All the Dead Lie Down

by Mary Willis Walker

  The article from the Lubbock Morning Clarion was attached. The rest of the file was transcripts of taped interviews with people she could barely remember: high school acquaintances, teachers, neighbors in Volente and on Avenue D, fellow workers at the paper.

  There was no denying that this Julian Palmer was a thorough researcher, and an accurate one; there was nothing in the entire file that was out-and-out wrong. His prose was abominable, but his investigating was sound.

  When she finished skimming the typed interviews and reports in the Molly Cates file, she looked back at the photograph. That girl, the subject of this sorry story, must have walked right past Julian Palmer without noticing that a strange man had a camera pointed at her. All this information had been gathered right under her nose, without her being aware of it. To think that a business she’d never heard of, in an office park she hadn’t known existed, in a part of Lubbock she’d never been in, contained this file of intimate information about her that she hadn’t known was being compiled at the time. It was a chilling glimpse into a parallel universe that had been operating right next to her, unseen.

  It made her wonder about other universes out there right now, universes she couldn’t see that were destined to collide with hers at some point, and when they did, she’d ask herself, once again, how she could ever have been so oblivious to what was going on around her.

  With relief she slipped the folder back in the accordion file. Her hand hesitated over the other two. She drew out the one marked Cates, Vernon. Let Sheriff Olin Fucking Crocker wait. For years that sorry weasel had been a pustule festering on whatever organ in her body was the opposite of the heart—the spleen maybe—and he could damn well wait a little longer.

  She opened the Vernon Cates folder slowly, fearful she might be confronted with the bloated, rotting monster face that had appeared in the autopsy photo. But stapled to the inside cover was the lean, suntanned face of her daddy, smiling and very much alive. It was the photo that had run with a magazine story he’d written for Texas Backroads, taken six months before his death. The crinkled skin around his eyes revealed his forty-five years in the sun, and his slicked-back hair, though still dark, had receded just slightly from the forehead.

  This folder was twice as thick as hers. The date at the top of the first sheet was November 21, 1975, the subject, Vernon Matthew Cates, birth date 1/4/25.

  It began with a factual account of his death taken from news stories and the medical examiner’s report. The autopsy was attached, as were news articles that had appeared in the Austin American-Patriot and the Lubbock Morning Clarion. Molly had to admire Julian Palmer’s thoroughness: nearly five years after the death and he’d found all the sources and gotten it right.

  A six-page typed biography followed and the tone of it puzzled her right from the start. It stuck to the facts of Vernon Cates’s life, but it presented him as a man who had failed at almost everything. This Julian Palmer had clearly not understood what her daddy had been about. Palmer described him as the ne’er-do-well son of a West Texas rancher, who’d let the ranch he’d inherited languish and managed money badly. Though he’d gotten a history degree with honors from Texas Tech and been on the debate and track teams, he’d never lived up to the promise of that early academic success.

  Right out of college he’d gotten a routine job as a well inspector for the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulated the oil business. After eight years of that state job, with no promotions and an undistinguished record, he’d quit. After that he’d done whatever free-lance writing jobs he could scrounge up for various small local publications.

  In 1968, plagued with debt, he sold the family ranch, which had never made a profit under his management, and moved with his teenaged daughter to Volente near Austin. Julian Palmer made their move from Lubbock sound like a defeat rather than the courageous escape from the past that it had in fact been. The information was all correct, but the spin he gave it was all wrong. It was upsetting, more upsetting than anything else she’d encountered in this report, and it made her damn angry. If this Palmer person had encountered her daddy when he was alive, he’d have understood that Vernon Cates was not your run-of-the-mill West Texas rancher; he was cut out for other things, better things. It was true Vernon Cates had not been a financial success, but money hadn’t been something he’d valued that much. And while it was true his writing had been low-paying assignments for small local publications, he was on the verge of success when he’d died. He just hadn’t gotten his big break.

  She forced herself back to Julian Palmer’s staccato prose:

  SUBJECT HAD HISTORY OF DEPRESSION—AFTER WIFE’S DEATH AND AT TIMES OF FINANCIAL STRESS—DRANK TO EXCESS AT TIMES (SEE INTERVIEWS B, D, AND F). SUBJECT HAD REPUTATION OF BEING LADIEs’ MAN, EVEN BEFORE WIFE DIED IN 1963—LOTS OF RUMORS—NO ONE WILL TALK ON THE RECORD.

  Molly jiggled her shoulders to try to get them to unclench. She’d seen her father drink too much, but only occasionally. All the men of her childhood had been two-fisted drinkers; it was expected. Of course she had to acknowledge the strain of melancholy in him, the same strain with which she was afflicted, but she would never go so far as to call it depression. The rumors of other women she didn’t like much, but it was possible. Her mother had been sick for several years. He had been undeniably attractive and he had always loved the company of women. It was possible. Harriet would know about this, but of course she’d never tell, even if she were still in possession of her wits. Of her many staunch loyalties, Harriet’s devotion to her little brother had been sacrosanct, her fiercest allegiance.

  AT TIME OF DEATH, SUBJECT WAS WRITING ARTICLE EXPOSING ALLEGED ILLEGAL DRILLING ACTIVITIES OF QUINLAN OIL—TEXT AND NOTES LOST WHEN THE HOUSEBOAT-OFFICE WAS SUNK. FRIENDS SAY IT INVOLVED ALLEGED WHITE OIL SCAM IN QUINLAN’S PANHANDLE FIELDS. QUINLAN GOT AROUND REGULATIONS LIMITING NUMBER OF WELLS THEY COULD DRILL BY REPRESENTING THEM AS OIL PRODUCERS RATHER THAN GAS PRODUCERS. MISS CATES SAYS QUINLAN OIL PRESIDENT JASPER QUINLAN OFFERED CATES MONEY TO KILL ARTICLE. MR. QUINLAN DENIES IT, BUT SEVERAL SOURCES (SEE ATTACHED INTERVIEWS B, D, AND E) CONFIRM BRIBE—SAY CATES REFUSED OFFER. THE ALLEGED OIL SCAM IS BEYOND SCOPE OF THIS INVESTIGATION.

  Julian Palmer’s acknowledging the attempted bribe boosted him in Molly’s estimation. Here was a man not afraid to nip the hand that was feeding him. After all, Jasper Quinlan was paying the bill for this investigation and he was a powerful force in Lubbock who could throw lots of business Palmer’s way, or ruin him.

  There followed interviews with neighbors in Lubbock and Volente, a former boss at the Railroad Commission, and an editor at the Morning Clarion. All mentioned Vernon Cates’s poor financial management, depression, and sporadic heavy drinking. It surprised Molly to see these things come up again and again.

  One of the interviews was a short one with Rose and Parnell Morrisey. They described him as a lifelong friend of theirs who was brilliant but moody. They said he had been very depressed the last week of his life, though they didn’t know why.

  A note at the bottom said that Harriet Cates Cavanaugh refused to see the investigator or talk to him on the phone. Well, of course. Aunt Harriet would keep faith with her baby brother past the bitter end.

  There were also Xeroxes of four articles written by Vernon Cates for some local magazines. Molly picked one up. It was from the Lubbock Rancher, dated May 1966. It was about the big drought of the 1950s. As she read, her throat tightened; it wasn’t what she’d expected. The article was simplistic and amateurishly written. It was the work of a beginner who was none too careful about his craft. Molly was stunned. She hadn’t read any of her daddy’s writing since she was sixteen because all his papers and files had been destroyed when his houseboat was sunk and she had never, for some reason, tried to ferret out any of these old pieces.

  She picked up another one, this one from the West Texas Oilman, about Texans in the Civil War. After reading one paragraph, she stopped and slid it back into the folder, feeling as though
she’d suddenly walked into a room and surprised a parent in some secret and shameful activity.

  A weariness was settling on her, making it hard to keep her head up. She tapped the file on the table several times, to wake herself up as much as to align the pages, and stuck it back in the accordion file.

  Now it was time for Olin Crocker.

  She drew the folder out and opened it. The photograph was one she’d seen before, the glamor shot that his office gave out to the media. He was smiling, if you could call that upward twist of barbed wire a smile. His fleshy-lobed ears, lumpy cheeks, and off-center nose gave him the look of a crudely modeled clay pot. It was rare for people to look like what they were, but Olin Crocker looked every bit the coarse and corrupted cracker sheriff she knew him to be.

  The photograph showed just head and shoulders, but Molly could picture the whole body—every detail of it, still—the fringe of thick black hair growing on his sloping shoulders, the soft white belly bisected by the jagged line of black hair, the short bowed legs that looked out of proportion with the bulky torso.

  The date at the top of the report was 12/5/75, so this part of the investigation had been done after the other two. Without planning it, she had read them in chronological order.

  The heading at the top of the page was Crocker, Olin T., birth date, 7—1—37. Molly did a quick calculation. God, he’d only been thirty-eight when this report was written, which was the same year she’d had her final encounter with him. She had thought of him as a dirty old man, but he hadn’t been old at all. He’d just been weathered by excess flesh and alcohol, and, of course, she’d been looking at him through the eyes of extreme youth.

  SUBJECT: OLIN CROCKER, 38, TRAVIS COUNTY SHERIFF SINCE 1964—STARTED AS CORRECTIONS OFFICER AT TRAVIS COUNTY JAIL, THEN COUNTY DEPUTY.

  SUBJECT IS MARRIED—FIVE CHILDREN, AGES 2 THROUGH 15—GRADUATED CROCKETT HIGH SCHOOL—STUDIED CRIMINAL JUSTICE AT SAM HOUSTON STATE IN HUNTSVILLE TWO YEARS—MARRIED RUTH HANSON 1959—WENT TO WORK FOR COUNTY—CAMPAIGNED FOR SHERIFF ON PROMISE TO BEEF UP SECURITY AT JAILS, CUT DOWN ON FRILLS FOR CRIMINALS—WON BY SLIM MARGIN.

  She read quickly over the innocuous account of Crocker’s eleven years as sheriff and his very close reelection campaign in 1972, during which his opponent, Jim Ray Toser, charged him with having taken indecent liberties with some female inmates he was in charge of. All this Molly knew already from following it in the news and from her own research, when she had read all the back newspaper accounts looking for ammunition to use against him. Her experience with Crocker made her certain he was guilty of the sexual harassment; it was his style to use his power to bully women sexually. Oh, was it ever.

  But a piece of information that followed caught Molly’s attention:

  DURING 1972 CAMPAIGN, TWO WOMEN, FORMER INMATES TRAVIS COUNTY JAIL, SUED CROCKER. CHRISTINE FANON, 17, AND SYLVIA RAMOS, 18, DROPPED SUIT TWO DAYS AFTER FILING. CONTENTS OF SUIT UNAVAILABLE.

  Molly found herself waking up. This was something she hadn’t known. These women would be forty-two and forty-three now, maybe still in the Austin area. She’d ask Shelby Palmer about trying to locate them. She’d love to hear what they had to say.

  INVESTIGATION OF CATES’S DEATH WAS SLIPSHOD—LEFT SEVERAL IMPORTANT LEADS UNEXPLORED—VEHICLES STRANGE TO AREA WERE SEEN BY NEIGHBOR—NO ATTEMPT TO LOCATE THEM—NO DRAGGING LAKE FOR SUICIDE GUN—PULLED SUNKEN HOUSEBOAT UP THREE WEEKS AFTER BODY WAS FOUND—VALUABLE COLLECTION OF MEXICAN GOLD COINS UNACCOUNTED FOR.

  Under the heading “Conclusion,” Palmer wrote:

  SHERIFF’S INVESTIGATION WAS POOR, BUT FINDING OF SUICIDE SEEMS WARRANTED BY EVIDENCE. NO EVIDENCE THAT QUINLAN OIL COMPANY OR ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH IT WAS IN ANY WAY INVOLVED IN THE DEATH OF VERNON CATES.

  The typed report ended here, but paper-clipped to it were two handwritten pages on yellow legal paper. The heading was easy to read because it was printed: “12/18/75. Addendum. Delivered orally, no written copy provided.”

  The rest was written in cursive, tiny and crabbed, so difficult to read it might have been written in code. But after she deciphered the first sentence, she would have walked across burning coals to figure out the rest:

  12/18/75, AFTER REPORT WAS TYPED, NEW INFO: JIM RAY TOSER, CROCKER’S UNSUCCESSFUL OPPONENT IN 1972 SHERIFF’S RACE, CALLED—SAID HE HAD EVIDENCE CROCKER IS CROOKED AS THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE—

  Here the handwriting became increasingly impenetrable. Molly jumped up and hurried down the hall, letting out a gasp of relief when she saw Mrs. Palmer still at her post.

  “Mrs. Palmer, would you please help me figure out some of the handwritten parts? I think I’ve gone as far as I can without your help.”

  The white-haired woman looked up from her keyboard. “Honey, you look frazzled. Get yourself a Coke out of the fridge. You don’t want to let yourself get dehydrated. I’ll finish this paragraph and then take a look.” She gave Molly a smile and went back to typing.

  Molly walked in the direction indicated and found a tiny kitchen. She opened the little refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke. She drank a long swig and carried it back to the conference room.

  In a few minutes Mrs. Palmer came in and sat down. “Now let’s see that chicken scratching he called handwriting. I was probably supposed to type these up and never did get around to it.”

  Molly handed her the yellow pages. The woman squinted at them for a few seconds. “That man must have been dropped on his hands as a baby.” She set the pages down and began to read slowly:

  “12/18/75, AFTER REPORT WAS TYPED, NEW INFO: JIM RAY TOSER, CROCKER’S UNSUCCESSFUL OPPONENT IN 1972 SHERIFF’S RACE, CALLED—SAYS CROCKER IS CROOKED AS THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE—CROCKER THREATENED TWO FORMER INMATES, CHRISTINE FANON AND SYLVIA RAMOS, INTO DROPPING COMPLAINTS AGAINST HIM.”

  She looked up. “The writing gets even worse here. I believe I’m the only one in the world who could decipher this.”

  “Bless you,” said Molly Cates. “Read on.”

  “CROCKER INVESTED $51,000 CASH IN A HOUSE IN SOUTH AUSTIN. DATE OF PURCHASE, AUGUST OF 1970.”

  Molly’s breath was coming faster. He was paid off, the weasel.

  Mrs. Palmer kept on reading, stopping occasionally to work out a hard word.

  “TOSER SAID CROCKER’S RECORDS AT BERTRAM BANK OF THE HILLS SHOW MAXIMUM $750 IN ACCOUNT, AT ANY TIME THE LAST TWENTY YEARS. I CHECKED AND CONFIRMED. TIMING OF INVESTMENT CONSISTENT WITH POSSIBILITY OF PAYOFF IN VERNON CATES MATTER. NO EVIDENCE FOR THAT, BUT I INCLUDE THIS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR COMPLETENESS.

  “N.B. TOSER IS NOT A NEUTRAL SOURCE, HATES CROCKER, PLANS TO RUN AGAINST HIM AGAIN IN ’78. HOPES TO FORCE CROCKER OUT OF THE RACE.”

  “Crocker did drop out of the race!” Molly exclaimed. “I’ve often wondered why.”

  “Shall I finish?” Mrs. Palmer asked. “Just one more paragraph.”

  “Please do.”

  “TOSER OFFERED TO HIRE ME TO INVESTIGATE WHERE CROCKER’S FIFTY THOUSAND CAME FROM AND TO LOOK FOR OTHER INMATES WILLING TO TESTIFY TO CROCKER’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT. SINCE IT WOULD BE UNETHICAL TO ACCEPT JOB WITHOUT FIRST CHECKING WITH JASPER AND ROGER QUINLAN, I TOLD THEM ABOUT OFFER, ASKED IF THEY HAD ANY OBJECTION TO MY CONTINUING TO INVESTIGATE OLIN CROCKER FOR NEW CLIENT. THEY HAD NO OBJECTION.”

  “So he did accept it?” Molly asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Palmer, might I take a peek at that report?”Molly held her breath.

  “Tsk, tsk. Miz Cates, you know better than that.”

  “Yes, but I hoped—”

  “You’ll have to talk to Shelby.”

  In a faint voice Molly said, “He was a good investigator, your late husband.”

  Mrs. Palmer stood up. She handed the two yellow sheets back to Molly. “The best. And the most honest. If he wrote it, you can believe it.”

  “And how about your son?”

  Mrs. Palmer beamed. “He’s his daddy’s boy.”

  “I want to hire him,” Molly said. “Right now, before his six
o’clock gets here.”

  ROUND, AROUND, AROUND, ABOUT, ABOUT, ALL ILL COME RUNNING IN, ALL GOOD KEEP OUT.

  —MACBETH

  Sarah Jane Hurley is standing outside the library shaking so hard her teeth are rattling. There’s so much to make a person shake she’s not sure whether it’s the fever, or the shock of seeing Tin Can like that, or the drinking finally getting her.

  She peers in the window, trying to see who’s working today. If she’s real quiet and careful she might slip past them and go upstairs to do her research. Since she’s not wearing her coat they probably won’t recognize her anyway.

  She takes another peek. It’s damned unfair. All those other people, some of them streets just like her, are sitting on the soft green chairs where she used to sit, and all they’re doing is just wasting time, pretending to look at the newspapers. Well, she has as much right to be there as they do, and she’s got some real research to do, important research that might be a matter of life and death. But those we-own-the-world snots who threw her out think that just because she’s living on the street she doesn’t have any rights.

  Well, she’s not going to let that stop her. She’s going to walk in there right now, and do what she needs to do. After all, it’s the Public Library and she’s a member of the public, isn’t she? She wraps her arms around herself and breathes deeply to slow the shaking. She walks to the door and enters, looking around for the bozos who hassled her last week. She’s in luck, for once. The security guy checking people’s books at the exit is new, and the people working the checkout desk don’t seem to recognize her, or even notice her. She hobbles up to the information desk, where a small young woman with frizzy reddish hair sits next to a computer and a shelf of fat reference books.