The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Chapter Eight IWANT TO SHOW YOU a grave,” said the sheriff.

Three rocks stood alone in the little mountain graveyard: smooth stubs of granite, evenly spaced about four feet apart. The stone pillars were uncarved, weathered from more than a century’s exposure to the elements and farthest away from the white steepled church in the clearing at the top of the mountain.

Sheriff Spencer Arrowood and Nora Bonesteel had said very little to each other in their journey across the mountain into Mitchell County, North Carolina. Early that morning Spencer had appeared at the door of the white frame house on the ridge on Ashe Mountain.

“I need to know about Frankie Silver,” he told her.

He had a longer drive to make tomorrow, but first he needed to go to Kona. At first light that morning, LeDonne had called him, knowing that he slept no more than they did. “We’ve made an arrest,” the deputy told him. “Guy with an earring. One of the other hikers noticed him. We found the murder weapon in his possession. He’s eighteen years old.”

So the sheriff was back where he started, with no new evidence, only a feeling that there was something he didn’t understand about the Harkryder case. He had asked LeDonne to continue the check on the names he had given him, but Spencer could not sit still and wait any longer. They were almost out of time. He promised himself that instead of sitting by the phone, he would see the place where the Silver murder happened, and if there was anything to be learned from that ancient riddle, he would do his best to find it.

Spencer asked Nora Bonesteel to go with him, and without asking a single question, she went. Later he would remember that when she answered the door, she had on her walking shoes and the little blue-flowered hat she sometimes wore to church. She knows when you are coming,people said of Nora Bonesteel, but the sheriff did not believe it. He believed in coincidence.

It’s unofficial,he told himself. The case is a hundred years old. It’s not as if I’m using a psychic to consult on a police investigation. This is a private thing.He was not driving the patrol car. He was still officially out on sick leave, and the pain in his side reminded him from time to time that this should be so.

Spencer escorted the old woman to the passenger seat of his white sedan and waited for her to fasten her seat belt before he took off down the winding Ashe Mountain road and made the right turn that would take them east into North Carolina.

Nora Bonesteel said nothing.

She knew. He wouldn’t ask himself how, or whether his belief in that statement constituted faith of any kind, but he had to know about Frankie Silver, and there was no one else he could bring here who would be able to understand.

“I’ve been studying the case of Frankie Silver,” he told her, after many miles of silence. “You probably know the story, but I’d like to tell it if you wouldn’t mind listening. It would clear things in my mind.”

Nora Bonesteel nodded, and the sheriff began to go over the facts of Charlie Silver’s murder—haltingly at first, but then with greater assurance, until at last he forgot she was there, and he was simply thinking aloud to align his thoughts. The Harkryder case hovered in his mind, parallel to the story he was telling, but although it flickered through his consciousness from time to time, he could not yet see the link.

They drove the winding back roads of Mitchell County, North Carolina, past settlements with colorful names like Bandana and Loafers Glory. It was just as Spencer remembered it from two decades earlier, when he had made the journey with Nelse Miller. If progress had come in the intervening years, it was treading lightly.

When they arrived at the white frame church in the community of Kona on state route 80, the air was still and the shadows sharp, promising a day of breathless heat. Spencer parked his car in the gravel driveway of the churchyard. A slender blond man came out of the church building and waved to them. “I’ll be right back,” said Spencer, as he got out of the car and headed toward the old church.

The blond man was a Mr. Silver, the keeper of the family history. He could have been any age, and he had been born here in the county, but his accent had been worn away like a river rock, softened by years spent in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles. Now he had come home to stay, and to tend the legends. He had a serenity now that one did not often find in the big cities in which he had spent his youth. People—mostly distant relatives, but sometimes scholars and writers—came thousands of miles to ask their questions, to look at the little stones, and to compare the list of names on their genealogy charts with the reams of information in the collection at Kona. They wanted to know who they were, and they seemed to think that Mr. Silver could tell them. Sooner or later most of the visitors got around to asking about Frankie Silver. Mr. Silver knew all the questions, and most of the answers. He was used to it by now.

Spencer told him who they were and what they wanted. Mr. Silver spoke with him for ten minutes, pointing out landmarks and telling Spencer Arrowood what he needed to know. When he had finished, the two men shook hands and Mr. Silver went back across the road to the newer church to tend to the family-history collection housed in its basement. Later they could come over and look at the maps and the photographs, he said. Spencer thanked him again and walked back to the car.

“We’re in the right place,” he told Nora Bonesteel, as he opened the door and helped her out of the car. She nodded without surprise and followed him through the little mountain graveyard.

Spencer walked over to the three uncarved rocks at the edge of the cemetery. “That’s Charlie Silver,” he said.

Nora Bonesteel nodded again. “Yes.”

“They didn’t find him all at once.”

The old woman was looking at the sheriff, not at the grave, and she knew that he was troubled by more deaths than this one. “It’s over now,” she said.

Spencer knelt and ran his hand along the top of the weathered stone. “Charlie Silver. He’s been nineteen for a hundred and sixty-five years now. I used to wonder what kind of a man he was. Whether he deserved what he got. Do you know?”

Nora Bonesteel considered the question. “The cutting came after,” she said at last. “He went quick. She didn’t.”

“Yes, but did he deserve to die?”

“I won’t say that anyone deserves it. Sometimes it has to be done, that’s all.”

Spencer thought that over. “Yes. Perhaps it did. Frankie said that what happened in the cabin was self-defense. I guess somebody was meant to die that night. The only choice was who.”

“Or how many,” said Nora Bonesteel.

Spencer remembered the baby. What was her name?Nancy. That was it. Nancy Silver. Named for Charlie’s stepmother. At least she had been saved. He wanted to see where it had all happened. “The cabin site is back in the woods a few hundred yards,” he said. “We can’t get to it very easily from here in the churchyard, though.”

Nora Bonesteel pointed to a log cabin at the bottom of a hill on the other side of the paved road. “That was the Silvers’ cabin, wasn’t it?”

“Charlie’s parents, you mean? Yes. Some of the family still live there. You see that brownish cut in the hillside across the road, leading to the cabin? Mr. Silver said that was the path that Frankie took when she went to tell her in-laws that Charlie hadn’t come home. It’s still there after a hundred and sixty-five years.”

Nora Bonesteel did not turn to look at the worn path in the hillside. “It would be,” she said.

“I hoped that we could go to the cabin site. Mr. Silver said to walk on past the old church, around the curve in the paved road, and take the first logging road to the right.” Spencer looked doubtfully at the old woman. “It’s a bit of a hike, though.”

“I’m accustomed to walking.”

They threaded their way past the modern gravestones of latter-day Silvers and their kinfolk, and walked the few hundred yards along Route 80 to the dirt trail that led off into deep woods. “Mr. Silver said to follow that logging road into the woods about half a mile, but from there the way to the cabin site isn’t marked. . . .”

Nora Bonesteel sighed. “I’ll know when to leave the road,” she told the sheriff.

Spencer looked at the thicket of trees lining the old logging road. The underbrush beneath the beech and oak groves was so thick that the ground was completely hidden. Walking through such a tangle of brush would be slow-going. He thought about Barbara Stewart, who had died from snakebite while she was

out berry picking in these woods or near them, and he reminded himself to stay close to Nora Bonesteel, and to watch the ground. He had not brought his weapon along, but he thought that the noise of their walking would keep snakes out of their way.

“Strange to think that there was once a farmstead here,” he said. “You wouldn’t think this had ever been cleared land. I guess a lot can change in a hundred and sixty years.”

“Some things don’t.”

They walked for another ten minutes or more, with only the sound of their feet against the rocks on the road to break the silence. It was cool under the canopy of leaves, and the air had the moist, loamy smell of a forest after a rainstorm. The dirt was soft from the recent rains, and they had to make their way around puddles, occasionally pausing to scrape the mud from their shoes. At last Nora Bonesteel stopped. She shut her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Here,” she said to the sheriff, pointing down a small, steep slope.

Spencer could see nothing to distinguish this spot from any other point along the road through the woods. He could see no footpath leading from it, no break in the foliage, no remnants of an abandoned building. It seemed a random choice. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, Lord,” the old woman whispered. “Can’t you feel it?” She was standing stock-still on the red clay road, staring at the underbrush, one blue-veined fist pressed against her mouth as if she were holding back a cry.

Spencer stopped and listened. He heard the trill of a bird far off in the branches of the distant trees, but otherwise he had no sense of being anywhere except in a moist, cool forest on a summer morning. “Can we get to it?” he asked his companion. “If I help you down, would you be willing to take me there?”

“If you are bound and determined to go,” said Nora Bonesteel, sighing. “We’ve come this far. We might as well see it through.”

He eased his way down the embankment of the logging road, a three-foot slope of mud and weeds. Bracing his foot against a bush at the bottom, he reached up and took the old woman by the hand, helping her gently down the muddy bank. “Will you be able to find it in all this underbrush?” he asked her, looking at the unbroken tangle of woods. No remnant of a farmstead remained.

She nodded. “It will be near the creek. I’ll know.”

He stepped aside to let her pass, and then fell in behind her as she made her way through the woods as if she were following a path. She deviated from a straight line only to make her way around a bush or to skirt a fallen log. Spencer scanned the ground around them for snakes and wondered if they would ever find the site. He could have asked Mr. Silver to come with them, but he hadn’t wanted to share the experience with a stranger. Either he would feel foolish embarking on this journey with Nora Bonesteel or else he would learn what he came to find out by a means that would not bear explanation. Either way, he knew that he would never talk about this journey to anyone else.

They were just beyond sight of the road in a clump of beech trees interspersed with tall yellow-flowered weeds when Nora Bonesteel turned to him and put her hand on his arm. “Here,” she said.

The canopy of leaves was so thick that it seemed to be twilight where they stood, but Spencer’s eyes were accustomed to the dimness now, and he began to pace slowly through the weeds, looking for some

sign that Nora Bonesteel was right. He had not ventured more than a few yards away from her when he found the rocks. “It’s here!” he called, motioning for her to come.

A wide, flat rock lay half buried in the black earth, nearly covered by the branches of a shrub growing beside it. “This must be the hearthstone,” said Spencer, kneeling down to examine it. “There are no logs or traces of wood that I can see. I had heard that the cabin burned.”

Nora Bonesteel nodded. “What else could they do?” she said. “The blood had soaked into the logs, into the earth. No one would have lived there.”

It was a crime scene, Spencer told himself. In twenty years, he had seen hundreds of them. You approached each crime scene in the same way. Picture the scene on the night the incident occurred, and try to work out what had to have happened. “December 21, 1831,” he murmured, thinking aloud. “The snow was knee-deep. The river was frozen. According to Frankie Silver, her husband Charlie had been to George Young’s place to get his Christmas liquor. But he came home. Yes. We know he came home.”

Spencer paused, expecting Nora Bonesteel to say something, but she did not, so he went back to his musings. “Christmas liquor. . . . Everybody said that Charlie liked a good time. Liked music. Liked to dance. . . . He’s only nineteen. He’s had quite a lot of George Young’s brew before he gets home. Of course he has. He comes home stinking drunk, and Frankie gives him hell about it. He hasn’t done his chores, and he’s been out partying, leaving her home alone with the baby. They get into a shouting match.”

“They were children themselves,” murmured Nora.

Spencer barely heard her. He was reenacting the crime now, as he had learned to do over the years in his own cases. “Why doesn’t Charlie storm out when the quarrel begins? Because it’s a bitter cold winter night. Deep snow. Frozen river. Nowhere to go. They’re trapped in that tiny, cold cabin. Two angry, shouting adolescents. Maybe the baby is crying. Maybe she’s sick, or colicky, or just plain hungry, and she won’t hush up.” The dark shape of a cabin had begun to appear in his mind, but he knew he wasn’t seeing it in the sense that Nora Bonesteel saw. The old woman had the Sight, but the picture in the sheriff’s mind was constructed out of cold reason. Cops did it at every crime scene. Medical examiners did it when faced with the map of injuries on the body of a victim. Cast your mind out into the possibility of what might have happened, and search with your educated instinct until you can determine what must have happened.

He plunged on into the narrative. “They’re teenagers. Not much self-control.” Trapped. Miserable. If you don’t shut that kid up, I will.He had seen it before. Often. This might as well have been a run-down trailer in a shabby backcountry park. A drunken good old boy, an angry young wife, a screaming baby. Nowadays they pick up the phone and call 911, and then he or LeDonne or Martha would have to go out and try to talk sense into them. Sometimes, to end the danger, they would have to take the raging husband away in handcuffs in the back of the patrol car. But the night that the Silvers fought it out—December 22, 1831—there was no one to call. No time. No time.

If you don’t shut that baby up, I will, Frankie!

“He picks up the gun.” Spencer was staring at the ground now, at the forlorn slab of hearthstone lost in a thicket of weeds. “He doesn’t mean it, really. He’s drunk and cold and the crying has driven him past reason. But he would have killed her. I’ve seen a dozen Charlie Silvers. A hundred, maybe. He would have cried all the way to town in the patrol car. He would have found God in the jail cell before the trial.

But as sure as I’m standing here, he would have killed them both. He has a gun. It’s over in a second. You can’t take it back.”

He paced the black earth between the stone and the beech trees. “So she takes him out. She has to. He has the gun pointed at—her? At the baby? She has a split second to react, and she does. She picks up the first thing to hand, and she takes him out.” He looked at Nora Bonesteel, doubtful for the first time. “An ax?”

She nods. “I think it must have been. It’s metal and heavy.”

“So he goes down, like a poleaxed steer. She gets him just above the ear. That’s in the indictment. He’s lying there on the floor, not moving. It’s quiet all of a sudden. Even the baby has stopped wailing. And Frankie looks down at the body of her husband, and she feels—what?” Spencer looked at Nora Bonesteel, unsure of his ground now that emotions were called into play.

The old woman shook her head. “I’d be guessing,” she told him. “I think she would be feeling shock first. And then mortal terror. She has killed a man. But I’m not feeling anything from her in this place. She’s not here.”

Spencer looked at her, interested, suspending disbelief. He had role-played scores of crime scenes, but he sensed that what Nora Bonesteel was talking about was a different kind of seeing. Every mountain family had someone with the Sight, but if your job is modern law enforcement, you prefer to overlook the old ways. You deal in facts and evidence and cold reason: things that will stand up in court. Still, what could it hurt to ask her about the Silvers—this case had been closed for more than a century. He simply wanted to know. “What do you feel?”

Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes for a moment and nodded, as if confirming an earlier impression. “Sorrow,” she said. “Deep, wordless sorrow. Great loss felt but not spoken.”

Spencer blinked. Sorrow. Someone grieving? “Not Frankie?”

“No.”

“Charlie, then.”

“I don’t think so.” Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes, shutting out the here and now and reaching for that remnant of past emotion. “It feels, but it has no words,” she said. “I think it is the child.”

Spencer dismissed the thought. “Oh, the baby. Nancy. It can’t be her. She lived to grow up.”

“Yes, but on that night, little Nancy Silver was a toddling child without any words for what she had seen. That is what has been left here, burned in the air. It doesn’t matter what became of her later on. What I’m getting is the emotion she felt on the night her daddy died. A deep, wordless sorrow. The anger from that night is gone. I feel no fear anymore. Just that great, heavy sadness.”

“The baby saw it happen,” murmured Spencer, taking up the thread again. “Of course, she did. She had to. It was a one-room log cabin, and her parents are shouting loud enough to wake her.” He nodded to himself, recapturing the feeling of being there. “The baby is watching. Mama and Daddy are arguing, and then suddenly Daddy falls down and he doesn’t get up. He’s asleep. What happens then? What does Frankie do?”

Nora Bonesteel said softly, “Frankie is only eighteen years old. A likely littlewoman, folks said. Not five feet tall. Not ninety pounds.”

“Right.” Spencer nodded, picturing the girl in his mind. “She can’t handle this alone. She’s in over her head. She’ll want her daddy.”

“Daddy is in Kentucky on a long hunt.”

“Her mother, then. Someone who will believe her; someone who will be on her side. She goes home to mother. I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident, Mama.” Spencer looked around at the tangle of woods. “The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. Where is the river?”

“Across the paved road,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Did you see the dirt road across from the logging trail? Likely that takes you down to the river. From where we’re standing it might be a mile or more.”

“The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. The land on this side belonged to the Silvers. There’s no bridge. It’s the dead of winter.”

“She can walk it. The river is frozen. The snow is knee-deep.”

Spencer nodded. He felt cold in the pale sunlight that filtered through the Silvers’ woods. “It’s night. Bitterly cold and dark. Frankie has to walk through the deep snow and across the frozen river to reach her mother’s cabin. It will take her more than an hour, but she has to go. She’s terrified. But. . .but. . .”

“She can’t take the baby,” Nora Bonesteel finished softly.

“No. The night is too cold, and the snow is deep. She must hurry. She can’t take the child with her. It would slow her down. So she leaves it in the cabin in the woods. No one will hear it cry while she’s gone. The baby is alone and afraid—”

“Because Daddy won’t wake up.” The old woman shivered. “Even now I can feel that little child’s bewilderment and sorrow.”

It felt right. Spencer could see things falling into place. It must have happened this way, he thought. Of course Frankie would go for help. She was eighteen years old. I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident. What must I do?He began to pace again. “And what does her mother say? She’s shocked at first, but she’s angry, too, that Charlie would get drunk and try to kill Frankie and the baby. Barbara Stewart doesn’t waste any tears over him. If only her husband were home. What a time for him to be gone! But Kentucky is days and days distant. There’ll be no help from him. They must see to things themselves.”

“If Mr. Stewart had been home, we wouldn’t be here now,” said Nora Bonesteel.

“Right. We wouldn’t be out here because there’d have been no legend of Frankie Silver to draw us in. She’d have got away with it! She would have said that Charlie didn’t come home from the Youngs’ place, and no trace of him would ever have been found. Her father would have seen to that. A strong adult man—a trapper and a woodsman—would have been able to hoist up Charlie Silver’s body like a sack of flour and haul him away. Into the deep woods perhaps. Or he could have broken the frozen ground and buried the body whole. But Isaiah Stewart wasn’t there that night. Neither was the oldest son, Jack. All Frankie has to rely on is her mother, and her brother Blackston, who can’t be more than thirteen.”

“But they have to do something.” Nora Bonesteel understood what the sheriff was doing now. She saw that she needed only to nudge his thoughts along and he would reach the conclusion on his own. It was all there. You had only to picture the scene and it all came clear, whether you had the Sight or not.

He nodded. “They have to do something. They don’t trust the law, and they don’t understand that self-defense isn’t considered murder. They think they have to hide the evidence that the death ever took place. Two women and a young boy can’t lift the dead body. At least not easily.”

Nora Bonesteel said, “The snow is knee-deep and the river is frozen.”

“Lord, yes. If they try to take the body out of that cabin, they’ll leave tracks through the snow that a blind man could follow. Besides, there’s no way to dispose of the body once they get him outside. The river is solid ice. They don’t have shovels—a pick, maybe, but it’s hard to dig frozen ground with a pick. It would take too long. Even the wild animals and the scavengers can’t be counted on to devour the remains in deepest winter. So the Stewarts are limited to what they can do with Charlie’s body inside the cabin.” Spencer ticked off the impossibilities on his fingers. “Can’t drag him away to the woods without leaving tracks. Can’t bury him. Can’t dump him in the iced-over river. Burn him!”

“It was bound to occur to them,” said Nora Bonesteel. “They were desperate.”

Spencer sighed. “I wonder if they knew how useless it was to try to burn him. Probably not. People think of fire as all-consuming. They wouldn’t have known that a body is mostly water.”

“They ran out of fuel, I expect,” said Nora.

“I think so. Yes. One of the legends is that shortly after Charlie disappeared, Frankie asked her brother-in-law Alfred to chop some wood for her, and Alfred replied that he’d seen a whole cord of firewood stacked by her cabin a day or so earlier. The Stewarts used up that cord of wood trying to burn the body, but they ran out of wood before—”

“Before they ran out of Charlie.” Nora Bonesteel permitted herself a grim smile.

“That’s why the body was cut up. It wouldn’t all fit into the fireplace in one piece.” Spencer stepped away from the hearthstone and closed his eyes for a moment. There.They cut him up there. And fed him into the fire piece by piece.Who did? He turned to his companion. “You know, there has never been a case—not one that I can find— anywhere—of a woman younger than thirty, working alone, dismembering a human body postmortem. Not one case.”

“Including this one,” said Nora, “don’t you reckon?”

“Well, I can’t imagine Frankie cutting up her husband’s body. She’s only eighteen. He’s her husband, for God’s sake! The baby is there.”

“Someone else then?”

“Barbara Stewart!” whispered Spencer. “Frankie’s mother!” He tried to picture a tiny, faded blond woman, old at forty, staring down at the lifeless body of the man who had beaten her daughter. “She is without pity. It is the living who matter now. Go stall the Silvers. Your brother and I will take care of this.Yes. She must have said that. Frankie couldn’t do it. She was nearly in shock, and besides, there was the baby to tend to. The mother and brother know that if they make Frankie cut up that body, she

will become hysterical, and then all is lost. So come sunup, they send her to the Silvers’ cabin to visit. Pretend like nothing is wrong,they tell her. Say that Charlie went over to the Youngs’place and he’s not back yet. Give us time to take care of this.”

“That poor girl, having to sit there and make small talk with her husband’s relatives, knowing what she’s left back there in the cabin.” Nora Bonesteel sighed. “No wonder they thought she was a monster, later, when they found out. But by now she had her mother and brother mixed up in it, too, so she had no choice. She was fighting for all their lives.”

“Barbara cut up that body. She must have butchered deer before. Her husband was a hunter. She had the ax and a hunting knife, at least. She had time, I guess. The search for Charlie went on for nine days.”

“Yes, but she had to get it done a lot quicker than that,” said Nora. “Someone must have dropped into the cabin before then. They had to figure that somebody would stop by as soon as Frankie went back home from visiting. Maybe nobody did come to see her, but the Stewarts couldn’t chance it. They had to be ready for company by the afternoon of the first day. They’d have disposed of the body that first night, best they could, and cleaned the blood off the cabin floor.” She shrugged. “Leastways, I would have.”

“You’re right,” said Spencer. “Of course you are. Close family—there were a dozen Silvers, give or take a child—living less than half a mile away. Someone could have walked in on them at any time. Besides, Barbara and Blackston Stewart couldn’t risk being gone from their own cabin for too long, either. If they were missed, someone might wonder later what they were up to.”

“People did wonder,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Didn’t you tell me that they were arrested at the same time that Frankie was?”

“Yes, but they were never tried. There was no evidence against them. Frankie saw to that. She never implicated them at all. But the cutting up of the body is what got her hanged. That’s what shocked people so. I wonder if she could have saved herself by telling what really happened.”

“More likely she’d have got all three of them hanged,” said Nora Bonesteel. “The law was in the hands of the townspeople, you know, but the Stewarts were frontier folk. They must have figured there was no telling what townspeople would do.”

“There’s still some of that,” said Spencer. He stopped and listened. The woods were completely silent. No birds sang. No gnats swarmed above the damp earth. “She was brave, wasn’t she?” he said at last. “Frankie never told who cut up the body, and she never said who helped her escape. She died protecting her family.”

“It must have been hard to die like that, wondering if the truth might have saved you.”

“She tried to speak on the gallows. They asked her if she had any last words, and according to eyewitnesses—there was a lawyer named Burgess Gaither who told the story years later—they asked Frankie Silver if she had any last words, and she stepped forward and started to speak. But her father was in the crowd, and he yelled out: Die with it in you, Frankie!And she stepped back, and was hanged without saying a word.”

“It wouldn’t have saved her then. He knew that.”

“That’s what her father was saying to her then,” said Spencer. He pictured the grizzled old man, surrounded by shouting strangers, staring up at his daughter with the rope around her neck, and he’s

ashamed that his sorrow is mixed with fear for what she might say. Die with it in you.Mr. Stewart was saying: “We can’t save you, Frankie. We did all we could. We tried to keep you from getting caught, but the blood would tell. Then we hired you a lawyer and paid for the appeal, but we lost the case. We even broke you out of jail. We can’t save you. Don’t take the rest of the family down with you.”

“Yes.”

Die with it in you.Spencer shivered in the pale sunshine. “I have somewhere to go tomorrow,” he said softly.

“Yes.”

“I have to go to Nashville and watch a man die in the electric chair. I put him there.”

The old woman nodded. Her face showed no trace of surprise or alarm. She began to retrace their steps

back to the logging trail. It was time to go back.

Spencer followed her back through the tall yellow-flowered weeds. He said, “I think I understand what bothered Nelse Miller about the case now. I know why Frankie Silver has been on my mind.”

“Yes.”

“Will I be able to save him?”

Nora Bonesteel turned to look at the sheriff. “Knowing is one thing,” she said. “Changing is another.”

It was nearly three o’clock when Spencer reached the sheriff’s office. “We’ve finished interrogating the suspect,” LeDonne told him. “He confessed. I think there’s some mental deficiency there, so he’ll probably end up in a treatment facility.”

“Did you ask him about the Harkryder case?” asked Spencer.

“Yeah. It happened before he was born. He never heard of it. There’s a press conference at four. Do you feel up to conducting it?”

Spencer knew that he should. Elected officials have to stay visible to let their constituents know they’re on the job. He shook his head. “It was your case,” he said. “You and Martha handle it. I just came back to get the information you ran down for me on my case.”

LeDonne handed him a folder. “You don’t have much time,” he said.

“No. But at least I know who to ask.”

His old desk felt strange to him now, after weeks away from duty. He saw that the plant in his window looked better, since he had not been around to pour cold coffee into it, and there was a tidiness to his desktop that made him uneasy. He read through the laser-printed sheets in the folder, making notes as he went. It was coming together now. Everything was beginning to make sense, but still he had no proof.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Kentucky. He wished he had time to go in person, but there were only hours remaining. “Tom Harkryder, please,” he said when the ringing stopped. “Mr. Harkryder, this is Sheriff Arrowood from Wake County, Tennessee. I’d like to talk to you about your

brother.”

There was an intake of breath at the other end of the phone, and then a sigh. “I can’t help you with Ewell,” drawled the voice. “Bailing him out is a waste of money. Let him sleep it off.”

“I meant your other brother, Tom. Lafayette. Remember him?”

After another pause, Tom Harkryder said, “I can’t help him, either.”

“I think you could,” said the sheriff. “I think you could save his life—if you told what really happened on the mountain that night twenty years back.”

“Fate said he was innocent. The damned jury didn’t believe him.”

“I believe him—now. He’s scheduled to die tomorrow night. If you meet me in Nashville, I can get us in to see the governor, and we can stop the execution.”

“By telling them what?”

“Tell them who killed Mike and Emily. It’s your brother’s only chance.” The silence dragged on so long that Spencer finally said, “Mr. Harkryder—Tom—are you there?”

The voice whispered, “I don’t believe I can help you,” and the line went dead.