The Ballad of Frankie Silver (33 page)

*   *   *

That night Spencer Arrowood sat in a circle of light at his dining room table with case-file papers and books of North Carolina history mingling in a pile in front of him. What was there about the Harkryder case that had reminded Nelse Miller of Frankie Silver? He couldn’t see it. He didn’t think Nelse had known the connection, either. It was a hunch of some sort that had never clarified itself in the old man’s mind. Spencer hadn’t taken much stock in such things in those days, but now, twenty years older and wiser, he believed that the intuition of an experienced cop could be counted as probable cause. If you lived long enough, you knew things just from instinct and observation.

By now Spencer had read all the material that the libraries could supply on the Silver case. Some of it was speculative, and most of it repetitive, but he had read it all, and the connection between the legend and the Harkryder boy still eluded him. When he looked at the Silver case as a lawman would, he could see why Constable Baker had no choice but to arrest Frankie Silver for the crime. The jury had no alternative, either. Since the grand jury had not indicted the Stewarts, they were offered no other suspects on whom to cast the blame. During the trial Frankie Silver had given no explanation for the fact that she had lied about Charlie’s whereabouts, or for the fact that his remains had been found in their own cabin. “Not guilty,” she said. Take it or leave it. They left it. Had to. He understood all that. But his instinct told him that there was something terribly wrong with the case. Eighteen-year-old girls do not kill without provocation, and they don’t cut up bodies.

He wondered what had really happened that night. Any explanation—no matter how lame—might have saved her, but she had sat there stone-faced and silent.
Not guilty.

Lafayette Harkryder had done the same.

He had been given a court-appointed lawyer, not one as young as Nicholas Woodfin, but not much older, either. Perhaps the attorney had lacked the experience to mount a proper defense to the charges, but since the defendant had no money, he also lacked the resources necessary to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. No private investigators muddied the waters of evidence with favorable findings; no psychiatrists or forensic experts were employed by the defense to refute the state’s witnesses. Fate Harkryder had not even been able to afford a suit jacket and tie to impress the jury with his respectability. He had sat in court in a red plaid flannel shirt and gray work pants, looking all the more barbaric in contrast to the sleek attorneys in their dark suits and crisp, starched shirts.

All that was fine with the sheriff, provided the defendant was guilty. Sometimes the law needed all the help it could get to worm a conviction out of bleeding-heart juries, but he didn’t want to think that a man had been convicted of murder simply because he had violated the middle-class dress code. The penalty is greatest for breaking the laws that are unwritten.

Spencer pictured the courtroom. Fate in his worn plaid shirt, and his nervous young attorney, correct but bland, and himself in his brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. Colonel Stanton had been almost as conspicuous as the lawyers in Wake County’s little courtroom. He had understood the symbols of society’s unwritten laws. He sat there day after day, ramrod straight, immaculate in his dress uniform, with every ribbon and medal on prominent display: the picture of solemn grief demanding justice. His wife was beside him most of the time, in a little suit and hat that would not have been out of place at a funeral or a church service. She had seemed a bit embarrassed to be there, blushing when anyone spoke to her and never looking at the defendant or the jury, but Colonel Stanton watched the proceedings with the alert gaze of a director viewing the dress rehearsal of the play. He took in everything, nodding when he agreed, and scowling when he did not. He took care to sit where the jury could not fail to see him, and perhaps because of his impressive looks and his air of command, they did seem to be watching him, testing their own reaction to a witness’s testimony by checking Stanton’s expression for approval.

What about the other victim’s parents, Spencer thought. He tried to picture them in the courtroom, but the image would not be summoned. The Wilsons were elderly. They had come to court at least twice, Spencer knew, because he remembered speaking to them in the hall, but they were simple country people, and they had been overshadowed by the elegant Stantons.

Outside the courtroom, Charles Wythe Stanton had also been in command. He radiated confidence, and dignified outrage over his daughter’s death. He was always ready to be photographed for the newspaper or to provide a sound bite for the television newsmen, and he would offer each reporter a poignant snapshot of pretty Emily. “She must not be forgotten,” he would say with a moist smile. “This trial is not just about that monster in there. It is about what Emily deserves, too, in exchange for her life.”

Spencer admired the man for his poise in the face of the media. He’d had the microphone shoved in his face a few times during the course of the trial, and he knew that projecting an image of courageous intelligence was harder than it looked. The old sheriff, though, wanted nothing to do with the Stantons. More than once he refused their offers to take the officers to lunch.

“That man is a creature of vengeance,” Nelse Miller remarked to his deputy, after court recessed on the third day. “Lafayette Harkryder might just as well have killed one of the Disney Mousketeers and been done with it, because this smooth-talking snake-oil man is going to hound him to the outskirts of hell. If you ever kill anybody, Spencer, make sure that they don’t have a damn bloodhound for a daddy.”

“That’s how I’d want my kin to act if I had been murdered,” Spencer replied. “Stanton has a right to demand justice.”

“I know he does. I’m just not sure that you can take one day of a person’s life, draw a line, and judge him on it.”

“We do it every day,” said Spencer. “Yesterday I gave a speeding ticket to a member of the church choir.”

Nelse Miller shook his head. “I’m getting old,” he said. “I keep thinking the world would be a better place if there were less justice and more charity.”

Nelse Miller had fulminated through the entire trial, prompting Spencer to ask more than once, “Which side are you on?” One day the old sheriff might be carping about Colonel Stanton holding court before the media. Another time he remarked: “Have you ever noticed that you can tell which side a person is on in this case by the way they’re dressed?”

That was true enough.

The Stantons and their supporters always dressed in what Nelse Miller called “Episcopal uniforms,” while the Harkryders, who had no notion of showing their respect for the court—or perhaps they were—turned up in clothes that Spencer wouldn’t have worn to a yard sale: old stained work clothes, T-shirts with rude sayings printed on the front, and occasionally camouflage hunting outfits. Fate Harkryder’s mother was dead, but various other female relatives turned up from time to time, usually in bright print slacks and cheap blouses laden with dime-store beads. The jury wasn’t supposed to notice such things, but inevitably they did.

Spencer’s clearest memory of the trial was the solemn, chiseled features of Colonel Stanton on one side of the courtroom, and sullen, scraggly Fate Harkryder on the other. Every day his two older brothers sat near the front of the courtroom, almost within touching distance of the defendant. They, too, glowered throughout the proceedings, muttering ominously when they disagreed with the witness testimony. Spencer kept his eye on them throughout the trial, watching for the bulge of a weapon in their clothing, or some sign that they meant to cause trouble.

When the verdict was announced, one of the brothers shouted, “It’s a damned lie!”

Spencer and the bailiff hurried to put themselves between the prisoner and his family, anticipating more than a shouting match, but Fate Harkryder had simply looked at his brothers for a long moment and shaken his head.

They subsided once more into smoldering resentment. “We’ll fight this, boy,” one of them muttered.

“You hang tough,” said the other one.

Fate Harkryder nodded.

By the time he was led handcuffed from the courtroom, his brothers were already gone. Spencer wondered if he had ever seen them again. Whatever happened to the Harkryder brothers, anyhow?

*   *   *

Fate Harkryder had twenty years’ experience in not letting his feelings show. He sat impassively in the blue padded chair, studying the man in the green necktie who sat across from him. He was a stocky fellow in his early forties, with unruly dark hair and a tendency to perspire. He was smiling uncertainly, and creasing the corners of his paperwork. Fate was trying to decide why the man was nervous. Some people felt uneasy in the company of a convicted murderer, but since this man was a state psychologist who often studied prisoners, his current subject didn’t think the anxiety stemmed from that particular source. Race was not a factor, either. Fate decided that the man must be uneasy because he was talking to someone who would be dead in a few days’ time. Death is considered bad taste in polite society. People do not care to be reminded of it. Now that Fate had an execution date, even some of the guards had stopped looking directly at him, as if they were embarrassed by the presence of someone so close to the abyss.

The psychologist managed a tentative smile as he pushed his glasses farther back along the bridge of his nose. “Now, Mr. Harkryder,” he said, “my name is Dr. Ritter. I don’t wish to alarm you in any way. I just wanted to have a talk with you to see if there are any concerns you’d like to voice.”

“Concerns?” Fate blinked at him. He had found that playing dumb was an asset in prison life. It gave you more time to evaluate your opponent, and sometimes it caused him to underestimate you, which was even more useful.

“Yes. As you know, your—er—your execution is scheduled for later this month, and barring any unforeseen developments, it will take place at that time. I wondered if you’d like to express your feelings.”

“I’m innocent, sir.”

The psychologist looked away. “I know nothing whatever about the details of your case, Mr. Harkryder. I find it easier to counsel prisoners if I am not apprised of what they have done. My only concern is your peace of mind at this point in time.”

“Well, sir, they’re going to kill me. How do you think I feel?”

Ritter was ready for that one. “There are many possibilities, Mr. Harkryder. You might feel relief that your long stay in prison is at an end. You might embrace the opportunity to atone for your misdeeds. You might take solace in religion and look forward to peace and joy beyond this life.”

“Or I might think that this life is all there is, and I’ve been cheated out of it by a state that framed me for a murder I didn’t commit.”

“I had hoped you might be beyond that,” sighed the psychologist. “I realize that death is a very difficult thing to accept. That’s why we tend to concentrate on the little rituals that precede it as a way of distracting ourselves from the prospect of the death itself. Would you like to discuss some of those items?”

“Like what?”

“Well, to begin with a trivial one—why don’t you tell me what you’d like as a last meal?”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. He had, of course. Back in Building Two, discussions of his last meal had been going on for weeks. After a while he began to notice that the suggestions from the other men tended to fit a pattern. They urged him to ask for steak and a milk shake; country-style steak, french fries, and strawberry shortcake with double whipped cream; a large pizza and a banana split. It was all comfort food—the dream menus of teenage boys, or of men whose last memories of happiness stretched that far back in their lives. It was food rich in grease, salt, and sugar, proposed by men who had lived for years on a bland, starchy diet that never quite filled them up.

Other suggestions were a poor man’s idea of a high-class meal. The farm boy who had suggested a pound of shrimp, a pound of lobster, and a pound of prime rib had never tasted any of those things. Fate had no better ideas about what he should ask for on the night of his execution, and he was by no means sure that he could swallow a single mouthful of whatever was brought to him, but at least he prided himself on knowing why his comrades suggested the menus they did. After twenty years in confinement, he thought he might be as much of a psychologist as the perspiring man who sat across from him now.

“No thoughts on a last meal,” Dr. Ritter was saying. He made a notation on his legal pad. “Let’s leave that then, shall we? You have plenty of time to consider that option. Now, is there anyone you would like to see in the coming days? Anyone you would wish us to contact?”

A
hooker
, he thought. Names of various shapely movie stars ran though Fate Harkryder’s mind, but he no longer felt in a playful mood. Besides, he was sure that the fat man had heard such feeble efforts at wit before, and was probably expecting them. He probably had his chuckle and his pat answer ready in his froggy throat. Fate decided that the conversation was beginning to bore him. He shook his head. “No one.”

“A relative, perhaps? Is your mother still living?”

“She died when I was eight.”

“Your father, then?”

“Lung cancer. Ten years back.”

“I see. I believe you have brothers, though. Perhaps you’d like a visit from them?”

Fate Harkryder almost smiled. “Perhaps I would,” he said. “Why don’t you see if they’d like to come and say good-bye?”

“I can certainly do that,” said Ritter smoothly. “Now let’s talk about you for a moment. Are you experiencing any symptoms of undue anxiety? Loss of appetite, trouble sleeping?”

“
Undue
anxiety?” The prisoner stared at him. “The state of Tennessee is going to strap me into a chair and shoot electricity through my body until I burn to death from the inside out. Just what anxiety would you call undue?”

“You would do well to remain hopeful. You might possibly get a stay of execution,” said the psychologist, ignoring the emotional outburst. “Meanwhile, we would hope that you can stay as calm and upbeat as possible under the circumstances. I can recommend sleeping tablets—in carefully controlled doses, of course—and perhaps some sort of tranquilizer for daytime use, if you feel that would help.”