Carolina Skeletons

by David Stout

  Is that what you’re trying to tell me, child?

  Across the years, Cindy Lou’s heartbreaking death face stared back.

  “Bless you, Cindy Lou,” Willop whispered to the empty room. “Hope you were able to give him a real good chomp.”

  Willop slipped out of the room. When he passed Bestwick, he pointed toward the room to tell her the file was still there and nodded his thanks.

  30

  There were few things better in the world than a good, hot shower. Plenty of soap—good, pure lavender aroma—and plenty of warm water to relax the muscles, take away the tension inside, too.

  A good, hot shower could even make him forget nasty things that happened a long time ago, some going back to when he was a boy and some to … later on.

  In his bedroom, he put on a clean pair of work jeans and a clean flannel shirt. He liked the feel of jeans and flannel, loose, comfortable. A man could feel relaxed.

  His bedroom was a private place, very private. The walls were cedar-paneled; they were not only handsome to look at but smelled good. His bed was narrow and compact; no need for a big one, and he didn’t toss and turn much. He used queen-size sheets, though, because they could be tucked in real, real tight at the bottom and along the sides. He liked the feeling of the bed tucked in real tight. It made him feel … safe.

  In one corner of the room stood a low, dark cabinet, and on top of the cabinet was a small refrigerator. The cabinet held bottles of whiskey, brandy, and wine, and the refrigerator held beer and soft drinks; in the freezer section there were several containers of ice cream. He got a kick out of it, whenever he thought how luxurious and personal he had made his bedroom. Those folks who imagined he didn’t know how to have fun … ha!

  Next to the cabinet and refrigerator stood his easy chair. It was positioned just right, so that he could reach into the refrigerator or cabinet and hardly have to move. Best of all, the chair faced the wall over the bed, faced it exactly right for the times he tacked up a sheet to watch a slide show.

  The windows had black shades, so that he could give himself a slide show with very little trouble. He had a big-screen television set, too, and a video-cassette recorder, which he used sometimes to tape football games. The hitting was good to watch, and he sometimes ran the same play over and over. Just as much fun were the shots of the cheerleaders. He loved to run them over and over, back and forth, slowing up the tape, sometimes stopping it, so that he could look for as long as he wanted. In that way, he did possess them, almost.…

  Sometimes he watched men’s tapes. He didn’t mind driving all the way over to Columbia to get them; he didn’t want people around Manning knowing what he watched.

  The television and VCR were a godsend. Years before, he had had to create the scenes he wanted in his own mind, using the town girls as props. Years before, whenever he would play one of those scenes in his mind, he would try as hard as he could to slow it down, to savor it. But he always hurried too much near the end, to get to the hitting.…

  He no longer bothered playing such scenes in his mind. He had outgrown them. And the girls he had used in the scenes, those who had stayed around Manning, had all gotten fat anyhow. So he ended up with the last laugh. Why, some of their children were prettier to look at. Yes, some of their children …

  He frowned at the memory of a mistake he had made. He had invited a little girl to his room—for ice cream and a slide show. She had made a fuss, had started to cry for no reason, no reason at all, only because he had gotten tongue-tied and maybe said a couple of things he hadn’t meant to.…

  That had been a mistake, all right. She had calmed down, once he gave her a ride back to the playground. Nothing had happened, so there was nothing for her to cry about. But it had been a mistake.…

  Another mistake had been bringing that woman to his room. Well, she was the one who had made the real big mistake. When he met her in Columbia, she was willing enough—no, eager—to come with him, all friendly like, after taking the money. She had taken a drink and seemed interested in watching a slide show. He hadn’t minded, too much, when she chuckled at him staying in the bathroom, getting ready.

  What had done it was her asking why there were no mirrors in his bedroom. Because I have one over the sink in the bathroom, and I don’t need one in the bedroom to look at myself, he had said, puzzled at the question.

  She had laughed at that. Laughed louder and louder and not stopped. Making fun. Well, he had had the last laugh, that was for sure. He did not feel the least bit sorry for her. She had brought it on herself.…

  He decided to relax a little before treating himself to a show. First he tacked the sheet up over the bed, then he pulled down the black shades. There, the little tasks were done (setting up the slides in the tray, that was fun, not work), and so he sat down in the easy chair. There …

  What to have? He was not thirsty enough for a beer.… Whiskey? No … Maybe a glass of brandy. Yes, that was just the thing. Having only to shift his sitting position a little, he reached into the cabinet, took out the bottle of brandy and a big glass, and poured himself some.

  He loved how the brandy felt, in his throat and nose, in his stomach, right down to his toes. In his very blood, even. He thought of it as a fire burning on a river; it was like the brandy set his blood on fire.

  It was certainly a good thing to have before a slide show.…

  He sipped the brandy slowly, slowly, deliberately putting off the pleasure of the slides. Pleasure delayed was all the more enjoyable. The brandy made him feel warm.…

  Time for a slide show! Now, where was Florence? Out, probably. Yes, she was, he remembered. Just as well; he was not really in the mood tonight to cuddle the old cat on his lap.

  He had to reach down into the cabinet, behind the bottles, to get out the two boxes. One box was black; it held the ordinary pictures—of fields and roads and woods and streams and fences and cows and blue skies. Regular pictures, some taken by him and others just slides he had picked up here and there.

  The other box was red. It held slides taken (almost all of them) by him, mainly with a zoom lens.

  The trick was to decide how many slides from the black box and how many from the red box to arrange on the slide tray. Usually, he liked to use about one red-box slide to every four black-box slides. That way, there was just the right amount of suspense.

  He counted out the black-box slides, then carefully pulled out one-fourth as many red-box slides. He had to be careful, because he pulled out the red-box slides without looking at them. He had come to know them by heart, and if he knew in advance which ones were going into the tray, and where, it would take away some of the fun.

  He shuffled the slides carefully, not looking, so the ones from the black box and those from the red box were mixed. Then carefully, carefully, still not looking, he arranged the slides in the circular tray. There, all ready for the show.

  He got himself all set with a full glass of brandy—the fire in his blood was warm and good—and turned out the lights.

  Click. A cow grazing, over near Sumter.

  Click. Old mansion, way over near Charleston.

  Click. Just a sky over a field.

  Click. Buildings in Columbia, nothing special at all.

  Breathing hard, he paused. Now, figuring the law of averages, the next slide up ought to be one from the red box, since the first four had been from the black box. But you never knew, you never knew.…

  Click. Just a farmer on a tractor, way off the road.

  He paused again, sipping. He had to laugh at himself, he was feeling so excited, not knowing. But that was the whole point. He was almost sure the next one up …

  Click. A fireworks stand by the road. He laughed again. All right …

  Click. Oh, yes. There, there, there. That one. Playground picture, taken from far away with the zoom lens, her going down the slide, smiling, not caring that her legs, all of her legs, were showing, and why should she, she did not know. Hmmm …

&nbs
p; Click. The bridge over Lake Marion.

  Click. Oh! His favorite of all, the one on the teeter-totter. Dark eyes, raven-black hair, dress blowing up just a little. Oh …

  Click. Old dappled horse, looking at him and nibbling grass.

  He let his body slump deep in the chair. Once in a great while, he would back up, go back to a slide that was especially good. The teeter-totter one was his favorite, but he didn’t want to hold up the rest of the show.

  The thumping on the front door startled him.

  His house was shaped so that he could look out one bedroom window and see the front door. He pulled the shade back just a little.…

  Well, I’ll be damned. What brings him here?

  31

  Two sheriff’s department cars and an ambulance were parked by the road when Stoker got to the Cody farm. Sheriff Bryant Fischer was waiting for him, mirrored sunglasses in place and sleeves rolled up to show hairy, fencepost-thick forearms. The kind of sheriff the old man would approve of, Stoker thought.

  “Old Dex, who would have thought it?” Stoker said, getting out of his car.

  “Don’t know too much,” Fischer said. “Wife found him. Out all night, apparently. She thought he’d walked over the hill to drink and play cards yesterday, after going crow hunting. Which he did almost every day.”

  “How long ago did she find him?”

  “Less than an hour. We’re taking plenty of pictures. Lab team and coroner on the way. Looks like he was chasing a bird and tripped. Shotgun went off under him as he fell. Blew away a good part of his head.”

  Stoker said nothing, but he was already puzzled.

  Fischer led him through tall grass, and Stoker felt a hint of the hay fever he had had occasionally as a child.

  The body lay in a clearing near a creek. The corpse was face down, legs stretched out. Around the head a puddle of blood had soaked into the ground. Stoker could see the butt of the shotgun protruding from beneath the corpse; the muzzle was concealed.

  “You done some hunting, Bryant. Anything look funny to you?”

  “Well, I ain’t thought to look for anything funny yet, to be honest.…” Fischer’s voice betrayed embarrassment, which Stoker would try to soothe.

  “Tell you what I mean,” Stoker said. “Just came from a visit to my daddy. Kind of reminds me, when he was sheriff he always said, knowing I wanted to be a law man, to use common sense, start off looking for the obvious and know when to look a little deeper.”

  “What you see?”

  “You done some hunting, Bryant. As have I. As did old Dexter here. One of the first things you learn is how to carry a gun so you won’t shoot yourself if you fall. Now, it would have been pretty damn tough for him to fall that way, the gun right under him—”

  “If he’d been carrying that shotgun the way an experienced hunter probably would.”

  Stoker was glad Fischer had caught his drift fast enough to finish his thought. “And if he’d been running after something, all the more likely the gun would have landed way out in front of him, assuming he tripped,” Stoker said.

  “Come to think of it, Cody was too practiced a hunter to be running and carrying a loaded shotgun.”

  “There you go. Too old to do much running, for that matter. And why would he? This here’s crow season. Old Dex, he just shot ’em for practice. Hell, he wouldn’t run after a quail, even.”

  “Damn suspicious thing. I don’t recall the last homicide around here.”

  “Well, I guess we don’t want to jump to any conclusions. Could be an accident. Wouldn’t be the first time an accident didn’t seem to make sense. Hell, that’s why they call ’em accidents.”

  Fischer frowned and got down on one knee. “Look here,” he said, using a pencil to point. “For this kind of damage, he would have had to carry the damn gun real, real low. Hard to imagine …”

  Stoker turned away. “Do me a favor and don’t turn him over till I’m gone,” he said.

  “We’ll run a check on his card-playing buddies,” Fischer said. “Make sure they can prove where they been and all …”

  “Right.” As he suppressed a sneeze, Stoker had another idea, though he wanted to avoid the appearance of meddling. He remembered how his father had chafed at state police interference. And now I’m on the other side, Stoker thought, not without humor.

  “And we’ll take some plaster casts on the road out front there,” Fischer said. “Off chance some tire prints will show up.”

  Stoker finally sneezed. Then he looked down at his shoes and pant cuffs. Dust stuck to his shoes and, amid the laces and on his cuffs, clung scores of tiny burrs and seeds. “Know what, Bryant. We should have the boys take some samples of the grass and burrs and seeds and whatnot around here. Put ’em in those plastic envelopes.”

  “In case we make an arrest and find a pair of pants with burrs and such.”

  “You got it.”

  Stoker heard laughter coming from below, down near the road. He looked to see two men coming up the hill, carrying a stretcher. They were chuckling, chatting amiably, probably enjoying being outdoors. And, Stoker had to admit, it was a lovely day to be outdoors. But it bothered him, the laughter in the presence of death.

  “Do me a favor and ride back to headquarters with me, Bryant. I’ll wait for you by the road.”

  Stoker was quiet on the ride back. His mind had more than it could handle.

  “How’s your daddy?” Fischer asked.

  “Oh, pretty good. You know how it is. Most of the time I think he’s all there. Ain’t getting any younger.”

  “Don’t know anybody who is. Hell of a man, your daddy …”

  Fischer was quiet for a while, perhaps sensing that Stoker needed the quiet. Stoker was grateful.

  Stoker took a shortcut on the way back to headquarters, going down a seldom-used dirt road, and saw a pickup truck parked next to an abandoned house. “Don’t that beat all,” Stoker said. “I remember that house from when I was a kid. Don’t recall anybody living in it then, truth to tell, and that ain’t yesterday.…”

  Coming closer, they saw that a bulldozer was poised at one corner of the structure. As Stoker slowed to watch, the machine coughed and roared and leaned into the house. Wood snapped, metal shrieked. The bulldozer backed off, readying for another assault, as the house sagged.

  “My daddy and me, we used to drive by that,” Stoker said. “Now they get around to tearing it down. Tell you, Bryant, things move slow around here.” Stoker drove on, glancing once more in the mirror at the bulldozer and house. Something ticked in his head. His daddy had always told him to play his hunches.

  “Know what, Bryant? We should run a check on any prisoners getting out recently after long terms. I mean, ones who might’ve been sent up ’cause of Dex. And damned if I’m not gonna get out the old files to look through the cases he worked on.”

  As soon as Stoker opened the door to his office, he smelled the dust from the files. There they were, lying on his desktop, just as he had asked the clerk: two long cardboard boxes and one shorter one. Slips of paper chronicling mischief and misery and death from bygone years.

  Stoker saw the clerk’s note on top of one of the boxes:

  Captain, here are the files on cases Dexter Cody investigated. The first box covers 1950 through 1954, the second ’55 through ’59, and the last 1960 and part of ’61, when he retired. Earlier than 1950, you have to go to the basement files.

  He started with the latest files, pulling the manila envelopes out of the long boxes and spreading the contents out on his desk, piece by piece. The papers consisted of everything from indictments, complete with seals and official language, to pink slips of paper saying that an assistant prosecutor had returned the call of an assistant public defender at a certain hour, and so on.

  There was a certain sameness to most of the files (few had to do with truly serious crimes), and yet as Stoker worked back in time, the differences became apparent. Drug cases, for instance, were relatively common near t
he front of the files. But as Stoker’s thumbs and fingers traced through the months and years, getting dirty gray in the process, there were fewer and fewer of them.

  Stoker dialed Bryant Fischer’s extension.

  “Sheriff Fischer.”

  “Bryant, did old Dex ever have anything to do with drugs? You ever hear anything like that?”

  “Oh, hell no. Shit, he retired before drugs were much known around here. No, hell no.”

  “Well, anything new from the coroner?”

  “Talked to him not ten minutes ago. May be a while, he says, before he has anything definite. If ever.”

  “If ever?”

  “Well, could end up cause undetermined, probably accident. I mean, we may not be looking at something that’ll ever be satisfied one way or the other.…”

  “Hmmm. All the same, it does seem strange. Guy hunts all his life … Listen, good-bye for now. I’m going through old case files. Just for the hell of it.”

  Stoker’s thumbs and fingers went back to work. The older cases carried routine references to “Negro,” none to “black.” Back a few more years and the paperwork was thinner: fewer references to pre-trial motions and hearings, no mention whatever of public defenders. Race was mentioned so openly as to be almost startling. Here was a prosecutor questioning three young blacks about a stolen car (“Now one of you boys may get a free ride in this case and the other two are going to prison. You boys decide who’s gonna do what.…”).

  And no interference from a defense lawyer, Stoker thought. Defense lawyer? Oh, hell no. Way before Miranda, before Gideon even. No wonder.

  So many names. Some popped up time and again, either as witnesses or defendants. Troublemakers. Some had died, some had moved away, taking their trouble-making to some other cops. Some had just gotten older. Some had even stopped making trouble.

  Stoker’s back felt stiff. A waste of time? No. His father never thought hunches were a waste of time. Ah, good old man. You were all right in your day, good old man. It was Stoker’s version of a prayer.