That Night at the Palace (10 page)

“Let’s get back to the truck,” Jewel demanded, clearly frightened.

Jesse and Cliff led the way, neither wanting to reveal that they were as terrified as Jewel.

When they got to the pickup they climbed into the back and watched. The mob was dragging the young man, beaten to the point that he was unable to walk. The noose had been lowered, and they held him as the crowd put the rope over his head. Jewel turned her head to hide the tears. Cliff and Jesse watched in stunned silence as the young man was being pulled up by his neck, his limbs flinging wildly. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of shouting, his legs stopped moving as the last breath of life slipped from his lungs.

Toad and Hunker approached the truck with their heads down.

“That chief oughten’t done that. They should have given him a trial,” Hunker said in disgust.

The two climbed into the cab of the truck.

“I knew that kid,” Toad said. “He’s a good kid. That girl didn’t say he done it. She just nodded her head a little.”

Jewel and the two boys looked at the mob that was boiling over with chaos and anger. Suddenly there was a single gunshot from behind them. All three looked back as a man on horseback slowly rode into the park. The crowd immediately fell silant. The man wore a broad cowboy hat and held a six-shooter in his right hand just like Gene Aurty or John Wayne.

“Cut him down,” he demanded to one of the men in the crowd.

No one in the mob made a move to stop the horseman as he tossed a pocketknife to the man.

Hunker and Toad stepped out of the cab and onto the running boards of the pickup to get a good look at the horseman.

“That’s Brewster McKinney,” Hunker announced.

“Who?” Jesse asked.

“Corporal McKinney?” Cliff asked.

“That’s him all right,” Toad agreed.

“Who’s Corporal McKinney?” Jesse asked.

“Texas Ranger,” Cliff replied. “One of the toughest men alive from what I hear.”

“He must ‘ave just got here,” Toad injected. “A ranger wouldn’t have let them lynch him.”

They watched as the now silent crowd lowered the man from the telephone pole. Jesse and Cliff both had tears in their eyes.

To their right an old black Ford pickup stopped in the middle of the street. A black woman got out of the truck and began running toward the mob. When she got to the young man who was then lying on the ground, she began wailing and threw herself on his body. The only sound that Jesse could hear was the woman’s wailing.

Jesse spotted a tall black man walking along the path the woman had taken a few moments before, “That’s Mr. Davis,” he said softly, breaking the eerie silence.

Davis walked past the ranger to whom he looked at with disdain and over to his wife who lay across her son sobbing. He had to pull hard to get her free from her son. The woman was now wailing without stopping as Davis held her. Finally, he led the woman back to his pickup. About half way to the truck the two stopped walking. The wailing turned to silence and the two looked around at the mob. Davis looked over at the pickup and at the three kids. Then the man and wife, holding tightly to one another, stood as straight and tall as they could and walked back to their pickup with their heads held high.

Chapter 6

MAIN STREET,

ELZA TEXAS

4:40 p.m.,. Sunday November 16, 1941

C
orporal Brewster McKinney was tired when he climbed out of his 1937 Ford Model 74 coupe. The fifty-year-old Texas Ranger had spent the night before on a stakeout with another Ranger at an old Roadhouse on the Trinity River. It was after five that morning when he finally got to sleep, and then a little before noon he got the call to go down to Elza
.

Elza was the only black mark in the otherwise perfect career of Brewster McKinney. The Rangers prided themselves in always solving their cases. Unfortunately, the fact was that the world-famous law enforcement agency left a lot of cases unsolved or “open” as the Rangers preferred to say. Most Rangers had a number of “open” cases on their record, but Corporal McKinney only had one. Some years earlier a local playboy had gotten drunk and driven out on some railroad tracks just in time to get hit by the Santa Fe headed up to Dallas. The problem for Brewster McKinney was that the man didn’t have a history of getting drunk. He did, Brewster learned, have a history of carrying on with women other than his wife, and there were husbands all over East Texas who had reason to kill him. There was also a dent in the back of the man’s head that matched perfectly with a bloody tree limb they had found about a few hundred feet up the track. So though he couldn’t prove anything and he had absolutely no leads, Corporal McKinney knew in his soul that he had let a killer go free.

McKinney put on the 5x Stetson he had bought two years prior at the Paris Hatters in San Antonio, carefully closed the door to the Ford, and walked into the Elza Police Station. Brewster loved both the car and the hat. The Ford was the first vehicle the Ranger had ever bought new off the showroom floor, and he suspected that it would be the last. Thus, the car was tuned-up once a year, and the oil was changed at exactly three thousand miles, no more, no less. The hat was as fine a Texas style hat a man could buy, and the price reflected it. He suspected, as with the car, that he’d never be able to afford to buy another one, so he took care of it.

Elza wasn’t a county seat so there wasn’t a town square with a large courthouse in the center. Before 1910 the town barely had enough population to justify a post office. In fact, back in those days the town was called Azle, after the family that founded it. Then when they tried to open a post office they found out that there already was an Azle, Texas. After some head-scratching they spelled the founder’s name backward and came up with Elza.

In the early days of the oil boom, the town swelled to over two thousand people. The result was a busy main street with two banks - one sitting on the corner that was as much a centerpiece as any county courthouse. Clearly the population was down some, but Brewster could tell that this was still a busy little town. Even on a Sunday with the stores closed, there were quite a few people about.

When he walked in the door Brewster immediately remembered the police station and police chief. The police headquarters was little more than a storefront wedged between the movie theater and an alley. The second floor had been outfitted with four jail cells, though, as Brewster recalled, they sat empty most of the time.

Inside the door was a large, open room with a simple desk and two chairs. Behind the desk was a long hallway leading to the back door and a staircase leading up to the jail. The little building had once been a tobacco shop, and even after nearly ten years the wood floors and walls still had the scent of fresh tobacco. Brewster found the odor disgusting. The Ranger, unlike virtually all of his fraternity, was a life-long non-smoker. He personally found the habit intolerable. Brewster was a large man who took pride in his physical ability to handle any crook he encountered, as he had done on many occasions. He held to the unpopular belief that sucking smoke in to one’s lungs had to inhibit one’s ability to chase down a bandit. That theory, which he espoused regularly, was not at all popular with the majority of his fellow lawmen at his Division Headquarters back in Dallas.

Brewster stood silent for a moment. There was a little sound coming from the back of the building. “Chief Hightower?”

Faintly, from another room he heard, “Just a minute.”

There was the sound of a toilet flushing, then a ruffled Chief Thomas Jefferson Hightower came up the hall as he tucked his shirt in his belt, which was almost completely hidden by his belly. A law officer who didn’t maintain a reasonable weight wasn’t tolerated among the Rangers. It was a very rare occasion when a Texas Ranger ever had to chase down a bandit, but he was expected to be capable of it. More importantly, to Brewster’s thinking, a peace officer needed to command respect. In the 1890’s Captain Bill McDonald had been called into Dallas to squelch an uprising of a group of very unhappy and probably drunk boxing fans who were threatening to riot over a canceled boxing match. When he got off the train, a reporter asked if he was the only Ranger sent. McDonald, it is said, answered, “One riot, one Ranger.” The story had made the afternoon paper and, as the Captain himself put it, “There never was any riot.”

Brewster didn’t believe a word of it. He suspected that some reporter made the story up. He had met Captain McDonald early in his career, and he doubted that the man, though an excellent Ranger, was eloquent enough to conjure up such a clever retort. Still, the story caught on, and the point was quite valid. If you looked and acted as if you could handle a riot, you would never need to handle a riot.

Police Chief Thomas Jefferson Hightower looked as if he had difficulty fastening his belt, let alone handling a riot.

“Corporal McKinney?” Jefferson asked as he walked up to Brewster, holding out his hand.

The Ranger hesitated, confident that the unkempt chief hadn’t bothered to wash. Finally he shook the man’s hand, “Chief,” Brewster replied.

“You probably don’t remember me. I was chief when you handled an investigation here several years back.”

Brewster smiled, something he didn’t do often. “I remember, Chief.” The man he recalled had been thirty pounds thinner, though.

Jefferson motioned to the chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat, Corporal. You must be tired. I just made some coffee, you want some?”

“Thank you, Chief. I’ll take it black,” Brewster said as he took his seat.

Jefferson poured two cups from a pot sitting on a hotplate behind his desk. The coffee pot was a sore spot to Jefferson’s pride. He had charged it to the town account at George Henry McMillian’s store as an office expense. It only seemed reasonable that the town would cover the cost of coffee. He gave a cup to everyone who came in the door, he reasoned. Then, Samuel Hastings, the mayor, town manager, and overall pain in Jefferson’s backside, got the bill and darn near soiled his trousers. The result was Jefferson paying for the coffee pot.

“What have you got for me, Chief?” Brewster asked as Jefferson handed him a cup of coffee. McKinney was thankful that the Chief had held it by the handle.

“There’s a kid down by the river. He’s got his head bashed in. We found his car first. It was crashed into the feed store with the passenger seat all covered in blood. Then a little later this mornin’ some boys were out huntin’ and came across the body, half eaten by an alligator.”

“Any suspects?”

Jefferson breathed a heavy sigh. He really didn’t want to do this. “Last night the kid, his name’s Cliff, and his best friend, Jesse Rose, got into a fight at the picture show. Jesse yelled, right there in front of fifty people, that he was gonna kill Cliff.”

Brewster’s eyes widened. It sounded pretty open and shut, but these things were never open and shut.

“I broke up the fight and sent ‘em home separately, but they got together later and had a beer down by the river.”

“Same place as you found the body?”

Jefferson nodded, “Yeah. Look Corporal, I’ve known Jesse all of his life. I think he was angry, and those words just came out of his mouth. Those boys have been best friends since they learned to walk. It just don’t make sense.”

“Do you know what they were fightin’ about?”

Jefferson sighed again and rolled his eyes, “It was a girl. The two boys used to be pretty sweet on her, I think. But the last few years they have been courtin’ these two sisters. Hell, half the town is bettin’ on when Jesse is gonna ask the older one to marry him. So then last night this other girl, Jewel Stoker, well, her old man came into the Palace with a shotgun and darn’ near killed Cliff. As a matter of fact, Jesse’s the one that stopped it. Well, we get the lights on and I grab Irwin, Jewel’s old man, and take his gun, and he says that Cliff got his daughter pregnant. No sooner than the words came out of his mouth, Jesse jumped on Cliff and started beatin’ the daylights out of ‘im.”

Brewster leaned back in his chair and took a long drink of coffee. He suddenly realized how tired he really was. “Where’s this girl’s daddy?”

Jefferson looked up at the ceiling. “He’s sober now, sitting in a cell. I’m gonna drive him to Rusk tomorrow. I suspect Judge Buckner will put him on the road gang for a week or two.”

“And both these boys have girls?” Brewster asked, knowing the answer but asking more as part of processing the information.

“Yeah,” Jefferson replied. “That’s what I don’t get. Jesse’s as in love as anyone I’ve ever seen. There’s nobody in town that would disagree with me either. He’s goin’ off to join the Aggie Corps next fall. Just about everybody thinks he’s gonna ask her to marry him before he leaves.”

“What about this other kid, Cliff?” Brewster asked, “Do you think he got this girl pregnant?”

Jefferson grimaced, “Corporal, if there was trouble to get into in this town, Cliff would find it. He’s not a troublemaker. I mean he’s never done anything really bad. He just does things without thinking them through. And that girl, well, she is a bit of a looker. She finished school last spring and’s been catchin’ the bus into Jacksonville. Works at the Chevy dealership up there.”

“The boys are in school?”

“Yeah, worked out at the timber mill all summer. They’ve been doing that for the past two or three years. Like I said, Jesse’s headed down to College Station. Cliff, I hear, got accepted into Stephen F. Austin Teacher’s College. I suspect he was plannin’ to keep working at the mill and drive into Nacogdoches. His folks don’t have the money that Jesse’s family has.”

“They’re pretty well off?

“His daddy’s a big dog with Powhatan Oil. I think he manages all of their rigs around here.”

Brewster sat silent holding the warm coffee cup on his lap for a long moment, “So where’s this body?

“Still sittin’ where we found it. I deputized a couple of boys, and they’re watchin’ over it. I figured that you’d want to look at it before we handed it over to the undertaker.”

“I appreciate that, Chief. We better get out there. It’ll be dark soon”

“The car’s out back if you want to look at it first.”

“Yeah, take me to it,” now remembering that although Chief Hightower looked a bit sloppy, he was a pretty decent police officer.

Jefferson led the Ranger through the hallway to the back door. The coupe sat next to some garbage cans, covered in canvas.

“I didn’t want anyone to see it until you got a look,” Chief Hightower said as he began pulling the tarp off the car.

Brewster walked around the car, looking closely for any sign of a clue. He then began looking at the bloody seat.

“I haven’t had time to look, but the boys who towed it in said that there’s a bloody tire-iron under the seat.”

Brewster opened the door and reached under the seat. He pulled out an angled tire wrench. The socketed end was covered with blood.

“In the morning I’m going to need to go over the car for fingerprints. I doubt that I’ll find anything, but you never know. Is there a place where we can keep the car locked up?”

“One of the boys I deputized has a mechanic shop. He’ll let me keep it over there.”

“Do you have a camera or someone who can take some crime scene pictures for us?”

“I’ve got a boy up there waiting. I told him not to leave the bridge until you’ve looked at the scene first.”

“How about a doctor? I’d like to get a time of death.”

“I forgot to tell you. I had him down as soon as we found the body. He says that the poor kid died a half-hour or so before my boys found him.”

Again Brewster was reminded that despite being overweight and a little unkempt, Chief Jefferson Hightower was a decent lawman.

“Good. Now take me to see this body. Call your undertaker, and have him meet us out there.”

#

Corporal McKinney had seen quite a few bloody crime scenes in his time as a Texas Ranger. Most were the result of a robbery or a fight in an alley behind a gin-joint. Once there was a housewife who used a carving knife to turn her cheating husband into a pincushion. In that last instance, both Brewster and the judge on the case felt like the wife was completely justified. Her husband was a louse. Had she stabbed him once or twice she might be walking scott-free right this minute, but there was just no possible way a judge could let a woman off after she stabbed her husband two hundred and thirty-five times with a twelve-inch knife right after she bopped him over the head a dozen times with a rolling pin.

Still, as bad as that poor hacked-up cheating husband looked, he didn’t compare to this. One side of this poor kid’s head was completely caved in, no doubt from the tire iron. From the looks of things, he had lived for quite a while after the beating. He had vomited at least twice. Once up the hill a little and then again right where he lay, after the gator dragged him down the slope. Brewster had only seen one killing that was anywhere close to this bad, and that was just a quarter of a mile up the those same tracks. That time the guy’s skull was broken and he had been slung out of a car that had been hit by a train.

Brewster prided himself in not getting ill at a crime scene. It was unprofessional and showed weakness, two things a Texas Ranger couldn’t afford. But this one got to him. He made sure to not let the deputies up on the bridge see his face as he looked over the body. Chief Hightower was standing a little up the slope, but he doubted the Chief noticed. The Chief had already contaminated the crime scene once and looked as if he was about to again.