’

  ‘The President has given us the strictest orders to keep this under wraps for now. God knows what kinda harm this could do to our nation and to this impending election,’ Hill replied. ‘But I am interested to know the answer to Grieg’s question about the website, Lawson.’

  ‘We’ve argued that we had already put it on the website but the viewers had the site cached.’

  ‘Cached?’ Darnell asked with an air of confusion. When he first entered the business everything was written down on the back of a cigarette packet. Today, he was lost amongst the multiple devices one needed to succeed as a detective and the thesaurus of technical terminology required to communicate with his peers.

  ‘In layman’s terms, when you visit a website, your web browser…’ Lawson paused as he saw Darnell’s eyes glaze over ‘…the screen that you use to see web pages, it saves the document you are viewing onto your computer so that when you revisit the page, it can show you the last image you saw, rather than having to rebuild the image, saving you on your bandwidth usage.’

  ‘So how would anyone get past that?’ Vanessa asked; she knew, but she wanted her colleague to feel that he wasn’t the only lost soul in a technical world. She’d had enough one-upmanship for one day with her knowledge of Lincoln and Darnell’s career calamities. Commander Hill had offered her some feedback earlier that morning on building a relationship with a man who’d been in the force longer than she’d been alive.

  ‘You can remove the saved pages on your browser by deleting something called cookies, and no we’re not talking about Maryland cookies, sir.’ Lawson giggled but Darnell did not waver.