Chiefs (13 page)

Sauls shuffled through his notes in a silence that even Harmon Everson did not feel inclined to break, as they all tried to picture what had happened. “I think that’s about it, except for one thing I’d like to point out. As far as I can determine, all the blows he received, both with the hose and with the paddle, were delivered in equal numbers and with equal force to both sides of his body. That’s unusual. It would be more common if one side took more punishment, depending on whether his persecutor was right-or left-handed. It indicates to me that the beating was accomplished by only one person, because two or more persons wouldn’t be so neat. Given that it was one man—or woman, we can’t rule out a woman—I’d say he has an obsession with orderliness, specifically with symmetry. He
had
to deal an equal number of blows on each side. His life is probably full of expressions of this symmetry thing. I’d be willing to bet he parts his hair in the middle.”

Will Henry said, “I part my hair in the middle.”

“I noticed that. In fact, if you weren’t so new to the police job and if Frank Mudter didn’t know you as well as he does, I’d figure you for the chief suspect, Chief.”

“What?”

“My first guess would be that whoever did this had a police background. The rubber hose isn’t a common weapon. Its whole purpose is to extract information, not to maim or kill. It’s the sort of thing that’s passed by word of mouth from cop to cop and police force to police force. Your average member of the public wouldn’t know about it and wouldn’t have any use for it if he did. If two fellows get into a knockdown, drag-out fight, they’ll hit each other with bottles or two-by-fours or whatever else is handy; but not with rubber hoses. A rubber hose is the sort of weapon that’s chosen coldly, deliberately/’

There was another silence, then Harmon Everson asked, “Was he sexually assaulted?”

Sauls shook his head. “He wasn’t sodomized, if that’s what you mean. There was no evidence of bruising in the anal passage and no semen present. But there’s sex with a capital
S
written all over this thing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Will Henry.

“I mean that whoever beat this boy up probably got a sexual thrill out of doing it, enjoyed it, and if the boy hadn’t got loose, it might have gone further. That sort of psychology isn’t really my field, but there are a couple of doctors in Europe could write you a book on the sexual ramifications of this one incident.”

“It’s hard to believe there could be anything like that in a place like Delano,” said Will Henry.

The doctor took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Chief, when you’ve been a policeman a little bit longer, you’ll get to know that there is just about every possible kind of person in Delano, or in the county, anyway. You’ll get to look under the rock and see what peculiar lives even perfectly ordinary people lead. I see it as a doctor and especially in my work with the Columbus police and the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office. I expect Frank sees it right here in Delano, because people will tell a doctor things they wouldn’t tell their dearest friend.” Dr. Mudter nodded agreement. Sauls heaved another sigh and put down his notes. “There isn’t anything in the world that could happen in Columbus or Atlanta or New York or Paris, France, that couldn’t happen right here. Believe me, there isn’t.”

Twenty minutes later Will Henry arrived home to find Billy and Eloise on the living room floor, playing with a golden Labrador puppy. Someone had left it on the doorstep after supper, with a note reading, “A gift from a friend for the Lee children.”

That night Will Henry fell asleep quickly. A part of his mind knew part of the truth, and the rest of him could not accept it. The anxiety this condition produced affected him like a drug, and he slept like a stone, afraid to dream.

Chapter 16.

THE BOY was buried in the city plot, a part of the cemetery set aside for the indigent or the unknown. Only Lamar Maddox, Will Henry, and the Baptist minister, Howard Abel, attended; the two black men who had dug the grave did not seem to count, although they removed their hats and assumed reverent postures as Preacher Abel prayed for the receipt of the soul of the dead boy into Abraham’s bosom. Not the early hour, the numbing cold, or the bleakness of the city plot inhibited the fervor of the minister as he shut his eyes tightly, tilted his chin toward heaven, and let his rich baritone roll over the bare earth toward the tall pines that watched over the family plots with their brown grass and wrought iron fences.

“And we beseech thee, O Heavenly Father, find a place for this young man in thy perfect paradise above, take him home to thee, and give him eternal rest.” Abel shifted his weight and altered his tone to one of special pleading: “And we pray, dear Lord, for the parents of this boy. Comfort them in thy secret way, and prepare them for the time when they can no longer hope for the life of their lost son. Spare them needless suffering and make them ready for the day when they can be reunited with their child in thy heavenly host.”

Will Henry huddled inside his pea coat and prayed for the preacher to finish praying. The cold of the early hour made it difficult to concentrate on the service, and he was becoming tense and irritable as his thoughts began to shift from pity for the boy to hatred for those who had beaten him, who had allowed this thing to happen. Despite the depth of his personal religious feeling, he could not bring himself to pray for them, and he felt guilty.

“All these things we ask in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ our savior. Ay-men.” Lamar Maddox stepped forward and touched a button on one of the four metal posts around the grave, and the coffin began to be smoothly lowered into the ground. Lamar watched carefully the inaugural performance of this ingenious new piece of equipment. He would give it its first large public display later in the morning at a more important and more profitable service.

Skeeter Willis was waiting in his car at the edge of the cemetery. “Morning, Will Henry. I saw your gathering and stopped. What’s up?”

Will Henry climbed gratefully into the warm car. “Well, Skeeter, looks like I’ve got a murder on my hands.” Skeeter did not respond. “Our paper boy found a dead body at the foot of Hodo’s Bluff yesterday morning. Boy in his late teens. We just finished burying him.”

Will Henry clearly had Skeeter’s undividea attention. “Tell me all of it,” Skeeter said. “Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

Will Henry took the sheriff through the events of the last twenty-four hours, again omitting only the identity of his Klan source.

“What do you think?” Skeeter asked.

“I don’t know what to think,” Will Henry said. “I don’t put much stock in the doctor’s views about the kind of person that killed him. That seems like the wildest kind of speculation to me. If the Klan had anything to do with it I think this fellow I know would have told me or at least hinted at it. I don’t know anybody around here crazy enough to do something like this. Foxy lives up there near where it happened, and he’s a little strange, but I can’t see any fair reason for suspecting him.”

“Foxy’s not your man, Will Henry. Granted, he’s a little peculiar, but he’s a good enough man. Not the Klan, either. In spite of what you hear sometimes. No, Will Henry, I’ll tell you what happened, and I don’t want you to think I’m jumping to conclusions. I’m just talking out of my own experience and the experience of a dozen other sheriffs I’ve talked to. Your killer’s long gone by now. There’s a lot of fellows on the road these days, what with the weevil and the times. Probably this boy was traveling with another fellow or two, and he had something they wanted—not much, maybe a little money or something—and they beat him up to get it, and he tried to run and fell over the bluff. These hoboes are always killing each other, fighting over money or whiskey or less. I’m not surprised the boy was naked. I’ve known ‘em to kill a man for his shoes, nothing more. When they’ve been on the road for a while they start playing by their own rules, don’t care nothing for what’s right any more, just living from day to day.”

Will Henry felt oddly relieved. “Well, that sounds pretty plausible. It hadn’t occcurred to me, I’ll admit. I’d begun to think it was somebody here in Delano, and that really worried me.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. This fellow isn’t going to get caught, not for this, anyway. Somewhere down the line somebody’ll do the same or worse to him, or he’ll finally run afoul of the law. But you’re not going to catch him, Will Henry. I know you’d like to, not just to get a feather in your cap/but because you’re mad about this. I know how you feel. Now, if you don’t want this kind of thing happening all the time, take my advice and don’t ever let no hoboes get a jungle going around Delano. Just make sure they don’t get off the train. You let ‘em start camping around here, and you’ll have one of these killings a week, you mark my words.”

“I see your point.”

“Another thing, Will Henry.” Skeeter shifted in his seat and rubbed at his nose. “About the Klan. I think you’ll find it’s best to leave ‘em be. Somebody calls you about a cross burning, you go out there in your own sweet time and poke around the ashes with your toe and look concerned and forget about it. They don’t mess with nobody don’t deserve messing with, and they’ll take care of things you can’t yourself sometimes. Like horsewhipping that fellow last year. He needed it, and I couldn’t do it; so they did it.”

Will Henry’s surprise must have shown in his face, because Skeeter reddened slightly and went on, “There’s some highly thought of people in the Klan, Will Henry. They’re all that’s going to keep the niggers in line, and I’ve got a lot of respect for anybody can do that.”

Will Henry made an effort to keep his face expressionless and his voice calm. “Skeeter, I don’t hold with horsewhippings or scaring innocent colored folks to death with cross burnings, and I don’t have much respect for grown men who run around at night in bed sheets. If I catch anybody at any of that in this town I’ll have ‘em in jail on the best charge I can think of.” He paused. “And you can pass that message on to anybody who’s interested.”

Skeeter reddened further and began to fumble with starting his car. “Suit yourself, Will Henry.”

“Can you think of anything I should have done that I haven’t already done, Skeeter?”

“Nope, you’ve covered everything I would of. I don’t think you’re going to catch any murderers on this one, though. Whoever did it is long gone.” The car’s engine clattered to life, and Will Henry got out.

“Thanks for coming down, Skeeter.”

“Any time,” Skeeter called back as he put the car into gear. “Shit,” the sheriff muttered under his breath as he pulled away.

Chapter 17.

FOR A WEEK nothing whatever happened in Delano to require Will Henry’s attention. He watched for speeders, checked locks, and patrolled streets, but nothing occurred that could take his mind off the boy. The story was run prominently in
the Atlanta Constitution,
and Will Henry hoped that someone might read it and come forward to identify the boy, but there was not a single phone call. He covered his steps again, talked to the people who lived on the ridge near the bluff, examined again the path to the bluff, and racked his brain to think of some other sensible step to take, but he could not. As each avenue of investigation proved fruitless, he turned more to Skeeter’s theory of a murder among hoboes; it made sense; it fit the facts in every respect; but he could not drive the thought from his mind that there was a killer loose in town, and there was nothing he could do about it.

At home he had always been a quiet but affectionate father and husband, but now he was unusually silent, and the children tiptoed around him. Carrie did not. She bore his preoccupation for a day or two, bustling about the house in her accustomed manner, cooking, sweeping, dusting, scolding children; then she had had enough. When the children were in bed she removed his feet from the stool in front of his easy chair, sat on the stool, and looked at him closely. “It seems to me that if you are going to be able to live with this job you are going to have to maintain some detachment from it.”

“I know it, but it’s hard. Especially in this instance.” He had tpld her little more than he had told the newspaper.

“You’re new at the job, but it seems to me you’ve done everything any policeman could do under the circumstances. Would Skeeter Willis have done anything you haven’t?”

.“I asked him that. He said not.” Will Henry also felt that Skeeter had now withdrawn any help he might have offered, because of their conversation about the Klan, but he did not say so to Carrie.

“Can’t you find some peace in that?”

“I know I ought to be able to, but I haven’t.”

“Then I think you ought to pray about it. I’ll pray for you, too.”

“Thank you, honey. I know that will help.”

“You haven’t been paying much attention to me lately, you know.”

He smiled down at her and pulled her into his lap. “Are the children asleep?”

“Like logs.”

Will Henry finally found distraction from routine and from his state of mind when court met in Greenville, the Meriwether county seat. His testimony was required in the matter of the robbery of,. The Bank of Delano, since he was the arresting officer of the O’Brien brothers. The twenty-mile drive took nearly an hour over a pitted, badly paved road that was still the best in the county.

Greenville was a pretty town by Georgia standards. Dating from the 1840s, it presented a handsome, red-brick, white-domed courthouse set in a spacious square of neat stores and green grass, and out on the La Grange road there were graceful examples of antebellum architecture, set among carefully tended azaleas and tall magnolia trees. It was one of those rare Georgia towns which conformed to the southern myth. The streets in the square were twice the breadth of Main Street in Delano and offered ample room for the mule-drawn wagons of farmers and the cars of local merchants. As Will Henry drove into the little town, the square was teeming with people, for the opening of court was a semigala occasion, offering an opportunity to see distant neighbors, to window-shop on the square, and to transact a little business at the bank or at one of the cotton gins which still clung to existence despite the pestilence of the boll weevil.