by WF Ranew
“That raised the specter of a killer on the loose, assuming Mr. Wrightman did not commit the crime. Mr. Washington would not comment further. Complicating the matter is the number of fingerprints found in the Elton home in the Cracker Town neighborhood. Several prints were recovered from the crime scene, both inside the home and on the back porch. Mitsy apparently was killed inside the house and dragged to her backyard.”
The story continued at some length.
“Previously, the sheriff told this reporter the prints matched those of Miss Elton and her brother, Jamison. Another set belonged to Cleet Wrightman. Another set of numerous prints could mystify investigators. ‘I can tell you this, while we found Cleet’s prints in the parlor on the settee and side table, the prints from the murder scene belonged to someone else. Asked why the lunacy board sent Wrightman off if someone else could have done the slaying, the sheriff replied, ‘ ’Cause his prints were at the scene of the murder. In the parlor.’ ”
Red copied the article and looked for others. None was found in the Atlanta evening paper. He checked the morning Atlanta newspaper of the time and only found stories that repeated much of what he already knew.
Perhaps he would learn more in meeting with the county sheriff in Damville the next week.
* * *
“Randy, something has come up,” Red said as they stepped into the attorney’s basement.
“Another surprise?”
“Not a big one, perhaps,” Red said. “Let’s call it a lead.”
“OK, break it to me. That’s why I hired you.”
Red sensed Randy might be uncomfortable with continually rehashing his family’s murder. He hoped his client might retain the open mind he originally had.
“Randy, do you recall an old military trunk among your father’s possessions?” he asked.
Red’s client walked to the back corner of the basement before answering. He lugged in a bright spotlight and hung it on a ceiling hook. He turned the hook and adjusted the angle to throw as much light as possible on the two-by-four and plywood shelving that held perhaps twenty or thirty banker boxes, much like the ones Randy had described.
“It’s not here. Plus, I didn’t collect a trunk after the funerals,” he said, going to one box and hauling it over to a table in the middle of the room. He stacked several folders full of paper on the table. “But as a kid, I remember playing around that trunk. It was huge, heavy, and painted government green.”
He looked at Red after setting another box down and opening it up.
“The college folks were real bastards about the files in his office, minimal as they were,” Randy said. “They made me clear out the two rooms immediately. I’d just buried my family, but the administrators over there insisted I take care of the task.”
“Randy, did you meet your father’s secretary during that time?”
Randy looked down as if in thought. “I did. Nancy, I believe. She attended the combined funeral. She was very helpful in organizing the files into the boxes. There were only a few of them. I’ve been through those. Not much else of any pertinence, I can tell you. What seemed interesting, I gave you in Savannah.”
Red shook his head and grimaced.
“Nope, no army trunk, Red,” Randy said. “I remember it from way back in Milledgeville, but not since then. How do you know about it anyway?”
Red had to be forthcoming, although he obviously didn’t tell Randy everything about his meeting with Nancy Miller.
“Nancy told me there was a trunk your father kept locked,” Red said.
“Where did he keep it?”
“She’s not sure where it might be,” Red said. “She’d taken some confidential files to your father one day, and he had the trunk open.”
“At the house?”
“I’m just not sure. I assumed the office. But if you didn’t find it there, the locker must have been at your home.”
Red had to obfuscate. He’d beg forgiveness later and hoped Randy wouldn’t make too much of a ruckus when he learned the truth—about his living kid sister.
“Back then, I had enough worries mourning my parents,” Randy said. He lowered his head as if studying the folders on the table. “I can tell you, Red, that whole period was a blurry ache in my heart. Don’t know how at eighteen, I did it. Thought I was all grown up. Until my parents and sister died.”
Red let him take a moment.
“I understand, Randy,” Red finally said. “The important thing is this. We have some valuable information in what you gave me in Savannah. Let’s see what else we can turn up today.”
They went to work. Randy set up folding chairs and brought down two office swing lamps to light the tabletop.
Red opened the box from Doctor Walter Goings’s office labeled lectures. It was pretty dry stuff. He found a transcript of a presentation Goings gave at a professional meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, eight years into his tenure at Central State. The year was 1968.
“Consider, if you will, the criminal’s insistence on innocence. I’ve encountered this with almost all patients in my current work and previously,” the document stated. “Almost everyone insists on his or her innocence of the crime for which they were accused. At first, early in my career, I grew tired of hearing this and expected it from every prisoner and mental hospital patient I saw. Then something happened that opened my eyes to this consistent insistence.
“It was with Patient Z at an undisclosed state institution. You can probably guess which one. (Laughter in the room.) In his lunacy board transcript, Patient Z did not disclose whether he killed a young woman in his hometown. He was asked twice by the judge, but the patient said nothing during the hearing. Nothing, at all, as a matter of fact. With our sessions over several years, however, the man started moving beyond merely insisting on his innocence of the murder and into the realm of who did the crime. (Gasps in the audience.)
“Now, the details of that I will not go into. But his acknowledgment of the real killer and how he knew showed me that we need to delve further into the rationale behind the accused’s insistence of innocence. We need to determine, first off, if the claim has validity. In some of my cases, people have maintained their innocence for years before finally breaking down and admitting their guilt…to me, privately, that is. And keep in mind that the majority of my patients resided in mental institutions. They were sent there because their mental disorders rendered them not responsible for their actions in the crime of which they were accused and not capable of standing trial…
“But Patient Z, over time, revealed a very detailed account of how the young woman died. Of course, these details might seem apparent if one considered him the killer. But what if he were not the killer? What if he witnessed the crime? He knew the killer well. After two years of work on the slaying, he committed his testimony of sorts to paper. He sent a copy to a relative working to obtain Patient Z’s release based on the affidavit. Will that happen? I do not know. But it was of no surprise to me that Patient Z named the killer in this affidavit. After all, we’d been discussing the man for several years.”
Red read the last passages of the paper to Randy.
“A damned bombshell,” the client said. “How can we locate that affidavit?”
“Let’s continue to go through all of these boxes,” Red said. “We might find it here. If not, I don’t have any other immediate tricks up my sleeve.”
They worked in the basement until just before midnight. At that point, they adjourned until Sunday afternoon.
Red welcomed the open parking slot in front of his B&B.
He slept well that night.
* * *
Nancy Miller called Red first thing Sunday. He was up, getting dressed, and preparing to go out for breakfast and a few shots of his beloved espresso.
“As you know, Jenny came to visit yesterday,” Nancy said. “She’s still here, but she wants to talk with you and perhaps meet when she returns to Atlanta.”
“That’s great,” Red sa
id. “Is she ready to meet her brother?”
“Yes, she is,” Nancy said. “I want to see Randy again.”
“Yes, he mentioned you two had met,” Red said. “I’ll speak with Jenny and take it from there. But I’d like to break the ice with Randy today. That will give him some time to adjust to the notion he has a living sibling.”
“OK, thanks, Red,” Nancy said. “We’re off to Sunday School.”
“Have a good day,” he said and hung up.
Chapter Six
Red got in touch with Jenny Miller. They had a short phone conversation, mainly setting a time to meet. Red suggested the Old Fourth Ward’s Battered Bean coffee shop for the next Friday.
Before meeting her, he considered his schedule and decided he had time to drive down to Damville and review decades-old murder case files.
* * *
Paul Mason, the current sheriff of Walmore County, met Red at the courthouse. He had pulled the documents relating to the murders of Mitsy and Jamison Elton.
Sheriff Dick Nelson’s name appeared on many of the documents. He’d retired years ago, but the new sheriff, Mason, seemed knowledgeable about both cases.
“We studied the crimes at the law enforcement training center during a seminar up there,” Mason said. “The cases are strange in that a brother and sister were killed eighteen years apart. One person was arrested in her death. Cleet Wrightman. Police for years wanted to question Cleet in Jamison’s death, but as you said on the phone, Red, he disappeared.”
Red looked at the table on which Mason had spread the file folders and pertinent content. The collection included fingerprints of brother and sister, along with several prints collected inside the Elton home. One of those was Wrightman’s. Other prints were not identified.
“Are there people close to these crimes we don’t have prints for?” Red asked.
“I thought of that when I became sheriff,” Mason said. “I studied the case from the standpoint of the few witnesses and the lunacy board transcript. Most of the witnesses are dead in Mitsy’s case. Several are alive from Jamison’s murder in seventy-three.”
Red nodded. He picked up and scanned the medical examiner’s report on Mitsy.
“This young lady died a violent death,” he commented to the sheriff.
“It was the most heinous of crimes,” Paul said. “Her assailant beat her and chopped her to death. Her brother drove up to the house around nine that night and found her body out in the bushes by a garden shed. "They have her blood type here somewhere. Should be on the report you have.”
Red flipped a page. He noted the blood type.
Red read the brother’s death certificate and compared it to Mitsy’s. “Both were hacked to death, likely by a butcher’s cleaver,” Red said. “Not an uncommon knife in most kitchens. Weapon ever found?”
“Not according to the evidence list.”
“We’re pretty certain the Goings were killed with a meat cleaver,” Red said.
The men sat down and took files to review. Red brought out his notebook and a pen.
For the next three hours, they poured over the files, at times pitching what-ifs back and forth to each other.
Red came across a Wrightman relative he knew and asked Paul about him.
“Yes, Wallace Adan, a first cousin of Cleet’s,” the sheriff said. “He ran an auto repair shop but sold the garage about ten years ago. He’s an old fellow now. Still owns his family’s home near Cracker Town. ”
Red nodded and scribbled in the notebook.
“Did Cleet and Wallace have other relatives still living around here?”
The sheriff got up for another cup of coffee and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“My lifelong mantra, Paul. I never say no to a cup of joe,” the private detective said.
Paul picked up both cups and went into another room. He came back with steaming vessels of the hot, black courthouse coffee.
“They do have another relative here,” he said. “He’s a preacher. Younger than Cleet and Wallace by a few years. But he’s still pounding the pulpit and raising holiness out on the Moultrie road. Mount Olive Baptist Church, I think.”
“Might drive out and meet the man of God,” Red said.
“He lives in a ranch house behind the church,” the sheriff said. “It’s about halfway between here and Moultrie, just this side of the county line. And these copies are for you.” Paul handed over a thick manila folder.
Red thanked Paul for hauling out the records and bid him a good day. He promised to stay in touch.
“Yeah, well, I’d love to help close the books on the Jamison murder,” Paul said. “I’ll do what I can.”
* * *
Cracker Town’s ghostly atmosphere could have made the perfect set for a movie. Except, the Damville neighborhood had been fenced off and restricted as a Superfund site years before Red’s visit.
Mercury poison and lead slag contaminated the entire area. Long before the federal designation, the old hat factory and battery plant next door closed and fell into disrepair. A huge steel and tin railroad shed and rusty train tracks remained beside the boxcar shop.
Red drove along the streets fronting the fences. Once-spectacular Victorian homes slumped in disrepair, and workers’ cracker houses tilted or collapsed in places. One house had burned to the ground.
Others looked pretty good, considering they hadn’t been lived in or maintained for years.
* * *
It was five o’clock by the time Red drove around Cracker Town enough to get the flavor of the place.
From there, he headed northeast toward Moultrie to visit the Reverend Gordon Adan.
He found the church easily enough. It was Wednesday, and getting on toward prayer meeting time.
He parked his truck and entered the church’s educational building.
He read the directory inside the door. The minister’s office was four doors down. Red stepped in and greeted an elderly receptionist named Doris.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m looking for Preacher Adan,” he said. “My name is Red Farlow.”
Doris mumbled a hello and picked up her phone receiver. She hit three buttons and listened.
“Hey, Pastor, a Mr. Farlow is here to see you,” she said. “All right.” She hung up and said to Red, “You can go on it.”
Gordon Adan sat behind a desk staring into a large computer screen. He turned as Red walked into the office.
“Good afternoon,” Adan said. He stood and walked around the desk.
Red shook hands and looked into the face of smiling Pastor Adan.
Something struck Red at that moment. Something shaky, scary, dark, unwholesome, even wicked. But the feeling was ridiculous. Still, something crawled underneath the surface of this man of God. Whatever it was, the thing slithered right into Red’s psyche and stopped there, as still as a stick on the ground and as frightening as a poisonous serpent.
What the hell is this?
Red managed to smile.
Gordon Adan actually reminded Red a lot of what he remembered about the man’s brother, Wallace Adan. Big, tall, robust, and someone who appeared to be pretty strong for his age.
Red spoke with Adan about his reason for visiting Damville. He also asked him about the man’s cousin, Cleet Wrightman. It was likely the minister knew more about Cleet than anyone.
“The last time I saw Cleet was when he got out of Central State,” Gordon said. “That was, let’s see, yes, that was right about spring of seventy-three. I remember because my mother worked to get him released. She called me and my brother Wallace to say he’d be coming into town.”
Red took notes, which didn’t seem to both Preacher Adan, as it did other people.
“Did you spend much time with him on that visit?”
The preacher rolled and twisted his lips.
“I went over to Wallace’s house and sat with Cleet,” Gordon Adan said. “I was concerned about his soul after being locked up in the crazy house so long.
I ministered to him, prayed with him, and invited Cleet out to our church services. But I only saw him once. I believe that was his second day in town. He left a couple of weeks later, and we never heard from Cleet again.”
Red nodded and scribbled some final notations.
“Thank you, preacher,” he said.
“Yes, thank you for coming in to visit,” Gordon said. “Now, it’s getting just toward seven o’clock. Please join us for prayer meeting. You grew up a Baptist, didn’t you, Mr. Farlow?”
Red did see that one coming. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” he told Gordon. “It is that obvious?”
“I knew it, just felt it,” Gordon replied. “Yes, I do believe you are one with the Lord, brother Farlow. Where is your home church now?”
“Bull Street in Savannah,” Red said. “Although, I ought to darken the door more often.”
“One with God, one with God. Please, let’s walk over to the sanctuary. You know, we’re coming up on celebrating our fortieth anniversary in this church. That’s a far cry from the trailers we started in.”
“Impressive, and I’ll be glad to join you, preacher.”
* * *
Red left Damville around eight-thirty that evening after the service. It was, in fact, a sizeable church for a rural community, with its sanctuary half full for the mid-week prayer ritual on behalf of the sick, dying, or people in need. Gordon Adan was a man of God who had a way with people. Everyone seemed to like him.
Red drove out of town refreshed in his spirit and satisfied his review with Mason produced some tidbits of information, though nothing earth-shattering. On the highway to Cairo, he checked into a motel for the night.
Red called Leigh, took a shower, and went to bed with a novel.
The next day, he paid the forger’s daughter another visit in Attapulgus.
A woman probably in her nineties opened the farmhouse front door.
“Mrs. Smith, my name is Red Farlow.”
“Hello, yes, I remember you from when you came down here before. A long time ago,” she said. “I’m going to have to get my daughter to speak with you since I can’t hear so well.” The woman invited Red into the house, and they sat in the living room.