Markers (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 3) (20 page)

“Yea, I heard bout the close call ye had-good thang that deputy of yourn was johnny on the spot or you’d been a dead ‘un fer sure.”

“Yeah, and another day or two in there and I would a probably gone ape-shit on them and ended up on the Seventh Floor.”

“You a sayin’ that like it’s a bad thang-I been up there afore, the Seventh Floor… ye don’t has ta be
nuckin futs
to be there,” Joe chuckled. “They help folks that can’t help theyselves, Sheriff.”

“I wasn’t trying to be ugly about it or making fun of ‘em; I was just making talk.”

“C’mon through here, Son; I’ll put on a pot a coffee and a pot a water fer some cornmeal mush, ain’t got no grits,” Joe turned and walked through a doorway, scratching his ass and then farting loudly as he walked down a short hallway that came out in the diner kitchen. Joshua looked around - everything was neat and as clean as a whistle. It appeared that everything had a place and was in its place.

“I’m not used ta havin’ folks in here wit me-why don’t you go on in yonder to the dinin’ room. Turn on the light-ain’t nuthin’ gonna bite cha out there.”

Joshua was not sure if he wanted to turn the light on; that would definitely alert folks that the diner was open. If Joe did not normally open that early then he should not have to open early just because he came
too
early. He decided just to sit down; the light from the kitchen was sufficient for him. He flipped over an ashtray and lit a cigarette. The last time he was there was the day he and James had stopped in after his last hospital stay. Things don’t change much, thought Joshua to himself as he took a long draw off his smoke.

Joe hollered from the kitchen and asked, “You want some eggs and ham ta go with this here mush, Sheriff?” Joshua told him the mush would be plenty by itself, and then added that maybe a slice of burnt toast would be just as good. He just wanted something to settle his stomach.

“You a makin’ fun of my toast” Joe hollered.

“No, just stating a fact,” Joshua replied. “If you’d invest in a toaster instead of trying to toast it over an open fire-”

“Aw, hush!” said Joe, as he came through the swinging café style doors from the kitchen. He flipped the overhead light on and said, “Ya don’t need ta be a sittin’ in the dark, Sheriff. Most folks know I open when I wake up, no particular time, jest when I get up. But, I’m always opened by seven.” He poured Joshua a cup of coffee, telling him that it would be a few more minutes on the mush. Joshua looked at his pocket watch - it was six-fifteen. It was still early… It was going to be a long ass day-he thought to himself, and a long assed two weeks before he would be released for duty. If he did not go crazy, it would be a frigging miracle…

Thirty-Three

A Sacrificial Lamb

Joshua turned off the blacktop-paved road and onto a dirt road. The long and winding road felt as though it had not been graded in a month of Sundays. The potholes the traffic had wallowed in it jarred his insides as his patrol car rolled over them, emphasizing the pain and soreness he still felt. The doctor might have released him for duty, but his innards had not fully recovered; they were still as sore as a risen. He rounded a curve and there was Henry Gills pride and joy. Joshua parked his patrol car and got out, grunting as he did. He stared across the field toward the lone, ancient live oak that sat square in the middle of the field. The shade of the old oak was just as predominate as it had been thirty-two years earlier, which was the last time Joshua had been in the field. The tree stood over sixty feet tall and its branches swept outward at least that or more apiece. Some of the branches nearly lay on the ground they swooped so low.

Joshua remembered Henry saying that his fifth great-grandfather planted that tree when he came there from Virginia back in the late-sixteen hundreds, which would make the tree at least three hundred years old.

As he gingerly made his way to the tree, he also recalled the summer he and Hook had worked for Henry Gill. It was the end of their junior year in high school; both moving on to the twelfth grade and both needed money to take their girlfriends on a double date to the new drive-in movie theater that had opened in Chickasaw. Henry was bailing hay for the winter and he always hired high school boys to work for him during the summer.

Old Henry is still sharp as a tack, thought Joshua, and he is probably close to ninety years old by now. He was not surprised to see Henry sitting on his tractor staring his way. He was well away from the supposed crime scene, which was why Joshua was there. He had to determine if they actually had a crime scene. From what Ida had conveyed, old Henry was not sure if it was real or some kind of practical joke, but from the stench of it, he figured there was definitely something dead near the tree. Henry told them on the phone that he did not get off his tractor to check it out, because he did not want to stumble and fall like his granddaddy did. He said his grandfather fell in that very field when he was his age. “He never recovered from that fall,” said Henry “he died about three months later… it was godawful to watch him die,” said Henry, shaking his head in the negative. “He laid up a suffering right to the very end…” Henry did say that he could smell whatever it was, over the stench of the cows that was gathered under the tree.

Halloween is still a month and a half away, thought Joshua. He would not think someone would pull a prank that early in the year… Henry’s herd of cows was gathered beneath the tree trying to avoid the noonday sun that was bearing down around them. Even before he reached the tree, Joshua could smell decomposition; the putrid odor of rotting flesh was unmistakable. Without hesitation, he shooed the cows away and walked beneath the low sweeping branches. He gazed around thinking maybe a calf had died during birthing and was nearby, but he did not see anything. He walked around to the other side of the tree and had to reach in his back pocket and pull out his handkerchief. He used it to cover his nose as he walked nearer the corpse that was nailed to the tree. The corpse, an infant a year or so old, was nailed hand and foot about four feet up the enormous trunk of the giant oak. The child had been gutted; its entrails hung down in a cluster nearly to the ground. Joshua immediately thought of little Anna Leigh and her bright-eyed smile. He looked but could not tell whether the child was a boy or a girl.

“My god!” Joshua exclaimed under his breath, muttering something under about barbarism. He looked around on the ground for footprints or other clues but whatever footprints there may have been, had been trampled and destroyed by the cows hooves. He did see several items that the cows had walked over and knocked down. Some of them had been walked on and some were simply lying there, untouched other than having been tumbled about. “What the fuck is wrong with people? Why… good lord why?” Joshua mumbled as he backed away, still scanning the ground for signs of whoever had done such an inhuman, horrendous deed.



Joshua Stokes lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He was getting antsy watching John Metcalf meticulously go over every inch of ground beneath the tree. When he learned of the manner in which the child in the field was murdered, he had insisted that none, but the two of them to be allowed near the sight.

“Well, John, what’s your take on all this… what do you think we’re dealing with here?” Joshua asked John Metcalf, who was picking material off the body and putting it into small plastic bags.

“Honestly, Sheriff,” said Metcalf, stopping long enough to look him in the eye. “It has all the markings of a sacrificial alter of some sort. These half-burned candles and the jeweled chalice lying over there all point to it being some type of religious ritual. I also found a crucifix inside the body cavity, which furthers my opinion that it was a sacrifice. The body is badly decomposed so I did not remove the crucifix, figured I would leave it there to keep from contaminating it… the coroner can remove it in a nice clean environment. I did not want to compromise the case. If there is something behind it or attached to it - all I can see is the end of it, but I’m sure it’s a cross because the feet of Christ are visible.”

“Maybe we can raise some prints off it -”

“That would be a stoke of luck, but don’t count on it,” said Metcalf.

“What kind of sick fuckers would sacrifice a baby?”

“I think they not only sacrificed the child, but collected the blood, maybe even several internal organs as well. There is a partial ring in the dirt below the entrails that could be the outline of the bottom of a metal bucket or a washtub.”

“Did they want the blood to drink?”

“They might have, the chalice contained what appeared to be blood residue in it, but it might not have been human blood in the chalice-maybe not all of the blood they collected was to drink. I remember reading something in college about sacrificing Christian children in something called the ‘Blood Libel’… I think that was what it was. It’s where they drain the blood and use it to make unleavened bread-”

“To eat?” asked Joshua, his stomach queasy at the thought.

“Yeah, I think so, Sheriff. I would have to do some research on it, but yeah, I am pretty sure. The sacrifice of the innocent in a certain manner and letting the blood… it would seem that they’re definitely trying to appease some god or demon of some sort; maybe for power… or as an induction into some satanic sect; you really never know.”

An idea suddenly came to Joshua as he watched Metcalf go back to collecting evidence. “Do you think this death here has anything to do with the last two bodies that were found? I know the first one was the man found off Old Moffat Road in Fairview the day I was attacked, and the second one was the woman that was found near Robbers Island…” Joshua felt a shiver run up his spine thinking of her - he was glad her body was found before he had to go do it; it was right where he knew it would be too. What gave him the willies was that her vision still had not disappeared from his backyard even though her body had been found and taken to the morgue. It was as if she was stuck there, waiting for something, something that was apparently more than just the recovery of her body. Then, another thought hit him.
What if they were a family
, thought Joshua - a father, mother, and child? Could it be possible, he wondered? They still had not identified the first two victims, but his gut was seldom wrong. Metcalf turned and then walked over to where Joshua stood. He had the strangest look on his face.

“That would make sense,” he said, “this baby was probably killed about the same time they were, but the manner of deaths was completely different. Those two were execution style murders. The bodies dumped in plain sight.”

“What if they were a family and the baby was the primary target,” Joshua suggested. “Cookie said that while I was in the hospital, they found an abandoned VW van with California license plates, parked at the cemetery in Wilmer…”

“No one processed the van-it was impounded and taken to the impound yard,” said Metcalf, stating, “I’ll get someone on it as soon as I finish here.”

Joshua could tell by Metcalf’s expression that he had gotten him to thinking about the connection. Somehow, standing under that tree, Joshua had made the connection in his mind and the decision that that was exactly what had gone down. Some psycho or a group of psychos had come upon the small family as they slept in their van somewhere-maybe even parked there at the cemetery. They deliberately decided to take them for their sick purpose. He had hoped that the spree of vandalism to cemeteries and satanic rituals the county suffered through in the late sixties and early seventies were to be the last, but apparently not. Joshua wished that every sick-minded individual that had thoughts of doing bad things to children, or to people in general, would just turn their weapons upon themselves and put an end to it all-it would save many innocent lives and make his and other’s jobs much easier.

Later that day, John Metcalf informed him that the child’s body was missing the heart, liver, and reproductive organs. “Rootworks and Necromancy have spread beyond the underground world of candle shops and herbalist stores,” said Metcalf. “From what I learned doing researchis that they usually do these sacrifices and rituals on the grave of an individual that had a strong life spirit-one ‘Root-doctor’ claimed that he used sacrifice and ritual to raise the dead. In the article I read, he said he needed to do this over the grave of the strong person so they could be ‘the helping spirit’ to lend their strength to help raise the dead… I wonder why the tree… why that tree,” asked Metcalf. “Is there anything special about it, or do you know anything about it?”

“Other than it being very old, I don’t have any idea why they chose that tree… maybe we ought to ask Henry about it. I know he sure takes a lot of pride in it,” Joshua responded, but his mind was also working other angles. When Metcalf mentioned ‘Root Doctor’ he remembered there was an old negro man that called himself a ‘
Root Doctor
’ - He was as black as tar and definitely showed his African origins. He lived off Rebel Road near where it intersected with Craft Highway in Prichard. The old Juju man kept a black cauldron half-full of coal briquettes; they burned twenty-four-seven in his backyard, underneath what he called his
Crux tree
.

When people came to him seeking help with different situations, he would throw different types of roots, herbs, and the occasional
caul
into the black pot and conjure up whatever spirits they needed him too. Joshua had seen him throw stick figures he had made from twigs, twine, and strips of cloth people gave him into the pot. He even saw him throw a bound, live chicken into the fire one time.

God, that was twenty years ago, thought Joshua, then wondered if the old man was still alive - he had to of been near eighty years old back then. As a young deputy, Joshua had gone to him several times seeking his help on a case involving the disappearance of a young black girl from the area. His last visit there was when the old man threw the bound chicken in the fire-That tree the old man sat under with his smoldering black pot he referred to as his ‘Crux tree’ was like Henry’s “pride and joy” - it was an ancient live oak; but hell, the city, no, the entire county is covered in live oaks. Many of them are probably just as old as those two are - what makes those two special… Joshua wondered. He decided to hunt down a dictionary and look up what a Crux tree was.