Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (45 page)

The rancher circled back and said, “Wait ‘till you see the view from the top. Some people have told us that mound is older than the pyramids of Egypt. And on the backside are caves that go on and on. There’s a karst system of underground water, limestone…lots of springs bubbling up and flowing into the Withlacoochee. Like I said, this place as a direct descendant from the Garden of Eden. Some say it was Osceola’s hideout before he was captured under a white flag of truce. The state better buy it before somebody builds a theme park here.”

Dr. Sanchez looked up from her camera, her eyes following something in the sky. She watched three carrion birds ride the warm air currents, circling above them. She pointed. “Maybe there’s an dead animal nearby.”

The rancher nodded. “It’s life…and its damn sure death. This land has a motto: eat or be eaten. It’s all about survival and where’s the next meal coming from. Probably a deer carcass. Something left over from a panther or bear attack.”

They started their ATVs. The two graduate students following the rancher as he headed toward the right of the temple mound. On a whim, Dr. Sanchez decided to go to the left, to meet them somewhere on the other side. She drove the ATV slowly, taking in the majesty of the work that went into constructing a mound of this size.

She thought about the doctoral thesis paper she’d written on the Calusa Indians. They had been a fearless tribe. The men and women were tall. For more than two hundred years they resisted all attempts from the Spanish to convert them to the white man’s religion. And in 1535, they were the tribe that killed the Spaniard famous because if his exhaustive search for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Ponce De Leon met death at the end of a Calusa arrow dipped in poison from a beach apple tree.

Had the Calusa built this mound
, she wondered.
If not, who did and what happened to them
.

Her thoughts were abruptly altered when the stench of death hit her nostrils. She’d smelled the odor once before when an indigent man she knew had died in his trailer home. Dead a week before he was found. And now, here it was again, in the middle of a secluded habitat. She stopped her ATV, her mind trying to comprehend what her eyes were sending to her brain. She couldn’t. The image was simply too horrible to grasp. She didn’t notice the rancher and the others riding up, their voices sounding muted. The coughing. The gagging sound. Someone trying to dial 9-1-1. No signal.

She stepped closer, trying to process the horror of what was on the ground. The body looked posed—propped up for display. She stopped, clutching her throat. The man’s body was at base of the tree, positioned in a kneeling posture. His hands had been tied behind his back. He was stripped of his clothes. A stick was wedged under his chin, holding his head up. He’d been scalped, dried blood coagulated in his open eyes, eyes that stared up at the top of the mound. Greenish blowflies circled his head. Some were crawling in his ears and nostrils. The others were feeding on dried blood that had oozed from his skull into what remained of his hairline.

Dr. Sanchez braced herself against a cabbage palm tree. Her knees were weak. The wind shifted, blowing the stench of death right toward her. She leaned over and vomited, the screech of carrion birds circling above her.

TWO

J
oe Billie drove slowly approaching his old airstream trailer. He almost always would drive his twenty-year-old pickup truck with the windows down. Sometimes he listened to the news and human-interest stories on NPR. Mostly he listened to the sounds of nature, going deep into the Florida woodlands to harvest palmetto fronds. He spent much of his time in the fish camp drying palm fronds to use in building rustic outdoor shelters, waterfront bars at marina resorts usually. When not working, he read nonfiction books and carved wood.

He eased his truck off the hard packed dirt and oyster shell road that twisted through Highland Park Fish Camp, stopping in front of the last the vintage trailer in a remote part of the secluded camp. The once shiny aluminum exterior was stained in dried pine tree sap and age spots of oxidation from spending almost thirty summers in the harsh Florida environment.

Billie parked, glanced in his rearview mirror at the palmetto fronds that filled the truck-bed. He listened to his engine tick, cooling in the shade of large pines. He looked up at the blue sky between the limbs, the hoot of a barn owl coming from near the St. Johns River. It was a rare sound for that time of day and the time of year. Billie, a descendent from the Seminole Owl clan, thought the call of the owl was the warning of a sentinel long associated with his family. He
lifted the machete from the truck seat. It was still sharp even after using it to cut dozens of palm fronds.

Billie got out of his truck. He carried a book he’d borrowed from the Volusia County Library in his left hand, the machete in his right hand. He was just over six feet tall, mid-forties, broad shoulders, brown skin, large and powerful hands. He wore his salt and pepper colored hair in a ponytail.

He stepped up to his trailer door, checked the hidden traps he always set when he was gone for more than a couple of hours. The small sliver of toothpick he’d wedged between the door and the jamb was gone. Billie lowered his eyes to the base of the metal door. The splinter of wood was at the threshold. He turned the handle. It was still locked, but it appeared that someone had jimmied the door.

Billie stepped back. Slowly turning. Listening. There was the second hoot from the owl. And then Billie heard the cars coming.
At least three…maybe more
. As they rounded the bend in the dirt road, he could see they were sheriff’s cars. Lights flashing. No sirens. They stopped quickly, dust and pine straw caught in the drafts. A large deputy got out of the first car, his right hand resting on the butt of his pistol.

“Are you Joe Billie?”

“What do you want?”

The deputy kept the opened door between him and Billie. “I want you to set that weapon down and step to one side.”

“What’s this about?” Billie’s hand tightened around the handle.

“Drop your weapon!”

Another deputy emerged, pistol drawn and pointed directly at Billie. He dropped the machete and stepped backwards, closer to his trailer. The first deputy approached Billie, staying within ten feet of him. “You Joe Billie?”

“Yes.”

The deputy looked at the palm fronds in the truck. “Where’d you get those?”

“In the woods.”

“What woods? Where?”

“What’s this about?”

“It’s about murder. It’s about scalping a man…and it’s about you.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“You got that right. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. And you have the right to an attorney.” He paused, stepped a little closer, studying Billie. “You want an attorney or can we go on down to the station and straighten this out?”

“I want to speak with Sean O’Brien.”

He ran hard. Stopped, waited for little Max to catch up, and then jogged. Sean O’Brien was finishing an afternoon run along the beach near Ponce Inlet when his phone buzzed the first time. Max, his ten-pound female dachshund followed him, short legs a blur, stopping to sniff an
occasional starfish or crab carried to shore by the pounding Atlantic. O’Brien slowed to a walk and then sat on a sand dune, cooling off, feeling his heart rate return to normal.

He was more than six-two, athletic build, wide shoulders, dark hair, chiseled face, hazel eyes that could penetrate the lies he’d faced conducting homicide interrogations years ago. His former partner in the Miami-Dade PD used to say O’Brien had a bloodhound’s nose for sniffing out BS during questioning, often getting a confession with the first hour. O’Brien simply chalked it up to closely watching people and listening to what they said or didn’t say. How they moved in the chair or didn’t move. The physical hints to the psychological façades.

His phone buzzed a second time.

Max sat at his feet, her pink tongue showing, eyes bright watching seagulls hop between the breakers. O’Brien looked the caller ID. It was from the Volusia County Jail. He knew no one in the jail. He knew no one that worked in the jail. He did know plenty of people in the Florida State Prison—people he’d help send there when he was a homicide detective. There was no one in or out of the county jail that he knew. But he couldn’t ignore the call. He answered, and for the first time ever, hearing a trace of desperation in his old friend’s speech. O’Brien felt his heart rate kick up again.

“I hate to ask you this, Sean…but I could use your help.”

“Why are you calling from the jail? What’s going on, Joe?”

“I’ve been arrested for murder. I get one call, and it’s to you. When you get here I’ll tell you what happened.”