O’Hara arrived back at the old mill. Four officers were in the larger office waiting for him to return. The police chief, county sheriff and mayor were there also.
The mayor was a nervous wreck and Ella was trying to describe what was found in the small room under the floorboards. Two of the local news reporters were there trying to listen to everything said.
Chief Atkins saw O’Hara as he came in and rushed over to him.
“Mac, what do we need to do first?” he said.
“Get all these people out of here.” Mac barked loudly.
All conversation stopped and the room became quiet. “Just get everybody out of here and let me do my job.”
“But it ain’t your job anymore Mac.” Mayor Ball retorted.
Mac looked at the chief, his face beginning to turn red. Chief Atkins quickly began to herd the mayor and the reporters toward the front door.
“Come along gentlemen, we will clear out so O’Hara can do his job.” Glancing back at O’Hara as he pushed the three out the door, Atkins said,” if you have questions fellows, I am sure Sergeant O’Hara will give you answers and keep you up on what’s going on. Come along, now. Let’s just go on outside.”
O’Hara managed a slight grin, as the mayor and reporters were ushered out.
O’Hara greeted the four officers there to help him, and looked toward the door to the small room. “Let’s do it“, Mac said.
Three lanterns were lit, two of them placed in the small room, the other hung just outside the door. A canvas tarp was laid out in the floor of the office, near the door, and a second smaller tarp placed on the floor in the small room.
Officer Adam Owens entered the room with O’Hara, and Officer Pete Green took a position in the doorway.
Ella was just outside the room with a pen and note pad, and a handful of evidence tags to catalog the items removed from the room. The other officers would help Ella with keeping the evidence organized.
Inside the small room, O’Hara knelt in the corner and began to remove to boards he had placed back over the opening.
Officer Owens would hand the items to Officer Green. Green would call out to Ella, “floor board #1, from right rear corner. Floor board #2 right rear corner.” and so forth as the items were removed.
Once the floorboards had been removed to make an opening big enough for one of the investigators to enter under the floor, O’Hara took one of the lanterns and held it close to the opening.
“Oh my God.” Owens said. “She’s just a baby.” O’Hara took a deep breath, “looks like maybe five or six years old.”
“My God. What kind of monster would put a baby in a place like this? I have a six year old daughter. Why would someone do that?” Owens mumbled his voice cracking.
“Adam, if you don’t want to be in here…”
“No, no, Sarge. I’ll be okay. It’s just…”
Mac put his hand on Adam’s shoulder. “I’ll crawl down in there.” Mac said, as he moved toward the open hole in the floor.
Jarrett and Pitt walked on down the spur track toward the slaughterhouse, looking for anything unusual or out of place.
“Wally, do you think the death of the child at the old mill is related to the murder of Ms. Baker?”
“I don’t know Bobby. We haven’t had any missing children reported in the last few years. I figure that kid has been there a year and a half, maybe two, so where would she have come from and how did she get there?”
Both Wally and Bobby seemed to be in deep thought and didn’t speak for a while.
Then Bobby spoke up, “what is that, Wally?” He motioned toward a large oak tree about ten yards to the left of the track.
Wally looked toward the tree and saw a board tacked on this tree also. The symbol drawn on this board gave Wally a cold chill. The symbol was a rectangle, with a darkened dot in the center. One of the first symbols learned by a young ’yap’, or rookie hobo. “DANGER” Stay away.
The limbs of the tree were hanging over an old wooden cattle pen. The pen obviously had not been used in years.
“Look at the post under the tree limb.” Bobby said as they moved toward the big tree. There was a narrow path leading down to the large oak tree. The area around the tree was somewhat cleared.
There was another hobo symbol drawn here, and yellow fabric was draped over the post. The symbol was 3 parallel vertical lines, with 2 parallel horizontal lines drawn through them, indicating ‘a crime was committed here. ‘
Wally leaned over to look at it a little closer. “Bobby, it’s a dress, and the front is covered with blood.”
Bobby looked back toward the tree and his eyes moved upward. “Wally, there’s a rope tied around that limb. I believe we found our murder scene.”
“I don’t know, Bobby. There’s no blood on the ground.” Wally observed.
“No blood, but look at this.” Bobby replied.
Bobby and Wally knelt next to a boulder next to the big oak. A tombstone, covered with leaves and vines was barely visible, but what caught Bobby’s eye was a broach on a gold chain draped across the top of the tombstone.
The broach had some unusual designs around the edge and in the center was a yellow stone.
Wally tried to pull back some of the vines and the brush to be able maybe to read the inscription, but the grave marker was old and the carved lettering was barely discernable.
They left the broach where it was for the time being and looked around the area closely.
After about 45 minutes of searching, Wally called out to Bobby, “got something over here.”
Bobby moved quickly to where Wally was kneeling. “What is it?” Bobby queried.
“I am not real sure. It is fabric, sewn together, and its hand sewn. Tubular in shape, it is closed on one end, and stuffed with some type of fiber. Looks like it could have been an arm or leg off a baby doll.” Wally described the item.
“Wally, there are some marks on the ground here, like maybe something has been moved.” Bobby said. “The marks go this direction, through the high grass. Wally, I am going to follow them to see where they go.”
“Okay, I will keep searching around here for now.” Wally replied.
Bobby started through the high grass, following the strange marks on the ground. He had followed the marks for about fifty yards and was now in an open meadow lined by trees on three sides. It was probably another one hundred yards across the meadow to what appeared to be a culvert or ditch.
The tracks he was following were leading straight to the culvert. He stopped just short of the culvert and could not believe his eyes.
The track he was following was the imprint of the bottom ring of a wooden barrel, as it was rolled toward the culvert. The barrel was pushed off into the culvert, spilling its contents. Blood and lots of it. Congealed like pudding, the blood was spread over about a six foot by six-foot area, and splattered on the far side of the ditch.
Bobby could see covered in the congealed blood, what seemed to be the carcass of some type of animal. It was a small animal, not nearly big enough to produce this amount of blood.
As Bobby headed back toward the big oak, he could hear Wally rattling the brush and cursing the blackberry vine and the honeysuckle vines that had him ensnared.
“Holy crap!” Wally was saying. “I swear. I will destroy every blackberry vine I see. I hate blackberries. Well, not really. I love that blackberry cobbler Grandma makes. Oooeee!”
Bobby laughed when he heard Wally and then saw him tangled in the brush.
They exchanged information, and then decided to go back to the old mill to confer with O’Hara.
“I think our hobo friends may know more about this murder than they are letting on.” Wally said.
“Yeah, I think you’re probably right,” Bobby replied. “Maybe we should stop by and talk to them just a little more.”
Walking the tracks back toward the old mill, Wally and Bobby continued to discuss the situation and the evidence they had found.
They were nearing the intersection of the spur and the main track. They left the track and walked the path to the hobo camp. No one was there. “It looks like they left in a hurry,” Bobby noted.
Wally suggested they may want to walk the mainline south a little ways, since Myrt, the woman at the hobo camp had said the jigger, or hand car had went on down the main after going north instead of traveling the spur.
Bobby agreed and they proceeded to walk the mainline south. They had not gone very far, when they saw someone walking the track toward them. At first they thought it may be one of the hobos from the camp.
As the subject approached them, Bobby recognized him to be Earl. He was an older black man who lived on Depot Street, near the track.
Wally and Bobby greeted Earl, and began to ask him how he was doing. Earl replied he was doing well, for an old man.
Wally asked Earl, “Living near the track, you didn’t happen to hear a hand car go by your house on the track last night did you?”
Earl rubbed his whisker covered chin, squinted his left eye, cocked his head to the left, and said, “Naw sir. Naw, I didn’t hear one go by last night last night. That old jigger usually stays on that little side track down next to the depot. I did notice it ain’t been there for a while.”
Wally was getting curious now, “you wouldn’t happen to have any idea who might have gotten it would you?”
“Naw sir. Naw, I wouldn’t know. Would this have something to do with Ms. Baker? I done heard somebody done kilt her.”
“We just ask questions, Earl.” Bobby replied. “Thanks, Earl. We appreciate your help.”
Bobby and Wally shook his hand. As they began to walk away, Earl called out loudly, “hope you fellers find out who kilt Ms. Baker. She was a good lady, and if you’uns wants to see that jigger, it’s off in the woods there just before Mumford Street.”
Wally and Bobby stopped, Bobby grinned at Wally. “Earl, why didn’t you say that before?” Wally asked.
“You didn’t ask me where it was, you just wanted to know if I heard it or knew who got it.” Earl pointed out.
Bobby laughed and Wally shook his head. ”Yeah, I guess we didn’t ask him did we?” Wally said.
“What do you mean we?” Bobby asked.
The two investigators walked on down the track and just as Earl said, there just before Mumford Street off to the left side of the track, was the jigger. It was lying on its side.
Wally and Bobby looked at hand car and saw blood smears on the bed of the car.
“It looks like the car jumped the track, turned over and landed here in the brush.” Wally said.
“The brush over here is pushed down, some broken limbs here also. I believe someone was thrown from the hand car.” Bobby added.
“Bobby, look at this. There’s blood on these branches. Do you think maybe there were two persons on the hand car?” Wally questioned.
“There’s a blood trail leading back toward the track.” Bobby pointed out. They followed the blood trail south to Mumford Street, before it disappeared.
Bobby continued, “That’s a significant injury to bleed like that. We will need to check all the hospitals.”
After investigating the handcar for a while more, Wally and Bobby headed back to the old mill.