Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (83) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Friday,
October 31, 1924,
1:30 PM

The top of the telegram read “Postal Telegraph”, followed by the triangular shield of the US Postmaster, then “Commercial Cables.” The recipient was listed as “JAMES MERRITT, SHERIFF, SAINT LUCIE CTY.” The body of the message was straightforward, as telegrams were charged for by the word.

CONFIRM ASHLEY FLEEING PALM BEACH SAT. NOV.1-(STOP)-FORD TOURING CAR 4 MEN ARMED-(STOP)-PLAN TO PASS THROUGH SEBASTIAN LATE NIGHT-(STOP)-ROBT. BAKER, SHERIFF, PLM BEACH COUNTY&G.S., V.O.V.

    Greyson Stikelether didn’t want his name attached to the apprehension of John Ashley. He also did not want to be seen helping Sheriff J.R. Merritt, therefore he would have Sheriff Bobby Baker do it for him.
    In truth the Judge and the Sheriff had remained friends despite the lawsuit for the Dedge boy. The money had been trivial except to a kid starting out, but he had an image to maintain for his clients. Drinking with the Sheriff didn’t fit his “for the people” style.
    Stikelether had seen to it that none of the targets of the suit had been publicly humiliated. They were all powerful men, and he had to live in this town, after all. Thus, his missive had been from “G.S.,” from the “Village of Vero.”
    Sheriff Merritt knew perfectly well who “G.S.” was, what V.O.V. meant, and what to do with the information.
    Besides, as the Judge had correctly surmised, Bobby Baker would have no problem taking some credit in the papers for himself; he was up for re-election in a matter of days.

Saturday, November 1, 1924, 2:00 PM

The top of the telegram read “Postal Telegraph,” followed by the triangular shield of the US Postmaster, then “Commercial Cables.” The recipient was once more “JAMES MERRITT, SHERIFF, SAINT LUCIE CTY.” The body of the telegram was as terse as the previous one, and for the same reason, the cost.

JOHN ASHLEY ET AL NORTH ON DIXIE HWY LATE TONIGHT-(STOP)-SENDING PADGETT, PADGETT, STUBBS, THOMAS ARRIVING 6 PM-(STOP)- DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY-(STOP)-YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO-(STOP)-ROBERT BAKER SHERIFF PALM BEACH CTY.

The telegraph operator ran down the street to the Sheriff’s office

    The minute the telegraph operator had decoded the message and scratched it on paper, he ran down the street to the Sheriff’s office and slammed through the door, his blue accountant’s apron flapping. He was a tall, sharp-faced man named Hannibal Jespersen that everyone called the Swede, although he was of Danish descent. In the heat his black hair stood in sweaty spikes from atop his visor. His mustache twitched so much it always looked like a small animal that was about to escape from his face.
    Sheriff’s Deputy O.E. “Three-Fingers” Wiggins looked up in surprise from where he was filling out the day’s call log at the counter.
    The mustache was marching double-time. Always an excitable man, Jespersen was practically dancing.
    “Jesus Christ, Hannibal, who lit a fire under your ass?”
    Jespersen, a man who took himself and his job very seriously, glared through his spectacles at the deputy. His wife had told him over and over he needed the glasses, but it wasn’t until he couldn’t tell the mark elements on the telegraph tape from the sprocket holes that he had finally given in.
    Wiggins was not only a hard man for anyone to like but knew perfectly well Jespersen was a religious man and did not care for either blasphemy or obscenity.
    Jespersen also knew Wiggins knew it and blasphemed and cursed just to rattle him.
    Of course, when he’d gotten the glasses, Wiggins had been the worst one to rib him about that, too. A typical schoolyard bully.
    Before he could form another unkind thought, Hannibal blurted out, “I need to see the Sheriff, right now.”
    Wiggins sensed an opportunity to mess with Jespersen on a new subject. He’d pecked at him unmercifully about the glasses, but the Swede had never risen to the bait. Must be his good Christian upbringing, Wiggins thought sarcastically.
    He slowly closed the call logbook and drawled, “Now, Hannibal, don’t get your petticoats in a twist. Whatever it is, you can just give it to me, and I’ll see the Sheriff gets it.”
    The mild-mannered operator’s reaction startled him.

“No! I need to see the Sheriff, right now!”

    “No! I need to see the Sheriff, right now!” He slammed his palm on the countertop for emphasis.
    Wiggins started back, and his three-fingered left hand knocked the logbook to the floor. Wiggins claimed he’d lost the first digit on his left hand in a knife-fight with a drunken Indian. The truth was, he’d caught it in a steam hay-bailer on his uncle’s farm in Wauchula, and when it tightened the wire on that bale it had taken that finger right off.
    Lots of farmers and loggers with nicknames like “Lefty” and “Stumpy” these days, what with all the machinery, Wiggins had thought at the time. Not that this was anything new. Axes and crosscut saws and falling trees could kill you quick as chain saws and falling trees could kill you. Dumb as he was, it had made him consider changing careers, which was how he had ended up as a deputy Sheriff.
    “Jesus, Hannibal, just hold your horses a minute, will ya?”
    Hannibal Jespersen leaned in close, his spectacles glinting back sunlight from the windows. His teeth were clenched beneath his mustache, which was positively galloping now. He reached across the counter like a lightning strike and grabbed Wiggins by the collar, dragging the astonished deputy halfway across what had once been the bar of a saloon.
    After years of knowing the mild-mannered telegrapher, Wiggins, a weasel of a man who only respected power, realized that Jespersen was a head taller than him, with long arms and big, round shoulders. His grip on Wiggins’ collar was so tight he was about to choke, his eyes wide, breath gasping.
    Jespersen snarled in his face, shaking him like a dog with a rat. “Get me the God damn Sheriff right now!”
    Sheriff J.R. Merritt had heard the last part of the conversation as the volume of the argument rose, and was shocked to hear the telegraph operator, a devout Lutheran, blaspheme. He stood up at his desk in the office at the end of the hall and shouted. “Damn it, Wiggins, bring him the hell in here!”

Three Fingers tried to speak

    Three Fingers tried to speak, but the telegraph man held him a moment longer, glaring through his spectacles, so all that came out was a strangled gurgle.
    Jespersen shoved him away roughly, then barged around the counter and into the Sheriff’s office.
    Merritt said nothing, simply held out his hand. Jespersen handed over the telegram, and the Sheriff spent less than thirty seconds reading it.
    Bobby Baker was right, he thought. Sheriff J.R. Merritt knew exactly what to do.

Saturday, November 1, 1924, 5:27 PM

When Elmer Padgett parked in front of the Saint Lucie County Sheriff’s office, his ass was so sore he thought he’d been kicked by a mule. He’d driven from Palm Beach in less than five hours, and he felt every stretch of marl rock, every pothole and busted hunk of pavement that had pounded into his spine the whole damn way.
    His brother, Ollie Padgett, sat on the right side in the back with the window down, because he got carsick, and E.O. Padgett was not about to have anybody puke in his car, no sir, not even his own brother. He’d thrown drunks out in the road when they’d puked in his car. All cops, like all taxi drivers, hated drunks, because they always puked.
    Ollie, who’d already puked when they’d stopped for gas in Stuart, made gagging noises out the window. Deputy Henry Stubbs rode shotgun, and Deputy L.B. Thomas sat across from Ollie, his head out his window, looking like he might puke his own self.
    Stubbs and Elmer’s brother Ollie looked like two peas in a pod but were completely different. Each filled out his khaki uniform blouse and trousers like overstuffed sacks of potatoes, all lumpy and way too big. Each had an egg-like head that was also way too big, with fat cheeks, big fleshy bags under their young eyes, high foreheads, and damn near no hair at all. Ollie wore spectacles; Henry didn’t.

He never moved or spoke unless spoken to

    On the way to a call Henry Stubbs was like a stone or a tree. He never moved or spoke unless spoken to. Henry had served in the Great War, and when the car doors opened, he emerged from his torpor at battle speed like a force of nature, ready to obliterate anyone or anything that stood in his way.
    Ollie had not served, hated travelling because he got carsick, and complained continuously, whining about the drive and the heat and the bumps and the mosquitos and the food, or the lack of it. When the car doors opened, Ollie was not nauseous, did not complain, and strode steadily forward with his weapon ready and didn’t stop firing until the bad guys were either dead or had given up.
    They were all armed with shotguns and pistols, and the ungainly long guns stuck from the windows like lethal spines on a porcupine. They rolled into Fort Pierce half an hour early, and Padgett thought grimly that Merritt had damned well better appreciate it. He was here for one reason: to kill John Ashley or see him killed.
    Ashley had not only threatened Sheriff George Baker, then his son Sheriff Robert Baker. He had threatened, personally, to kill Padgett and his brother. They’d been there when Joe Ashley had been killed, although neither of them had any idea who had shot the old man. No one did. Nobody had claimed it. Many men would have crowed like roosters about it. Others would understand that to do so would mean their eminent death.
    Still, John had declared that every single man he knew had been there would die. How he knew who-all might’ve been there was a mystery. He couldn’t have seen them all from the back left of the house where his little sleepy hole sat under a ragged tarp, next to the still. They sure as hell hadn’t seen him, but for God’s sake, he was John Ashley, and seemed to know everything.

Elmer Padgett meant to see to it that threat was never carried out

    Elmer Padgett took Ashley’s statement as a personal threat. Hell, it was a personal threat. He meant to see to it that threat was never carried out.
    Deputy L.B. Thomas, in the back seat behind Elmer, was slim, slick, and “sophisticated”. His hair was oiled to the point that it wouldn’t have moved in a hurricane. His khakis were ironed to such perfection that you could cut yourself on the creases. White flakes of Argo Gloss Laundry Starch, “Easy To Use, Crisp Finish”, shed from his uniform like a tiny snowstorm. His buddies joked that he had the worst dandruff they’d ever seen.
    Girls swarmed around him with his boyish good looks, but he had no special girlfriend. He was twenty-nine and unmarried, had not served in the war, and lived with his mother. His buddies wondered if he might be just a little bit queer. Of course, that was only a joke; you couldn’t be a “little bit” queer.
    Elmer Padgett had a full head of black hair, a square jaw, a handsome face, and a bad attitude. He resembled a tall slab of concrete with long arms and legs in a crisp, well-fitted uniform. He’d been shot once, stabbed three times, struck by lightning, and had beaten three men who came for him at his house one night for busting their still until one had died, one was a drooling idiot and the third one’s legs didn’t work.
    He didn’t blame them for coming for him. He’d been expecting it, and he knew that, in this job, he took his chances. But they had come to his home. Not on the road, on the job, like honorable men, but like thieves in the night, to where his wife and his children slept.
    He had shown them no mercy and had felt no remorse. He had used nothing but his hands, because no other weapon could cause them the pain his fists could without murdering them outright, and no jury would convict one unarmed man against three.
    No charges were ever filed against him.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens