The Murder of Marion Miley by Beverly Bell

Author:Beverly Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

24

Friday, October 17, 11:30 a.m. With the ten-story gothic tower of the Kentucky State Reformatory growing smaller and smaller behind them, the two police cars traveled west on Highway 146.

A handcuffed Penney sat in the back seat of the first car. McCord from the Fayette County Patrol and Guy Maupin were in the front.

“Did you talk to Skeeter?” Penney asked.

“Not yet,” McCord replied.

“But you picked him up?”

“This morning.”

Maupin looked at Penney through the rearview mirror. “Near the canal?”

“Yeah.”

They drove the thirty miles to Louisville mostly in silence. McCord had rolled down Penney’s window an inch or two, allowing him the cooler fall air. A clipped breeze caressed his face. At the reformatory, the air within the stone walls was stagnant, as if it were breathed over and over again by equally stale men. He had heard it was even worse in Eddyville.

They reached the 14th Street railroad bridge just as the rotating trestle was making room for a carrier ship. The iron structure towered over their heads. It spanned more than a mile in length, but was designed for trains, not people, and certainly not cars.

“So where did you throw the guns?” Maupin asked.

Penney looked at the drawbridge, stalling for time. There would be no turning back once he gave up the weapons.

“Tom?” McCord called out.

“They’re not here,” Penney admitted.

“Wait a minute—” Maupin said.

“Tom, what’s going on?” McCord asked.

“We did come here that morning. But we got rid of them someplace else.”

“Where are they?” Maupin asked.

“Fountain Ferry Park.”

At the park, Penney directed them to the partially standing building. “In there.”

“The old bath house,” McCord said. Penney hadn’t realized it before, but he could see it plain as day now. One wall of a shower stall and three concave drains.

Everything else—what he had seen that Sunday morning after the crime—was the same: the concrete posts, a doorway, but no roof; even the broken bottle that Anderson had used to dig the hole was still there.

Penney kicked at a spot near the corner of the building. “Under here,” he said.

Maupin picked up the same broken bottle and started digging.

Layers of time fell on Penney like pieces of clothing: here now with the police, hunting for the weapons; with Anderson hours after shooting the women, hiding the guns; with Emma four years ago, her burrowing into his shoulder as they flew down the tracks of the Comet. That’s the way it felt now, like he was rushing forward on a roller coaster he couldn’t stop or control.

Maupin hit something with the bottle. From the ground, he pulled out a small bundle and unwrapped the dirty cloth. In the rag were the two weapons: the blue steel gun, already rusting in some places, and the shiny nickel-plated pistol.

“Are these the ones?” he asked Penney.

“Yes.”

Maupin held them closer to Penney. “Which weapon did you use?”

“The shiny one.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s the gun Anderson gave me.”

Back in his cell at the reformatory, Penney took out a sheet of paper.

Dear Mother,

I know you are heartbroken. Don’t worry; it’s not as bad as it seems.

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