Image by Bobby Love from Pixabay
Captain Ironwood Hamilton of the Tinyville, VA police force had heard that everyone became their parents at some point in their life, and sure enough: the combination of strength, love, power, sorrow, and righteous indignation he had often seen in his father looked back in him in his morning mirror.
Why? Lofton County's chief law man, Sheriff John Nottingham, had crossed a line that no one concerned with public safety and justice should have been able to bear with … yet in March, he had won his re-election while defiantly ignoring the hassling of bicyclists in Lofton County. By May, the hassling had ripened to serial killing – and it had taken until July before Captain Hamilton and his two allies – Captain Lee from Big Loft, VA and Major Dubois, retired from Interpol – had figured out how to get that serial killer off the road, all of them working outside jurisdictional lines.
The three allies had also figured out in that same time period that Sheriff Nottingham cared nothing about the deaths. The bicyclists were thought to be transplants to Lofton County who were bringing their “liberal” ideas in from cities and states the fiercely conservative southern Virginia region despised. Captains Hamilton and Lee, in their jurisdictions, had stopped the hassling, but the killer had known that in Sheriff Nottingham's vast jurisdiction, he could do as he pleased – it was known that the sheriff was a firm believer in “just us,” so certain groups could be targeted.
Sheriff Nottingham had been elected for 15 consecutive two-year terms in Lofton County, so Captain Hamilton multiplied 22 murders in three months times four quarters in a year times 30 years – it was a staggering potential number that no one seemed to have a problem with.
Yet Isaiah Hamilton, as Tinyville councilman, had a problem with the Tinyville Massacre of Black voters in 1972, and had reached out and brought the force of the federal government down into Lofton County to impose civil rights at last and to capture, try, and jail the murderers who thought they were going to run free like they always had. This had cost Councilman Hamilton his life in the end, with his wife – an “accident” had been framed up in 1988, while Ironwood their son was too young to know what questions to ask.
But now, the son was 46 … in investigating another set of murders, he had caught the people who had murdered his parents. That was after he had worked with the Black men of Lofton County to set a trap for great bunches of rogue officers from Lofton County's city and towns around Tinyville – they had taken down 120, and killed a bit more than a third for resisting.
Ironwood Hamilton carried the same burden of sorrow his father had, and he was also equally dedicated to putting a stop to wanton injustice. Sheriff Nottingham had crossed the line, and enough of Lofton County was all right with that to have kept him in office – so Ironwood Hamilton picked up the mantle left him by his father, and headed to work for a key meeting.
“I'm a soldier in the army of the Lord!
I'm a soldier in the army of the Lord!
Got my war robes on, in the army of the Lord!
Got my war robes on, in the army of the Lord!”
Retired Major Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois was singing along in the shower with his favorite traditional Black gospel song – it had been the first such song he had learned in English while growing up speaking Creole French in the bayous of Louisiana.
The song fit the man – lifetime bachelor, 20 years in the army in the Judge Advocate General service, 10 years in Interpol, never retired from the service of his country and his people – serving as a lawyer to Lofton County's Black community upon his family's move there and specifically into Tinyville, and always available to consult with his dear friend Ironwood Hamilton at need.
But for Major Dubois's salt-and-pepper hair, there was no clue that he was 52 – his sable-skinned body admitted of no wrinkles, and he also kept himself in tiptop military form … the bright beads of water highlighted the sculpted curves of his muscular frame as he stopped out of the shower.
Major Dubois also saw his father Jean-Luc looking back at him … slow to age and weaken, working happily in his third food-related business, and forever saying: “No man need retire from what good God puts before him to do – Allons! – let's go!”
Major Dubois was a bicyclist still on a competitive level, which had allowed him and Captain Hamilton to lure that serial killer into the trap that took him off the road. But for the day, his war robe was his suit, which he put on for his first appointment on Zoom.
“Good morning, Captain Hamilton,” he said at the appointed time.
“Good morning, Major Dubois,” Captain Hamilton said, invoking the formality of their relationship for the importance of what they were about to discuss.
The formality acknowledged, it quickly disappeared.
“Well, Ironwood, this is the first morning in which we count down, openly, to the sheriff enjoying his breakfast in retirement, or, if we are exceptionally blessed, to him eating whatever he serves his prisoners at the county jail for breakfast.”
“I've been reviewing the relevant law – it's about the same problem as the serial killer he enabled. Yes, we can prove misconduct, but with the backing he has in the county, he will probably still survive until 2022 … just think of the 'accidents!'”
“I don't have to think about it, Ironwood. I have the actual number for you from my clientele in the Black and Latino communities, over the past thirty years. The Lofton County Free Voice totaled it up at election time, but it was buried by Covid-19.”
Major Dubois posted the figures, and saw Captain Hamilton began to shake from rage.
“We have just re-elected a man who has allowed this much to go un-investigated?”
“Let me put it to you this way, Ironwood. The best thing that law enforcement did was to cross you in trying to protect the police brutality records they also left. That allowed you and Captain Lee to take out the worst of the worst of them in concert with the Lofton County Free Voice and the Black men of this region … and then Captain Lee almost single-handedly changed out Big Loft's police department.”
Captain Hamilton smiled after a moment's thought.
“That just leaves the sheriff's department, and after that, light can break.”
“I have examined the election results carefully,” Major Dubois said, “and on its face it looks like Sheriff Nottingham won in a landslide, but consider this, my friend: he and his opponent, together, only turned out 52 percent of the possible vote.”
Captain Hamilton sat up straight.
“What?”
“Lofton County is 58 percent Caucasian, and not even all of them showed up – six percent of them stayed home along with the entire Black, Latino, and Native vote. Had everyone shown up, Sheriff Nottingham would have lost, because his vote was only 49 percent of the eligible voters in the county. ”
Major Dubois leaned toward the camera on his computer.
“I have examined Lofton County's election laws. A recall can be done with only 15 percent of the county signing on – there is still time to get that on the ballot by November. The communities I serve can deliver that, but the 42 percent is not going to turn out for a kinder, gentler bigot. So, the first step would be to find a candidate who can inspire the 42 percent to turn out, and also pick up at least 9 percent of the Caucasian vote.”
“You planning on running, Jean-Paul?”
“I can get 42 percent, my friend, but I am too Black and French to get the rest in Lofton County at the moment. However, we do know someone who might be able to do the feat … he may lose a little on the side of the 42 percent, but he would pick up enough of the 58 percent to make up for it while still pursuing justice, for his track record is proven by everybody.”
“Where? Me? Everyone remembers me killing off all these little departments – never, in this small town environment!”
“I know, Ironwood. I was speaking of Henry.”
Captain Hamilton leaned back in his chair and thought about that for a long moment.
“That's about as dangerous an idea as your last one, Jean-Paul.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures, Ironwood.”
Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee of the Big Loft police force had a magnificent record in both JAG and on the Big Loft police force in terms of getting crime solved to the highest levels. He also had a secret weapon for Virginian public life, but …
“The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding the entire United States of America this election year, and you think this is the time to have the spirit and image of Virginia's personal horseman in gray come out of marble and ride back into Virginia's politics?” he said when he heard what Captain Hamilton and Major Dubois had in mind.
Both Major Dubois and Captain Hamilton knew who their friend confronted in his mirror every morning … Captain Lee's Lee and Slocum-Lofton parents were distant cousins, so the genes of “Light-Horse” Harry Lee and his second wife Anne had re-asserted themselves in an eerie way, leaving the son of Hiram and Sarah Lee born on January 19, 1974 to get up every day and confront the son of Harry and Anne's son Robert Edward Lee, born on January 19, 1807.
Captain Lee defeated the man in the mirror daily, repudiating his family's Confederate legacy by both word and deed. That hurdle had been jumped; the next hurdle was that the captain inherited his uncle's deep natural aversion to politics.
“We're just asking you to think about it, Harry,” Captain Hamilton said. “I know it's a lot, and if you can't, you know we can always come up with a plan B.”
“We will need to know your answer by Friday,” Major Dubois said.
Captain Lee's marbled face was troubled at that moment, but all at once, it became thoughtful, peaceful, and then formed the bud of a smile.
“You know,” he said, “I have been crying out to the Lord about what we are going to do about Sheriff Nottingham ever since he refused to consider all the evidence we presented him for those 22 murders. This was not the answer I expected, but, I humbly submit to it and say yes.”
“He didn't dispatch two angels, but we two just rolled up on you with the answer, Harry!” Captain Hamilton said.
“When God prepares your way before you, hallelujah!” the major said.
“Y'all going to spot me the money to rent a blue roan horse for the campaign, because you know I cannot do gray?”
“That's called a campaign expense, Sheriff Lee, and there are people who fundraise for those things!” Captain Hamilton said as Major Dubois laughed.
“This requires a praise break,” Major Dubois said, and reached over and turned on his favorite song.
The three friends laughed, got up and put their tenor, baritone, and bass to work, laughed at the foibles of singing together on Zoom, and then sat down and began the plan.