“Whereas most of him had…” drawled Dr. Banner. “I know the story. Doesn’t prove she killed him. Maybe she was covering up for someone.”
“Then she’s not innocent,” said Spencer. “Accessories before the fact get hanged, too. There appears to be no evidence of anyone else involved, though. Frankie Silver was never accused of having a lover. And her father and older brother were on a long hunt in Kentucky when the crime was committed.”
“You sure about that?”
“All the storytellers say so, and I tend to believe it, because they were never arrested. If they’d been around, they would have been the constable’s first choice for suspects.”
“All right, she was guilty. I wonder what bothered Nelse Miller about the case then?”
“The fact that it doesn’t ring true,” said Spencer. “A little eighteen-year-old girl in a cabin with a year-old baby. A one-room cabin. Charlie Silver’s body was cut into little pieces and parts of it were burned in the fireplace. How long would that take, anyway?”
The doctor shrugged. “Depends. What do we have to work with?”
“It’s 1831. An ax, maybe. A hunting knife.”
“A couple of hours, easily. More if she isn’t used to butchering. If you don’t hit between the vertebrae just right, it could take you an hour just to get the head off. It would be messy work. I wonder she had the stomach for it. Him being her husband and all.”
“She was afraid of being caught,” said Spencer. “Fear can make you do extraordinary things.”
“Maybe so. But it’s not something you’d expect an eighteen-year-old girl to be capable of. I know of no precedent.”
“Frankie Silver was a pioneer. People were tougher in those days.” Spencer pushed a pawn toward the center of the board. “Your move.”
“Checkmate.”
Spencer managed to keep the Harkryder case at bay for two more games of chess, both of which he lost, because his mind kept straying to matters of greater consequence. At last he was alone again, having promised to make an early night of it in deference to his weakened condition. Instead he was sitting in his leather chair with the yellowed manila folder in his lap, sorting through the evidence one more time.
The physical evidence tied Fate Harkryder directly to the scene of the crime-no question about that.
That afternoon at the truck stop, Spencer had arrested Fate Harkryder on suspicion of murder. The jewelry was impounded as evidence of his guilt. The items tallied exactly with the list Spencer had written down during his phone call to Colonel Stanton: the woman’s UNC class ring containing the initialsEAS, the silver and goldtone watch, and a gold chain.
Spencer took the prisoner back to the jail in Hamelin for questioning, and he notified the TBI that he had a suspect in custody. He’d also left word with Nelse Miller, wherever it was he’d gone. An arrest in a major murder investigation: that would bring the old fox home. Spencer was sure of it.
Deputy sheriff Spencer Arrowood read the suspect his rights. “Do you understand?” he said as he put the card away. “You can have a lawyer if you want one.”
The sullen young man sat with his feet wrapped around the legs of the chair, scowling up at the officer questioning him. His long hair was unkempt, and his baggy clothes were several days past needing a wash. Spencer had a good mind to hose him down before he put him in the jail cell.
The prisoner shrugged. “What do I need a lawyer for?”
It wasn’t the deputy’s job to tell him. He said, “I’m just telling you that if you do want one, you can call him now. And if you can’t afford to hire an attorney, we can have one appointed to represent you.”
He shrugged. “I don’t need no help to say I didn’t do it.”
“Where did you get the jewelry?”
Another shrug. “Found it.”
The interrogation had yielded precious little information after that. Fate Harkryder sat there sullen and silent, refusing all offers of food and soft drinks with a quick shake of his head, as if he were determined to say as little as possible.
At first Spencer tried asking simple questions in a firm but courteous tone. When that got nowhere, he switched to shock tactics, describing the mutilated condition of the bodies and declaring that an unrepentant killer would get no sympathy from judge or jury. “If you want to be as dead as they are, you just keep sitting here saying nothing,” he said. “You can’t talk your way out of having that jewelry in your possession.”
“Doesn’t prove nothing.”
The jury thought otherwise.
Joe LeDonne hated the telephone. Its shrill peal was mechanical nagging as far as he was concerned, and he never answered it without an inward curse at the interruption. If he had not been in law enforcement, he would not have had one in his house. It was ironic, he thought as he stared at the instrument, an electronic spider on his desk, that so much of police work required proficiency in telephoning.
He and Martha had agreed to give it one more day before they told the sheriff about the homicides. The TBI was conducting its own investigation, but Martha and Joe were going to complete all the scut work of canvasing for witnesses, so that there would be little for Spencer to do by the time he was informed of the case. Joe didn’t think there was much chance of keeping him on the mountain once he heard about the new Trail Murders, but he reasoned that the sheriff was bound to find out sooner or later, and the news had better come from them.
So far they had played it by the book, with all the thoroughness they could pack into sixteen-hour days. They had investigated the crime scene, and then gone over the site again when the TBI arrived. The next few days had been spent talking to residents in the vicinity of the site, questioning people at the local bars and cafés, and to suppliers of camping goods and army surplus equipment.
Martha had refused to believe that the two Trail Murders, separated by twenty years, were in any way connected, but she had studied the old case file anyway. Willis Blaine, the forest ranger, was dead, but she had questioned Harmon Ritter, still a fixture out at the truck stop. She had even tracked down the two firemen from Alabama, but they had not been able to tell her anything helpful. She had expected no link between the two cases, and she found none.
LeDonne focused his attention on the individuals most likely to be involved in criminal activity. First he checked the list of parolees in residence in the area, phoning the ones whose crimes had included robbery or violence and checking on their current employment status. He had not ruled out the ex-cons entirely, but he was reasonably certain that they would have to look elsewhere for the killer.
That morning he had called the park service and asked that they fax him a copy of the sign-in sheet from the date of the murders from the two shelters on the Appalachian Trail nearest the crime scene. Maybe one of the hikers saw something. Maybe one of them was the man they were looking for. He had spent several hours in the tedious process of tracking down addresses and phone numbers via the Internet and calling the hikers or, in some cases, E-mailing them. Most of those who were hiking all the way to the end of the Appalachian Trail in Maine could not be reached, but he had been able to reach a fair number of weekend campers, and park visitors who had hiked for only a few days. It was now early evening and LeDonne was still at it, reasoning that the dinner hour was the best time to catch people at home. Beside the list of names, the cup of coffee that was his dinner grew cold.
He had just got through to Jeff Garrison in Maryland. LeDonne explained who he was and what he wanted. Days of practice had honed his explanation to a concise summary in the fewest possible words. When he finished, there was a silence on the other end of the telephone.