“Have you notified relatives?”
“Batlett’s on the phone now. In some cases I suppose we won’t be able to find them. The National Guard has provided body bags, and we’re moving all the remains to the Atlanta morgue. Those that can’t be identified will be interred as quickly as possible, the others will be turned over to families as soon as postmortems are done.”
“What other problems can we expect?” Billy asked.
“Funderburke apparently left a sizeable estate—something in the neighborhood of a million dollars, Mr. Holmes reckons— and, as far as we can determine, he had no living relatives. There are likely to be a number of suits against the estate, and I expect most of the proceeds will go to families of the victims.”
“That’s as it should be,” Billy said.
“That’s about it, for now, I guess. I’ll keep you posted if there are any new developments, but right now I’m going to go home and get some sleep. John’s going to use our guest room.”
Billy turned to Howell. “When is this going to hit the papers, John?”
“Tomorrow morning. It’ll be in the
Times
, of course, and the
Constitution
will pick up our story and photographs. I’ve already sent a courier to New York with copy and film. The TV people will descend on the town tomorrow, when they hear about it. I’d have a statement ready, if I were you.”
“All I can do is express my shock and regret and sympathy for the families and refer everything else to Tucker, I guess.”
Billy shook hands with both men and saw them to the door. Then he went back to the study and sat, staring into the fire, immobile.
When they had turned out of Billy’s drive and toward Tucker’s house, John Howell took a deep breath and spoke. “Tucker, when I was doing the research for the
Sunday Magazine
piece, I went down to Columbus and looked up your birth certificate.”
“Oh?” replied Tucker. He gripped the wheel more tightly.
“Naturally, I didn’t bother to look for a death certificate. If I went back down there now and looked, what would I find?”
Tucker was too tired to care any more. “You’d find that I died of scarlet fever when I was eight years old,” he said.
“The original Tucker was your cousin?”
Tucker nodded. “Uncle Tuck’s boy. He still had the birth certificate. That was all I needed to get into the army later. I worked for a sharecropper down in Alabama during that time. My cousin was two years older than me, but I was tall for my age, and there wasn’t any problem enlisting. Uncle Tuck wrote out a letter for my mother, saying that I had been hit by a truck in Alabama and killed. She showed it around, and everybody bought it. After that, I was Tucker Watts.”
“Who else knows?”
“Elizabeth. I only told her a few months ago.”
“Tell me the truth, Tucker, does Billy know?”
Tucker shook his head. “No, but if you’re going to print it, I’d better go back out there and tell him right now.”
Howell was quiet for a few moments, staring out the window at the passing countryside. “No, I don’t think I will. He’s been through enough the last couple of months—two elections, and now this house vote on Tuesday. Tomorrow you’re going to come out smelling like a rose, and so will Billy, for backing you. If I print this stuff it will muddy the waters, cast doubts on what Billy knew and what he didn’t. He has a chance to go all the way, you know.”
“What, Washington?”
Howell nodded. “Yep. I have it on good authority that he’s at the top of the list if JFK dumps Johnson, and it looks like he’s going to.”
Tucker grinned. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Howell laughed. “Yeah, maybe you’ll get to be head of the FBI.”
“John,” Tucker said, “I appreciate your not bringing all this out. Billy deserves better than that.”
“Yeah.” Howell looked out the window at the wet fields. “Boy, I’m some kind of reporter, huh?”
Chapter 24.
BILLY DIDN’T GO to Atlanta for the house vote on Tuesday. John Howell agreed to keep an open line from the capitol to the house outside Delano to report on the voting as it progressed.
Shortly after the house convened, Holmes, at Billy’s house to await the vote, received a phone call. He took it in the kitchen, then came back into Billy’s study. “That was Fred Mitchell,” he said to the little gathering of family and friends, which included Tucker and Elizabeth Watts, “from Toccoa, in north Georgia. Billy and I flew up to see him the other day. The boy that was found in Foxy’s garage was Fred’s nephew, his sister’s boy, from Florida.” There was a little gasp from the group. “He asked me to tell Tucker how grateful he is; they might never have known what happened to the boy. He also said to tell you, Billy, that he’s voting with you, and he thinks he’s got two, maybe three others lined up.”
There were two hours of speeches in the house, and at noon the vote was taken. John Howell, on the phone from the capitol, breathed the news to Billy. “Two votes, Governor. You won by two votes.”
Billy hung up and reported the news to the gathering. There was cheering and applause. The phone rang again immediately.
Patricia answered it. “It’s the White House/’ she said.
“Ask them to hold on a minute,” Billy replied. He turned to the gathering. “Before I tell them how happy I am, I want to tell all of you how happy I am, and how truly grateful I am to each of you. You’ve given me so much help, and I promise you, I’m not through asking.”
He tried to say something else, but couldn’t manage it. Instead, he went to the phone and talked for a few minutes. He came back to the group, who were waiting eagerly.
“He says congratulations, and congratulations to Tucker, too. He’s going to Texas for a few days later this month, and he wants me to come up to talk with him when he gets back.”
Hugh Holmes sat in his study late that night, a brandy in his hand, immensely sad. He had suddenly had the feeling of having finished something, indeed, everything. It had been fifty-four years since he had first set foot on the land that had become Delano, and always since that time his life had been filled with plan and purpose. Now there was no plan, no purpose, in which he could play a meaningful part.
He had done all he could for Billy. He had done all he could for the town. And now Delano/in which he had invested such industry and ingenuity, would become a synonym for perversion and death. No one would ever again speak of the town without reference to what had happened there. He felt a pain in his chest, which quickly spread to his left arm. He knew that pain; he had felt it before, recently. There was a phone at his elbow; help was available—if he wanted it. The pain increased; the brandy glass fell from his fingertips.
He had only to wait. The pain would take him, or it would leave him. He genuinely had no preference.
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