John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

“Things got bad then for black folks. The police figured there might be a connection between the disappearances after all and they called in the FBI. After that, black men walking around town after dark were liable to get arrested or beaten, or both. But those people…” He used the phrase again and there was a kind of mental shake of the head in his voice, a gesture of horror at the ways of men. “Those people had a taste for what they were doing, and couldn’t stop. The woman tried to snatch a little boy in Batesville but she was alone and the boy fought and kicked and scratched her face and ran away. She chased after him, too, but then she gave up. She knew what was coming.

“The boy was a sharp one. He remembered the make of the car, described the woman, even recalled some of the numbers on the license plate. But it wasn’t till the next day that someone else recalled the car and they went looking for Adelaide Modine.”

“The police?”

“No, not the police. A mob of men, some from Haven, others from Batesville, two or three from Yancey Mill. The sheriff, he was out of town when it happened and the FBI men had left. But Deputy Earl Lee Granger, as was, he was with them when they arrived at the Modine house, but she was gone. There was only the brother there and he shut himself in the basement, but they broke in.”

He was silent then and I heard him swallow in the gathering dark, and I knew that he had been with them. “He said he didn’t know where his sister was, didn’t know nothing about no dead children. So they hanged him from a beam in the roof and called it suicide. Got Doc Hyams to certify it, though that basement was fourteen feet from floor to ceiling and there was no way that boy could have gotten up there to hang hisself ’less he could climb walls. Folks after used to joke that the Modine boy wanted to hang his-self real bad to get up without help.”

“But you said the woman was alone when she tried to snatch the last child,” I said. “How did they know the Modine boy was involved?”

“They didn’t, at least they weren’t sure. But she needed someone to help her do what she did. A child is a hard thing to take sometimes. They struggle and kick and cry for help. That’s why she failed the last time, because she had nobody to help her. At least, that’s what they figured.”

“And you?”

The porch was quiet again. “I knew that boy and he wasn’t no killer. He was weak and…soft. He was a homo-sexual-he’d been caught with some boy back in his private school and they asked him to leave. My sister heard that when she was cleaning for white folks in the town. It was hushed up, though there were stories about him. I think maybe some people had suspected him for a while, just for that. When his sister tried to take the child, well, folks just decided he must have known. And he must have, I guess, or maybe suspected at least. I don’t know but…”

He glanced at Deputy Martin and the deputy stared right back at him. “Go on, Walt. There’s some things I know myself. You won’t say anything I haven’t thought or guessed.”

Tyler still looked uneasy but nodded once, more to himself than to us, and went on. “Deputy Earl Lee, he knew the boy wasn’t involved. He was with him the night Bobby Joiner was taken. Other nights too.”

I looked at Alvin Martin, who stared at the floor nodding slowly. “How did you know?” I asked.

“I saw ‘em,” he said simply. “Their cars were parked out of town, under some trees, on the night Bobby Joiner was taken. I used to walk the fields sometimes, to get away from here, though it was dangerous given all that was happenin’. I saw the cars parked and crept up and saw them. The Modine boy was…down…on the sheriff and then they got in the back and the sheriff took him.”

“And you saw them together after that?”

“Same place, couple of times.”

“And the sheriff let them hang the boy?”

“He wasn’t going to say nothin’,” Tyler spat, “case someone found out about him. And he watched them hang that boy.”

“And his sister? What about Adelaide Modine?”

“They searched for her too, searched the house and then the fields, but she was gone. Then someone saw a fire in the shell of an old house on the East Road about ten miles from town and pretty soon the whole place was ablaze. Thomas Becker, he used to store old paint and inflammables there, away from the children. And when the fire was out, they found a body, badly burned, and they said it was Adelaide Modine.”

“How did they identify her?”

Martin answered. “There was a bag near the body, with the remains of a lot of money, some personal papers, bank account details mostly. Jewelry she was known to have was found on the body, a gold and diamond bracelet she always wore. It was her mother’s, they said. Dental records matched too. Old Doc Hyams produced her chart; he shared a surgery with the dentist, but the dentist was out of town that week.

“Seems she had holed up, maybe waiting for her brother or someone else to come to her, and fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. She’d been drinking, they said, maybe to try to keep warm. The whole place went up. Her car was found nearby, with a bag of clothes in the trunk.”

“Do you remember anything about Adelaide Modine, Mr. Tyler? Anything that might explain…”

“Explain what?” he interrupted. “Explain why she did it? Explain why someone helped her to do what she did? I can’t explain those things, not even to myself. She had somethin’, sure enough, somethin’ strong inside her, but it was a dark thing, a vicious thing. I’ll tell you somethin’, Mr. Parker: Adelaide Modine was as close to pure evil as I’ve met on this earth, and I’ve seen brothers hanged from trees and burned while they were hangin’. Adelaide Modine was worse than the people who did the hangin’ because, try as I might, I can’t see any reason for the things she did. They’re beyond explainin’, ’less you believe in the Devil and Hell. That’s the only way I can explain her. She was a thing out of Hell.”

I stayed silent for a while, trying to sort and balance what I had been told. Walt Tyler watched while these thoughts went through my head and I think he knew what I was thinking. I couldn’t blame him for not telling what he knew of the sheriff and the Modine boy. An allegation like that could get a man killed and it didn’t provide conclusive proof that the Modine boy wasn’t directly involved in the killings, although if Tyler ’s character assessment was right, then William Modine was an unlikely child killer. But the knowledge that someone involved in the death of his child might have eluded capture must have tortured Tyler all these years.

One part of the story still remained.

“They found the children the next day, just as the search had begun,” concluded Tyler. “A boy out hunting took shelter in an abandoned house on the Modine estate and his dog started scraping at the cellar door. It was built into the floor, like a trapdoor. The boy shot the lock off and the dog went down and he followed. Then he ran home and called the police.

“There were four bodies down there, my little girl and the three others. They…” He stopped and his face creased but he did not cry.

“You don’t have to go on,” I said softly.

“No, you gotta know,” he said. Then louder, like the cry of a wounded animal: “You’ve gotta know what they did, what they did to those children, to my child. My little girl, all her fingers were broken, crushed, and the bones pulled away from the sockets.” He was crying openly now, his large hands open before him like a supplicant before God. “How could they do those things, to children? How?” And then he seemed to retreat into himself and I thought I saw the woman’s face at the window, and her fingertips brushing the pane.