15 THE HIDDEN FACE

One day that September, the undercover operative who was

pretending to be an insurance salesman stopped at a filling station
in Fairfax and struck up a conversation with a woman working
there. When the operative told her that he was looking to buy a
house in the vicinity, she mentioned that William Hale “controlled
everything” in these parts. She said that she’d purchased her own
home from Hale, which was on the edge of his pasture. One night,
she recalled, thousands of acres of Hale’s land had been set on
fire. Nothing was left behind but ashes. Most people didn’t know
who had started the blaze, but she did: Hale’s workers, on his
orders, had torched the land for the insurance money—$30,000 in
all.

White tried to learn more about another suspicious matter: How
had Hale become the beneficiary of Henry Roan’s $25,000 life-
insurance policy? After Roan turned up with a bullet in the back of
his head, in 1923, Hale had the most obvious motive. Yet the
sheriff had never investigated Hale, nor had other local lawmen—
an oversight that no longer seemed incidental.

White tracked down the insurance salesman who had originally
sold Roan the policy in 1921. Hale had always insisted that Roan,
one of his closest friends, had made him the beneficiary because
he had lent Roan a lot of money over the years. But the salesman
told a different story.

As the salesman recalled it, Hale had independently pushed for
the policy, saying, “Hells bells, that’s just like spearing fish in a