Authors: Jonathon King
W
ilson showed up with a squad car following him into the driveway. He greeted me coldly.
We stood in the shadow of the big oaks. Mayes deliberately avoided looking back at the open barn door, and the uniformed cops, one with sergeant stripes on his arm, seemed at a loss as to what to do with the bristle they carried into the place. The sheriff’s face held a look of tight-lipped resolve.
“Hank, keep these two separated, please, until I can get their independent statements,” he said, and then spun on his heel and headed for the barn. I went to sit in my truck while one of the deputies took Mayes to the squad car. The sergeant started over to me but when I looked up and met his eyes, he saw something in them that made him stop short, and he took up a position about fifteen feet away. I didn’t say a word. After a time I watched Wilson step out of the barn door and head back our way. He bypassed us and went to the trunk of his Crown Victoria and popped the trunk. He came up with what I recognized as a fingerprint kit and I watched him return to the barn. He was gone several minutes more and then came out with the kit and again disappeared into the trunk of his car, concentrating on something there. When he was finished, he called me over and my guard came with me.
“I am not a man who likes to be wrong, Mr. Freeman, but my daddy taught me to at least admit it when you are.” There was no question in the statement, so I did not feel compelled to say anything in return.
“I have taken enough latent print courses at the FBI to make a good guess that the fingerprints of the now-deceased Mr. Jefferson appear to match those on the .405 casing that we found at the first murder scene,” he said. “We’ll have to get them over to the expert in Orlando, but I’m guessing we’ve got some shaking out to do with all this, Mr. Freeman. So why don’t you and I sit down and talk a bit.”
Wilson used his cell phone to call the county medical examiner’s office. When he was through he gave his deputies instructions on how he wanted the scene sealed off, and then turned to me.
“Come take a knee with me, sir.”
He led me over into the shade of the oak, and when the sergeant started to follow, he waved him off.
“It’s OK, Hank,” the sheriff said.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Freeman, I’d like to leave your friend there in the car.”
I looked over at Mayes, and when I turned back, the sheriff read the confusion in my face.
“Gotta do this one by the book, sir.”
We settled under the tree and I told him how I had arrived at the church at 6:10 and found Mrs. Jefferson there. I described where and how I had found Mayes and how I had left the scene out back just as he found it, except for my adjustment of the front door.
He nodded, and then it was his turn.
“You must have left the church just before we got there, son. Mrs. Jefferson called Judy down to dispatch and told her she’d found her husband hanging dead in the barn when she got up. She said she didn’t know what to do but to go to the church and pray.”
She had known he was dead before I had arrived. I tried to rerun her words and wondered why I hadn’t caught it.
Wilson then gave me a short version of his own ten-year investigation into the Highlands County murders. The facts weren’t much different from those that Billy had come up with in his research, but from the lawman who had lived the cases and had obviously let them burn in his head for so many years, it was painful to see him try to accept the truth. The reverend had carried out the killings as some kind of warped retribution against evil. The twitch of violence in his bloodline had surfaced in a way he could somehow justify.
While we spoke a van from the medical examiner’s office arrived with another county squad car. Wilson’s sergeant spoke to the driver and he backed down the driveway to the front of the barn. The van emitted a piercing beep for as long as the transmission was in reverse. I cringed with each beat, and saw Mark Mayes squeeze his eyes closed.
“I have seen Reverand Jefferson two or three times a week for a decade. Attended many a prayer meeting at his church,” Wilson said, looking off in the direction of the van. “I’m having a hard time with all this, Mr. Freeman. What possesses a man?”
I wasn’t qualified to answer such a question, and when I remained silent, he stood and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I need to speak to Mr. Mayes, and then you two can go. I will eventually need that rifle that the reverend gave you.”
“I’m sure the ballistics reports on the weapon will be extremely thorough, Sheriff.”
While Mayes was being interviewed I called Billy’s office and home before finally reaching him on his cell. The connection was bad.
“I’m down in Miami-Dade,” he said. “The lawyers for PalmCo are trying to get an injunction to block any excavation of the site that we put in the probable cause filing. They’re trying to use some angle about sacred Indian burial grounds through the name of some Miccosuki tribesman they dug up, excuse the expression.”
“Christ,” I said. “Lawyers.”
“It’s a stalling tactic,” Billy replied. We’ve already got a Collier County sheriff’s detail out there securing the site, and I’ve warned the PalmCo boys that if they play us on this, we’ll be glad to get the media involved.”
“We built Florida on the bones of our workers.”
“Exactly,” Billy said.
I told Billy about Reverend Jefferson’s suicide and the sheriff’s preliminary fingerprint analysis.
“Is Mayes all right?”
I looked over to the patrol car where Wilson was still talking with the kid. Mayes was nodding his head, being deferential and polite.
“The kid’s got some faith,” I said. “And finally some answers.”
“And more to use it on than he bargained for,” Billy said.
When the sheriff was done talking to Mayes he escorted him over to where I was standing and shook my hand.
“I’ll have to have both of you come in later to make official statements. I hope that won’t put you out much. I know you’ll have some pressing engagements down south,” he said.
Mayes climbed into his car just as another squad car was pulling in. I could see Mrs. Jefferson’s profile through the backseat window.
“May we go back to the church for a few minutes, Mr. Freeman?” Mayes said, watching the car through his window. I nodded and he pulled out ahead of me without waiting.
When we pulled down onto the dirt drive to the church, a worn and rusted truck was parked in the grass. I stopped next to Mayes’s sedan and got out.
“Can I suggest that you get a hold of Billy as soon as you can?” I said. “He’s going to have some things to tell you. There’s a forensics team working the spot in the Glades where we found your great-grandfather. Billy can probably arrange to have you taken out there if you want.”
He waited a few seconds and then said, “I don’t think I’m going to have to, Mr. Freeman.” We were still standing next to my truck when a couple came out of the church. He was big and round- shouldered with thick, workingman’s hands. The woman was small and angular and sagging at the shoulders with some invisible weight. The man opened the passenger-side door of the truck for her and then got in and drove away.
“I’m going to go inside for a minute if you’d like to join me,” Mayes said, and turned away.
I watched him disappear through the church door and then sat back looking at the sun filter down through the leaves and onto my hood. I had been up for nearly forty-eight hours, and my head felt filled with cotton though I couldn’t call it sleepiness. I was bone- tired, but my grinding had not stopped. I reached back behind the seats and found the bag I had stuffed there after hosing myself off at Dawkins’s dock and took out an evidence bag.
Mayes was in the front pew when I joined him inside. His hands were folded in front of him, but instead of bowing his head he simply stared up at the cross behind the altar. I sat down beside him and tried to match his gaze but couldn’t hold it for long. I took the gold watch out of the plastic and held it out in my palm beside his knee and he finally shifted his eyes down and reached out to take it. He held it with the tips of his fingers as though he was afraid of a brittleness that was not there.
“It still opens,” I said.
He found the catch and flipped it open, then turned it so he might read
the
inscription. A single tear rolled down his face, leaving a shining streak. He looked back up at the cross.
“He was a good and pious man, wasn’t he, Mr. Freeman?”
“I believe so.”
“Then I should forgive him,” he said. It was not a question, and I did not feel the need to answer.
W
hen I got back to Billy’s penthouse I slept for fourteen hours, the first six or seven in my clothes. I woke late in the evening and took a shower with the full intent of staying up, but when I lay back on the bed I turned my head into the pillow and was gone again for another six or seven. It was still dark when my eyes snapped open, my heart thumping in fear that I didn’t know where I was, nor did I have any concept of the correct day or even the year. My fingers went involuntarily to the soft disk of scar at my neck. I reached over and turned on a bedside lamp, and it took me several minutes to calm myself.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and padded out into Billy’s kitchen. The only light came from the dimmed recessed spots that glowed above the counter space and at the front entryway. I had a magnificent headache, and my immediate guess was caffeine withdrawal. I had gone without coffee for longer than I had in many years. I set a ten-cup pot to brewing in Billy’s machine and stepped out onto the patio to wait. The ocean was black, and against all odds I couldn’t see a single light on the ocean. There were no fishermen, no freighters and no way to judge the horizon—or even the era. There was only the sound of the surf on the sand, the way it has moved up onto land for millions of years. For the rest of the night I sat with coffee, waiting out the darkness and watching light come into the world.
Shortly after dawn I heard Billy moving about inside, and he joined me with an obscene concoction of blended fruit and vitamins and a copy of
The Wall Street Journal.
“Welcome b-back, Mr. Van Winkle.” We clinked mug to crystal and caught up.
The judge in Collier County to whom the PalmCo attorneys had presented their injunction had apparently not been the recipient of enough PalmCo political money, and they squelched their argument. The excavation had already begun. Billy had sent Bill Lott to be his representative. The old CIA man was grumpy as hell over having to spend days in the Glades fighting mosquitoes and the heat, but he was fascinated by the project.
“He c-called last night to tell us they had already f-found an intact skull. They weren’t sharing too m-much with him until he convinced them of his experience with l-law enforcement. Then they l-let him have a look,” Billy said.
“They can’t tell in the field if it w-was one of the b-boys or Cyrus, but there was an obvious shattering hole in the back of the skull. They’ve already ruled it a h-homicide.
“Lott thinks a lot of the b-bones and fragments will be spread out from the animals that would have g-gotten to the bodies. B-But in that insect-rich environment, he says it t-takes only a few days for a body to be st-stripped to the bone. So they th-think they’ll find the others.”
“That ought to get PalmCo spinning,” I said.
“It already h-has. There are three agencies in on th-this, including someone from the park service. One of them is already l-leaking info to PalmCo. And an acquaintance of m-mine at the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
called on a t-tip he got, so the press is onto it, too.”
“So there goes our media threat.”
“Doesn’t m-matter,” Billy said, looking a bit pleased with himself. “Their attorneys left a m-message with my office today. They w-want to meet.”
I let him enjoy his lawyerly reveling for a couple of minutes before asking him his opinion on what they might do.
“They will p-probably offer some c-compensation to the families. Not b-because they had any direct h-hand in the deaths, but b- because it w-was their project years b-back and they want to show r-respect for th
e
workingm-men who sacrificed their lives to b-build the trail.”
“Christ, that’s repulsive,” I said.
“It’s called spin, Max. And due to the fact that w-we don’t have anything sp-specifìc to tie their old company Noren to John William Jefferson, it m-might be the b-best we can do.”
“And that’s going to be enough for you?” I said, wondering if my friend had gone soft. But I should have known.
“No. We’ll d-demand that they continue to f-fund any extra c- costs for the forensics investigation into the other b-burial spots on John William’s m-map. And if there is anyw-way to identify them, their f-families will also have t-to be compensated.
“We will also ask that a m-memorial to the men who lost their l-lives d-during the building of the Trail be purchased by them and s- set in a prominent p-place on land that they will provide.”
“And that’s going to be enough for you?”
I had succeeded in dampening some of his gloating.
“We will m-most likely n-never see their internal documentation from that time. If it even ever existed, they would have sh-shredded it by now.
“They may even h-have the n-names of the other m-men Mayes’s letters sp-spoke of. But I doubt that even a h-homicide investigation is g-going to find them.”
When Billy mentioned Mayes’s letters I thought of the young man. At the church I’d asked him if he would be driving back to the coast. He said he didn’t know. When I stood to go, he handed his great-great-grandfather’s watch back to me.
“You’ll need this for evidence, yes?”
I told him he’d get it back as soon as possible.
“Yes, I know.”
When I left he was still sitting in the front pew, his head bent forward in prayer, but I didn’t know for whom—his family or the Jefferson’s.
“How much is he going to get in compensation?” I asked Billy.
“I’ll ask for a m-million, and they’ll give it,” he said. “But it won’t m-matter to him, you know? He c-called to say he’d enrolled in the seminary.
“Yeah, I figured,” I said. “The truth shall set you free.”
I spent the next two days at the beach, swimming in the surf, reading travel books I stole from Billy’s shelves, and then falling asleep with warm salt air in my lungs and uneasy thoughts in my head. I talked with Richards on the phone and gave her a recitation of the details of my wounding of the P.I., the revelation of the reverend’s own possible killing spree, and the discovery of his suicide.
She told me about the removal of McCrary’s body from her front lawn. That she had spent two hours with internal affairs, documenting what she knew of his relationship with her friend, Deputy Harris. It was shop talk, and even over the phone I could sense an uncomfortable hesitation in her voice. I asked if I could drive down and see her. I asked if she could come up, get away for a day in the sun. She said Harris was now staying with her and she didn’t want to be far away. They were talking late into the night, and the woman was in a fragile place.
“You OK?” I asked the last time we spoke.
The phone felt awkward in my hand and I could hear her breath in the receiver.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about lives caught in circles, Max,” she said, without offering more. I tried to out-wait her again and kept swallowing back words.
“We could talk about it together,” I finally said. The phone was quiet on the other end, and I winced with a physical ache in my chest that I was losing something.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “Gotta go.” And the line went softly silent.
I wiped the sweat from my left eye with the shoulder of my shirt on the upstroke. When I switched to the other side of the canoe, I did the same on the right. I was pounding down the midline of the river in the open water, reaching and pulling with a ferocity I thought I’d left behind long ago. The sun was high and hot and even my raptor friend in the dead stalk of the tall palm was hiding somewhere in the cool shadows. I’d packed the boat with extra supplies. My intention was to make it a lengthy stay this time. I had had enough of bodies and bones, concrete and air-conditioning, recollections and remembrances. I needed to get back onto my river.
I didn’t stop my angry paddling until I reached the cavelike mouth of the upper river, and by then I was gasping to fill my overwrought lungs and the blood was pounding in my ears, and when I finally gave it up I bent forward and was nearly sick in the bow. The canoe coasted along with my final kick-stroke and drifted into the shadows. I laid the paddle handle on one gunwale, the blade on the opposite side, and crossed my arms over it. I rested my head on my slick forearms and closed my
eyes.
I could smell the leaves and roots rotting on the banks, taste the tannin in the tea-colored water, and feel the shady greenness cooling my back. I wanted to stay in that position forever. Then I heard the distinctive sound of a hammer on hard wood coming from the distance.
I took up the stroke again, and along with it, my head began its speculation. I couldn’t work up the same speed as before; the winding trail of the water through the cypress knees and clustered oak tree trunks slowed me. My exhausted shoulder muscles would not loosen again.
The hammering became louder, overwhelming any other sound in the forest. It had no rhythm—six or eight hard strikes, then quiet, then four more. I knew where it was coming from, but not why. When I got to the columned oaks that marked the water trail to my shack, the hammer reports stopped. I turned the canoe in and strained my eyes through the cover of tree limbs and ferns to see if I could catch any movement and surprise whoever was chopping at my home. I crept in slowly, taking care not to let water drip from the paddle blade. Thirty feet from the dock I could make out a rowboat through my cover. It was tied and anchored at one of the rear support pillars. Oddly, an aluminum extension ladder was set in its stern, and I could see that it was leaning up onto the northeast wall and was lashed to the column. Straddling the top of the ladder was Ranger Griggs. He had a plank of newly cut wood in his hand, and I watched him place it carefully against the corner wall of the shack and then take out his hammer from a ring on his tool belt. Before he could set another nail I called out to him.
“How much you charge for this kinda work?” I said.
My voice startled him. The ladder shifted and swayed and started the wide rowboat to rock.
“Jesus!” he yelped.
I paddled over while he settled his own heartbeat and waited for him to climb down. I lashed the canoe on his stern cleat. He was obviously embarrassed, and I made him more so by not saying anything.
“I, uh, came across some Dade County pine and, well, I figured I could use it,” he said, stumbling on his words.
“Yeah?”
“Well, I saw the state order warning that the building may not be inhabitable after the fire, and being somewhat familiar with the code, I figured it wouldn’t take that much to fix.”
“Yeah?”
He sat down on the port gunwale and reached down to open a small cooler. He hooked his fingers around the necks of two iced Rolling Rocks and offered me one. I took it.
“I had the day off with not much else to do so…I hope it’s OK.”
I twisted the top off the beer and tipped my head back as I drank.
“It looks like you know what you’re doing,” I said, keeping my eyes up on the corner where he had already set three planks after tearing out the blackened remains of the originals.
“Well, my father was a carpenter, and his father before him,” Griggs said. “So I come by it honestly.”
We sat in an uneasy silence for a few seconds, both looking up and avoiding what truth might be in either of our eyes. The boats were gently rocking below us both. The quiet was a shared salve.
“Well, then,” I finally said. “Let’s carry on.”