by Ron Hudson
“Thank you ma’am, most people don’t care about their country and especially about the people we lost in Viet Nam.” Then he went on to make several comments about his Army duties.
Caley now saw what people meant about Harley’s personality. She decided to encourage him and let him continue talking. One thing she had learned was that if people keep talking, sooner or later they would trip themselves up. Not only that, but it allowed her to better observe his nonverbal behavior.
“Harley, I know you are a brave man, having served in a war and all, and I know you must be pretty smart too. So, hanging around Nel’s as much as you do, surely you have observed something that would help us find who murdered Homer and Henry,” She paused to let it sink in.
Suddenly, the room was quiet. Then Caley just watched Harley. The silence was even annoying to her, but she waited for Harley to say something first. His brow wrinkled, the corners of his wide mouth twitched as he took off his hat with his right hand and held it in his lap.
Silence...more silence…
Finally, Harley was beginning to show a sign of defensiveness, “Why would you ask me about that. I never saw them two men go in or out of their still site.”
Lie number one. Caley knew he bought whiskey from them and it was highly unlikely he ever saw them go to their still.
“But you did talk with them a lot didn’t you Harley?”
“I haven’t spoken with either one of them in weeks. In fact, I didn’t even know they were making whiskey behind Nel’s until the day all you people were out there investigating.”
Lie number two...
Caley continued to stroke Harley’s knack for talking about everything on earth, but the murders. She kept at him for over three hours. Until finally he said, “I gotta go now because I have got things to do, so if you’re finished I will be leaving.”
Then Harley continued to talk and lie about several other things. One thing for sure, Nellis had told her Harley bought moonshine all the time from Homer or Henry. It was very doubtful he had gone for weeks without a drink or talked with them.
Then Harley took off talking again, before Caley could comment, “Now why would I want to do anything to them old boys I have known for years?”
“Maybe you had a falling out with them Harley; maybe you were messing around with one of their wives; maybe you wanted to rob them, I can think of a hundred possible reasons. But right now, I am trying to find out from you what reason you may have really had,” Caley continued.
“I ain’t had no reason to kill them, and you not going to railroad me into saying I did.”
“OK Harley, I need you to stay here and keep talking with me to try to help figure out what has been going on over there. You have given me more information already than I have gotten from anyone else. I am convinced you know a lot more than you are telling me. Maybe there is something you don’t even know that is important, but let’s keep trying OK?” Caley knew he could leave if he wanted to, but she didn’t want to play the “arrest” card yet since he seemed to be willing to give some information, however limited.
“Now I know you heard about the murders before you saw us out there investigating. Who did you hear it from?”
“No, I’ll swear that is the first time I ever heard about it.”
“Harley, have you ever seen Jim Avant over there talking to Homer or Henry?”
For the first time since he sat down, Harley seemed to get quite. After a long pause he said, “No, I can’t say that I have, but I heard he talked with them a lot.”
“Where did you hear that Harley?”
“I don’t know, I just heard it.”
Caley continued to question Harley about Avant for another hour. During the conversation, he made reference to getting lost and going down the road to Avant’s house to turn around at night when he was drinking too much. To Caley, the drinking part might have been logical, and he could have gotten lost. On the other hand, he had lived in this area all his life, and it gave credence to another lie.
Caley had questioned Harley long enough that she knew he was continuing to tell some tall tales. She still didn’t know why, unless he had actually committed the crime.
She decided to go all in, “Harley I know you murdered Homer and Henry. I have it from an excellent source that you admitted to the crime. When you were half-drunk, you admitted it to Nellis Garvant. He has made a sworn statement to that effect.”
“Oh no, if that happened I was just drunk.”
“I have no doubt you may have been drunk, but none-the-less you admitted doing it, and now you will have to pay.”
After more questioning, Harley was totally confused and becoming exhausted.
Caley reached into a bag and pulled out the pistol she had found beneath Jim Avant’s house and laid it on the table in front of Harley.
She just let it lay there and said nothing. Caley could see Harley’s eyes get bigger, but he said nothing
“Harley, have you ever seen this gun before?”
“No…no..I..I..haven’t.
“Then why do you think your fingerprints were on it?” said Caley although no fingerprints were found on the gun, she wanted to see how Harley would react.
Removing his baseball cap with one hand as he had done before, his words being barely audible he said, “I can’t answer that.”
Caley pursued her hunch, “I think you could if you wanted to Harley. Now tell me why did you kill those two people. Why are your fingerprints on the murder weapon? Right now, you are looking at a lot of years behind bars.”
“Did someone hire you to plant the gun underneath Jim Avant’s house? Or was it your own idea to deflect suspicion away from yourself. Looks like you messed up by not wiping your fingerprints off the gun that has been proven to be the murder weapon. Now you are complicating the situation by not telling the truth about it.”
“No, no, I had nothing to do with the murders. Avant must have found the pistol and shot them, then put the gun under his house. I swear I had nothing to do with killing those men.”
“Who hired you to put the gun under the house, Harley?”
“I can’t say. They will kill me, or do worse,” he said with a very agitated demeanor.
“OK, just relax Harley, we’ll protect you, but you need to let us know who you were working with. If not, then all I can assume, is that you were working alone.”
“No. I can’t tell you.”
Now getting somewhere with Harley, Caley continued to question him about the details of when and where, the as yet unknown person had given him the pistol. After interrogating Harley for most of the day, Caley decided not to arrest him yet. She knew she had sufficient grounds based on his admission of having planted the murder weapon under Avant’s house but wasn’t quite convinced that he had committed the crime.
If she arrested him for conspiracy to commit murder, the so-called “politician” he mumbled about back at Nel’s Place would get involved. At this point, maybe she could find out whom Harley would tell about her interview. If Harley’s tale was true, maybe there was some logical explanation. In any case, nothing would be lost by waiting a few days to arrest him. As it turned out, this was an unfortunate call on Caley’s part.
Now it was time to see what Sheriff Wilson had to say about Harley’s interview. She wasn’t looking forward to informing the sheriff an unknown politician had hired Harley to plant a pistol under Avant’s house. The sheriff was good friends with all the politicians in the country, and he would definitely want to pursue Harley’s claim. She figured the sheriff would want to threaten Harley and mess up any progress she had made on getting him to give up further information.
Chapter 45
The murder of Homer and Henry was initially reported by the newspapers under the headline of, “The Moonshine Murders.” The term quickly took on a legendary mystical aura throughout the Lowcountry. Speculation as to who may have done I was a guessing game among large and small groups alike. Most of the people Cal
ey and Sweet spoke to about the crime, had an opinion about who could have done it, but little beyond speculation could be obtained.
Caley and Sweet’s efforts were interrupted by the discovery of a body in a canal just outside of town. The location was a small drainage ditch beneath the main road. There was a small turnout along the road, just wide enough for a car to pull over. The body had been found by the county maintenance crew when they were removing debris from the drain.
Caley walked carefully down the side of the road to the narrow stream flowing out of the culvert pipe protruding from beneath the road. The body was laying at the bottom of the railing that went over the creek. It was clearly dumped over the side from passing or a vehicle parked in the small pullout.
Sweet, cautioned Caley as she entered the knee-high grass near the road, “be careful, we don’t want you to get bitten by a water moccasin. There are plenty of them out here in this area.”
Caley didn’t need the warning; she was very familiar with the swamp. She knew it contained more predators, both human and animal than she cared to run into.
Her first observation was that whoever dumped the body must have stopped and dumped the remains and then made a quick getaway hoping not to be detected. She had seen similar things before, not only for disposal of bodies but more commonly for anything people didn’t feel like taking to the local dump. In this area, sometimes locals or tourists would use the quick access to roadside streams to deposit old furniture, appliances or anything they no longer need.
A body was no different to them than a piece of unwanted debris. Get rid of it, and make a quick exit from the scene. The body, like most other debris, had been discovered by the country maintenance people.. Usually, they didn’t canvas the outlying roads more than once every two or three months. As luck would have it, this particular route was on schedule for within a few days from when they came by. The body didn’t look like it had been there for more than a couple of days when they reported
Caley was the first law enforcement person on the scene. She had, however, made contact with Sweet and advised him that she would be sidetracked from anything else until this incident could be investigated.
As she approached the victim, she saw a baseball type hat resting on the brush beside the ten-foot stream. It appeared as though it may have blown off the victim’s head as the body was thrown over the side of the road. The hat was sitting between two small trees. Its front markings were clearly visible---“115th Cav.“
Before she stepped further, she paused and stared at the hat. Then she looked back up the slope to view where it may have come from. She checked to see how disturbed the area immediately around the hat was. Did the wind blow it to its resting place, or did bushes drag it off someone’s head, she asked herself. Accustom to attempting to make crime scene observations that may later tell a story, she tried to make herself think like a criminal. She used her cell phone to snap a picture of the hat before she picked it up.
Instinctively she knew it was the hat of Harley Kettle or Nellis Garvant. Then she walked carefully the few feet down to the body. The man’s lower body was in the water, but his face appeared to be looking at the blue sky. It was Harley Kettle. No doubt in her mind about who the unfortunate victim was. Harley’s lifeless body clearly had two small holes on his forehead. They were about an inch above his eyes and dead center. “Bullet holes,” Caley mumbled to herself. She had no question about how the man met his demise before his body was discarded in the canal.
Something else was familiar to Caley. Harley had a stain resembling bird feces on his face. A spit of snuff left by the perpetrator of death. She knew when she collected a sample and had it analyzed, it would show to be the same as that that had been recovered from Homer and Henry’s faces. Now the killer was beginning to establish a pattern. Consciously or not, he was leaving a unique calling. Furthermore, Harley’s death now made the executioner a “serial” killer.
Caley looked back over her shoulder at Sweet, still standing on the side of the road above her and said, “Looks like the killer left his signature on Harley’s face. Tobacco spit!”
All Sweet could say was, “Jesus! I don’t believe it.”
Caley reached down and lifted Harley’s head to see if the bullets exited. Sure enough, they left a large hole about two inches in diameter, where they had exited the back of the head. By this time, Sweet was standing beside Caley.
“You think he was shot here or elsewhere and then dumped here,” Sweet casually commented.
“Highly unlikely he would have been shot here, I’d say,” replied Caley.
“Yea, you probably right.”
“Anyway, let’s get someone over here with a metal detector and see if they can find a slug, or anything else.”
“Sounds good, I’ll take care of it.”
Caley spent another hour looking around for additional evidence.
Having found nothing helpful, she sloshed back up the slope of the ditch to the road. Before she left, she took several more pictures of the surrounding area.
Sweet had already called the coroner, who was waiting to pick up the body of Harley and transport it to the lab for an autopsy.
Chapter 46
Caley had heard the name Harley Kettle in her conversations with the lady who lived near Nel’s. She was also told by Mo, who she spoke with in front of Nel’s Place, that he saw Harley talking with Homer and Henry. She made a note of it at the time and intended to check with Harley if she could find him. Now that someone had killed him and dumped his body, she needed to know more than where he lived.
Caley’s first place to start asking about him was with Nellis Garvant and the people outside his store. Maybe some of them could tell her more about Kettle, or more specifically about any of his enemies. As she opened the outside screen door, a bell hanging on the door announced her arrival. Nellis greeted her right away. Two black men were sitting on the dog food bags. They were not the same ones as she had observed there before.
She asked Nellis several questions in between interruptions of several customers who came in to buy beer or to get change to play the lottery machine. Caley asked Nellis if he had heard about Harley’s shooting.
“Oh yeah, I am so sorry about that. He certainly will be missed by us all. Have you been able to find out anything about who shot him yet? Poor old Harley always helped me deliver supplies and do other things around the store. I don’t know what I’ll do now that he is gone. He knew a lot of people around the area, what with him visiting those who have no transportation and all. He had become friends with a lot of them.”
“Can you give me a list of the people he delivered supplies to? I need to talk with them to see if they might know anything about his death.”
“Yes. There are only about eight or ten people. I’ll also give you the names of the vendors in town where he picked up materials.”
“The poor man. What a shame. I always did like Harley,” one of the customers sitting on a bag of dog food lamented.
Caley thanked Nellis, took the list and said, “I will probably be back, but right now I need to talk with some of these people to see if I can get any useful information.”
Chapter 47
After all the commotion about the tornado, Caley and Sweet hadn’t done much regarding the murders. Although they knew the death of Harley was connected in some way, they hadn’t been able to do much follow up on it either. One thing for sure, Caley thought to herself, these wouldn't turn into cold cases. No matter how much time I need to spend on them, I will solve them one way or the other.
Then Caley decided to talk with Strep and Topop again. Maybe they could add something to the Harley mystery. Although she was too confident, as to what it may be. She hadn’t given much thought about her strategy for interviewing the two men. She was just hoping something further could be learned about both murders, as information and substantial leads were almost non-existent at this point.
As she pulled into view of the house with
the newly constructed porch, the house was hardly recognizable. The lumber was new, instead of being old with nails streaks along their sides. The people who helped them fix up the place had leveled the yard and cut down the small weeds and saplings that were growing all over the place. They also picked up and cleaned the garbage and trash that had been lying all around. The house and surroundings didn’t look like the same location she had visited before, except for Strip and Topop sitting on the rebuilt front porch rocking in two new rocking chairs.
Before Caley got out of the car, Topop said to Strep, “Oh God here she is again. Now we don’t have to say anything about our involvement in the murders. Just act like we wuz sitting here talking about business as usual.”
“Yea, you right, we ain’t got nuthin to worry about, anyway it wasn’t our fault, it was old man Fuzz who did all the bad stuff,” said Topop already turning from using the respected title of “Mr.” from Fuzz’s name.
As Caley got out of the car, Strep nervously said, “Ok, ok, now shut up, shut up, let me do the talking.”
Instead of having smiley faces about their newly improved property, Caley observed the men looked awful nervous when she approached them. Her knack for finding nonverbal signs was on track this morning.
“Good morning,” said Caley as she stepped onto the porch and sat in a chair near the men.
“Good morning,” replied both men.
“Well, I am glad you both are here to talk about the murders we discussed the other day. Have you been able to remember anything else that might help us solve the case?”
“No ma’am, no ma’am, we ain’t heard nothin else,” said Topop nervously.
“Did you ever meet Homer Aiken or Henry Padgett,” she said looking directly at Strep.
