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