I drove back to Bill’s, marveling at how little traffic there was. Of course it was six forty-five in the morning, and I don’t suppose that rush hour in Danville starts until about five to eight. I had my pick of parking places.
I pounded on the door to Bill’s tiny apartment, knowing that he had to have heard me. No place in his apartment is all that far from the door. “Open up, Bill!” I called out. “It’s your sister. Without a search warrant.”
The door opened a fraction, and I could see rumpled blond hair and an unshaven face peering out at me. “What do you want?” he asked between yawns.
“The key to your office and a cup of tea,” I said sweetly. “I see that I woke you. No rush. Any time in the next minute or so will do.”
Bill glared. “Why do you want the key?”
“To call your law partner. I have some information that may help her case.”
“I’m still working on it.” I snatched the key and fled downstairs.
A few minutes later, I was talking to A. P. Hill, who was wide awake at this hour, as I suspected she would be. She probably alphabetizes her underwear drawer. “I looked over that coroner’s report, and I have some information for you,” I said after the initial civilities.
“I don’t see what you could have found without doing any lab work,” she said.
“They did the lab work. And either they forgot to record one significant finding or there’s something strange about Misti Hale’s death.”
“You mean she wasn’t strangled?”
“Sort of. There were bruises on her neck, all right, and her body had been in the car for a couple of days, so the lividity and coloration weren’t much help, but what I would expect to find noted on the report was evidence of petechial hemorrhaging.”
“Which is?”
“Red dots, especially noticeable in the eyes. They are actually small hemorrhages in the capillaries under the skin, and the condition is most evident in the whites of the eyes. The pressure put on the blood vessels during strangulation causes the tiny ruptures. But in the autopsy report on Misti Hale, no petechial hemorrhages were mentioned.”
“But you said there were bruises on her neck.”
“Right, but if there weren’t any hemorrhages, then she didn’t die from that. In grad school, we heard about a case like this. I have a hunch that Misti Hale was one of those rare and unlucky people whose blood pressure goes down under stress instead of up. You know, like a possum.”
“She passed out?”
“Way out. Someone took her by the throat, and she went into shock almost immediately. Her blood pressure plummeted and her heart stopped. So she didn’t die from strangulation, but from shock. It would have been very fast. Seconds.”
A. P. Hill was not impressed with my diagnosis. “Hmm,” she said. “But whoever had his hands around her throat still killed her.”
“Maybe not on purpose. Her assailant might have stopped in a couple of seconds. He may have been trying to shut her up. But she had this blood pressure trouble, and she passed out and died. It’s not conclusive proof, but you could argue that it was not an intentional homicide. You could get expert witnesses to back you for manslaughter.”
“He might get off with time served for that.” A. P. Hill sounded thoughtful. “And I could get expert witnesses to testify to this condition.”
“Sure. If I were you, I’d start calling the UVA med school and go from there.”
“Thanks. I’ll look into it. Unless you’d like to-”
“Sorry. I have to figure out what Major Edward Anderson is doing on a Georgia island.”
“Friend of yours?” The disinterest was back in her voice.
“No. Somebody mentioned it, and I got curious.” I was tempted to tell her about Bill’s problem, but he would have killed me for betraying his confidence.
“Major Edward Anderson. Well, there’s the famous one, of course.”
“The comedian. Rochester. I thought of that.”
“Comedian? Oh, on Jack Benny. No, that was
“Where?”
“I don’t know. He was only a major. But in my office there are some reference books on the Civil War, and bound copies of
“It’s worth a try. Thanks.”
Twenty minutes later, I was reshelving all of Powell Hill’s reference books when Bill came in, holding two steaming mugs of tea.
“Took you long enough,” I said. “Unfortunately, I can’t drink it.”
“Why not?” His tone suggested that I had just refused the Holy Grail.
“Because there aren’t that many rest areas between here and I-95,” I told him as I started out the door. “I think I’ve found your old ladies.”
– NEXT-TO-LAST WORDS OF
THOMAS J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON, MAY 10, 1863
– NEXT-TO-LAST WORDS OF ROBERT E. LEE, OCTOBER 1870
GILES COUNTY, VIRGINIA, DECEMBER 1901
GABRIEL HAWKS TRACED his forefinger along a line of type in the Richmond newspaper. His eyes weren’t what they used to be-and he never had been much on reading-but the name of his old friend had jumped out at him from the columns of gray words: Tom Bridgeford… state senator… appointed to the board of the newly established Home for Confederate Women in Danville. He tried to picture the lanky young sailor as a dignified old politician, but the image wouldn’t come. Even though his own mirror showed him an image of an arthritic old man of fifty-five, he couldn’t picture Tom any older than twenty-five, still chafing under the weight of authority and spoiling for a fight. If he was a senator now, and active in charitable works, he must have prospered.
Gabriel Hawks looked about the simple parlor of the farmhouse, with its sepia photograph of General Lee over the mantel and a homemade braided rug on the pine floor. He reckoned that he hadn’t done too well, as the world measured success, but by his own lights he’d had a good life. He had done a bit of wandering in Georgia in the aftermath of the war, and then he’d made his way back to Giles County and taken up farming again at the homeplace. The community was much the poorer, mostly because it had lost most of the boys he’d grown up with, but he was happy enough back in the sheltering mountains of the Blue Ridge. Shortly after his return he had married Mary Hadden, who, at sixteen, had been left widowed by the War. She had lived to see the beginning of the new century, but pneumonia had taken her during the first weeks of winter, and now Gabriel was alone again. There had
