Elizabeth MacPherson 07 - MacPherson’s Lament

by Sharyn McCrumb

  I pounded on the door to Bill’s tiny apartment, knowing that he had to have heard me. No place in his apartment is all that far from the door. “Open up, Bill!” I called out. “It’s your sister. Without a search warrant.”

  The door opened a fraction, and I could see rumpled blond hair and an unshaven face peering out at me. “What do you want?” he asked between yawns.

  “The key to your office and a cup of tea,” I said sweetly. “I see that I woke you. No rush. Any time in the next minute or so will do.”

  Bill glared. “Why do you want the key?”

  “To call your law partner. I have some information that may help her case.”

  “Her case?” he wailed. “What about me?”

  “I’m still working on it.” I snatched the key and fled downstairs.

  A few minutes later, I was talking to A. P. Hill, who was wide awake at this hour, as I suspected she would be. She probably alphabetizes her underwear drawer. “I looked over that coroner’s report, and I have some information for you,” I said after the initial civilities.

  “I don’t see what you could have found without doing any lab work,” she said.

  “They did the lab work. And either they forgot to record one significant finding or there’s something strange about Misti Hale’s death.”

  “You mean she wasn’t strangled?”

  “Sort of. There were bruises on her neck, all right, and her body had been in the car for a couple of days, so the lividity and coloration weren’t much help, but what I would expect to find noted on the report was evidence of petechial hemorrhaging.”

  “Which is?”

  “Red dots, especially noticeable in the eyes. They are actually small hemorrhages in the capillaries under the skin, and the condition is most evident in the whites of the eyes. The pressure put on the blood vessels during strangulation causes the tiny ruptures. But in the autopsy report on Misti Hale, no petechial hemorrhages were mentioned.”

  “But you said there were bruises on her neck.”

  “Right, but if there weren’t any hemorrhages, then she didn’t die from that. In grad school, we heard about a case like this. I have a hunch that Misti Hale was one of those rare and unlucky people whose blood pressure goes down under stress instead of up. You know, like a possum.”

  “She passed out?”

  “Way out. Someone took her by the throat, and she went into shock almost immediately. Her blood pressure plummeted and her heart stopped. So she didn’t die from strangulation, but from shock. It would have been very fast. Seconds.”

  A. P. Hill was not impressed with my diagnosis. “Hmm,” she said. “But whoever had his hands around her throat still killed her.”

  “Maybe not on purpose. Her assailant might have stopped in a couple of seconds. He may have been trying to shut her up. But she had this blood pressure trouble, and she passed out and died. It’s not conclusive proof, but you could argue that it was not an intentional homicide. You could get expert witnesses to back you for manslaughter.”

  “He might get off with time served for that.” A. P. Hill sounded thoughtful. “And I could get expert witnesses to testify to this condition.”

  “Sure. If I were you, I’d start calling the UVA med school and go from there.”

  “Thanks. I’ll look into it. Unless you’d like to—”

  “Sorry. I have to figure out what Major Edward Anderson is doing on a Georgia island.”

  “Friend of yours?” The disinterest was back in her voice.

  “No. Somebody mentioned it, and I got curious.” I was tempted to tell her about Bill’s problem, but he would have killed me for betraying his confidence.

  “Major Edward Anderson. Well, there’s the famous one, of course.”

  “The comedian. Rochester. I thought of that.”

  “Comedian? Oh, on Jack Benny. No, that was Eddie Anderson. I was talking about the Confederate officer. Wasn’t he in charge of battery positions at the beginning of the war?”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. He was only a major. But in my office there are some reference books on the Civil War, and bound copies of Civil War Times Illustrated. You might check those. Of course it might be the wrong man.”

  “It’s worth a try. Thanks.”

  Twenty minutes later, I was reshelving all of Powell Hill’s reference books when Bill came in, holding two steaming mugs of tea.

  “Took you long enough,” I said. “Unfortunately, I can’t drink it.”

  “Why not?” His tone suggested that I had just refused the Holy Grail.

  “Because there aren’t that many rest areas between here and I-95,” I told him as I started out the door. “I think I’ve found your old ladies.”

  “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action!”

  —NEXT-TO-LAST WORDS OF

  THOMAS J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON, MAY 10, 1863

  “Tell Hill he must come up.”

  —NEXT-TO-LAST WORDS OF ROBERT E. LEE, OCTOBER 1870

  GILES COUNTY, VIRGINIA, DECEMBER 1901

  GABRIEL HAWKS TRACED his forefinger along a line of type in the Richmond newspaper. His eyes weren’t what they used to be—and he never had been much on reading—but the name of his old friend had jumped out at him from the columns of gray words: Tom Bridgeford … state senator … appointed to the board of the newly established Home for Confederate Women in Danville. He tried to picture the lanky young sailor as a dignified old politician, but the image wouldn’t come. Even though his own mirror showed him an image of an arthritic old man of fifty-five, he couldn’t picture Tom any older than twenty-five, still chafing under the weight of authority and spoiling for a fight. If he was a senator now, and active in charitable works, he must have prospered.

  Gabriel Hawks looked about the simple parlor of the farmhouse, with its sepia photograph of General Lee over the mantel and a homemade braided rug on the pine floor. He reckoned that he hadn’t done too well, as the world measured success, but by his own lights he’d had a good life. He had done a bit of wandering in Georgia in the aftermath of the war, and then he’d made his way back to Giles County and taken up farming again at the homeplace. The community was much the poorer, mostly because it had lost most of the boys he’d grown up with, but he was happy enough back in the sheltering mountains of the Blue Ridge. Shortly after his return he had married Mary Hadden, who, at sixteen, had been left widowed by the War. She had lived to see the beginning of the new century, but pneumonia had taken her during the first weeks of winter, and now Gabriel was alone again. There had been no children to keep him company in his old age, and keep the family land. He supposed he was free now, and about as old as he was likely to get. Surely he would soon be joining Mary in the sweet hereafter. Until then he could have his heart’s desire, if he wished it, or at least what there was of it that money could buy. What are you waiting for, Gabe? said a voice in his head. It sounded like young Tom’s voice, urging him on.

  He stared into the fireplace and thought about those far-off days in Georgia when the world had about gone to hell around them. There he was, waving farewell to Tom Bridgeford and cantering off down a dusty road with a fortune in gold in a saddlebag. Bridgeford—State Senator Bridgeford—must have made it back with his, and from the sound of his prosperous life, he had put it to good use. Old Tom would probably laugh to learn that his old shipmate was still a poor mountain farmer in the Blue Ridge. “You could have made something of yourself, Hawks,” he’d say, if he knew. But Gabriel hadn’t wanted to try. He missed the farm and he was more than a little afraid that bushwhackers would get him if he tried to head home with the gold. And how would he explain the gold to the folks back in Giles without sounding like a vulture picking at the bones of the Confederacy? There was hardly a family in the valley that hadn’t lost someone to the cause. How could he profit from the sorrow and still look them in the eyes?

  But he couldn’t give it back, either. He didn’t see that the new government would put it to good use.
Likely as not, they’d try to hang him for having taken it in the first place. Besides, the day might come when he would need the money—to pay taxes or buy new livestock after a bitter winter, or for the children he thought would come. He’d wandered down to the coast with some notion of trying to work his way out of the country by ship, but that wouldn’t have been safe either. Not with a knapsack full of gold. Near Brunswick, he’d made his way to a little island that was mostly marshland and sand dunes, and there he had buried his gold bars. He marked the spot, fixing it in his mind with landmarks. He reasoned that he could always go back to get them if the need ever arose.

  That had been thirty-six years ago. Many’s the time Hawks had toyed with the idea of going back for the gold. He dreamed of building a fine house for Mary or buying a new herd of dairy cows, but each time he thought of making the long journey south again, he always abandoned the project. His need was not great enough to offset the perils of the journey and the fear of discovery.

  Now he was old, and Mary was sleeping under a headstone in the churchyard. It was too late in life for riches now. There was no place he wanted to go and nothing he wanted other than what he had. It seemed a shame, though, for the gold to be left in the sands of Georgia. It put him in mind of the parable about the servant who buried his talents and was scolded by the Master for not making use of them. He looked again at the newspaper article about the prosperous Senator Bridgeford. Tom was always the smart one; he had always known what they should do. Gabriel would write his old comrade and tell him where the gold was. Surely a man so prosperous and wise would know what best to do with it.

  He pressed his face close to a sheet of writing paper and began to spell out the words: Dear Tom Bridgeford—I take pen in hand to write you this missive …

  “Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, wishing for the war to cease …”

  —“Tenting Tonight,” CIVIL WAR SONG SUNG BY BOTH ARMIES

  CHAPTER 9

  THE FASTEST WAY to Georgia is Interstate 95, which is an extremely boring road—a more or less straight line of asphalt running down the coastal plain, hemmed in by an endless stretch of pine barrens and sandy soil. There is nothing in the way of scenery to keep you alert unless your reading taste runs to garish billboards or lists of fast-food joints at forthcoming exit ramps. I figured that the drive from southeast Virginia to southeast Georgia would be six hours of unbroken monotony, but much as I dreaded it, I will admit that there are routes I am even more reluctant to travel, roads that are anything but boring. These roads are mostly north of Danville.

  I have an old school friend who lives in western Maryland, and the drive up I-81 to her house is always an anxious journey for me. To get to Frederick, I must pass through the heartland of the War. First comes Lexington, where Stonewall Jackson taught artillery at Virginia Military Institute before he went forth in 1861 to practice it. An hour or so north is New Market, where the young boys of VMI still in their school uniforms went up against the Union Army and were butchered. Just seeing the road sign NEW MARKET makes me uneasy, and I picture schoolboys dying in the long grass of the valley. Farther up are exits for Charles Town, West Virginia, which means horse racing to most people nowadays, but to me, it conjures up an image of John Brown, waiting for the rope to be placed around his neck and predicting the coming war with his dying words. I-81 is a modern four-lane highway, but it follows the old route along the valley, where the armies traveled under Sheridan and Jackson, and I feel their presence, even over the roar of the eighteen-wheelers whizzing past me.

  Near the Maryland border I cross Antietam Creek, and the chills start. Antietam … I know that there are streets in Maryland named that now, probably grade schools and dry cleaners even. But to me Antietam is bodies piled in a roadway, one on top of the other, making a mound twelve feet high, stretching on and on through the dust of that winding road. It is the stench of powder and blood and death that can’t still linger after a hundred years and more, but still I smell it.

  They are just words on road signs, that’s all, I tell myself. And between Norfolk and Richmond, on I-64, is an exit sign for Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor … The swampy terrain made it almost impossible to attack the well-entrenched Confederate Army. To charge in such a marsh against the enemy’s guns was suicide, and the Union soldiers knew it. Cold Harbor. On the shirts of their uniforms, they pinned pieces of paper bearing their names and their hometowns. That way when their bodies were pulled out of the swamp, they could be sent home for burial. One soldier wrote: June 3, 1864. I was killed.

  I go out of my way not to drive past Cold Harbor.

  In the South we haven’t really forgotten the War. Many of us knew people who knew people who fought in it. It hasn’t quite passed into history yet. It’s still more feelings than facts, and likely to remain so for a good while. I know this because I’ve been with my Scottish husband to an older battlefield—Culloden Moor, west of Inverness—and watched his face grow pale and solemn as he looked at the field where his kinsmen died. On that field, the Scots met death, defeat, and the end of their country as an independent nation. That was 1746, and it still stirs them, so I figure we have a ways to go before the emotion fades away, before words like Antietam and Cold Harbor pass without raising chills and dark memories.

  I hadn’t thought about the War in a long time. It was Bill and his damned Confederate ladies who brought it all back. Even on I-95, where the most ominous sign is an ad for Gatorland, the gray ghosts rode along, making me remember them. In Virginia, the Civil War isn’t something you learn in school; it’s a Presence. Always there. I can remember an ancient great-aunt telling Bill and me about our great-great-grandfather David MacPherson, a sixteen-year-old private in the 68th Infantry under General Bragg. In 1865 the 68th had marched from Virginia to Fort Fisher in the snow, he’d told her. They had no shoes by that time, just shreds of leather or rags wrapped around cracked and callused feet. It was winter and they followed the railroad tracks south. They left bloody footprints in the snow.

  That’s the war to me: a starving sixteen-year-old leaving footprints in the snow in his own blood. And the women I was tracking were the daughters of those young soldiers—the last link with them. So what was I supposed to do? Coax those old ladies into a nursing home so the state could take their house?

  I wished there was something to look at on I-95 besides a million damned pine trees. I didn’t want to have to think anymore.

  A month in a county jail had not improved Tug Mosier in any way. The lack of sunlight and starchy jail food had made him even paler and more flabby. His hair shone with grease, and a stubble of beard completed a look that would have made a jury convict him on general principles. He looked guilty of something. A. P. Hill managed to smile at her scruffy client, hoping that she looked more confident than she felt. At least she had a shred of a defense now.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “I hate being cooped up,” said Tug. “Specially in summertime. And I sure as hell could use a drink.”

  “I can’t help you there, but I do have some news about your case. First of all, I just had a meeting with the district attorney. He has offered you a deal, which is really beside the point because I have a new lead that may win this case for us.”

  “The D.A. is talking a deal?” The scowl left Tug’s face and he leaned forward with the first sign of genuine interest he had shown since she arrived.

  “Yes. He wants you to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He says he’ll ask for a ten-year sentence.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t serve all the time they give you.”

  “Well, you could, of course, if you tried to escape or didn’t behave. But usually a prison term is about a quarter of the sentence. Say two and a half years. That’s a long time to be behind bars, I’m sure. But listen: I have great news. I had a forensic expert study the autopsy report on Misti and she came up with a wonderful piece of evidence to help our case.”

  Powell’s voice bubbled with e
nthusiasm as she explained Elizabeth’s theory about the absence of petechial hemorrhaging in Misti Hale. She had to repeat the part about low blood pressure—and still Tug looked unimpressed. “You see,” she said triumphantly, “if she died of shock, you didn’t kill her intentionally!”

  Tug Mosier frowned and rubbed his stubble of beard. “You think a Patrick County jury is going to follow that?” he asked.

  “I’ll call in a medical expert,” A.P. assured him. “We’ll go over the whole process. Maybe even have a chart to help the jurors focus on the technical part.”

  “But if we do that, the district attorney won’t be going for second degree, will he? He’ll try to convict me of first-degree homicide. Maybe capital murder. They fry people in this state, you know.”

  “We’d argue that Misti’s death was accidental.”

  “That’s just it,” said Tug sadly. “We’d argue. But you can lose an argument. You can’t lose a negotiated deal. I don’t want to bet my life that this jury will understand a word you’re saying. I didn’t, much.”

  A.P. looked down at her briefcase full of notes, the result of hours of work researching the case. Then she looked at Tug Mosier, stone-faced and flabby, with the stirrings of fear in his eyes. “You want to plead guilty, then?” she asked. “Accept the D.A.’s offer?”

  “I reckon so,” said Tug. “It seems the best way. I can do two and a half years, no sweat. I got friends inside. And—no offense, ma’am—but this is pretty damn near your first case. I’m not anxious to risk my life on the skills of a baby lawyer. Really: no offense.”

  “None taken,” murmured A. P. Hill. “I’ll go back and tell Mr. Hazelit that we’ll accept his offer.”

  Her client settled back in his straight wooden chair with a happy smile. “I sure am glad you’re taking this so well, ma’am. I do hate a woman that argues and nags at a fellow. Misti was always a one for that. She used to bitch and moan till I’d itch to slam her through a wall. Anything to shut up that mouth of hers.”