The Hate Next Door by Matson Browning

Author:Matson Browning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

* * *

It was mid-October and the weather was beautiful. Tawni and I were out for dinner with friends. We spoke of the things normal people speak of and had just ordered our food when my cell phone went off.

“Hey, Matt,” a Phoenix homicide detective, Paul Dalton, said.“Need a favor.”

He told me of Cole’s murder and that, according to witnesses, the suspects were White men “with loads of tattoos.” He’d been told I was the guy who would be able to help identify them. And, sure enough: one of the suspects had “CRACKER” tattooed on the back of his head.

“Chris Whitley,” I said. The kid I’d sat behind and first met at a National Alliance meeting. A guy I’d shared beers with a dozen times since.

“They weren’t kidding about you,” the detective said. “How fast can you get here?”

I started making my phone calls to get all the approvals from the powers that be (it takes far more calls and authorizations than you’d ever think for a Mesa detective to help a Phoenix detective ten miles away). I kissed Tawni and left her as the third wheel at the restaurant. I was already in Phoenix when I was given—unenthusiastically by my superiors—the approval to assist.

I first drove to the apartment where Whitley and his friends had been living, hoping to catch them there. I sat outside in my truck and waited until, eventually, Phoenix PD showed up and cleared the house, but nobody was inside.

Entering the apartment, I wasn’t surprised by what I found. On the wall hung a swastika flag. Beneath it, a pair of the shiniest spit-shined Docs I’d ever seen. Hate music blared on the stereo in the empty apartment.

I was fully debriefed on what had happened.

The group—Chris Whitley, Sammy Compton, Justin Larue, Brandon Miller, Cassandra Wood, and Kelly Coffman—had all been inside the bar, River City Pockets, playing pool. At some point, Cassandra got into a fight with another random barfly and ended up breaking her orbital socket. An enormous Black security guard, a collegiate offensive lineman no less, proceeded to throw all six out. Sammy, humiliated, was the first out the door and he’d spotted Cole Bailey.

After attacking Cole, of course, like most “White nationalists” and “street soldiers,” they all ran like cowards. Brandon, I was told, had already been caught, driving away from the scene, blood still on his boots, and had been arrested for murder.

The other five were still on the run.

I sorted through all the names of all the members of Unit 88 whom I’d met or knew from the National Alliance meetings, and one who kept coming to mind was Jason Keith, a.k.a. Slick. Slick had just been released from prison and had moved to Apache Junction, an area at the far east end of Phoenix. Having been raised in Phoenix, I said to myself, “If I wanted to get out of town but didn’t have the means to do so, the furthest place I would go would be Apache Junction.”

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