CHAPTER 2 The Crawlspace and the Hobos
Entering the front door O’Hara could see tracks in the dust on the floor, where investigators had already walked through. There were two desks to the right side of the approximately ten by fifteen room, which obviously was a former office. One of the desks was missing a leg and the other had remnants of a ladder back chair lying on the floor behind it. There was an old dolly or hand truck that was missing one wheel leaned up in the opposite corner from the desks. An old calendar was hanging on the wall behind the desks. The calendar was from the year 1881 and was turned to the month of June. The date of June 16 on the Calendar had an X drawn through it. O’Hara stopped and looked at the calendar.
“That’s strange.” O’Hara commented. “June 16th, 1881, has an X over it. Today is June 17, 1889. Wally, was Inez Baker killed a couple of days ago?”
“The Coroner said he thought so.” Wally answered.“Hmmm, strange.” O’Hara mumbled. “That X was recently drawn over the 16.”
The three continued to walk slowly through the office, and passed through a door opening into what appeared to be another office. The dust and cobwebs did not appear to have been disturbed. While Ella and Wally watched, O’Hara took a quick look around and backed out of the office. Moving to his right, another door opened into a smaller room. Papers were scattered all over the eight by ten room. Invoices, ledger pages, old calendars, payroll papers completely covered the floor, except for an area about 3 feet by 3 feet where the papers appeared to have been recently scattered. Mac used his foot to pull back the papers and exposed the wooden floor. The room was dark, so Wally stepped back into the large office and got a coal oil lamp and lit it to provide at least some visibility in the small room. O’Hara and Wally knelt in the corner, and O’Hara began to look closely at the floorboards. Grasping one board with the tips of his fingers, he pulled and it came up. He then pulled the remaining boards up. Taking the lamp, he leaned over and looked inside the floor opening. Suddenly there was movement in the opening, startling O’Hara. A large wharf rat emerged from the opening, causing Wally to jump and cringe, and Ella to squeal with fear. The rat disappeared into the other rooms. O’Hara leaned over and again peered into to opening.
“Holy crap.” O’Hara exclaimed. Wally and Ella leaned over also where they could see in the opening. There they saw a human skull, some bones and clothing. The skeleton was small, like a child, and the clothing appeared to be that of a young girl’s dress.
O’Hara placed the boards back over the opening and he, Wallace and Ella moved out of the room, closing the door to keep it secure.
O’Hara addressed Wally, “go back to the station, get whatever equipment you think we may need and bring some help. We’ll investigate this floor compartment better. Ella and I are just going to snoop around and see what else we might find. Also, send one of the officers in here to guard this room.”
O’Hara’s mind was racing. Could these remains be associated with the murder of Inez Baker? They still hadn’t found the murder scene, an important part of Inez Baker’s murder investigation.
O’Hara and Ella looked at each other without speaking. They slowly walked toward a door that led out into the production area of the old mill. Most of the production machinery was still in the building, as if someone had just turned it off and walked away. The equipment was powered by water flow from the river being diverted into a channel, called a ‘race’, short for raceway. The diverted water turned a large water wheel, which in turn provided power to operate the milling machinery through a series of belts, pulleys and gears. It was not a very complicated arrangement. O’Hara and Ella looked at each piece of machinery for anything unusual or out of place. As they neared the rear door, Ella stopped. “Look at this Mac” she said. She was looking at a pedal powered grinding wheel. There were footprints in the dust from the grinding wheel leading back over about six feet to the tracks left by the previous investigators.
“ Those could be footprints from someone checking out the grinder.” O’Hara said.
Ella spoke as looked at the grinder, “the dust has been disturbed and there are fresh metal filings on the grinder and on the floor.”
“Hmmm,” Mac looked closely. “It looks like someone has been grinding something.”
“Like maybe sharpening a knife?” Ella said.
“Yeah, like someone sharpening a knife.” O’Hara said then pulled his notepad from his pocket and scribbled a note.
The two then walked out on to the rear dock. There was lots of trash and old boards on the dock. There were several old half-empty bags of grain stacked against the wall. The grain left in the bags had soured, fermented, and then rotted producing a very pungent odor. Ella covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief, but it really didn’t help. O’Hara laughed and poked fun at her. As they passed the rotted bags of grain, O’Hara saw an old portable scale, used to weigh the sacks of grain. Ella squealed as another wharf rat ran across the dock. O’Hara stood there on the dock looking out toward the back lot and the ditch where Inez’s body was found.
The lot was leveled out for about fifty feet from the dock, and then dropped off sharply into a ditch that was about eighteen to twenty feet deep. The other side of the ditch also rose sharply up about twelve feet to the beginnings of a railroad bed and then rose another eight feet. The railroad tracks were old and used very little. The decline into the ditch was over grown with brush, briars and trees on both sides.
Ella stayed on the dock as O’Hara made his way over to the edge of the ditch. The yard was strewn with trash, old machinery parts, and heavily covered with weeds. O’Hara could see where the body was found and had been removed by the other officers. He could also see where the officers had cut and attempted to clear enough of a path on the far side of the ditch to reach the rail bed.
O’Hara made his way down the hill. He looked around where the body had been lying, and saw nothing unusual.
The body had been located slightly up the far side of the bottom of the ditch, indicating to O’Hara that the body had come from the top of the ditch on the far side, possibly the railroad track.
He decided to follow the same path the previous investigators had cut out to get up to the rail bed. The hill was very steep and difficult to climb.
O’Hara finally reached the rail bed, and leaned against a small sapling to catch his breath and rest for a moment. He saw very little disturbed, except maybe where the others had walked. The rock on the rail bed did not seem to be disturbed at all. He climbed the rock forming the rail bed to the top and stood on the rail timbers, looking back down where he had just climbed up. It was obvious where he had come up.
He stood for a moment, and looked down at the tracks. The rails were mostly rusted.
Then O’Hara saw something that caught his attention. A rock, but not just a rock. A rock that has been crushed between the rail and something that had passed on the rail. The rock, however, was not completely crushed. Whatever ran over the rock or stepped on the rock was not heavy enough to crush it completely. To O’Hara, that ruled out a locomotive or railroad car.
He stood, looking first up the track to the North, then turned and looked down the track. Thinking to himself, boy, this is tough on an old man, but he knew he had to walk the track for a distance. But, which direction was the question. A couple of hundred yards to the north, the track curved back toward the river, and O’Hara knew it wasn’t far the river bridge.
He decided to go south first. If he did not see anything, he would re-trace and then go north. It was early afternoon, and though it was springtime, walking the railroad tracks in the sun was hot.
After walking down the track about a hundred yards, O’Hara had seen nothing. A short distance down the track, he saw a spur track branch off to the West. Now, the decision was to follow the spur or stay on the mainline. He approached the spur and suddenly saw the corner of a building come into view. He wondered what that building was, and he began to think of businesses, abandoned and active in that area. The slaughterhouse was in that area. Could that be the abbatoir?
He decided to walk the spur track for a ways, and look for anything out of the ordinary. In the trees ahead on the right O’Hara something blue in color. As he got closer, he realized it was cloth stretched between a couple of trees. He left the tracks and saw a small board tacked to a tree with the shape of a “U” drawn on it. O’Hara knew the “U” was a hobo signal for ’camp’ or ’sleep here’. He slowly walked toward the hobo camp. As he got near, he could hear voices. O’Hara stealthily approached the camp. He saw two men sitting on stumps and one woman, stirring a fire and adding wood to the fire. O’Hara stepped quickly from the cover of the brush and trees into the open area of the campsite. The two men jumped, as if to run, but O’Hara was right on them, handgun drawn. Both stopped and raised their hands. The woman stood and remained still.
After checking all three for weapons, or ’shaking them down’ as a hobo would say, finding out who they were, O’Hara had the three to sit down on the stumps at the campsite and began questioning them.
From the questions and answers, he learned they were all hobos, traveling north for the summer because it would get too hot in the South. The older of the hobos went by the name of Luthie. He was tall and unkempt, with a rather long beard. Luthie was an ‘axle swinger’ or preferred to ride the rail cars in the underneath framing. He was from the coastal area of Alabama, and referred to himself as a swamp rat.
Ragman was a smaller framed, slender man. His clothing matched his name. Ragman sported long hair tied back in a ponytail, scruffy looking beard and an odor that kept the other hobos at a distance. Ragman’s home was in Virginia.
The female was named Myrtle Morris, and was known by the hobos as Myrt. Myrt was only in her early 30’s. Although her hair was not well groomed and she was in need of a bath, Myrt had a look about her, that someone could not help but think how she would be a pretty lady under different circumstances. A first impression of Myrt was that she was an intelligent woman with a very affable personality, which is why Mac questioned her being in this situation. She really didn’t fit the profile of a hobo.
Mac learned that Myrt had been on her own since she was fourteen years old. She had been used and abused by so many people she could not even begin to count. At fourteen she was forced by a man in Memphis to prostitute where he promoted her as a twelve year old virgin and charged a hefty price to desiring perverted old men to have sex with a child. For fifteen years that was her life until one day she decided to simply leave Memphis and became a hobo. She was well treated by the hobos and never molested by any of the men.
They had been at this camp for four days and were planning to leave in a couple of days.
O’Hara wasn’t suspecting that the hobos had anything to do with the murder, but when asked if they had seen or heard anything strange, Myrt spoke up. She had heard a noise the night before, out on the tracks. She said it sounded like a ’jigger’. O’Hara knew that was hobo slang for a handcar. Myrt said it came from down the spur then went North on the Main.
A good while later, maybe two hours, the jigger came back down the track, but stayed on the main, not coming down the spur.
O’Hara thought to himself, something not heavy enough to totally crush the rock on the track…Hmmm, could have been the handcar.
O’Hara left the hobo camp and started back down the spur track, when he heard some yelling his name. It was Wally, and Bobby Pitt, O’Hara’s old partner. They caught up with O’Hara and he began to fill them in on what he had learned.
“A hand car!” Wally declared. “Well that would explain why there were no footprints, no disturbed rock in the rail bed. You are on to something there Sarge.”
Pitt spoke up, “Sarge, the Chief wants you back at the mill to investigate the body in the compartment in the floor.”
O’Hara told Wally and Pitt to go down the spur toward the slaughterhouse to look for any clues. He turned to go and stopped, “I think the murder took place at or near the slaughter house. What better place to dispose of body parts and raise no suspicion at all than an abattoir, but why carry the body back up to the ditch at the old mill? There has to be some significance to that location.