Evidence of Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  “Talbott made this speech at the end of the trial,” Townsend said. “It was about as good as Talbott could do, I guess. He was trying to save Overton’s neck, and so he brought out the fact that he’d been in the war, wounded in the war, that sort of thing.”

  Kinley nodded.

  “Well, after the trial, Old Man Jessup, the owner of the paper, told me to do a profile on Overton,” Townsend went on. “Just look into his life, check out a few things, so we could run a nice full story on him after the execution.”

  Townsend stopped suddenly, and his face grew oddly full of wonder, as if the mystery of life did not reside in the extravagances of birth or death or the long line of accidents that stretched between them, but in the weird instances of sudden, miraculous discovery.

  “Well, I was just a hireling, so I did whatever Old Man Jessup said,” Townsend continued after a moment. “I did the routine things, looked into the public record to see what he owned, what he didn’t, whether he had any kind of criminal record before the murder.” He stopped and took a deep breath, as if the very telling of his story had begun to exhaust him. “And just as a way of covering all the bases,” he continued finally, “I wrote the Army for a copy of Overton’s war record.”

  Kinley could feel it coming, sense it like a primitive man might have smelled the air and sensed the approaching storm.

  “Charlie Overton had been in the war, just like Talbott said,” the old man went on, “and he’d been wounded, too. It had happened right at the end of the war, in some little tussle near the Rhine. But what Talbott left out was that Overton had been wounded in the groin, the genitals, that he’d lost any capacity whatsoever to handle, or even want to handle, a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  Kinley’s mind shot back to Sarah Overton, big with child in 1954, a full nine years after the war, big with a daughter she named Dora.

  Townsend shook his head slowly. “What it added up to was that there was no way Overton could have had any kind of relationship with Ellie Dinker, and certainly not one like Luther Snow described, one that would get him into some kind of ‘woman trouble’ with her.”

  Kinley felt his hands tighten, but retreated into his profession, focusing on the story, pushing Dora from his mind like a small girl from a speeding train.

  “Did you tell Warfield this?” he asked.

  Townsend nodded. “I told the person I thought would do the most with the information.”

  “Horace Talbott,” Kinley said.

  Townsend nodded. “And he did nothing with it,” he said grimly. “As far as I can tell, he buried it just as deep as somebody buried Ellie Dinker.”

  Kinley looked at him intently. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you try to find out?”

  “No,” Townsend said, as if admitting that with this failure he had reached a lost region of himself. “And, within a few weeks, Overton was dead.” He looked away for a moment, his eyes settling on the drooping petals of a dying flower before returning to Kinley. “I tried to do him one last service, though,” he said. “I kept everything I came up with on the case.” He smiled softly. “I was waiting, you see,” he added. “And I knew that you would come.”

  Kinley thought of Ray, the locked drawer in his small desk at the courthouse. “Was I the first one to come here?” he asked.

  Townsend shook his head. “No,” he said. “Ray Tindall did.”

  “Did you tell him everything you told me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you gave him all the information you had?”

  “I gave him everything,” Townsend said. He shook his head contemptuously. “But he didn’t do anything with it, either.” He glared at Kinley contemptuously. “I’d always thought better of Ray, but the way he acted, I figured he was just another one of that courthouse crowd.” He shook his head disgustedly. “At first I thought he was really trying to get to the bottom of this Overton thing, but later, I knew that was wrong.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was working for the big boys,” Townsend said authoritatively. “Whatever they did back then, Ray was trying to cover it up.”

  Kinley looked at him, astonished. “How do you know that?”

  “Because he brought it all back,” Townsend said, “all the papers I’d given him. All the stuff I’m giving you. He brought it all back, every single bit.”

  “When did he do that?”

  Townsend smiled approvingly, as if some measure of justice had been done. “The day the bastard died,” he said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Kinley did not wait to return to Ray’s house on Beaumont Street before going through the large yellow envelope Townsend had pressed into his hand before he left.

  Instead, he drove directly to the town park, pulled over to the curb and spread the papers out on the front seat. It was not a great deal of material, and most of it, pictures and newspaper clippings, Ray had already gathered in his own file on the case. Still, the slender stack of documents which Townsend had given to Ray was critical. For there, nestled among the yellowing newspaper articles Townsend had written for the Sequoyah Standard, was also the official report he’d received from the United States Army regarding the final disposition of Corporal Charles Herman Overton, all the accumulated material regarding his medical discharge in 1945.

  It began with an official statement dealing with the circumstances under which Overton had been wounded. As a report, it was exactly what Kinley had become accustomed to, succinct and emotionless, even when it detailed circumstances of the deepest imaginable feeling:

  On March 12, 1945, while on routine patrol near the west bank of the Rhine, Corporal Overton’s unit approached a group of civilians. The men gathered along a rural byway. Acting according to established military procedure, Captain Carlos P. Santiago began to carry out his assignment of gathering all relevant intelligence regarding previous, ongoing or future enemy action in the area.

  During the course of that operation, the report continued:

  The unit was fired upon from the surrounding woods. In the ensuing engagement, the unit sustained heavy casualties. Corporal Overton was severely wounded in the legs and groin, and as a result of those wounds, Corporal Overton was later hospitalized for three months in a military hospital in Belgium.

  Townsend had stapled a second report to the first, this one written by Dr. Paul J. Rosenberg, a United States Army Surgeon, stationed in London. In the usual clinical language, Dr. Rosenberg briefly detailed the procedure by which Charles Overton’s testicles had been removed due to the “irremediable trauma suffered by the designated organs.”

  Under the heading “Prognosis,” Dr. Rosenberg had written candidly that “following surgery, patient should recover completely within a period of two months, though loss of sexual function is complete and irreversible.”

  Kinley folded the report and let his eyes sweep out over the park, imagining Overton fully. Broken, emasculated, he had offered “no resistance,” just as Maddox had testified. It was easy for Kinley to envision it now, a man already horribly wounded, suffering through the inexplicable pregnancy of his young wife, and now, at the end of a long, torturous road, accused of murdering a young girl. Under such conditions, burdened by such past experiences, he had finally embraced a fatalism which resisted nothing because it had already come to accept the unacceptable again and again. No wonder he had looked disoriented as he’d shuffled across the cement floor to the electric chair; no wonder, at such a moment, he’d had nothing whatever to say.

  Kinley shifted his eyes to the far side of the park. It was still early, but a few old men could be seen scattered among the benches of an area the town had long ago designated as “Whittler’s Corner.” Beyond them, Sequoyah’s single main street had begun to come to life as well, its small clothing stores now dotted with browsing customers, its old routine entirely in place.

  For a time, Kinley sat in perfect stillness and watched the morning unfold before him,
its iron routine unchanged from his youth. Perhaps, he thought, this changelessness had been its principal allure, the life raft of daily predictability which even Ray had finally clung to, and which he’d wished, above all else, to keep out of harm’s way.

  He was working for the big boys. Whatever they did back then, he was covering it up.

  Kinley glanced down the main street to where he could see the red-striped awning of Jefferson’s Drug Store as it fluttered softly in the distance. Inside, he was seated at the small marble table once again, his eyes first on Ray, then on Mrs. Dinker, then back to Ray, his ears listening keenly to his old friend’s words: It’s better to know, don’t you think? No matter what the cost.

  Kinley tried to imagine what could have been powerful enough to change Ray’s answer to so deep-seated a question. For a few minutes, he concentrated on the town, his eyes fixed on its main street, as he worked desperately to see Sequoyah as he thought Ray must have come to see it. Perhaps, in Ray’s final vision, it had not been a town at all, Kinley thought, but a frail organism, infinitely vulnerable, living on faith alone, a gossamer patchwork of church spires and flagpoles, Ray’s own bizarre version of Never-Never Land, a myth he’d decided to protect at all costs.

  In an instant, Kinley felt his vision shift radically, this time focusing on the mountain, the granite ledge upon which Overton’s house still sat perched above the town, its unpainted wooden frame glaring down at Sequoyah, a slumberless gray eye.

  “Dora,” Kinley thought. “Maybe it was Dora.” As a hypothesis, it seemed reasonable enough. Perhaps Ray had returned Townsend’s papers because he knew that to go any further in his investigation would mean that he would have to tell Dora that Charles Overton was not her father.

  But if Charles Overton were not Dora’s father, Kinley wondered, his mind reasserting its dominion, its purely technical inquiry rising to close him off from all other forms of speculation, who was?

  “Complete and irreversible,” Kinley said, his eyes still on the solid immobility of Horace Talbott’s face.

  “You knew about Overton’s condition,” Kinley added, when Talbott failed to respond.

  Talbott continued to stare at the Army report, his fingers moving up and down one side of the paper, as if trying to make it disappear.

  “You knew it before Overton was executed,” Kinley said bluntly, the accusatory tone now unmistakable. “Harry Townsend told you all about it.”

  Talbott’s eyes lifted slowly toward him. “Yes, he did,” he said, “but I knew it before he told me.”

  Kinley was surprised, not only by Talbott’s quick admission, but by the fact that he’d amplified it, deepened his complicity in Overton’s death.

  “During the trial?” Kinley asked, unbelievingly. “You knew during the trial?”

  “Even before the trial,” Talbott said bluntly, his head now fully erect, as if the truth, even so lately disclosed, had served to liberate him.

  “How did you know?” Kinley said; then, before waiting for Talbott’s reply, answered the question himself. “Mrs. Overton. She worked for you.”

  “Because of my wife,” Talbott explained. “She was very ill for many years.”

  Kinley said nothing, instead relying on the old device of letting the dam break of its own pent-up waters.

  “Sarah was only twenty-nine years old when she came to work for me,” Talbott said. “And she was quite beautiful at that time.” He smiled appreciatively. “Like Dora is now,” he added, “very attractive, as you know.”

  Kinley’s mind flashed the pictures of Mrs. Overton that had been published in the Sequoyah Standard. She had been pregnant by then, a large woman wrapped in thick layers of winter clothes, her face strained with worry and fatigue, her beauty lost behind her circumstances.

  “That was in the fall of 1950,” Talbott went on. “My wife had been sick for many years by then. Multiple sclerosis. She was deteriorating very rapidly. She couldn’t walk or feed herself.” He shrugged. “For as long as I could manage it, I took care of her by myself,” he continued. “She had been very independent at one time, and her disease embarrassed her. Of course, after a while, I had to get help. That’s when I hired Sarah.”

  “That was in the fall of 1950, you said?”

  “Yes,” Talbott answered. “And as I said, she was twenty-nine.” He smiled. “She had reached that fullness, you know, that a woman reaches at a certain age. She wasn’t so young you felt like her father, and she wasn’t so old you felt like she was your sister. She was just the right age to be …” He stopped, as if unable to go on, not because the story was painful to him, but because it was sweet and beautiful, and he did not want to damage it by telling it too quickly. “Anyway, with my wife, it had been so long.” He stopped again. “And Sarah, she was …”

  In the moment of silence which fell between them, Kinley studied Talbott’s face, noting the dark, slightly oval eyes, the strong set of his jaw, the look of force and authority he had bequeathed, along with the oval eyes, to Dora.

  “You have to understand about Sarah,” Talbott continued finally. “She was not some poor, country bumpkin I took advantage of.” He shook his head. “She knew exactly who she was, and what she wanted.”

  Again Kinley said nothing, but merely waited, listening, for Talbott’s voice to begin again.

  “She was married to a man she hardly knew,” Talbott said. “They’d been married only a few weeks before the war. She’d only been sixteen, a girl. When he came back, she was in her twenties, and Overton was even more of a stranger than he’d been when she married him.” He paused a moment, looking for the best way to say it. “And of course, there was the other problem.” He lifted the paper he still held gently in his hand. “As you know,” he said as he let it slide from his fingers to the desk.

  “What happened when she became pregnant?” Kinley asked.

  “We thought of an abortion,” Talbott said. “But it wasn’t easy in those days. It was a very serious step.” He shrugged. “Still, if Sarah had really wanted it, it could have been arranged. I knew people. I could have gotten it done.”

  “But she refused?”

  “We both refused,” Talbott said. “Sarah knew that I would do my best for the child, whatever the circumstances.” He looked at Kinley helplessly. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I actually offered to marry Sarah. More than that. I wanted to marry her. But Sarah didn’t want that.”

  “Why not?”

  Talbott looked at him pointedly. “Well, you know Dora, don’t you? I mean, how determined she can be.”

  Kinley nodded, remembering the last few days. “Yes.”

  “Sarah didn’t want to marry,” Talbott went on. “She wanted to divorce Overton, and I think she would have eventually.” He took in a long, weary breath. “But she felt sorry for him. Time went by, but she still couldn’t decide what to do.”

  “Then Overton was arrested,” Kinley said.

  Talbott gave Kinley a stern look. “She didn’t think of that as a solution, if that’s your theory,” he said flatly.

  “Did you?” Kinley asked.

  Talbott did not seem surprised by the bluntness of the question. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “But I don’t expect you to believe that either.”

  “With all the information you had about his war wound, why did you keep it out of the trial?” Kinley asked, this time less as an accusation than a point of information.

  Talbott’s answer was unequivocal. “Well, for one thing, because Overton never told me about it, and I could hardly tell him how I knew. That would have made it clear just how close Sarah and I had become.”

  “What about Sarah? Didn’t she want you to use that kind of information?”

  “Yes, she did. But not without her husband’s approval.”

  “And he wouldn’t give it?”

  “No,” Talbott said. “His problem was humiliating enough, but he also had a pregnant wife.” He looked at Kinley pointedly. “And a child was on the wa
y. A child who needed a father, even if it were a dead one. At least, that’s the way I think Charlie thought about it.”

  “So Overton never mentioned his war wound to you at all?”

  “Never,” Talbott answered, “And I gave him a few opportunities. I mentioned rape, the fact that if they found Dinker’s body, it might show she’d been raped. I thought he might say, ‘If it does, then I’m free,’ but he never did.” He plucked a pencil from his desk and began to run it smoothly back and forth between his fingers. “You can’t make a case out of thin air.” The pencil returned to the desk. “I did my best with what I had.”

  Kinley said nothing, letting his silence cast doubt on Talbott’s defense.

  “But even if he had told me about the war, I don’t think it would have mattered,” Talbott said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was more or less irrelevant,” Talbott said.

  “Irrelevant to what?”

  “The murder of Ellie Dinker,” Talbott said authoritatively. “Because the fact is, Charlie Overton murdered Ellie Dinker. I never really doubted it. The evidence was overwhelming. Overton was positively identified as being with her on the mountain not long before she died. Then they found the girl’s shoes in the back of his truck. Not to mention the tire iron they found there, too. There was blood all over it, of course, and Dr. Stark testified that the blood was the same type as Ellie’s. Everything pointed to Overton, and nothing pointed away from him.”

  “Except the motive,” Kinley reminded him.

  “You mean what Luther Snow said?”

  Kinley nodded.

  “That’s the one question I’ve always had,” Talbott said. “I never really doubted that Charlie did it. He was half a man, with a beautiful young wife who was suddenly pregnant by someone else.” He looked at Kinley fiercely. “Can you imagine the rage?” He tapped a single index finger on the top of his desk. “That was the motive, you know. The rage he must have been feeling. Then, all of sudden, Ellie Dinker comes prissing up to him, maybe teasing him a little, because, as you’ve probably found out, she was that type of girl. Anyway, he just finally broke. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again.” His eyes took on a strange darkness, as if his face had suddenly retreated into the shadows. “Some men hate women, you know,” he said, “hate them all their lives.”