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Chapter 116

IT WAS TIME TO TRY OUT the plan I had concocted Maybe it was even past time, too late Moody and LJ had come with me Jonah wanted to but knew he couldn’t After all, he was representing the great state of Mississippi, and ere about to break the law in too many ways to count

“Stinks bad in here,” Moody said

The awful s odor, like a cross between bad patent medicine and rancid moonshine It was the foul scent of the cheraphs

I had just clih an unlocked ith Moody and LJ behind me, into Scooter’s old cabin off the East Point Road Noere in his studio, one large roo it into three The front part was a portrait studio, with a backdrop and a stool for the subject to pose on In the e wooden tables held trays of foul-s chemicals But it was in the last section that we found e’d coraphs, with dozens more pinned to the walls

There was one box full of nothing but photographs of lynchings Scooter Willems had been busy these past months Beside that box sat a stack of postcards ed corpses, burned bodies, twisted victims, like the one I’d received in the mail

“God Alhty,” Moody said “The ed”

“Look here,” said LJ, working his way along the wall “These are all fro”

I held up the lantern to see

“First, take a look at poor old Bobby hanging there,” LJ said “Now look who’s standing next to him There By his feet”

There they were, plain as day in the flickering laht: Chester Madden and Lincoln Alexander Stephens, two of the three White Raiders on trial They grinned up at the bloated, bloody, bursting head of Bobby Burnett

One by one I pulled the photographs down fro them in a manila folder I found on Scooter’s desk

“Look at this!” Moody exclaiht

I caround, with a rope around his neck His grinning killers each had a foot on his body, as if he were a prize lion they’d slain on safari

LJ pointed to the man on the end “I’ll be damned if that ain’t Lester Johnson”