He crossed the bridge over the creek and proceeded down the road on the other side. A short distance beyond the bridge, he drove off the roadway and down the little lane to the fence gate of the field. He released the chain and opened the swinging aperture. He returned and drove the truck through the gate and dutifully closed and again secured the hasp.
The soil on the road was wet and he accelerated and moved forward, proceeding to the bank of the creek. He unloaded two wash tubs in anticipation of depositing the night’s catch, along with new bait from the truck. He dragged all of it down to the water’s edge. He returned to the truck and removed his shoes and pants. He placed them into the cab of the truck and retrieved an old, worn pair of waders. These are overalls with two attached shoes, all made of rubber and supported over the shoulders by nylon suspenders. This attire was designed to allow the sportsman/commercial fisherman to enter the water, accomplish his task and emerge without getting wet. Thus outfitted, Billy located the trotline attached to a large sweet gum tree on the edge of the creek and carefully stepped from the bank, down into the shallow water.
He stepped slowly lifting the wetted fishing line, inspecting each attached shorter line and hook immersed in the clear water. The depth to the bottom from the surface increased steadily as he approached the middle of the creek, and he still had not found a fish on any hook. As he neared the deepest portion of the creek bed, he felt some rocks beneath his feet and began a gentle ascent. He stared into the clear, almost motionless water. Suddenly, he could define a grinning skeletal face with remnants of bloated facial tissue and tufts of hair, moving with the gentle flow of the stream, staring upwards at him, with a vacuous emptiness in his eyes, at least where his eyes should have been. Billy suddenly realized that he was looking at a human skeleton.
Billy screamed out loud. Terrified, he dropped the trotline and stumbling, began to run, lifting the shoes of the heavy waders through the muddy water back toward the creek’s edge. He lost his balance and fell on the slippery rocks beneath his feet.
The upper edge of the waders momentarily dipped beneath the surface of the water and Billy felt a chill as the icy liquid began to inundate his abdomen and perineum, into his buttocks and down each leg. Blessed fear intervened, and his strength was amplified. He felt no resistance of mud or water, gained the edge of the creek and lunged upward onto the bank. He gave no thought to his equipment, his waders and tubs, but rather jumped back into the truck, started the engine and returned to the road and bridge, then home with all the dispatch that the little vehicle could muster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE INVESTIGATION
Two hours later, three quarters of the entire law enforcement of Clarke County were parked along the margin of the little patch of land between that county road and Souinlovey Creek.
Furland Winters was a Federal Marshall. He was The Law, and immediately took command of the investigation. More like a Field Marshall than a civil servant, he ordered a portion of his troops to begin a methodical search of the entire little cotton field, then led the remainder to the creek for retrieval and inspection of the remains. The body was already at creek side, enshrouded in one of Mrs. Boykin’s freshly cleaned sheets. Furland peered down at the bloated corpse and felt sure that this person was not a native of Clarke County. He was a veteran of many years of police work and political campaigning, and knew at least ninety-five percent of all the natives of his district, and, despite the victim’s disfigurement Furland was sure that he didn’t fit the profile. He made an entry into a little note pad that he sequestered in his left hip pocket.
At his direction, one of the officers disrobed and jumped into the creek. He quickly dove beneath the surface and broached with a yell. The other officers cheered him on, inwardly glad that they had not been chosen for this extraordinary duty. He found the temporary gravesite, the mound of rocks, but found no other evidence or lead that might help in the investigation. He looked up to the Marshall and shouted, “Furland, I can’t find anything in this water or on the bottom but two blue cods. Both of ‘em belong to me. If you want anything else in here you better come down here and look for it yourself!”
Even Furland rendered a laugh then called out, “Purvis, if we don’t have this figured out by next August, I’ll take a look myself. Meantime, come on out, I’ve got a blanket in the car.”
The tedious search continued throughout the day. The slightly frostbitten deputy had been warmed sufficiently for transport back to Quitman, and the remainder of the officers were apparently growing weary without any positive lead. Furland was about to call out for his driver, a deputy that served in the office as dispatcher and part time chauffer, when he heard an excited voice calling from a distant location on the field.
“Marshall Winters! Marshall Winters! Come here quick, I’ve found something!”
Furland walked briskly toward the excited voice. Soon he could see the officer, waving his arms and continuing to yell. He recognized his officer and called to him, “What have you got, Berl?”
The deputy, a short, corpulent officer, jumped up and down, holding a rectangle of metal, obviously a motor vehicle license plate. He called back, “Over here, Marshall!” A few moments later Furland arrived and accepted the tag from his deputy’s excited outstretched hands.
“Thank you, Berl; you did good work.” His superior praised, staring intently at the letters and numbers on the plate. “Where did you find it?” he asked.
“Over there, just by the little path down to the Souinlovey, at the place that we found the body,” he exclaimed.
Furland looked down upon the ground beneath him and noticed some barely discernible, very blunted, indentations within the moist ground of the rows. Then he asked the deputy, “Could we get any impressions on the tires?”
“What tires, Marshall?” Berl bluntly inquired, mystified.
Piqued, and not a little wearied, Furland gazed at the vacuous face beneath him and replied, “Just look down at the ground, Berl. Look here, see the little faint outlines of the tire treads.”
“Wasn’t that the tractor that pulled the cotton pickin’ wagon from the field?” Berl countered.
Becoming testy, the Marshall bent over, reached up and pulled the man down low over the row immediately in front of the deputy and spoke out with his voice raised, “LOOK DOWN, BERL! These tracks are not nearly wide enough to be a tractor. Can’t you see the stripped off cotton stalks? Many of them have been torn from the ground and have been broken and scattered. This could only have been done by a vehicle that was moving along the rows at high speed.” Furland abruptly stood up, lifted his inertial companion erect, and mused, “When we find the owner of the car that little license tag belongs to, we will know the one that put our victim to sleep, the one that tucked him into the creek bed with stones for a blanket. We will have found the killer.
Get the Plaster of Paris crew over here and make those impressions,” he amended, and then strode from the field back to the waiting squad car. “And,” he glowered out loud, “I have the tag, Berl. I’ll run a make on it to Jackson as soon as I get back to the station.”
Berl watched as the Marshall climbed in through the rear passenger’s door of the cop car, and then quickly pulled away back to Quitman carrying the damning vehicle license plate.
As they left the field and moved onto the county road, Furland directed the driver of the squad car to proceed back across the creek to the Boykin place.
The Marshall looked out upon the turbidity of the water’s flow beneath the bridge.
Billy Boykin emerged from the house and yelled at the dogs who were putting up a loud racket to announce the arrival of the police car and Marshall Furland Winters. “Shut up, Boog, hush Jolly,” Billy admonished. He then continued as they settled down quickly after their master had arrived, “Get out and come into the house, Marshall, they won’t bother you now.”
“I didn’t come to visit, Billy, I just came to let you know that we have completed the crime
scene site examination and we found some pretty interesting things down there. I just wanted to thank you for coming forward so that we could get started with the investigation very promptly,”
The Marshall amended, “I also wanted to know if you were leaving the county over the next month to six weeks because I am going to need you to testify at the coroner’s inquiry and also at the Grand Jury hearing when we find the person who is responsible for this. I’ll also need you to come down to the station tomorrow to give us a statement regarding your find and anything else that you might remember regarding this matter.”
“Do you know who it is?” Billy inquired.
“Not yet,” Furland replied, “It won’t take long to find out, I believe. That is the reason I can’t stay long.” The Marshall finally said, “I’m going back to the police station right now to get started answering that question.” With that, the police car started, but first Furland called out to Billy once more, “You still have not answered my question about leaving any time soon, are you going to be here?”
Billy nodded in the affirmative and the automobile moved out of the yard.
As he drove away from the Boykin place back to Quitman, Furland reviewed the day. He was particularly fascinated with the automobile tracks. Those marks would identify the owner, the perpetrator, the proprietor of the instrument that had murdered a human being. The mystery would be resolved when he found the owner. Furland liked mysteries, but he liked mysteries that he had solved and had punished better than the enigma itself. His mind began a deductive process. He accepted that the man discovered, now dead, had lived. But where had he lived?
He thought, “He could have lived in Memphis to the North, or Birmingham toward the East, or Southward in New Orleans, or as far west as Dallas or all the way to Los Angeles, but that just doesn’t seem logical. Maybe I’d better look a little closer in Meridian or Laurel.”
His soliloquy continued, “I am going to look first at home. There must be someone that has recently disappeared, someone that abruptly left and wasn’t seen or heard from again. If only one such person is missing, then I will have my victim. If several, then the elimination process will sort it out. That is as important to the solution as the killer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE NOOSE TIGHTENS
Marshall Winters bounded from the car upon their arrival back at headquarters and went immediately to his desk. First, he got the license plate that they had found in the field, and he immediately picked up the telephone and instructed the station’s operator to call the Mississippi State Department of Motor Vehicles in Jackson and ask for the license registration section. He hung up the phone and tried to occupy his mind with mundane paper work but to no avail.
He didn’t have long to wait when the phone rang and the station operator’s voice informed him that a Florine Shelby with the DMV was on the line from Jackson. A moment later, Mrs. Shelby came on the phone. After the usual salutations, she inquired, “Now, what can I do for you?”
Furland came promptly to the point, “I must have the owner’s name of Mississippi license number DX 1366. It is connected to a murder, and the owner of the vehicle that possesses that number may be the individual who is responsible for the crime.”
“I can certainly see why you would want this information as soon as we can provide it. I will get on it right away, but it may take a couple of hours of work. I will call as soon as I have it. It is a little late in the day to provide the answer this afternoon, so plan on receiving my call before noon tomorrow.”
Marshall Winters concluded with, “That will be much appreciated.”
He arrived early at his office in the station the following morning in anticipation of her call. Additionally, he contacted the Coroner’s office to ask that they provide a report on the results of the autopsy, in order to describe the body to the various police departments in the area. These done, he waited. At 10:20 that morning his first inquiry bore fruit. His telephone rang and Mrs. Shelby’s pleasant voice spoke cheerily, “I have the answer to your license question.”
“To whom does it belong?” the Marshall’s voice had a bit of a quake in anticipation. Florine waited a moment to heighten the effect, then spoke, “And the winner is, Glen Hailes, of Hale community just a few miles from Quitman. His car is a 1931 Studebaker convertible.”
“Thanks for being so prompt in providing this information, I’ll tell the relatives of this poor fellow that is over in our morgue that I couldn’t have done this without your help, I’m sure that they will be very appreciative, as I am.”
The Marshall continued, “I’ve got a few more pieces to add to the puzzle but that won’t take too long, now that I have this to go on.” He added, and hung up the telephone. He resisted the temptation to collect this Hailes fellow and bring him in for questioning. He wanted to find the identity of the victim first, if at all possible.
He didn’t get the autopsy report until the following afternoon. After all, he couldn’t charge him with anything until he had a name for his corpus delicti to prove that any crime had been committed even though he knew that one had been done. The call from the coroner’s office came at 3:00 the next day. Beulah Black was the coroner’s girl Friday, and the Marshall had known her for several years, ever since he had been in law enforcement in Clarke County. They had become good friends because she was a hard worker and liked his ability to take the information that she provided him and use it to catch perpetrators that involved the coroner’s office, i.e., the death of people.
“Whatcha got, Beulah” he inquired.
“A real mess,” she replied, and then continued, “Of course, I will provide you with a full written report, but knowing you to be a man of action I’ll give you a few verbal tidbits right now.”
“Alright, shoot,” the Marshall said.
Beulah’s voice assumed a professional tone, “The subject is a Caucasian male, who died approximately two years ago, was between twenty and twenty-eight years of age, five feet, eight inches in height and weighing one hundred and forty-six pounds. He had straight black hair and a dark complexion, but it was impossible to determine his eye color because of deterioration of the body in the water. He had identifying scars on his right buttocks and his right abdomen, not a surgical scar but from a superficial wound, and the amputation of his left third fingertip. Unfortunately, his wallet was missing, which naturally would have been very helpful to identify him. The shirt that he was wearing had a laundry mark clipped to the label at the collar which was from a cleaning establishment in Meridian.” She stopped a moment to clear her throat then she continued, “It was a stroke of luck that it was still on him because the shirt and most of the other items that he was wearing had been torn to shreds by some great force. He had skid marks over his entire body, plus numerous fractures, including, but not limited to his ribs, left arm and both hands, pelvis, and facial bones, both legs, and punctures to internal organs and other structures, which leads us to speculate that he had been struck by an automobile, not once but several times.”
The Marshall exclaimed, “Beulah, you and Dr. Barnes have still got it. You went the extra mile on this one, for sure.” He thanked her profusely, hung up and immediately had Sadie to call the police department in Meridian. Five minutes later Sadie called his desk with the Missing Person’s desk on the line. He learned that he was talking with Mrs. Eva Turnbull, the secretary who was in charge of the missing person’s files. He proceeded forthwith, “Mrs. Turnbull, this is United States Marshall Furland Winters in Quitman. I have a fellow in our morgue that is not a local resident from here in the immediate area, but I have information that indicates that he might be from the vicinity of Meridian. Do you have a person that has been missing and presumed dead since about the early part of 1932?” He proceeded to give her all the vital information that he had been provided then waited for her response.
“Well, I don’t have an immediate candidate for you. That was a considerable bit of time ago, but you came to the r
ight place for your information. That is, of course, if we have such a candidate in our files.”
“When do you think that you can get that for me? I have a suspect in this case, and I have a body, but I cannot move on this until I have a name for my body.”
She said, “I can’t really give you an exact time. Because I am not sure that he is in our dead file. But there again, every file we have that involves a murder is a dead file.”
The Marshall laughed politely at her macabre little joke then he said, “But can you give me any timeline that I can use? Do you think in a couple of days, a week or longer?”
She replied, “I am sure that it will not be greater than two weeks, probably sooner, but I just can’t say just yet.”
The Marshall answered back, “You can reach me at the Quitman police department at the telephone exchange, GA-inesboro 7-5386.” He thanked her again for her cooperation, then sat back and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. He had put all of the parts in motion, and now all he had to do was wait.
Eight days later the Marshall got her call. Eva said, “I think I have a name for your victim in the Souinlovey Creek murder. There was a young man that was last seen at the Owl’s Nest nightclub just south of Meridian on New Year’s Eve two years ago. His name is Johnnie Silver, and he hasn’t been seen or heard from since the incident happened.” She promptly provided the address of the victim and telephone number of his closest kin there in Meridian.
Marshall Winters exclaimed, “Great work, Eva!! You have just wrapped up this case, I believe.” He got off the line as quickly as possible and promptly called the number that stared at him from the page on the table. The telephone rang and the voice of an elderly lady answered.
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