The Ballad of Frankie Silver (3 page)

“Did you look at those jurors? Some of them were taking notes like there’d be an exam to follow. They won’t want to let that effort go to waste. They’re probably retrying the case right now, just to prove to one another that they were paying attention. And reasonable doubt!
Reasonable
doubt, mind you. Some juries would make a cat laugh. Why, they’re probably in there looking for loopholes as if this was
Perry Mason
on TV. What if this fellow had a twin nobody knew about who just happened to own a gun exactly like his—all that hogwash not fit for a fairy tale, much less a court of law. Makes them feel important. This is a big event for Wake County, you know. We go years without having anybody tried for murder.”

“I could have done without this time,” said Spencer.

“It’s finished. Your part is, anyhow. You said your piece in court, and the lawyers said theirs, and now the matter rests in the hands of twelve other people. And I know for a fact that the judge has dinner plans. It’s over for the night. So go home.”

Spencer shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to get my mind off it. Might as well be here.”

The old sheriff sighed. “You sure do beat all, boy. Now, if it was me having to testify against that little piece of bull turd, I’d leave that courtroom with a spring in my step and never give him another second’s thought. That boy is trash and trouble, like all his kinfolk up there in the holler, and if he didn’t do this crime, he did a lot more we never caught him at, and he deserves what he gets.”

“What do you mean
if he didn’t do this crime
?” said Spencer.

“Oh, nothing. It’s not our job to decide guilt anyhow. That’s for judges, lawyers, juries. We just catch the suspects and round up such evidence as we can find. After that, it’s their call.”

“I know that, but what do you mean
if he didn’t do this crime
? Don’t you think he’s guilty?”

“Well, personally, I don’t care,” said Nelse Miller. “You could have looked into Fate Harkryder’s cradle and told that he was going to end up in prison. If it wasn’t one thing, it’d be another. I’ve known his kin for more than fifty years, and there’s not a solid citizen in the bunch. You’d stand a better chance of getting a thoroughbred out of a swaybacked donkey than you would of getting a good man out of the Harkryder bloodline.”

Spencer just looked at him, waiting.

Finally Nelse Miller let out a sigh, and looked away. “Oh, hell. I just got a feeling, that’s all.”

“But the case is ironclad. Blood type. Forensic evidence. The victims’ possessions found on him. We have him dead to rights. Everything but a confession.”

The sheriff shrugged. “It’s not up to me. Or you. We gather the evidence.
They
decide.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this feeling of yours before now?”

“Because feelings aren’t evidence. They’d have laughed me out of the courtroom. Maybe Elissa Rountree would believe me. Sensible woman. She’s the only juror that would have! But nobody cares what your
opinion
is in a murder case. Facts. Evidence. Fingerprints. Then they make up their own minds. We’re well out of it.”

Spencer nodded. “I think he’s guilty,” he said. “I was there that night. I’m the one who arrested him. I wouldn’t have testified for the prosecution if I thought he wasn’t guilty.”

“Oh, you’d have testified. You were the law that night, and what you saw and what you did is the state’s business. But it helped that you had a moral certainty. Now stop fretting about it.”

Spencer wanted to protest that he hadn’t been fretting at all about the matter of guilt until the sheriff brought it up, but instead he said, “You’ve testified in capital cases before. Are you ever unsure of the man’s guilt?”

“Well, son, I tell you: I’ve been lucky that way. The doubts I’ve had have been in trifling cases, most of them. The punishment was at most a couple of months in jail, and like I said, most of the folks we arrest have that coming to them on general principles. But a capital case? There’s only two murder cases in these mountains that I’m not happy with. And I may be wrong on both of them, mind you.”

“What two cases?”

“One is the fellow you’re about to put on death row. And the other one is Frankie Silver.”

*   *   *

“What do you mean, an execution? In Tennessee?” Martha shook her head. “It just doesn’t happen.”

“It does now.” Spencer handed her the letter. “That judge who has been granting automatic stays for all these years finally retired, and now it looks like the state is going back into the capital punishment business.”

“After all these years? When was the last time we executed anybody in Tennessee?”

“The early sixties. But we didn’t abolish capital punishment. Juries kept handing out death sentences right along. We just haven’t carried one out in a very long time. Decades. Apparently, that’s going to change in about”—he glanced at the letter—“six weeks.”

“Why are they telling you about it?”

“Tradition. The sheriff of the prisoner’s home county is usually asked to be one of the official witnesses when the sentence is carried out.”

“Can you refuse? Like you said: plead ill health. Or decline the honor—if that’s what you’d call it—of being a witness.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t think I can do that, Martha.”

“Sure you could. Dr. Banner would write a letter to get you out of it. And it wouldn’t even be a lie, Spencer. You just had major surgery. Shot in the line of duty. They shouldn’t ask you to hand out doughnuts at a choir meet, much less do something as stressful as—as watch a man die.”

Spencer didn’t answer. He was looking out at the ridge lines, where a bank of dark clouds settled in low on the horizon, adding a new mountain chain at the edge of the mist.

Martha tried again. “How do we do it in Tennessee these days? Lethal injection?”

“No,” he said. He watched the cloud lines with even greater attention. “It’s still Old Sparky. No options.”

“Oh. The electric chair. I see.” Martha shuddered. After another stretch of silence she added, “Of course, the victims didn’t get any options, either. You’ve got to remember that.”

“I’ll try to bear it in mind.” Spencer folded the letter and slid it under the rest of the stack of mail.

“You’re not against capital punishment, are you? Not after what we see in this job. Not after what happens to children at the hands of some of these people.…”

“I can’t say I’m against capital punishment, no,” said Spencer. “I see the victims, which is a misfortune that most people don’t have. It’s just this one. Just—this—one.”

“Why do you feel like you have to go to this thing, Spencer? You’re already upset about it, and it’s still six weeks away. If the state of Tennessee insists on having somebody from Wake County present for the occasion, why don’t you send LeDonne? It wouldn’t bother him to watch an execution. He’d pull the switch himself and never turn a hair.”

“I can’t.”

Martha looked at him. She had known Spencer Arrowood all her life. They had been students together at the local high school. She knew his mother from church. She had been a dispatcher in the sheriff’s office, and now she was a newly appointed Wake County deputy, all of which added up to a good number of years of close observation of the man. She decided that his reaction to the summons from the Tennessee Department of Corrections amounted to more than just squeamishness. The sheriff hated cruelty on any level, but he was no coward, and he never shirked an obligation. “You want to tell me what this is about, Spencer?” she said quietly.

“It’s been about twenty years ago now. I guess you don’t remember.”

Martha frowned. “Twenty years ago. I was gone by then. I was off being an army wife in some godforsaken little town close to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Husband number one.”

“I forgot. You wouldn’t know about the case then.”

“Who is it they’re executing?”

“Fate Harkryder. I arrested him. Testified against him. And he got the death penalty. He’s been sitting on death row in a Nashville prison ever since. Lord, I haven’t thought of him in ages. And now this.”

“What did he do?”

“Murder.”

He had been planning to leave it at that, but Martha’s expression told him that the discussion wouldn’t be over until he told her the rest. He sighed. “He killed two hikers from the Appalachian Trail. Boy and girl—college students from the University of North Carolina. He was ROTC; she was a colonel’s daughter. Honor students. They were very clean-cut and attractive kids. They were worth ten of him.”

In his mind he could hear Nelse Miller’s voice.
He might as well have killed Donny and Marie.
The Osmonds. Spencer had nearly forgotten them, too.

“Apparently he ambushed them at their campsite while they were sleeping. He tortured the boy. We…” He didn’t want to remember about the burn marks. “And he raped the girl before he killed her. Mutilated the body. I think that’s what really got him the death penalty. The jury looked at pictures of that smiling girl with the big calf’s eyes, and then at what was left of her in the crime scene photos.…” He shrugged.

He took a deep breath and wished he hadn’t started talking about the case, because he had tried hard to forget what he had seen that day. He didn’t want to picture the remnants of bodies he’d found at that campsite. He hadn’t had that nightmare in a long time. And now he would.

“I don’t remember this,” said Martha. “What were their names?”

“Her name was Emily Stanton. I can’t remember his.”

Martha shook her head. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me. I sure do remember the Harkryders, though. They were memorable, every single one of them. How many were there? I lost count.”

Spencer smiled. “Seemed like dozens, though some of them were cousins of the other ones. Nobody talked family with the Harkryders. If you were kin to them, you wouldn’t claim it. Tom was the one in our class, wasn’t he? I don’t think he started out with us, though. We caught up with him.”

“Mean as a striped snake. Which doesn’t say much to distinguish him from the rest of the litter. Which one was Fate?”

“Lafayette Harkryder. The youngest. There isn’t much to say about him. He was only seventeen when it happened. I guess he’s been in prison now longer than he was out in the world. Funny, in my mind, I still see him as a skinny teenage boy. He must be middle-aged by now, at least in prison years. You age fast in there. I probably wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

“And you arrested him back then?”

Spencer nodded. “My first murder case. I was a deputy for Nelse Miller, and the bodies were found late one night on my watch.… Fate Harkryder … I’d almost forgotten about him. I fretted over it enough at the time, though. I guess I never thought it would come to this.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” said Martha. “In the first place, I’m sure he has it coming to him, and in the second place, the way they mollycoddle criminals these days, I doubt very much that he’ll keep that date with the executioner. He’s probably got a roomful of lawyers writing appeals on everything they can think of. Trust me. An execution hasn’t happened in Tennessee in thirty-some years, and it won’t happen now.”

“Maybe you’re right, Martha.”

“Of course I am. Now, I have to get back on patrol, so I’m going to leave. You’re sure you’re all right?”

He nodded. “Just a shock to the system, that’s all.”

“But I worry about you being stuck up here on this ridge all alone. Thank the Lord it’s not winter. Is there anything I can bring you?”

“Yes,” said Spencer. “I’d like you to bring me the case file on Fate Harkryder.”

Martha sighed. “You’re going to wear yourself out worrying about this thing, aren’t you?”

“No. I promise I’ll go easy. I just want to refresh my memory. And, Martha—one other thing. Have you ever heard of Frankie Silver?”

*   *   *

The old woman stood on the side of the road clutching the letter. She waited there until the pickup truck swirled into dust below the brow of the hill before she took a step toward the small iron gate bordered by tiger lilies. The white frame house at the end of the path sat like a pearl on a seashell, poised as it was on the ridge above the patchwork of fields and river far below. The beauty of the scenery did not gladden her heart, though. She looked warily at the prim little house, knowing that for all the urgency of her visit, she was in no hurry to open that gate.

Nora Bonesteel lived here.

Not that anybody ever said a word against old Miz Bonesteel. She was still a handsome woman, who wore well her seventy years, and she never asked favors of a soul. She stood faithfully in her church pew every week, and she kept to herself, but for doing what had to be done: food taken to the sick, and fine things knitted and sewn for the brides and the babies of the parish, but still … Still.

Nobody wanted to have much to do with Nora Bonesteel. She knew things. People said that when you came to tell her the news of a death in the valley, the cake for the family would already be in the oven. The Sight was in the Bonesteel family; her grandmother had been the same. The Bonesteel women never talked about what they knew, never meddled in folks’ lives, but all the same, it made people uneasy to be around them, knowing that whatever happened to you, they would have seen it coming.

The old woman looked down at the letter from Nashville. Would she know about that, what with the letter coming from so far away? With a sigh she bent down to open the gate.

When she looked up again, the tall, straight figure of a woman in gray stood on the porch, silently watching her. She clutched the mason jar of peach preserves tighter against her belly. She had brought a gift. She would not be beholden to this strange old woman.

As she neared the porch, she called out, “Afternoon, Miz Bonesteel! I’ve come to sit a spell.”

Nora Bonesteel nodded. “You’re Pauline Harkryder.”

“I am.” She held out the jar of preserves, but the burden of the letter from Nashville was too great for the pretense of a social call. “I’ve got a letter here,” she said. “It’s about my nephew Lafayette, down at the state prison in Nashville.”