by Reyna Favis
“Maybe if you reference the historic record in addition to what your ‘mystery psychics’ found, that will fill in the story for the viewers,” Cam suggested. Directing his gaze at me, he said, “I was able to get the full history of the axe murders just before we ran off to see how Joel was doing, so you haven’t heard this part yet.”
“Do tell…” I prompted him, tilting my head and mimicking Lucas.
“At the time, they called this the crime of the century,” Cam began as he settled into telling the story. “In the modern vernacular, it was a home invasion. On the night of May 1st in 1843, some person or persons went to that house in Changewater and murdered four people. Three bodies were found in the house and one person was murdered outside. They were all killed with a hatchet or axe.” I shuddered a little at this. Actually seeing the wounds on the man in the pit did not allow me to have any distance from the story. I ought to be immune to brutality by now, but it still got to me.
“Was this just a random act of violence or was there a motive?” Lucas asked, leaning forward. Taking out a small notebook from a back pocket, he began jotting down notes.
“It’s believed that the motive was robbery. The man who owned the house, John Bowlby Parke, earned his living investing in real estate and loaning money to his neighbors at interest. He was known by the community to have stashed a substantial sum of money in the home.”
Lucas was thoughtful for a moment and then asked, “Did either Peter Parke or John Carter owe him money? That could also have been a motive. Maybe they just didn’t want to pay up.”
Cam shook his head and responded, “There was no mention of any debt owed to John Parke by either of the hanged men. But that is a good point. Anyone who owed money could have been a suspect.” Yawning widely, he covered his mouth with one hand and signaled for the waitress, lifting his empty coffee cup with the other. “That’s the crux of the problem,” he said after she filled his cup. “There were probably a lot of possible motives beyond robbery that were never considered. And without these alternative motives, how many suspects were ignored? The more I learn about the case, the more I am convinced that this was a rush job and two men were railroaded into a conviction.”
“What caused the rush?” I asked as leaned an elbow on the table and propped up my head up. It was getting harder to keep my eyes open. “Were they afraid that there would be more murders?”
“No, nothing that innocent,” Cam said. “The bloodlust started during the burial of the murder victims. The funeral was held at the orchard at the back of the house in order to accommodate the crowds. The caskets were afterwards transported by wagons to the Mansfield cemetery.” Cam’s eyes narrowed as he retold the story and his mouth compressed in distaste when he paused. The tale disturbed him, but we needed to understand what led to this miscarriage of justice.
“Some years earlier,” he continued, “the Mansfield Church had split into two congregations, some worshipping in Bethlehem and others in Washington Township. To avoid arguments among the surviving family, the reverends from both churches were asked to officiate at the funerals. Each one tried to outdo the other in convincing the crowd that the guilty party stood among them.” Cam shook his head in disgust and took another pause to fortify himself with more coffee. I stole a glance at Lucas. He was caught up in the story and had stopped taking notes.
“The Reverend Jacob Castner from Washington won the battle of the preachers in the end,” Cam continued. “He delivered a deeply divisive sermon during the interment, encouraging neighbors and family members to scrutinize each other as suspects in the killings and to root out the guilty parties. He was particularly hard on the family members. Many people removed themselves from the burial, so that they would not have to listen. For those that remained, the good reverend whipped them into a frenzy for revenge,” Cam concluded.
“So, that’s when things must have really started to go south for the criminal investigation,” Lucas murmured. “Law enforcement was probably under an even greater pressure to pin the crime on someone after the funerals.” He sat back, folding his arms across his chest. The fingers of one hand began to drum on his upper arm as he considered. “Any errors that occurred then are now made fixed and immutable by the passing of time. There’s no correcting it. Everyone who was a possible suspect is long dead and any evidence of the crime no longer exists for us to examine.” He looked grim and tired. “We’re not going to be able to solve this to anyone’s satisfaction.”
“I think we all agree on that front,” I nodded. “How about, for now, we focus on just trying to corroborate the history with observations from the present?” Both Cam and Lucas shrugged an agreement. This was the best we could do at the moment. “The man in the pit was fatally injured and was located a few hundred yards from the house, so that might jive with the victim killed outside. Was a little girl killed in the house?” I asked.
“The man outside of the house was likely John Castner. It appeared that he had been lured away from the house and was possibly the first to be murdered. His body was found in a sinkhole not far from the house. Castner was married to John Parke’s younger sister, Mary. They both lived in the house, with him working the farm and his wife keeping house with the help of another sister. Mary and John Castner had a little girl named Maria Matilda. She was only three, not that it made a difference to the murderer. The little girl’s body was found in a bed lying in her mother’s arms. Both had severe gashes and deep puncture wounds to their heads. The murderer had pulled a blanket up over the bodies and covered the face of the mother with a pillow.”
We were all silent for a moment. Cam added softly, “The little girl was buried in her mother’s arms.” I think it was at that moment that I resolved to help this family if I could.
Lucas said nothing, only raised his eyebrows. These people were probably just characters in a story to him. I could almost hear the wheels turning as he sought a rational explanation for these correlations between the past and the present. While he thought, I asked another question. “The mother and little girl were found in an upstairs bedroom?” Cam nodded, so I continued. “Okay, this was also where Joel encountered the little girl. That accounts for two bodies in the house. Who was the third?”
“John Parke, the homeowner, was also killed that night. He was the most viciously attacked. His skull was broken into pieces by the force of the blows. He was found in his bed and was probably killed as he slept. The murderer put a pillow over his face as well.”
“What happened to the sister - the one who helped keep house?” Lucas asked yawning. “How did she escape?” He rubbed his face and then started jotting notes again.
“Sister Sarah was tending to the sick child of a relative and was not at home that night. Oddly, John and Mary’s six and nine year old sons were in the house, but the murderer passed over them. A field hand named Jesse Force was not so lucky. He slept in one of the rooms and had also been attacked, but he survived. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for him, he didn’t remember anything.”
“So, we have four people murdered and two people executed.” I counted on my fingers as I summarized what we knew. “We have encountered four of these to whom we can provide a tentative identity: Peter Parke and Joe Carter were the executed men, John Castner was the man in the sinkhole and his daughter, Maria Matilda was seen in the house.” Lucas scribbled away and held a finger up to ask for a moment to catch up with his notes. He gave a nod my way when he was ready and I continued, “We have two murder victims yet to be positively identified in an encounter, Mary the mother and John Parke the homeowner. There is another unnamed entity in the field, who may correspond with one of these victims.”
“All right,” said Cam as he signaled for the bill. After we each threw down some cash, he continued. “Next steps. Fia and I need to go back into the house and rummage around to find out who remains there. It’s possible some of the murder victims have moved on and we won’t have a full house to contend with.” He stretched and
yawned again before saying, “But this won’t happen until tomorrow night. I am completely wiped out.” I had been a little worried that the two men would decide to white knuckle it, ignore our sleep deprivation and try the house that night. I was delighted when Cam admitted his exhaustion and scheduled us for the next night.
Lucas rubbed his face and hunched forward, balancing his elbows on the table. “I’ll let the film crew know to get ready. You’ll each receive a contract tomorrow night that will stipulate that we do nothing that could in any way identify you. I’ll also have the crew sign confidentiality agreements to keep your identities secret.”
Cam and I agreed that this sounded good and we all stood up from the table, stretching and stifling more yawns. To make the drive home less daunting, I decided to hit the ladies room and splash some cold water on my face to wake up. I told Cam and Lucas that I would meet them outside. By the time I made it to the parking lot, Lucas had already gone back to the hospital, leaving his good night wishes for me with Cam.
CHAPTER 10
Another day, another dollar. I was starting to think that this was probably my real going rate, despite working two jobs. By the time we ate the previous night, I was feeling pretty hypoglycemic and I really needed the food. In the harsh light of day, I was berating myself for incurring the additional expense. Nothing I did involving delivering newspapers was going to earn me any additional remuneration, so I tried being extra friendly to my restaurant customers. That did not seem to produce bigger tips, so I was maybe not so good at being insincere. By the time I went to walk and feed Heckle and Jeckle, I saw that Joel had made it home from the hospital and stopped in to see how he was doing.
“I’m a free man!” Joel declared. He was grinning ear to ear and the trauma of the previous day was already behind him. The thought flashed through my mind that real tough guys are resilient.
“Good for you! I’m glad they let you out,” I said as I leashed the dogs. “Enjoy your freedom and rest a little more while I walk these guys for you.” I brooked no argument and insisted that this was part of my rent agreement.
When I returned from being dragged around the block, Joel was sitting on his front steps eating a bowl of ice cream. He ran back inside and came back with another bowl for me, complete with a stack of napkins. “I’m not even sure why I bother giving you a spoon,” he teased as we settled down on the steps. The day was unseasonably warm and after being exercised by the dogs under the hot afternoon sun, the strawberry ice cream tasted deliciously creamy and was pleasantly cold in my mouth. I won’t say that I set a land speed record finishing off the ice cream, but Joel was still eating as I contemplated licking the bowl. Maybe he read my mind, since his next words were, “Let me finish my ice cream and then each dog can have something to lick out.” Pretty much caught in the act, I repressed my natural asocial behavior and waited for him to finish. As he slowly ate the ice cream, Joel looked contemplative, staring silently into the distance. He looked like he was deciding whether to say something.
Breaking the silence, Joel finally said, “I can’t stop thinking about the little girl.” A shadow passed over his face that even the bright sunshine could not dispel. Maybe he wasn’t as over it as I had thought.
My body stiffened and I looked at Joel from the corner of my eyes. “Did you make some kind of connection with her?” I asked. That would not be good for Joel. He needed his home to be a safe place if he was going to recover.
“No… She just reminded me a lot of my kid.” He looked at his hands and began rotating the empty ice cream bowl. “The little girl had the same colored hair as my Ginny.”
“You have a daughter? I had no idea.” I relaxed again and looked at him fully. The bowl stopped spinning and his shoulders slumped. He stared at the bowl and he sighed softly before answering.
“I had a daughter. She died when she was about the same age as that little girl.”
This at least explained why the little girl was drawn to him. “I’m so sorry, Joel. What happened?”
“It was a long time ago. We were in a car accident. A drunk driver T boned us running a stop sign. My wife blamed me even though she said she didn’t. Losing our daughter was pretty much the end of our marriage.”
I touched his arm and said, “None of it was your fault. You can’t control everything that happens in this world. But losing your family really sucks. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“I wish it had been Ginny I saw,” Joel said softly. After a few minutes of silence, he looked into my eyes and said, “You’re really lucky, you know.”
“How’s that?”
“You know they’re there. I never believed. All this time, I thought Ginny was gone, that she doesn’t exist anymore.” He gave me a sad smile and then started fiddling with the bowl again. I sat quietly and considered what he said. It was definitely a different perspective for me. I never felt lucky that the dead sought me. I always thought of it as more of a curse. Eventually, Joel grabbed my bowl and went back inside to get us some more ice cream. We ate companionably for a while, talking about this and that, just letting things settle.
Clearing his throat, Joel asked in a strong voice, “What will you guys do next?”
“We’re going back to the house tonight,” I answered him. “Cam and I got a good feel for what’s going on outside. Now, we need a better understanding of what we’re dealing with inside.” Thinking the storm had passed and that Joel was back to being a tough guy, I described the history of the house and lands and the murders committed there.
Joel’s eyes opened wide with alarm and he sputtered, “Jesus… we’re putting a family in this house?” Shaking his head and looking down, he clutched his bowl tightly and muttered, “Oh, this ain’t good at all…”
I instantly regretted being so honest with my history of the place. This agitation couldn’t be good for his heart. Ducking down to catch his eye, I said, “Hey, we’re going to try to make it better. We can’t put a family in a house like this, but if we can clean it up…”
He looked up and gulped a breath. Nodding at me, he said, “I hope you can clean it up. That family has nowhere else to go right now.” His brow knit and he continued, “You just be careful. Whatever it is in there, it wasn’t the little girl that came after me. Whatever it is took down a big guy like me and you’re just a little bit of a thing.”
“They’ll miss me if they start throwing things. I’m too short to make a good target,” I said grinning impishly. “It’ll be like putting a little person at bat – no strike zone,” I added, deliberately bringing up Joel’s favorite baseball story. Grateful for the diversion, Joel told me again about Eddie Gaedel, a little person immortalized in the record books after batting for the St. Louis Browns in 1951. Laughing, he described how Eddie was strategically signed as a pinch-hitter just days before a double-header against the Detroit Tigers and how he has gone down in history for having one game, one plate appearance, one walk, and a perfect on-base percentage of 1.000.
Joel was still smiling as we offered the bowls to the dogs and I congratulated myself for bringing him out of his worries. The dogs licked and slurped while Joel told me funny dog stories. I wouldn’t admit it to Joel, but I was also worried about our next visit to the house.
# # #
The stone house looked no different in the setting sun, but I was fairly vibrating with the tension. Maybe ignorance was bliss. It was easier walking into that structure when I knew nothing about the deaths.
As promised, Lucas brought the contracts. As expected, they were long, unwieldy things, stuffed with legalese. I skimmed through the text to understand all the conditions imposed. The gist of it was that we were being signed on as contractors, our identities would not be divulged and then my eyes bulged when I came to the section on compensation. The pay being offered stunned me. I looked up at Lucas, my jaw slack, and just said, “Are you sure? I thought you said we weren’t getting much.”
He looked uncomfortably at Cam for a moment an
d then said, “Well, last night in the parking lot, Cam said we should give you his share.” Cam glared at Lucas and gave small, rapid shakes of his head. “Sorry, she asked and I don’t want to start off our partnership with dishonesty,” Lucas told him.
“Cam, thank you!” I threw my arms around him and gave him a big hug. I supposed I could have been proud and demanded that we each get only our own share, but Cam had a decent job and this pay would allow me to drop the newspaper route and still have some to spare. I was ecstatic and for a brief moment, I didn’t feel anxious about going back into the house. I signed the contract and its duplicate, putting one in my car and handing the other to Lucas.
The anxiety returned when we stepped over the threshold and entered the house. Lucas began filming and narrating, while other crew members held microphone booms, lights and other cameras that tracked our progress. Our ease at being filmed was a measure of how the trust had grown. Our unease at fully entering the room was a measure of how the house, or perhaps knowledge of the house, was influencing our mood. Cam glanced furtively around and I joined him, looking for any signs that we were not alone. Zackie extended her neck, stretching her nose into the room and sampling the slight currents that were wafting through. In a sudden move, having caught some scent, she whipped back around towards the entrance and began examining the holes in the sheetrock. Standing on her hind legs to reach the damage higher on the wall, she looked like a hunting dog that had just treed her quarry. As she dropped to all four feet again, she nosed the tools lying near the ruined wall, inhaling and huffing as if trying to reach some conclusion about cause and effect. The film crew was eating this up, taking footage from different angles to make the most of the moment.
