Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, February 1974

Hope Knight twisted a smile and shrugged out of Sheriff Strowe’s grasp. “You don’t believe in poetic justice, Sheriff Strowe? Well, your system isn’t working any better. It’s been almost two weeks now, you know.”

“We’re doing everything we can, Hope.”

“But it’s a pretty sad situation, you must admit. You have no clues, no witnesses, no fingerprints, no murder weapon. And if it hadn’t been for that crater ledge of slag and rotted timber at Lake Loon, you wouldn’t even have a car or a corpse. I’m going to expose Julie’s murderer, put my poetry and myself on a collision course with him. I’m going to do it. Now, if there isn’t anything else, I have to clean two holding tanks before the six o’clock milking.”

“There is one other thing, Hope. For your own safety, I’m recommending to Carl Dunlap at the Herald-Talisman that he not print any of your poetry. And I intend to make the same recommendation to Matt Hemphill, your advisor.”

“You do that, Sheriff Strowe,” came the deadly voice, “and I’ll run you through so many courtrooms you’ll begin to feel like re-processed sausage no one can make come out right. And in case you think I’m sellin’ wolf tickets, Sheriff, let me remind you that I’m very well-versed on this state’s laws on libel and censorship. My holding tanks aren’t cleaning themselves, Sheriff Strowe. Please excuse my rudeness, but Dad has a funny idea about an hour’s work for an hour’s pay.”

Hope Knight’s first poem left all of Zachary aghast and edgy. By morning, not a single one of the 3,000 copies could be found for sale anywhere. Leaving Sheriff Strowe to wonder whether Julie Knight’s killer had his.

“The town isn’t going to sit still two weeks for the next issue of Soundings,” Carl Dunlap told Strowe over the phone that same day, “so I’m running Soundings From the Grave on the editorial page of tomorrow evening’s Herald-Talisman, with a press run of 10,000. And those will be whisked out of our hands before the ink is dry. I can’t help it, Ev. The town wants it, and I serve the town. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you — or kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

But there would be killing, Strowe felt. He wasn’t sure he and his men could prevent it.

The following evening, as promised by Carl Dunlap, Hope Knight’s second poem, Soundings From the Grave, appeared on the editorial page of the Herald-Talisman.

He ran it without any commentary of his own, leaving his readers as sole judges.

SOUNDINGS FROM THE GRAVE
by
Hope Knight

Having total impunity now from my words,
Knowing no second death can harm me,
I speak up from the grave,
My soil-smeared words seeking the ear of my murderer.
Could you have hated me so fiercely
That the sisterhood and brotherhood of man
Meant less to you than the crush of guilt?
Like a watch overwound by absent-mindedness,
Can your life be anything like normal now?
Is sleep easy? Does food hold taste?
Does water have property in your throat?
Do you stand in heat and wind and wet,
As impervious as marble to their touch?
I guess you do. And I further guess you are still yourself
Marbelized about what to do
With the tennis shoes.

“Yeah, it’s stout stuff all right,” agreed Lonnie Davenport over a coke with Sheriff Strowe in the Tigers’ Den the next afternoon. “I’d put old Hope’s pen up against any sword in the land, any day of the week.”

“I particularly like the reminder to the killer about those basketball shoes,” Sheriff Strowe said to Davenport. “I’m curious. Did yours ever turn up?”

“A smart apple like that isn’t suddenly going to turn unclever and return the shoes to my car, especially when it is also generally agreed I didn’t kill Julie. He’ll pin Julie’s murder on somebody else who’s a size 10½, not me.”

It was puzzling about the basketball shoes. Of what importance could they possibly have been in this act of brutal murder?

On the next Friday the third poem appeared in the Herald-Talisman. It was chronologically titled:

SECOND SOUNDINGS FROM THE GRAVE
by
Hope Knight
Up through dark, dank soil rise my words.
When I was alive and leapt on maple,
My lungs burst with “We don’t mess around,
Hey! We don’t mess around! Zachary High just
Goes to town on anybody that’s around!”
But it wasn’t to town I went that morning;
It was to the dead and quiet lake.
He had called, your lying lips spoke.
Already he was flying to the cold shore
Of the black, tideless lake, holding back his love
Like fists against a pressing foe.
Do you know how fast I drove?
Do I know how fast you ran?
We both know how long I waited.
And how long murder took you.
And how long I lived after that.
These things we both know, my murderer.

“Very rambling and disconnected,” said Carl Dunlap to Ev Strowe, “a kind of free association babbled under some sort of influence or trance. Two quarters of college psychology is doing the talking now, Ev. I want you to understand that. But the poetry is strange, very strange.”

“You can’t be seriously thinking of printing any more of it, then. Hope Knight is shooting in the dark now and her sister’s killer knows it.”

Hope Knight’s poetry was still selling papers for Dunlap, but Strowe knew when a dying horse was being whipped. And Carl Dunlap had more honest journalist in his blood than tabloid pitchman.

“I’ll consider them on merit alone from here on out,” he told Sheriff Strowe. “The Soundings is due out again tomorrow. Perhaps Hope is building up courage to present some real clues in print. And perhaps tomorrow is the day.”

If there were clues in the short, six-line poem, they were exposed as bluntly as the force which had killed Julie Knight from first to last line.

THIRD SOUNDINGS FROM THE GRAVE
by
Hope Knight
We both know, my murderer, whose hand wielded the pipe;
As we both know whose hands pushed me to my grave of water;
And like a dead voice speaking of the deadly existance
Of Spoon River smallness, a dead Zachary voice now speaks;
To point my voice at my murderer;
To aim my dead indignant rage at you, Lon Davenport.