Hick put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think,” he said, pulling the piece of cloth from his pocket.
“Where’d you get this?” she asked.
He cleared his throat. “I accidentally picked it up.”
A reluctant smile played upon Carol’s lips. “Accidentally, huh?” She studied it. “It’s not your average knot, that’s for sure.”
“No, it’s not,” Hick agreed. “By the way, there was a pretty deep gash on the floor and it wasn’t put there by Skaggs. I checked.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It looked fresh, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been put there by one of us in the cell when we took Skaggs down.”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Carol remarked.
“Yeah, me neither. I just don’t know…” He paused, then said, “The pipe was wiped clean.”
“Wiped clean?”
“An entire foot of dust-free pipe. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“The bed sheet rope was three inches wide at most,” Carol said with a puzzled frown. “Could he have done it while struggling?”
“I don’t think the sheet would have swung back and forth an entire foot.”
“Well, what could have caused it?”
Hick paused, then said, “If the sheet had been hoisted over the pipe with Nicodemus already on it …”
“Hold on there, Hillbilly. That’s crazy.”
“Deem Skaggs didn’t weight over 130 pounds. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone or a group of men murdered him, strung him up to make it look like a suicide, tied that knot, and then took off.”
Carol’s brow lifted. “What are you saying?”
He stared ahead, then cleared his throat. “I’m saying what I saw resembled what I’ve read about lynchings. I’m saying you could be right about everything. Let’s say someone did put Skaggs up to shooting Father Grant. They wouldn’t want to take any chances that Skaggs might talk when he got to Little Rock.”
Carol stared at the sheet in her hand. “But who would be able to get in the jail and do this, and how?”
“I don’t know,” Hick said, “but until we find out, we don’t trust anyone. Not even Lowell.”
“The sheriff?”
“Someone got into that jail. Someone familiar with it. I don’t suspect anyone, but I don’t trust any of these people either.”
“What can we do?”
“Is there any way you can stall sending Kelly’s body back to Washington? Anything you can do to keep us here a few more days?”
“I’m due at the morgue this afternoon to sign the release papers and send him home,” Carol said. “Why stall?”
“I want to call Doc back home and find out if this is even possible. See if someone can kill a grown man by hanging him and then make it look like a suicide.”
Carol nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
9
Wednesday, September 7, 1955
“I was surprised when Adam told me you’d gone to Birch Tree,” Dr. Jake Prescott’s voice carried to Hick over the phone receiver. Jake had been Hick’s father’s best friend and now Hick’s confidant for many years. “Is everything okay?”
Hick sat on the bed and wedged off each shoe with the opposite foot. “I’m not sure,” he answered, leaning back against the headboard. “What do you know about death by hanging?”
“By hanging? Why?”
“We came to question a man and he ended up committing suicide. He hung himself.”
“What did his note say?” Jake asked.
“There was no note. And in my mind there were a few things that didn’t quite add up at the scene.”
“What did the coroner find?”
“Death by suicide,” Hick said.
“But you don’t buy that?” Jake asked.
Hick rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what has you questioning the finding?”
Hick pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “I could be seeing things …”
“Like?”
“Well, it appeared there was a tear in the tile that looked fresh, but the man who hung himself was barefoot. That got me looking around the room and …”
“What about the body?” Jake asked. “How much bruising did you see around the ligature mark on his neck?”
“I didn’t look that close,” Hick admitted. “There didn’t appear to be much. Just a deep, dry groove below his chin because he’d evidently been hanging there a while.”
“Hmmmm,” Jake’s said. “Were his hands clenched, did he seem to struggle against the rope?”
“No. Why?”
“Even in an unconscious state the body fights for oxygen. He would have convulsed, there would be saliva, his tongue would protrude. You saw none of that?”
Hick swung his legs around and sat up. “Yes, his tongue was protruding and his face was swollen pretty bad.”
“Well, that fits in with someone hanging himself.” Dr. Prescott paused and seemed to be thinking. “But you say there was no bruising or hemorrhaging around the rope?”
“It was a sheet, and I saw none.”
“Was there a reason for him to commit suicide? Is it plausible?”
“Yes, it’s plausible. He’d just found out he was likely going to prison. He was none too happy.” Hick heard the tinkle of ice in a glass through the receiver.
After the sound of a drink, Jake asked, “Where is the body now?”
“I reckon it’s at the funeral home.”
“Without seeing it, I can only make wild guesses. He had motive and opportunity for suicide. Without any clear cut evidence that points to murder, I don’t think you’ve got much to go on.”
“Let’s say I got into the funeral home to look at the body. What would I look for?”
“Signs of a struggle. Defensive bruising on the arms, bumps on the head, bruises on the face.”
“The body doesn’t bruise after death, right? So could we have caused any of that getting him down?”
“Not really. There could be some hemorrhaging due to gravity, but that would typically be found in the extremities.”
“So you’re telling me if I find a bump or bruise on the back of his head, chances are he was killed before the hanging.”
“Yes. But, don’t expect anyone to take your word over the coroner’s.”
“I don’t.” Hick leaned forward and crushed his cigarette into the ash tray. “But I want to know for myself.”
“Hick, are you okay?”
Hick’s heart jolted and the question irritated him. He was tired of talking about it. “What do you mean?” he asked, although he knew exactly what Jake was driving at.
“Are you sleeping?”
“I sleep fine,” Hick said, as his glance landed on the bottle sitting on the bedside table.
“I can’t in good conscience keep giving you those—”
“I’m fine, Doc. I’m great. I don’t take them every night.”
“That’s not what the number of prescriptions I write indicates.”
Hick closed his eyes and sighed. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got to go. They bury the fellow tomorrow and I don’t have much time.”
“Okay.” Jake’s voice held a sadness that lay heavy on Hick’s heart.
“I’m fine, Doc. I promise. I’ll talk to you soon.”
After hanging up, Hick left the motel and walked down the main road through Birch Tree. Carol had the car but, according to the hotel manager, the Smithfield Funeral Home was less than a mile away.
Birch Tree was located in the foothills of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. It seemed like a different world in comparison to the flat, sandy bayous around Cherokee Crossing, but Hick had been to Europe. The title “mountains” seemed a stretch.
And yet, as he climbed the hilly street, he couldn’t deny the beauty of the place. The trees were just beginning to show th
eir fall colors and the sunlight had that golden hue reserved for sunny, autumn days. As the street wound up the hill and curved to the right, the Smithfield Funeral Home came into view. Nicodemus Skaggs had little money and the funeral home seemed to reflect this. It was little more than a house with a dirt and gravel parking lot.
Hick climbed the porch, tried the door, and was relieved to find it unlocked. He slipped inside and glanced in the front office. There was a desk covered in papers with two shabby arm chairs before it. No one seemed to be in the place and Hick walked into the back parlor where, lying in a pine box, he found Nicodemus Skaggs. There was no money for embalming, and the body would be buried tomorrow so Hick went straight to work.
The swollen, puffy look had disappeared and Skaggs now looked more like the man Hick remembered interviewing. Leaning over the coffin, he pushed back a long, scraggly beard, untied the tie, and loosened the shirt around Skaggs’s neck. The ugly, yellow mark was gruesome in its depth and width. But Hick saw no purple or red around the scar left behind by the bed sheet, nothing that resembled a bruise—just a yellowed, crusty dent where the sheet had dug in to Skaggs’s skin. He leaned closer and squinted, then shook his head, discouraged by the lack of evidence for either murder or suicide. Checking the fingernails, he saw no fabric or skin and Skaggs’s arms were clear with nothing in the way of the defensive wounds Doc suggested.
Hick hesitated, then made himself run his fingers through Skaggs’s greasy hair but found no bumps on his head. He smoothed the hair back into place and sighed. It had been a long shot anyway.
He began to re-button the shirt and glanced at the neck once more, then moved closer. Just below the wide ugly, yellow gash he spied a very thin, deep purple line. But why would a bruise be below where the sheet had been? He pulled the shirt collar down further and his eyes travelled around Skaggs’s neck at the level of the faint bruising. The noose he’d been hanging from was up under the chin but this mark traveled around the neck and well below the ear, closer, in fact, to the collar bone.
Taking a breath to steady his nerves, Hick reached into the casket and pushed Skaggs up on his side by his shoulders, then holding him with one hand, he lifted the long, greasy hair with the other. He leaned in close and saw the thin purple line encircled Skaggs’s neck like a collar and at the base of his skull was a crisscross of purple bruising. But he’d seen the noose Skaggs was hanging by. It was up behind his ears not across the back of his neck. This didn’t make sense if Skaggs died by hanging.
Hick gasped, then leaned forward to be sure. Dr. Lyman was partly correct. Nicodemus Skaggs died of asphyxia, but not by his own hand. It appeared to Hick someone crept behind Skaggs and choked him with something thin, but lethal. If caught unaware and pulled tightly enough, Hick knew consciousness would have been quickly lost. Skaggs likely never saw it coming and a struggle would have been brief if at all. But Hick was no doctor and Birch Tree was not his jurisdiction. No one would pay attention to any of his speculations.
Hick gently lay Skaggs back and put the dead man’s wardrobe back in order. Dazed, he walked quickly out of the funeral home where he almost collided with Lavenia Skaggs who was headed inside.
Lavenia’s eyes widened. “Sheriff? I didn’t expect to see you here.” She paused and wrung her hands. “I’ve been home with my brothers and sisters and Brother Mallon.” Her gaze traveled to the inside of the funeral home. “Is he in there?”
“Yes,” Hick said. “I’m sorry.”
Lavenia stood before Hick and looked him in the eye. She was as tall as Hick and her eyes bore into him. “Sheriff Lowell says Daddy killed hisself. Is that true?”
“It appears that way.”
Her voice shook with emotion. “I told Sheriff Lowell, but he wouldn’t listen. There’s something wrong here. My daddy had no fear of man. He said he weren’t afraid of them what could kill the body. He feared God who could destroy the soul.” She shook her head. “My daddy feared Hell’s fire above all things. He would never take his own life. Never.”
“Not even if he was faced with prison … or worse?”
“He would have counted it all joy to go to prison for doing what he thought was right. Daddy believed suffering for righteousness sake was a sign of God’s love. He weren’t afraid of no prison, but he were afraid of Hell’s fire where they’s weepin’ and gnashin’ their teeth. He didn’t kill hisself.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I know he didn’t.”
“He was pretty shaken up when I last saw him.”
“It don’t matter. He taught us that life is just a vapor that vanishes away. When Paul and Silas was put in prison, they sung the Lord’s praises. My daddy would have done the same.”
Hick cocked his head. “But the fact is he’s gone and if he didn’t kill himself, someone else killed him. Do you understand that’s what you’re saying?”
She looked up at him, her eyes clear and cold. “I know what I’m saying, and I know what I b’lieve. I might not have got to go to school, but that don’t mean I’m stupid. My daddy didn’t say one word about me working for that church for the last three years, and all a sudden he takes it in his mind to kill Father Grant? It don’t make a lick of sense. There’s something about all this that stinks to high heaven.” She shook her head. “I don’t expect you to understand or care. Sheriff Lowell don’t even care so why should you?” Her gaze went past Hick and into the funeral home. “What my daddy did was wrong. Father Grant ain’t never spoke a word against Daddy and he ain’t ever told me the way I believed in God was wrong. He’s a good man.”
“Then what happened?” Hick asked.
“I don’t know! I ain’t the sheriff. All’s I know is one minute daddy was at home eating dinner like every other day and the next minute he went to the church and shot two men. He was fine all day. You tell me … how did he go from being the same as always to runnin’ off and killin’ someone? How?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Hick said. “But the fact is he did shoot two men and confessed to it. I don’t know what to tell you other than his belief that Father Grant converted you to Catholicism is the only motive I’ve heard. Nothing else makes sense.”
“They’s a lot to this green earth that don’t make sense. But, it don’t make sense that my daddy would shoot someone knowing darned good and well that we cain’t eat without my wages. It don’t make sense that Daddy thought Father Grant converted me, ’cause Father Grant didn’t, and I never said nothin’ about him to Daddy. I believe there’s a lot here that don’t make sense.”
“I’ll be here a few more days,” Hick said. “I’ll try and look into things, but don’t expect miracles.”
Lavenia’s face hardened. “The age of miracles is over.”
As she started to walk past to get inside the building, Hick stopped her. “Will there be a service for your daddy?”
“Brother Mallon said he’d say a few words over him.”
“My friend and I would like to come,” Hick said. “Do you mind?”
“You’re welcome if you like. It’ll be at ten o’clock tomorrow morning right here at the funeral parlor.”
“I’ll be here.” He turned to leave and then paused. “I am sorry, Lavenia.”
She regarded him a moment. “It might be God put you in this here town for a reason. You find the man what did all this.”
Hick shrugged. “I’ll do my best, but it’s hard to fight against facts. Sheriff Lowell is convinced your daddy did it all.”
She took a deep breath, raised her chin, and studied Hick. Finally, she said, “But, we both know that ain’t true.”
10
Wednesday, September 7, 1955
Carol Quinn did not return to the Birch Tree motel after taking care of Ernest Kelly’s remains. Hick ate a sandwich at the drug store and then turned in for the night. A clinking sound awakened him and he picked up his watch from the night stand. It was almost midnight. He punched his pillow and flopped in bed. The sound of glass breaking made his eyes fly open
and he hopped from bed. He stumbled into a pair of trousers, turned on the lamp, crept to the door, and opened it. In the slice of light that escaped through the doorway, he spied Carol kneeling beside one of the metal rockers between the motel room doors picking up glass. Beside her was a six-pack of beer, with a couple already missing.
She glanced up at the sound of the opening door and said in a loud whisper, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Hick looked around the empty, darkened parking lot covered in a thick fog. “What are you doing out here?”
“Thinking. This fog matches my mood so I decided to sit out here.”
“Where have you been all night?”
“Dr. Lyman asked me to dinner. He was pretty persistent.”
“I see.”
Carol stopped picking up glass shards and smirked. “Don’t be getting any ideas, Hillbilly.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t have to. And, I won’t be doing that again. I have no idea what the point was. He lives here and I live in Washington, and I sure as hell don’t intend to move.” She stood up, brushed gravel from her knees, and sat on the metal rocker. She patted the one beside her. “Join me for a drink?”
Hick shrugged. “Why not? I’m up.”
She grabbed a bottle opener, popped off the cap, and handed it to Hick. Opening her own, she asked, “Did you find anything of interest at the funeral home?”
“I ran into Lavenia Skaggs.”
“Did she have anything to say?”
“Just that she’s pretty damned sure Deem Skaggs wouldn’t kill himself. Apparently, in Deem’s world, killing a priest is okay, killing yourself is a no-no.” Hick shook his head. “I reckon everyone has a code no matter how ridiculous.” He paused, took a drink, and then asked, “What do you know about garroting?”
“I know it’s a pretty unpleasant way to die. Why?”
“According to my doctor friend at home, the body doesn’t really bruise after death. Remember there was no bruising around the ligature, just yellow, dead skin. But, there was bruising, purple and deep beneath the ligature and all the way around Skaggs’s neck. And there was an x-shaped bruise on the back of the neck. There were two ligature marks, the obvious one and a thin, purple one. It looked like someone might have slipped behind him, put something slim around his neck, crossed it, and then choked with all their might.”
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