Hindsight

by Ronald Kelly

  "Are we going to turn our thoughts away from the fate of those poor boys? Are we going to let their murderers walk the streets, thinking they have gotten off scot free? No, I don't believe any man, woman, or child here today could comprehend such a thought. And I am confident that you, gentlemen of the jury, will end up doing the right thing. I am sure that you will listen to the evidence presented, weigh the words spoken today, and come to the correct decision. For your sake and, most of all, for the sake of those poor boys who are not here today to plead their own case."

  All in all, the case of Tennessee versus Hanson and Darnell seemed to be off to a spirited start.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The first thing that Willard Shaw did before calling his first witness was to identify each and every piece of physical evidence. The items lay on a broad table, each labeled and positioned in correct order.

  There were three small piles of meager belongings that had been discovered in the pockets of the unfortunate victims and the single tortoiseshell guitar pick that Clay had found on the floorboard of Bully's truck. Johnny's gray fedora, water-stained and earthy, sat in the center of the table. Shaw took each item and turned it over in his nimble fingers, explaining which possession belonged to whom.

  Then he moved on to the more destructive articles. There was a small tin partially full of lead pellets: double-aught buckshot extracted from both the bodies of the murdered boys and the splintered post of Brewer's back porch. Beside the pellets was Bully Hanson's sawed-down L.C. Smith shotgun. The breech was cracked open, revealing the dark chamber of each shortened barrel. The last item on the table was an old hand axe. Its heavy blade was crusted with flakes of rust, its foot-long handle pitted and tacky with old varnish. The hatchet had been found in the thicket beside the tobacco barn and was believed to be the weapon used to split Billy Longcreek's skull in half.

  As the district attorney left the table, he knew in his heart that one other item should have been there and that was Johnny Biggs' flat-top guitar.

  During his investigation of the case, Shaw had gone to the Nashville pawn shop and had done his level best to convince the owner of the seriousness of the case at hand. But the man had stubbornly denied knowing exactly who had brought the guitar in. After all, he claimed, it had been nearly five months. The lawyer had left the pawn shop feeling that he had been lied to. The last time he saw that simple flat-top, it hung foremost in the cluttered window where it had hung since last May, its fifteen-dollar price much too rich for passing musicians.

  "Doctor Anson Hubbard, please approach the witness stand."

  After taking the oath, the silver-haired physician settled into the chair to the right of the judge's bench. Willard Shaw flipped through a few sheets of paper, studied a typewritten page for a moment, then leaned against the edge of the prosecution table.

  "Dr. Hubbard, you are the only practicing physician here in the town of Coleman?" he asked for the record.

  "Yes, sir. Matter of fact, I'm the only one in Bedloe County."

  The district attorney nodded. "Did you receive a phone call from Sheriff White on July twenty-second of this year?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Could you please tell us the extent of that conversation?"

  "Well about two o'clock that afternoon the sheriff called me at my office in town. Told me to meet him over at the Brewer place. Said they'd found some bodies hidden there."

  "And you arrived at Mr. Brewer's property shortly thereafter?"

  "Yes," agreed Doc Hubbard. "I accompanied Taylor into Mr. Brewer's tobacco barn, where the bodies had been discovered."

  "And, as acting coroner of Bedloe County, did you examine those remains?"

  The elderly physician hesitated, remembering that stifling summer day. "Yes sir, I did."

  "There were three bodies?"

  "Yes, but it was difficult to tell at first."

  "And why was that?"

  The doctor looked uncomfortable. "Well, the victims had been . . . dismembered before burial. Also they were badly decomposed. Someone had dumped a bag of lime over the remains, perhaps hoping to dispose of them faster. But they didn't use enough to do much good."

  A rush of excited discussion swept the courtroom. Judge Mullen had to rap his gavel several times to regain order.

  The prosecutor continued. "But you finally separated the remains and determined them as belonging to three individuals?"

  "Yes." Hubbard's face paled slightly at the memory of what they had found inside that tool chest.

  Willard Shaw approached the bench and quietly conversed with Judge Mullen for a moment. The judge faced the gallery of curious spectators. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been informed that the next series of questions may be quite graphic and somewhat disturbing. If there are any women or children who wish to leave, please do so now."

  A couple of elderly spinsters left their pew, as did a young mother who dragged her children, whining and complaining, from the courtroom.

  "All right, you may proceed."

  Shaw nodded politely. "Now, Doctor, would you please describe in detail the extent of these individuals' wounds?"

  Again the physician hesitated, then went on. "One body had been assaulted with a heavy, sharpened instrument, probably an axe or hatchet of some sort."

  The prosecutor lifted the hand axe from the evidence table. "An instrument similar to this one?"

  "Yes. That may very well have been the same one. Anyway, there was a devastating wound on the victim's head. The axe had been swung with great force, for it made a deep opening in the cavity of the man's skull from the top of the scalp, clear down to the bridge of the nose."

  "And the cause of death for this individual was . . . ?"

  "Severe trauma to the frontal lobe of the brain. I would say that he died instantaneously."

  "This individual was later identified as William Longcreek, is that correct?"

  "Yes." Anson Hubbard shifted his eyes to the first pew behind the banister. Maudie Biggs was helping a sobbing Stella Longcreek down the center aisle toward the back. The doctor suddenly felt like a callous, unfeeling ghoul sitting there on the witness stand.

  "Could you please tell us of the second body?"

  The doctor continued. "The second individual had been killed by a severe gunshot wound to the lower abdomen, just below the rib cage. The wound measured six inches in diameter and extended throughout the trunk of the torso. The stomach and intestines were badly damaged, and the spine had been severed by the force of the blast."

  "And you determined the wound to be made by what sort of weapon?"

  "By a shotgun. A twelve gauge using a double-aught hunting load."

  "Could the wound have been inflicted by this gun?" Shaw asked, lifting the sawed-off scattergun from the table.

  "From the spread of the buckshot, yes, it certainly could have."

  "The second victim was later identified as Clarence Judson Potts," the attorney stated for the record. "Now, Doctor Hubbard, would you describe the wounds of the third and final victim."

  "The third boy had been shot twice, but only one was a fatal wound. He had been shot once in the upper thigh and buttock of the left leg. The pellets penetrated muscle tissue, but did not damage any bones or major arteries. The second shot had caused a severe wound to the victim's head. The blast entered the back of the skull, traveling through the mass of the brain, and exited from the right maxillary or upper jaw. Because of the force and closeness of the gunshot, most of the right side of the face was totally obliterated."

  Doc Hubbard finished his grisly diagnosis, his mouth as dry as cotton wadding. He avoided looking toward Clay and his family.

  "And the third individual was ...?"

  "Johnny Biggs," he sighed.

  "Your witness, counselor," called Shaw, returning to his table.

  A.J. Branchworth left his seat and eyed the elderly physician. "Doctor Hubbard, you are absolutely sure that the gunshot wounds were made by a twelve gauge shotgun?"<
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  "Yes sir, I am."

  "And the double-aught buckshot? How did you come to that conclusion?"

  "A number of pellets were found in the victims' bodies. They were all double-aught. Approximately .330 of an inch in diameter."

  Branchworth took the shortened gun from among the evidence. He studied it carefully, handling it as though he had never held a firearm in his life. "You say the wounds were made by a sawed-down shotgun. How did you determine that? Couldn't they have been inflicted by a standard shotgun with barrels longer than this one right here?"

  "I don't believe so," pointed out Hubbard. "The size and severity of the wounds suggest a gun with shortened barrels. You see, the shorter the barrel, the greater the spread of the shot pattern. A shotgun with, say, twenty-eight-inch barrels would have made a much smaller, concentrated wound. Perhaps one or two inches in diameter, compared to six."

  Branchworth frowned at the stubby length of gunmetal, opening and closing the breech several times. "Are you absolutely positive that this is the exact shotgun that killed two of those three young men?"

  "They were killed by a sawed-off twelve gauge," the doctor replied. "Other than that, I couldn't say for sure."

  A gleam flickered in the lawyer's droopy eyes for a second. "So what you are saying is that this shotgun found in Mr. Hanson's possession can not be positively identified as the same weapon that killed those boys? That, in fact, those wounds could have been made by an entirely different make and model of shotgun? Perhaps a single-shot or a pump shotgun, rather than one with side-by-side barrels?"

  "I suppose so."

  The public defender walked back to the evidence table. "One more question, Doctor." He took the rusty hatchet and hefted it gingerly in one hand. "Is this the axe that was found on the Brewer property at the time the bodies were discovered?"

  "It is."

  "Then could you tell us if this hatchet was tested for blood samples?"

  The physician replied affirmatively.

  "Did you discover any traces of blood on this item?"

  Hubbard's face clouded. "No, the tests were negative." Privately, the doctor knew that the absence of blood was perfectly understandable. After all, the hatchet had been lying out there in the open thicket for nearly two months after the time the murders had actually taken place. Bad weather and pouring rain could very well have obliterated any traces of Billy Longcreek's blood from the blade of the short axe.

  However, A.J. Branchworth did not give him sufficient chance to explain that particular point. He returned the hatchet to its correct place, a smug grin on his clean-shaven face. "No further questions, Your Honor."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . . so help you God?"

  "I do," declared Taylor White. He lumbered up to the witness stand and had a seat. The hardwood chair creaked noticeably beneath his vast weight.

  "Mr. White, you are the acting constable of Bedloe County?" asked the prosecutor, laying the groundwork for the following bout of questioning.

  "Yes sir, I've been the sheriff hereabouts for nearly twenty years."

  "And when did you first become involved in this murder case?"

  Taylor cleared his throat nervously. He felt the curious eyes of the twelve jurors on him, as well as those from the gallery, watching him closely. "It was on the twenty-second of July. I happened upon Harvey Brewer in town. He'd bought himself some groceries and was about to walk home. I offered him a lift on account I was going that way anyhow. Besides, Harvey has a bad heart and I just didn't like the idea of him walking that far in the hot sun. He's on in his seventies, you know."

  The lawman was introspective for a brief moment, as if sorting out the events of that sweltering July day. But he had no trouble in doing so. The discovery of horrible death was ever present, forever tattooed into the flesh of his brain. "When we pulled up outside Harvey's place, we heard the most godawful commotion down there at the old tobacco barn out back of his house. We heard young'uns screaming, not out of fun . . . they were scared half outta their wits. I saw the Biggs girl run off across the thicket into the woods, and I ran down there to the barn to see what was going on. When I got there, a few other kids from town were piling out of a hole in a side wall. They were crying, screaming, and carrying on. I asked them what the matter was, but couldn't get a clear answer from any of them."

  "Did you then enter the tobacco barn?" asked Willard Shaw.

  "Yes." Taylor White nearly shuddered in reply.

  "What did you find there?"

  "I squeezed through that opening, and a smell like some dead animal hit me. It was dark in there, so I couldn't see very well at first. I drew my service revolver and went on inside. It was then that I noticed the tool chest a few feet away. Its lid had been opened, and I figured that's what those kids had been up to. They'd been messing with that old tool box, and whatever they'd found in it had thrown a scare into them."

  "And could you tell us all exactly what you found in that chest?"

  Taylor's moon face began to grow pallid around the eyes and mouth. "At first I thought the remains of a single person were in there. Then I saw that there was more than one. Two, maybe three, bodies had been chopped up and stacked in there neat as cord wood. A coating of lime had been dumped over the remains to help quicken decomposition and keep down the smell."

  "And after that you contacted your deputies and Doctor Hubbard?"

  "Yes. After the doc had made his examination and we had identified the three boys, we contacted the families as well."

  The prosecutor walked over to the evidence table and indicated the dirty fedora hat and the three piles of assorted possessions. "Did you find these items on the victims?"

  "Yes, in their pockets. All that seemed to have been taken was money. The hat there was found by Cynthia Ann Biggs in a corner of the barn. It belonged to her brother."

  "What motive do you believe led to this heinous crime?"

  "Simple robbery to begin with, then maybe one of the boys made a wrong move and triggered the killings. We've about decided now that they were lured to the barn by the promise of bootleg whiskey. It's a fact that the three boys were seen on the night of May twenty-ninth at the Bloody Bucket, a beer joint across the railroad tracks. They tried to buy some drinks, but were run off by Otis Schofield, the owner. From the way we see it, they happened across someone in the parking lot, were promised moonshine, then driven to the old barn and murdered."

  Shaw paced the floor for a few moments, moving to the conclusion of his questioning. "Did your investigation of this case go smoothly after the initial discovery was made in late July?"

  "No, sir, on the contrary. There was very little physical evidence to be found at the scene of the crime and no witnesses that we knew of . . . at the time. We had no description of the murderers, no description of the vehicle they had been driving, nothing concrete to go on. Whatever leads we came upon just didn't pan out. Toward the end of September I figured those killers had done gotten away scot free."

  "Then, on the night of September twenty-sixth, something happened to turn the case around," the prosecutor pointed out. "Would you please tell us of the events of that evening?"

  The warm morning sun beamed through the courthouse window. It glistened like golden fire on the brass star pinned above Taylor's breast pocket. "I received a call that night from Clayburn Biggs' son, Josh. He told me that there was gonna be bad trouble at the Bloody Bucket and that I should get over there fast. I rounded up my deputies and drove over to the tavern to check it out."

  "And what was taking place when you arrived?"

  "There was a fight going on between Clay Biggs and Bully Hanson. Or I should say, it was done over with. I got there just as Bully was about to shoot Clay with that sawed-off shotgun of his. Had it aimed square at Clay's head. He was on the verge of pulling the trigger when we showed up and arrested him for the murders of those three boys."

&nbs
p; "What gave you reason to suspect Bully Hanson and Claude Darnell of killing those young men?"

  "'Cause Bully admitted to it right then and there."

  "What were Mr. Hanson's exact words?"

  "He said that Johnny Biggs was a real bitch to kill; that he'd had to chase him halfway across Brewer's field before he finally caught him and put a load of buckshot through his head."

  "Your witness, Mr. Branchworth," extended Shaw.

  "Sheriff White," began the counselor, approaching the stand. "During the lengthy and sometimes fruitless investigation of this particular case, did you ever get the impression that the citizens of Coleman were getting somewhat restless as far as your lack of progress was concerned? Did you ever feel as if they had lost confidence in your ability as a lawman?"

  Taylor White felt a cold weight in the pit of his ample stomach. He knew that he was under oath, that he must answer truthfully. "Yes ... yes, I did get that impression a few times."

  "In fact, did you not begin to believe that their concerns were genuine? That, perhaps, your skills as a county sheriff were not up to handling a complex case of triple homicide?"

  The constable was beginning to resent the tone of the questions being directed at him. He shifted uncomfortably in the witness chair, a pink flush of embarrassment slowly creeping into his thick neck and jowls. "Maybe so;" he finally said. "I reckon I might've had some doubts after a while."

  A thin grin possessed Branchworth's dull features, and a devilish twinkle could be detected in those droopy-lidded eyes. "And then, on that September night, you came upon a drunken brawl in the parking area of a local roadhouse. My client made an off-color remark as to the killing of his opponent's son, perhaps merely to goad him into further fisticuffs, and you, Sheriff White, suddenly found a solution to a lot of nagging problems that were making you into, shall we say, a picture of incompetence?"

  "What the hell are you trying to say, mister?" snapped the lawman. His knuckles whitened with growing anger as he gripped the arms of the chair he sat in.