A Dredging in Swann

by Tim Garvin

  “Okay.” His eyes fell on the Walmart rose lying on the passenger seat. “Bonnie, you did me a solid by finding the governor’s phone number. You’re definitely my gem. I have a gift for you, but you might have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “You’re right outside, and you can’t bring me my lovely gift?”

  “It is lovely. And sweet, just like you. Also, one more thing.”

  “One more thing, of course. What?”

  “I need a military record.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to know what months or days a guy was granted leave during his enlistment. About fifty years ago.”

  “Dream on, Seb. Not a chance.”

  “I figured.”

  “Best you could do is find somebody who served with him and get testimony.”

  “Okay. Now I got one more. Kind of a hurry-up on this one.”

  “What kind of gift are we talking about?”

  “A secret, thoughtful gift from my heart.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “There’s a guy that used to write for the Raleigh paper forty years ago. Named Jeff Yates. During the murder trial of Leo Sackler he wrote an article for the Observer. I need to know if he’s alive and how to reach him.”

  “Jeff Y-A-T-E-S?”

  “That’s it. This may increase the size of your gift.”

  “You got me flowers, didn’t you?”

  “I got you a flower. I’m only a corporal.”

  “Well, keep it in water if you don’t get up here.”

  They ended the call. Seb watched the entrance of the sheriff’s department. In a moment a man wearing the reported-about blue sport coat and a gray porkpie hat pushed open the doors, crossed the street, and entered the lot. Seb got out of his car, fished his ID badge from his front pocket. He held it up as the man approached.

  DeWitt stopped and opened his mouth in annoyed surprise. A white mustache hid most of his upper lip and was waxed upward at the ends. He was in his fifties, short, fit, and irritated.

  He said, “Is this about parking in the sheriff’s lot?”

  “No. I’m Seb Creek, the guy that sent you down here to give a statement.”

  “Oh. Nice to meet you. I gave the statement.” He gestured toward his car door, which Seb was blocking.

  Seb said, “You gave it to Barb Addario?”

  “I didn’t get her name. If you don’t mind, I’m late, so …”

  Seb didn’t move. He spread his hands. “I got to ask you a question.”

  “What?”

  “Where did you go after you left Leo Sackler’s place, before the Stillsons?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Am I a suspect?”

  “No. But I need to know where you went. It’s important.”

  DeWitt looked at the asphalt. “Where did I go? I have no idea.” Then he looked up. “I went by Cooper Farms.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “I talked to Squint Cooper. I go by his place every year or so, to show the mustache and keep my hand in.”

  Seb smiled. “That’s a business mustache, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Now—”

  “So what did you talk about with Squint?”

  “Was he ready to sell off some land. He owns two miles of Sable River frontage.”

  “Was he?”

  “No, but I keep asking. Then I went back to the office. I had a closing.”

  “Where did you talk to Squint?”

  “In his house.” He gestured toward his car again. “You mind?”

  Seb said, “Did you tell Squint where you’d been?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you tell him you’d been over to see Leo Sackler?”

  DeWitt thought. “Yes. I did.”

  “Did you tell him Leo was digging out a well?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did he think that was interesting?”

  “I have no idea. I guess he was a little surprised. I was, and that’s why I mentioned it.”

  “Did you put that in your statement to Barb Addario?”

  DeWitt hesitated, wary.

  Seb said, “I just talked to her. You didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t. So what?”

  “You got to go back up there and put it in.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t do it now. I’ll have to—”

  “You have to do it now.”

  “Or what? You charge me with obstruction of justice?”

  “I give you a ticket for parking in the sheriff’s lot.”

  DeWitt said, “Goddammit.” He turned and walked quickly away toward the sheriff’s department.

  Seb said to his back, “I owe you, Mr. DeWitt.”

  DeWitt raised both hands shoulder height and let them fall. He did not reply.

  Seb got into his Honda. He sent the window down, slipped out his phone again, and redialed Bonnie. When she answered, he said, “Bonnie, I just sent Press DeWitt back to redo his statement for Barb. He left something out. Is Barb still in the shop?”

  “She’s sitting at her desk.”

  “He’ll be up there in a minute. Don’t let her get away. Any luck with Jeff Yates?”

  “Damn, you’re pushy. But as a matter of fact, yes. He lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his son. You want to write it? Or a text?”

  “I’ll write it.”

  He opened his notebook and wrote the address and phone as she recited. He said, “Any idea how old he is?”

  “Eighty-four. No idea of his health, mental or otherwise.”

  “Thanks, Bonnie. Now one more thing. I could probably find this myself, but you’re way faster than me. I need the number of Leonard Castle. He’s the ex-governor’s personal lawyer. He’s still working in Raleigh as far as I know.”

  “So he might be in the phone book? Which almost anyone could access from the internet.”

  “Bonnie, you’re up to two flowers. Definitely.”

  She said they better be roses, he said they were, and they ended the call.

  He dialed the number of Jeff Yates. The call was answered on the second ring.

  “This is Jeff.” The voice had an elderly waver but was crisp with attention. There was a hissing sound in the background.

  Seb said, “Hello, Mr. Yates. This is Detective Sebastian Creek with the Swann County sheriff in North Carolina. You got a minute?”

  “I got more than a minute. Just a second.” There was a mechanical thump, and the hissing ceased. “Had to turn off the shower.”

  “Let me call you back.”

  “No, I’m going to go right over here and sit down and listen. What’s up? Was it Sebastian?”

  “Call me Seb.”

  “Call me Jeff. All right, I’m sitting down.”

  “Thanks. I’m calling about a trial that you covered in Swann County, North Carolina, about forty years ago.”

  “That would be the Britt murder.”

  “It would. How did you know that?”

  “I only covered one trial in Swann County, and that was it.”

  “You wrote an extensive piece for the Raleigh paper.”

  “For the Sunday magazine.”

  The man’s mind was entirely lucid. Seb opened his notebook wrote murder, trial, Squint, Germaine. Things to cover. He said, “Did you hear that Leo Sackler was released?”

  “I did. And he got that plantation or something. Are you folks reopening that case? I’d think double jeopardy would apply.”

  “No, not that case. This is a new case. Leo Sackler has been murdered.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “Two days ago. He was found down in a well he was digging out. He was hung.”

  “Oh, my. Now what can I do for you?”

/>   “I’m not sure. I guess I want to hear about the murder. What people thought. Just anything you recall.”

  “Well, hell, that’s a book. I was down there two weeks. Did you talk to the detectives? They might all be dead.”

  “They are.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m creaky but able.”

  “Do you recall the details of the murder?”

  “Of course. It was about magnets on a fishing scale. Leo Sackler pulled up with a boat of fish, and Hugh Britt came out and got him through the arm with a gaff and slung him around. He could have been prosecuted for assault if he hadn’t been killed. Witnesses said he threw Sackler into pilings up and down the dock, one after the other. Bruised him up and severely injured his arm, which was the defense’s main argument, that no one could use an axe after that.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Well, he still had use of his left arm. Also, he was a basketball player and known to use both hands. But I’ll tell you what, it was a hundred percent circumstantial case.”

  “You thought he did it?”

  There was a silence. “I’ll tell you what that case did for me. It was a lesson about the depressing ignorance of mankind. Like a fog that never lifts. Leo Sackler got up and testified, you know. He made a good impression too. I thought, well, if he did it, he’s a terrific actor. What you did know was no white jury in Swann County in 1969 was going to let off a black man they thought might have killed one of their own. If they had to guess about it, they were going to guess against him. And they did. That case has come back to me many times over the years. Many times. You can’t grieve about the injustice because you don’t know if there was any. You grieve about not knowing. You grieve that twelve people made a decision, and they didn’t know either.”

  Seb glanced at his notes. “How long was the trial?”

  “Short. Two weeks. Testimony about the fight, testimony from the detectives. Then from Leo.”

  “Was it well attended?”

  “Packed courthouse for the rich white man. Which is why I was there. Think about that. If you let that penetrate, you can get disgusted. We call it a justice system, but God knows what that would look like.”

  “Last two questions. Did you ever run into Squint Cooper?”

  “The Silver Star winner?”

  “Right.”

  “I never spoke to him, but I saw him around. You couldn’t miss him. He was a great big boy and famous.”

  “I wondered if you might have written an article about him.”

  “I didn’t. There might have been something in the paper though, probably not under the name Squint. You know how he got that name?”

  “When he was a boy, he used to clench his buttocks, so his family called him Squint.”

  “Now there’s a rusty nugget of memory.”

  “Where did you run into him?”

  “At the trial. I sat behind him once and had my view obstructed by his considerable size.”

  “He attended the whole trial?”

  “No idea. But that’s where I saw him. Is he a suspect?”

  “I’m looking at him. How about Germaine Ford? Did you know her?”

  “I know that name. Who was she?”

  “She was a beautiful girl that Hugh Britt was going out with. She’s the one that gave the land to Leo.”

  “Oh, of course. I expect that caused many a rumor in Swann County.”

  “Many. Do you recall if she was at the trial?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, I’ll let you get your naked self into that shower.”

  “I need to. Do one favor for me. If you solve this murder, please call me to let me know. I might not hear otherwise.”

  “I definitely will call you.”

  “You know what’s deeper than disgust, Seb? This is wisdom from an old man. Sadness. Sadness is deeper.”

  Odd Thoughts

  Cody tried to concentrate on fishing—casting, reeling, lifting the pole tip and carefully lowering it, feeling for bumps. Still, two full-blown futures kept floating through, with colors. One was gray prison. The other was Keisha in their yellow kitchen in the morning, with her bright brown smiling face, cooking eggs or whatever, or oatmeal, something healthy and forward-looking. Then, as corrective, he invited back the prison thought, and the vividness of gray concrete and shouts and smells and the unstopping trivial emptiness. But then the kitchen again, and Keisha, because he wasn’t in prison yet, and might not be, and don’t make a spot for prison in your mind, like a beaten fool, but don’t think of Keisha either, like a childish fool. Think of fish, watch for cops, watch the currents and eddies where fish might swim.

  He was ten miles south in the sandbar creeks. The tide was rising. He had taken the mushroom anchor from the anchor box and was now streamed behind it, casting into an eddy tail. He had caught three there, all different, a little blue and a little spot, but also a plate-sized flounder, a pole-bender. He had let them all go. When he let the flounder go, he had checked up and down the slough to make sure he was alone, having the odd thought that freeing a nice fish might be suspicious. He had been checking the water now and then for Peener and Elton, but checking it for releasing a big fish had to be a bad-mind odd thought. You let a fish go, so where’re those Stingers? He was well-acquainted with odd thoughts, where you couldn’t get a truth sense. They had pelted him since a boy, whipped into him first by his dad, then by the war, then by homelessness, where fear was right, but paranoia wasn’t, and you couldn’t tell them apart. Another bad-mind thought was the pink boat. He had painted his boat pink, which was insane, and would shout, what strange person would paint his boat pink, look at that person, and he had thought it would hide him by misdirection, his mind working in sections again. He was captured in a bad mind.

  Then the kitchen thought came back, blooming hard against the nuzzle of depression, and painful hope came. She had stood in Walmart with her hands at her sides, ready to give up her job for a hug and kiss, if that’s what he wanted.

  He made a nice toss across the eddy and on the third lift got a strike, another pole-bender. The drag zipped as the fish streaked for deep water, so maybe a blue, long and strong. Lift, let fall and reel, repeat. He looked upstream for boats but caught himself before turning downstream.

  Cody stripped off doubt. Anyone could let a fish go, any type of normal person, which even if he had never been, he sometime might be, and could be.

  The Bottom

  of the Well

  Seb parked in front of the Ford lodge. Across the tall grass, he saw Kate standing at the rim of the well, saluting against the sun. He sent a hand lift and inquiring shrug. She shook her head. Seb nodded and fished out his phone. He had one more call to make. That would end the leads. Then it was the famous-rich-guy-murder-bust briefing with Stinson. He could endure it, since the investigation had been circumspect. Then the waiting. Unless he could get Squint to confess, or could devise a tricky Hollywood trap. Which first, why would Squint confess, and second, he couldn’t think of a trap. And third, maybe Squint was innocent. Maybe, like cops and prosecutors he had read about and detested—and like some he knew—he had gotten mesmerized by a plausible false story.

  He dialed. A woman answered and said she would see if Mr. Castle was available.

  Seb had searched the internet and found a photo of the man, white-haired and broad-shouldered, seated behind his desk with the faintest of smiles, uttering for the camera the seasoned calm of accomplishment. When Castle came on the phone, Seb introduced himself, then said, “You were Germaine Ford’s lawyer and wrote the will that gave her property to Leo Sackler.”

  “I was.”

  “Did you hear he was murdered?”

  “I did. If you hadn’t called in a week, I would have called you to offer what I can, which I’m afraid isn’t much.”

  They spoke f
ive minutes. In the end, Castle had nothing to add to the governor’s statement, except that the psychologist he had enlisted was his daughter-in-law, and that Germaine had stated, both to his daughter-­in-­law and to him, that the truth would one day be revealed.

  Seb thanked him, and they ended the call.

  And Seb remembered, with excitement, and also chagrin, his earlier idea, which the latest death and Mia had driven from his mind: the forty-­eight years of letters.

  He found the number of the Amboise town hall on his phone and dialed.

  “Amboise city. Can I help you?”

  “Virginia?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “This is Seb Creek, the detective you spoke to yesterday.”

  “I want to thank you for arranging that call to my brother. Did you get the phone number I sent? For my mother-in-law?”

  “I did, thanks. I called her, and she hasn’t seen your husband for some months. The reason I’m calling is that I’d like to take a look at the letters Leo sent your mother. The ones in the precious box. I wonder if you can arrange that for me.”

  “I’ll talk to my mother. We’re having a service in the morning, and the burial.”

  “I wonder if it would be possible for you to call her now and ask her if I could swing by.”

  Virginia said she would, and they ended the call.

  “Seb!”

  It was Kate, waving from the well. He got out of the car and started toward her, then stopped, returned to his car, and sprayed his cuffs. When he reached the well, he offered Kate the can of repellent. She shook her head and pointed into the hole. She said, “They think it’s an axe.”

  An extension cord ran from the V ladder and held a light which illuminated the two men below. They had dug five feet farther down and stood in muddy water. A black siphon hose descended beside them and made an occasional gulping hiss. One of the men had crouched and was feeling beneath the surface with bare hands.

  Kate said, “It’s wrapped in some kind of plastic.”

  Seb said, “If it’s an axe, that’s goddamn confusing.”

  “Why?”

  “Forty-eight years ago, they found an axe thirty feet off the Britt dock. Which they concluded was the axe used to kill Hugh Britt.”