Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

Sex Murder in Cameron by Michael Fessier

The romance was a strange one, and the marriage was even stranger. Doc Marston wasn’t surprised when the result was a sex murder in Cameron.

Old Doc Marston is a stubborn cuss. When they found the body of Cass Buford with his head sliced in the middle by an axe and started looking for Linda, old Doc Marston said that what had happened to Cass didn’t surprise him one bit. When they caught Linda hiding in Jim Carver’s cabin trying to wash the blood out of her dress, Doc Marston seemed almost disappointed that she hadn’t got away. When they remembered that Jim had been hanging around the Buford farm long after his work as handyman was done and that Cass had complained about it, Doc Marston made a lot of enemies by saying that folks were taking too much for granted.

What made the people really disgusted with Doc, though, was Doc’s attitude when Linda calmly confessed that she’d killed Cass.

“Maybe she did,” Doc said, “but there’s more back of it than anybody knows about. There’s something mighty strange about this whole business.”

“You bet there is,” the sheriff told him. “There’s something damned strange about a woman who kills a man who gave her such a good home as Cass gave Linda.”

“How do you know she had a good home?” Doc asked. “You haven’t ever lived with Cass.”

“And neither have you,” the sheriff said.

That stumped Doc. He didn’t have anything to say for a while. Which was a good thing for Doc, because most folks thought he’d said too much already.

Everyone admitted, of course, that there was something strange about Cass’ marrying Linda. Cass was one of the most important men in Cameron County. He was the last of the Bufords and he owned everything that was left of the family fortune. It wasn’t as much as it used to be, but still there was a well-paying farm and a half interest in the Cameron First National Bank and some first and second mortgages that paid good interest.

Besides all that, Cass was young and good-looking. He had black hair and he was tall and slender and he dressed well. There was something funny about his eyes, though. They weren’t exactly crossed, but they were slanted in an odd way. This didn’t spoil his good looks, however. The ladies seemed to think it made him more handsome.

Whether it was because he was handsome or because he was rich, the ladies liked Cass. He could pick and choose even when he was a kid. Before he was fifteen there was almost a shooting between the Carrolls and the Bufords over Emily-Sue, the Carroll girl. She was thirteen and she came home one night with her dress torn and her face scratched and said Cass did it. Old man Carroll got a gun and went over to the Buford’s and went around and around the house to get a shot at Cass who was hiding underneath.

Finally old man Buford came out and there were some hot words and old man Carroll threatened to shoot him, too. Then they calmed down and got to talking and everything was settled. Mr. Buford loaned Mr. Carroll his prize Hereford bull which old man Carroll had been trying to borrow ever since it won the blue ribbon at the state fair.

After that, Cass didn’t get into much trouble. Anyway, he was pretty careful.

It wasn’t until he was nineteen that old Doc Marston started hating Cass. It wasn’t over very much, either. It was over a dog that wasn’t worth a cent. The dog’s name was Nero. When people asked Cass what breed Nero was he’d always grin and say it was a cross between a boll weevil and a hook-worm. That always got a laugh.

One day Cass came into the village store laughing. He’d just killed Nero. Something had been killing chickens around the Buford place and Cass decided that it was his dog. So he took him out and killed him.

“I took my twenty-two along,” Cass said, “and I drove out near Willow Branch. I got Nero out of the car and let him have it, right between the eyes.”

He sat on the counter and reached for a bottle of pop.

“Damnedest thing you ever heard of,” he said. “The bullet hit him right between the eyes and he went down like his head’d been chopped off. I started for the car and damned if Nero didn’t get up. I aimed again and then the fun started. Around and around the car he went — him with a bullet in his head — and me after him a-hooting and a-hollering so’s hell wouldn’t have it.”

He laughed, thinking of his chasing a dog that was supposed to be dead.

“Finally,” Cass said, “he jumped into the car — into the front seat where he always rode — and tried to sit up like nothing had happened and he didn’t have a bullet in him.”

Then Cass went on to tell how he dragged Nero out of the car and beat him to death with a rock.

“Damnedest thing you ever heard of,” he said.

Old Doc Marston walked closer and looked at Cass. He looked a long while, as if he’d never seen Cass before. Then he spat as if he were aiming at Cass’ feet.

“Tchew!” he went. “Yes. It is the damnedest thing I ever heard of!” Then he turned and walked off.

After that, Doc Marston would hardly ever speak to Cass, even when he treated Cass for measles or flu or a cut hand.

It was about ten years later that word got around that Cass was seeing Linda Wells once in a while. At first, nobody’d believe it. Linda had never had a fellow, not even when she was in grammar school. The plain truth is that she was just about the sorriest looking girl in the whole county. She was tall for a girl, and big-boned, and her body didn’t have much more shape to it than a hoe handle. Her mouth was too wide and her eyes were too small and even in the summertime her skin was always a dead white, a sort of fish-belly white. And that wasn’t all that was wrong with her. Her teeth weren’t in straight and she had straggly hair that no amount of combing or braiding or silk-ribboning would make look like a girl’s hair should.

Linda’s father was poor and she worked on his farm just the same as a hired hand. She never went to dances and it wasn’t very often that she came to church socials. When she did, she stuck in a corner and nobody paid any attention to her except the preacher and his wife.

So when Cass started going around with her, people couldn’t figure it out.

“Maybe he’s after something,” one of the fellows said.

Another fellow laughed.

“He ain’t that hard up,” he said. “Not that Linda wouldn’t be broadminded about it.”

“How do you know about that?” he was asked.

“One night after a church social I was gassed up,” the fellow said. “I met Linda going home and I started walking along with her. I fooled around a little bit and you shoulda seen how that gal took to it. I bet I was the first guy ever tried anything.”

“What happened?” he was asked.

“Well,” he said, “it was dark and I figured what the hell!”

He made a face.

“Ugh!” he said. “Even in the dark, and gassed up like I was, I couldn’t go it.”

He laughed. “Too bad she isn’t pretty,” he said.

“Well, she ain’t and if what I hear’s true, Cass Buford’s gone off his nut,” another guy said.

Off his nut or not, Cass kept on going with Linda and pretty soon it wasn’t just a rumor. It was a fact. He took her everywhere, to dances and church socials and skating parties and everything. At first the fellows took it as a joke, but they quit laughing to Cass’ face. He beat up a couple of humorists and that ended that. Cass was a powerful man and he had a funny streak in him. When he started fighting it was for keeps, and when he got another man down he’d tear into him and see just how bad he could cut him up with his fists before somebody hauled him off. Sometimes he’d keep hitting another man long after he should have stopped... almost as if he was sort of enjoying it. Guys who’d been in a fight with Cass Buford remembered it a long time.

Nobody believed Cass’d actually marry Linda, though. He was too good-looking and too rich. Every single girl in Cameron County had her cap set for him. He hadn’t gone with any of them steady, but everybody thought that that was because he was choosey.

At first they figured maybe Cass wanted some other Cameron girl and she was holding out and that Cass was lugging Linda around to make her jealous.

The preacher’s wife thought Cass was just trying to be a good Christian.

“The poor girl’s been neglected,” she said, “and Cass is just being charitable.”

Old Doc Marston spat.

“Tchew!” he went. “Whatever that young whelp’s got on his mind, it isn’t charity and you can be sure of that!”

And then Cass ups and marries Linda. It was hard to believe, but all of a sudden there was Cass and Linda standing before the preacher and promising to love, honor and obey. Cass was as solemn as a barnful of owls, but Linda couldn’t hide her excitement. She had on a pretty dress and, for the first time in her life, she had put paint and powder on her face. Her eyes sparkled and she smiled and squeezed Cass’ hand. She was so excited and happy and all that she even looked kind of pretty.

During the ceremony some of the women cried. It was sad and beautiful and wonderful, they said, that such a plain, ordinary, ugly girl as Linda should be made so happy by Cass.

The couple left on a honeymoon and the whole county kept right on talking about the wedding. It was hard to believe, but there it had happened and everything was settled. Nobody in the county ever mentioned that Cass might of got a good wife. It was all Linda and how lucky she was. Everybody figured Cass’d done something noble and fine and generous and everybody liked him a lot more for it.

Everybody but old Doc Marston. He chewed and spat.

“Tchew,” he went. “It’ll come to no good end. Just you wait and see.”

When Linda got off the train from the honeymoon she still had on paint and powder and a pretty dress, but you wouldn’t have thought for a minute that she was pretty. She didn’t seem any too happy either, but she smiled at everyone and said she’d had a wonderful time.

Everybody noticed how kind and considerate Cass was when he helped Linda into the car. You’d of thought he was a prince or something helping the most beautiful lady in the world into a carriage all lined with silk.

And Cass kept on being kind and considerate. People invited to dinner couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw how gentle Cass was with Linda. He kissed her and loved her right before everybody and sometimes he went a little too far with it and shocked some of the ladies.

What puzzled people was the way Linda acted. She didn’t bother to use powder or paint any more. She didn’t wear pretty dresses, either. When Cass kissed her and loved her in front of people she tried to pull away at first. Then something’d happen to her and her lips’d part and she’d grab Cass’ arm and look at him kind of wild until she remembered where she was. Then she’d turn and run out of sight and everybody’d be embarrassed.

That went on for a long time: Cass being kind and considerate and loving Linda a little too much before people and Linda acting funny about it.

And then Cass hired Jim Carver as handy-man. Jim was from another county and he wasn’t much good as a farm worker. He was a scrawny, ferrety-looking guy, always grimy and ragged, and most of the time he was either half drunk on sweet wine or sick to his stomach from what he had drunk the night before. He was as shiftless as they come, and nobody liked him. He was just plain no-account, folks said, and the only kind of work he ever got was the hateful odd jobs nobody else would do.

Everybody said it made them feel uncomfortable just to be around him.

Jim didn’t live on the Buford farm. He came out from the village about three times a week and did what there was to do. At first he went back to his shack in the village soon’s work was over and got drunk. But then he started staying around the farm a little while longer in the evening before he went home, weeding Linda’s flower garden and bringing her shoots and things from other gardens.

At first people thought it was just because Linda was kind-hearted. Jim was different from most folks and so was Linda and it was natural they’d have something in common. People didn’t pay much attention to the thing at all.

Then a sort of rumor started going around. At first nobody paid any attention to it. Linda was smart enough to know what side her bread was buttered on, they said. She had enough sense not to take any chances ruining the best thing that’d ever happened to her. Besides it was silly. Jim was such a miserable fellow, what with being drunk or sick half the time and all, that he wouldn’t appeal even to Linda.

For a while Cass went along just as usual. Then he spoke to just a few of his closest friends and made them promise never to breathe a word of it around. If they did, he said, he’d beat their heads off for them. That’s the reason the thing didn’t spread as fast as such things usually do. When Cass said he’d beat someone’s head off he meant just that.

It wasn’t until Cass went to the preacher that things started to happen. He was in the parsonage a long time and when he came out those who saw him didn’t suspect that he’d had anything serious on his mind. Remembering it later, they said he’d had a kind of funny smile on his face.

The preacher told about his part later. He said he went to Linda and tried to get her to pray. She wanted to know why and the preacher told her. She acted like the preacher must be crazy. Then he told about the talk he’d had with Cass. Linda didn’t seem to believe him at first. He went on talking and scolding her and urging her to pray her sins away and promise to try and live down the ugly, black, slimy sin she’d committed. She just sat there like a hunk of stone and didn’t say anything. The preacher went on talking and suddenly Linda got up and ran out of the room crying. The preacher couldn’t find her, so he went home and talked to his wife about it.

It was the next morning they found Cass lying in the kitchen with his head split open by an axe. The axe was laying right beside him and the blood on it was beginning to dry. At first they thought it must have been a robbing tramp who did it and then Cass’ friends came out and told about what Cass had confided to them. The preacher told his story, too.

That put a different face on things. They started looking for Linda. They found her in Jim’s cabin washing a bloody dress. Jim tried to help her out, but the sheriff smashed his face in with one blow and called him all the filthy names he could think of while he lay on the floor with blood spouting between his fingers.

Linda was awfully ugly then. Her hair hadn’t been combed and she had on an old faded dress. She looked worse than before Cass married her. She wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t cry or she wouldn’t look afraid. She was just sullen.

Linda wouldn’t talk until they got her to the county jail.

Then she said: “I did it. I hit him with the axe.”

They asked her why and she wouldn’t answer. She just didn’t pay any attention to questions. It didn’t matter.

It was the most exciting thing that’d ever happened in Cameron County. Nobody talked about anything else. The more people talked the more excited they got. Everybody remembered what a fine, upstanding, kind and generous man Cass Buford was and all he’d done for Linda. And then she’d killed him out of lust for a no-good bum like Jim. She ought to be lynched, they said.

Somebody suggested that Jim ought to be lynched first and they went for him. But Jim had packed up and gone away. Nobody ever saw him again.

The crowd sort of cooled down while looking for Jim and they didn’t make any serious attempt to lynch Linda after that. It was decided that law and order would take its course and there’d be a county hanging in back of the jail just as soon as Linda was found guilty.

The trial attracted a lot of attention in the county and even the big city papers took it up. They said Linda was the Cinderella Girl who’d murdered her fairy prince.

Cameron people didn’t call her anything like Cinderella. They called her every low name they could think of. They hated her. When Doc Marston still insisted there was something behind the case other than a depraved woman’s lust, people just walked away from him. He was too old a man to beat up. They just put him down as cracked and let it go at that.

The trial was over in a hurry. The defense attorney couldn’t do much. Linda wouldn’t help him. She just sat there in the courtroom stony-faced and looking straight ahead. She wouldn’t even testify.

The county attorney made a longer speech than was necessary, seeing as Linda was practically convicted already. He told of what a loving husband Cass had been, how he’d demonstrated his love before all sorts of people. He spoke of the fine home Cass’d given Linda and how she’d had everything a woman can desire. And then she’d thrown it all away for the lustful love of a man decent people wouldn’t even speak to.

“And then,” he said, “when her husband found her out she deliberately murdered him so that she could carry on her affair with the other man.”

It took the jury five minutes to bring in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree and when they led Linda out of the courtroom, the other women spat at her.

The gallows was rigged up in back of the county jail. The crowd began gathering before dawn and by sunrise every man, woman and child in Cameron County was packed into the square. The prisoners in the jail lined the windows to watch.

Just as the sun came up and the roosters started crowing and the early freight began whistling far off on the river bend, they led Linda out of the jail and up the stairs to the gallows. A rustle and a murmur ran through the crowd and then a woman started screaming. Not in fear or horror. She was screaming insults at Linda. Some of the others took it up, but the men looked at one another and at the women and then kept their eyes on Linda and didn’t say anything.

Linda’s arms were strapped close to her sides and she walked with short, dragging steps and looked straight ahead and didn’t seem to see anything, not even the noose dangling before her eyes.

The sheriff asked her did she have anything to say and she shook her head without looking at him. The sheriff gave the signal and the jailers who’d been practicing on a dummy went to work. It was one-two-three — just like a well-executed football play. One man knelt and strapped her legs together. Another put a black bag over her head and another slipped the noose over that. The sheriff waved his arm and the strings were cut and there was a clang like a heavy door slamming and Linda was below the trap and two men were holding her feet, pulling down so’s she wouldn’t kick.

Old Doc Marston walked up with a stethoscope and opened Linda’s blouse and stood there for ten, twelve minutes and during that long wait while you could hear the roosters crowing louder and the train coming closer, five men and a woman fainted. It was the waiting and silence that got them.

Finally Doc Marston put the stethoscope in his pocket and turned to the sheriff and solemnly shook his head.

“Congratulations,” he said. “She’s dead.”

Later the sheriff was in his office with several of the fellows having a little drink on account of the whole thing’d been such a strain on his nerves.

“I don’t like to hang people, especially women,” said the sheriff, “but this here Linda sure did have it coming to her. To think of a woman with a strong, virile, handsome man like Cass going around and—”

He didn’t finish because old Doc Marston came in.

“I just finished examining Linda,” he said to nobody in particular.

One of the fellows giggled nervously.

“Was the operation a success, Doc?” he asked.

The others giggled inside their lips. They didn’t want to make fun of a dead woman, but the joke was too good to let pass.

“Oh, yes,” said Doc. “It was quite a success. Her neck was cleanly broken.”

He walked toward the door and turned and looked at the people in the room. He chewed a while and then he spat right on the sheriff’s new office carpet.

“Tchew!” he went. “It might interest you to know you’ve just hanged a virgin.”

He turned and closed the door softly and you could hear his footsteps going down the hall.

You could hear his footsteps even after he reached the end of the hall and started downstairs.