Parker 02 - The Guilty (29 page)

toward them to see what was up, but then smelled something

unmistakable in the air.

I looked over at my desk, noticed a paper bag sitting on

my keyboard. As I got closer I noticed that a) my desk smelled

absolutely rancid, and b) there was a small brown splotch at

the bottom of the bag. I didn't need to get any closer to know

somebody had put a bag full of shit on my desk.

I forced a smile, picked up the bag, walked it to the pantry.

The other reporters parted as I approached. I dropped it in the

trash, washed my hand, and said, "Looks like someone forgot

their lunch."

I wasn't laughing as I returned to my desk. A killer was

still out there. And despite what Wallace hoped, he wasn't

planning to stop.

37

"Last time we spoke," Paulina said, "you told me you were

closer to Henry Parker than, let's see if I recall, 'white on rice.'"

James Keach loosened his tie and thanked God he was

wearing a suit jacket because he was sure the pit stains on his

blue Oxford were visible from across the street. "There's different kinds of rice," he stuttered. "There's brown rice,

chicken fried rice. It's not all white."

"You said white. White on rice. So why the fuck is this

Billy the Kid exclusive in the
Gazette
and we're sitting with

another Britney crotch shot on page one?" Paulina's face was

red, but James couldn't tell if it was from rage or more Xanax

than usual. He hoped it was the latter, but doubted it.

"Parker was attacked in his apartment," Keach said, trying

to regain his confidence. "The cops have assigned two protection details, one for Parker and another for this Amanda

Davies girl. I tried waiting down the street from his apartment,

outside a bagel shop, but one of the cops spotted me and

started walking toward where I was standing. He was
looking

at me, Paulina! So I pretended I was buying a bagel and got

the hell out of there. Better that than they knew who I was,

right?"

244

Jason Pinter

Paulina closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead with her hand.

"And so Parker finds this crackpot Vance, and he snags the

story while you're slurping cream cheese. James, do you

know how close we are?"

"How close we are in what?"

Paulina rifled through some papers on her desk, pulled out

a white sheet with a bunch of indecipherable numbers.

"These are the latest circulation figures for all five major

New York newspapers, along with rates for the top twenty

newspapers in the country. The latest numbers show the

Gazette'
s circulation lead over the
Dispatch
at less than five

percent.
Five percent.
That's less than yearly inflation these

days. One major story can turn the tide, my rice-loving friend.

So I don't care if you have to channel Houdini himself, you

shadow Henry Parker like your life depends on it. Because I

can sure as hell make sure your job does. That is all."

38

Icould sense the men following me even though I couldn't see

them. I knew they carried guns, had their eyes glued to my back,

and sized up every person who came within five feet of me.

I told the cops the killer had already done what he came

to do, that their efforts would be better used fighting terrorism or searching for the killer himself. They disagreed. I told

them the guy who cut up my hand wasn't stupid enough to

go after me in broad daylight, that he had actual targets. He

had a motive, a purpose, wasn't some fly-by-the-seat-of-hispants, run-of-the-mill murderer. He picked the Winchester for

a reason. Stole it from that museum in Fort Sumner for a

reason. Came to my apartment and tried to scare me off the

story for a reason.

In the days since, I wondered why he didn't just kill me.

The man had already killed four others. He clearly wasn't

averse to murder. There was a story he wanted to stay buried,

and leaving me alive was just one more shovel that could keep

digging. I guessed he just didn't know how driven--or

stupid--I was.

To uncover more about the legacy of Brushy Bill Roberts,

I had to start at the end. Roberts had lived in Hamilton, Texas,

246

Jason Pinter

and died in Hico. Roberts had since become Hico's only

claim to fame, bringing in thousands of dollars in tourism

every year. If Fort Sumner lived and breathed the legend of

Billy the Kid, Hico lived on the whiff of conspiracy brought

on by their most famous former resident.

I had to get out of the office and do research away from

the madness that had become the
Gazette
newsroom. With the

increasing battles between the
Gazette
and the
Dispatch,
I

could tell Hillerman had come down hard on Wallace to make

sure his reporters knocked this story out of the park. And if

that was the case, I was his Babe Ruth, stepping to the plate

and calling my shot, hoping for a moon rocket rather than a

whiff.

The New York public library was quiet, had the same

Internet resources as the
Gazette,
access to LexisNexis, and all

the historical newspapers on microfiche I needed. I wanted to

view the Roberts case from every media angle: not only Hico,

but by the major metropolitan papers in Texas, New York, Los

Angeles and elsewhere. You could get a good grasp of how a

story penetrated the national consciousness by how widely it

was reported, and with what veracity the conspiracy was given.

It was a crisp summer day and the steps outside the library

were teeming with people reading, hanging out, and even a

few sleeping on the stone. The NYPL itself is a behemoth that

takes up two full city blocks. The entrance is guarded by two

stone lions named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after John Jacob

Astor and James Lenox, both generous patrons. In the 1930s,

they were renamed Patience and Fortitude by Mayor Fiorello

La Guardia. Patience guards the south steps, Fortitude the

north. As I passed them by, I hoped they'd grant me both. The

three main doors are bracketed by six carved stone columns,

which lead into the great reading room where I'd spent many

The Guilty

247

hours wrenching my back while poring over old texts. The

massive room is lit by grand chandeliers and surrounded by

thousands of volumes. I was here to use CATNYP, the online

system allowing subscribers access to the library's huge collection of journals, periodicals and newspapers.

I jogged up the steps and entered, making my way to a

computer stall where I took a seat, cracked my knuckles, looked

to see if the two cops had followed me inside. They hadn't.

I logged on to CATNYP and ran a search for Texas newspapers containing stories pertinent to the Brushy Bill case. I

typed slowly with my index fingers, my right palm aching

from the stitches. Guess I'd have to settle for old-fashioned

two-fingered typing for the time being.

The first article I came across was from the
Austin Chroni-

cle,
a story about one Judge Bob Hefner who, in 1986, published a booklet claiming Brushy Bill had in reality been the

real Billy the Kid. The booklet gained notoriety when it was

picked up by the
Dallas Morning News.
According to

Hefner's story, "Brushy Bill had no children and was at the

end of his life. Fame and fortune were not a consideration for

the old man."

Hefner continued, saying that Roberts desired only to be

granted the pardon promised by Governor Lewis Wallace to

the Kid years before. Hefner claimed that Pat Garrett had

actually killed a friend of Billy the Kid's that night in 1881,

solely for the purpose of collecting the five-hundred-dollar

bounty on Bonney's head.

It seemed strange that Brushy Bill Roberts would suddenly

decide, after years in hiding, that he wanted to be pardoned

for crimes committed in the 1880s. I noted that Hefner currently ran the Billy the Kid museum in Hico, making it two

different states with two different museums claiming to be the

248

Jason Pinter

final resting place for Billy the Kid. Of course he had financial motivation for keeping the theory alive. But that didn't

make him a liar.

I then found an article published by the
New York Times
in

1950, concerning the spectacle surrounding a man who

claimed to be the real-life Jesse James. James had been

assumed murdered by two brothers named Bob and Charley

Ford back in 1882, but in 1950 a man named J. Frank Dalton

claimed to be the real James. After a media carnival descended upon the 102-year-old man during a hospital stay,

Dalton died. Yet the rumors persisted. Finally in 1995, the

body of Jesse James was exhumed from its grave in Missouri

and the DNA was found to match 99.7 to that of James's

family. Supporters of the Dalton theory did not give up hope,

and in 2000 a court order was granted to exhume the body of

J. Frank Dalton to end the speculation. Unfortunately the

wrong body was exhumed, and attempts to discredit Dalton

were halted. Dalton's actual body was never exhumed nor

tested. I wondered if this botched exhumation was part of the

reason Largo Vance was unable to do the same for William

H. Bonney.

The article was accompanied by a photo of an elderly man

with a long, scruffy beard lying in a hospital bed with two men

standing by his side. When I saw the attribution given to the

second of the two men, my heart nearly skipped a beat. He

was wearing a leather jacket and bore a look of concern on

his face. He was identified as one Brushy Bill Roberts, ninety

years old, at the deathbed of J. Frank Dalton. The man thought

to be the real Billy the Kid next to the man suspected of being

the real Jesse James.

I ran another search, this time to determine whether Jesse

James and William H. Bonney knew each other. According

The Guilty

249

to news reports, Jesse James and Billy the Kid had met only

once, at the Old Adobe Springs Hotel near Las Vegas in July

of 1879. The two were seen having dinner by an associate of

Bonney's, though the witness's story was widely discredited.

People simply couldn't believe history's two most famous

outlaws had ever crossed paths, let alone met for a friendly

dinner.

The
Austin Chronicle,
in a later story, said this "chance"

meeting was even more unlikely considering James's daughter had been born merely ten days earlier.

I kept searching, and soon discovered another photograph,

dated 1942, again of Brushy Bill Roberts and J. Frank Dalton,

this time of the two men standing side by side. The picture

clearly identified the two men by the names they went by at

the time--Brushy Bill and Frank Dalton. According to

records, it was not until after Dalton's one hundred and

second birthday that he claimed to be Jesse James. Additionally, Roberts denied that he was Billy the Kid at first, only

admitting to it after being confronted.

There were a slew of websites and conspiracy theory

pamphlets printed and posted on the web, many claiming

that Roberts and Dalton were two con artists looking to make

a buck and gain notoriety. What made no sense is why the two

men would wait until their deathbeds to claim this "notoriety."

Both Roberts and Dalton died within a few years of their confessions, and neither made any sort of profit from their claims.

According to another report, a man named Homer Overton

claimed that Pat Garrett's widow told him that the Kid's death

was a sham, a ruse concocted by Garrett and the Kid to allow

the outlaw safe passage into Mexico. Overton's testimony

was entered into the record during Vance's attempt to convince

lawmakers to exhume the body of Catherine Antrim. Lincoln

250

Jason Pinter

County sheriffs made a point of noting that Pat Garrett's

likeness is featured on the logo of the Lincoln County Sheriff's

Department. The man was an icon. If it were proven that

Garrett did not, in fact, kill William H. Bonney, it would throw

the entire county into upheaval.

I allowed this information to digest. For years Brushy Bill

Roberts's story had been considered fraudulent. The ramblings of an old, broke man. Even an attempt to put the case

to rest by comparing Billy the Kid's DNA to that of his mother

never came to fruition. Likewise, J. Frank Dalton's DNA was

never compared to that of Jesse James's family.

Two legends with cracks in their facade. Two legends protected either by governmental incompetence, or institutions

with reasons to hide the truth. Without the prosperity of those

legends to harvest from, several towns in the Southwest would

shrivel up and die. And a large part of this country's history

would be rent to pieces. If Oliver P. Roberts truly was Billy