Authors: Jefferson Bass
T
he high-powered, high-tech worlds of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children seemed far away as Angie and I bumped and slewed down the dirt road to Winston Pettis’s north Florida cabin for the third time. I hoped this time would prove to be a charm. I’d retrieved my truck from the Tallahassee airport at ten the night before—had it really been only fifteen hours since I’d boarded the flight to D.C.?—and had staggered into bed at the Hampton Inn, which I’d persuaded Angie was more comfortable (and more affordable) than the posh Duval. She’d fetched me at midmorning and—after a quick errand at a sporting-goods store—we’d headed to Pettis’s neck of the Florida woods.
As we rolled west again on the long, straight stretches of Highway 90, Angie handed me photocopied pages, covered with an uneven, barely legible scrawl. I felt a rush of adrenaline. “Is this what I think it is?”
She nodded.
The soggy book had not, she told me, responded well to the methanol soak the documents examiner had tried. After Flo had soaked it in the alcohol and redried it, it had become an even more brittle brick of fused paper. So she’d begun a laborious deconstruction process, one that would require reinforcing and then peeling off the sheets of paper one at a time.
After carefully teasing off the fiberboard cover, she’d pasted a sheet of Japanese tissue onto the first page in the book—a blank one—by brushing a thin layer of wheat-starch paste onto the tissue. The tissue itself was as thin and transparent as gossamer, yet it was remarkably strong, according to Flo. It was handmade in Japan from the inner bark of the
kozo
, or paper mulberry, whose fibers were pounded with boards to break them into individual strands. Pasted to a weak, pulpy page of the diary, the Japanese tissue provided a near-invisible web of reinforcement, allowing her to peel off a sheet without tearing it. Thus it was, page by page, a few painstaking sheets a day—paste, dry, peel; paste, dry, peel—that Flo hoped to crack whatever secrets were coded within the buried book.
As I read the words scrawled on the pages, I felt my heart begin to pound.
I cant write much. If they catch me at it Ill get a whipping for sure.
I found this notebook behind the nurses desk when I was sweeping up. It had fell between the desk and the wall and it look like it had been there a long time because there was spiderwebs and dead bugs on it. so I think she forgot about it a long time ago and will not miss it. there was a pencil stub in her trash can. and this Prince Albert tobacco can in the dump. I don’t know why somebody would throw away this can. It has a picture of Prince Albert in a fancy coat and hat, and the lid fits tight, just like on a paint can, but there’s a little metal key like a bottle opener that slides clear around the top of the can so you can pry the lid open whenever you want to. The can still smells good when I open it. Theres a few bits of tobacco down in the bottom. I thought about cleaning them out when I first found the can but I’m glad I didn’t because I like the way it smells.
Papaw use to smoke Prince Albert and his cloths and his car always smelled like this. One time when I was little I asked him could I take a puff on his pipe. He laughed at me and said lord no, boy, youd be sick as a dog. I didnt believe him so I kept asking and asking until finely he let me. The smoke made me cough and get dizzy and then I threw up. Papaw laughed when I was coughing but when I threw up he felt bad for me. then my ma heard me and came outside. she got mad at me for smoking and got mad at Papaw for him letting me smoke. A 7 year old child should not be smoking she said, and a old man with no teeth should know better than to let him. you both need a good thrashing to beat some sense into you. Papaw said go right ahead but she had better start with him first, and he reckoned even if he was a old man with no teeth, he bet he could still turn her over his knee like he used to when she was just a little shit-tail. she looked even madder when he told her that, but she never whipped me then. she waited till the next day, when he was gone, and then she whipped me twice as hard.
I can smoke without coughing now. Even cigarets, but I dont smoke much. For one thing its hard to get cigarets here, you have to steal them from one of the guards or staff, and if you get caught stealing it might be the last thing you ever do. Stealing or trying to run away, those are the surest ways to wind up in the bone yard. Thats what Jared Mcwhorter told me, and hes been here almost a year. So he should know. Besides I dont even like the taste of the smoke. its just something to do.
We got a new boy yesterday, Buck. He is from over at Perry, which is east of Tallahassee, he said. He got caught throwing rocks through some church windows, which is worse than what I done, which was only playing hookie. But it still dont seem worth sending him to this place for. so he mustve got in trouble before. or maybe hes a orphan and they didn’t want him at the orphanage no more. I will find out when I can. but I have to be careful about talking to him. You can get the shit beat out of you for talking. Talking dont get you in as much trouble as smoking, and for sure not as much as stealing or running. But talking is not worth a beating.
there is nigger boys here, but not in our building. they are in some other buildings just down the road. I wonder if they get treated as bad as what we do.
I have to stop now or Ill be in trouble for taking me so long to take the trash to the dump. Writing is not worth a beating. But I will write again when I can.
“Amazing,” I said. “Scary. What do you suppose he means by ‘bone yard’?”
“Whatever he means, I’m sure it’s not good.” Angie shook her head. “Poor kid.”
“Kids,” I said. “Plural. He’s just the one who’s writing it down.”
We turned off the highway for the blacktop county road, then turned down the dirt lane to Pettis’s cabin.
Jasper bayed and bounded out to greet us, rearing up and resting his paws on the sill of Angie’s open window. Winston Pettis shambled down the steps and leaned his elbows on my window. “Howdy, Doc; Miss Angie,” he drawled through the opening. “What brings you out this way today? Jasper call y’all to say he’d found anything new?”
“Not exactly,” Angie began as we got out and Jasper inspected her more thoroughly and personally, “but we’re hoping maybe he will soon. We sure would like to find where those skulls came from.”
“Well, I know Jasper’d be glad to tell you where he found it, if he could. I wish he could talk.”
“That’d make our job a lot easier,” she agreed. “But since he can’t tell us, we’re wondering if he might be able to show us.”
“Show you?” Pettis looked puzzled. “I reckon he’d be glad to, but how you gonna get him to do it?”
She smiled. “That’s where we’d like to ask a favor of you, Mr. Pettis. Would you be willing for us to put a tracking collar on him, see where he goes for a few days? Maybe he’ll bring back another bone, and we can backtrack. See where he got it.” She’d latched onto the idea when I mentioned the Vermont case that Joe Mullins had told me about. Vickery had endorsed giving the technology a try, given that there seemed to be nothing to lose. So while Vickery had headed off to interview local old-timers about the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory, Angie and I had returned to Pettis’s cabin in hope of conducting a field study of canine carrion foraging.
Pettis rubbed the back of his neck, then rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You’re not talking about one of them shock collars, are you? I wouldn’t feel right about putting a shock collar on Jasper.”
“No, sir,” Angie assured him. “I’m talking about a GPS tracking collar. Hunters use ’em to keep track of where their bird dogs or coonhounds are. I’ve got one right here in the truck, if you’d like to see it.” Without waiting for an answer, she returned to the truck and grabbed the collar and receiver from the backseat. The collar itself was a black nylon band, about an inch wide, with the word
Garmin
in white letters on one side. A black plastic housing, about twice the thickness of a shotgun shell, was attached to the lower part of the collar, and a six-inch flexible black antenna stuck up from the top. Pettis eyed the rig doubtfully. “See, there’s a GPS receiver in the collar,” Angie explained. “It pinpoints the dog’s position by comparing signals from a network of satellites up in the sky.” She paused, giving him a chance to ask questions, but he didn’t. “There’s also a transmitter in the collar that sends us a signal every few seconds, telling us where he is,” she went on. She showed Pettis the handheld receiver, which was about twice the size of my cell phone. “This display screen shows us where he is.” She held out the screen for his inspection. “The black triangle in the middle of the map is the location of this receiver. See that little picture of the dog, beside it? That shows us he’s right here.”
Pettis looked at her dubiously. “I know he’s right here, Miss Angie. I’m lookin’ at him. And I know that receiver’s right here. I’m lookin’ at it, too.”
Angie laughed good-naturedly. “Okay, this isn’t a very good demonstration. You willing for us to put it on Jasper, so you can get a better idea how it works?” Pettis frowned. “It’ll just take a minute,” she cajoled.
“And you’re sure it won’t hurt him?”
“It won’t hurt him a bit. I promise.”
“Well. All right, then. If he’s willing. Jasper, you willing to try that thing on?”
Angie handed the collar to Pettis. “Jasper, set on down,” he said. The dog sat, and Pettis strapped it on, frowning and shaking his head. “I sure wouldn’t want to wear it,” he said. “Jasper, you sure about this?” The dog cocked his head, and Pettis laughed. “Well, if you don’t care, I reckon I shouldn’t care.”
Angie said, “So, does he like to chase sticks?”
“Who, Jasper?” Pettis guffawed. “Jasper likes to take naps. You want to track him takin’ a nap?”
She smiled. “You particular about what he eats?”
“Well, I don’t much like it when he brings skulls into the bed,” Pettis said. “Besides that, I don’t much care. He’s a dog, you know?”
Angie opened the back door of the truck again and leaned in. When she emerged, she had a hamburger patty in her hand, which we’d procured at McDonald’s on our way. “Hey, Jasper,” she cooed, waving the burger near him. The dog’s head snapped around and his nostrils flared. “Want a treat?” She made another quick pass with the burger near his nose, too quick for him to make a grab. “Want it? Huh, Jasper, you want it?” She waved the burger back and forth as she said it. The dog’s eyes were locked on the burger like a fighter plane’s targeting radar, and his head swiveled in perfect sync with the movement of the patty. “You ready, Jasper?” She cocked her arm back. “Go get it, Jasper!” With that, she flung the burger across the clearing and into the brush. The dog tore after it. “See,” she said, pointing to the screen. She’d zoomed it in as close as it would go. The small dog icon, which had been superimposed on the triangle, suddenly flashed to a new position, halfway across the screen. As Jasper snuffled his way through the bushes, the icon moved every five seconds. Then, after a brief pause that was punctuated by loud smacking noises in the underbrush, the icon made its way back to the triangle, arriving shortly after Jasper did.
“Okay,” Pettis conceded, “looks like it works, close up, anyhow. How far away can that thing see him?”
“Seven miles, says the company that makes it,” said Angie. “That’s if the terrain’s flat and there’s nothing in the way between the collar and the receiver.” She scanned the flat terrain around the cabin. “We might need to find a piece of higher ground to get better line-of-sight reception. Anyplace nearby that’s higher up?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “How about a hunnerd fifty feet higher up? There’s a old fire tower right over yonder.” He pointed. “I’d check the stairs and the floorboards pretty careful before I trusted it, but it looks to be in pretty fair shape, at least from the ground.”
Angie cocked her head, much as the dog had done a few minutes before. “So you’re willing for us to track Jasper for a few days, see where he goes, see if he brings another bone back from one of those places?”
“Sure, why not,” he said. “On one condition.”
“What condition?”
“If he shows you where the rest of them bones are, you’ve got to give him another hamburger. Sound reasonable?”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Pettis.” Angie laughed, and they shook hands. “We’ll get somebody out here to check the tower later today. Oh, we’ll need to change the battery in the collar every couple days. Is that okay?”
Pettis scratched his stubble again. “That might require some additional compensation,” he said. Angie looked worried. “Better make it a cheeseburger.”
“You and Jasper drive a hard bargain, Mr. Pettis. But you’ve got me over a barrel. A cheeseburger it is.”
He grinned. “Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Angie.”
B
reakfast anytime, promised the marquee of the Waffle Iron, a glass-fronted cinder-block diner on the main street of Sinking Springs, the tiny county seat of Bremerton County. The sign appeared to date from the 1950s or early ’60s; the diner’s name was outlined in script by glowing tubes of neon, and so was the profile of a cartoonish chef, who wore a puffy white hat and served up a golden neon waffle. Underneath the sign’s offer of breakfast were two alternatives:
Lunch Specials
and
Fried
Cat
. It was only when I did a double take that I noticed the word
Fish
tucked on a separate line underneath. The fried cat must have been pretty tasty, because the parking lot was packed fender to fender with pickups and SUVs.
After our errand at Pettis’s, Angie and I had returned to explore the ruins of the school further while Vickery mined the courthouse records for information about the reform school, or old-timers who might still remember it. We rendezvoused with him shortly after dark in the Waffle Iron’s parking lot.
Every head in the diner swiveled in our direction when we entered, sizing us up frankly and reminding us clearly that we were outsiders. Angie and I ignored the stares; Vickery took the opposite tack, nodding and waving amiably at various patrons, as though they’d greeted him in a friendly way. We ran this visual gauntlet to a back corner of the diner, where a booth had just opened up. As we slid onto the plastic benches, Angie and Vickery with their backs to the wall, the clatter of silverware and chatter of conversation gradually resumed.