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Roscoe, NY
About six weeks had elapsed since the murder, and we were no closer to finding Billy Stillwater’s killer than when we first started. I had all three of my patrolmen following up on any tips we received, including a phone call from a farmer’s menopausal wife, who insisted that she murdered Billy to keep the school children safe. A quick check with the husband confirmed that she had been home the night of the murder.
The truth was that we had virtually nothing to go on, and had made absolutely no progress. Just as with the homicide cases we were assigned back in Manhattan, if a crime wasn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the chances of a successful conclusion decreased with every passing day. It was beginning to look as though Billy’s killer would probably go undiscovered. I couldn’t say that I was real upset, but I wasn’t about to quit, either.
I had just spent the last three hours with Pete Richards, the two of us trying to make sense of the clutter of information scattered across the surface of the white board I had erected in my office. I might just as well have had Einstein’s Theory of Relativity up there for all the good it was doing. On it were several names, among them those of the victim, Billy Stillwater, a known Meth dealer, and Wayne Sabolewski, his last known client. But, I’d checked with the owner of the diner, who verified Wayne’s alibi, so I could probably take his name off the board. Then there was Donna, the dancer at the Twin Islands. She, too, had an alibi, but might still know something. For the time being, I left her name with the rest.
When we searched Stillwater’s trailer immediately following the murder, I was surprised to find a framed high school diploma hanging on his bedroom wall with the name Stepp, rather than Stillwater as his last name. Apparently, Billy was a “Son of the South,” with Beaumont Regional High School, in Jefferson County, Alabama as his alma mater—a distinguished member of The Class of 1991. Wouldn’t his classmates be proud! Talk about your quintessential incongruity; here was a Meth dealer, no doubt selling drugs to underage kids, yet boasting of his own graduation from high school. It made no sense. But, after a career as a New York City homicide detective, nothing surprised me anymore.
I contacted the Jefferson County authorities and found that Billy had legally changed his name to Stillwater (his mother’s maiden name) when he had turned eighteen, which explained the name on the driver’s license. However, the name on his birth certificate was Stepp, the same as his deceased father. The records also showed that he had a sister, Winona, who was just slightly more than a year older than he was, but there was no record of her ever having changed her name. My guess was that when his parents divorced, the old man had left with the daughter, leaving Billy and his mom to fend for themselves—which really pissed off the son. By changing his last name to Stillwater he had effectively separated himself, once and for all, from both his father and his sister.
There was no record of any aunts or uncles—so there was no one to even claim the body. More likely than not, Billy’s body would be buried in a Potter’s Field after a specified waiting period, during which it would remain in the morgue. Apparently, the record keeping in Alabama was about on a par with that of New York State..
Also written on the white board was the word “strychnine,” the murder “weapon,” which was a real mystery in itself. And that was it; that was all we had. Not very much information with which to solve a murder, I thought. Disgusted, I left Pete to ponder the clues, after deciding my time would be better spent at the library—if I could get there before it closed. It was a Wednesday evening and the one night of the week that the library remained open until nine o’clock.
* * * *
Just past eight-thirty, I made my way slowly through the cramped aisles of the book stacks that occupied the limited space assigned to the Roscoe Public Library. It wasn’t even a freestanding edifice, but merely a five-hundred-square-foot adjunct to the ancient, wooden VFW hall, designated by a hand-painted sign that hung next to that of the building’s principle occupant. It used to be worse. In the past, residents of the little fishing village were forced to avail themselves of the county facility in Monticello, whose location required more than an hour’s drive round trip. Only the most devoted readers were up to the journey, so it came as no surprise that there was rampant support when the current mayor proposed the present arrangement.
Unfortunately, now, three years later, that accomplishment remained the only significant one of an administration with less than a full year left in its term. The addition of a new patrol car would greatly alter that legacy—at least for me. But that was a subject for another day. Right now I was searching for something interesting to read during my spare time.
A hand-lettered sign affixed with cellophane tape to the top shelf of one of the stacks proclaimed, “New Non-Fiction,” and I stopped in front of it to peruse its contents. A book down on the bottom shelf caught my eye: Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington. It wasn’t a large book, not more than two-hundred-and-fifty pages at most, but its title intrigued me. I bent down to pick it up. Immediately, a twinge in my lower back reminded me of my chiropractor’s advice to always bend my knees—rather than bending from the waist—but it was too late, and I stood there quietly massaging the bottom of my spine until the pain subsided. I squatted back down (as I should have done the first time), removed the book from the shelf, stood back up, and began reading the inside flap of the front cover. It was touted as “a story of snake handling and strychnine drinking, of faith healing and speaking in tongues.”
Strychnine drinking? I pored over the pages. Maybe this was what I’d been looking for? The book went on to describe how one man’s search for his roots had resulted in “spiritual renewal.” There were all kinds of details of how the author had covered the sensational murder case of Glen Summerford, pastor of the Church of Jesus with Signs Following, who had been accused of attempting to kill his wife with rattlesnakes. The author had “felt the pull of a spirituality that was to dominate his life for the next several years,” said the promotional blurb. It went on to say that he had even attended snake-handling services throughout the south, and how he “eventually took up snakes himself.”
The last bit of information proved to be too much, and I closed the cover and returned the book to its place on the shelf. “Hey, Margaret,” I called to the young librarian who was busy re-shelving books in the next aisle, “Got any new books on fly fishing?”
Margaret mumbled something sarcastic under her breath, and then replied in a soft voice, “You know, Chief, fishing isn’t all that folks around here care about. Have you thought about broadening your horizons a bit?”
I just smiled. “Just tell me what section they’re in, please, Margaret. I’ll find them myself.”
“It’s seven, ninety-nine, Chief—and we close in twenty minutes.”
“Thank you, Margaret.”
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, I left the library with about as disparate a pair of books as one might find: the book about the snakes and drinking strychnine by a southern journalist and Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing by John Gierach. I chose the former for its possible informational value, and the latter for the levity I would no doubt require after reading the former.
God, I hated snakes.