Cracker Town

by WF Ranew

  With Mary’s help, Madison slowly got to his knees. He bent over the bedside as if saying his evening prayers.

  “What’s going on now, Mary?”

  “The county sheriff is here with another man,” she said. “They want to speak with you. It seems urgent. Something must have happened at the college last night.”

  Something happened, all right. “Oh, hell. Well, he said he was coming over.”

  Madison stood up with his wife’s help and put on a bathrobe. The silk one with his initials on the upper left side.

  They walked downstairs where Sheriff Dixon and a detective, Don Smithgall, waited in the living room.

  Mary left them to talk and went to prepare coffee for the visitors.

  “I’m afraid the shock of your call, Sheriff, unsettled me a bit,” the college president said. “Please, tell me more.”

  The sheriff nodded, and Smithgall sat posed with notebook and pen in hand.

  “I’m sorry to say that Doctor Walter Goings, his wife, and daughter were murdered in their home last night,” Dixon said. “Someone stabbed them to death.”

  Madison bolstered himself but somehow managed to don his I’m-in-charge hat. Still, his hands shook, and some of the sheriff’s words reverberated.

  “This is, of course, a shock. Horribly so,” Madison said. “Who would do this to them?”

  “We do not know,” the sheriff replied. “In the next few days, with the help of state authorities, we hope to put together the recent actions of each family member. That could lead to some clues about who did this.”

  “How did they die?” Madison asked.

  “They were killed by a large knife and stabbed multiple times,” the sheriff said. “I ask that you do not repeat this. The little girl’s panties were down around her knees. However, the medical examiner has not suggested she was sexually assaulted.”

  Mary walked in with a carafe of coffee, cups, and saucers along with cream and sugar bowls. She set everything down on the coffee table next to the detective.

  She served each guest and Madison.

  They talked about Goings and his post at the college. The detective took notes. In forty-five minutes to an hour, the law officers left.

  * * *

  Nancy tuned into the Tallahassee, Florida, television station to watch the weekly gardening show on Sunday afternoon.

  The news horrified her.

  A live broadcast from Valdosta had supplanted regular programming. She watched the fuzzy images.

  “Summing up this horrible day for our Valdosta and area viewers, three people were murdered in their home sometime Saturday evening…Doctor Walter Goings, his wife, and young daughter…viciously slaughtered…found by their son.”

  Nancy screamed. She walked across her small living room and turned off the television. She stepped to a chair and collapsed in tears.

  “Oh, Walter, Walter, Walter,” she sobbed.

  She needed help comprehending the news.

  Then another thought tore through her brain.

  “Lawson!”

  Her husband wasn’t there to hear her. He played golf every Sunday afternoon and never returned home before seven or eight.

  Guilt ripped through her.

  “Could Lawson have done this?” she said out loud. No one heard her. “You’re a selfish, jealous bastard.”

  She knew Lawson Simmons had a notorious temper, which flared up during jealous rants about who might be screwing his gorgeous wife.

  “How could he know about Walter and me? No, no way,” she exclaimed aloud.

  Nancy decided to shut up for fear that perhaps Lawson had gotten home and might hear her.

  * * *

  He hadn’t.

  At that moment, Lawson rolled in bed with Julie Hammer at her mobile home on Bemis Road just outside Valdosta.

  He called their Sunday afternoon escapades his nineteenth hole of golf. While his buddies drank in the clubhouse after their round on the links, Lawson rushed over to Julie’s trailer.

  They entwined with vigor.

  “Shit, Law, you can screw a gal,” Julie hollered. “Gimme all you got, baby doll.”

  Lawson sweated in every pore of his hairy body. He’d put on weight considerably since his college golfing days. He huffed and puffed as he slowed his pace to finish.

  He collapsed on top of her.

  “Lordy, big boy. You sweat more than a stuck pig on the Fourth of July,” Julie said as she squirmed out from under the man. She wrapped a leg over his backside and hugged up on his torso as she pleasured herself in vocal volume far exceeding her cheers during the humping.

  “Damn, Law. Let’s do it again,” Julie cried out.

  Lawson, half-drunk from beer during golf that afternoon, breathed heavily. He couldn’t move right then, and he certainly couldn’t muster the means to Do…It…Again.

  He had no idea his wife Nancy was having an affair with her boss. Of course, that ended abruptly the night before upon the demise of Walter Goings.

  But Lawson didn’t know about it right then.

  He just needed to breathe.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three murders in a small college town garnered headlines across the South. An entire family. Every one of the victims had been stabbed to death. One news report said hacked.

  Red Farlow put down the three newspapers he’d just read—The Atlanta Herald, The Florida Times-Union, and the local Valdosta Times. He folded each paper and stuffed the lot into his new envelop-style briefcase. The satchel cost him a fortune, but he purchased quality for two reasons. First, he intended to use it until the stitching fell out and the leather tore. Then he would retire. Given the satchel’s price at the Atlanta luggage shop, the man promised him good use for decades to come.

  The second reason concerned his love life. A woman he’d fallen for at the University of Georgia was sliding away from him. Red could feel it. She confirmed this a few months back by telling him she loved him but wanted to date others.

  While his crying jags over Leigh Wallace had subsided, the deep-down aching for her would take more time to ease.

  Red ran his hand over the brown leather and shiny brass latch. He admired the case, a model recommended by his English professor and student adviser in college.

  As he sat in his motel room in Valdosta, the boss knocked on the door.

  It was Day Two of their investigation. Already, Red felt slimed by the whole process.

  “Ready to go, Matt,” Red said after opening the door.

  * * *

  Matthew Bailey stood about six feet two and was wide in a muscular way. He lifted weights and worked out regularly, something Red hadn’t done in the year since he left the Army.

  Bailey definitely was a man of strength and someone who seemed mad as hell most of the time, as his perpetual snarl indicated.

  Red had worked under Bailey’s supervision for nine months after graduating from the law enforcement school. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation hired Red when his Army stint ended.

  Matthew had called Red at his Atlanta efficiency at nine the previous morning.

  “We got a nasty one in Valdosta,” Bailey said. “Pack and be ready to leave in an hour. We’re heading down south. I’ll pick you up.”

  They arrived at the crime scene around two-thirty Sunday afternoon. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies stumbled all over themselves and apparently had done so since arriving Saturday night.

  Red was appalled at the leisurely way cops lounged around in the family’s living room. Empty donut boxes littered the kitchen countertop, and the coffee maker had burned out overnight. Dirty plates and cups had piled up in the kitchen sink.

  “Looks like the law has made itself at home,” Red commented to Bailey.

  “Yep. There is no way in hell we’re going to get evidence from this crime scene,” Matt told Red after they had arrived and surveyed the premises.

  The bodies of a forty-eight-year-old man, Walter Goings; Candace, his wife, thi
rty-seven; and their daughter Lilly, twelve, had been removed. Their son Randy walked into the death scene around eleven Saturday night and called the funeral director. He went to high school with the undertaker’s son. It was the only person Randy Goings could think of to call at the time.

  Besides, back then, the funeral director was called to transport people, alive or dead. He was one of three people who owned a hearse cum ambulance in the town.

  The two state law officers talked to the local sheriff, deputies, and a police photographer. They wanted prints of all the photos he’d shot.

  The state crime lab technicians arrived, went to work, and soon gave Red and Matthew their initial assessment on the murders.

  “Sliced by multiple knife wounds,” their colleague said. “Some very deep. Looked like a very sharp butcher knife or a cleaver, possibly one from the victims’ kitchen.”

  “But no weapon found?” Matthew asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll see if the police chief and sheriff are combing the area for clues, such as the weapon,” Matthew said.

  They talked with Smithgall.

  “What do you know about the victims?” Red asked.

  “Only that the man was a professor over at the state college,” the Valdosta detective said. “Sheriff and I talked to the college president this morning. He gave us a description of the man. Thing is, the prof only just moved here last summer.”

  “Where was he from?” Bailey asked.

  Smithgall checked his notebook scribbles. “He used to work as a psychiatrist at the state hospital.”

  “Milledgeville?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bailey and Red went about tying up the loose ends of an investigation still in its early days. There was a lot of disorder that didn’t help them.

  The sheriff arrived and huddled with Red and Matthew.

  * * *

  After leaving their motel Monday morning, Red and Matthew met with the college president. He welcomed them into his office. A young woman brought in a tray of coffee, cups, cream and sugar, and a plate of oatmeal cookies.

  “Thanks for seeing us, Doctor Madison,” Matthew said. “We’re with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and are down here to investigate the murder of the Goings family members.”

  Madison said nothing.

  “We wonder if you could tell us what you know about Goings’s private life.”

  The college president sat quietly for a moment. Then he started talking about how he’d wanted to hire Walter Goings years ago. He said “ah” and “let me see” a lot. Finally, he spoke in complete sentences in answering Bailey’s request.

  “Walter joined us last fall as head of our psychology program,” Madison said. “His family moved down, and you know where they lived. Nice, quiet neighborhood just down the street. So far as his personal life…well….”

  Madison paused and looked around the room, finally staring out his office window to the palm fronds rustled by a gentle breeze. The day was sunny. Springtime in Georgia. Beyond the palms, students passed by on the way to their morning classes. This was a scene Madison viewed every morning of the school year.

  “I am sorry,” he continued. “But I’m a bit paralyzed by the shock of this event. But tell me, what exactly do you want to know?”

  Matthew’s eyes cut over to Red.

  “Doctor Madison, we need to know as much as we can about Walter Goings, how he got along on campus with students and colleagues, and if he had any conflicts with anyone,” Red said.

  “I see,” Madison said. “Well, now, this is a very difficult thing. But it may be useful in that Walter was having an affair with his secretary.”

  “Tell us everything you know about this,” Red said.

  “Ha, well, thing is, I don’t know much. Only second-hand information,” the president said. “But a colleague in the psych department and a student assistant reported Walter’s behavior to me. Both came in separately.”

  Madison related what Professor Ishaan Kohli told him about Goings and his secretary, Nancy Simmons.

  “Mostly, Ishaan complained about the noise coming from Goings’s office several days a week,” Madison said.

  On one occasion, Doctor Kohli met with two of his students about a paper they were working on together. Unfortunately, the lovemaking next door interrupted the session and caused the students to break out in laughter.

  “Needless to say, the conference ended at that point,” Madison said.

  “How do you know he was making love with his secretary?” Red asked. “Who is it, Miss Simmons?”

  “No, Mrs. Simmons,” Madison clarified. “A student walked in on them early in the fall. That indicated to me that Goings worked very fast with his woman. He only arrived on campus in August, and this was the second week in September.”

  The student assistant, Sarah Beth Daniel, was a library science major and worked for the academic dean as part of her scholarship. She personally delivered the weekly faculty meeting agenda to each dean and department head.

  “Understand, we have an open-door policy here,” Madison said. “Something I insisted on when I first became president of the college. This is to encourage our teaching staff to be receptive and available for their students during office hours.”

  Thus, Sarah Beth didn’t think to knock when she went into Doctor Goings’s office. What she saw shocked her.

  “Mrs. Simmons was partially unclothed,” Madison said. “Doctor Goings was standing behind her. He was dressed and making love to Mrs. Simmons.”

  Sarah Beth, a devout Christian, became very upset with what she saw. Then, she left the room with the door open and walked directly to Doctor Madison’s office to report what she saw.

  “She described them as unpenitent sinners,” Madison said. “Apparently, Goings continued in his physical endeavor with Mrs. Simmons even as Sarah Beth beheld them.”

  Matthew asked how he and Red might contact Nancy Simmons. Madison got up from his chair and walked to his door. He opened it and spoke to his secretary. The woman brought a slip of paper to him in a moment, and he sat back down.

  “Here’s her home phone number and her address,” Madison said. He handed the paper to Agent Bailey. “You should know she’s probably at home. She called in sick this morning, and we are suggesting she remain home this week. Despite the circumstances of her relationship with Doctor Goings…rather, because of it, this must be a tragedy for her.”

  “You said she is married?”

  “Yes, and I’ve met her husband. Lawson’s his name,” Madison said. “He was an outstanding golfer on our team several years ago. A big man. Very athletic. He played baseball too, at catcher. But golf was where he excelled for our school.”

  * * *

  Matt and Red thought they had a break in the Goings family case on Monday afternoon. A sheriff’s deputy told them local detectives had just interviewed a teenager named B.J. Beresford.

  In a very odd twist of fate, B.J. played baseball with Randy Goings on Saturday morning. But instead of joining his friends later for a hamburger and movie, he went over to his girlfriend’s house. Her parents were out of town for the weekend, and their absence promised seclusion for him and Lisa Gorman to do what they’d done in the backseat of his dad’s car two weekends running. Now they would have a bed. Her bed in her bedroom.

  Randy’s friend contacted the police Sunday when he heard about the murder of his buddy’s parents and sister.

  He told detectives he was walking home around nine-thirty that evening. When he turned a corner, B.J. looked over at the Goings family home. A man was standing in the front yard. He wore a suit and tie and had on a white hat. He walked onto the sidewalk and toward the boy before rushing down an alley.

  That was quite odd to B.J. because he saw another man dressed in work clothes and standing beside the carport a week or two before. When the man saw someone looking at him, he faded into the darkness on the side of the house.

  On the night o
f their deaths, B.J. noticed no lights were on in the Goings home. That struck him as odd since the family apparently just had a visitor.

  * * *

  Randy told police he felt strange as he walked from the street to the carport door.

  No lights were on in the house.

  The door was unlocked as usual. When he walked in, he called for his dad, then mom.

  After flipping on the lights, he walked down the hallway and beheld the bodies of his mother and sister.

  When asked, he told the police no one was outside the house as he came home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As usual on Tuesday mornings, Wallace Adan opened his auto repair shop two blocks behind the courthouse square in Damville. His jitters from lack of sleep showed as he tried to slip the key into the lock on the bay door. Finally unlocking the door, he raised it and went inside to the office. There he flipped the sign to “open” and unlatched the main doorway to his business.

  His shop was in an old brick building that sat on the corner with vacant lots around it. Hardwood trees shaded the property, laden with old cars and newer ones parked along the street.

  The sun sent a single piercing ray into the big front window. Wallace shielded his eyes from the light as he stepped over the desk laden with stacks of repair invoices, all paid. He looked down. A shorter stack consisted of finished work on cars due for customer pickup that morning. Wallace took the five of those and spread them out, neatly overlapping along the desktop's front side. Repairs completed, the four cars and one truck awaited their owners along a side street.

  Wallace stood there after arranging the invoices and looked down at his hands. The shaking wouldn’t stop. Damned, it just wouldn’t.

  Wallace’s mother, Gladys Wrightman Adan, called from Macon the previous week. She sounded excited to tell him Cleet Wrightman would be released from the state hospital.

  Cleet was Wallace’s first cousin. They’d known each other since childhood. But older kin Wallace lacked his mother’s enthusiasm about his cousin’s release. Cleet’d likely show up in Damville and want some money, a job, and a place to stay.