Carolina Skeletons

by David Stout

  Before the divorce, Jen had been the one who insisted on getting the cable TV service (he had had trouble justifying the expense to himself), but now he relied on it a lot. Not so much for movies and plays and things Jen hated Manning for not having, things which she had grown to like in Charleston and Atlanta on the business trips she took without him, but so he could watch the Atlanta Braves. Here it was, the baseball season starting, and he still did not have a good picture. Gotta get the cable people off their ass. He picked up the phone.

  “Clarendon Video. Morning.”

  “Morning to you. Listen, I called a couple times already. Cable reception’s lousy and I gotta have it fixed ’else I can’t watch the Braves. Now, you folks gotta tell me when you’re gonna get over here, because I’m on the road a lot.”

  The woman asked for Stoker’s address, and he gave it to her.

  “Is that a private home or apartment?” she asked.

  “Apartment. Listen, just tell your boss Junior Stoker called again. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir. Does he know how to reach you?”

  “He better. And tell him to call me as soon as he gets that Clint Eastwood movie I asked him to reserve. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir. What was that name again?”

  “Stoker, Bill D. Just tell your boss Junior Stoker. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Stoker hung up, annoyed. If Manning was getting too big, so you couldn’t deal with people person-to-person anymore, then there was no hope whatsoever. He always used “Stoker, Bill D.” for his charge accounts and the like. “Junior,” his lifelong nickname, pinned on him not because he was a junior but just because his parents thought it fit the younger of two brothers, he used whenever he wanted someone around Manning to recognize his name. Now, it was getting so he couldn’t even count on people to recognize his name.

  Damn. It wasn’t that long ago the old man hung up the shield. Was it?

  He pulled into the lot next to the low, yellow brick building that housed the Clarendon County sheriff’s office and jail. There was a parking space reserved for “Capt. Bill D. Stoker, South Carolina State Police,” which, this morning at least, no one had usurped. Things were looking up.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Cheryl Bestwick said as he passed the dispatcher’s station.

  “Morning to you, Miss Cheryl.”

  Stoker had summoned more cheer than he really felt. For one thing, Cheryl Bestwick was an excellent dispatcher, and he wanted to keep her happy; for another thing, she was black. The word from headquarters, official and otherwise, was that you bent over backwards to be courteous to black subordinates.

  Sometimes, Stoker remembered the advice his father had given him on treating the colored—the colored!—with the right mix of honesty and gentleness. Whenever he remembered that, he was touched by his father’s old-fashioned rectitude, yet bothered in ways he couldn’t put into words that his father had found it necessary to say such things regarding blacks. His father had never told him to treat white people with the proper blend of honesty and gentleness; that had been understood.

  Well, what the hell. Now it was official policy that you had to be nice to them, the blacks. Bend over backwards, in fact. Which he thought he tried to do.

  Cheryl Bestwick was in her mid-twenties, tall, round-buttocked, athletic. Black or not, she was something to look at, and Stoker was charmed by her, by the way she squared her shoulders when she walked, by her deep black eyes, her light tan skin and high cheekbones, even (and this was something he was a long time admitting to himself) her smell.

  “That brother of yours, he still keeping that fastball down like he should?”

  “Lord, Captain,” Bestwick said. “Mama, she rave about Lyman all the time. Triple-A next year, she say. Then the big time soon after that.”

  “Well, he best not let anybody monkey with his arm motion. You tell your mama that for me, to tell Lyman not to let anybody monkey with his arm.”

  Abruptly, it seemed to him, there was no more time, no more room, for small talk with her. He went down the hall and turned left, into his corner office.

  “Captain,” Bestwick shouted after him from the other end of the corridor, “Mrs. Stoker on line two.”

  He was apprehensive. Jen called him occasionally from Columbia, where she was a buyer in a department store, but it was not like her to call him so early in the day.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Junior, I’m sorry to start your day this way. Thomas fell and hit his head. They think he suffered a mild concussion. Probably nothing serious, but I wanted you to know.”

  “Damn it. Wasn’t anybody watching?”

  “Well, sure they were. But it only took a moment for him to get up out of the wheelchair, you know how he is. It’s not like taking care of a child. The people at the home were very apologetic.”

  “Good for them.”

  “I think it was just one of those unfortunate things.”

  One of those unfortunate things. Try as he might, Stoker usually thought of the life of his twenty-four-year-old retarded and institutionalized son as a long series of unfortunate things. Unfortunate he had been born that way, all the more so since it was their first and only child, and a late one at that; unfortunate that he had needed constant care, unfortunate that he and Jen had blamed themselves and each other. Unfortunate that his wife had complained bitterly that he, Junior, wasn’t “learning to deal with it and accept,” whatever that meant.

  Well, maybe she had been right all along. He had been goddamn sorry and disappointed for a long time that he could not get the same enjoyment from his son that his father had gotten from … from Bob, goddamn it. More from Bob than from him.

  “Everything else okay?” he said.

  “Busy as hell. Last thing I needed today was the call from the hospital. Got a lot of stuff coming in for the summer season. Well, I just wanted you to know. Stay in touch.”

  After a few more pleasantries, they said good-bye. Jen sounded interested and happy in what she was doing. Much happier in Columbia than around Manning. Who could blame her? Mind like hers, college education, knowing stuff about paintings and books, she could probably land a good job in Charleston or Atlanta if she wanted. That possibility alarmed him, for some reason.

  But he knew how to put unpleasant thoughts out of his head. He opened his briefcase and took out a small dictating machine and a black notebook, the latter containing jottings on thoughts he wanted to pass on to Sheriff Bryant Fischer. Fischer was only the second (no, third) sheriff since Hiram Stoker, but how things had changed. Miranda and probable cause and defendants’ rights and science and computers and technicalities.

  Stoker sifted through the reports left in his “in” box and was pleased. Fischer had trained his people to be meticulous and thorough, which made Stoker’s job much easier. Stoker was the state police liaison with local law-enforcement agencies, and as such he could help determine how much state aid, in money and training, the local people got, or didn’t get.

  The fact was (and Stoker could appreciate the irony) he was just the kind of law man his father had found most troublesome.

  But Stoker liked Bryant Fischer. He was a beefy law man from the old school, crew cut and all. He was only a few years younger than Stoker and shared his hard-ass feelings on drugs and respect for authority, and (Miranda or not) he could often frighten suspects into telling the truth.

  “Hi, Bryant,” Stoker said into the dictating machine. “Columbia suggests you send one deputy, two if you can manage it, to finger-printing classes scheduled …”

  On another matter, he paused. Got to use tact, he thought. Or what passes for tact from me.

  “Re the February twenty-eighth seizure of marijuana plants. Uh, good job by the deputies, but I suggest even stronger, I should say more detailed report-writing on this. Otherwise, you could be very vulnerable on the chain of evidence …”

  He paused again. Chain of evidence. Reports. More paperwork, less detectiv
e work …

  “Re theft of farm equipment …”

  So it went, through the morning. And then, not so suddenly, it was lunchtime.

  23

  His back clammy and his legs weak (not so much from the little bit of walking he had done, but from tension), Willop was tempted to head back to the motel, take a hot shower, and down enough Scotch to fell a steer.

  Instead, he drove into Manning and found the sheriff’s office. He pulled into a visitor’s spot next to an empty space reserved, so the sign said, for Captain Stoker. My big-mouthed friend on the telephone, Willop thought. For some reason, seeing the name on the sign made it seem doubly familiar. Willop was pleased to see that the space next to Stoker’s, for Sheriff Fischer himself, was also empty.

  He sat in the car for a minute or more, trying to relax, trying to rehearse, trying to tell his conscience what he was about to attempt was for a good cause.

  What the hell, he thought finally. The law ain’t always played fair.

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “Hi. I wonder if I could see Sheriff Fischer.…” She was pretty, Willop thought, spotting the name tag that said BESTWICK. Gorgeous face, skin the color of a new penny, athletic figure.

  “I’m sorry, he’s not in. Someone else help you?”

  “Hmmm …” Willop frowned, feigning surprise and disappointment. “I was hoping to look at some old material, actually.…”

  “Well, who might you be?”

  “I might be Mr. James Willop, distinguished visitor from Yankeeland.”

  “Well, I might be too busy for your smart-ass games.” But she wasn’t, and she laughed. Then her eyes brightened and her smile faded. “You’re the one who called yesterday.”

  “The same.”

  “Well, Captain Stoker said that Sheriff Fischer himself has to okay that sort of thing.…”

  “Don’t make it sound so dirty.”

  That set off such a hearty, unself-conscious laugh that Willop liked her immensely. He would protect her all he could.…

  “Sheriff Fischer, he’s over to Sumter County, I think. I know he isn’t expected back till late this afternoon. If he makes it at all …”

  “How about the captain?”

  “He’s out on personal stuff. Won’t be back for a while, and before he does he always radios in. Like clockwork.”

  Good, Willop thought. He wasn’t ready yet for an encounter with Stoker—especially an unexpected one.

  “His father was the sheriff,” Willop said.

  “That’s right. You know him?”

  “No. But I did some homework before I came down here. Old newspaper clippings and such.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Yes, Willop thought. She was studying his face. Yes, she was sure now.…

  “They good to work with?” Willop asked. “Them honkies?”

  Bestwick smiled slyly. “Yeah, mostly they is. The sheriff, he a big fella. Tough as nails, when he want to be. Mostly nice though …”

  “Sort of a ‘Cool Hand Luke’ type maybe?”

  She started to laugh, then stifled it when the radio crackled. Picking up the microphone, she mumbled something indecipherable to Willop but apparently understandable to whoever was on the other end. She put the microphone down and turned back to him, laughing anew.

  “Funny thing,” she said, “is that Sheriff Fischer, he really do wear them funny sunglasses. Like mirrors. Awful funny-looking, them mirror glasses under that crew cut …”

  “Crew cut? No, come on. I mean, a crew cut?”

  Bestwick’s laugh showed malicious delight with just the tiniest touch of guilt.

  “Well, how about the captain?” Willop went on. “He pretty straight? I mean, comfortabe to work with …”

  Now, Bestwick’s laughter was at hip-slapping level, and she made no attempt at all to conceal her mirth. “He so straight, it almost like he got a ramrod up—”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “The captain, he about the most uncomfortable man I know.”

  “Gee, over the phone he sounded pretty easygoing. I mean …”

  “Shee-it.” Bestwick laughed some more.

  “Ah, I get it. I bet he tried to talk jive-talk to you. Am I right?”

  “He pretty good at that, all right.…”

  “I can tell. Seriously.”

  Willop let her laugh for a while. Then it was time for his move, win or lose. He pulled out the credentials Delmar Springs had given him and showed them to Bestwick, just long enough for her to see that they were official, or semi-official, but not long enough for her to examine them closely.

  “No bullshit,” Willop almost whispered. “I really need your help.”

  Bestwick put Willop in a small, windowless room at the end of a corridor. One wall was taken up by a blackboard, another by a cork bulletin board with various flyers and pictures and advisories. Willop sat in a stiff metal chair at a long table.

  Bestwick pushed open the door and set a small cardboard box in front of him. Willop smelled mold and dust.

  “Ain’t much there, I bet,” she said. “Don’t look like anybody bothered it for a long time.”

  “I’ll be careful of what’s here.”

  “You gotta promise me not to take nothin’ now, you hear?”

  “Promise.”

  “You lock the door. When I gotta chase you out, I’ll come and knock. If you ain’t gone by then.”

  “I might be. Thanks again.”

  Willop locked the door, hung his coat over the back of the chair, and took an ancient manila envelope out of the box and carefully opened it. The tips of his fingers felt dirty, whether from the age of the envelope or just his imagination he could not tell.

  “Clark-Ellerby homicide” had been scrawled in the upper left corner by—who? The sheriff at the time? His deputy?

  Willop slid the contents onto the tabletop, then shook the envelope gently, certain that more papers would come out. To his surprise, none did. Jesus, he thought. A case like that, and this is all there is? Willop had covered courts and had been through God knew how many case files. A criminal case of any gravity or complexity would generate hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages of police memoranda, photographs, indictments and superseding indictments, subpoenas, motions to quash subpoenas, motions to dismiss, trial transcripts, appeal motions—

  Oh, of course … no trial transcript. Simple enough … no appeal had ever been filed, and they fried the kid just a couple weeks after the trial, which only lasted a day anyhow, so no trial transcript. And this was in 1944.

  Damn, Willop thought. Things were a lot simpler then.…

  With his fingers he shifted the papers. There, for God’s sake, there was the same prison mug shot of Linus Bragg that Baker had shown him. God, look at him, Willop thought. A moment caught in time, long ago and yesterday.

  Kid, did you ever dream you’d be causing me so much grief?

  Willop found a note in ink on yellow lined paper: “Asked State Police to check suspicious traffic in and out of area since night before girls reported missing … nothing suspicious found … Old man name of Crooks (colored) says he believes one Linus Bragg is sufficiently mean.…” The note went on to say that Crooks’s account would be followed up.

  Seems like common sense, professional procedure, Willop thought grudgingly, acknowledging that the designation “Crooks (colored)” made the memo-writer no worse a bigot than anyone else at the time.

  Again, Willop slid papers around on the tabletop, uncovering several more photographs. Before he looked (he already knew what they were, they could be nothing else), he raised his eyes to the ceiling and took a deep breath.

  Willop had seen more than a few bodies at crime scenes and in wrecked cars, and he had seen many more photographs of bodies in various stages of decay—had seen enough of all that to face up to the fact that there was a certain attraction in horror, in evil. That he knew, and he was not ashamed of it, because he knew that it was part of the human condition
. Also because he had not lost the capacity to feel weak in the knees, and in the stomach.

  Jesus Christ. Every death scene had its own, unique horror. The picture of the little girls’ bodies next to the ditch, their hair and clothes still soaked, their glassy eyes—Jesus, those eyes!—made Willop sad. Could he even dare to have children with Moira if there was even the slightest chance of something like that happening to them?

  In other photographs, the girls lay nude on metal autopsy tables, their eyes the same: full of terror. The mouth of the older girl was half-open, almost as though the photograph had been taken while she was alive, the camera catching her lips in the act of forming a word. One of her bottom teeth was slightly out of line. Ah, poor kid. She should have had braces. Wonder if her folks were thinking about that, back then … Willop stared long at the autopsy pictures, his mind filling with sadness and futile pity.

  He looked again at the photograph of the death scene. Way off in a corner, out of focus, was a fender from a World War II–era truck. And on the left edge of the picture part of a man’s pant leg was visible, enough to show the full, floppy tailoring of the 1940s. Noticing those things made Willop feel better, reminding him that the horror he was looking at belonged, after all, in the long ago. Or most of it did. And if he was going to be any kind of investigator, he had better stuff his emotions in the closet.

  He checked the back of the murder-scene photograph. “Bodies shortly after discovery by Pvt. Luke Reddy of Natl. Guard on 3/29/44.” Willop took out a notebook and wrote down the name. Luke Reddy was likely long dead or long gone, but you never could tell.… Willop picked up a sheet of paper with the words “Autopsy Report” typed on top. Heights and weights of each victim … Cause of death “repeated blows to head by heavy instrument, causing numerous fractures and lacerations of brain …”

  A present-day autopsy report would almost certainly state exactly how many wounds on each body, and the depth and width of each, Willop thought.

  “No evidence of sexual violation …” And that’s it? Willop thought. No mention of what chemical tests were done, if any. A good defense lawyer today could tear this report to shreds. Hell, Willop could do the cross-examination himself: Doctor, would you say that the rest of your autopsy report is as thorough and detailed as your findings on possible sexual violation …?