IMAGINATIVE STEALTH

Sonny Parsons almost always looked forward to his youth league baseball games. He had played two years of Little League baseball and was drawing near the end of his second year in Pony League. Now nearing his 15th birthday, he had looked forward with eagerness to every game he played in those leagues. Tonight’s game was different. Not only was there no sense of anticipation, there was actually a sense of dread. The pitcher for the opposing team tonight would be Bart Wilson, a pitcher Sonny had faced in a game for the first time 2 weeks before, an experience he was not anxious to repeat tonight. 

Wilson appeared to be much older, by at least a couple of years, than the age limit of 14 set by Pony League rules. He had moved into Sonny’s home county of Beresford in Texas shortly before the start of summer baseball, so Sonny hadn’t come to know him through school sports or other activities. Following his first encounter with Wilson, Sonny checked with some of his friends playing on Wilson’s team and received very little additional information.

Apparently, Wilson lived with his father and mother on a 160 acre farm not far outside the city limits of Desmond, the county seat of Beresford County. Darnell Wilson, Bart’s father, had inherited the farm from his older brother who died intestate after a long bout with cancer, during which time the farm fell into major disrepair through lack of attention. The uncle had suffered through two failed marriages with no children, so Darnell was his only living heir.

Darnell Wilson had managed to make a huge nuisance of himself during the handful of Pony League games in which Bart had played since moving into the area. He would pace up and down the area separating the bleachers from the wire screen which encircled the diamond, yelling and screaming at the players, coaches and umpires. Mostly though, his screaming was directed towards Bart, criticizing his every move. The crowds at these games were usually reserved, cheering only some outstanding play or giving encouragement to the players. It didn’t take long before some of the crowd, mostly parents of other players, began to jeer at and to heckle Mr. Wilson. If he heard any of these taunts directed at him, he didn’t let on, making no kind of acknowledging gestures. That was about all anyone knew about the Wilsons at the time, though quite a bit more would come to light in the days and weeks following.

***

As it happened, Darnell was a veteran of the Korean War, though he served his stint with Uncle Sam in Germany. While stationed near a town called Baden Baden, he met Gretchen Muir, the woman he would marry and bring back to live with him in the states. Darnell had been a fairly good football player in a high school in South Texas but he was considered something of an over-achiever, not particularly athletic, and so was not recruited by any of the major colleges in Texas to play on an athletic scholarship. He decided to forego college and enlisted in the Army at age 18, just as things were heating up in Korea. He didn’t particularly care for the Army life, so when his time was up, he opted for civilian status and moved back to South Texas where Bart was born less than a year after the Wilsons arrived back in the states. Darnell worked at various jobs during Bart’s early years, finally settling in as an auto mechanic, becoming quite skilled at that trade. Bart was to be the only child of the marriage and soon became the primary focus of Darnell’s attention.

Bart was signed up by his father for every organized sport available in their area, beginning as soon as Bart became old enough to compete. Despite his mother’s protest, Bart was held back from entering first grade until he reached his seventh birthday, a strategy fashioned by Darnell to ensure Bart would have the advantages of size and maturity in sports. Not only did Darnell attend all of Bart’s games of football, basketball and baseball, he worked with him intensely at home between contests making certain the boy was physically fit and teaching him all the mental aspects of whatever sport was in season. During games, Darnell would position himself so that he could shout instructions and criticisms to his son throughout the contests. He was also known to constantly berate the game officials whenever calls did not go his way, developing the very unseemly conduct he would later display at his son’s baseball games in Desmond.

While Darnell’s antics alienated him from virtually everyone he came in contact with, his attention to every possible aspect of Bart’s training eventually paid off. The boy became an outstanding player in all three of his sports while maturing physically. By the time he reached his 16^th birthday, shortly before moving to the farm, Bart had become a tall, athletically muscular specimen who managed nothing more than a scowl as his only show of emotion during games. In Sonny’s previous baseball encounter with him, he demonstrated a fast ball that proved unhittable and, frankly, quite scary. He also had an exploding curve ball and an attitude of disregard for the safety of the batters he faced, often sailing pitches behind or directly at the heads of those facing him. If he happened to hit someone, as he did Sonny, for instance, there was not the least hint of remorse in his manner. He had joined his team after the season had begun, but had already thrown two no-hitters in his 4 appearances thus far.

As it turned out, to Sonny’s relief and delight, Bart did not show up for the Pony League game. Sonny would later remember these initial feelings with extreme guilt. No one offered an explanation for Bart’s absence, which didn’t seem all that unusual at the time.  Bart’s parents were both reclusive by nature and there was no telephone at their farm. So none of the coaches for his team were provided an explanation for his absence prior to game-time.

***

In the early morning hours of the day on which the Pony League game was to be played, the Sheriff of Beresford County, Alex Parsons, was called upon to visit the Wilson farm. When he arrived, he was led by Darnell Wilson into the barn situated about a hundred yards from the farmhouse. There he found Bart Wilson lying face up on the dirt floor with a long-handled, three-pronged pitchfork stuck in and through his neck, the center tine piercing the center of the throat with the outer tines scratching the sides of the boy’s neck and buried deeply into the dirt floor. There was blood around the wounded area, though not a massive amount, and blood running down the outer tines of the pitchfork. Bart was dressed only in gym shorts, a t-shirt, which was stilled drenched somewhat from sweat, and a pair of high-top basketball shoes. His socks also showed signs of heavy sweating.

After surveying the situation for several minutes, Parsons asked who had discovered the body.

“My wife Greta did,” said Wilson.

“Is she here now? Can I talk to her?”

“Yep, she’s in the house. You’ll have to go in there to talk to her though because she will not come in here right now.”

“OK, good. But for right now I have a few more questions for you.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When was the last time you saw your son before he was discovered like this?”

“Well, I remember it was getting dark because I pulled the chain to turn on the light as I left the barn. Me and him had been working all day making repairs to the porch and steps on the house, so we got a little late start doing our exercises for the evening.”

“Wait a minute, what exercises are you talking about?

“Well, Bart is a really fine athlete and I make sure he stays physically fit by leading him through a workout on days when he doesn’t have a game or some organized team activity. That was the case yesterday. So, as I was saying, we were late getting started on the exercises and after a while I went inside to tell Greta that Bart would be late for supper, but before I left I gave him a set of exercises to complete before he could come in to eat. That was the last time I saw him, before this.”

“Did you become concerned when he didn’t come in after a while”?

“Not really. He is a very dedicated athlete and I just figured he was getting in a little extra work. Greta got worried before I did and decided to go out and tell him to come on in. That’s when she found him.”

“And what time was that”?

“I’m not sure exactly, because some time passed before I realized that neither of them had come back to the house. Could have been around 9:30 or so. But when I went out to the barn I saw Greta crying and kneeling over Bart, who was laying just like he is now, dead.”

“And how did you know he was dead”?

“I could actually tell just by looking, but I checked for a pulse and put my ear to his chest to listen for a heartbeat.”

“What did the two of do next”?

“We sat on the ground beside Bart for a very long time; I have no idea how long. After however long that was, I told Greta we needed to contact someone because it was obvious to us that our son had been murdered. We don’t have a phone and my pickup is out of commission because I’m working on rebuilding the carburetor. I told Greta I was going to walk down to the highway, which is about 3 miles to the south, and that I would try to hitch a ride into town. Before I got to the highway, I saw some lights on in a house just up the dirt road a bit. I went there, knocked on the door and was allowed to use their phone to call your office. I went back to the house to wait for you to get here.”

“OK. So you think your son was murdered. Do you have any idea who might want to kill him”?

“Not for sure, of course, but last week we had some Okies, sorry, migrant workers, help us do some clearing work here on the farm. I got this place from my brother who had been laid up for quite a while before passing on and the farm needed a lot of work just getting cleared up. Anyway, I know that one of the young workers got into something of an argument with Bart over who knows what. I thought that group of workers had moved on, but maybe the youngster came back to settle his differences with Bart. Otherwise, I have no idea who might have done this.”

“OK, lets leave it at that for now. Can we go in to talk with your wife? I see that my deputy has just pulled up, so I’ll get him to look after things in here. I’ll still need you to come back into town with me to make a formal statement, OK?”

“Sure.”

***

Greta Wilson was 18 when she married Darnell and moved to Texas. It wasn’t long after they arrived before she realized she had made a huge mistake. Her notion of America, based mostly on images from movies, television and magazines, included tall buildings, lavish stage productions, museums of all kinds and a fast-paced culture in which she would undoubtedly make many new friends and experience a much fuller life than the one she had known growing up in rural Germany. Instead, she found herself living in an out-of-the-way rural Texas town where half the small population was made up of immigrants from Mexico who had no interest whatsoever in befriending her.

Darnell was no longer the dashing young soldier in uniform full of rampant ambition and with whom she had fallen in love in Germany. Rather, whatever ambitions he may have displayed to Greta during their courtship seemed to have quickly settled into the singular goal in Texas of just getting and keeping a job, any job, so that he and Greta could get by. She actually made plans to leave him and find another life elsewhere, she wasn’t sure where. But those plans were scuttled when she discovered she was pregnant. And once Bart came into her life, he became her life. She loved him completely through every stage, enduring the indifference her husband came to show her. Darnell was never mean to her, certainly not in the sense of aggressive behavior, physical or otherwise. She simply was no longer attractive to him, but she was not loathsome to him either, so he was basically content to have her around to take care of Bart when he wasn’t there. Greta’s feelings toward him were somewhat similar and equally distant. Thus, there marriage became one not of convenience, but of necessity.

When Sheriff Parsons entered the house, he found Greta sitting at a small table in the kitchen, her hands clasped in front of her on the table. Her posture was erect and did not change when the Sheriff made his presence known. Her account of the prior evening was essentially the same as that of Darnell, with only a couple of variances, which Parsons did not consider significant at the time. First, her recollection of the various time lines was slightly different, probably natural or normal given that neither of them were likely to have been particularly time-conscious after discovering their dead son. Secondly, according to Greta, her husband asked her to go out to check on Bart.

“Do you know why he would ask you to go rather than doing it himself?” Parsons asked of her.

“Well I wondered about that, but he just said he had been out there with him for hours and that he would appreciate it if I would just do it. So I did.”

***

In Texas at the time of Bart Wilson’s death, there was no such thing as a coroner’s office. Instead, the duties that would normally be assigned a coroner were vested in the County’s Justice of the Peace, an elected official. In order to discharge the obligation to determine the cause of death, the Justice of the Peace would normally delegate the function to a local physician. These physicians were typically not trained in pathology but spent their time diagnosing illness and treating living patients. There were no medical examiners or examination facilities in small counties such as Beresford. Thus, the examinations were often conducted in funeral homes or even at graveside.

In the case of Bart Wilson, his body was taken to a local clinic where, in a small examining room, one of the clinic’s physicians was assigned the task of determining the cause of death. The doctor chosen for the exam proved to be significantly more capable than most small town general practitioners, having spent the past 8 years in Desmond after completing a residency at Parkland hospital in Dallas. His quick diagnosis and finding was that the cause of death came directly as the result of the pitchfork wound to the throat of the deceased. He made note of large bruising to the back of the head which he felt was consistent with the idea Bart had banged his head on the barn wall when he fell after losing consciousness. It was also consistent with the possibility that he had been struck on the back of the head with a flat blunt instrument, causing him to lose consciousness. He concluded the stab wound had been inflicted while the victim was already on his back. He discovered no other injuries to the body, defensive or otherwise. His final notation indicated that small particles of partially digested food were found in the victim’s mouth, lodged between the gums and cheeks. When Parsons asked him about this finding, the doctor said he had at first considered this to be an odd discovery, but finally deduced that immediately before or following the stab wound, the victim had simply vomited or had commenced to vomit. Not unusual, he surmised, given the likelihood of a physical struggle or a blow to the head before the fatal wound was administered.

***

The investigation was not producing much in the way of progress. Attempts to recover fingerprints from the handle of the pitchfork had proven fruitless. The weapon was quite old and the wooden handle had taken on a smooth surface, but oils and grease had permeated the wood to a degree as to make lifting prints impossible. There were no real suspects to pursue — local law enforcement officials had been alerted to be on he lookout for a migrant worker who fit the very sketchy description provided by Darnell Wilson, but nothing had turned up, nor was Parsons particularly hopeful that anything would. Inquiries in the Wilson’s old home town yielded nothing of substance. Neither Greta nor Darnell was very well known there as they tended to keep mostly to themselves. While many in Desmond and his former hometown expressed hatred toward Darnell because of his antics at his son’s sporting events, that kind of dislike would probably not rise to the level of a motive for the murder of his son. If Bart had any enemies anywhere, none were known, except possibly for some kids he had hit with a baseball while pitching.

Of course, Greta and Darnell had to be considered as suspects. Neither had a criminal record and Darnell’s Army service record was spotless. Plus, it seemed obvious that both parents had loved their son deeply, albeit in entirely different ways. So, with no real suspect to pursue and with no motive of substance, Parsons was intrigued enough by the vomiting discovery to revisit the Wilson’s barn to have another look around.

***

It appeared the scene had not been disturbed to any significant degree. He noticed, in the center of the open area of the barn, dirt patterns in the floor that could be consistent with a struggle. They could also be consistent with the occurrence of extensive physical exercising of the sort Wilson had prescribed for Bart. Looking for traces of vomit near the area where the boy’s body had been found, Parsons noticed an unusual neatness to the dirt near the place where Bart’s feet had been, as if it had been sprinkled there and was not packed down like the rest of the barn floor. Could it be, he wondered, that someone had cleaned up he floor at this spot and then re-covered it with other dirt. Why would someone do that? Naturally, the Wilson’s had cleaned up the area near the boy’s head because of the blood from the injury, but no efforts had been made to cover up that area with sprinkled dirt. Parsons ultimately abandoned this line of thought because he realized he was dealing with a crime scene that had been contaminated by normal clean-up activities of the Wilsons and the entrance of several others dealing with the removal of the body.

Another search around the barn turned up nothing of interest, so Parsons went looking for Darnell and found him at the back of the house doing repair work on the house siding. When Parsons asked after Mrs. Wilson, he was surprised to learn that Darnell had no idea where she might be. He had not seen her since yesterday when they finished burying their son on the farm.

“Is this unusual?” Parsons asked. “Do we need to put in a missing person report?

“It is unusual, but not surprising. Greta lived her whole life for that boy and now that he is gone she really has no reason to stay here. I don’t think she’s gone missing, I just think she’s gone. And it’s not likely she’ll return.”

“Well that may be your point of view, but from mine, she could be seen as fleeing from a crime that is nowhere near being solved. It makes one suspicious.”

“That’s ridiculous, suspecting Greta for killing her one and only son and the reason for her life.”

***

Again finding himself without progress of any kind on one of the few murders he had encountered in his 15 years as Sheriff, Parsons left work a little earlier than usual to have dinner with his family for the first time since the killing. He had two sons, one being the aforementioned Sonny and the other being a 9-year old heading into the third grade. His wife was a former high school sweetheart whom he married shortly after graduation, some 18 years ago. Their marriage had always been a loving and tender affair and their family life had been that of a typical small town Texas home.

Over dinner that evening he mentioned the discovery of vomit by the examining physician, a subject he wouldn’t ordinarily discuss over dinner under any circumstances. It was even more unusual because he had made it a practice never to discuss any of his cases with his family. But Sonny, who was particularly interested in the murder case because of his encounter with Bart on the baseball field, had been the one who brought up the subject, asking if there had been any developments in the investigation. Instead of avoiding the subject, for some reason Parsons decided to talk about the food particles discovery. Maybe he just wanted to demonstrate that he was at least still pursuing the matter. In any event, Sonny became very interested in hearing all about it.

“Dad” said Sonny, “I don’t know if you heard about this before, but there was a kid on the varsity football team who died during early two-a-day practices two years ago. He passed out on the field and was carried inside where he died on the training room table. I remember all this because I was planning to try out for football when I got to high school and all the players were talking about how much easier the practices became after the guy’s death. But the interesting thing is that they all said he died from heat exhaustion. When the truth came out quite a bit later it was clear that the guy died from swallowing his own vomit, something the trainers could easily have prevented by just turning him on his side. It wasn’t heat exhaustion at all.”

At this point, Parsons pushed his chair back quickly and headed out the back door, politely excusing himself and saying he needed to think. He remembered vaguely the incident with the high school footballer because the parents had threatened to sue the school for negligence and even to bring criminal charges. The matter finally resolved itself when the family decided to forego any action, reasoning that, with two other children set to enter the high school in the coming years, it just wasn’t worth the notoriety that further action would inevitably produce.

Could it be that Bart Wilson had died alone in the barn as a result of swallowing or inhaling his own vomit and that the pitchfork was inserted after the boy was already dead. But, if that was the case, would there not have been an absence of blood from the stab wound, or at least less blood? The blood discovered at the scene was found to be of the same type as Bart’s, but there was no way to match the blood precisely (DNA testing wasn’t available at that time). And the central question remained: why would someone stick a pitchfork into the throat of a dead body? These were questions that needed answering, but first Parsons wanted to talk further with the doctor who performed the medical exam.

***

The next day, when he was able to speak to the doctor, Parsons learned that aspiration of vomitus was a common cause of death. The victim does not actually swallow the vomit, he was told, but inhales it into the lungs where it causes a loss of breath which often leads to death if not dealt with properly.

“Could Bart Wilson have died from this aspiration thing?”

“I doubt it,” answered the doctor. “There would have had to have been much more vomit than I saw in order to create this problem. I didn’t examine the lungs, but there should have been more vomit materials on or around the body in order for me to make such a diagnosis.”

Armed with this new information, Parsons headed out to see Darnell Wilson again.

***

When confronted with the vomit issue, Darnell admitted he had noticed some rather unsightly material around Bart’s mouth and chin which he assumed to be just some spit up or drivel brought on by the trauma. Or perhaps it could have been something coming from the killer. In any event, he said, I just wiped his mouth and cheek clean so he didn’t look so awful.

“What did you wipe it with?” asked Parsons.

“Just an old handkerchief I carry around in my back pocket most of the time.”

“And where is that handkerchief now?”

“I’m not sure. At some point I guess I threw it in the dirty clothes hamper. By now I’d guess Greta has washed it with the other stuff in the hamper.

They checked the hamper and found it was nearly empty and held no handkerchief or other item that might have been used to clean up Bart’s face. There were, however, a few pieces of Greta’s clothing in the hamper, prompting Parsons to look around a little further. It was obvious that most, if not all, of Greta’s clothes were still in the closet and dresser drawers.

“I thought you were sure that Greta was not coming back. So why are all her things still here?”, Parsons asked.

“I always figured Greta would leave sooner or later, certainly when Bart went off to school or wherever. And I knew that, when she left it would be a complete leaving, taking only the barest of essentials and parting completely from her life here. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all she would leave most of her stuff here.”

“It may not surprise you,” said Parsons, “but it is certainly a strange way of going off to begin a new life without so much as packing a bag.”

Darnell just shrugged at the comment. What Parsons had not disclosed to Wilson was that his office had checked the bus station in town, as well as the closest train depot, about 30 miles away, and had found no evidence of Greta having accessed either. The neighbors down the road had not seen nor heard from Greta either, so, if she had run away without a vehicle, she had done so with imaginative stealth.

Wrapping up the conversation, Darnell said he was certain that Greta had cleaned up the blood left in the barn but didn’t believe she did any other cleaning there. After receiving assurances from Darnell that he had done no other cleaning up himself, Parsons decided to leave. As he headed to his car, he happened to notice that the front porch and steps had newly installed wooden boards. Remembering that Darnell had mentioned to him in his first interview that he and Bart had been working on the porch and steps just before heading to the barn, Parsons went back inside. He asked Darnell when he had completed the repairs on the porch and steps.

“Just a few days ago” Darnell replied. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason, actually. I just thought you had done a really nice job.”

***

The next day, Parsons returned to the Wilson farm, along with two deputies and armed with a search warrant for the house, barn and the rest of the property. As Darnell sat quietly in the living room, Parsons and his men removed several of the new boards on the front porch. Fearing the worst – that he would uncover the remains of Greta’s body – Parsons stuck his head through the opening and surveyed the area under the porch. What he found was not a body but a piece of cloth of the type used by auto mechanics as hand wipes. There appeared to be blood on the cloth as well as other particles which could very well be bits of regurgitated food. Parsons took several minutes to process this information before taking the cloth inside and confronting Wilson.

“I pretty well know now what you did,” Parsons began. “I just want to go over it with you and you can stop me or correct me at any time. You left Bart in the barn, demanding that he complete a series of strenuous exercises in conditions of extreme heat and humidity. Although the large barn door was open, there was very little air movement so that hay and dust particles were being stirred up from the activity and breathed in by Bart. Eventually, Bart passed out from heat exhaustion and fell on his back. While unconscious, Bart vomited and inhaled enough of it to clog his lungs and cause his death. At some point, probably without Greta noticing, you went back to the barn and found your son dead. I won’t try here to attribute any reason for it, but you picked up the handy pitchfork and jammed it through his neck to make it look like he had been murdered. When you noticed that the stab wound produced very little blood, you cut yourself, probably on the wrist where I noticed you had been wearing a bandage. You dripped and spread your blood on the wound and the pitchfork tines. You used this cloth to clean up the vomit as best you could and then used the cloth to stop the bleeding on your wrist. When you went back inside you asked Greta to check on Bart, making it appear she was the one who first discovered the body. What I don’t know, Mr. Wilson, and frankly cannot fathom, is why you would do such a thing. Can you help me out with that?”

Darnell did not speak for a long time, but when he did so, it was in a voice just above a whisper.

“First, you have to understand that Greta did not know anything about what I did and had no part in it. I now know that you suspect me of killing Greta, maybe because you think she knew what I had done, but you are dead wrong about that, pardon the expression. Sooner or later you will discover that she is very much alive somewhere, probably thriving.”

“When I first found Bart, it struck me immediately that I was responsible, that I had killed him just as surely as if I had stuck the pitchfork in him in the first instance.  I loved my son more than anything in the world and I had devoted my life to making his a better one than mine. Yes, I worked him hard and I pushed him to be better and better as an athlete. It worked. He was becoming an elite player in three different sports and he loved it just as much as I loved seeing it happen. Of course he didn’t enjoy the hard work, but he accepted it once he realized where it was taking him, a place where he very much wanted to go. The irony did not escape me that I had actually destroyed the very thing I had worked so hard to create. I couldn’t live with that knowledge. At the same time, I didn’t want anyone, especially Greta, who loved the boy as much or more than I did, to know what I had done. I thought about killing myself right there in the barn alongside Bart after finding him, but frankly, I didn’t have the guts.  I still don’t, though I’ve considered taking my worthless life many times since that day.”

***

Darnell Wilson pleaded guilty to the charge of murder without malice and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, probably an appropriate outcome. It was unlikely any jury would have found Darnell guilty of malice in the killing, even though they would surely have considered his conduct in the handling of his son to be reprehensible in most all respects.

Greta Wilson found her way south after leaving Desmond, taking with her nothing more than a few items of clothing and some cash from a coffee can in their kitchen – only taking half the money. She finally settled in a small town near Fredricksburg, Texas, where a large part of the population was made up of people from German heritage. Since Darnell had pleaded guilty, she was never required to return to Desmond for a trial. She did make arrangements for the sale of the farm, with Darnell’s ready approval, using her portion of the sales proceeds to open a small restaurant specializing in German cuisine, an enterprise that did quite well for many years. She did not, in fact, know what all Darnell had done regarding her son’s death, but she probably sensed that, somehow, he was deeply involved.

On the night when Bart Wilson no-showed for the Pony League game he was to have pitched, Sonny Parsons got three hits.