Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (37 page)

My next call was to Lana Halley, and I told her what had happened. She said, “And you’re convinced that Taylor didn’t pull the trigger.”

“Yes.”

“What if he got into a heated argument with Jeremiah Franklin. What if Taylor, who has had a drug and alcohol problem, ostensibly from PTSD, just flipped and shot Franklin?”

“He didn’t.”

“But you can’t be sure of that.”

“They met because Jeremiah was going to tell Jesse who killed Andy Cope.”

“And did he tell him?”

“I don’t know. Jesse wants to speak with me. I’ll know soon. I wanted you to have a heads up because you now know the history of all this and Carson’s role as the state property is about to change hands.”

“Sean, this whole thing is so beyond legal ethics. I’m now trying to have a grand jury investigate my boss, and I’ll no doubt be assigned Jesse’s case because I had his first case when he hit town.”

“It’s beyond legal boundaries because Jeff Carson decided to take it in that direction. You’re within your jurisdiction to find the facts, find the evidence, wherever or to whomever it points. And that includes Carson.”

“Then you find something with teeth in it that I can take to a grand jury. I’m certainly not going to get it any other way.”

“You may not be able to get a court order to excavate the reform school property for graves, but if you can get a judge to sign an order to acquire fingerprints from Hack Johnson, I think you’ll have all you need to interest a grand jury. Why? Because now you have a preponderance of circumstantial evidence that gives you probable cause. Similar to how a police officer can search your car without a warrant. While you’re at it, you can DNA test him and prove or disprove if he fathered Jeff Carson.”

There was a long pause. “It can be done. If they get pissed, let them sue. Give me a few hours.”

“I’m here. Deputy Parker will have to facilitate the order. I’m sure he can find backup he can trust.”

“Good, Sean. You can sit tight.”

“Somebody will need to backup the backup.”

She disconnected and I drove to the county jail.

Jesse’s attorney, Daniel Grady, had just met with him when I arrived. I spoke with Grady in a corner of the public waiting area, a half dozen people sitting in hard plastic chairs, all there to speak with family members awaiting bail. Grady looked at me through tired eyes and said, “Jesse has a compelling case. Unfortunately, compelling doesn’t win juries. Evidence and motive do.”

“I know you can’t discuss the details, but do you believe he’s innocent?”

“Yes, I do. My problem is the state has a dead body, the victim’s blood apparently on Jesse’s hands, gunshot residue, and a gun.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s the gun that fired the shot.”

“That’s true.” He looked down at his laced-up brown wingtips and then his eyes met mine. “I need to be going, to prep for an arraignment hearing. Bond may be difficult. He wants to speak with you, Mr. O’Brien.”

“This is where I need your help.”

“Me?”

“You need an investigator, and I’m the closest thing you’ve got. As your investigator, I need to speak with our client.”

He smiled. “I’ll see what I can arrange.” He walked away, heading for the jailer’s area. My phone vibrated. It was Dave Collins. “Sean, your second appearance in the local newspaper is quite different from the first. The reporter, a Cory Wilson, writes that you are convinced there are bodies of children buried on the old reform school property and how you believe any and all sales of said property should be indefinitely postponed until excavations can prove otherwise. He further indicates that you are aggressively pursuing evidence to substantiate that. The article quotes state officials saying those allegations are unfounded and a gross misrepresentation of the reform school’s history. Did you actually do an interview with him?”

“Yes. Did he use a picture of me?”

“Indeed.”

“Good. Now those who are moving this thing at warp speed have a speed bump—me.”

“There’s no gallantry found in the antics of the sacrificial lambs. They only get slaughtered.”

“Maybe I can avoid the swords.” I told Dave about Jeremiah Franklin’s death, Jesse’s arrest, and the possibility of family connections I’d found between Jeff Carson and the Johnson clan. When I finished I heard ice clink in Dave’s drink.

He cleared his throat and said, “I once knew of a young man who discovered he was conceived from a brutal rape of his mother. He hunted down the man, his biological father, and killed him. There’s probably an allusion to Greek mythology found somewhere in there. In the case of Jeff Carson, either he doesn’t know that Hack Johnson raped his mother, Julie, or he knows and doesn’t care. He’s manipulated it to his advantage. He becomes a state attorney with an entourage, a posse to carry out, shall we say, deeds in which he prefers not to be associated. In the meantime, he keeps the proverbial blinders on lady justice. But that, of course, is purely speculation. What do you do next?”

“Talk with Jesse. If Jeremiah told him who killed Andy Cope before the fatal shot was fired, we have an ID.”

“But you no longer have an eyewitness, Sean. And that will take a lot of wind out of the prosecutor’s sails.”

“It will, but if we have a name, we have a reason to get a court order to print and run DNA tests on Hack Johnson. And if it matches the print on the shotgun shell…it’s a whole new chapter.”

“That’s a lot of supposition. However, I must admit, you’re damn closer to burning down that haystack.

SEVENTY-TWO

W
ithin days, history was repeating itself. Jesse Taylor back in police custody, back at almost the same visitor’s window where I’d first met him. An indifferent deputy stood on one side of the small room, giving Jesse little, if any, privacy. He picked up the receiver, looked through glass smeared with fingerprints and said, “O’Brien, you gotta get me out of this shithole.”

“And the way I’m going to do that is to take evidence to a grand jury that will turn this completely around. What have you told investigators?”

“Told them exactly what happened. The same detective, Lee, doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. All he’s saying is they have a murder victim, gunshot residue on my hand, Jeremiah’s blood on my clothes. I told him that’s what happens when you fire back at a shooter and you try to save a bleeding man’s life—you get blood on your clothes.” Jesse told me everything that led up to his trip to meet Jeremiah.

I nodded. “Did you see the shooter?”

“No. I think he was just across the river. He fired three times. I returned fire. One shot. Don’t know if I hit him. Man, I was just tryin’ to keep Jeremiah alive. Jeremiah and I were
standing there at the entrance to the old bridge. He was about to tell me who killed Andy. They cut him down right at that moment. I had to carry Jeremiah behind cover to keep us both from being shot. Although I didn’t see the triggerman, I think I know who ordered it.”

“Who?”

“The same sick son-of-a-bitch that killed Andy…Hack Johnson. With Jeremiah’s last breath, he told me it was Hack Johnson who pulled the trigger that night. I always thought it might have been him. And now I know. O’Brien, somehow you gotta get to him. I don’t know who you can trust in this county. Somebody’s got to drag that old man and half his sorry-ass kin outta those swamps to face the music.”

“They say you stole the pistol from a trooper.”

“Bullshit! He’d pulled me over, but rather than give a speeding ticket, he was about to march me into the woods and put a bullet through my head. Somehow he knew I was gonna be on that road. He knew I was heading out to meet with Jeremiah. Unless he was just a twisted psychopath in a cop’s uniform, somebody hired him. I wrestled the gun from him and handcuffed the asshole to his steering wheel. When he first pulled me over, I hit the audio record button on my phone. I got it all. Least I think I did.” He whispered. “I hid it on the left side of the Bellamy Bridge, right under the very first half-rotted plank. If you can get it, the recording will prove I was about to be shot.”

“They’re getting desperate. The shooter near the bridge could have presumably hit you and Jeremiah, but yet they wanted to try taking you out first. I don’t have a lot of daylight left, but tell me exactly where you two were standing, the direction Jeremiah was facing before he was hit. Try to remember details.”

When I arrived back at the Bellamy Bridge area, it seemed deserted. No squad cars. No sense of chaos and emergency that was here three hours earlier. I looked at my phone. Sunset was in less than thirty minutes. The small parking lot was hard-packed dirt and gravel bordered by thick woods. I called Lana Halley and said, “I talked with Jesse Taylor. He said that Jeremiah Franklin told him that the man who shot and killed Andy Cope was Hack Johnson. And Jeremiah told him that right before he died. Who’d want him dead, Lana? And why? The Johnson family is inextricably woven into the old quilt of this community. Who’s hiding under that quilt…and how can you prosecute them?”

She said nothing for a few seconds. “Maybe it’s Jeff. We’ll get Hack Johnson’s prints, and we’ll test his DNA. Where are you?”

“Bellamy Bridge. Looking for evidence.”

“Be careful, Sean. Call me. Bye…”

I locked my Jeep, slid my Glock behind my belt in the small of my back, under my loose-hanging shirt, and started walking down the Bellamy Bridge trail. The setting sun was already casting dark shadows across the trail, cicadas beginning night chants in the murky recesses of the forest.

I picked up my pace—walking fast, moving toward the place Jeremiah Franklin had died. Mosquitos followed me, high-pitched droning near my ears and neck. I turned up my collar and jogged the remaining one hundred yards to the bridge. It was an odd silhouette in the sunset. Steel beams, broken cables, girders missing—the ribs of an old bridge straddling the slow-
moving river. The remnants resembled pieces from a giant erector set long ago abandoned. Left to rust. Left to give witness to a road less traveled.

I stepped up to the entrance to the bridge, most of the wooden planks long since rotted away. Two were still there, at the very lip of the bridge. I knelt down and searched the first plank. Jesse’s phone was in the spot where he’d left it. I stood, slipping the phone into my back pocket.

Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off a triangle section about seventy feet in dimension. I ducked under the tape and played back the details Jesse had given me. Where they were standing when the first shot was fired—the position of Jeremiah’s chest, his stance. Wind movement in the leaves. Whether Jesse recalled the sound of a bolt-action between shots. I knelt down and studied the tracks, boot and shoeprints, the trodden area left behind from an earlier investigation.

I walked toward an ancient oak, wide knotty trunk, the tree Jesse had described. It was the place he’d carried Jeremiah and tried to take refuge, the place where he returned fire. I spotted specks of dried blood on fallen oak leaves, dark red spots of blood on ferns near the base of the tree. It wasn’t the season for the oaks to loose leaves. There were more than a dozen, green leaves on the ground. I remembered Jesse saying he heard a bullet rip through the branches. And then he heard one make a thud.

I walked closer to the tree, looking at the trunk from its base up to one of the first mammoth limbs. And there it was—a bullet hole. Fresh. The old tree was oozing a trace of sap from the hole. It was as if the tree had been wounded. I thought back to the night I’d dug the buckshot from the tree on the reform school property. It was an oak very similar to the one I was
standing beside. One was shot fifty years ago, and the other a few hours ago. Both rounds, no doubt, coming from the same seeds of anger with roots probably as deep as the tree in front of me. I could tell from the angle of impact the general direction where the shot had been fired. I knew the round could be dug from the tree and, depending on its condition, used for ballistics.

Now to find the spot where the shooter stood.

I turned and looked across the Chipola River, through the black silhouette of the old bridge, near a very small clearing on the riverbank, to the left of a bald cypress tree. It was a perfect trajectory. But I needed a closer look. The only way to get there was walk across the bridge. The wooden floor was gone, crossbeams mostly gone. I stepped up on one of the rusty girders, walking heel-to-toe over narrow cables and beams that straddled the river. I looked at the water maybe fifteen feet below me, moving slowly, the current causing the slight spinning vortex of an eddy off the riverbank. I could see a large alligator in the water, its knobby eyes and back protruding from the surface.