Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

Author:David Joy [Joy, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

32

The road snaked across broken pasture, small fields of broomstraw and hay threaded together by tractor trails cut through big timber. Through the years the place had proven all but impossible for both farmers and the cattle they kept. The Cogginses had lived here in the Savannah community of Jackson County for six generations where Cowee surrendered a sliver of its grade to laurel hells and rock bluffs.

Joe-pye and goldenrod bowed along the ditch line, the weeds swaying briefly as Leah’s car shot past and the dust swirled up in her wake. The town had taken a couple days to deliver the body cam footage from the protests. To be honest, it wasn’t much help. The nice thing was that the cameras were linked, so that as soon as one officer’s started recording, every officer on scene went live. The problem, though, was that the place had been too crowded, too close quarters and chaotic, to make sense of much. What was captured was Coggins coming down the stairs at the last second ahead of the crowd.

A camera on a nearby bank building captured the rest of the story. It was angled back up the street so that it looked right at the fountain, where the fight had broken out. Sheriff Coggins stood between both groups, and the moment the mob poured off that hillside he took off ahead of them like he was running from an avalanche. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he fought through bodies and disappeared among them, and then the two crowds melded together into one pulsing swarm that was impossible to pick apart. But as the protestors thrashed, the sheriff emerged with Toya Gardner thrown over one shoulder. He carried her away from the riot to safety, and when they were clear, he let her down and the two disappeared left of frame up Keener Street.

Leah played the segment of video a dozen times—zooming in, slowing it down, panning out. The details were unmistakable. Later, when she played the footage from the Sylva Herald webcam down the street, Coggins’s pickup appeared, and as it passed she could make out someone in the passenger seat beside him. The angle of the footage made it difficult to say with any certainty, but it looked like she was with him. Coggins was the last known person to be with Toya Gardner while she was alive.

The sheriff lived in a long one-story brick rancher that ran across a shelf on a hill. The driveway came around the front of the home, as there was no room behind, the pitch as steep as a mule’s face. A short set of steps came off the front porch, and as Leah pulled past she saw Coggins’s wife beating the dust from a rug with a broom. There was a small barn around the other side of the house with a gravel lot in front, and this is where she parked.

Coggins’s wife, Evelyn, had on a pair of Key overalls with the legs rolled halfway up her shins.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.