Authors: Jean Lorrah
Less heart-wrenching, they were similar to the earlier cases Church had showed Chief Benton: the owner of a real estate agency charged with conflict of interest when she purchased farmland and sold it as an industrial park. Callahan ruled insufficient evidence. An air cargo operator out of the small local airport charged with transporting drugs. Once again Callahan had cleared the man's name and made sure his plane was not confiscated.
“I don't know,” said Brandy. “The first two cases show the judge favoring people who can help him politically. But some other judge might rule insufficient evidence because the third case shows the other side of the story."
“What other side?” asked Church.
“Callahan also helps people with no political clout. Ace Air Cargo is hardly a major business."
“Brandy, if Callahan is involved in the drug trade—? Maybe he was protecting an employee!"
“Okay,” she conceded, “but what about the Chu family? They don't have any political power, but remember how Callahan cleared Ricky Chu's record so publicly? What earthly good could the Chus do him?"
“Good publicity. Grandstanding. Maybe he's planning for the future. Those Chu kids are likely to become influential, bright as they are."
“I suppose that's possible,” said Brandy. “I'm just trying to see past unsupported suspicion."
“You're in love,” said Church. “I don't think you're in the mood to see bad in anyone today."
Maybe her friend was right. That only made it harder to face Doc Sanford's grief when she and Church stopped to see him that afternoon.
If Troy Sanford had looked his age the night of his grandson's arrest, today he looked twenty years older. He had been drinking, but not much. One beer can sat on the table, and he was drinking a second. His shoulders slumped, his hands shook, but his eyes burned. Sloughing off their condolences, he said, “Rory wasn't suicidal! Somebody murdered him—the same person that killed Carrie Wyman."
“Doc—” Church began gently.
The old man shook off his support. “You think I'm crazy with grief, don't you? Well, that don't change the facts. Don't let Chief Benton say this proves my Rory killed Carrie and close the case. You find out who really killed her. Clear Rory's name!"
“We'll continue the investigation,” Brandy promised. “Have you got anyone to stay with you?"
“Mrs. Diugood was over here earlier. I sent her home."
“I know her,” said Church. “She lives next door. Doc, she does your housekeeping, doesn't she?"
“Yeah."
“I'll get her back. You shouldn't be alone tonight. She can get your house ready for all the people coming—"
“Coming to stare! Coming to laugh! Coming to lie about Rory selling drugs and murdering people! Don't want no one in my house telling lies about my Rory."
“No one's going to do that,” said Brandy. It was almost possible to guarantee such an unfounded promise. Southern custom kept people from speaking ill of the dead.
“Keep the Callahans out,” said Dr. Sanford. “Joey Lee that dirty bastard, and his no good son both! Killed Cindy Lou, now my Rory. Filthy rotten wife-beating bastards!"
Brandy looked sadly at Church. Joseph Lee Callahan had been dead for nearly forty years. The judge, his son, had been widowed for at least ten. But she promised, “No Callahans will come here. We'll see to it, Doc. Now, have you seen a doctor?"
“I am a doctor!"
“Yes,” Brandy said gently, wishing she had Dan's influence, “but you can't prescribe for yourself, Doc."
“Agh, Dr. Montrose was here, left a prescription for a sedative.” He waved vaguely toward the sideboard. “I don't need to be sedated. I need to prove my grandson's not a murderer!"
“I'll go have this filled,” Church said, picking up the small square of paper. “Can you handle him?"
“I think so. Doc, let's go into the kitchen. I need a cup of tea, don't you?"
There were already a pie and a loaf of home-baked bread on the kitchen table, Murphy's response to death. In the refrigerator Brandy found lasagna and a quart of homemade chicken soup, along with the rest of the six-pack. Soup was what Doc needed; he probably hadn't eaten all day. She poured out a bowl and set the microwave while she put the teakettle on and searched for cups and teabags. Then she cut a couple of slices of the crusty bread.
Doc Sanford sat quietly at the table, but when Brandy joined him, he pinned her with red-rimmed eyes and said, “L. J. Callahan had Rory killed. You'll have the devil's own time proving it, but he killed my grandson just as sure as his father killed my sister. Blood will tell."
Brandy was grateful that the teakettle whistled just then, and she could busy herself making tea and putting steaming soup before Dr. Sanford.
He picked up the spoon, but did more talking than eating. “Callahans and Sanfords useta be good friends. My daddy was mayor in them days, and ol’ L. J., the granddaddy of that bastard we got now, was on the school board and the city council. When he was elected to the legislature he done good for West Kentucky. Got us roads an’ bridges, brought electricity and phones in. L. J. was the last good Callahan, and he died young—kilt in the First War.
“His son Joey Lee was a right bastard. Oh, charmin', smooth as silk when he courted Cindy Lou. I was just her kid brother then. No one took no mind that I was the only one didn't like Joey Lee. My daddy lost a bundle in the ‘29 crash, so he thought it was real good thing when Joey Lee took a interest in Cindy Lou. The only dowry he could give her was a parcel of land bordering on Callahan's property. You know what that land is now?"
He paused, taking a couple spoonfuls of soup while he waited for Brandy to answer. She stalled, hoping he would eat more, but when he stopped and stared at her, she answered, “No, what is it?"
“The airport!” Sanford said triumphantly, and took another spoonful of soup. His body probably craved food, so if he had to keep his mind elsewhere to eat, so be it.
“So the Callahans made a lot of money from it."
“Still do! Judge Callahan rents it to the county. Greedy bastard, just like his father. Spittin’ image of ol’ Joey Lee. I was there when he come home from college an’ proved my sister weren't no whore."
“What?” Brandy asked, confused at the logical quantum jump.
“She never cheated on Joey Lee. He had no reason to kill Carl Mishinski, and Cindy Lou had no reason to take her own life, ‘less that bastard drove her to it."
“Who was Carl Mishinski?” asked Brandy.
“Filthy commie,” Sanford replied. “Bolshevik, we called ’em in them days. Teacher at the college—Jackson Purchase Normal School, it was then. Raised a big stink teaching evolution t’ them young teachers."
Brandy realized he was talking about the 1930's, when people had a mind-set so alien to the one she had grown up with that they might as well be Martians. This was the part of the country where all the fuss had happened. Just down the road in Tennessee the Scopes trial had taken place in the ‘20's, and to this day some people tried to get required prayer and creationism back into the public schools. Signs bearing the Ten Commandments were to be seen in front yards all over town, and only the order of a Federal Judge had recently prevented state funds from being used to build a Ten Commandments monument in front of the state capitol in Frankfort.
Doc Sanford's story was fascinating. With judicious questioning, she garnered the Sanford side. When Church returned, they got the sedative into Doc and put him to bed.
Leaving the neighbor, Mrs. Diugood, to keep watch, they went back to the station for the rest of their duty shift. Sunday was still a quiet day, and the news of Rory Sanford's suicide made the duty officers quieter still. Bill Phillips, a Murphy native, commented, “I like Doc, but the Sanfords were always a weak-willed bunch."
“What do you mean?” Church asked.
“Doc's sister committed suicide, now his grandson. Rory's dad was a gambler, married some no-good gal from Memphis who left him the kid to raise. Seems Doc's the only Sanford any good to himself."
“Doc's Judge Callahan's uncle,” said Brandy.
Phillips had to think a moment before nodding. “Yeah, but they don't no way act like kin. Not after what Doc's sister did to L. J.'s father."
“Do you know the whole story?” Brandy asked. “Doc told me some, but he was rambling and he only gave me one side."
“Yeah, I know,” said Phillips, and proceeded to tell it, with other officers chiming in to add details.
Joseph Lee Callahan, the father of the present judge, married Cynthia Louise Sanford, older sister of Troy Sanford, after her family was hit hard during the Depression. She brought land, but no money, to the marriage, which remained childless for ten years. In those days people blamed the woman for being barren.
Then the rumors started that Cindy Lou was having an affair with Carl Mishinski, a biology professor at Jackson Purchase Normal School. Mishinski was certainly a damyankee, professedly a Darwinist, and possibly a Bolshevik. The community was shocked when the Callahans rented a house to such a scoundrel, so when rumors of the affair began, nobody was surprised.
No one was surprised, either, when Joey Lee burst into that very house to catch his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto. He shot Mishinski and dragged Cindy Lou home by the hair. The shooting was ruled justifiable homicide.
Seven months later Cindy Lou gave birth to a baby boy, a sickly little thing of uncertain parentage whom Joey Lee nonetheless claimed as his own. The boy had only what social life money could buy, for everyone believed him to be Mishinski's child, especially as Cindy Lou doted on little Lee Joseph while cringing from her husband.
That Joey Lee abused his wife was probable. In the 1930's, 40's, and 50's no one in West Kentucky saw much wrong with that when the woman had been caught in adultery. Her husband had had the goodness of heart not to turn her out, and even to claim her bastard child and raise it as his own. To the residents of Callahan County, Joey Lee Callahan was a hero, his wife a slut.
One day when her son was in high school, Cindy Lou Callahan took the same gun that had killed her lover and blew her brains out. A few people had the audacity to suggest that Joey Lee had finally gotten fed up and killed her. But the official ruling was suicide.
Eventually Lee Joseph Callahan was sent east to college. Joey Lee, by this time a state senator, went as part of a legislative team to inspect a coal mine in Appalachia. The mineshaft collapsed, no one escaped, and none of the bodies were recovered. Lee Joseph came home for the memorial service, but then stayed far from Murphy all through college and law school. He returned a changed man.
In four years of college and three of law school he had turned from the sickly, cringing youth they had been so sure was the by-blow of a Bolshevik Darwinist into the image of Joey Lee! Education had given him presence and breeding. Lee Joseph Callahan took over the family property, served on the city council, and eventually became a judge.
Joey Lee, who despite all had recognized the bond of blood with his son, was elevated in local opinion from hero to saint. Lee Joseph, adopting the less cumbersome “L. J.” his grandfather had used, became the hero who had overcome a difficult childhood to be the man his daddy would have been so proud of if he'd only lived to see it.
Brandy listened in amazement. What a wonderful novel that story would make, if only William Faulkner were still around to write it! Most people took it, from the Callahan side, as the bond between father and son triumphing over the misery caused by an unfaithful wife. But the Sanford side would take a modern slant, an abused wife practically driven into the arms of another man—or even, as there were no witnesses to her adultery other than her husband, and the child turned out to be his, two innocent people having their lives destroyed by the jealous, possessive husband.
Cindy Lou had never testified, never to the day of her death either denied or admitted her guilt. Had she actually committed suicide? Or did Joey Lee finally get rid of her, intending to replace her with someone better suited to be a politician's wife? For like the present judge, Joey Lee had also had aspirations to become governor of Kentucky, cut short by the mine accident in which he died.
It was a rare thing for a woman to commit suicide by shooting herself. That was a man's way. Women took pills or drowned themselves; they closed themselves in the garage or the kitchen and turned on the car engine or the gas stove; they slit their wrists. They just didn't shoot or hang themselves when there were other methods available.
Brandy considered suggesting to Church that here was the plot for his novel. The recounting of the story took up the rest of their duty shift, and afterward Church drove her home, reminding her that she and Dan were due at Church's house on Thursday for Thanksgiving. The snow had melted. The tire tracks in Brandy's muddy driveway indicated that Dan had been in and out several times. His car was there now.
When she opened the front door, the smell of roast beef filled Brandy's nostrils. A bouquet of chrysanthemums adorned the dining table set with her best dishes.
Dan emerged from the kitchen to offer her a kiss. “A celebration of our engagement."
“To remind me that you're a better cook than I am!"
“It's an easy meal—what's wrong? I don't think it's my cooking you're upset about."
“Rory Sanford's dead,” she replied. “Doc's inconsolable and irrational. He's all alone now, Dan."
He hugged her, and it was good to cling to his solid warmth, knowing he would always be there for her.
She realized she had picked that thought up from Dan. The sun was setting. Touching him, she could feel his love for her, the sense of security she, of all the unlikely people, gave him. And she could feel his sincere sympathy.
“Do you have to work tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes, but so do you."
“Can we meet for lunch, then shop for an engagement ring?"
She hadn't even thought about a ring. “You are a traditionalist, aren't you?"
“I wish I could give you the whole world, except that I know it wouldn't make you happy."
“You know that, do you?"