LAKE CITY, MARCH 23. Mike Tolen, a prominent farmer residing between Lake City and Fort White, was murdered by unknown parties on his farm about 8 o’clock this morning.
News of the murder was immediately brought to the city and a posse, headed by bloodhounds, were soon off to the scene. The authorities suspect certain parties of the murder and it is believed that arrests will be made tonight and the prisoners brought to this city. Sam Tolen, a brother of the dead man, was murdered by unknown parties last summer. The trouble is the outcome of a family feud.
– Jacksonville Times-Union, March 24, 1908
The special term of the Circuit Court called for Madison County convened Monday for the trial of a murder case on change of venue from Columbia County, the defendant being E. J. Watson, a white man, and Frank Reese, a negro, indicted for the murder of one Tolen, white, in Columbia County. The case is one which excited the people of Columbia greatly, all the parties concerned being prominent.
The defendant Watson is a man of fine appearance and his face betokens intelligence in an unusual degree. That a determined fight will be made to establish the innocence of the defendants is evidenced by the imposing array of lawyers employed in their behalf. At this writing a jury is being chosen.
– Madison Enterprise-Recorder, December 12, 1908
On December 19, the jury found the defendants not guilty and they were discharged.
Lucius telephoned Watson Dyer, who was in the state capital on official business but had asked to be kept posted. He was not in the least curious about Frank Reese. “All that matters is, E. J. Watson was found innocent. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’-that’s the American way.”
“I suppose so. At least when the accused is the right color.”
Ignoring this quibble, Dyer said, “And if he was proved innocent of killing Samuel Tolen, he may well be innocent of other allegations. In our book we can say-”
Irritated by that “our book” even before he’d figured out what was objectionable, Lucius interrupted sharply, “Let me repeat. My father was charged with killing D. M. Tolen. Mike. The man indicted for the murder of Sam Tolen was Leslie Cox.”
“Is that a fact?” Surprise rose slowly in Dyer’s voice like the first thick bubble in a pot of boiling grits.
“It’s possible, of course, that both were involved in both those murders.”
“Or that neither killed either. There’s always that nigger, right?” Dyer said he could not talk now, being late for an appointment at the governor’s office. He would be driving south tomorrow and would stop by Lake City for consultation and an early supper.
The interview with L. Watson Collins, Ph.D., in the newspaper next morning attributed to Professor Collins precisely what he had denied-in effect, the reporter’s notion that E. J. Watson, “formerly of this county,” had been the mass murderer of his era.
Lucius rushed to the newspaper office to demand a retraction, knowing it would do no good. Any hope of cooperation from his cousins had been blighted. But wonderfully, feckless reportage had pierced Collins defenses where earnest entreaty had failed. A note hand-delivered to the newspaper stiffly disputed the visitor’s observations and opinions.
Sir: It is very doubtful that you spoke to the Collins family because those who knew of Uncle Edgar are of an older era when family business was just that and was not told to strangers. I am writing to tell you that I greatly resent Uncle Edgar being compared to a mass murderer. If you’ve done any research at all, you would know that my uncle could be a very considerate and courteous neighbor…
Indignant that old family detritus had been stirred into view like leaf rot from the bottom of a well, a Collins had broken all those years of silence. What’s more, Miss Ellen Collins did not hang up on him when he telephoned to apologize, so determined was she to chastise him. “Is Collins your real name? Or are you passing yourself off as kin just to snoop out scurrilous information?”
Taken aback, he felt a start of panic. “I am a relative,” he said. Still gun-shy from Julian’s rejection, desperate not to lose this precious chance, he withheld his real name, awaiting a better moment. “And I’ve been talking to another relative,” he added hastily, lest the conversation lapse. “Mr. Arbie Collins.”
The anticipated outcry-Cousin Arbie!?-was not forthcoming. “R. B., you say?” If this R. B. was a bona fide Collins, he was a distant one indeed, her tone implied. “I don’t suppose you mean R. B. Watson? Whose mother was a Collins?”
“Oh Lord, I’d forgotten that! Do you recall her name?”
His eagerness kept his flapping kite aloft: Ellen Collins was still there.
“Oh heck, let me think back.” She’d been shown the gravestone as a child. As a second cousin, Rob Watson’s mother had been buried in New Bethel churchyard, south of Lake City, not in the family cemetery at Tustenuggee near Fort White. “There’s still a few of us back in those woods,” she sighed, “on our old land grant or what’s left of it. Uncle Edgar lived there, too.” Then she snapped, “I’ve talked too much already,” and hung up. Shortly she rang back: if he was really a history professor, she had decided, he should know the truth. If he promised that Julian Collins in Lake City and Cousin Ed Watson in Fort Myers would never hear about it-and on the condition that he made no mention of “that Tolen business”-the family in Fort White would meet with him the following day. “I’ll be there, too,” she warned.
At the billiards emporium and pool hall, Lucius found Arbie showing off for a lacquered female of uncertain age who sat with one hip cocked on the corner of the table, her cerise bootie dangling and twitching like a fish lure-the only whore in town, Lucius suspected. The archivist turned pool shark, giving Lucius a cool nod, racked his balls and broke the rack with a ferocious shot that left him square behind the eight ball. “Damn fool shot his own dog,” he muttered, walking around the table to inspect the catastrophe from another angle. “Story of my life.”