The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Keep an eye on him. I’m on my way.”

  Sometimes you get lucky, Nelse Miller had said. In the small hours of the morning, Nelse had been apt to find philosophy at the bottom of a shot glass, or in the glow of his last cigarette. He maintained that for every case that stays unsolved by chance-no one happened to see anything, no one happened to find the weapon-there is another case that is solved by the same random luck. “This time the coin came up your way,” he’d said when he got back to find the suspect already in custody and the evidence tagged for trial.

  Now Spencer wondered whose luck it had been-his windfall or Fate Harkryder’s misfortune? He found the kid at the truck stop, still shooting pool with a couple of truckers. Harmon pointed him out. Spencer recognized the scraggly youth with the peach-fuzz mustache as one of the Harkryders, and he’d asked to see the jewelry the kid had been trying to sell. The kid had made a move, as if to put his hand into the pocket of his jacket, but instead he had shoved the player with the cue stick against Spencer Arrowood and made a run for the door. He’d been about three truckers short of a getaway, and instead of making it to his car, he found himself facedown on the sticky floor of the truck stop, while the deputy cuffed his hands behind his back.

  “It’s your move,” Alton Banner told his patient, tapping the chessboard with a black pawn.

  Spencer blinked and the carved wooden pieces came back into focus, but he had forgotten now what maneuver he had been setting up. “Did we miss anything?” he asked his opponent.

  The old doctor shrugged. “Are you referring to my designs on your king’s bishop, or are you over there wool-gathering again?”

  “I was thinking about the night of the Trail Murders,” said Spencer. “When you and I were at the crime scene. Is there anything we overlooked? Anything you’d do differently now-with more experience, I mean.”

  “Speak for yourself, boy. I was fifty-one back in those days, and I can’t say that experience has improved me much since then. As for technology, maybe there’s something we could have gained if we’d had Luminol and DNA testing, and all the rest of the new tools, but there’s no use worrying about that now. The evidence has long since degraded. It went into the trash the decade before last. What good will it do to dwell on that now?”

  “I want to be sure. I’ve never had anybody executed before-and it’s on my say-so. The evidence was circumstantial.”

  “Circumstantial. Would you listen to yourself? Most of the people in prison are there on circumstantial evidence, aren’t they? Even felons are smart enough not to commit the crime in front of a bunch of eyewitnesses. Excepting John Wilkes Booth, that is.”

  Spencer smiled. “I know that. And most killers are not inclined to think that confession is good for the soul, either. We had a solid case. He had Emily Stanton’s jewelry in his possession and was attempting to sell it, which gave us a motive of robbery. His blood-type A-negative-was found at the crime scene. He had no alibi.”

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself? Because if you’re saying all this for my benefit, let me say now that I never had one moment’s doubt from that day until this that you had the killer. He had A-negative blood, Spencer. That’s rare enough so that if you walk into a blood bank and offer to give them some, they start dancing for joy and offering you refills on the orange juice.”

  “I just wondered if there’s anything I’ve forgotten about that case.”

  “My memory is long. I can still see those two young people crumpled on the ground in that clearing, looking as if they’d been caught in a threshing machine. No, I never will forget that. So don’t ask me to spare too much time helping you agonize over Fate Harkryder’s execution, because the night we found the bodies of his victims, I could have shot him myself without a flicker of hesitation. I swear I could’ve.”

  Spencer pushed a rook forward. “My summons to the execution said that as sheriff of the prisoner’s home county, I could appoint another witness besides myself to attend as well. Would you like to go?”

  Alton Banner sighed. “I would not,” he said. “I have spent a lifetime trying to keep people from dying, and I have no intention this late in the game of watching it happen on purpose. You go, if you feel it’s your duty, but my responsibilities in this case were all discharged twenty years ago. I’m done with it.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I’ll tell them I relinquish my second witness, then. The forest ranger, Willis Blaine, is dead. I asked Martha to check on that a couple of days ago. Aside from him, I can’t think of anyone else who ought to be there.”

  A few moments passed in silence while Spencer stared at the chessboard, but Alton Banner knew that chess wasn’t on his mind. “What about your other pet case?” he said loudly, hoping to distract him. “Was the evidence against Frankie Silver circumstantial?”

  Spencer had finished reading all the material Martha had brought him about the 1830s murder case. So far he saw no reason to question the decision of his nineteenth-century counterpart. Given the circumstances, he could see no choice but to arrest Frankie Silver for murder. “She lied,” he said. “When Charlie Silver disappeared, Frankie went to her in-laws and said that he hadn’t come back to the cabin.”

  “Whereas most of him had…” drawled Dr. Banner. “I know the story. Doesn’t prove she killed him. Maybe she was covering up for someone.”

  “Then she’s not innocent,” said Spencer. “Accessories before the fact get hanged, too. There appears to be no evidence of anyone else involved, though. Frankie Silver was never accused of having a lover. And her father and older brother were on a long hunt in Kentucky when the crime was committed.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “All the storytellers say so, and I tend to believe it, because they were never arrested. If they’d been around, they would have been the constable’s first choice for suspects.”

  “All right, she was guilty. I wonder what bothered Nelse Miller about the case then?”

  “The fact that it doesn’t ring true,” said Spencer. “A little eighteen-year-old girl in a cabin with a year-old baby. A one-room cabin. Charlie Silver’s body was cut into little pieces and parts of it were burned in the fireplace. How long would that take, anyway?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Depends. What do we have to work with?”

  “It’s 1831. An ax, maybe. A hunting knife.”

  “A couple of hours, easily. More if she isn’t used to butchering. If you don’t hit between the vertebrae just right, it could take you an hour just to get the head off. It would be messy work. I wonder she had the stomach for it. Him being her husband and all.”

  “She was afraid of being caught,” said Spencer. “Fear can make you do extraordinary things.”

  “Maybe so. But it’s not something you’d expect an eighteen-year-old girl to be capable of. I know of no precedent.”

  “Frankie Silver was a pioneer. People were tougher in those days.” Spencer pushed a pawn toward the center of the board. “Your move.”

  “Checkmate.”

  Spencer managed to keep the Harkryder case at bay for two more games of chess, both of which he lost, because his mind kept straying to matters of greater consequence. At last he was alone again, having promised to make an early night of it in deference to his weakened condition. Instead he was sitting in his leather chair with the yellowed manila folder in his lap, sorting through the evidence one more time.

  The physical evidence tied Fate Harkryder directly to the scene of the crime-no question about that.

  That afternoon at the truck stop, Spencer had arrested Fate Harkryder on suspicion of murder. The jewelry was impounded as evidence of his guilt. The items tallied exactly with the list Spencer had written down during his phone call to Colonel Stanton: the woman’s UNC class ring containing the initialsEAS, the silver and goldtone watch, and a gold chain.

  Spencer took the prisoner back to the jail in Hamelin for questioning, and he notified the TBI that he had a suspect in custody. He’d als
o left word with Nelse Miller, wherever it was he’d gone. An arrest in a major murder investigation: that would bring the old fox home. Spencer was sure of it.

  Deputy sheriff Spencer Arrowood read the suspect his rights. “Do you understand?” he said as he put the card away. “You can have a lawyer if you want one.”

  The sullen young man sat with his feet wrapped around the legs of the chair, scowling up at the officer questioning him. His long hair was unkempt, and his baggy clothes were several days past needing a wash. Spencer had a good mind to hose him down before he put him in the jail cell.

  The prisoner shrugged. “What do I need a lawyer for?”

  It wasn’t the deputy’s job to tell him. He said, “I’m just telling you that if you do want one, you can call him now. And if you can’t afford to hire an attorney, we can have one appointed to represent you.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t need no help to say I didn’t do it.”

  “Where did you get the jewelry?”

  Another shrug. “Found it.”

  The interrogation had yielded precious little information after that. Fate Harkryder sat there sullen and silent, refusing all offers of food and soft drinks with a quick shake of his head, as if he were determined to say as little as possible.

  At first Spencer tried asking simple questions in a firm but courteous tone. When that got nowhere, he switched to shock tactics, describing the mutilated condition of the bodies and declaring that an unrepentant killer would get no sympathy from judge or jury. “If you want to be as dead as they are, you just keep sitting here saying nothing,” he said. “You can’t talk your way out of having that jewelry in your possession.”

  “Doesn’t prove nothing.”

  The jury thought otherwise.

  * * *

  Joe LeDonne hated the telephone. Its shrill peal was mechanical nagging as far as he was concerned, and he never answered it without an inward curse at the interruption. If he had not been in law enforcement, he would not have had one in his house. It was ironic, he thought as he stared at the instrument, an electronic spider on his desk, that so much of police work required proficiency in telephoning.

  He and Martha had agreed to give it one more day before they told the sheriff about the homicides. The TBI was conducting its own investigation, but Martha and Joe were going to complete all the scut work of canvasing for witnesses, so that there would be little for Spencer to do by the time he was informed of the case. Joe didn’t think there was much chance of keeping him on the mountain once he heard about the new Trail Murders, but he reasoned that the sheriff was bound to find out sooner or later, and the news had better come from them.

  So far they had played it by the book, with all the thoroughness they could pack into sixteen-hour days. They had investigated the crime scene, and then gone over the site again when the TBI arrived. The next few days had been spent talking to residents in the vicinity of the site, questioning people at the local bars and cafés, and to suppliers of camping goods and army surplus equipment.

  Martha had refused to believe that the two Trail Murders, separated by twenty years, were in any way connected, but she had studied the old case file anyway. Willis Blaine, the forest ranger, was dead, but she had questioned Harmon Ritter, still a fixture out at the truck stop. She had even tracked down the two firemen from Alabama, but they had not been able to tell her anything helpful. She had expected no link between the two cases, and she found none.

  LeDonne focused his attention on the individuals most likely to be involved in criminal activity. First he checked the list of parolees in residence in the area, phoning the ones whose crimes had included robbery or violence and checking on their current employment status. He had not ruled out the ex-cons entirely, but he was reasonably certain that they would have to look elsewhere for the killer.

  That morning he had called the park service and asked that they fax him a copy of the sign-in sheet from the date of the murders from the two shelters on the Appalachian Trail nearest the crime scene. Maybe one of the hikers saw something. Maybe one of them was the man they were looking for. He had spent several hours in the tedious process of tracking down addresses and phone numbers via the Internet and calling the hikers or, in some cases, E-mailing them. Most of those who were hiking all the way to the end of the Appalachian Trail in Maine could not be reached, but he had been able to reach a fair number of weekend campers, and park visitors who had hiked for only a few days. It was now early evening and LeDonne was still at it, reasoning that the dinner hour was the best time to catch people at home. Beside the list of names, the cup of coffee that was his dinner grew cold.

  He had just got through to Jeff Garrison in Maryland. LeDonne explained who he was and what he wanted. Days of practice had honed his explanation to a concise summary in the fewest possible words. When he finished, there was a silence on the other end of the telephone.

  “Sir? Are you there?”

  “I’m thinking.” Late twenties, LeDonne thought, analyzing the voice. Educated. White-collar worker. Maybe a lawyer. Not rattled by the idea of talking to a law officer. He waited.

  “I’m trying to sort out the different days of the trip.”

  “We’re right on the North Carolina line,” LeDonne told him. “Near Erwin. Unicoi. Do you remember anybody who looked-well, out of place-on the trail?”

  “Oh, right. Let me see… There was a guy with hunting dogs. I didn’t think he ought to be in a national park.”

  One of the Jessups,thought LeDonne. “They do that around here sometimes,” he said aloud, making a note to find out who had been out with the dogs, and to question them also.

  “Other than that, there were just the usual folks doing the trail. It’s pretty crowded this time of year, you know. Lot of old dudes-the Woodstock leftovers, you know-out communing with nature, and some really buff women doing the Xena thing. All kinds, really. And guys that were obviously locals. Rednecks.”

  LeDonne resisted the urge to tell Mr. Garrison how much he disliked talking to bigots. He had to be polite to potential witnesses, and besides, the exercise would be pointless. He was sure that the smug young man would be bewildered to be accused of prejudice. Political correctness did not require tolerance or courtesy toward white Southerners.

  “Oh, wait. Speaking of locals. There was one guy out there who looked pretty odd.”

  “How so?”

  “He looked like he ought to be going to computer class instead of out backpacking. Skinny little guy with pens in the pocket, and dress shoes. And a necktie. In the woods.”

  “Did he have a backpack?”

  “Yeah. I think so. A bookbag, really. Not serious camping gear.”

  “How old would you say this individual was?”

  “Late teens. Early twenties. Hard to say.”

  “Can you give me a description of him? Height? Hair color?”

  “Not really. I just looked at him and thought:Nerd, and I kept walking.”

  “Nerd, huh?”

  “Yeah. Oh, wait there is one other thing I remember. The guy had an earring. You know that science fiction TV show about the space station?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the people from this one planet always wear this odd kind of double earring. And he had one of those. So I knew he was a space cadet. I wondered what he was doing out hiking, instead of shooting down aliens in the video arcade.”

  “If I find him, I’ll ask him,” said LeDonne.

  Fate Harkryder was having the dream again. It was dark, and he could not see where he was, but he knew, the way one does in dreams, that he was dead. He could not remember how he came to die, or whether there was any pain involved in the leaving of his life: all he knew was that he was dead and it was very dark. He kept still for a moment, listening for his own heartbeat or the sound of his lungs drawing breath, but there was only stillness and silence. He felt the oppression of a confined space, and he knew that he was in a box deep in the ground, but he was somehow conscious.
Perhaps there had been a mistake and he was not dead after all. He had heard tales of men on the gallows who were revived after being cut down from the hanging rope, and of an electrocuted prisoner needing two or three jolts of current to finally stop the heart. Ethel Rosenberg-the convicted spy in that fifties atomic-secrets case-went to the electric chair at Sing Sing. Her husband had died on the first round, but they’d had to electrocute her a second time to make her die. Maybe his execution was over and he had been rendered unconscious, but not killed. He would shout for someone to let him out, but when he tried to open his mouth, he found that it had been sewn shut, and he could not open his eyes, because they, too, were sealed with nylon thread. He tried to lift his arms to pound on the lid of the coffin, but he could make no movement with his dead arms. The screams stayed inside his mind, caught behind sewn-shut lips, echoing in the dark.

  He woke up then. The same place in the dream that he always awakened, to the same six-paces-by-nine-paces cell, filled with his books and his calendar pictures of mountains.

  “Hey, Milton, you out there?” It was two o’clock in the morning, but nobody sleeps soundly on death row. Fate was shivering, even in the breathless heat of a Nashville summer night. It was not completely dark. It is never completely dark here. He listened for a sound from beyond the wall. “Milton?”

  Milton, his neighbor, a skinny young junkie from Memphis, who copped the death sentence in a drug hit, didn’t answer. Fate didn’t like Milton much-but maybe, he reasoned, that was the point. Nobody that you could like very much ever made it to death row these days, because a jury wouldn’t ask for the death penalty if they could find any redeeming qualities in the accused. In the old days, maybe, but not now. Public opinion and liberal lawyers were making it harder and harder to execute prisoners, so it was mainly career criminals and second-time killers who made it into Pod Five now. Fate wondered if a new trial would get him taken off the list, but that didn’t seem likely now, as the dream reminded him.