The Last Juror (Page 69)

McNatt soon asked us to leave. His men found the cans of oil that had been drained by the vandal, and they found a window that had been pried open for entry into the shed. They would dust for fingerprints and find none. They would look for footprints on the gravel flooring, and find none. They would scour the woods around the soybean field and find no sign of the killer. In the dirt beside the tractor they did find the 30.06 shell, and it was quickly matched with the one that killed Lenny Fargarson.

* * *

I hung around the Sheriff’s office until well after dark. As expected it was a busy place, with deputies and constables loitering about, comparing stories, creating new details. The phones rang nonstop. And there was a new wrinkle. Random townsfolk, unable to control their curiosity, began stopping by and asking anyone who would listen if there was anything new.

There was not. McNatt barricaded himself in his office with his top boys and tried to decide what to do next. His priority was the protection of the surviving eight jurors. Three were already dead – Mr. Fred Bilroy (of pneumonia), and now Lenny Fargarson and Mo Teale. One juror had moved to Florida two years after the trial. At that moment, each of the eight had a patrol car parked very near their front doors.

I left and went to the office to work on the story about the murder of Mo Teale, but I was sidetracked by the lights at Harry Rex’s. He was in his conference room, knee-deep in depositions and files and all sorts of lawyerly debris, the sight of which always gave me an instant headache. We grabbed two beers out of his small office refrigerator and went for a drive.

In a working-class section of town known as Coventry we drove along a narrow street and passed a house with cars parked like fallen dominoes in the front yard. "That’s where Maxine Root lives," he said. "She was on the jury."

I vaguely remembered Mrs. Root. Her small red-brick house had no front porch to speak of, so her neighbors were scattered around the carport in folding lawn chairs. Rifles were visible. Every light in the house was on. A patrol car was parked by the mailbox, two deputies leaning on its hood, smoking cigarettes and watching us very closely as we drove by. Harry Rex stopped and said, "Evenin’, Troy," to one of the deputies.

"Hey, Harry Rex," Troy said, taking a step toward us.

"Quite a party they got goin’, huh?"

"It’d take a fool to start trouble around here."

"We’re just passin’ by," Harry Rex said.

"Better keep movin’," Troy said. "They got itchy fingers."

"Take care." We eased away and swung around behind the livestock barn north of town where a long shady lane dead-ended near the water tower. Halfway down, the street was lined on both sides with cars. "Who lives here?" I asked.

"Mr. Earl Youry. He sat on the back row, farthest from the spectators."

A crowd was huddled on the front porch. Some sat on the steps. Others were in lawn chairs out on the grass. Somewhere in that pack Mr. Earl Youry was hidden and very well protected by his friends and neighbors.

Miss Callie was no less defended. The street in front of her house was packed with cars and barely passable. Groups of men sat on the cars, some smoking, some holding rifles. Next door and across the street the porches and yards were filled with people. Half of Lowtown had gathered there to make sure she felt secure. There was a festival atmosphere, the feeling of a unique event.

With white faces, Harry Rex and I received closer scrutiny. We didn’t stop until he could speak with the deputies, and once they approved our presence the pack relaxed. We parked and I walked to the house where Sam met me at the front steps. Harry Rex stayed behind, chatting with the deputies.

She was inside, in her bedroom, reading her Bible with a friend from church. Several deacons were on the porch with Sam and Esau, and they were anxious for details of the Teale murder. I filled them in with as much as I could tell, which wasn’t much at all.

Around midnight, the crowd began to slowly break up. Sam and the deputies had organized a rotation of all-night sentries, armed guards on both the front and back porches. There was no shortage of volunteers. Miss Callie never dreamed her pleasant and God-fearing little home would become such an armed fortress, but under the circumstances she could not be disappointed.

We drove the anxious streets to the Hocutt House, where we found Buster asleep in his car in the driveway. We found some bourbon and sat on a front porch, swatting an occasional mosquito and trying to appreciate the situation.

"He’s very patient," Harry Rex said. "Wait a few days when all these neighbors get tired of porch sittin’, when everybody relaxes a little. The jurors can’t live long locked inside their homes. He’ll wait."

One chilling little fact that had not been released was a service call received by the tractor dealership a week earlier. At the Anderson farm south of town a tractor had been disabled under similar circumstances. Mo Teale, who was one of four chief mechanics, had not been sent to repair it. Someone else’s yellow shirt had been watched through the scope of a hunting rifle.

"He’s patient and meticulous," I agreed. Eleven days had passed between the two murders, and no clues had been left behind. If it was indeed Danny Padgitt, there was a stark contrast between his first murder – Rhoda Kassellaw – and his last two. He’d advanced from a brutal crime of passion to cold-blooded executions. Perhaps that’s what nine years in prison had taught him. He’d had plenty of time to remember the faces of the twelve people who’d sent him away, and to plan his revenge.

"He’s not finished," Harry Rex said.

One murder might be considered a random act. Two meant there was a pattern. The third would send a small army of cops and vigilantes onto Padgitt Island for an all-out war.

"He’ll wait," Harry Rex said. "Probably for a long time."

"I’m thinking about selling the paper, Harry Rex," I said.

He took a long drink of bourbon, then said, "Why would you do that?"

"Money. This company in Georgia is making a serious offer."

"How much?"

"A lot. More than I ever dreamed of. I wouldn’t work for a long time. Maybe never."

The idea of not working hit him hard. His daily routine was ten hours of nonstop chaos with some very emotional and high-strung divorce clients. He often worked nights, when the office was quiet and he could think. He made a comfortable living, but he certainly scraped for every penny. "How long have you had the paper?" he asked.

"Nine years."

"Kinda hard to imagine the paper without you."

"Maybe that’s a reason to sell it. I don’t want to be another Wilson Caudle."

"What will you do?"

"Take a break, travel, see the world, find a nice lady, marry her, get her pregnant, have some kids. This is a big house."

"So you wouldn’t move away?"

"To where? This is home."

Another long sip, then, "I don’t know. Let me sleep on it." With that, he walked off the porch and drove away.

Chapter 39

With the bodies piling up, it was inevitable the story would attract more attention than the Times could give it. The next morning, a reporter I knew from the Memphis paper arrived in my office, and about twenty minutes later one from the Jackson paper joined us. Both covered northern Mississippi, where the hottest news was usually a factory explosion or another indicted county official.

I gave them the background on both murders, the Padgitt parole, and the fear that had gripped the county. We were not competitors – they wrote for large dailies that barely overlapped. Most of my subscribers also took either the Memphis or Jackson papers. The Tupelo daily was also popular.