The Ballad of Frankie Silver (20 page)

“Within the hour. They go to University Hospital in Knoxville for a complete workup. I’ll give you that information to pass along to the families.” He looked down at the two sprawled bodies in the clearing and sighed. “We’ll move them before the flies come out, I promise.”

“Good,” said Spencer. One side of the girl’s face looked as if she were only sleeping, and he didn’t want to see her covered in insects.

“When it gets light enough, we’ll tilt the bodies, see what’s under them. I found a tooth under the victim once. Belonged to the killer.”

Spencer nodded. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He set off on a path that led back into the forest, training his flashlight on the ground in front of it and letting the light play left and right to illuminate the weeds at the side of the trail. He saw no broken twigs or evidence of a struggle, or even of footprints, and his hunch that the killer had not come this way was confirmed a few moments later by a triumphant cry from the other officer. Spencer had forgotten his name almost the instant he heard it, and he would forever think of the investigator as “the TBI man,” the embodiment of a faceless state bureaucracy.

He hurried back to the clearing. The officer had laid out the wallets on the log where Willis Blaine, the ranger, had sat for much of the night. The dark brown leather one was worn and scratched, obviously the property of the man. Beside it lay a small red clutch purse containing a compartment for coins, as well as a notepad and a compartment for paper money. “I found them about twenty yards down the hill,” said the TBI man with a satisfied smile. “Killer must have taken the money and thrown down the billfolds as he ran. Who knows? We might even get prints.” He pried open the two sections of leather with a gloved finger. “Can you read that? I’m no good at fine print in this light.”

It seemed perfectly clear to Spencer, who was still a long way from thirty, from bifocals, from having to read the newspaper at arm’s length, as he did these days. “Michael Wilson,” he said. “Virginia driver’s license. He’s twenty-one. There’s a student ID in there, too. University of North Carolina.”

“Yeah, I figured they were college kids. A lot of these hikers are. So they’re not from around here. That figures.”

“How so?” asked Spencer.

“Stranger killing. They were ambushed out in public land. This wasn’t some guy offing his girlfriend, or a fight between two old enemies. Somebody was hunting, and hunters don’t care about the identity of the victim. Who was the girl?”

Spencer fingered the soft leather clutch purse. He imagined it still warm from being tucked away in the hip pocket of the girl’s jeans, pressing against her buttocks. “Emily Stanton. Driver’s license says Wilmington, North Carolina.” A solemn young woman with long auburn hair and dainty small-boned features looked out at him from the license photo. He could see tiny gold hoops in her ears, and a pearl necklace against the dark blue background of her dress.
Sorority type
, he thought.
I wonder what she made of the trail.
He said, “There’s also a student ID for UNC.”

“Yep. I figured. College sweethearts, taking a little vacation together after classes ended. Rich kids, too. At least, she was.”

Spencer glanced at the body. The small figure had been wearing jeans and a plain black sweatshirt. Now they lay crumpled a few feet away from her body. “How can you tell?”

The officer smiled. “It helps to have kids, Deputy. I recognize the brand names on her clothing. That outfit may look like old jeans and sneakers to you, but she paid a couple hundred bucks for them. I probably would have known even without that, but it isn’t something I could explain.” He shrugged. “Her manicured nails. Her hairstyle. After you observe people for enough years, you just
know.
”

“A robbery that got out of hand then?”

“No. There won’t be any money in the wallets, but taking the cash was an afterthought.”

Spencer poked a finger inside the billfold. Empty. The TBI guy was right. “Not the motive, though?”

“Incidentally, sure. I mean, the cash is just lying there. It’s not going to do the victims any good. Why not take it? But that’s not the real reason the killer did this. He did this for fun, because he’s so mad at something that this is his way of striking back.”

Spencer said, “
I am reckless what I do to spite the world.
” He shrugged. “I always liked that line.”

The older man smiled.
“Macbeth,”
he said. “It’s nice to hear Shakespeare every now and then from an officer, instead of Kris Kristofferson, which is what passes for philosophy these days.”

“I like him, too,” said Spencer. “So you think this guy we’re looking for is more than a thief whose robbery got out of hand?”

“He’s a killer first and foremost. Have there been any other unsolved murders around here?”

“No.”

“Any disappearances? Maybe you just didn’t find the bodies.”

“No missing persons.”

“Maybe he’s not from around here then. You’d better hope he doesn’t decide to stay a while. This kind of thing is habit-forming. There should be more victims sometime … somewhere.”

“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 countertop. “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 sexes, 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.