Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3) Page 4

  The sheriff said to Harry, “Catch is like a lot of folks here. They don’t trust outsiders to understand what this killer done to the town.”

  The sheriff dropped his eyes. “Best you stand aside and let us do our work, Mister Jacobsen,” he said, turning to follow Catch into the shop.

  Harry listened, his hand on the back of the flat bed truck, his fingers wet with the mud dripping from the wreck. He overheard the sheriff speaking to Catch inside.

  “You clean her up for me, Catch,” the sheriff was saying. “Lock her up inside here and when you’re working on her, keep your eyes open for anything I can use. Maybe I’ll get some kind of idea where he was going to hide out. Get this done for me right away, too.”

  “Don’t you forget, Sheriff, that Walker tried to kill my father too,” said Catch. Then the garage door closed down with a thud.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday July 29, 10:30 pm

  The newspaper office was in an old building. In better days the proprietor of the Nanticoke Times had owned the building but Harry only leased space, paying rent to a real estate conglomerate in Baltimore which owned and managed properties all over Maryland. The structure was pre- Civil War and its interior condition was certainly that old. Nothing was in line, windows and doors failed to open, or once opened, refused to close without the use of both a large hammer and a crowbar, which were kept beside one of the most crooked windows. The painted and worn wooden floor creaked either from ghosts, of whose ghastly tales Harry was advised by many of the older citizens, or, more appealing to his practical mind, from warping and lack of repairs in the half rotten and bug infested joists beneath. The desks were ancient and dusty and the floor itself was covered with a worn linoleum with huge faded flower blossoms in a design that predated World War One. A row of mechanical typewriters sat unused on a table across from Harry while, in a sign of progress, his desk, Annie’s and that of their copy editor, Chauncy, had modern computers tousled among the paper debris of present and past news stories. One fax machine and several telephones kept contact with the community. In the back was a separate room with Chauncy’s old linotype which he rarely used anymore, and tables where Chauncy laid out and edited the paste-up, the computer copy, graphics and advertising, which would be compiled and sent to meet the deadline for the printing service. Other niches were set up for the stringers, those part time reporters who covered specialties like obituaries and the all-important bird watching and fisherman columns.

  Inside, the bulbs shone under steel shields attached to the end of thin pipes suspended from the high plaster ceiling. They spread shadows over the quiet office desks and gave life to the Civil War oil painting left over from the previous editor’s tenure and prominently placed on Harry’s office wall so that it was easily seen from the street. Sometimes during the day, a tourist might stop and look at the painting, then step inside to ask the name of the artist, which neither Harry nor Annie knew, to ask if it were for sale which it wasn’t, to ask the meaning, an inquiry that Harry could not pretend to answer. To Harry, while he wanted to get the thing out of his office and replace it with something more modern and hopeful, he knew that it probably was important to a certain percentage of River Sunday residents who had seen it in their walks by the office for many years. He would someday donate the piece to the courthouse for hanging with the paintings of town fathers.

  It measured two feet by four feet and at the bottom of the frame on a brass plate was the title, “Maryland men at the Battle of Cold Harbor in Wilderness, June 1864.” The painting showed men in both blue and gray fighting each other, being tossed in the air in circular patterns, arms and legs askew, as though they were caught in a summer tornado. Cannon and rifle smoke rose, while the flames of many brush fires in the background of the sketch swirled among the human insects and further colored this wreath of ghastly figures. Faces stared out at the viewer with expressions of intense hatred while others were filled with supplication, as if praying fervently to the observer to step in and stop this canvas maelstrom. Harry was most arrested by the portrayal of one man, shown as a small face sketched in quick colors, peeking from the leaves of a tree on the side of the battle. His perch was still strong and vertical although its lower trunk was on fire. His face, however, had no body, no base of support, or at least the artist had hidden with green leaves the soldier’s form, so that Harry did not know to which army this poor fellow belonged. It was the man’s eyes, though, that carried the imprecise report, whether it was one of pure terror or pure wonder, of doom or of hope. Whenever he passed the painting, it was those painted eyes which forced Harry to look into their oiled colors again and again. As he did he couldn't help remembering the revolutions he had witnessed during his years in Africa, the heartless killing and the death of the innocents. Annie was the only person in River Sunday that he had met so far who had the same reaction, one of sorrow, at seeing the old work. Most spectators expressed patriotic sentiments to Harry, explaining that old Lloyd had left the painting there to represent Southern revenge for the earlier losses in the war at Gettysburg.

  Harry worked on his knees in the back of the front office in a small storage room. A single swinging light was bombarded with moths of all sizes, some of them finding quick death against the hot surface of the bulb and falling into a fried pyramid on the floor. Harry lifted the former editor’s files out of cardboard storage containers and tried to keep them in order as he searched. For weeks he had been determined to penetrate Lloyd’s filing system, a task at which he had failed several times in researching other stories. This time, though, with his reporter’s curiosity about the Walker John story, and with a burgeoning new mystery about the criminal’s disappearance, he had more than enough reason to try again and to dig deeper.

  Lloyd was like many pre-computer, old timers Harry had known in the newspaper business. His own father, owner of a small newspaper outside Boston, didn’t do much better. In high school when Harry worked for his father he struggled with the files trying to find facts for his father without success. If he’d listened to his father, as a matter of fact, he would never have gone into the business. His father didn’t have much faith in Harry’s ability to get a story right. If his mother had not encouraged him, Harry would never have gone to journalism school. Unfortunately his father had died long before Harry began getting his awards for international reporting.

  As far as Harry could figure out, and this was with Annie’s patient help over these first few months at the paper, when Lloyd had a project, he made a paper file and stored it in a metal case by the subject name. His filing system was his own and his priority was by subject not by alphabet. If Harry had insight into the workings of Lloyd’s mind which he did not, he could have found anything in the office in a fraction of time simply by understanding the subjects Lloyd used for filing. Without knowledge of Lloyd’s years of interests he didn’t know where to begin to look for anything. The newspaper had been sold to Harry as part of an estate settlement, not because Lloyd ever planned to sell it. Both he and Annie had to guess whenever they wanted material for a local story. She’d worked with Lloyd for two years before Harry came along and even then she had never figured out his filing secrets. The net result was hours of going through folders one by one.

  Fortunately this evening he was lucky. After about an hour of guesswork, while working in a decrepit wooden cabinet, he found a group of files labeled simply “crimes yes or no?”

  The first folder included several pages of notes on the fires of River Sunday. In the papers, which looked to Harry like accumulated research for an article, Lloyd had listed all the big fires in the town from the beginning of the Depression to the end of the 1960s.

  Then Harry made his biggest discovery. The second folder was thin, with the words, Black Duck, scrawled across the index flap. He sat back on the floor in front of the cabinet and read the contents. Only a few documents were there, most not more than hastily written notes on scraps of lined paper. The first item was a faded a
nd crumbling clipping from the Baltimore Sun. In what Harry recognized as Lloyd’s careless printing the date “August 6 1968” had been scratched next to the headline,

  “Warrant issued for suspected killer.”

  “River Sunday, Maryland. State police issued a murder warrant yesterday for Walker John Douglas a man described as the prime suspect in the arson slayings of two elderly women, killed during a five alarm fire which destroyed part of this small Eastern Shore town two nights ago. Douglas was last seen as he escaped by running his speedboat out into the Chesapeake Bay while local law enforcement was preoccupied with the fire. Police also released a photograph of Douglas and asked the public to help find him. All ports along the Bay shores have been asked to be on the lookout for him and his boat, described as an eighteen foot speedboat with a white hull with black letters on its sides spelling Black Duck. He is considered armed and dangerous.”

  A picture of a black man in a white sport shirt was part of the article. It was captioned, “Walker John Douglas of River Sunday, Maryland, fugitive.” Walker was serious in the photo but did not look menacing. He had handsome features, strong eyes and nose, and a mouth that looked as if it were always ready to smile. His eyes, with crinkled skin at their edges, appeared friendly, as if he weren’t harboring malicious thoughts, and with his thin mustache and well-trimmed hair, he might have been mistaken for a successful businessman, the kind of man who could advertise an expensive automobile on television.

  The second clipping was from the same paper and dated “August 13, 1968” again in Lloyd’s scrawl.

  “Fugitive killed in boat explosion.”

  “River Sunday, Maryland. State Police today declared that Walker John Douglas, wanted in the arson slaying of two women in River Sunday earlier this week, was killed in the explosion of his speedboat while trying to escape authorities.

  At a news conference State Police detectives displayed materials discovered at the wreck site. First was a torn and partly burned white racing jacket with the words Black Duck on its back. It was identified by the subject’s family as belonging to Douglas. Also on display was a wooden deck panel, its edge jagged from breaking away from the rest of the speedboat hull.

  “In addition, a metal casting that had black smears across its once shiny exterior was found when investigators dragged the bottom near the other floating wreckage. This was determined by the police lab to be part of the boat, a very scorched transmission case. In the opinion of experts this part proved Walker’s fate. Transmission explosions are common in this type of boat because of the extreme stresses of the high speed engines. The State Police believe the boat exploded and disintegrated as it hit the heavy swells of this part of the Chesapeake Bay and that this part was one of the few pieces that remained intact. Further searches have been called off. The police spokesman stated that divers, after extensive searching, found the bottom too filled with silt to locate the suspect’s body or other large parts of the boat.”

  He found another article, faded newsprint cut out from an old issue of the Sentinel, under Lloyd’s byline and his column “Town Chats”

  “August 8, 1978”

  “Is Walker John Douglas now one of River Sunday’s ghosts?”

  “Walker John Douglas, who died when his speedboat exploded after he allegedly killed two women and burned down River Sunday ten years ago to this date, is now a local ghost. This possibility came to my attention from a person, who doesn’t want to be identified further. He said he was night fishing at the end of the pier out at the War of 1812 memorial. He reached back for his unopened can of beer just in time to see a shimmering figure rise up alongside the dock and grab it and then disappear back into the water. He told me he used to know Walker and claimed this figure was the spittin’ image of the man. He said he waited around for the figure to reappear but nothing happened, nothing but the lap of the water on the pilings, and byemby he got so scared he picked up his gear and came on home.”

  “So there you have it, dear readers, has Walker come back to haunt us?”

  Last, on a page of composition paper he saw undated notes by Lloyd, as if he were working out a story but had not completed his thoughts.

  “Is he still alive somehow, even after that boat explosion. Not likely. I knew Walker John and I’m sure that man could not live underground over in Baltimore or Washington this long. For one thing he’d be hurt bad, probably burned over most of his body. That is, if he still had the use of his arms and legs. Even if he recovered from his wounds, and that’s saying something because he would have had to find somebody to take care of him, he’d probably still stand out like a sore thumb. He was a country man and not one who would do well in a city. Besides that, people could see all the mention of him in the papers. During the first year old man Terment offered a good sized reward for information on him. Maybe the local black community, some of them might have looked the other way if he showed up. They were just as likely as the whites to turn him in for that reward.

  “So I don’t think any question exists about him being dead.

  “More important is whether he was guilty. Since he never went to trial, no telling what would have happened in a court of law, I mean, when the witnesses were subjected to cross examination. I suppose with the fire over though, people around here were just as glad to put the whole affair to rest. The Terment family, I know, with all their losses in that building, would have been happy to prosecute Walker, if he had been alive. I never saw the figures on the losses but I understood the Terments lost money. On top of that Walker had injured his friend, Homer Kirby, and because of that he wouldn’t have gotten much support from the race boat community either.

  “So why did the man do it? What’s the motive? Killing those old women. Was that an accident, or on purpose? Everyone in town knew they lived in that old tinderbox and a fire anywhere near their house would get them killed for sure. Besides with all the hard work the Albright sisters were doing to help the blacks get ahead, it seemed strange that a black man would do what he did.

  “I interviewed the Douglas family today. Some of the black community continue to say that Walker was a hero for burning down the Terment Warehouse. The Terment family has never been popular with the people of color in this town. I suspect that is because of their history as large slaveholders before the Civil War and then, in modern times, being employers in the low wage canneries. However, I know that Walker’s mother and sister don’t hate the Terment family. From the way they talked to me, I could tell these people do their jobs and keep out of politics. His father was a respected farmer and was killed in the war. The mother worked as a housekeeper for William Elliott the president of the Bank of River Sunday. Missus Douglas was very pleasant when I went to see her. She’s a big hearty woman and seriously involved with Pastor Jefferson Allingham’s church. She said she had not seen her boy Walker since the fire. The daughter was not very well the day I was there. Her mother said she had been sick with a cold.

  “The daughter came into the room, blowing her nose and took the opportunity to complain to me about the town police force. She said that the police seldom come into Mulberry to investigate crimes. She said she complained to the police about seeing lights moving around inside Walker’s old boat shop in the middle of the night. She added that the police never came to check out the building. After I talked to the two of them on the front porch of the house, I went around back to the boat shop and found it closed up tight with vines thick on the walls. As far as I could see no one had been near the little barn in years. Any forced entry would have been easy to spot. Even the lawn back there was now tall grass and weeds. I had to push through some high growth to see where the door was. On the water side of the barn where Douglas used to launch his boats, the sliding doors were rusted solid to the boat railway. They were so rotten that no perpetrator could have touched them without the wood collapsing and leaving evidence of entry. In my opinion no break-ins had been committed on the property, and I suspect that’s what the police t
hought too.”

  He had learned something of Lloyd’s thinking. As he had suspected, from the notes it seemed obvious that, as Annie had joked, Lloyd feared the people in the town would hurt him or the paper if he showed too much interest in Walker’s version of what happened at the fire. He, like Harry, had thought the same questions. Lloyd, however, had done nothing more. The file was empty and from the condition of the papers, Harry realized that his predecessor had not spent much more time on the mystery of Walker’s crime. Judging from the tension in the town even today after all these years since the crime had occurred, Harry understood why the old editor had left the story alone. He understood but he didn’t approve.

  Harry put away the materials and closed up the office. He decided to drive out to Lulu’s for a quick dinner before he went home. Every town has its watering hole. Here in River Sunday the place was Lulu’s, on the tourist route just outside River Sunday.

  Outside, in the dim light he could see a note attached to his windshield, stuck under the wiper blade. He stopped before opening the truck door and reached for the piece of white paper. It was a single sheet and on it, printed in careless red letters were the words,

  Yankee reporters who play with fires get burnt

  He looked around but the people on the street looked like tourists and race fans. He could not spot any of the churchgoers he had seen outside before. He tore the note in to small pieces and let the fragments float away in the evening air. If anyone was watching, he’d know that Harry wasn’t going to be scared with threats like this. If anything, the person who wrote the note was going to learn that he just proved the old saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. With this, the threat had officially been laid down, the line for him to step over, and he was very willing to step forward, intending to find out what that fire was.