Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (20 page)

I paid for my coffee and left. The fresh air and sunlight was a welcome change from the courthouse. Two members of the Johnson family lingered near the building, still talking, probably about Jesse Taylor. One man, the guy with the full streaked beard, laughed at
something, and then the two men walked away, going separate directions. I came down the courthouse steps and followed the bearded man, keeping my distance.

He kept to the sidewalk, walking under the deep shade of the live oaks. He stepped up to a late model pickup truck. Someone was sitting on the passenger side of the truck, cigarette smoke curling out the open window. The passenger appeared to be an old man. I moved faster. My Jeep was parked less than three spaces from the truck.

The older man wore a Stetson hat, white T-shirt. The bearded man got into the driver’s side. He didn’t start the engine immediately, instead the two men sat there talking. I walked behind the truck, memorizing the license tag number, moving near the passenger side of the truck. I pulled out my phone, pretending to send a text standing beside a locked mid-eighties model Ford Taurus. I tried to get a glimpse of the man wearing the Stetson, but the hat was too far down on his forehead. He held the cigarette in his right hand. Claw-like. Hand knotted from arthritis, nicotine stains between two fingers.

The motor started. I feigned taking a call, turning back toward the passenger side, the sound of a George Jones song coming from inside the truck. A gust of wind blew through the trees, the branches moving, dappled light falling against one side of the truck. The old man knocked the ash off the cigarette, light from the sun illuminating a tattoo on his forearm. Although the ink was faded, and his skin flaccid, I could tell the tattoo was the same image Curtis Garwood had seen as a boy.

There was no mistaking a tattoo of the Southern Cross.

I stood there as they drove away, a blue jay shrieking in the branches of the live oak, the wind dying and the deep shade returning. I walked to my Jeep, thinking about Curtis’s letter,
thinking about the scene I’d just witnessed in a court of law. As I unlocked the Jeep, my phone buzzed. Caroline Harper said, “Sean, Jesse called me. He’s officially been booked and fingerprinted, and he’s angry. I told him I was going to make bond as soon as I could. He wants to speak with you.”

“I’m sure you didn’t tell him I asked you to delay making his bond. He could speak with me when he’s out. Did he say why he wants to talk?”

“He said it has to do with that eyewitness he mentioned…the man, who as a boy, witnessed Andy’s murder. Jesse’s afraid, now that he’s in jail, someone will harm the man.”

“And that could only mean that Jesse’s told someone the witness’s name.”

“Maybe Jesse told the police, or the state attorney. After what happened in court, he could have a good reason to be frightened. Somebody doesn’t want the truth out. What can we do?”

“I’ll speak with Jesse in the county jail. In the meantime you can begin the bonding out procedure.”

“So you don’t want a day delay now, correct?”

“In view of what’s happening, Jesse might be much safer out of the county jail. That can be a place where fatal accidents or restraints happen.”

“I’ll go to my bank for the bond money. Please hurry, Sean.”

I started to open the door to my Jeep when I saw a moving reflection on the side window. It was that of a man, and he was quickly approaching me. I opened the door, knowing my Glock was within reach. I turned to face him. He was the same reporter I’d seen in the courthouse
hallway, but not the reporter I’d spotted in the courtroom. Big guy. Scruffy. Loose tie. Short sleeve pale yellow shirt outside his pants, the wind lifting his comb-over hair.

He said, “Excuse me. Are you Sean O’Brien?”

“Who wants to know?”

His smile dissolved, his chest rising and falling. Nervous. His breath smelling like burnt beef brisket and onion rings. “I’m Wallace Holland with the
Jackson County Patriot
. Can we talk?”

“I’d really enjoy a nice chat here on the shady square, but I‘m in a hurry.”

“Are you representing someone looking to buy the old Dozier School for Boys?”

“If, and this is only if, I were…any information pertinent to a purchase or even an inspection is confidential due to the nature of competitive bidding. Now, I must be going.”

“So you’re saying no comment, correct?”

“No, I did comment and I told you why there is no further comment. In the what, where, how and why part of journalism I gave you the why, probably the most important part of a story, I’d imagine, right?” I smiled.

He didn’t. His eyes widened, suspicion behind his glasses. I noticed a mustard stain the size of a bird dropping on his red tie. “I know that you’re the same Sean O’Brien who fired the shot that took out a terrorist plane on the runway. So why would you be interested in the state property? Is this about building some sort of paramilitary facility there?”

I said nothing.

“Who are your backers? You do realize that all particulars to the sale of taxpayer-owned properties will be open for scrutiny?”

“If the taxpayers had really owned that reform school, maybe there’d have been better scrutiny and less exploitation of kids. By the way, a plane can’t be a terrorist, only the pilot or a passenger. No more than a bullet is a terrorist until a coward aims and fires it into someone’s back. When you spell my name, it’s O’Brien with an
e
not
a
. I know accuracy is everything to you guys. Just a suggestion.” I smiled.

His mouth contorted, trying to form a question, his lips looking as if he’d bitten into a lemon. I got in my Jeep, started the engine and drove toward the county jail. In my rearview mirror, the reporter stood vertical like an unmade bed, his fingers punching the keys to his phone.

THIRTY-EIGHT

T
he feeling was always the same—a type of mental castration. A prison setting does more than confine and segregate humans from the outside. It’s the inside, the human mind, that’s really trapped in a mental sterility by virtue of being locked in a six-by-eight foot cage. Even as a visitor, you can sense the edge of vulnerability. I felt it often working homicide in Miami, dealing with jails, inmates, prisons, and jailers. You, the prisoner—even someone being held on charges and yet to be tried for those charges, became insignificant the moment you put on the orange jumpsuit.

I thought about that as I cleared metal detectors in the Jackson County Jail, signed the visitor’s paperwork, and waited for the jailers to bring Jesse to the visitation room. It was more of a large cubical than a room. Thick glass separating the visitor and the inmate, the ubiquitous black phone attached to the wall adjacent to the glass. I knew how jail begins to torment the human psyche. It doesn’t take long. A rational man or woman may break a law, sin against society, and while locked in a pen, come to realize through that personal depravity, his or her own self worth. Sometimes.

A lanky guard in his mid-twenties, acne, round shoulders, led Jesse Taylor into the room. The guard moved over to a metal table and chair in a corner of the room.

Jesse picked up the phone. I did the same. He blew out a breath and said, “I guess you and Caroline saw all that shit that went down in court.”

“Yeah, we saw it.” I noticed the scars on the hand that held the phone. I looked at his other hand. Same thing.

“That damn detective is gunning for me.”

“There are a lot of people who don’t want the scabs knocked off the history of the old reform school.”

“That’s for damned sure.”

“And right now you’re a threat, coming from nowhere rattling cages just as the state is trying to make millions in a sale of the property.”

“What those bastards did to us as kids is beyond criminal. It’s like they wanted to experiment to see how much physical and mental abuse we could take before we died inside.” He looked away, eyes blinking rapidly for a moment. Then he cut his head toward me. “You know, in a few years all of us in our sixties and seventies will be dead and gone. And the reform school will be a fancy neighborhood with winding streets where children can play safely. Nobody will know about kids like Andy Cope and the others. We were the throwaways. They didn’t care then, and they don’t care today.”

“I care.”

He looked at me, his eyes searching my face. “Why, man? You got no skin in the game.”

“Because there’s something about a brutal injustice that bothers me. And it really bothers me when it happens to a child.”

“Even though you aren’t family of the victims?”

“We’re all related. That’s the best answer I can give you.”

He grinned and shook his head. “I always wondered why the family of man is so dysfunctional. Although I’ve done some bad things, I’m not a bad person. I’m just sort of despondent because of this nature verses nurture thing. I certainly didn’t have any of the latter. I’m not a philosopher, but I have pondered whether we’re born with a blank slate and life experiences become the writing on our wall. Or is some of that writing on the wall already there—a kind of invisible ink? Does it become more legible the more we find out who we are in life?”

“Maybe it’s a combination of both, born with some inherited sense of survival—of mutual dependence, but too helpless to recognize or understand it if we could.”

He nodded. “I got to believe that inherited thing can be handed down good or evil, too, like black or white seeds scattered by an unseen hand. Then the roots take hold. But will the person be rooted in good or evil soil? Guys like you, O’Brien, are a rare breed, I do believe. If you hadn’t got Curtis’s letter, if he hadn’t gone fishing with you…what then? Nobody has been able to do anything—to prove anything. The whole damn town seems scared. And why’s that? Who’re they afraid of…a few old men today who coulda been guards in a World War II death camp? Maybe. Maybe there’s more.”

“Why did you want to see me before your bond is made? It shouldn’t take too long to make bond.”

“You never know, and because I’m afraid. Not for me, although they might bust me up in here. I figured after fifty years there’d be new generations of good people in this county…in law
enforcement. That’s why I gave the cops the name of an eyewitness, someone who saw ‘em shoot Andy. Thought they might interview him and begin a real investigation. Now I believe I made a bad mistake.”

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“I told a news reporter with the local paper, but I didn’t tell him his name.”

I thought about the reporter in the courthouse hallway who’d snapped my picture standing next to Lana Halley. “Was his name Wallace Holland?”

“No, it was Cory Wilson. Holland is another guy who works there. He seems like he couldn’t give a shit if a hundred kids were buried on the property. The other guy, Cory, he’s different. After I’d left, he called me, talked in sort of a whisper, like he didn’t want anybody to hear him. Said he really wanted to write a story, but didn’t have enough to go on, so he wanted me to let him know if I found something else. I think he’s a good guy, just not a ball buster kind of reporter. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“Did you tell anybody else?”

His eyes opened a little wider, looked over his phone and whispered. “Yeah, I gave his name to the assistant state attorney, the one givin’ me shit in the courtroom, Lana Halley.”

I said nothing.

Jesse continued. “The eyewitness was just a kid hiding in a tree on the reform school property the night they killed Andy. If I give you his name and address, would you ride out there and tell him to lay low. Maybe stay at his mama’s place ‘till we can get this sorted out? Maybe he can get into a witness protection deal.”

“Write down the information, fold the piece of paper and ask the guard to give it to me. Tell him I represent you.”

Jesse stared at me for a moment. I could hear his breathing in the receiver. He nodded. “Got it.” There was a small note pad next to Jesse. He picked up a pencil with tooth marks on much of the yellow paint. He wrote down a few lines, folded the paper three times and looked toward the guard. “Sir, would you give this to Mr. O’Brien. He’s one of ‘em who represents me.”

The guard stopped reading a Sports Illustrated magazine, slowly got up and walked across the room to take the piece of paper. He looked at Jesse. “Let’s call this a favor, bud.”

“Much obliged.”

The guard went to the far right of the room, unlocked a door, locking it as he exited into the visitor’s area. He handed the paper to me, said nothing, and returned to Jesse where he said, “Time’s up, bud.”

Jesse looked at me through the glass. “See you when I get outta here.” He stood and the acne-faced guard led him away. I placed the folded piece of paper in my pocket and left.

I walked across the parking lot, the Florida sun shimmering off the exteriors of cars parked in the county jail lot, the asphalt searing. I’d left my Jeep under the shade of an oak tree in a far spot of the fenced-in lot. I unlocked the door, opened it, the warm air billowing out. I unfolded the paper Jesse gave me and read his note.
Jeremiah Franklin lives in back of a big pecan grove off Stevenson Road. Right past a sign about pecans for sale. Follow the trail beyond a cattle guard marked no trespassing. His house is an
old school bus. Tell him you know me and his old grandpa taught me to fish on the Chipola River. He’ll know you talked with me
.

THIRTY-NINE

I
’d been on the road less than ten minutes when Dave Collins called. “Sean, the newspaper in Jackson County may not have a large local circulation, but their Internet presence is, of course, with no boundaries. I’d say they got a fairly good angle of you. The lady next to you looks very photogenic.”

“Her name’s Lana Halley. Assistant SA. She was the prosecutor during the Pablo Gonzales murder trial.”

“Ah, yes. I recall her courtroom tenacity.” Dave chuckled.

“What’d the reporter write?”

“Enough to fuel rumor mills from the state capital to Marianna and, no doubt, rush the sale of the property into the waiting arms of Vista Properties. The reporter is quoting a security guard at the property as one source. A man who says you told him your representative may be in the market to build a military training facility larger than the old Blackwater operation in North Carolina. Keep in mind, the word facility is derived from the French intonation, meaning toilet. The reporter went on to quote people within the department of law enforcement—the current custodians of the property, who have no official comment about you or their alleged negotiations with you. A real estate agent, Ben Douglas, is quoted as saying you appeared ‘sincere’ in your
interest, but he’s not received an offer from you or the person you represent. Perhaps I should call him with a comment or a financial bid based, of course, on contingencies.”