by Sally Wright
“Well. If ya think of anything else connected to Seeger, give me a call at the office.”
“I will.”
“I’ll arrange to get a deputy to take a statement later.”
“Sure.” Buddy got up and walked him out the door, then sat down on the stone stoop and lit himself a Marlboro with a kitchen match as he watched Earl drive away, thinking, How am I gonna tell Jo and Alan?
Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro’s Journal
Tuesday, April 28th, 1964
It looks as though Blue Grass’s burning must’ve been something electrical. The insurance folks have been investigating forever, and though the final report isn’t in, they’ve said it doesn’t look like arson. Which Spencer hadn’t expected, of course, but the insurance money will be critical, and I’m sure it’s been hard waiting to hear what they think.
We haven’t heard anything more from Earl, but Buddy called a week or so ago, and told us that Earl had asked him if he’d told anyone about the key in Carl’s garage.
I’ve always thought you just tell the truth and even if somebody else isn’t, it’ll work out fine in the long run, so I never would’ve wanted him to hedge around it. But finding out Earl knows we knew about the key made my stomach turn over right then. Alan’s too, probably, even if we didn’t talk about it much.
There’re been anxious silences every day when we’ve worried alone so as not to upset the other—interspersed too with feverish discussions of the circumstantial evidence Earl’s got. That’s when we weren’t talking about Ross’ diarrhea, and us not knowing how to make it stop.
But not hearing from Earl has eased us back into more of a routine—of Ross, and our work, and helping Toss some, of taking walks with Emmy, and me riding Sam and Alan riding Maggie (who seems to have gotten attached to Alan, which pleases him no end).
I’ve been praying every day that Earl’s eliminated Alan as a suspect, and this is not just the lull before the proverbial maelstrom.
Thursday, April 30th, 1964
Ross was sleeping in his buggy late that afternoon, in the shade of a huge old maple, next to the sand riding area just past the south barn.
Jo was sitting on Sam at the south end watching Alan canter Maggie. She’d been asking Alan to pick up the canter from the walk, and the trot, then bring Maggie down to one gait, and then the other, to help him work on his position in transitions, and get quick responses from Maggie too, instead of letting her shuffle a couple of strides before she responded to his aids.
Jo said, “I’m glad you came home at five for once. It’s too beautiful not to ride.”
“That’s why I came home.”
“You’ve really learned a lot in two years.”
That made Alan laugh, before he smoothed a hand along Maggie’s neck as she rushed a couple of strides, then settled into the canter. “Oh, yeah? Then why is this so hard?”
“You’re both learning. Good transitions take a lot of hindquarter strength too, and Maggie’s just getting back in shape after having that last baby.”
“Her canter’s getting smoother.”
Jo nodded, and had just said, “And you’re beginning to get more precise in the way you apply your aids”—when she heard a car coming toward them on the long drive from the house.
It was a white sedan, and when it’d gotten close enough for her to see the insignias on the front doors, her heart lurched against her ribs, and blood rushed to her face. “Alan!” There was worry and warning and misery in her voice.
And Alan brought Maggie down to a walk, and looked across his left shoulder to see what Jo had seen.
The car stopped just north of the barn, and Earl opened the driver door and squeezed himself through. Pete Phelps climbed out the passenger door and stood looking like an embarrassed egret, as he stared into the small paddock of mares and newborn foals.
Earl nodded at Jo, and squinted at Alan as he said, “I need to talk to you a minute.”
“Sure. Let me just get Maggie unsaddled and turn her out in her paddock.”
“Ya reckon Jo could do that for ya?”
Alan had climbed down and was leading Maggie toward Jo, who’d already dismounted and was walking Sam toward the back of the barn. Alan met her at the open door to the aisleway and handed her his reins, before he started toward Earl, who was pulling a paper out of his shirt pocket, without taking his eyes off Alan.
“I got no choice, Alan. I feel real bad, but I gotta ask ya to come with me. I got a warrant here for your arrest for the murder of Carl Seeger. I hate doin’ it, but I’m gonna hafta handcuff ya too and take ya into the department. I can cuff yer hands in front. It don’t have to be in back. But that’s the procedure I gotta follow.”
“Earl!” Jo was white-faced and rigid, Sam and Maggie standing close together just behind her, her voice sharp, her hands gripped tight on both sets of reins, just as Ross started screaming. “He didn’t kill Carl! You know better than that!”
“Can’t ignore the evidence, Jo. County Attorney give me no choice. I gotta take Alan in and book him, but you go ahead and get you a lawyer, and work on makin’ bond as soon as it gets set.”
“Do I get to change my clothes? I’m dirty, and sweating, and I need to get cleaned up.” Alan was glaring at Earl, as he peeled off his riding gloves and unbuckled his helmet.
“Sorry.”
“I’m going to take my chaps off, and wash up with the hose. You can come with me and watch if you feel the need.” Alan was unbuckling his rawhide chaps without looking at Earl, his face hard and angry, his green eyes, when he took off his sunglasses and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, hot and pinched and focused on the tack room door as though nothing in this world could have made him turn aside.
Earl watched him pull the handle up on the pump in the tack room and drag the hose out behind the barn, and wash his face and hands. Jo and Earl were staring at Alan’s back when Alan said, “Jo, get Bob Harrison’s lawyer. Then call Bob at home and tell him what’s happened.”
While they took his mug shot and fingerprinted him again in the Woodford County jail in Versailles, Alan told himself to calm down and watch his mouth.
This is nothing compared to France.
Demolition before D-Day.
Setting up local army governments.
You dealt with nothing but deceit.
Use what you learned then.
Listen. Read between the lines. Don’t aggravate Earl.
Earl walked him into the Sheriff’s Department next door to the jail, past the old scarred counter in the front room, where a plump deputy looked up with ill-disguised hostility as they passed into Earl’s office.
The brown linoleum was old and cracked, the desks—Earl’s facing the door, Pete’s against the wall on the left—were banged-up metal under chipped tan paint. There were gray metal chairs with red plastic seats sitting in front of Earl’s desk, and Earl sat in one, and waved Alan to the other. Pete swiveled his desk chair toward them, and folded his arms across his bony-looking middle, while he stared across at Alan.
Earl pulled a stick of Juicy Fruit from his shirt pocket and peeled off the silver paper, folding it into his mouth, before he held the pack out to Alan—who shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his hands spread on the arms.
Earl sat and watched Alan for a minute with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “As you know, we got circumstantial evidence against you, and we gotta go through it again.”
“You think I’m stupid enough to do it the way it was done?”
“Meaning what?”
“Use a toxin that could only come from my own lab. Leave my pen at the scene. Leave a syringe and a surgical glove. I figure there must’ve been a glove, or a piece of one, of the type we use in our lab there too, since you took samples from the lab. And with you taking the Selectric ball, and samples of Equine paper, there’s a good chance that the note Carl left didn’t match his typewriter, or his typing paper either. How dumb would I have to be to make mistakes like that?”
>
“Can’t ignore it though, can I?”
“No, I know that, but—”
“What other explanation can you offer for the evidence? No alibi neither. Your car seen just past his house close to the time he died.”
“And if I were going to go to his house, would I do it so my car would be seen? No! I’d plan it a whole lot better!”
“You gotta admit you got motive.”
“What motive? That he tried to steal my formula, and he got the IRS to hassle Jo and me? I would not murder somebody over an IRS audit! And he didn’t get away with stealing my formulas. He got fired. He got stopped. It means I think he was a dishonest son-of-a-pup, but it doesn’t mean I’d kill him.”
“There’s more evidence besides what I’ve mentioned before.”
“What? Anything new from the autopsy?”
“I’m not obligated to reveal our evidence, not at this stage of the proceedings.”
“Earl, it’s me. Alan Munro. Remember the murderer I helped you arrest, when I could’ve killed her with my bare hands for what she did to Jo! You know in your gut I didn’t do this.”
“I wouldn’t a thought it, but the County Attorney he don’t know you from spit, and he’s the one weighing the evidence and asking the judge for a warrant so he can take you to District Court.”
“Do you have any evidence placing me inside Carl’s house?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You don’t. You can’t. I’ve never set foot in his house! You don’t have my prints on the vial, or the syringe, or anything else. You can’t!”
“Well, you cain’t tell me you wouldn’t a worn gloves.”
“Right. And I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to make all the other stupid mistakes!”
“The question I cain’t answer, and I don’t figure you can either, is why would Carl kill himself just to set you up? Unless you got some other suspect.”
“I don’t know. I admit that that’s a serious question. And I don’t have another suspect. But I’m not giving up on finding one.”
“Fine.”
“Do you have Carl’s appointment calendar?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, it seems like maybe what he’d been doing, and who he was meeting, might give us some kind of clue.”
“Actually, we didn’t find one. And consider that a concession on my part to pass on that information.”
“I do. Thank you.”
Earl pulled a legal pad off his desk and handed it to Alan. “You write down your side of things. Your history with Carl Seeger, when you went to his house like ya told me before, and all-and-everything, and what you was doin’ the day and night of the fifteenth. Then Pete and me, we’ll sign it after you as witnesses that it’s your words.”
“Crap, Earl!”
“You can wait for your lawyer if you want. If you—”
“No. I’ll write it now. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“One thing I will tell ya, that I don’t have to, is that the final ortopsy report got real delayed. The M.E. from up in Franklin who did the preliminary examination, after I talked to him that morning, he was in a real bad car accident on his lunch hour. They doubt he’ll be out of the hospital for another week or ten days. They don’t have nobody else to fill in. So it ain’t been finished.”
“That seems fairly outrageous. That they’d only have one doc.”
“The other one they used some turned out to be a drunk, and they fired him not too long before all this happened, and he up and moved outta town.”
“Still seems unprofessional.”
“Well, we’re kinda small potatoes around here. We don’t get hardly any unexplained deaths, and there’s never been a big need. The doc had no doubt Carl’s death was caused by the injection, and his blood was on the needle and all, and the cat’d been injected too. He found that before he got hurt, but we’ll have to wait for the rest.”
“But you know they’re going to set bond for me?”
“I reckon they will, yeah. You’re not much of a flight risk, with your family and job and all. ’Course, this bein’ late in the day, I reckon you’ll have to spend the night, but tomorrow your lawyer can go to work, and the bond’ll get set, and then Jo can talk to the bank and all, and get ya out after that.”
“Not tonight?”
“I’d be surprised. And you better prepare yourself for this bein’ all over the papers. This is real big for Woodford County. Lexington and Louavull, they’ll be on it too. We ain’t had a murder case like this in Versailles, premeditated and all, pro’bly since 1949. This ain’t no knifin’ outside some bar late some Saturday night.”
“Except for the one two years ago.”
“Right.”
“When can I take the lie detector test?”
“Takes awhile to schedule it. Earliest next week.”
“Jo does not need to go through this, Earl. She knows everybody in a fifty-mile radius, and it’s bound to be horrific for her.”
“I reckon that’s true, but it cain’t be helped.”
“Still—”
“You may be kinda a newcomer ’round here, but everybody’s gonna know you now, that’s for darn sure.”
It was past two when Alan woke up and threw the blanket off his face. He sat up shivering, sweat pouring through his shirt, his jeans sticking to his thighs, trying to see where he was.
He’d been back in France, running from a train they’d booby trapped with plastic explosives, and it was night, and there was machinegun fire behind him, and Gary Prescott had just been blown apart fifteen feet to his right.
It’d changed then the way it always did, to him running across a stone square in a tiny village up near Amiens, where he saw a guy from the French Resistance lob a grenade at a woman who’d been posing as a collaborator, but had worked with Alan and the OSS before American troops moved in.
He could see the grenade flying toward her—the perfect arc, the effortless throw—Marie not seeing it as she walked away from him. And then Alan was running faster and faster, screaming at her back. And then he felt himself stumble on a chunk of rubble and hit his face on the edge of a curb—where he watched her get ripped apart against a café window that shattered on her as she fell.
That’s when he woke up, shivering and sweating, and told himself to open his eyes.
He wasn’t in France.
There wasn’t a grenade.
The woman he’d been trying to save had been.
He’d been ten feet away. And he hadn’t stumbled.
And the war was over and done with.
He was in Versailles, Kentucky.
In jail for murdering Carl.
That made Alan laugh—and not be able to stop for longer than he could explain—before he pulled his threadbare blanket up around his shoulders, and told himself to calm down and take a deep breath.
There was light in his cell, from a streetlamp, falling on the concrete floor through the bars on the one high window in the wall on his right where he sat on his metal cot. There was light from a bulb too, in a wire cage, in the hall ceiling beyond the two-foot square of bars in the door on his left.
He heard another door open at the end of the hall, and the clap of hard-soled shoes hitting concrete, heading toward his cell.
The footsteps stopped outside his door, and he looked up and saw a small guy with yellowish skin, holding a mug of coffee in his hand, staring at him through the bars. “You okay in there?”
“Sure. I’m fine. Nothing to worry about here.”
The deputy didn’t answer. He blew on his coffee and took a sip, then walked back to the end of the hall and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER TEN
Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro’s Journal
Friday, May 1st, 1964
We debated taking out a second mortgage on the farm to make bond, which they set as half the value, which means we had to pay ten percent of that. Neither one of us wanted to put the farm in
jeopardy, and put more pressure on Toss with the horse business, so we pretty much emptied the savings account, hoping we’ve got enough left to pay all the legal fees. Whatever they may end up being.
Alan’s been unnervingly quiet. He never talks just to hear himself. If he has something to say, it’s something worth listening to—but this quiet is different.
He spent a long time in the shower when he got out of jail, then shut himself away to write up what he knows about the whole situation to give to Garner Honeycutt, who’s agreed to represent him.
We did talk at dinner, which came as a relief. I don’t do well with uncomfortable silences. But we’re both so much in the dark, the only good it does is to get it out in front of us.
We met with Garner at the jail today, when he asked Alan to write that report, and he’s filed some sort of paper, telling the County Attorney (which is the same thing as a prosecutor), and I assume the District Court Judge, that he’s representing Alan, and that Alan pleads not guilty. This will eliminate a preliminary hearing. Whatever that is.
The first hearing in District Court (which is different than what got waived) will be Monday, since they only meet on Monday in Woodford County, and Garner doesn’t want to delay. This will be an open court with Alan there, when the County Attorney presents his initial case. If the judge thinks there’s a “preponderance of evidence that shows probable cause,” he’ll “kick the case up to the grand jury.”
The press will be there, and Garner wants to keep it short so Alan doesn’t get run into the ground by the prosecution and let them prejudice the community any more than it probably is now. The news coverage has been awful. We’ve got reporters and TV folks camped out at the gate. And the queasy feeling around the boulder in my chest makes it hard to swallow.
Saturday, May 2nd, 1964
We took Ross with us, and spent the morning with Garner going over what we did the day Carl died, and what we know about Earl’s evidence, and the questioning he’s been doing. We won’t get all the evidence the prosecutor has for some time to come apparently. Even the results of the autopsy, if the report’s finally in.
I’ve never known much of anything about the procedures leading up to a criminal trial, and having to learn still seems surreal. But I’ve got to come to grips with it, and figure out how to help. Standing by and doing nothing, I’ve always been bad at that.
