by Stuart Woods
Tucker pointed them toward the house. “If you’ll come inside I’ll explain the whole thing to you,” he said, and walked them down the hill. As they walked through the kitchen door, John Howell waved at them from the telephone. Dr. Tom Mudter was sitting at the kitchen table, writing.
“Evening, Billy, Mr. Holmes,” the doctor said. “Tucker, if you’ll get somebody to move Foxy’s truck we can put his body in the garage. We’ll need a place for all the remains, anyway. There’ll be a lot of cataloguing to do.”
“Is Foxy dead?” Billy asked incredulously.
Tucker led them into the living room and sat them down. He opened a file folder and handed it to Billy. “Let me start at the beginning, Governor,” he said.
Billy stared down at the sheet of paper before him. Even after so many years, he recognized his father’s handwriting immediately.
Billy was still trying to absorb what Tucker had been telling him for the past half hour, when a man in a dirty blue suit came in. Tucker introduced him as Special Agent Carr of the FBI.
“Tucker,” said Carr. “We found a fresh grave; you’ll never guess where.” Tucker raised his eyebrows. “It was in the garage, under Funderburke’s truck. If we’d moved it sooner we’d have found it immediately. God only knows why he buried him there. Two to one it’ll turn out to be the boy in the latest bulletin.”
“How many does that make so far?” Tucker asked.
“Seven, counting the cop. And we’ve only just begun.”
Billy walked out back with Holmes and Tucker. “We need a lot of help, here, Governor,” Tucker said. “Do you think you could get us some National Guard assistance?”
Billy nodded. “I’ll call the governor right away.” He went back into the house.
“Uh, Chief?” Tucker turned. It was Bobby Patrick. “Uh, can I help you out in any way?”
Tucker introduced him to Ben Carr, who looked at him for a moment and said, “Sheriff, you could relieve the Chief’s man down at the main road. We could use him up here. Just keep anybody from coming up here who doesn’t have any business here.”
“Right, yeah,” said Patrick, backing out of the house, grateful for some official function.
Carr looked at Tucker and laughed. “There’s a sheriff who’ll probably have a number of candidates opposing him come election time, when word gets out that he and that Talbot County judge didn’t want to search this place.”
Billy returned from the house. “The governor is calling the National Guard commander at La Grange, who will call you and offer whatever you need.” He looked around him. “Mr. Holmes and I are of no use here. I think we’d better go.”
“All right, Governor, I’ll keep you posted.”
“I’d appreciate it if you would. And if there’s any kind of assistance I can give you, don’t hesitate to call me—at any hour.”
“I expect the National Guard can give us all we need,” Tucker replied. “Mr. Holmes, we could use three or four more phone lines out here. Do you think you could arrange that?”
“Of course,” Holmes replied. “I’ll have them out here within the hour.”
John Howell joined them. “Billy, I’ve got a clear bead on this, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tip any other press for another twenty-four hours.”
Billy looked around him. “Sure, John. From the looks of this operation it’ll be that time before we know the extent of this, and I can’t say I want to be the one to announce it. That’s up to Tucker and Mr. Carr, I expect.” He turned to Hugh Holmes. “Why don’t we go home, and leave this to the professionals?”
“I’d like nothing better,” replied the banker. Considering all that had happened, Holmes was strangely silent on the way home, Billy thought.
Back at Foxy’s, John Howell loaded a camera and began walking slowly about the digging area, photographing everything. He stopped to take a shot of an old black man leaning on his shovel. The man pointed at Tucker across the way.
“That sho’ is some Chief of poh-leece we got, ain’t it?” he said to Howell.
“Yep. He’s quite a fellow.”
“Always wuz.”
“How’s that?”
“I’se knowed him since he wuz a boy,” the man said. “We used to git in a heap o’ misChief when we wuz chillen, Willie an’ me.”
Howell stopped taking pictures. “You grew up in Columbus, did you?”
“Oh, nossuh. We growed up right here in Delano. Willie’s daddy done used to work for Mr. Billy’s daddy, when he wuz still farmin’.”
Howell looked closely at the man. He seemed perfectly sane and sober. He was one of the prisoners Bartlett had brought out to dig. Howell got out a notebook. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“My name’s Walter Johnson,” he replied, “but folks call me Pieback.”
23
BILLY SPENT a quiet Saturday at home, waiting to hear from Tucker. He talked briefly with Holmes, and they agreed it would be better, under the circumstances, to make no more phone calls to legislators.
“This thing at Foxy’s is going to overtake us shortly,” Holmes had said, “and it will obliterate everything else. Let’s don’t try to swim against the stream.”
Late in the afternoon Tucker Watts and John Howell arrived, both looking exhausted. Patricia pressed some hot soup on them, and Billy mixed them a drink. Soon they were settled in Billy’s study before a fire. It had begun to rain outside.
“We’re finished out there, for the most part, and it’s a good thing, too,” Tucker said, glancing out the window. “The FBI has sent a pathologist down, and he and Dr. Mudter are cataloguing the remains, with the help of an anthropologist from the University of Georgia, who’s had a lot of experience on archaeological digs.”
“How many?” asked Billy, dreading the answer.
Tucker produced a notebook and flipped through several pages, counting. “We think we’ve found them all now.” He paused and took a deep breath. “It comes to forty-three.”
Billy had been expecting bad news, but the number struck him like a blow. A moment of nausea came and went.
When Billy didn’t respond, Tucker continued. “We’ve been able to identify seven of them from personal effects buried with the bodies. The rest are being checked against old missing-persons records in Atlanta. Most of them will probably never be identified.
“It’s difficult to tell exactly when all this began, but I think it’s likely that the one your father dealt with, the boy found by the old Scout hut, was the first victim, and the second body found, the one from Waycross, was the second or third. After those two experiences, Foxy became much more careful, and, as far as we know, no others ever got off the place alive.”
Billy was still unable to say anything.
“We found a lot of paraphernalia in a hidden cupboard at the back of a broom closet—handcuffs, rubber hoses, a lot of stuff. We haven’t had a psychologist in on this yet, but it seems to me that the whole thing began when Foxy applied for the Chief-of police job and didn’t get it. He felt he had been cheated out of it, somehow. Foxy had some sort of police fixation, and he conducted interrogations. None of his victims, of course, would have known the answers to his questions.”
“Were these sex crimes?” Billy was finally able to ask.
“Without a doubt,” said Tucker. “Only the body found in the new grave in the garage was recent enough for a reliable determination—he had been sodomized—but if we knew the truth about all the victims, I’m sure it would be much the same.”
“Have you notified relatives?”
“Batlett’s on the phone now. In some cases I suppose we won’t be able to find them. The National Guard has provided body bags, and we’re moving all the remains to the Atlanta morgue. Those that can’t be identified will be interred as quickly as possible, the others will be turned over to families as soon as postmortems are done.”
“What other problems can we expect?” Billy asked.
“Funderburke apparently left a sizeable est
ate—something in the neighborhood of a million dollars, Mr. Holmes reckons— and, as far as we can determine, he had no living relatives. There are likely to be a number of suits against the estate, and I expect most of the proceeds will go to families of the victims.”
“That’s as it should be,” Billy said.
“That’s about it, for now, I guess. I’ll keep you posted if there are any new developments, but right now I’m going to go home and get some sleep. John’s going to use our guest room.”
Billy turned to Howell. “When is this going to hit the papers, John?”
“Tomorrow morning. It’ll be in the Times, of course, and the Constitution will pick up our story and photographs. I’ve already sent a courier to New York with copy and film. The TV people will descend on the town tomorrow, when they hear about it. I’d have a statement ready, if I were you.”
“All I can do is express my shock and regret and sympathy for the families and refer everything else to Tucker, I guess.”
Billy shook hands with both men and saw them to the door. Then he went back to the study and sat, staring into the fire, immobile.
When they had turned out of Billy’s drive and toward Tucker’s house, John Howell took a deep breath and spoke. “Tucker, when I was doing the research for the Sunday Magazine piece, I went down to Columbus and looked up your birth certificate.”
“Oh?” replied Tucker. He gripped the wheel more tightly.
“Naturally, I didn’t bother to look for a death certificate. If I went back down there now and looked, what would I find?”
Tucker was too tired to care any more. “You’d find that I died of scarlet fever when I was eight years old,” he said.
“The original Tucker was your cousin?”
Tucker nodded. “Uncle Tuck’s boy. He still had the birth certificate. That was all I needed to get into the army later. I worked for a sharecropper down in Alabama during that time. My cousin was two years older than me, but I was tall for my age, and there wasn’t any problem enlisting. Uncle Tuck wrote out a letter for my mother, saying that I had been hit by a truck in Alabama and killed. She showed it around, and everybody bought it. After that, I was Tucker Watts.”
“Who else knows?”
“Elizabeth. I only told her a few months ago.”
“Tell me the truth, Tucker, does Billy know?”
Tucker shook his head. “No, but if you’re going to print it, I’d better go back out there and tell him right now.”
Howell was quiet for a few moments, staring out the window at the passing countryside. “No, I don’t think I will. He’s been through enough the last couple of months—two elections, and now this house vote on Tuesday. Tomorrow you’re going to come out smelling like a rose, and so will Billy, for backing you. If I print this stuff it will muddy the waters, cast doubts on what Billy knew and what he didn’t. He has a chance to go all the way, you know.”
“What, Washington?”
Howell nodded. “Yep. I have it on good authority that he’s at the top of the list if JFK dumps Johnson, and it looks like he’s going to.”
Tucker grinned. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Howell laughed. “Yeah, maybe you’ll get to be head of the FBI.”
“John,” Tucker said, “I appreciate your not bringing all this out. Billy deserves better than that.”
“Yeah.” Howell looked out the window at the wet fields. “Boy, I’m some kind of reporter, huh?”
24
BILLY DIDN’T GO to Atlanta for the house vote on Tuesday. John Howell agreed to keep an open line from the capitol to the house outside Delano to report on the voting as it progressed.
Shortly after the house convened, Holmes, at Billy’s house to await the vote, received a phone call. He took it in the kitchen, then came back into Billy’s study. “That was Fred Mitchell,” he said to the little gathering of family and friends, which included Tucker and Elizabeth Watts, “from Toccoa, in north Georgia. Billy and I flew up to see him the other day. The boy that was found in Foxy’s garage was Fred’s nephew, his sister’s boy, from Florida.” There was a little gasp from the group. “He asked me to tell Tucker how grateful he is; they might never have known what happened to the boy. He also said to tell you, Billy, that he’s voting with you, and he thinks he’s got two, maybe three others lined up.”
There were two hours of speeches in the house, and at noon the vote was taken. John Howell, on the phone from the capitol, breathed the news to Billy. “Two votes, Governor. You won by two votes.”
Billy hung up and reported the news to the gathering. There was cheering and applause. The phone rang again immediately. Patricia answered it. “It’s the White House,” she said.
“Ask them to hold on a minute,” Billy replied. He turned to the gathering. “Before I tell them how happy I am, I want to tell all of you how happy I am, and how truly grateful I am to each of you. You’ve given me so much help, and I promise you, I’m not through asking.”
He tried to say something else, but couldn’t manage it. Instead, he went to the phone and talked for a few minutes. He came back to the group, who were waiting eagerly.
“He says congratulations, and congratulations to Tucker, too. He’s going to Texas for a few days later this month, and he wants me to come up to talk with him when he gets back.”
Hugh Holmes sat in his study late that night, a brandy in his hand, immensely sad. He had suddenly had the feeling of having finished something, indeed, everything. It had been fifty-four years since he had first set foot on the land that had become Delano, and always since that time his life had been filled with plan and purpose. Now there was no plan, no purpose, in which he could play a meaningful part.
He had done all he could for Billy. He had done all he could for the town. And now Delano, in which he had invested such industry and ingenuity, would become a synonym for perversion and death. No one would ever again speak of the town without reference to what had happened there. He felt a pain in his chest, which quickly spread to his left arm. He knew that pain; he had felt it before, recently. There was a phone at his elbow; help was available—if he wanted it. The pain increased; the brandy glass fell from his fingertips.
He had only to wait. The pain would take him, or it would leave him. He genuinely had no preference.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
MORE THAN THIRTY years ago, while rummaging in a closet in my maternal grandmother’s home, I found a large Chief-of-police badge. It had been torn and pockmarked by buckshot and still bore traces of dried blood. It had belonged to my grandfather, who had died wearing it more than ten years before I was born. The story of his death, as related to me by a great aunt, formed the basis of this book, but so little was I told, and so much have I embroidered upon it, that the event, like everything else in the book, must be regarded as fiction.
Apart from Will Henry, a number of other characters are based on real people, all but one of whom are dead. Except for Delano, all the towns and counties mentioned in the book are real, but none of the people who populate them is. Any living person, but one, who believes himself or herself to be portrayed in this book is mistaken. So careful have I been to avoid such a portrayal, that any resemblance to such a person would be a matter of the wildest coincidence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM INDEBTED to Dr. Thomas J. Holmes, a fine storyteller, who nurtured the seed of this novel with his memories; to the late James S. Peters, who at ninety spoke history and remembrance of a brilliant quality into my tape recorder; to Merrick and Janet Coveney, of County Galway, Ireland, who helped me to find a quiet and beautiful spot in which to begin this book; to Peter and Elizabeth Shepherd, who gave me a similar spot in which to continue it; to my editor, Eric Swenson, for insight, patience, and friendship, and for taking me sailing with him; to Frederick Allen, Chief political writer for the Atlanta Constitution, for his sage advice on the complexities of Georgia politics; to Dr. Paul Golightly, medical director of the emergency services
unit of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, and to Dr. Sam Gray, both of whom read the medical portions of the manuscript and offered comments; to my mother, for bearing both my person and my personality; to the microfilm department of the University of Georgia Library, which supplied me with copies of old newspapers; to the designers of the microcomputer upon which I wrote, edited, and typed this manuscript, but not to its manufacturers, who were a pain in the ass; and to my dog Fred, without whose entertaining company the solitude necessary for the completion of this book might have been unbearable.
Copyright © 1981 by Stuart Woods. All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto. Printed in the United States of America.
FIRST EDITION
BOOK DESIGN BY MARJORIE J. FLOCK
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Woods, Stuart.
Chiefs.
I. Title.
PS3573. 0642C57 1981 813’.54 80-27350
ISBN 0-393-01461-4
ISBN 978-0-393-06353-0 (e-book)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. 25 New Street Square, London EC4A 3NT