Murder in Mayberry. Jack Branson
We climbed the stairs one at a time, moving as if wearing those weighted boots astronauts use when gravity is sparse. Gravity and emotional heaviness partnered to make the climb an ordeal, and the effort was nearly unbearable.
At one point in what seemed an eternal climb, we laughed, remembering that Bob was not allowed on the second level of the house. Ann had problems with a faucet recently, and Bob offered to fix it. She’d refused, saying it was improper for him to be in her bedroom.
At the top of the landing was Ann’s dressing room, a generous room that consisted primarily of wigs, makeup and jewelry. I glanced in as we turned toward Ann’s bedroom. The dressing table was strewn with cosmetics and jewelry, and a light sprinkling of face powder covered the table’s surface, giving the impression that Ann was coming right back to remove her makeup and whisk away the dusting of powder with a Kleenex.
Even before entering Ann’s bedroom, we saw pictures of me and Jack, Penny and Dave as children and our grandchildren, Taylor and Elliott. The only pictures besides those of our family were a few studio shots of Ann and Carroll.
“We were her family,” I told Jack. “You were as close to her as any son could have been.”
We moved around the bedroom, lush with peach and gold window and bed dressings. Many times, we had sunk into the thick coverings of that bed after a long drive, falling effortlessly to sleep in its eloquent comfort. But today, we felt like intruders. We stood deliberately in the middle of the room, holding hands, being careful not to touch Ann’s personal belongings. We understood the officers’ hesitancy to disturb items in the drawers. Everything was so uniquely Ann’s, and she had not planned for company.
We paid our respects to the rest of the upstairs rooms. When we had surveyed every perfectly decorated room, we faced the inevitable.
We headed for the basement. Everything appeared as Ann would have left it. She tended to stack things on the basement stairs, letting Judy eventually put them in their proper places. Right now, pictures she’d planned to frame were stacked on the stairs along with a variety of household clutter. We inched down the narrow stairs, navigating around knickknacks, newspapers and paraphernalia that had meaning only to Ann.
Like most basements in older homes, Ann’s was not designed for company. It was dark, dank and served as her dusty catchall. But today the basement was pristine except for the spot where Ann’s body was found. Apparently, blood continued to seep from her body after the killer cleaned the crime scene. Police cut away the carpet and now the bloodstained concrete floor was exposed. The dark spot could have been any type stain, but we were acutely aware that Ann’s battered body had lain in the spot now marked by her blood.
We stood motionless on the final step, surveying the basement. Ann kept a small waist-high freezer at the bottom of the stairs, and it was gone. Everything else seemed to be in place: small piles of magazines, boxes of memorabilia and stacks of laundry. Everything was perfectly placed against an eerily clean backdrop.
We moved quietly, almost reverently, around the dark basement. This was the place where Ann’s life ended. This was the room where someone hated a 115-pound older woman enough to bludgeon and stab her to death. In the stillness of the basement, I could imagine the thud of Ann falling to her death. I could almost hear the steady monotone of stab wounds to a still body that, even in life, would have been too fragile to fight back.
The killer had walked where we were walking. He’d scrubbed blood off the walls, moved past Ann’s mutilated body to the far side of the basement and taken a shower. A washer and dryer stood next to the shower. I imagined the killer washing his clothes while he showered, leaning indifferently on the wall as his clothes dried, and then stepping over Ann’s body to climb the stairs.
Jack and I walked over to the old-fashioned shower stall. A slight and continual drip kept the entire stall damp. Jack squatted, shining a light from his key ring into the drain. I knelt beside him and followed the light beam. Hairs and fibers glistened in the light.
Jack used a key to pull the now-useless evidence from the drain. The house had been turned over to the family, and all evidence would now be considered contaminated. We knelt by the shower and stared flat line.
Earl called down the stairs to Jack. “We’re going to try to find Ann’s gun. Want to help us?”
Earl, Jack and David went back to Ann’s bedroom. I walked over to the desk where Ann kept phone messages and notes. Scraps of paper were everywhere, scrawled with names, dates and phone numbers.
I sensed Judy behind me.
“You know what’s hard to understand?” she asked me. I looked up and waited for her answer.
“I was the last one to talk to Miz Ann, and they never even searched my house. They didn’t ask me to take a lie detector test or anything. It’s just weird, that’s all.”
Jack stormed into the room. He slammed a gold revolver on the table. He doesn’t get angry often, but he was furious now. In the past few days I’d seen Jack display as much anger and impatience as he normally displayed in a year.
“I told the cops to call Bob and ask him where Anna Mae kept her gun. That’s all they had to do. I called Bob, looked behind the books on the bookshelf—where he said—and found it in three minutes.
“These cops couldn’t find their way down a railroad track if they were riding on a caboose.” Whether the judgment was fair or unfair, Jack was frustrated and I knew he needed to vent among family.
“Well, you’re sure out of control,” Grace said in the cutting tone we’d come to expect in recent months.
Jack glared at her. “We should all be out of control. Someone’s been murdered. And the victim was your sister and my aunt. This isn’t a time to be polite. I want Anna Mae’s murderer found. If we sit back while the locals play whodunit, the killer will go free.”
“Jack,” Janet spoke his name with a slow Kentucky drawl. “We can’t make the police angry. They’re all we have.”
“If we don’t do everything—everything—possible to find the killer, then Anna Mae’s murder will still be unsolved a year from now,” Jack said on his way out the door. “Mother, if you want to stay here a while, maybe Earl can drive you home.”
Once in the car, Jack called Captain Randy Hargis. He spoke to Hargis’ voicemail as if they’d never met, and I knew he’d passed his edgy stage and was now into full-blown volatility. It was a side of Jack I seldom saw, but I knew the stress of the situation had removed the tiny bits of courtesy he usually slapped on the outside of his abruptness. “Captain Hargis, this is Special Agent Jack Branson. I’m Ann Branson’s nephew from Atlanta. Earl Winstead now…has…the…gun…that you and your investigators were unable to find. I found it in a matter of minutes by doing exactly what I suggested you do. I called Bob.”
Jack hung up and took an audible breath. This type of fury seemed strange coming from a man who calmly put on body armor and busted down doors as part of a regular day. But this crime was personal, and Jack was hurting as I’d seldom seen him hurt.
We drove in silence for a few moments while Jack regained his composure. “We need to let Hargis know what Judy said about the truck,” Jack told me.
“You mean about someone seeing a truck pulling out of Ann’s driveway that night?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Jack took a breath. “Honey, if I call him again, I’m going to say some things I’ll regret—again. Will you call him?”
Jack handed me his phone and I pressed redial. I left a second message for Captain Hargis.
“Thanks, hon,” said Jack. We stopped at a red light and Jack turned to me. “You know