by Jeremy Tyler
“How does somethin’ like this happen, Dan?” she asked.
“Oh, ya’ know how it is with these old silos, Ma’am. Grain gets left in too long, starts to ferment, gas builds up, turns the whole damn thing inta’ some kinda’ bomb, just waitin’ for the sun to heat it up an’…”
Dan left the obvious result unsaid.
“Well, thank you so much for that science lesson, Deputy Merrill. It ain’t as though I been livin’ around these things longer ’an you been born, after all.”
Dan smiled sheepishly at the biting sarcasm.
“Yes, Ma’am. Of course.”
“What I’m askin’ is, how did this happen in the middle o’ the night, when there ain’t no sun to set it off?”
It was a good question. It was, in fact, the very question that had inspired Dan to drag four volunteers out here to sift through the rubble. The problem was, in order for Dan to tell her that, he would also have to tell her why he was so determined to search through every inch of the damage site, and why he was trying so hard to get her out of the area before…
“Deputy!” came a shout from one of the volunteers, “Deputy, we found somethin’!”
Dan took the opportunity the interruption provided him and ushered Wilhelmina the rest of the way to her car.
“Ma’am, I gotta take care o’ this. But I won’t be too long, ya’ have my word. Now, let’s not waste any time, ya’ hear? You get on down to the station and talk ta’ Fred. I’ll handle everything here.”
Wilhelmina seemed satisfied to put her curiosity on hold for the moment. As she drove off down the road, Dan’s shoulders slumped down in an odd mixture of relief and foreboding.
With leaden feet, he walked to where his four volunteers were gathered. The center of their attention was half-buried under sorghum, ash, and a piece of sheet metal off the silo, but it was unmistakable. It was the source of that putrid odor. It was a body, and just as Dan had feared ever since Wilhelmina had driven up, it was wearing the remains of a very well-made sundress.
It was fully three hours after Dan had discovered and identified Opal’s body at the silo explosion that Sheriff Roy Rivers and Deputy Fred Flandon were driving at ridiculous speeds down Highway 47. Roy was angry, and it showed in his driving.
Fred could clearly see how upset the sheriff was, and how that was affecting his driving, but he was too terrified of the man to say anything. Truthfully, Fred had always been a little afraid of his boss. But the events of the past few weeks had engendered a deep and honest terror of the man. Opal’s murder had deepened that fear a little more, so when Roy had stormed into the office and barked at Fred to get in the squad car, it was only an extreme act of willpower that kept him from wetting himself. Of course, it occurred to him now that, had he not employed that act of self-control, the sheriff probably wouldn’t have wanted him along for this near-suicidal race down the road…
The sheriff had yet to locate John Webb. This was the cause for his dangerous driving. He had already secured Wilhelmina and Arnold at the Rivers Estate, with Gerald and a few others he trusted in place to keep them safe. But with this morning’s murder, it was becoming entirely too clear that their killer had very specific targets, and whether John wanted to admit it or not, he was a Rivers.
That’s why Roy’s first stop that morning had been to the Boarding House. John was supposed to have left word as to where he was going in case there had been some break in the case and they needed to reach him. But Mr. Ellswhite couldn’t tell them anything. Apparently, John had left rather early that morning, before anyone else, and left no word or message. Since then, he had driven to every place that had been on John’s list of planned visits to try and locate the man, with no luck.
And now, he had to put that search on hold.
Dan had found something at the explosion site. That was why Roy had rushed back to pick up Fred. It was why they were racing down to the Stovall home as fast as the car would carry them. Not that speed was an issue. You could walk to the place in half an hour, but the sheriff was mad, and driving fast was just one of the ways he showed it. So, fortunately for Fred, the terrifying ride only lasted about a minute and a half.
Unfortunately for Fred, the sight that greeted them when they arrived at the Stovall home only served to deepen the sheriff’s bad mood. There in the front yard, in plain sight, was the all-too familiar Studebaker that John Webb had been driving.
“How did Mr. Webb know we was comin’ for Athur Stovall?” he asked, before common sense told him to shut up.
“He didn’t,” Roy said through clenched teeth. It was at that moment that Fred realized how great a mistake it was that he didn’t just pee his pants back at the station when he had the opportunity.
Fred had been there when Ephraim Moss had gotten too drunk for his own good and started shooting up the boarding house. He had broken up more than his fair share of fights between angry neighbors. He had even single-handedly faced down the Rivers’ prize bull when it had broken out of the pen and started terrorizing picnickers in a nearby meadow.
All these things were familiar to him, as they were regular occurrences for a small Georgia town.
Walking up to a man’s home to place him under arrest for suspicion of three murders, however, was very far outside of his realm of experience. At this moment, Fred was at a total loss for how to hold himself. He tried to think of detectives he’d seen in movies; how they had held their hand with a thumb hooked into their belt, close to their gun, just in case trouble came, and how they kept their hard eyes fixed on the ground before them, until that fateful moment when they raised them up to look the suspect straight in the eyes.
It didn’t quite work that way for Fred. His thumb kept slipping, and his hand would slap with a sad and pathetic sound against his holster. He tried to keep a hard gaze, but it felt more like the face he made when he accidentally drank someone else’s beer, and when he stared down at the ground he became instantly nervous that he would walk into a branch.
Watching Roy didn’t help either. He walked with a steely determination that had nothing to do with professionalism, and his hand went nowhere near his gun. In all likelihood, in his current frame of mind, he would be more likely to cause more harm with his bare hands than he possibly could with his sidearm.
Somehow, the two managed to reach the Stovalls’ front door at the same time. Roy knocked on the door hard, demanding. He looked as though he were actually waiting for the opportunity to break it down if no one answered, but if so, he was disappointed.
Annie Ruth opened the door within a few seconds.
“Sheriff Rivers, Fred. It’s so nice to see you. We were just talkin’ ’bout you,” she greeted them cheerfully. When it was evident that their arrival was not nearly so happy an occasion as she had imagined, she stepped back, involuntarily, as if in preparation for an escape.
“There somethin’ wrong?” she asked, a little more warily. Her eyes told that she already knew the answer was yes.
“We’d like to talk with your husband, Ma’am,” Roy said coldly, then stepped forward to demonstrate that it was only phrased as a request out of courtesy. Annie Ruth moved to one side and graciously ushered them inside.
“He’s in the kitchen with…”
“With Detective Webb,” Roy finished irritably.
Arthur Stovall was sitting quite comfortably at his kitchen table, as he and John Webb laughed easily in mutual good humor. The scene of it was unnerving, even for Sheriff Roy Rivers, as he stood watching them. John was the first to notice them, as he raised a half-empty glass of iced tea.
“Well, hi there. I’m afraid you just missed lunch,” he said. Roy just stood there, unsure how to proceed.
“Nonsense!” Arthur said, good-naturedly. “We can always make room at the table for friends…Annie Ruth, set up some plates for our guests.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Fred said, holding up a warning hand.
Maybe it was the shock of Fred growing enough spi
ne to speak, or maybe it was the embarrassment of realizing that Fred only managed it because Roy was apparently unable to do so himself. Either way, Roy stepped forward to reassert his control on this situation.
“Mr. Stovall. I need to ask you some questions.”
If someone didn’t know her better, they would think that Annie Ruth’s stoic demeanor as her husband was being led off in handcuffs was due to shock at the unbelievable drama being played out in front of her.
Both Fred and John, however, did know her better than that. They could clearly read the intensely burning anger in her eyes. It was easy enough to recognize. They had seen the same look on the face of the sheriff, as he proceeded to ask Arthur Stovall about his actions and whereabouts the night before. They watched him go from a quiet, professional questioning to a full-blown interrogation in a matter of questions.
When it was all said and done, Sheriff Rivers had managed to convince himself, if no one else, of Arthur’s guilt.
For a brief moment, John considered holding back just long enough to offer some sort of reassurance to Annie Ruth that Arthur would not be mistreated at the sheriff’s station, but something about the look in his father’s eyes suggested to him that Arthur could very well be in danger before he even got that far, so he jumped in his car and followed the squad car in. He still only had sketchy details about the morning’s events, but he had learned enough to know that Opal had been killed, and stuffed into a granary on the edge of town. He understood that the granary was then blown apart by a homemade bomb, and that the primary igniter, aside from the sorghum itself, was moonshine.
Roy Rivers had been a little sketchy on how he had made the immense leap from moonshine to Arthur Stovall directly, but John figured that his best bet at keeping Arthur alive long enough to get a fair shake was to get Roy calm enough to see the possibility that there could actually be numerous people besides Arthur who would have ready access to moonshine.
It was clear that it would take some considerable effort.
As they pulled up to the sheriff’s office, Dan came out the door to escort the prisoner inside. It was clear, by the look on his face, that Dan was just as concerned about Stovall’s safety as John was—albeit for different reasons. John wanted Arthur Stovall to get fair treatment because he believed the man to be innocent. Dan was concerned about the backlash should Roy decide to give in to his anger. The result was the same, and that was good enough for John.
To his surprise, John followed Dan, not to a cell, but to a small storage closet that had been hastily cleared and outfitted with a table and chair. Arthur was directed to sit, and then Dan turned around and exited, motioning John with him. He closed and locked the door behind him.
“I fig’gered it’d be a good idea to let ’im sit and worry for a while,” Dan explained. He didn’t have to. It was part of procedure in New York to seclude a suspect before questioning them. They often referred to it as “tenderizing.”
“John,” the sheriff’s voice rumbled. He had removed his hat and was holding it with a death grip in his right hand.
“We need to talk.”
Apparently, John’s interrogation would occur without delay.
Nodding slowly, John walked to the nearest desk and took a seat.
“Ask the question, then.”
Understandably, Dan looked confused.
“Ask what question?” he asked.
“The sheriff wants to know what I was doing over at the Stovalls’ today.”
“He damn sure does,” Roy said through clenched teeth. “He also wants to know why you decided not to tell us where you’d be today. And why you been all over the county, askin’ all kind o’ questions that’s not got one damn thing to do with this investigation.”
John knew well enough that this was no time to be flippant. The sheriff had every reason to be angry. John had purposefully kept him out of the loop. The trouble was, he was fairly certain that the sheriff really didn’t want to know what he had learned.
“I was at the Stovalls’ to get some answers, just like I’ve been doing since I got here. I don’t know the people around here like you do, or Dan, or Fred. I don’t have the option of drawing on personal experience to judge who might be hiding something. So I leave that to you. I have, instead, focused my attention on some of the less obvious leads.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“E…L…P,” John said slowly.
“The message George left?” Roy asked.
John was almost—almost—tempted to smile at the fact that the sheriff was still clinging to basic assumptions, despite the obvious evidence in front of him.
“It was a message. That’s for certain. But it wasn’t George who left it.”
“How could you possibly know that? And what does that have to do with the questions you been askin’?”
“George didn’t live long enough to leave a message. Not with the kind of wounds he received. In addition, I conferred with Mr. Parrott over a detail that we all overlooked that morning.”
“What was that?” Dan asked, not liking his professionalism called into question, even slightly.
“His fingers,” John said simply. “That message was scrawled on the wall by someone’s finger. That much was obvious. But in all the confusion that morning, no one—not even myself—thought to look at poor George’s fingers to see if they had blood on them.”
“There was blood all over ’im,” Fred said from his vigil by the door of Arthur Stovall’s impromptu interrogation room.
“Castoff blood,” John replied. “Blood left from the attack spurted in predictable patterns. But for George to have left that message, he would have had to dip his fingers into his wounds and allowed them to be coated completely. But George’s fingers only had streaks of castoff blood. You can ask Mr. Parrott yourself, if you’d like…”
“So that means…” Dan began
“‘ELP’ was a note, left by George’s killer…for us. That is what I have been looking into.”
“How?” Dan asked.
“I…” John paused just for a moment before going further. It occurred to him that revealing too much about George’s personal life might cause Roy to completely shut him down before he got anywhere.
“Well?” Dan insisted.
“I had gotten some information that George was looking up some old newspaper records in Pelham.”
“Gerald,” Roy said with disgust. He clearly did not like how closely Gerald had become involved in his family affairs.
“Gerald pointed me in a direction, that’s true. But that’s all. He didn’t know what George was looking for. Fortunately, I was able to track down that he was researching obituaries. Specifically, with the last name of Posey.”
“Posey?” Roy asked, suspiciously.
“One name in particular. Emma Lou Posey.”
“ELP,” Dan remarked. He was so intrigued by this new turn of events that he didn’t notice the sudden lack of color on the sheriff’s face.
“Suddenly my ‘outside investigations’ don’t seem so unnecessary, do they?”
“So why keep us in the dark?” Dan asked, “Once you realized how important this could be, you should’a called us all in, but ya’ didn’t. Why?”
“’Cause he didn’t trust us yet,” Roy said quietly. This time, no one missed the look on his face. “He still don’t. He’s only tellin’ us now ’cause he ain’t got no choice in it.”
Dan was confused. He could see that something important was happening between Roy and John, but whatever it was, it was something neither wanted to give voice to. It was obvious that he would have to take this situation head on if he were to get any answers.
“Alright, enough is enough. Clearly, the two of you know somethin’ that I don’t, and I am gettin’ plain fed up with ever’body trying to keep my eyes shut! So whatever weird little secret the two of you are sharin’, let’s get it out here in the open, ’cause as tired as I am o’ all these secrets, I’m even more tir
ed of findin’ bodies.”
After a moment of silence, Roy managed enough composure to turn toward Dan and look him in the eye.
“Damn, Dan. That’s twice in one week you’ve yelled at me. I don’t know if you’ve gained a lot o’ nerve, or just lost a lotta respect for me…either way, I gotta say I don’t like it.” Then his voice softened slightly. “But you happen to be right. John stumbled on to a nasty little family secret, and he was keepin’ quiet about it on my account. I’d like to think it was out o’ some feelin’ for family ties, but truth is I think he was more concerned about the possibility that I might have been the killer.”
“How could…”
“Emma Lou Posey,” Roy said stoically, “was my first wife.”
*
Arthur Stovall had plenty of time to take stock of his surroundings, not that there was much to see. Dan had done a very thorough job of clearing the tiny room. So, when the door opened, Arthur was glad just to have a break from the monotony.
“Well, it’s about time, Dan. I was startin’ to feel like I’d been forgotten!” Arthur said, trying to keep up an air of good-nature.
But it wasn’t Dan that walked into the room. It wasn’t Fred. It wasn’t Roy.
“Well, it seems we get to finish our conversation after all.”
Arthur looked at John with obvious suspicion.
“I liked where we were havin’ it before. The new settin’ ain’t to my likin’.”
“Mine either,” John agreed, “but it seems the sheriff has some evidence that you’re the man we’re looking for, and I either have to prove him wrong, or find you a damn good lawyer. You know a damn good lawyer?”
“Oh yeah, lots. On account o’ me an’ lawyers travelin’ in the same kinda’ circles all the time.”
“I guess that just leaves us with proving him wrong, then.”
Both men paused. John was waiting for the right moment to continue, his entire conversation already planned in advance. Arthur, he knew, was desperately trying to catch up. This was the critical moment. This was the point where the guilty man will reveal himself, or the innocent man will be seen for who he is. John was absolutely certain that Arthur was innocent, but in order to convince the sheriff, who was listening, unobserved, by an air vent that happened to carry sound from the room very well, he had to get Arthur to reveal something about himself. Something that an innocent man wouldn’t even think about being important, but a guilty man will hide at all cost.