The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “How do we go about looking for him then?”

  “Stranger killers are hard to catch. No pool of suspects. Could have been anybody. You have to hope they do something stupid. But we’ll do what we can to help you with the forensic evidence. It will take some time, though.”

  Spencer nodded. “I understand. We have to have a suspect anyhow, before the forensic evidence will do any good.”

  The TBI man stood up and stretched, yawning into the gray light. “Morning already. You’re going to have a long day ahead of you, Deputy, finding out if anybody saw anything suspicious up here. Oh, and when you notify the families, be sure you get a description of the personal effects the victims had with them. They may turn up somewhere. It could be the best lead you get.” He yawned again. “Keep in touch. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do to help.”

  Back at the office, Spencer worked through the rest of the dawn hours, organizing his notes, making calls to locate the victims’ families. Now it was seven o’clock. He would have to make the notification calls soon, before the families left for work. He stared at the two telephone numbers, wondering which family to call first. He had never had to notify the family of a murder victim. Nelse Miller always took it upon himself to contact the families, and Spencer devoutly wished that the sheriff were here now to take care of it. The thought of coping with weeping and hysterical strangers made him uneasy, and he wondered what questions they would ask him about the circumstances and the condition of the bodies-and what should he tell them?

  The most difficult call would be to the female victim’s parents, he thought, because no one ever imagines their little girl in danger. Should he get that call over with, or should he begin with the other one and work up to it? He was so tired.

  He dialed the Wilsons’ number. The phone rang four times before someone picked it up, and a sleepy voice murmured, “-’Lo?”

  Spencer took a deep breath. “Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Who is this? What time is it?”

  He took a deep breath. You never got used to it. “My name is Spencer Arrowood. I’m with the sheriff’s department in Wake County, Tennessee. Is there anyone with you, Mrs. Wilson?”

  She made a startled cry and said, “What’s happened to Mike?” He heard her say, presumably to her husband, “Lyman, it’s about Mike.” Spencer waited for a man to come to the phone, but after a moment’s silence, Mrs. Wilson came back on the line and told him to go on. He plunged into his account of Mike Wilson’s death. He repeated who he was and where the bodies had been taken, telling Mrs. Wilson that someone would have to come to Tennessee to identify the body. Spencer made her write down his telephone number, because he knew she would want it later.

  At last she said, “I’ve been expecting this call for a long time, Officer. Funny, though. I always thought it would come from Vietnam.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Spencer. “My brother was killed there.”

  There wasn’t much left to say after that. He told her again how sorry he was, and asked if she was sure she was all right, but she was a soldier’s mother and she knew how to be brave. She said she was fine, and she thanked him for his kindness, but he could hear the sobs in her throat.

  Spencer waited five minutes after he hung up the phone before he placed the second call. He drank cold coffee without tasting it, and wondered if he’d be able to sleep when his day was finally over.

  Colonel Stanton had answered the phone as if he had been up for hours, which perhaps he had. His voice was crisp and alert. He picked up the receiver after one ring and said “Stanton!” as if all the calls he had ever received at home were urgent and official.

  Spencer identified himself, as he had to Mrs. Wilson, and then he’d asked, for form’s sake, “Do you have a daughter named Emily?”

  Spencer heard a sharp intake of breath, and then the same calm voice answered, “I do,” and then waited. He didn’t say:What is this all about? Why do you ask? Is she hurt? -all the things that people usually said when Spencer called to break the news to the loved ones. Colonel Stanton’s military training had prepared him to meet disaster with an unflinching stare. He simply waited to hear the worst.

  The silence at the other end of the phone stretched on as Spencer explained that Emily Stanton and her companion had been attacked while camping near the Appalachian Trail, and that both the young people were dead. He would need a member of the Stanton family to come to Tennessee to identify and claim the body. At this point the silence had become so protracted that Spencer interrupted himself to ask: “Are you all right, sir?”

  Charles Wythe Stanton ignored the question. “Are the killers in custody?”

  “No, sir. Not yet.” The authority in that voice took Spencer back to his army days in Germany. This stranger on the telephone had just taken command of the investigation.

  “Is there anything you need from us, Officer?”

  “Yes, sir. A description of any jewelry your daughter may have been wearing.”

  The list was given in the same crisp tones as before. “Is there anything else?”

  “Not at this time, sir.” Spencer felt that he was more shaken by the news than this stranger on the telephone.Perhaps he doesn’t believe it yet, he thought.He hasn’t seen her; I have.

  “I will be driving to Tennessee within the hour,” Charles Stanton told him. “I shall expect a full report when I arrive.”

  “Go to Knoxville first,” Spencer told him. “Identify the body, and talk to the TBI. Stop in Hamelin on your way back, after my investigation is under way.”

  “Hamelin is a little one-horse town, isn’t it?”

  “You might say that.”

  “I hope to God you people are up to this investigation,” said Charles Stanton. “Because if you aren’t, I will find the killer myself.”

  He hung up before Spencer could respond. He had no intention of explaining to Colonel Stanton that “you people” was him, working alone, with whatever assistance the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation cared to provide. He took another gulp of cold, bitter coffee. Sleep, he decided, was not an option.

  Martha Ayers was tired. Running the sheriff’s department short-staffed was a tough job even on the slowest days. Now, with a homicide investigation in full swing, she was subsisting on catnaps and cold burgers. She felt as if she had talked to everybody in the county by now, classroom to classroom, door to door, truck stop to café. Had anybody seen something that would help her? She had to keep moving, keep asking. Because sooner or later Spencer was going to find out that they had a double homicide on their hands, and if the pace of the investigation was killing her, she could imagine what it would do to him in his weakened state. She had known him all her life, and he was too intense for his own good, always had been. This case would pull him off that mountain like a logging chain, and if he wore himself out trying to take charge of the case, there’d be hell to pay for it. He might be sick for months. He might even have to resign.

  I don’t need him,she told herself.I’m the most recent graduate of the academy. I know all the latest methods of crime solving, and besides, the TBI is doing most of the work. All Joe and I have to do is present them with a suspect.

  “Miz Ayers? Are you awake? Your coffee’s getting cold.”

  Martha looked up from her contemplation of the counter-top. “Thanks, Fred,” she said to the old farmer who had sat on the stool beside her. “I guess I’m working too hard.”

  “I heard about it,” he said. “You don’t expect a thing like that to happen in the country.”

  “No.”

  “Of course, it happened here before, didn’t it? Twenty years ago.” Fred Dayton stabbed his finger at the coffee cup. “Right near that old church it was. Another couple out in the woods, up to no good, like as not.”

  “The couple in that case were hikers on the Appalachian Trail,” said Martha. “These two were grad students from East Tennessee State, studying rare mountain wildflowers.”

  Fred raised his
eyebrows. “At night?”

  “Well, they camped out. They were making a weekend of it.”

  “I saw the girl’s picture in the paper. Pretty little thing. Looked like the other one.”

  “Uh-huh.” The female victim, a native of Cincinnati, had been five foot nine with long black hair and dark eyes. She was pretty enough, but that was all she’d had in common with the tiny, auburn-haired Emily Stanton. She had also been married, but the husband, a fourth-year med student, had a hospital full of witnesses to account for his whereabouts on the night of the killings. They had checked him out six ways from Sunday, but the case wasn’t going to be that easy to solve. Her partner was nobody’s idea of a wife stealer, either: a balding, chubby botanist whose interest in sex seemed to have been confined to honeybees. The case had sounded sensational at first: young couple killed on the Appalachian Trail. But they weren’t a couple; they were two botanists who happened to be of opposite sex, and they weren’t attractive enough to hold the public’s attention. Perhaps that was why the coverage of the case had been light, almost casual. That, and the lack of an advocate like Charles Stanton to keep the media inflamed, had made the interest in the case little more than perfunctory, except to those who had the responsibility of solving it.

  “They weren’t from around here,” said Fred. He felt entitled to talk “shop” with her because he had helped her round up strayed horses on a road once, and since then he had engaged her in occasional conversations at the diner. This time he hoped to pick up some tidbits to enliven his trip to the barbershop. Martha was willing to humor him in the hope that something he said would be of value in the investigation.

  “No,” she sighed. “They weren’t from around here.”

  But the killer was,she thought.

  Burgess Gaither

  THE TRIAL

  Then let the jury come…The words chilled me, familiar as they were to an officer of the court.

  The trial had begun.

  I duly recorded in my notes:Frances Silver pleads not guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands charged and the following jurors were drawn, sworn, and charged to pass between the prisoner and the state on her life and death, to wit: Henry Pain, David Beedle, Cyrus P. Connelly, William L. Baird, Joseph Tipps, Robert Garrison, Robert McEirath, Oscar Willis, John Hall, Richard Bean, Lafayette Collins, and David Hennessee.

  They were all upstanding men of the community as far as I knew, although I was not well acquainted with any of them. By chance, none of them came from the exalted ranks of the town fathers: indeed, I knew of no connections that any of them had to the Erwins, the McDowells, or any of the other prominent families in Burke County, although no doubt Elizabeth could have found a connection somewhere in the wide-ranging roots of Morganton’s family trees. No matter if there were connections, of course; the luck of the draw could have packed the jury with Erwin cousins and former sheriffs, and still the trial would have been perfectly legal, but considering the humble origins of the defendant, the common touch seemed appropriate. Surely these plainspoken men could understand the humble life of this young woman better than the cosseted scions of planter families ever would.

  Constable Pearson threw open the doors to the courtroom, and a horde of raucous, clamoring spectators crowded in on an ill wind of whiskey fumes and tobacco smoke. It was a prodigious turnout, even by the standards of Burke County’s ordinary court attendance, which was never sparse. Because it was a brisk and cloudy day in early spring, I did not dread the presence of so many sweaty bodies in the confinement of the courtroom, as I often did during the September term of Superior Court. The heat and the noise would at least be bearable today. I hoped, though, that when the new county courthouse was built next year, the courtroom would be larger than the present one.

  I recognized many of the men in the crowd: the blacksmith, the tavern keeper, several local farmers. Shabbily dressed frontiersmen elbowed their way in among the dark-suited gentlemen and the townsmen in shirtsleeves, everyone eager for a look at the frail young defendant.

  Suddenly a flash of white at the back of the courtroom caught my attention. Surely it wasn’t…it was… a parasol. I groaned inwardly and leaned forward in an attempt to discern the bearer of this feminine object among the throng of men. My eyes could only confirm what I already knew, however, and sure enough, a few moments later the crowd parted as if before the staff of Moses, and Miss Mary Erwin sailed in upon a tide of murmuring.

  Of course, it was she. What other woman would dare to invade the male bastion of justice? Apart from the danger of unruly crowds, fistfights, and even more serious displays of violence, there is the carnival atmosphere of trial day, with drunken men cheering the lawyers, farmers spitting tobacco juice upon the floor, and a general laxity of decorum that should make any member of the fair sex shun this building when criminal court is in session. No doubt the fact that Miss Mary’s father had been clerk of Superior Court for forty-four years gave her a proprietary interest in the proceedings, and I knew that the friendless young woman on trial had aroused her interest and sympathy.

  I glanced at Judge Donnell to see if he would order the bailiff to escort Miss Mary from the premises, but he showed no interest in the matter. Her cousin Colonel James Erwin motioned for her to join him, no doubt concluding that if the lady could not be made to leave, then the next best thing would be for a respectable family member to act as her chaperone. I made a mental note to omit this detail from the account of the day’s events that I would give to my wife, but no doubt she would know about her sister’s boldness already.

  What a striking contrast Miss Mary made to the defendant! Her dress and the Spencer jacket that covered it were of the finest material, her hair was perfectly arranged under a fashionable Charleston bonnet, and although she was no beauty, Miss Mary radiated an air of assurance and good breeding that would mark her as a lady and win her respect and deference in any circumstances in which she might find herself. The defendant was a lovely, fragile creature, with a sweet, childish face under a cloud of fair hair, but if Frances Silver lived for a hundred years, she could not attain the commanding poise and aura of gentility that Miss Mary so effortlessly displayed.

  Another thought occurred to me as well. Although Frankie Silver was accused of killing her husband with an ax, surely a brutal crime calling for great audacity, I did not think, were the circumstances reversed, that she could have walked into a courtroom full of men and sat down so confident that her presence would be tolerated. I wondered if Elizabeth knew about her sister’s daring venture. I resolved not to mention it at home. No doubt she would learn of it soon enough. With a rustle of her skirts, Miss Mary took her place among the gallery and gazed expectantly at the officers of the court as if we were actors.Let the games begin, her expression seemed to say.

  William Alexander would present his case first. He rose, and inclined his head toward Judge Donnell with just the suggestion of a bow. The murmuring swelled and then tapered off at a stern look from the bench. Mr. Alexander waved his fist in the air. “We are here to try a wicked and heartless creature for cruel murder!” he announced.

  Full of the righteous brimstone that infuses prosecuting attorneys, William Alexander described the finding of Charlie Silver’s sundered body, dwelling on the victim’s youth and innocence. He let his voice falter as he described the life cut short, the soul sent unshriven into the hereafter, and the fatherless child left to fend for itself in the world. He ended with a thundering demand for justice. “The very blood of Charles Silver cries out for retribution. Let not his killer go unpunished!”

  Nicholas Woodfin sat through this harangue, frowning slightly, as if he wondered what his colleague was talking about, his expression suggesting that Mr. Alexander had been misinformed, and that he welcomed the opportunity to rectify the misunderstanding. Perhaps we are not so far from actors after all.

  Frankie Silver herself sat motionless, staring at the window beyond the jury box, as if she could not hear the tumul
t taking place around her. Perhaps she hears but does not comprehend, I thought. I wondered if Nicholas Woodfin had explained the trial procedure to her, and if so, had he done it in simple enough terms for an unlettered girl to understand? Surely there are more people here today than she has ever seen in her life; perhaps she is terrified of the sight of so many unruly strangers. She looked distressed only once, for the briefest moment, when Nicholas Woodfin left her side so that he might address the court on her behalf.

  The prince speaks,I thought sourly, remembering the stir that his appearance had caused among the ladies of the community. He stood tall and straight in his black suit, with his classical features composed into a solemn countenance. I was loath to admit, even to myself, that he did make an impressive figure in our simple country courthouse. I wondered what the jurors would make of him.

  “Gentlemen, you sit in judgment of a tragedy,” he told the jurors. “A young man in his prime has been cruelly struck down, and we compound the sorrow of the family by accusing his widow of his murder, by hauling her into open court to suffer the gaze of strangers, while we accuse her of the basest of crimes.

  “My colleague has told you how Charles Silver was done to death, and that his remains were cut up with a knife, as one might butcher a deer, and that his body was burned in the fireplace as if it were refuse. Is this the crime of awoman, gentlemen? Can you see even the most pitiless female savage committing such an outrage upon an enemy? I cannot. Yet Mr. Alexander asks us to believe that this gentle young woman, only eighteen years of age, a frail girl who is the tender mother of a baby, could do this awful deed-not to a stranger, but to a man who is her own husband.”

  Nicholas Woodfin turned and pointed to the defendant, who sat with perfect composure gravely watching him. “This fair young woman whose fate is in your hands is Frances Stewart Silver. Look at her. She is not mad. She is not a savage. She is an ordinary young woman, against whom no word of censure has ever been uttered in her community. She is not lazy. She is not wanton. She is not a drunkard. She is a simple young wife and mother. They say so, all of them in the place she comes from. Yet Mr. Alexander would have us believe that she had the ferocity to butcher a man-her own husband! Where is the sense in it, gentlemen? Where is the strength that would allow her to do it? And-that which concerns us most of all in a court of law-where is the proof that she did it?For I saw none. A man is dead, that much has been shown. But by whose hand he met his untimely death-that hasnot been shown.”