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

“This’ll be fine.” He pulled out a small notebook. “I can jot down what you have to say and take it from there. As I understand it, you wanted to meet about an incident at the Dozier School, correct?”

“They called it the Florida School for Boys when I was there. What I want to talk to you about isn’t no incident. It’s murder.”

The detective tilted his head, lower jaw tightening. “Murder? What murder, and when did it allegedly happen?”

“It was in 1965. The victim’s name was Andy Cope.”

“How do you know this?”

“I heard the shooting.”

“So you were in juvie. What were you in there for?”

“I took a car for a joyride.”

“You stole a car, right?”

“No, it was my old man’s car. Rather than punish me like a father, he liked to have the county do it. He could spend more time drinking. Detective Lee, the night that Andy was killed I knew he was going to make a run for it. He wasn’t at breakfast the next morning. His family never saw him again, and they were told Andy ran off, maybe hitchhiked outta there. But it never happened.”

“You heard a shooting, which meant you never saw it, correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“Ever see a dead body?”

“No. Didn’t have to. Andy wasn’t the only one not to make it outta there alive. A kid told me he saw a black boy’s severed hand in the hog slop one day.” Jesse glanced at the woman sitting in one of the plastic chairs. She closed her eyes for a moment. “Detective, you got a lot of
cold cases on that property. And there are people here in this county that never were investigated for them.”

“Mr. Taylor, a case, at least to me, gets cold if I don’t have somebody in cuffs after forty-eight hours, not fifty years. And this county has investigated allegations such as yours. The state attorney says there has never been sufficient evidence to prove or disprove abuse or even a killing in the old school. Some fellas like you filed a class action suit, think it was in 2010, and the judge threw it out because it vastly exceeded any statute of limitations.”

“That doesn’t apply to murder.”

“There’s no dead body, no crime scene…nothing.”

“Look…if they build condos and golf courses over that land, the devil will do a dance over graves ‘cause he was at the school when I was held there. I could see it in the eyes of the men who beat me. See the hate and the downright evil. They were the criminals, not the kids. Maybe you can take a team out there and start doing some digging. I’m bettin’ you’ll find graves of kids never reported dead in any official records.”

“Mr. Taylor, I want to thank you for coming by today. However, I’m not going to get a court order to start excavating hundreds of acres of property based on hearsay. Now, I’ve got other pressing cases I have to get to.” He closed his small notebook, turning to leave.

“Detective Lee, you know an old timer here by the name of Hack Johnson?”

The detective looked at his pen, clicking the top and placing it in his shirt pocket. “Can’t say I do. Why?”

“Because he could lead you to where they’re buried.”

The detective stared at Jesse for a few seconds in silence, the soft buzzing of a phone call coming from behind the reception desk. He walked away, his hard soles loud against the tile floor, exiting left through the same door that his partner had used.

Jesse shook his head, turned and started for the entrance door when the black woman set the People Magazine down and said, “Sir.” She stood and walked his way.

Jesse stopped. “Yes?” He tried not to stare at her eye, partially swollen shut—the white of the eye strawberry red.

She glanced around, lowering her voice. “I didn’t mean to overhear your conversation with the policeman, but I heard you talking about a killin’ at that reform school.”

“Do you know something about that?”

“Way ‘fore I was born, they sent two of my grandma’s boys there. One time I heard her tell my mama that my Uncle Jeremiah, when he was a boy in there, he saw ‘em shoot a white boy.”

Jesse looked over her shoulder at the receptionist. “Let’s step out in the hall.”

“I cain’t be gone long. My boyfriend violated his ‘straining order. Now he’s gonna go straight to jail.”

Jesse looked at her eye. “He hit you?”

She nodded, sniffling.

“Come on.” He led her to the hallway. “Let me ask you something, did your Uncle Jeremiah ever go by the name Jerry?”

“Some folks called him that. When he was little they did mostly, I’m told.”

“Where’s he now?”

“He stays in an old school bus parked in a pecan grove somewhere. My mama, his sister, said after he got outta that reform school he was never the same boy. He don’t talk much. He’s a picker. Apples. Grapes. Watermelons. Stuff like that.”

“You mentioned two boys. Did Jeremiah have a brother in there?”

“His name was Elijah. I never met him. Grandma says those men tol’ her Elijah up and run away from that reform school. Grandma and my mama said they never saw him again. Nobody did. Grandma believes they kil’t him in there. Buried his lil’ body somewhere. All she wants to do now is put flowers on his grave. But there ain’t no grave to go to.”

“How do I find your grandma?”

“I’ll write down her address. There’s a picture of a redbird on her mailbox. If you go to her house, go in the daytime.”

“I understand. Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Sonia Acker. All my life I heard stories about my lost Uncle Elijah. My grandma has one picture of him. He was about nine, dressed for church on an Easter Sunday. He had the biggest smile. She keeps that picture on her mantle next to a picture of Jesus. Write down your number. If I see my Uncle Jeremiah, I’ll give him your number.”

Jesse wrote his number on the paper napkin she gave him. “Take care of yourself, Sonia.”

“I don’t know where they put Elijah. But if you find boys buried at that school, look in two places. Look for a graveyard for white boys and one for black boys. They won’t be buried
together.” Her eyes filled with water, a single tear falling from her swollen eye onto the marble floor in the hall of justice.

ELEVEN

I
walked down L dock toward my boat with payment-in-full from a dead man. The money was still in the envelope. I didn’t count it. No reason to. There was no return address on the package. And for me, there was no turning back. I’d made the commitment to Caroline Harper. By opening the sealed package, I’d closed the deal with Curtis Garwood too. And now I had a narrative of Andy Cope’s last day on earth, a description of a tattoo, the name of a man Curtis called the Preacher, and a 12-gauge shotgun shell.

And fifty years from the point of origin—from the day the shell was fired.

A squadron of gulls flew over the marina just above masts of the sailboats, the gulls laughing, darting toward Ponce Lighthouse. I walked down the dock, playing over in my head the two conversations I’d had with Caroline, the one at the Tiki Hut and the other on the phone when I called her after I’d read Curtis’s letter. She didn’t know anyone called the Preacher in Jackson County. Had never heard her mother mention a person by that name. The description of the Southern Cross tattoo meant nothing to her. But she was intrigued with the possibilities of what the shell casing might bring.
“At least that’s real evidence,” s
he’d said.

But what were the real odds of ever finding the shotgun? Betting men simply wouldn’t wager. Caroline said I’d given her something—hope. But I was doing so on speculation, the probabilities so low that that no one could calculate those odds. I’d have to figure a way to
improve them, to shorten the distance, condense the years between a crime or crimes and the perpetrators.

I walked toward a 42-foot Sea Ray, open cockpit, exterior painted deep blue. I heard a woman laugh, smelled a whiff of cigar smoke. They were in the cockpit—an older man and a younger woman, the music up. The man was in his early sixties, mostly bald, wearing an unbuttoned, green tropical shirt, belly hanging over the swim trunks, a thick gold chain buried in his chest hair. A stogie was in one corner of his mouth. He sipped scotch from a heavy cocktail glass before setting the drink on a table. “I’m getting more ice,” he yelled, turning to enter the salon.

The woman was in her late-twenties, sitting in a lounge chair, black hair swept up, dark tortoise shell glasses on a striking face. She wore a bikini top, exposing ample cleavage, white shorts not much larger than bikini bottoms. She was deeply tanned, a rum punch in one hand, fingernails fiery red. Norah Jones was on the wireless speakers singing
Turn Me On
. The woman lowered her sunglasses and smiled at me, uncrossing and crossing her feet at the ankles, slightly shifting her body in the lounge chair. I returned her smile and kept walking.

I walked toward
Jupiter
, my 38-foot Bayliner I’d bought for ten cents on the dollar in a DEA sale. It was at the very end of L dock. I knew Max was either on Dave’s boat,
Gibraltar
or Nick’s boat,
St. Michaels
. She had the best of both marina worlds—the relaxed and quiet crossword-puzzle-solving atmosphere around Dave’s boat, with a Gershwin tune or jazz usually played softly. She might choose to be on Nick’s boat,
St. Michaels
, following Nick in a Zorba-the-Greek dance. It all depended upon whether she wanted a nap or if she was hungry.

It was Nick’s boat at the moment. I spotted her sitting in a canvas chair, opposite Nick. He sat with a reel he’d removed from one of his many rods. Nick was using a light oil to clean the reel, a web of fishing line piled next to his bare feet. He was animated, gesturing and chatting with Max. She seemed to listen patiently, and then she turned her head my way, jumping from her chair, tail wagging. Nick looked up. “Sean, you walkin’ like an Indian or what? Didn’t hear you, and I don’t even have my music on. How long have you been standing there?” He glanced down at the package in my hand.

“Just got here. How’s Max?”

“Hot dog’s the best. She’s a watchdog. Gulls stay off
St. Michaels
when she sits out here. Max is better than a wooden owl. Gulls are on to that decoy crap anyway. Kinda like a crow sits on a scarecrow’s stuffed shoulders.” He grinned, pleased with his analogy. “So, what the hell did you find in that post office box. Looks like you brought it to your marina home, and that probably isn’t cool. I can tell ‘cause Max looks worried.”

Max looked at me and then at Nick. I lifted up the package. “I couldn’t return it because there is no one to return it to.”

“So, what’s in this one?”

“Where’s Dave?”

“When you answer my question like that, man I know the shit’s rising in the bilge. Dave’s on
Gibraltar
. Probably watchin’ C-Span or sleepin’ after he got tired of cussing whatever the hell’s on C-Span.”

“Politicians, mostly. Let’s go find him, and I can show you both what I received from Curtis Garwood.”

We crossed the pier and walked down the ancillary boarding dock that ran the length of the trawler, all the way to the transom. Dave sat at a small table on the cockpit, laptop open, his bifocals balanced near the tip of his nose. He had sliced cheese and crackers on a large plastic platter, a bottle of cabernet and a half-filled glass in front of him.

“Perfect timing, Sean. I was just doing a little research on the Dozier School for Boys, formerly the Florida School for Boys. You can change the name, but you can’t exorcise the demons from the hundred and eleven year history of that place. Come aboard little lady and gentlemen.” Dave stood, getting two more glasses from a small wet bar on deck.

We took seats around the table, Max sniffing the corners of the cockpit, satisfied, she sat near Nick, hoping for a handout. She was never disappointed. Dave poured wine in my glass and Nick said, “I’ll get a brew.” He stepped to the wet bar, opened the mini-fridge, taking a bottle of Guinness and popping the top.

Dave leaned forward. “I assume the large envelope you came with brings new revelations.”

“More puzzles than revelations.”

“Unless Curtis Garwood left you with hard and tangible physical evidence, he, even though deceased, and Caroline Harper, very much alive, won’t have a legal chance in hell considering the circumstances. Statute of limitations overrides any civil or criminal charges of abuse at this point. Only the crime of murder, excuse the pun—still lives, should you find evidence that may connect some very faded and distant dots.”

I reached inside the package and set the shotgun shell in the center of the table. “The dots just got a little closer.”

TWELVE

J
esse Taylor wondered if she’d remember him. He remembered her. Little Caroline Cope, holding Andy’s hand, walking around mud puddles on the way home from school. He recalled her wearing a Tweety Bird yellow raincoat with a ripped hood, her nose running in a cool April rain.
Funny
, he thought.
Can’t remember my debit card pin number, but I can remember bits and pieces of childhood and slow-motion images of survival in Nam
.

He pulled into the driveway, the house a 1950’s ranch style. Maybe a half-acre yard mixed with Bermuda and St. Augustine grasses, a few weeds in the dry patches. He crushed the remains of a cigarette in the car’s ashtray, stopping next to the brick home. He got out and walked down the slate rock path leading to the front door. At this moment he wished that Harold had given him Caroline’s phone number as well as her address. Maybe he should have called first. And now he’s showing up after fifty years. Why hadn’t he come earlier? Why did it take reading Curtis Garwood’s obituary to motivate him?
Because the abuse of a child leaves scars that never fuckin’ heal. That’s why
.

He knocked on the wooden door, paint fading, the scent of blooming azaleas next to the house, a butterfly darting over the pink blossoms. The door slightly opened the length of a brass chain. Jesse nodded, looking into the same pale blue eyes he remembered so long ago. She’d
aged well. “Caroline, I don’t know if you remember me. Harold Reeves gave me your address. I’m Jesse Taylor. I went to school with you and Andy. Andy was in my grade. And he and I wound up in reform school together.”