Carolina Skeletons

by David Stout

  Stoker shook his head sadly. Willop was clearly out of his mind, on drugs, dead tired, or all of the above.

  “Bryant,” Stoker said, motioning for Fischer to join him in a corner. “I think we should seize the gasoline can on the porch. And I think we should look in the garage and check T.J. ’s car. See if the tires got any mud, then see if any tread marks from the road in front of Cody’s house match them tires.”

  “Jesus …” Fischer said.

  “And look through T.J.’s clothes. For seeds and burrs, like in the field where Cody was. And vacuum the house here, too.”

  “Uh, we got any probable cause, Junior?”

  “No. But we may have some pretty soon. Or I’ll get a warrant. One way or the other, we’ll toss this place. I just don’t want anything disturbed.”

  “Well, what will the gas can show?”

  “Nothing, maybe. But you can see T.J. hasn’t cut his grass lately. So if he bought a couple gallons of gas lately, and there’s a lot less than that in the can, that tells us something. Now, there ain’t that many gas stations around here, and people know who T. J. Campbell is. Gotta be someone who remembers selling him that gasoline …”

  “Which you think he used to set fire to Tyrone’s cabin.”

  Stoker shrugged. He walked the few steps to the easy chair and sat down, facing Willop.

  “What happens to me?” Willop said. “Not that I give a damn.” But he did.

  “Not sure yet. Menacing poor Judah Brickstone like that wasn’t too smart. Could be a high misdemeanor …”

  “The gun wasn’t loaded.”

  “Yeah, well he thought it was. Like to scared him shitless …” Junior paused, embarrassed by his unintended bad joke. “Them fancy credentials of yours notwithstanding, you got no right to run all over my county, getting information under false pretenses, trying to do the work of professional law men.”

  Willop chuckled, bitterly. “You ‘professional law men’ hadn’t done much with this case in over forty years,” he said.

  “True enough,” Stoker said. “And since you arrived we got two dead people here.”

  Willop was getting some of his energy back, enough to know he didn’t want to go to prison for the rest of his life. Or go to the chair, like Linus …

  “Listen,” Willop said, “I didn’t kill anybody.…”

  “We know you went to see Cody, and Tyrone, along with Brickstone.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “You had plenty of reason to kill Cody, seeing as how you think he railroaded your uncle.…”

  “So? How about Tyrone. Why would I kill a pathetic old Uncle Tom?”

  “Because you were mad at him for not coming forward sooner,” Stoker said, testing. But his own words didn’t ring true. “You could have come to us. Should have, with your information.…”

  “Yeah, well, I thought about it. Then I thought the better of it.”

  “Were you prepared to kill T.J.?” Stoker asked. On a hunch, he went over to the closet.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “’cause if you weren’t, and we hadn’t showed up, you could be dead.” Junior took the shotgun out of the closet, broke open the barrels, and caught the shells in his palm. His dad had told him to always play his hunches.

  “Jesus,” Willop shuddered. “How’d you know?”

  “I’m a professional law man,” Stoker said. “We ain’t fools, you know.”

  There was a shuffling noise from the other room.

  “Steady,” a deputy said, then led T. J. Campbell out and looked uncertainly at Stoker.

  “We’ll need to have T.J. come along and give us a full account,” Stoker said.

  “He wants to go to the bathroom,” the deputy said.

  “It’s his house,” Stoker said. A moment after Campbell went into the bathroom, Stoker said to the deputy, “Listen close. Don’t let him open a medicine chest.”

  Overhearing, Willop looked into Stoker’s face and smiled. “You’re thinking about what I said,” Willop said, feeling a weight fall off his chest.

  Stoker did his best to keep his face expressionless. A moment later, there was the sound of a toilet flushing, and T. J. Campbell emerged from the bathroom, stooped and pale.

  “Guess we’re finished up here, Bryant,” Stoker said. “Let’s seal this place up and get going.”

  Willop was handcuffed (“Don’t try anything, and you’ll be treated just fine,” Stoker told him) and put in the backseat of a patrol car next to a deputy. Campbell, supported by Fischer and another deputy, was put in another car. God, he looks old and tired, Stoker thought.

  Junior drove clumsily for the first few minutes; part of it was the adrenaline he was still feeling from the guns-drawn facedown with Willop, and part of it was simple awkwardness. He didn’t know what to say to Willop.

  “Not very goddamn smart,” Junior said to Willop at last, “coming down here and waving a gun under people’s noses …”

  Willop said nothing.

  “’Course, I guess you figure you had plenty of reasons,” Junior ventured.

  “You read me my warnings,” Willop said. “Is this off the record?”

  “ ‘Off the record.’ So, you used to be in the newspaper business?” Junior looked in the mirror, saw that Willop was startled that he knew.

  “Oh, yeah,” Junior went on. “I know you used to be a reporter. Once we got our act together, we did some pretty good checking on you.”

  They rode in silence for several minutes, the deputy sitting stiffly next to Willop. Finally, Willop said, “What’s the outlook for me? I mean, as far as charges. Seems like it should count for something if I uncovered some facts you didn’t know about.…”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Junior Stoker said. Which was the truth.

  By the time Stoker pulled into his regular parking space, Fischer and the other deputy were leading T. J. Campbell into the building. Campbell seemed to need their support.

  “Bryant,” Stoker hollered as he got out of his car. “Let T.J. rest on that cot in the room at the end of the hall.” Fischer nodded and waved.

  Stoker led Willop through the door, past Bestwick, who had just come on duty and looked, Stoker thought, oddly startled, and down the corridor to his office.

  “Captain, you want me in there with you?” a deputy asked hesitantly.

  “No,” Stoker said. “Uncuff him. I’ll be all right.”

  Willop sat in the chair that Stoker indicated, rubbed his wrists, and studied the white walls and fluorescent lighting.

  “I never killed anybody,” Willop said. “I’m not even sure I could.”

  “Oh, you could,” Stoker said. “Trust me on that. A lot of decent people kill, as well as those not so decent.”

  “Never even fired that gun,” Willop said. “Hey! You can run tests and prove that for yourself.”

  “Sure we can,” Stoker said. “That’ll only show you didn’t kill anybody with that gun.”

  “Even so …”

  “How come you didn’t come right to me from the start?” Stoker said. “How come you had to play detective yourself? Maybe you really were interested in killing.…”

  Willop laughed, bitterly. “You have any idea how black people feel about the law in the South? Even today? I mean, Jesus Christ, Stoker …” Willop reminded himself who Stoker’s father was.

  “Well, times change,” Stoker said. “We got col—black people working here. Try to treat them the same …”

  “Do you remember?” Willop said. “Remember the killings? And the execution?”

  “Remember?” Stoker chuckled mirthlessly. “I’m the sheriff’s son. I remember when it happened, remember driving over to Columbia with the boy … My daddy stopped and bought him a chocolate bar and a Bible. You know that? Not that he had to or anything. He just did. Good man, my daddy …”

  “You remember the execution?” Willop pressed.

  “Watched it, for God’s sake. Only one I ever saw, o
nly one I ever wanted to see. Had nightmares about it for a long time afterward. That and—” Stoker stopped; his feelings were too full, and he didn’t want to share them with Willop.

  “How was he, right at the end?”

  “Good as can be expected, and that’s the truth. Walked in and sat down, carrying that Bible. Think he was doped up a bit, maybe. When they shot the juice to him, his face came out.…”

  Stoker didn’t want to say any more, and Willop didn’t want to hear any more about that.

  “They say my uncle confessed. You really think those are his words? You really think a black kid, a nigger kid, used those words back then?” Willop said.

  “The sheriff paraphrased, kind of,” Stoker said.

  Willop tried to keep his contempt from showing.

  “But my daddy never beat any confession out of anyone,” Stoker said. “And that is the goddamn truth.”

  Got to be careful, Willop thought. Jesus, yes, be careful. I am in the middle of nowhere in the middle of South Carolina.…

  “Can I ask you something?” Willop said. “Just hypothetically. Assume, just for a second, that I didn’t kill Cody. Then do you think Cody was killed, by whoever did it, because he was going after the truth, like a good law man? Or was he trying to blackmail somebody? He had a copy of the whole case file, photographs and all, in his trunk. And—”

  Willop stopped himself. He had been about to mention that Cody’s trunk held something the original case file didn’t, but he didn’t want Stoker to know Bestwick had shown the file to him.

  “I don’t deal much in hypothetical stuff. Leave that to the lawyers. Tell you this much, Cody was a funny duck in some ways. Not the easiest guy. But I can see him being on the right side in this. Might be he was always suspicious of T.J., and T.J. knew it, and figured he had to kill him once he’d done away with Tyrone. Long as we’re talking about hypothetical stuff. Anyhow, Dex was a law man, straight and true, in his time.”

  “In his time …”

  “All you can ask of anybody. That he be good in the time he lives. Back when my daddy was the sheriff, people thought a lot different about things. Here, sure, but other places too.” Stoker thought of his father in his prime, and was proud. “Don’t forget. My daddy didn’t have fancy computers and stuff like we do today.”

  Suddenly, Willop felt like he had been stripped naked. “So you know everything about me?” he asked.

  “Never know everything about anybody. But we know a lot. How the family moved to Newark, New Jersey. How your other uncle, Will, was killed in the riots up there in ’sixty-seven …”

  “Family never had a chance,” Willop said softly. “Their folks, they died young. Never the same after …”

  Stoker wanted to be gentle. “I’ve seen it,” he said. “Seen how bad things follow some folks. It’s the truth. Sometimes hard luck follows families around. Seems like if a bad thing happens, other things …” Stoker bit his lip; some of his own memories were intruding.

  His soul naked, Willop asked, “You know about all the rest? I mean, my mother …?”

  “We know about her being killed.”

  “Jesus …”

  “And your father running off.”

  “My step-father, you mean.”

  Stoker was embarrassed, almost ashamed.

  “You know the rest,” Willop said.

  “We know about her, your mom, being raped near Fort Dix, New Jersey, yes. The name came up when we punched in …”

  Now Willop wanted to get it over with. If he said it quickly, he might be able to do it without breaking down. “Always bothered me, not knowing exactly who my father was,” he said, then took a deep breath. “One of them five or six white guys. Can’t really be sure.”

  Stoker stood and turned away, an intruder on someone else’s grief.

  “Hey,” Willop hissed, “suppose she’d been a white woman raped by a bunch of nigger soldiers. Think maybe there woulda been a trial then?”

  “Could be,” Stoker said. He owed him that much, at least.

  The phone rang. “Captain,” Bestwick said, “Sheriff Fischer wanted me to find out if you need any sandwiches and coffee?”

  “How do you like your coffee?” Stoker said to Willop.

  “Black,” Willop said. “Naturally.”

  “Couple black coffees,” Stoker said into the phone. “And ham, tuna, anything.”

  Stoker hung up, sat down again, looked at Willop. “Never had a case quite like this,” he said.

  “Hey, Captain. There’s just two of us in this little room right now. What do you think happened? I mean, that day the girls were killed.”

  “I’ll be goddamned if I know, goddamned if anybody ever will.”

  “We both know he didn’t get any kind of trial.…”

  “Well, at least he got a trial,” Stoker said, defending his father.

  “Right, right. Okay …”

  “Today, well, a lot of things would be different. I’d never want the chair for someone that young, you want to know the truth. Not sure I’d want it for anybody …”

  Outside, the corridor suddenly clattered with sounds of footsteps, pushing, shoving … something. The door to Stoker’s office flew open and Bryant Fischer’s face appeared, not tough and hard, but a way Junior had never seen it. Heartsick.

  “God, Junior, I’m sorry. T.J. must’ve taken some pills in his house. Snuck ’em in the bathroom, I guess. Jesus, and we were watching …”

  “Get a doctor,” Stoker said matter-of-factly.

  “On the way. Jesus, I’m sorry …”

  As if in a dream, Junior saw a stretcher bearing T. J. Campbell, blanket-wrapped, only his face showing, being wheeled by. Eyes closed, head to one side, skin blue-gray …

  No need to hurry, Stoker thought.

  38

  Stoker arranged for Willop’s rented car to be returned because he, Stoker, wanted to see Willop get on the plane. Part of it was simply courtesy; then, too, having used some discretionary powers to see that Willop wouldn’t be charged with anything, Stoker wanted to watch him leave his jurisdiction. And there were things he wanted to say to him, or at least try to say.

  Sitting in the car next to Stoker, Willop felt empty. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here at all,” he said. “Three people dead who wouldn’t be if I’d stayed home.”

  “Not your doing,” Stoker said.

  “Yeah, well whose then?”

  “T. J. Campbell’s. T.J. died by his own hand. Tyrone … well, poor old Tyrone, he’d be alive if he’d trusted in the law a bit more. Come to us instead …” Stoker stopped talking when he heard Willop’s quiet, bitter laugh.

  “Yeah, I know,” Stoker said. “Too much to expect a poor old black guy to trust in the law much …”

  “Yeah, it is. After Selma and Birmingham, it is.…”

  Stoker was about to say that Selma and Birmingham were a long time ago, but he stopped himself. With all that had just happened, they didn’t seem that long ago.

  “You know any Catholics?” Stoker asked.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I’ve known some. The serious ones, especially the priests, they sometimes talk about the Sorrowful Mysteries. Hell, I don’t even remember what that means. But I never forgot the term. Sometimes it seems to sum life up pretty good. Like today.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Just did.”

  They rode past gently sloping farmland. Occasionally, they passed a general store or a small gas station.

  “Pretty in a way, ain’t it?” Stoker said. “Same way we came back then, with your uncle. Whenever I’m not too rushed, I like to take this way, instead of the interstate. Makes me feel more part of the countryside. For better or worse. Am I making any sense?”

  “Part of the countryside?”

  “I mean, not that I have any definite feelings on religion or anything, but the older a guy gets, the more he wants to feel a part of things, sort of.…”

  Junior Stoker r
emembered some of his father’s awkwardness with words and was ashamed; he was no better.

  More and more, Willop sensed Stoker’s vulnerability. “You married?”

  “Separated. My job kind of got in the way, not that it was the only thing. We have a son, Thomas. He’s never been well.…”

  “Well, I guess I owe you,” Willop said. “For not jumping to too many conclusions. And you might have saved my life.”

  “My job.”

  “Yeah, well, you did it right.”

  “Seems like you must be a hell of a reporter.”

  “That’s what Moira says when she’s trying to encourage me—”

  Moira! God, she must be worried sick. He would call her from the airport. So much to tell her …

  Stoker made an unexpected turn, so abruptly that Willop thought it was on a whim.

  “Someone I’d like you to meet,” Stoker said.

  * * *

  Junior Stoker knocked.

  “Come right in,” a woman’s voice said. “The sheriff’s just finishing his lunch.”

  “Hi, old sheriff,” Junior said. “I brought along a visitor.”

  Willop stepped into the room and looked at the man—old, frail, skin shiny and tight across the face—who, probably more than anyone, had sent his uncle to the electric chair.

  “Uhhnn …” the sheriff said, raising his hand from the chair slightly.

  Willop took the hand, gently, and shook it.

  “Hello,” Willop said softly. He could not hate this man.

  “My dad, he used to be the best damn sheriff in the state,” Junior said. “Fair shake for everybody, and nobody gave him any shit. Ain’t that right, old fella?”

  “Uhhnnn …”

  “That woman who just left, old Dad doesn’t care for her,” Stoker whispered to Willop. “Lets his soup get cold, talks down to him without meaning to.”

  “Uhnnn …” Sheriff Hiram Stoker was annoyed. He didn’t want his son telling his private business to a stranger (who was he, anyhow?), and besides, his son had not yet apologized properly for not having understood him during his last visit.

  “Right, Dad,” Stoker said. “I should have paid more attention. That what you’re trying to tell me? I admit it.”

  “Uhnn …” The apology out of the way, the sheriff wanted an explanation. What had it all meant, his son Junior asking about T. J. Campbell? Why, he, Sheriff Hiram Stoker, had checked into that just last— Oh, no. Longer ago …