“Yes, but she had to get it done a lot quicker than that,” said Nora. “Someone must have dropped into the cabin before then. They had to figure that somebody would stop by as soon as Frankie went back home from visiting. Maybe nobody did come to see her, but the Stewarts couldn’t chance it. They had to be ready for company by the afternoon of the first day. They’d have disposed of the body that first night, best they could, and cleaned the blood off the cabin floor.” She shrugged. “Leastways, I would have.”
“You’re right,” said Spencer. “Of course you are. Close family-there were a dozen Silvers, give or take a child-living less than half a mile away. Someone could have walked in on them at any time. Besides, Barbara and Blackston Stewart couldn’t risk being gone from their own cabin for too long, either. If they were missed, someone might wonder later what they were up to.”
“People did wonder,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Didn’t you tell me that they were arrested at the same time that Frankie was?”
“Yes, but they were never tried. There was no evidence against them. Frankie saw to that. She never implicated them at all. But the cutting up of the body is what got her hanged. That’s what shocked people so. I wonder if she could have saved herself by telling what really happened.”
“More likely she’d have got all three of them hanged,” said Nora Bonesteel. “The law was in the hands of the townspeople, you know, but the Stewarts were frontier folk. They must have figured there was no telling what townspeople would do.”
“There’s still some of that,” said Spencer. He stopped and listened. The woods were completely silent. No birds sang. No gnats swarmed above the damp earth. “She was brave, wasn’t she?” he said at last. “Frankie never told who cut up the body, and she never said who helped her escape. She died protecting her family.”
“It must have been hard to die like that, wondering if the truth might have saved you.”
“She tried to speak on the gallows. They asked her if she had any last words, and according to eyewitnesses-there was a lawyer named Burgess Gaither who told the story years later-they asked Frankie Silver if she had any last words, and she stepped forward and started to speak. But her father was in the crowd, and he yelled out:Die with it in you, Frankie! And she stepped back, and was hanged without saying a word.”
“It wouldn’t have saved her then. He knew that.”
“That’s what her father was saying to her then,” said Spencer. He pictured the grizzled old man, surrounded by shouting strangers, staring up at his daughter with the rope around her neck, and he’s ashamed that his sorrow is mixed with fear for what she might say.Die with it in you. Mr. Stewart was saying: “We can’t save you, Frankie. We did all we could. We tried to keep you from getting caught, but the blood would tell. Then we hired you a lawyer and paid for the appeal, but we lost the case. We even broke you out of jail. We can’t save you.Don’t take the rest of the family down with you. ”
“Yes.”
Die with it in you.Spencer shivered in the pale sunshine. “I have somewhere to go tomorrow,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
“I have to go to Nashville and watch a man die in the electric chair. I put him there.”
The old woman nodded. Her face showed no trace of surprise or alarm. She began to retrace their steps back to the logging trail. It was time to go back.
Spencer followed her back through the tall yellow-flowered weeds. He said, “I think I understand what bothered Nelse Miller about the case now. I know why Frankie Silver has been on my mind.”
“Yes.”
“Will I be able to save him?”
Nora Bonesteel turned to look at the sheriff. “Knowing is one thing,” she said. “Changing is another.”
It was nearly three o’clock when Spencer reached the sheriff’s office. “We’ve finished interrogating the suspect,” LeDonne told him. “He confessed. I think there’s some mental deficiency there, so he’ll probably end up in a treatment facility.”
“Did you ask him about the Harkryder case?” asked Spencer.
“Yeah. It happened before he was born. He never heard of it. There’s a press conference at four. Do you feel up to conducting it?”
Spencer knew that he should. Elected officials have to stay visible to let their constituents know they’re on the job. He shook his head. “It was your case,” he said. “You and Martha handle it. I just came back to get the information you ran down for me on my case.”
LeDonne handed him a folder. “You don’t have much time,” he said.
“No. But at least I know who to ask.”
His old desk felt strange to him now, after weeks away from duty. He saw that the plant in his window looked better, since he had not been around to pour cold coffee into it, and there was a tidiness to his desktop that made him uneasy. He read through the laser-printed sheets in the folder, making notes as he went. It was coming together now. Everything was beginning to make sense, but still he had no proof.
He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Kentucky. He wished he had time to go in person, but there were only hours remaining. “Tom Harkryder, please,” he said when the ringing stopped. “Mr. Harkryder, this is Sheriff Arrowood from Wake County, Tennessee. I’d like to talk to you about your brother.”
There was an intake of breath at the other end of the phone, and then a sigh. “I can’t help you with Ewell,” drawled the voice. “Bailing him out is a waste of money. Let him sleep it off.”
“I meant your other brother, Tom. Lafayette. Remember him?”
After another pause, Tom Harkryder said, “I can’t help him, either.”
“I think you could,” said the sheriff. “I think you could save his life-if you told what really happened on the mountain that night twenty years back.”
“Fate said he was innocent. The damned jury didn’t believe him.”
“I believe him-now. He’s scheduled to die tomorrow night. If you meet me in Nashville, I can get us in to see the governor, and we can stop the execution.”
“By telling them what?”
“Tell them who killed Mike and Emily. It’s your brother’s only chance.” The silence dragged on so long that Spencer finally said, “Mr. Harkryder-Tom-are you there?”
The voice whispered, “I don’t believe I can help you,” and the line went dead.
S O NOW WE KNEW.
Spencer Arrowood wondered if Constable Charlie Baker had known the truth back in 1832, and if he had ever been tempted to use that knowledge to save Frankie Silver.
Maybe the constable had known a lost cause when he saw one.
The six-hour drive to Nashville had never seemed longer, but at least the sheriff knew where he was going. Someone from Riverbend had faxed him directions with his final instructions for attending the execution (“no cameras, no recording devices…”). The sheriff did not play the radio for fear that every country song would sound like an omen. Instead he tried to concentrate on I-40, rather than on the jangle of possibilities that crowded his mind. He had finally received the information he’d asked LeDonne to find for him, and he had spent much of the previous evening making telephone calls and assembling the paperwork on the case. He was already weak from his injury, and he got little enough rest, but he told himself that he would not have been able to sleep anyhow.
It was 7A.M. By the time he reached Nashville, Spencer Arrowood would have nine hours to save a life.
From I-40W, he took the Robertson Road exit, turning right onto Briley Parkway, and onto Centennial Boulevard. The exit from Centennial put him in sight of “The Walls,” Tennessee’s Gothic-looking old prison, a nightmare in red brick, which had closed its doors to real prisoners in 1989, when the new penitentiary was completed. Now only movie stars in shapeless prison garb walked its corridors while the cameras rolled. The state rented out the old facility on a regular basis to film producers, so that the old building spent its declining years in a grotesque parody of its former existence. Now people only pretended to die there.