Black River (38 page)

It took less than five minutes. Silas Jackson stood on the corner a half block north of the Volusia County Jail Complex, smoked part of a thin cigar and in less than five minutes a black pickup truck pulled over to the side of the curb. Jackson dropped the cigar on the sidewalk, used the toe of his boot to crush it, and walked to the passenger door side of the truck.

From the opposite side of the street, O’Brien sat in his parked Jeep, watching Jackson and counting heads of those in the pickup truck. Three men, including Jackson. O’Brien could see the driver through the truck’s open window. Big guy. Baseball cap backwards on his head. Black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the driver’s left arm resting out the window against the door. The muscular arm was filled with ink under the fur.

They pulled away from the curb and O’Brien started the Jeep’s engine. He waited for the truck to get a block away before following the men. The driver in the pickup truck drove another two blocks before making a left turn onto Jefferson Street.

O’Brien stayed as far behind the truck as he could, calculating the movement of traffic and the time it would take to clear stop signs and traffic lights. He knew Jackson’ pickup truck was back at the movie lot where Jackson had been taken in for questioning. He assumed the men were driving him to the set for his truck.

What he didn’t anticipate was that Jackson would be followed.

O’Brien spotted the BMW with tinted windows when the car first pulled out of a side street. It happened less than ten seconds after the truck with Jackson passed the first intersection away from the jail complex. The car’s windows were too dark for O’Brien to make out the driver’s face. He could tell that the man wore what appeared to be a traditional Scottish golf cap and sunglasses.

Maybe he was a detective, someone working with Dan Grant. Maybe they suspected Jackson of more than what Grant had said
. O’Brien didn’t buy it. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
What? Think
.

It was something that Laura Jordan had said after Cory Nelson pulled the knife before bolting through the gate leading from Laura’s backyard.
‘He has a key to the front door, and he knows the alarm code. I have to change the locks.’

But before Ike Kirby was murdered, after Laura had been awakened when a man was standing in her bedroom in the dark and holding Paula sleeping in his arms, Laura said he’d whispered something. ‘
It took me less than twenty-nine seconds to disarm your house alarm. How does it feel now knowing that you and little Paula are so unsafe, so unprotected.’

Cory Nelson
knew
the alarm code. And he had a key to the front door.

Someone other than Nelson broke into Laura’s home that night. Maybe someone other than Nelson killed Ike Kirby and the hotel clerk.
Was it Silas Jackson? The guy in the BMW?
O’Brien’s pulse rose as he stayed two cars behind the BMW, watching for a glimpse of the driver and keeping an eye on the truck with Silas Jackson sitting in the passenger seat.

O’Brien followed, trying to get close enough to the read the license plate, careful to keep from being spotted by whoever was driving the car. After four more blocks, the pickup truck made a right turn. The driver in the BMW looked two times into the rearview mirror and once into the side-view mirror. He abruptly turned into an alley. For a moment, O’Brien thought about ending his tail of Silas Jackson to follow the BMW instead.

O’Brien parked his Jeep under the deep shadows of an oak tree across from the entrance to the Wind ‘n Willows plantation. He’d followed the pickup truck until it turned off the road en route to the film set. And now O’Brien waited. He thought about calling Detective Dan Grant to let him know that Cory Nelson may not have killed Ike Kirby and the clerk. Maybe Grant could come to that conclusion when he interrogated Nelson. Maybe not.

But right now it was time to meet Silas Jackson.

The same pickup truck that delivered Jackson to the Wind ‘n Willows came down the long drive, stopped at the road and then turned east. A few
seconds later it was trailed by a second pickup. Jackson was driving. He didn’t bother coming to a complete stop, pulling quickly onto the road and heading west. The first thing O’Brien noticed about the truck was its over-sized, off-road tires. Lots of knobby, dirt-grabbing tread design. He waited thirty seconds before following Silas Jackson.

Keeping his distance, O’Brien tailed the truck across County Road 76 for miles before turning onto a secondary road and then another as Jackson weaved deeper into the Ocala National Forest. O’Brien tried to hang back without losing sight of Jackson. As the truck snaked through the curvy road, he saw one brake light flash on and then go off. He slowed, trying to keep some distance between his Jeep and the truck. O’Brien could see Jackson using his phone. He assumed he’s been spotted and Jackson was calling his pals.

The road was a series of sharp S turns, oak trees on both sides, the sun partially blocked by the dense limbs. A white-tailed deer and her fawn jumped from behind a clump of trees, bolting in front of O’Brien’s Jeep. He slammed the brake pedal. The fawn stood paralyzed from fear, stopping in the center of the road. Staring. Eyes wide. Head held high. The doe jumped across a ditch into the trees and foliage. O’Brien waited, the little fawn pulled in its gangly legs, blinked once, and trotted across the pavement to join its mother in the woods.

O’Brien drove off, knowing that he may have lost the truck. He accelerated, scanning the entrances to dirt roads that led farther into the forest. He drove almost a mile before catching something out of the corner of an eye. He slowed the Jeep, stopped and backed up, turning onto the dirt road, still wet after last night’s rain. O’Brien got out of his Jeep and walked up to the deep, fresh tire tracks. He knelt down, touching the mud with the tips of his fingers, lifting his eyes up to the cypress and oak trees in the distance, the muddy path snaking into the obscurity of the forest.

The trail vanished into the heart of a dark place where O’Brien knew he would find Silas Jackson.

T
he deep tracks in the mud led O’Brien more than three miles into a forest so thick that the canopies of old oaks kept the midday sunlight from piercing. He drove slowly, windows down, listening, watching. A boisterous throttle of cicadas reverberated all around the Jeep, limbs and brush slapping both side doors, the smell of moss and jasmine on the warm wind. Bald cypress trees with trunks, stretching more than ten feet in thickness, grew in water the color of black ice.

O’Brien started to drive through a wide, shallow creek that flowed slowly across the road, but he stopped. He looked to the far side of the creek. No tire tracks. He turned off the engine, reaching beneath his seat for his Glock. He opened the door, slid the pistol under his belt in the small of his back and stepped up to the edge of the creek. O’Brien studied the flow of the shallow water. Bottom visible. Maybe a foot deep at most.

He followed the current with his eyes, walking downstream. Through the clear water he could see moss scrapped off rocks that had been disheveled by something heavy—something like a truck. O’Brien looked to his right, to the far reaches of the creek. In the speckled light squeezing through the trees, he saw something shiny in the distance—the reflection of sunlight from the chrome door handle on the pickup truck. It was parked in the creek, maybe one hundred yards from where O’Brien stood.

“You lookin’ for somebody?”

O’Brien turned around to see Silas Jackson standing twenty feet away. His blue jeans soaked from the knees down, water trickling from his boots.
Jackson wore a Confederate jacket, hanging to his thighs, open at the waist. O’Brien assumed a pistol was under the coat.

Jackson said, “I asked you a question. You lookin’ for me?”

“I’m just curious why a man would park his truck in the middle of a creek.”

“That’s none of your fuckin’ business. You some kind of private investigator or just a crazy man?”

“A little of both.”

“Let’s end the bullshit now, make-believe cop. I saw you tail me from downtown.”

O’Brien stepped a few feet closer to Jackson. “But did you see the man in the BMW following you?”

Jackson raised his eyebrows. “I said end the bullshit.”

“He drove a BMW 328. Gray, like your jacket. I figure someone who can afford a car like that might be in the market for the diamond you stole. Maybe he was tailing you because you didn’t live up to your end of the deal. Holding back and not delivering either the Civil War contract or the diamond.” O’Brien didn’t blink. Staring hard into Jackson’s eyes, looking for any sign of cover or deception.

“You definitely got balls comin’ out here and accusing me of theft.”

“It gets better, Silas, I’m accusing you of murder.”

Jackson said nothing. Eyes scorching.

“You killed a hotel clerk before breaking into Professor Ike Kirby’s room, shooting him, and stealing the Civil War contract.”

Jackson shook his head. “You’re one sick puppy.”

“You couldn’t let that Civil War document become public, could you? That was a sacred, confidential document that was helping to finance a cause you still believe in, right?”

Jackson said nothing. A deer fly orbited his head once before landing on his neck.

O’Brien lowered his voice, just above a whisper. “You
know
that diamond Jack Jordan found was, of course, Confederate property. And now, all these years later, you could cash it in to buy the manpower and weapons you need to take back the Union – or to split it. The war isn’t over, correct, Silas? Any killing can be justified for the
rebirth of the South and the cause all those men gave their lives for, right?”

“You’re fuckin’ right! But you’re not gonna get me to confess to something I didn’t do, although I salute the man who did.”

“Cory Nelson says it was you.”

“Nelson’s a damn liar!”

“He says the plan was he’d take out Jack Jordan—steal the diamond and you’d steal the Civil War contract. Nelson only had to murder one man. You killed two. Where’s the diamond and the contract?” O’Brien stepped closer, staring directly into Jackson eyes, which were black as the water at the base of the giant cypress trees.

Jackson tightened his neck muscles as the deer fly bit into his skin. “I answer to nobody. I knock tyranny on its ass. Whatever it takes. Who the fuck are you?”

“That’s not important. What is important—it’s the decisions you make, Silas, because those decisions have a real bad effect on others. I’m betting you have the diamond and the contract hidden with the painting you stole from the film set.”

“What painting?”

“The one you are infatuated with, the one of the woman painted at the time of the Civil War. You told others you believed the woman in the painting would be reincarnated. And you believe she’s now Kim Davis. You left the Confederate roses on her property.”

Jackson said nothing. Staring, eyes fiery.

“Don’t go near her again.”

“You got a claim on that woman? I doubt it. I’ll ask her sometime.”

“That’d be a bad mistake.”

“Maybe I’m a bad man.” He slapped the deer fly on his neck, crushing it in the palm of his hand, without taking his eyes off of O’Brien. Then he looked down, opening his right hand. Black dirt packed under the long fingernails, bruised and damaged cuticles at the nail base. O’Brien stared at a deer fly wing wedged under Jackson’s fingernail on his index finger.

Jackson licked his thin lips and said, “This here fly is a female. Only the female deer fly drinks blood. The male visits flowers, spreading pollen. The female uses a razor-sharp mouth and jaws to cross-slice the skin, sort
of makes a tiny X. When the blood rises to the surface, she puts her face in and drinks her fill. You ever drink blood—the elixir of life? The alchemy between a man and a woman is the continuation of the bloodline. The true scent of a woman, her blood, is the same thing the male deer fly is programmed to do when he enters a flower. Think about that, whoever the fuck you are. You visiting Kim Davis’ flower?” Jackson grinned. “I’m next. I see you don’t rile up too easy. That’ll change soon.”