A Dark and Lonely Place (29 page)

At 12:50 p.m., two stories up in his Dade County Jail cell, John ignored his lunch of watery pea soup with bread and butter. Instead, he paced his narrow cell, overwhelmed by a sense of dread, and tried to recall the details in his troubling dream.

“We got visitors,” Joe Ashley said at 12:57 p.m. in Palm Beach. He peered at them through the front window and self-consciously rubbed the stubble on his chin.

Ben Lummus was outside with his wife, Rose, and their reluctant daughter, Rachel.

“Sorry, Joe,” Ben said. “Girl never lied to me before. Come here, Rachel.”

The girl climbed the steps like a condemned prisoner on the way to the gallows. She stood on the porch, a forlorn creature, red-eyed and cowed, the unhappy center of attention.

“’Pologize to Mr. Ashley and tell ’im what you told us,” her father demanded. His wife watched, her lips a tight, thin line.

Leugenia stepped out onto the porch. She clutched a damp handkerchief between her hands, which were clasped, as though in prayer. “Don’t stand out here in the hot sun, folks.” Her voice shook slightly. “Come on in.”

They stepped inside as Frank and Ed joined them in the kitchen. Laura, afraid her knees would give out, eased into a chair. The air felt thick with tension.

Bobby hopped off his bike at 12:59 p.m. and rapped on the door of the apartment behind the jail, the residence of Wilbur Hendrickson, the man with the jailhouse keys, the jailer who had tossed away John’s food and tonic like garbage and insulted Laura and his sister Daisy.

He still carried his long blue package. He had a plan. He felt no fear.

A tall, dark-haired man, eyes piercing beneath fierce brows, swung the door open. His badge and posture made him look even taller. He loomed large in the doorway. He wore a puzzled frown, a long-sleeved shirt, and suspenders. He had seen this slender young man before, he thought, but couldn’t quite place the face.

“Are you Hendrickson?”

“Yeah,” the jailer said. “You have a delivery?”

“Yes.” Bobby raised the package wrapped in blue paper and slipped his fingers inside.

“Who are you?” The jailer frowned.

“Bob Ashley. You know my brother, John, and my sister, Daisy.” Bobby squeezed the trigger.

The rifle shot erupted like an explosion in the tiny room. Hendrickson staggered back a half step, then dropped to the floor, shot straight through the heart.

Not so tall now, are you? Bobby thought, and stepped inside, his ears ringing.

John sprang to his feet. That was a rifle shot! Other inmates—black, white, and Chinese—began to shout. He jumped up onto his bunk but could see nothing from the high, narrow window.

“Who’s shooting?” he shouted down the cell block. “What’s going on? Can anybody see anything?”

“Tell ’em!” Ben Lummus demanded.

Rachel fidgeted, pouted, then sniffed. Tears flooded her eyes. It was 1 p.m. in Palm Beach, sixty miles north of Miami.

“What is it, dear?” Laura said gently. “Can you tell us where Bobby is?”

The girl gulped and shot her father a fearful sidelong glance. The tears spilled over and skidded down her cheeks.

“Tell ’em!”

“Miami,” Rachel bleated. “Bob said he was goin’ to Miami to bring back his brother John.”

“Oh, Lord!” Leugenia dropped to her knees.

“No,” Laura whispered.

“We got to stop him!” Joe said.

Bobby crouched over the bleeding jailer and rifled the man’s pockets for his keys. It was 1:01 p.m. It would take him only a few seconds to dash into the jail and find John. He hoped his brother heard the shot, knew
he’d come, and was ready to run. Impatient, he rolled Hendrickson over. The man made an odd sound, like a sigh, as the air escaped his lungs. He was limp, a dead weight.

Bobby found the keys. As he fumbled, trying to yank them off the jailer’s thick leather belt, a bloodcurdling scream rent the air around him and froze him in place.

A sturdy, brown-haired, plain-faced woman had burst into the room from the kitchen. He stared up at her shocked, his eyes wide, as she continued to scream. She had no part in his plan. Her skirts swished, and the skin on his arms erupted in goose bumps as she ran for the two rifles that stood in the corner. A small boy peeked from behind her as she snatched up one of the guns and swung it to aim at Bobby’s head.

Still crouched over her motionless husband, Bobby stared at death down the barrel of the weapon less than two feet from his face and saw her squeeze the trigger. The gun clicked harmlessly. She screamed louder as she yanked the trigger again and again. The gun did not fire. The rifle was not loaded, to protect Wilbur Jr., age nine, the child behind her.

Bobby hesitated. So did she. They locked eyes for a moment. He saw the grief and horror, the rage and determination in her face. But he couldn’t shoot a woman. How was he supposed to know that Hendrickson had a family?

Shrieking hysterically in panic and frustration, she flung the useless rifle at his head. He deflected it with his right arm as she continued to scream. The boy joined in with high-pitched, animal-like yelps of terror.

“Be quiet, ma’am! You too,” Bobby sternly told the child, and got to his feet.

Neither listened. His plan had gone south in a heartbeat. People on the street heard the shot, heard her screams, and came running. Their shouts grew louder, closer.

“Over here!”

“It’s the jailer’s place!”

“That’s Hendrickson’s wife!”

He quit trying to rip the keys off Hendrickson’s belt and ran.

The prisoners in the adjacent jail heard the commotion at 1:03 p.m.

“What the hell’s going on?” John Ashley shouted.

Inmates shouted back that it must be Hendrickson’s wife screaming, the woman who prepared their lousy meals.

“But what happened? Who got shot?”

More shouts and cries in the street below.

“He’ll be fine,” Rachel told the stunned adults at the Ashley homestead in Palm Beach, and tossed her blond hair. Joe Ashley took out his pocket watch. It was 1:05 p.m. The girl’s lips curved into a smile. “Bob has a plan,” she assured them.

Bobby burst out into the sun-drenched Miami street at six minutes after one. He did not have the jail keys or even a chance to hop onto his bike. The three big men who pounded after him shouted for others to join the pursuit. He sprinted through a shady garage, dodged from one street to another, to another, but couldn’t lose them, and their numbers grew.

“There he goes!”

“Over there!”

“Get him, get him!”

“He shot Hendrickson!”

Jail inmates heard and picked up the chant. “He shot Hendrickson! Go, man, go! Run, run, run! He shot Hendrickson! He shot Hendrickson!”

Bobby stumbled across the railroad tracks, his heart pounding out of his chest, the growing mob in hot pursuit. They gained on him, were close on his heels. He stopped, turned, tore away the blue paper, exposed his rifle, then leveled it at them, his lip curled. The unarmed men saw the weapon, fell back, and took cover.

Panting, Bobby tried to think. His plan had failed, all because of that woman. Now he had to escape, rethink the situation, and concoct a new plan.

He darted into the street as a westbound bread truck rumbled toward him, stopped the startled driver, T. F. Duckett, at gunpoint, and leaped onto the running board.

“Keep going! Speed it up! Let’s go! Let’s go!” he shouted.

Duckett stared down the barrel of Bobby’s rifle. “Drive it yourself, man!” he shouted, bailed out, and ran for cover.

Bobby had never driven a truck. Now he had to learn. Fast. He glanced back at his pursuers, blinked into the blinding midday sun, and saw two Miami police officers emerge like a mirage from the glare, running toward him. One, who held a revolver in his right hand, caught Bobby’s shoulder with his left as young Ashley tried to slide into the driver’s seat.

“You’re under arrest!” he shouted.

“Like hell!” Bobby swung around, jumped down, grappled with the cop in the street, then stepped back and shot him pointblank in the jaw. The officer spun, as teeth, bone, and blood spattered Bobby’s shirt. What will Mama say when she sees it? he worried, then took another angry step back and fired again. The officer, hit in the left chest near his heart, was thrown off his feet by the impact.

But the cop didn’t quit. Bobby saw him jerk the trigger convulsively three times, three rapid shots, as though in slow motion as he fell. The first flew wild, over Bobby’s head. The second slammed into his stomach with a pain that burned like fire. The third, fired from the ground as the cop’s shoulders hit the street, caught Bobby under the jaw and blew an exit hole and a geyser of blood straight through the top of his head.

He fell back, jerking and gasping, into the bloody, dusty street.

The other cop commandeered the delivery truck to rush his wounded partner to the Miami hospital just north of Sixth Street.

Up in the jail, John Ashley heard a gun battle, screams, and shouting in the street below. Sick, his heart sinking, he knew somehow that it involved him and the dream he had that morning.

Breathless witnesses interrupted Sheriff Hardie’s lunch with shouts that the jailer had been shot. At 1:10 p.m. Dan Hardie ran toward the scene, gun in hand, but on the way, he found a horribly wounded young man sprawled in the street, blood frothing from his mouth. Hardie commandeered a car and took him to the hospital. When he arrived he found his
jailer, Wilbur Hendrickson, forty-four, dead, and wounded police officer John Rhinehart Riblet, thirty-one, struggling to breathe.

Thirty minutes later, Riblet, a US Army veteran from a small Ohio town, lost the struggle and died, the first City of Miami police officer ever killed in the line of duty.

Word that Riblet and Hendrickson were dead spread like wildfire. Men armed themselves. Angry Miamians gathered outside the hospital. The crowd grew. Some demanded that Bobby, drowning in his own blood and fighting to breathe, be lynched.

“Can you give him some morphine?” Sheriff Hardie asked the doctor.

The physician knew the dead lawmen and their families. The widows, Marian Hendrickson and Madge Riblet, had rushed to the hospital and were weeping inconsolably over their husbands’ corpses. Each had a young son with her. Along with Wilbur Hendrickson Jr., there was Edward Riblet, age three. The doctor flat out refused to treat the killer in front of the dead men’s loved ones.

“He’s dying anyway,” the doctor tersely told the sheriff. “There’s nothing I can do for him.”

The physician washed his hands of Bobby’s case as the crowd outside grew still larger, shouting demands that the killer be turned over to them. When Hardie refused, they hurled rocks and smashed the hospital windows. Sheriff Hardie decided to move the young man to the jail rather than lose him to a lynch mob. He and two deputies rushed Bobby to the jail. Guns drawn, they held off the mob that followed shouting threats and curses. Hardie double-locked all doors, then secured the young cop-killer in a first-floor cell. The sheriff’s clothes and those of his deputies were drenched in Bobby’s blood.

“Can you hear me, son?” Hardie asked.

“Yeth thur,” Bobby said, bubbling blood, his tongue split and his teeth shattered by the bullet. “Help me.”

“Nothing more can be done for you, son, except prayer. You don’t have much time. You’re about to cross that river. If you want to save your soul, tell me the truth.”

Bobby told Hardie his name and confessed all he’d done. Hardie asked if John knew about his plan. Bobby swore that he didn’t, he had
told no one in his family. He confessed to his role in the robberies of the Stuart bank and the Palm Beach Limited.

“Who was the other man with you?”

“Kid Lowe, wanted in Chicago,” Bobby mumbled. “He shot John.”

Hardie nodded, took notes, and asked more questions.

Bobby’s injured brain began to swell. It had been more than two hours since he’d been shot. The bright day faded as his world grew dark. Now blind, he asked for his brother John, again and again.

Hardie believed Bobby but needed to be sure. He climbed the stairs to John’s second-floor cell. The waiting prisoner, fear on his face and in his heart, saw him approach.

“John,” Hardie said. “You have a younger brother, Bob?”

“I do.” John held his breath, fearing what was to come.

“He the one you talked about, the boy interested in joining the Miami Rifles?”

John nodded, a lump growing in his throat. “He likes the music and the uniforms.”

“He tried to bust you out of jail this afternoon,” Hardie said, eyes shiny. “Did you know about it?”

“No. I didn’t, Sheriff, I swear. If I even thought . . . I woulda stopped him. He’s just a kid, Dan.” His voice broke, then dropped to a whisper. “Tell me he’s all right.”

Hardie shook his head. “I can’t do that, John. He’s dying.”

“Where? Where’s he at?”

“Downstairs, in a cell.”

“Can you get him to the hospital, Dan?” John pleaded.

Hardie sighed. “I did. Nothing they could do for him. He’s hit bad, right through the head and the gut. He’s not gonna make it. He killed Hendrickson, the jailer, and a Miami police officer, name of J. R. Riblet. Both their families are at the hospital now. The town’s outta control. A mob busted out the windows trying to take him. Had to bring him here, or they would have lynched him.”