Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3)

by Thomas Hollyday

  “Like you say, except for those two women getting killed,” said Harry, nodding. He looked back at Catch and the sheriff as they drank their beers and ogled Francine’s dance.

  Lulu came up to the table and said to Harry, “My sister Peggy, she knew Walker John, used to think right much of him too. He fixed her boat all the time.”

  Senator added, “I remember the smell of the burned out buildings.”

  “Folks say it was like a cloud of stink come over the town,” said Marty Sol, throwing in his cards. “Like these cards.”

  As Harry was leaving the bar later, Lulu came up to him.

  “Charleston let you take all his money again,” she said.

  “First lawyer I ever met who likes to lose.”

  “You home later?” she smiled. She was referring to the small rental cottage he had taken on the shore of a backwater creek outside of town.

  He looked into her eyes. He liked Lulu but a long memory of knowing beautiful women like her made him wary about starting something he might not be able to finish.

  “I’ve got to work on an article tonight,” he said with a smile. Charleston had stirred Harry’s curiosity with his comments. He had to think about Walker’s story, where he should go with it and what he should try to find out. As a reporter he knew that would take his full attention if he was going to do the job right. He also had to keep in mind that whoever left the threatening note on his van windshield earlier this evening would not stop with just delivering a piece of paper.

  Chapter 4

  Thursday July 30, 8 AM

  Harry had barely entered his office when the phone began to ring. Annie waved to him from her cluttered desk and picked up the phone.

  “New York,” she said, her eyes wide as she handed the phone to Harry.

  “Harry, I need some help,” came a familiar New York voice, that of his former boss, Spotswood.

  “Anything,” said Harry.

  “One of my guys gave me something about a Walker John murder case down your way,” came the reply. “Is it true that the wreck of the boat used in the escape was found and that he might still be at large?”

  “I was going to call you about it,” said Harry.

  “Black guy, white town. I need a photo of that boat for starters,” said the wheedling voice that Harry knew so well. “Harry, I’m surprised. I find out about this good story from other people and yet you are right there.” The voice paused, then said with authority, “You get me some photos, all right?”

  Annie interrupted and when he covered the phone mouthpiece, she said, “Marty Sol just called and said that Sheriff Good is having a press conference in ten minutes at his office.”

  Harry nodded and went back to his call. “Give me some time to get the facts together,” he said, putting off his old boss.

  “You’re not going to let me down, Harry? Send it to any of the other editors?” asked Spotswood, with the same wheedling tone.

  “Don’t worry,” Harry said.

  After he hung up Annie smiled at him. “Are you going to let Spotswood have the story?” she asked. “We could get a byline in New York, Harry, and the paper could sure use the money.”

  She added, “Photo shop called and said the pictures are good. You’re a pretty good photographer. You got the name clearly in focus on the wreck.”

  “First I want you to do some research for me,” he said.

  “What do you need?”

  “The picture of the boys who found the boat. We’ll need their full names for the caption. All I got is WeeJay, Chuckie and Steve,” Harry said.

  She looked up from the pad on which she was writing. “You didn’t know?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “WeeJay is the nephew of Walker John Douglas. His last name is Douglas. His mother is Walker’s younger sister,” she said.

  He nodded. This did help him understand the boy’s interest in the discovery, the excitement Harry could sense when WeeJay was talking out at the police blockade in the swamp.

  She hesitated then asked, “What about New York?”

  He shook his head and didn’t say anything as he left the office for the sheriff’s press conference. If he discovered an insight into the story, he wanted to keep it for himself. New York would get the story anyway. The press conference would insure that. He wanted to keep his own independence. Spotswood would see only the money to be made, the copies to be printed and sold, the television segments. He was fed up with that kind of reporting. He had a chance to write Walker’s story without any angles, the kind of angles that made a story popular. If he let Annie sell his story, he knew from past experience with Spotswood that he would lose control of it.

  He stopped and said, “You watch out.”

  “Why?”

  He told her about the note he received last night.

  “I told you things would start up around here,” she said.

  “You scared?”

  “I‘ll let you know,” she said.

  Harry walked fast to get to the Courthouse. Spotswood was definitely a very wise newspaperman. He was asking himself the same questions that Harry had asked, the same questions that the public would wonder about. What happened to the guy? If by some weird chance this Douglas fellow is still out there, how did he get away with it all these years?

  Cheeks was at the door to his office, reading the reporter identification cards, his lips moving slowly, eyes going from card to face and back again. He had large sweat stains under his shoulders which were expanding down the sides of his gray uniform shirt. A small line of reporters, men and women from Baltimore and Philadelphia papers and television, had formed impatiently in line at a doorway while Cheeks stood by the portal and continued his processing. Then, once approved with a glance from the sheriff, each turned sideways to squeeze by Cheeks’ bulk. The female reporters were forced to brush their chests against his. Harry was used to a kidding attitude on the part of news people, but here, around Cheeks, was a tension, a deference. Except for one, Peterson, who the sheriff greeted by name. He was a sharp faced writer from the Baltimore Sun, dressed in a wrinkled seersucker suit and white shirt, known by Harry to be a brassy outspoken type on the crime desk, who looked hard at the sheriff as he went into the room. Cheeks in turn kept his eyes away from the man, carefully scanning Peterson’s document and handing it back without comment. This led Harry to wonder if Sheriff Good had any answers or if he did, whether he would share them with the press.

  The sheriff’s office smelled of sweat and mold. Chairs for twenty or so had been set up in rows in front of his desk. Harry sat in the back and waited. Captain Robert Stiles sat to the side, hands in his lap, his face impassive. He was the town chief of police and supervised the town constable force, men and women who handled traffic and local drug and domestic problems. He basically reported to the sheriff on any larger matters that took in the whole county. Stiles didn’t stand out in the local law enforcement community. He had grown up with Sheriff Good, had held his police job for most of his life, was balding and nearly sixty, preferred to spend most of his time running his crab and oystering business, and essentially let Sheriff Good handle the town politics.

  Chairs rustled as the reporters sat down, turned on their recorders and portable computers, and prepared to ask their questions. Sheriff Good loomed forward over his desk. Harry noticed several autographed photos of race boat drivers on the walls mounted in between the racked rifles and shotguns. A scale model of a racing boat with exhausts arranged like the one that Harry had seen pulled from the swamp was on the front of the desk next to several folded copies of the Wall Street Journal. Most interesting though was a small card table to the side, the one that Annie had told Harry about. It was covered with a white sheet which hid lump like shapes.

  As the room grew quiet, a young reporter in blue Polo shirt and shorts sitting in the front row raised his hand, and called out, “Was the boat you found the same as the escape boat used by Walker John Douglas?” Before he could
answer, the telephone rang and the sheriff answered it, talking quickly in a voice too low to be heard. When he finally hung up the phone, he signaled to one of the newsmen at the edge of the room to shut the outside door. As the door closed, several others raised and waved their hands.

  Finally looking at the man in the polo shirt, the sheriff said, “I can tell you that we’ve just been offered the assistance of the State Police in looking into the Walker John Douglas case. With the River Sunday town police also committed, we’ll have a pretty good size team working on this investigation around the State of Maryland over the next few weeks.”

  “Did the boat belong to the killer?” the original questioner repeated, his eyes narrowing as he spoke.

  “Yes, it did. That we can be sure of,” answered the sheriff, his mouth trying to smile but the lines of his lips lost in the fat of his face.

  “Does that mean the killer fooled the police?” the reporter persisted.

  The sheriff hesitated, his forehead wrinkling, then he said, “You might say the killer fooled us, that we were smoked. I’d like to think that all of us in those days were so glad to think that this fugitive was gone, drowned dead, that we congratulated ourselves a little too soon, that is, without actually finding his body.”

  “Could you describe the condition of the boat?” asked an older woman dressed in white slacks and silk blouse, tall and blonde, with a harsh voice.

  “You’ll get what you need in time,” said the sheriff with a smile. “I’ve called you people here to get the news out all at once so I don’t have to keep answering your questions all day long. We’ll have time for all your questions if you’ll just hold on and let me cover what I got to say.”

  The chair scraping and coughing stopped. The door opened and Marty Sol came in, placing a set of typed papers on the desk. His shoes made a squeaking sound as he went to a chair and sat down. The sheriff reached up with fat fingers to his right breast pocket, the one that his badge hung from, and took out a pair of clear plastic eyeglasses. “I’ve got a prepared announcement for you guys,” he said as he put on the glasses and began to read the top sheet from the pile Marty Sol had brought him.

  “Yesterday the County Sheriff’s Office, located in River Sunday, Maryland, hauled an old motorboat from the mud up in the Great Wilderness Swamp. Some kids had come across the wreck and reported it. After we got the boat out of the water we identified it as belonging to Walker John Douglas and we also can say that it was the boat he used to escape from police thirty years ago.

  “This case dates to the great fire that burned down a lot of the town in 1968. In those days, I wasn’t sheriff then so you can say that I’ve inherited this case. Walker John Douglas, wanted for questioning in the starting of that fire, was then a forty year old black man who ran a motorboat repair shop in Mulberry, a suburb of River Sunday.

  “On the night of August 8, 1968, at eleven o’clock on the night before the annual powerboat regatta in River Sunday harbor, this suspect is accused of bringing a can of gasoline to the alleyway between the Kirby Racing Shop and the deserted Terment cannery. He knocked out Homer Kirby who tried to stop him. Then he went ahead and set a fire at the corner of the cannery. Next to the cannery building was a residence, the home of Heather and Floral Albright, sisters, who were burned to death.

  “The suspect ran away when confronted by firefighters and police officers, clutching his gasoline can, and, after managing to get to his boat shop, took his own racing boat out on the harbor and got away.

  “A massive search was conducted around the Chesapeake shoreline and towns as well as close-by cities looking for any sign of the boat or the suspect. Locally all areas including the Wilderness swamp, any area where we thought he might have tried to hide, were searched thoroughly with men as well as hounds.

  The sheriff stopped, looking at Peterson. “Peterson was here when this case was originally investigated.” Peterson nodded.

  Cheeks continued reading, “Douglas was assumed drowned in the Chesapeake where his racing jacket was found floating, even though when we dragged the Bay in that area, we only found a part of the boat’s transmission.”

  “Why did he set the fire at that location? What was his motive?” interrupted one of the newsmen, a short black man representing the Philadelphia Enquirer.

  Sheriff Good stopped to let the man finish his question, then continued reading, as if to say, just let me get my story out first,

  “Because of his death, we never did find out exactly what his motive was, why he set out to cause so much harm. However, at that time in River Sunday, bad feeling existed between the white and black communities, the same as elsewhere in the nation. Getting revenge, for some injustice, may have been part of his motive.

  “From what the investigators could determine, Walker had tried to implicate Homer Kirby as the arsonist. At about ten minutes to eleven on that evening the suspect walked into the Kirby boat shop carrying a can of gasoline. Kirby knew Walker had brought the gasoline because he kept all his own race boat fuels secured by lock and key. Walker began to ask him about certain technical features of his racing engine especially carburetor settings. Kirby refused to answer him. The suspect then grew angry and said that Kirby didn’t deserve to win the race. Walker then claimed that Kirby had rigged the race by making sure that the suspect’s new boat was inferior. He claimed Kirby had not given him good advice on his carburetor settings. He was upset that his boat wouldn’t go as fast as he wanted it to go. Kirby then said that perhaps Walker had designed his boat wrong and that he would have to try again next year. The suspect became angry and struck Kirby, knocking him out. Before Kirby could regain consciousness and stop Walker, the suspect ran outside and threw gasoline on the side of the deserted wooden cannery next door. A witness stated that Walker lit the fire, screaming. “This will show you and the rest of the white people of this town. This will be a fire that they can sure remember.” With that the old dried wooden wall of the cannery was instantly a sheet of flame. The suspect was swinging the now empty gasoline can at anyone who approached him. He then managed to slip down towards the harbor water and by swimming out among the moored boats, he escaped.”

  “His mother and his sister seemed as amazed as anyone that he had done this treacherous act and tried to help the authorities track him down. The mother provided a list of all his former boat repair customers and acquaintances and was very helpful. The sister who was young at the time did what she could. All in all the investigators felt the family was very supportive of the investigation and helpful.”

  “That’s all, boys and girls,” said the sheriff. “We got copies of this report for all of you to take home.”

  “Where’s the boat, Sheriff? We’d like to get some pictures,” asked Peterson, the first time he had talked since he came into the room.

  The sheriff answered, “I’m afraid she’s under wraps, people, but she should be available for you and the public to see within a few days.”

  Harry smiled. The pictures he took in the swamp would beat the other reporters. They were all anyone would have with the boat now under lock and key. As a reporter he had no problem in having his own newspaper come out with Black Duck pictures ahead of the rest of these newsmen and women.

  “Will we get to meet the people who first spotted the boat?” asked Peterson.

  “The boys are minors,” said the sheriff. “We’ll have to check and see what their parents think about their children’s names being used in the paper and on television.”

  Harry smiled. He’d print the names first, then answer the parents later. News was news and giving the names was not putting a slant on the story.

  “Can you tell us what you plan to do now?” asked the woman.

  The sheriff replied. “We’ll continue the investigation,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he added, “I don’t think he ever went anywhere. No way to get out of the Wilderness without a boat. Too far to swim. That’s all I’m going to say.”

  “Is his fam
ily still living here?” the black reporter asked.

  “The mother is dead She died a few months ago,” the big man answered.

  “Any chance he’s still out in that swamp?” asked Peterson, his voice more bass in tone than the others.

  “Not likely he’s alive all these years,” said the sheriff. He hesitated and then added, “More likely his bones. We’ll keep a look out.”

  “Where’s the sister?” asked the woman in slacks.

  “She’s got a lawyer,” said the sheriff. “She won’t talk to anyone.”

  “What’s the lawyer’s name?” the reporter persisted.

  “Me.” Charleston, who had come into the press conference after the sheriff had begun, stood up in the back of the room. He smiled at Harry and waved to Sheriff Good and the others.

  “Was Walker married? Tell us about his wife,” asked the woman.

  “No wife,” the sheriff said. “A girlfriend. She’s asked the police to keep her name out of the press. You’ll have to talk to her lawyer.” He pointed to Charleston, who nodded again. “You got to understand. People want all this left in the past. Folks don’t want to talk about this criminal and especially the family members who knew and trusted him and were so disappointed in him.”

  “How are you going to search for Walker?” asked Peterson, his monotone showing that he wanted to pin down the sheriff’s intentions.

  “All these years people figured the boat sank in the Bay,” Good replied. “Now we know it did not. Right now I don’t want to speculate.”

  “Will you put out a national bulletin?” asked Peterson.

  Sheriff Good looked at the reporter, his eyes squinting, “I’ve thought about that. Maybe an updated description of him as an old man. I’d have to convince my police friends that he’s still alive, that the case is worth all that expense of putting out a bulletin.”