The Ballad of Frankie Silver (39 page)

Spencer repressed a shudder. “Will you write the article?”

“I will. I’m a man of my word. I said I would watch that man die, and if writing an article is the cost of keeping that promise, then so be it.”

“I wish this execution would bring your daughter back, sir,” said Spencer, choosing his words carefully. “But since it won’t, I can’t say that I see much point in it.”

Charles Stanton narrowed his eyes. “People ought to pay their debts, Mr. Arrowood. Legally and morally. Debts have to be paid. So even if this execution isn’t a deterrent to others, even if this man would never kill again, and, yes, even though it will not bring my daughter back from the grave, at least a debt will be paid, and that’s something. I worked long and hard for this day. Maybe it even cost me my marriage. So when Fate Harkryder sits down in that electric chair, it will mean that twenty years of my life have not been wasted.”

Spencer nodded. He was thinking that there are many ways to serve a life sentence, and he wondered if Fate Harkryder’s death would set Charles Stanton free.

“I came to see if you’d like to ride to Nashville,” said Stanton. “I’ll be going up a day or so early, to pay my respects to the governor and to thank him for having the courage to let this happen on his watch. When I heard that you were injured, I thought I’d offer to take you with me. An invalid shouldn’t make a six-hour trip alone.”

“That’s very kind of you, Colonel,” said Spencer, “but I have some things to take care of here before I can leave. I’ll go up the actual day of the execution. If it’s still scheduled by then.”

Stanton smiled. “I can promise you it will still be scheduled. Three network news shows are interviewing me from Nashville between now and the time Fate Harkryder dies. They’re calling the segments things like ‘Justice at Last.’ The authorities won’t dare call it off. I’ve seen to that.”

Spencer wanted to say,
But what if he isn’t guilty?
But he kept silent, because guilt or innocence didn’t matter anymore to this man with a handsome face and dead eyes. Charles Stanton had hated Lafayette Harkryder for too long to change his mind now; no evidence would ever convince him that the condemned man was not guilty. Someone was going to die for Emily Stanton’s sake, and to that end Charles Stanton was a much more cunning killer than any Harkryder had ever been.

Charles Stanton stood up, smiling. “Well, I mustn’t keep you,” he said. “I know you’re not well, and I have a press conference this afternoon in Johnson City. I plan to use the new Trail Murders to draw attention to our cause. I wish Harkryder’s execution had come in time to deter this new killer.”

Spencer managed to nod. He was able to stay expressionless only because police work had given him twenty years of practice at concealing his emotions, but he felt his muscles tighten and his stomach churn.

“Are you close to an arrest yet, Sheriff?” asked Stanton, making his way to the door.

“I can’t say.”
What murders? In my county?

“Too bad. I’ve actually heard people saying that the two cases might be related. I want to put a stop to that nonsense right away. I wouldn’t want the governor to have any excuse for a stay of execution.”

*   *   *

Spencer leaned against the door, taking deep breaths until he heard Stanton’s tires crunch the gravel in the driveway. He glanced at the telephone. No. He would go in. Holding his side, as if pressure could block the pain, he limped toward the kitchen counter, where his car keys lay in a bowl with his spare change. Alton Banner had not yet given the sheriff permission to drive, but Spencer told himself that it had been a couple of days since he’d asked, and he was confident that he was no risk to anyone but himself behind the wheel. He would get down the mountain, one way or another. And he wanted some answers.

He backed his car out of the garage, around the gravel circle beneath the oak and hickory trees, and headed up the driveway. He was about six minutes from town, but the road led through field and forest, so that it might have been any century at all, but for the black ribbon of road that separated the meadows. Actually, that wasn’t true. Frankie Silver would have been bewildered by the missing chestnut trees, the strange kudzu vines, and other changes in the modern landscape, but Spencer was willing to settle for a lack of billboards and power lines. He tried to calm himself by blurring his thoughts into a distant hum, drowned out by the beauty of the surrounding mountains, and for a few miles he almost succeeded, but the sign marking the town limits of Hamelin brought him back to the business at hand. The sheriff’s department was two blocks away.

When he saw Deputy Joe LeDonne’s patrol car parked in the driveway, he felt his jaw clench. He had hoped to find Martha, but LeDonne would do. He hobbled out of the car, slamming the door until the window rattled. He managed to walk up the front steps without much hesitation, and by the time he reached the front door, he had filled his lungs with a deep breath to ward off any expressions of pain. He must be careful not to seem ill. He intended to take over the investigation, and he wanted to give his deputies no chance to use his injuries as an excuse to exclude him from the case. If he showed any weakness, LeDonne, with the best of intentions, was likely to summon Martha and then Alton Banner, and the pair of them would insist upon escorting the sheriff back home until he had recovered more completely from his wound. There was no time for that.

“What are you doing out?” Joe LeDonne had never got the hang of social amenities. Picturing the deputy at a press conference or a meeting of the board of supervisors made the sheriff wince even more than the pain in his gut.

“I feel fine,” Spencer told him. “Consider me back on duty. Begin with telling me why the hell I wasn’t informed about the homicides.”

LeDonne was sitting at his usual desk, with the Pepsi that was probably his dinner sitting to the left of the computer monitor. On the screen was a list of addresses and phone numbers. He was doing phone interviews, tracking witnesses. He didn’t look so great either, Spencer thought. Long hours and no days off were beginning to wear him down.

“We’re doing all we can,” said LeDonne. “The TBI is on it, and we’re doing interviews. That’s about it.”

Spencer nodded. “It was Martha’s call, wasn’t it?
Don’t disturb poor Spencer. He’s been sick.
”

The deputy shrugged. “Something like that. She may be right, you know.”

They mean well,
Spencer told himself, swallowing his rage. “We’ll leave that for now,” he said. “Tell me about the homicides.”

With a sigh of resignation, LeDonne picked up the case file and handed it to the sheriff. “At least sit down,” he said. “You look awful.”

“I’m fine.” He sat down, though. “Tell me what is being done.”

Step by step, LeDonne took him through the stages of the investigation, from the call reporting the discovery of the bodies to the several lists of possible witnesses being questioned by telephone or in door-to-door canvasing. Spencer nodded as the case began to take shape.

LeDonne paused for breath. After a moment he said, “Is there anything else you would have done?”

The sheriff shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it. I wouldn’t have ignored the possible link between this crime and the Harkryder case, though.”

“We didn’t ignore it. We questioned all of those witnesses we could find—Harmon, the two firemen from Alabama, even poor Willis Blaine’s widow. We came up empty.”

“Don’t you see what you’ve done? A man is set to die this week, and you’ve failed to follow up on new evidence that might save him.”

The deputy was silent for a few moments. Confrontations were all part of a day’s work in law enforcement, but LeDonne hated to have to quarrel with his boss, who was also his friend. They had known each other a long time now. LeDonne had spent his teenage years in Vietnam with an infantry line company. For a dozen years after that, he had drifted from one job to another, missing the excitement of combat and never succeeding in outrunning the rest of the memories. This little county on the shoulder of a Tennessee mountain was as close as he ever got to coming home. Spencer was obviously in no shape to handle the present situation. At last he said, “We don’t see a connection between the two cases. The TBI doesn’t see it, either.”

“You haven’t ruled it out.”

“It’s a coincidence, that’s all.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Let it go, Spencer,” said Martha from the doorway. She came in, looking more tired than both of them, and perched on the edge of LeDonne’s desk. “I saw your car here,” she told the sheriff. “I was afraid you’d find out about this, but I kept hoping we’d solve it first. You’re in no shape to handle an investigation, and I knew you’d try, because of this Harkryder connection.”

“So there is a connection!”

Martha sighed. “Only in your mind, Spencer. Look, you need to trust us. I just finished the academy course, remember? Things have changed in the twenty years since you arrested Fate Harkryder. Back then the film
The Collector
was a creepy fairy tale; now it’s used as a training film, because there’s a whole new breed of serial killer out there. We know more about murder now than we used to. And one thing we know is that people don’t commit identical murders twenty years apart with nothing in between.”

“You’re betting a man’s life on this,” said Spencer.

“We’re following a good lead right now, and there’s no connection to the Harkryder case. This case isn’t your answer, Sheriff,” said Martha. She so seldom called him by his title that he looked up in surprise. “Why don’t you let me drive you home now?”

“No!” He was too forceful. The urgency that he had taken such trouble to conceal was now apparent, and he realized that his emotions were too close to the surface, a sign of his tenuous health. “I won’t get any rest anyhow, if I have to worry about this. I know you’ve checked over the Harkryder case, but let me double-check. For my own peace of mind. You go home. I’ll stay here and pull some records.”

“You’re in no shape to be working,” said Martha.

“I can’t help thinking.”

“It’s that damned execution, isn’t it?” said LeDonne.

“Yes.”

“Stay home then. The state wants a county witness, tell them I’ll go.”

“It has to be me. Fate Harkryder is on death row because I put him there—and I may have been wrong.”

“I doubt it,” said LeDonne, as calmly as if they were talking about a bet on an old baseball game.

“Nelse Miller was never happy about this conviction, but I was so sure of myself back then. It was my first big case, and I thought his doubts about it were just sour grapes because he hadn’t been here to solve it.”

“So why didn’t he prove you wrong?”

Spencer shrugged. “I gathered the evidence, that’s all. The district attorney and the jury were the ones who decided Fate Harkryder was guilty. And all the evidence was against him. Blood type, lack of alibi. He even had the dead girl’s jewelry on him when he was arrested.”

“You’ve got me convinced,” said LeDonne. “That’s as good as cases get, except on television.”

“I know. But it feels wrong.”

The deputy smiled. “Well, that’s bound to impress the Supreme Court,” he said.

“I know. I need something besides twenty years’ experience and a hunch. I thought the Trail Murders had the earmarks of serial killings. And they stopped after I arrested the suspect, right? If I had the right man, the killings shouldn’t have stopped. But now we have this case.”

“Martha told you. Serial killers don’t take twenty-year breaks. More like twenty days. Most of them are under forty anyhow.”

“I know. I said it was a feeling. It doesn’t make sense yet, and I don’t have much to go on. But I want to look at some criminal records.” Spencer handed LeDonne a slip of paper from his telephone scratch pad. “Can we contact the TBI and get them to run these names through their computers?”

“Sure,” said LeDonne. “What are you looking for?”

“I’ll know when I see it. Get me everything they’ve got.”

The deputy handed Spencer the telephone. “You might as well go out to dinner with Martha, then, because this will take a while. I take it you want to check more states than just Tennessee?”

“I want everything.”

LeDonne nodded at Martha. “You’ll have time for breakfast, too,” he said.

*   *   *

The officer-in-charge stacked the cardboard boxes on the bunk in Fate Harkryder’s cell. “We might as well get this taken care of now, Lafayette,” he said, but his tone was apologetic. “They’re moving you out of Two in an hour or so. To the quiet cell. I thought you might like some help.”

Fate nodded. “Thanks.” He noticed that Berry had said, “We’re moving you to the quiet cell,” instead of “We’re putting you on death watch.” A small point, perhaps, since it amounted to the same thing, but Fate’s existence had long been built upon small pleasures and petty annoyances in the great nothingness of prison time. Little things mattered. Berry wasn’t too bad for a guard. He was just doing his job. Maybe he understood things better than the lawyers did. You didn’t have to explain poverty to someone who worked as a prison guard.

Fate looked around, measuring his possessions, the accumulation of his entire adult life. They would fit easily into the four cardboard boxes. Now he must decide what to do with them. He began to take things off the shelf. Four bottles of Prell shampoo, a carton of cigarettes, a stack of unused yellow legal pads.… He thought how people on the outside would shake their heads at such a pitiful excuse for wealth. “Give those things to Milton,” he said, scooping the cigarettes and toilet articles into the smallest box. “God knows he needs it. Especially the shampoo.”

It was a feeble joke, but Berry smiled anyhow.

“What happens now?”

Berry shrugged. “You’re going to get some peace and quiet,” he said. “But the accommodations are a little sparse.”

“Compared to what?”

“The quiet cell has bars, like a jail. It has a bed, a sink, a toilet, and a writing table. That’s it. You’ll be allowed fifteen minutes a day outside the cell to shower; otherwise, that’s where you stay.”