Evidence of Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  He returned the transcripts to the box, then the box to its place on the top shelf. On the way out, he stopped at Mrs. Hunter’s desk at the entrance to the vault.

  “I wanted to thank you for letting me look through the transcripts,” he said politely.

  “Oh, no trouble,” Mrs. Hunter said. She drew a pair of glasses from her eyes and let them dangle from a black cord around her neck. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Not exactly,” Kinley told her, “but I made a start.”

  Mrs. Hunter smiled. “You know, I didn’t know who you were at first.”

  Kinley looked at her quizzically. “Who I was?”

  Mrs. Hunter shook her head shyly. “I mean, if you were the Jackson Kinley they write about in the paper sometimes.”

  Kinley nodded.

  “Then Mr. Warfield told me, and I remembered seeing your picture from time to time,” Mrs. Hunter added. “He said you came down for Ray Tindall’s funeral.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wonderful person, Ray was.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful person,” Mrs. Hunter repeated idly.

  “Did you know him very well?”

  “Not really. He kept to himself.”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “I think he was sort of close with Mr. Wade, though.”

  “Mr. Wade?”

  “He’s the Chief Investigator for the District Attorney’s Office,” Mrs. Hunter said. “Ben Wade.”

  Kinley recognized the name immediately. “Ben Wade,” he said. “Is he the same Ben Wade who worked for Sheriff Maddox back in 1954?”

  “Yeah, he was with the Sheriff’s Office back then,” Mrs. Hunter said.

  “And he’s still around the courthouse?”

  “Right upstairs,” Mrs. Hunter said.

  Kinley smiled quietly. It was one of the pleasures of working the rural outback, he thought, the fact that everything was so inextricably connected.

  SIXTEEN

  Ben Wade was now over sixty years old, but the large, robust body Kinley remembered from the newspaper photographs he’d found in Ray’s file on the case was still very much in evidence. He sat behind a small wooden desk in a cramped office just down the hall from William Warfield’s far more spacious one, and the blank walls and worn carpet suggested that he had little use, and no money, for the more luxurious taste of the District Attorney.

  “You’re Ben Wade, I believe?” Kinley said as he lingered at the open office door.

  Wade’s head lifted, and Kinley saw the web of red veins that lined his nose, and the moist, heavy-lidded eyes that peered gently in his direction, giving the unmistakable suggestion that a bottle of Old Grand-Dad could probably be found in his desk drawer.

  “I’m Ben Wade,” the man said. He leaned back slightly and drew in a long slow breath. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and Kinley could see a faint, purplish tattoo just above the right elbow, a sprig of vine coiled around a motto of some kind, but which he could not make out from his place beside the door.

  “What can I do for you?” Wade asked.

  “My name is Jack Kinley,” Kinley began. “I was a friend of Ray Tindall’s.”

  Wade nodded. “Good man, Ray. I liked working with him. I thought he might try to play the big shot, having been Sheriff before and all, but he didn’t.” He nodded toward a second wooden desk which was in the opposite corner of the room. “That’s where he worked, in case you’re interested.”

  Kinley’s eyes swept over to the desk. It was almost a duplicate of Wade’s, and just as marked by age and indifferent use, honed down to its function, the way Ray had often seemed honed down.

  “Ray sort of kept to himself,” Wade said, “but we got along pretty well.”

  Kinley returned his attention to Wade. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” he asked.

  “Questions?” Wade said, surprised. “About what?”

  “Just about Ray,” Kinley answered. “What he was doing the last few weeks of his life.”

  “Sure, I got some time,” he said. “But I didn’t follow what Ray was doing all that close.”

  Kinley walked further into the room and sat down at the small metal chair in front of Wade’s desk. “I’ve been reading the transcript of the Overton trial,” he said. “You remember it, back in 1954?”

  Wade nodded, his face very still. “Yeah, I remember it,” he said. “We don’t have so many murder trials here in Sequoyah that you don’t remember them.”

  “You must have been a young man when all that was going on,” Kinley said.

  “I’d just turned thirty,” Wade said, “but I’d been around for a while by then.” His eyes narrowed somewhat. “How come you’re looking into that old case?”

  “Because Ray was.”

  Wade looked at Kinley pointedly. “You know, before you get too deep in this thing, there’s something you ought to know about Ray. And this is not for general circulation, of course, but it might explain a few things about why Ray was so interested in this …”

  “He was having an affair with Dora Overton,” Kinley blurted. “Yes, I know.”

  Wade’s mouth tightened. “You got it.” He smiled, a sage in his small arena of human connection. “Like the song says, ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.’”

  “That’s what Ray was doing?”

  “Well, Dora had a sort of a reputation here in town,” Wade said. “You know what I mean?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Sort of living wild, you might say.”

  “She didn’t strike me as the party type.”

  “Not exactly wild like that,” Wade said. “More in her head. Wild ideas.”

  “Like her father’s innocence?”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  Kinley reached for his notebook. “You wouldn’t mind if I took some notes, would you?”

  Wade waved his hand casually. “Hell, no. Whatever you want.”

  “I just have a few questions about the investigation,” Kinley said as he brought his pen to the notebook.

  “Shoot.”

  “How did you first hear about the murder?”

  “I got a radio call,” Wade said. “From the dispatcher. We just had two radio cars in those days. Me and Hendricks, we handled most everything.”

  “Hendricks?”

  “Riley Hendricks,” Wade said. “He works over at South Side High School, in case you want to talk to him.”

  Kinley wrote the name down quickly, then continued with the interview, moving effortlessly into the style that served him best, cool, matter-of-fact, a face that betrayed nothing but academic curiosity.

  “And this radio dispatch,” he asked. “What did it say?”

  “That a girl was missing,” Wade answered. “Said her name, you know, Ellie Dinker, said she was wearing a green dress and that her mother had last seen her going up the mountain toward Carl Slater’s house.”

  “Carl Slater? Is that Helen Slater’s father?”

  “That’s right,” Wade said. “Ellie and Helen were high school friends, I guess. Anyway, she never made it to Helen’s.”

  “Did you ever talk to Helen?”

  “I talked to everybody up there, Carl and Helen, and Dottie, that’s Helen’s sister, and to Carl’s wife, Cynthia.”

  “Are they all still around town?”

  “Cynthia died about three years ago,” Wade said. “Carl’s in the state home up on Williams Road. Helen and Dottie are still around. Dottie’s got a little sock store out in the factory district. Slater Socks, that’s what it’s called.”

  “And Helen?”

  “She married a Foley,” Wade said, “but when Carl got put in the state home, they moved into the old homestead.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Up on Foster Road, where it always was,” Wade said. “Same place Ellie Dinker was headed up to that morning Overton snatched her.”

  Again, Kinley car
efully recorded the information for future use, ignoring Wade’s clear belief that nothing had gone awry as far as the guilt of Charles Overton was concerned.

  “And from your investigation,” he said, “you learned that Ellie Dinker had never made it up to the Slater house?”

  “Never made it, that’s right.”

  “How far would that have been? From Ellie’s house to Helen’s, I mean?”

  “Oh, five miles or so, if you took the road.”

  “Was there another way?”

  “Through the woods,” Wade said, “straight up the side of the mountain. It would be hard slogging in the summertime, but it could be done.”

  Kinley jotted it down in his notebook.

  “Of course, she’d probably have taken the road most of the way up,” Wade said, “then, once she topped the mountain, she could have cut a hard left and gone through the woods to the Slater place.”

  “Where is the Slater place, exactly?”

  “Foster Road, like I said,” Wade said. “Right at the end of it.” He pointed to the window. “Hell, you can just about see it from the bottom of the mountain. It sits right on the edge up there.”

  Kinley thought a moment, his mind doing its service while he flipped back through the notes he’d taken of the trial testimony. “That’s sort of strange,” he said when he found the page he was looking for.

  “What is?”

  “Well, I was just looking at my notes on Mrs. Dinker’s testimony,” Kinley said, his eyes studying the open notebook. “And when Warfield asked her when she saw Ellie last, Mrs. Dinker said that she’d seen Ellie head out through the woods behind her house.” He looked at Wade. “If Ellie were going to Helen Slater’s, why wouldn’t she have taken the road?”

  Wade said nothing.

  “Why would she have headed out into the woods behind her house?” Kinley repeated. “Instead of going in the other direction to the mountain road?”

  Wade glanced quickly at the notebook, then back up toward Kinley. “Martha Dinker said that?” he asked. “That she saw Ellie going off in the woods behind her house?”

  “That’s what she testified to, yes.”

  Wade leaned back slowly in his seat. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Because if she’d gone right up through the woods behind her house, she wouldn’t have come nowhere around Carl Slater’s place.”

  “They’re not in the same general direction,” Kinley said. “Not even close.”

  Wade shook his head. “No, they’re not.” He thought a moment. “Of course, old lady Dinker might have gotten it wrong.” He smiled. “She’s got a few loose screws too, you know?”

  “You mean the dressing in black, haunting the town, all of that?”

  “Partly,” Wade said. “But she’s also come back and forth to the courthouse a few times.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Wade shook his head. “Sometimes she used to read the trial record, like you’re doing. Then, after that, she’d just come and stand on the steps and stare out over the town.”

  In his mind, Kinley suddenly saw her, a black figure melodramatically set against the great stone edifice of the courthouse, silent, motionless, her face draped in the black netting that perpetually covered it, her hands tearing at a white, lacy handkerchief, unravelling it one slender thread at a time.

  “They put her away about three years ago, you know,” Wade said. “She died in the state nuthouse.”

  “Why did they put her away?”

  “Well, she’d started raving about things,” Wade said, “roaming around too. Especially after her house burned down. At night, sometimes. Just roaming around. People around town would come home and find her standing out in their yard.” He shook his head at the preposterousness of it. “Hell, they even found her in the woods one time. An old woman, naked. Just roaming the woods out by the canyon.” He shook his head. “Poor old thing. Judge Bryan had her committed after that.”

  “Judge Bryan?”

  Wade nodded.

  “Is that the same Judge Bryan who presided at Overton’s trial?”

  Wade laughed. “The very same. We don’t have many judges in Sequoyah County,” he said. “We can’t shell out that kind of public money the way you rich folks can up North.”

  Kinley once again ignored the kind of jab he’d heard often enough in the past. Instead he noted the facts Wade had given him in his notebook, then, as he always did, drew his questions back to their original path.

  “You said you talked to all the Slaters, and they hadn’t seen Ellie. Is that right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Well, Sheriff Maddox had told me to go up to the Slaters,” Wade said, “and I was through up there at around midnight, I guess, and after that I headed down the mountain road, just looking around, thinking the girl might be headed home. I didn’t see her, of course, and so I checked back in at Headquarters.”

  “Your shift was over?”

  “No, not quite, but I wanted to tell the Sheriff what I’d found out,” Wade said. “It’s what they call ‘briefing’ now, but back then we didn’t have a word for it. We just came back and reported various things.”

  “Did anything else happen during your shift?”

  “No,” Wade said. “Nothing happened after that until we started to comb around the woods and I found Ellie Dinker’s dress hanging in the tree.”

  “Was anybody with you?”

  “No, and I was glad of it,” Wade said. “Hell, if Riley’d been with me, he’d a turned white as a ghost. Swear to God, that boy would have run over to the nearest shrub and let go of his breakfast.” He chuckled. “Riley just wasn’t made of the right stuff for law enforcement, you know. He got out of it not long after the trial, and he was right to do it.”

  Kinley nodded. “What happened after you found the dress?”

  “I called in to the Sheriff,” Wade said, “and he came right out to where we’d found it.”

  “Where was the dress, exactly?”

  “Sort of hanging on a limb.”

  “I know, I’ve seen the pictures,” Kinley said.

  “They’re pretty good, those pictures,” Wade said. “I took them myself. First time I’d ever used one of those instant cameras. I was a little surprised at how good the pictures came out.”

  “Yes,” Kinley said quickly. “But I was asking about where the dress was in relationship to the mountain road?”

  “About a half-mile off of it,” Wade said. “There’s a mile marker there. I think the number is twenty-seven, and where I found that dress, that’s pretty much a beeline right up the mountain for about half a mile from there.”

  Kinley wrote down the directions, then looked back up at Wade. “What happened after that?”

  “I gathered up the dress, and then me and the Sheriff searched the area, but we didn’t find anything.”

  “Was there any indication of where the murder had taken place?” Kinley asked.

  “The only thing we knew for sure was that it sure hadn’t happened where we found the dress,” Wade said.

  “There was no blood in that area?”

  “No blood, no broken plants or dirt and leaves messed with at alt around that place,” Wade said. “He’d carried her there from somewhere else.”

  “He?”

  “Charlie Overton.”

  Kinley looked at him intently. “Did you ever have any reason to doubt that you had the right man?”

  Wade shook his head.

  “Ray did,” Kinley said flatly.

  Wade sat back slightly and folded his great arms over his chest. “Did Ray hear him confess?” he asked.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you testify to that?”

  “Because Warfield didn’t ask me to,” Wade said.

  “Why not?”

  “He read it over, and said it rambled too much,” Wade said. “He claimed it was incoher
ent, that the jury would think Overton was a little nutty, and if they got to feeling sorry for him, they might let him off on that. He didn’t want to raise that issue.”

  “But it was a confession?”

  “It sure was,” Wade said. “He made it in that little holding cell right there in Sheriff Maddox’s office.”

  “Did you take it down?”

  “Of course I did,” Wade said, “not that it mattered. They never used it.” Something struck him suddenly. “As a matter of fact, the only person who ever asked me for it after the trial was Ray.” He glanced over to the empty desk. “He asked me where I’d put it, and I hunted around in my old files and came up with it.”

  “Do you know what he did with it?”

  “Yeah,” Wade said. “He put it in that top drawer. It might still be there, if you’d want to see it.”

  “Yes, I would,” Kinley told him.

  Wade pulled himself up and lumbered across the room to Ray’s desk. “He put it right in here,” he said as he opened the unlocked drawer. “Well, you’re in luck,” he added, as he drew the single sheet of paper from the drawer and handed it to Kinley.

  Kinley looked at it unbelievingly. “Just one page?”

  Wade shrugged. “He didn’t have that much to say.”

  “Would you mind if I took it with me?” Kinley asked. “I’d like to give it a close reading.”

  “Like Ray,” Wade said. “I saw him reading it several times.”

  Kinley folded the paper and inserted it in his jacket pocket. “Did he ever tell you anything he might have found out about the case?”

  Wade shook his head silently, then returned to his place behind the desk. “No, he never said anything about it,” he said, “but I could tell that it was getting to him. Or that something was.” He smiled. “I figured it was Dora. I figured she was putting him through the paces, something like that.”