Authors: Jefferson Bass
He took another breath, and this time I heard the soles of his shoes scraping the floor slightly as he pivoted into the windup. The strap seethed through the air again, slapped the ceiling, and exploded onto my buttocks. This time I’d stiffened up, bracing myself for the blow, but still it made me gasp.
“Two,”
he said. “How’s that feeling? You think you might could develop a taste for this, Mister Fancy Forensic Scientist?” The strap slid off me and slithered away; his shoes pivoted, and the leather seethed and slapped and exploded again, this time onto the same spot as the previous blow. It felt as if my flesh were splitting open all the way to the bone. I groaned. “
Three,”
he counted. “You know, after I went to Texas, I didn’t get a chance to do this. I thought about trying to get work in a boys’ school down there, but they didn’t have anyplace as good as what I’d left. And I figured I’d best lie low anyhow.”
Swish
pivot
seethe
slap
explode
. “
Four
. But you know what?” The only answer I could manage was a moan. “There’s a lot of illegals smuggled across the border from Mexico. Sometimes they bring their kids with ’em.
Five
. Sometimes the parents don’t survive the trip, for one reason or another.” He paused to breathe and wind up again.
“Six.”
I felt myself on the brink of losing consciousness again. “So then the smuggler—the ‘coyote,’ the smuggler’s called—the coyote’s got this kid on his hands. So every now and then, I’d get me a boy. The girls, they’d end up somewhere else—in a cage in somebody’s basement in El Paso, or in a brothel back across the border in Juarez—but there wasn’t as much market for the boys.
Seven
. You’d be surprised how cheap you can buy a little ten-year-old wetback boy.”
Either he miscounted, or I passed out briefly, because “ten” was the next number I heard him say. It was the last number I heard before unconsciousness—blessed unconsciousness—took me under again.
When I came to once more, I was lying on the floor, my legs and buttocks and back afire, my hands and feet tied. I heard a sound like a dying animal might make—half groan, half whimper—and realized it was coming from me. Then, through the fog and through the pain, I heard the seethe and slap of the leather strap again. “Stop,” I gasped, flinching and shrinking from the pain as best I could. The strap struck flesh with a loud whack, but this time I did not feel the impact. I heard another groan, but this time the groan came from someone else’s mouth.
A pair of feet and legs and the leather strap came into my field of view, and a man I did not recognize squatted down and looked at me. He appeared to be about my own age, maybe a few years older. His face was weathered and bore multiple scars—a thin vertical line down his left cheek, another over his right eye, and one across his chin—and the top of his left ear was missing a ragged crescent of flesh. His neck was as thick as a tree trunk, and his shoulders were beefy. The fingers of both hands—unlike Cochran, he had them both, I noticed, as he squatted with his hands on his knees—were tattooed with letters that spelled out F-U-C-K Y-O-U. His eyes flitted rapidly, never quite settling, as he looked at me. “Hurts like hell, don’t it?”
“Just go ahead and kill me,” I said.
“No,” he said. The corner of his right eye—the one with the scar—twitched slightly. “That’s not what I’m here to do.”
“I don’t understand,” I groaned. “Who are you?”
“I’m not somebody who’s got a quarrel with you,” he said. “I’ll cut you loose when I’m done. This here is between me and him. I’ve got a score to settle, and I’m only up to ‘five’ so far.”
Something was coming together in my mind—something about the man’s muscular build and the ragged, amateur tattoos: a prison body, and prison tattoos. “My God, you’re Anthony Delozier, aren’t you? You were in Starke until a few months ago.”
“I expect I’ll be going back again,” he said, “soon as I finish up my business here.”
He walked out of my field of vision, and I heard the dreadful sequence of the strap again.
“Six,”
Delozier counted. “Did you ever think there might come a reckoning?”
In response, I heard what I recognized as a strained, pained version of Cochran’s voice whisper, “Go to hell.”
“
Seven
, you son of a bitch. I hope it takes seven hundred to kill you.” There was another windup, and another blow of the strap. “How many of us did you beat?
Eight.
How many lashes?
Nine.
An eye for an eye.
Ten
. And a tooth for a tooth.
Eleven.
I thought you burned to death forty years ago.
Twelve
. I thought I’d put wings to my prayer. Guess I should’ve put a strap to my prayer instead.”
The phrase cut through the fog of my pain like a knife. “What did you just say?” My question was punctuated by another blow of the lash on Cochran. I raised my head and said, as loudly as I could, “Wings of fire. You put wings of fire to your prayer.” The lash stopped. The man’s legs walked toward me, and again he squatted. He stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost. “Jesus,” I said, “you’re Skeeter, aren’t you? We found your diary.”
“What are you talking about?” The twitch in his eyes accelerated; it reminded me of a fluorescent light that flickers as it’s heading toward burnout.
“We found your diary, Skeeter. It was in a Prince Albert can under a flagstone.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“It helped us.
You
helped us. You can
still
help us. Untie me and let’s call the police.”
My mind was racing back over the diary’s contents. “Your friend Buck. We found his bones. At least, I think we did. One of the sets of remains we found was wearing a compass around the neck. The compass you gave him to help him escape.”
His face—his iron-hard, lifer’s face—twitched and then crumpled, and he put a large, tattooed hand over his eyes and began to sob. His big body shook, and he sat down on the floor, wrapped his arms around his knees, and cried. After what seemed like a long time, the sobs subsided, but still he sat, hunched into himself, his broad back and shoulders rising and falling with deep, ragged breaths.
Underneath the sound of his breathing, I gradually became aware of another sound, and as its volume rose, I knew he heard it, too, because his breathing stopped while he listened. In the distance, a siren was approaching. He raised his head, unfolded himself, and got to his feet, the leather strap still clutched in one hand.
“Skeeter, untie me. Please.” He hesitated, then walked to the bedside and shook out the strap for a windup.
“FOUR-teen.”
He grunted as he swung the strap at Cochran, putting all his strength into the blow.
“Skeeter, please stop. Let the police take it from here.”
“FIF-teen.”
Under the rain of intensified blows, Cochran’s breaths grew labored now, wheezy. I’d heard such breathing before. It was the beginning of a death rattle.
“Skeeter, we’ve got a lot of evidence now. We found seven murdered boys. We found the chain around the door handles. We can bring this guy to justice.”
“Justice? What the hell is justice? . . .
SIX-teen
.”
“We can send this guy to prison for the rest of his life,” I said. “I know it doesn’t make up for what he did, but it’s the best we can do.” The siren was getting close now.
“It’s not the best I can do.
SEVEN-teen.
”
“Did you kill Hatfield?”
“Hatfield? The son of a bitch that ran the place? I like to think I’d’ve gotten around to it, but I hadn’t yet. If somebody beat me to the punch, I’d like to shake his hand.
EIGHT-teen.
”
“Skeeter, if you kill Cochran, you’ll never get out of prison.”
“Man, I’m in a place a lot worse than prison. I burned nine boys to death. Didn’t mean to. Didn’t know the doors were chained. Prison’s all I was ever fit for anyhow, thanks to fuckers like this.
NINE-teen.
”
The siren grew deafening, then fell silent. Blue strobe lights pulsed through the open doorway, casting surreal shadows as the strap rose and fell.
“TWEN-ty.”
Outside, a car door opened and closed softly.
I heard slow footsteps, then a low, gravelly voice. “Seth?” It was Judson’s voice. On the bed, Cochran groaned. “Seth?” Another groan. “This is Sheriff Judson. Anthony Delozier, if you’re in there, come out now with your hands up.”
“All right,” Skeeter answered. “I’m coming. Don’t shoot. Your man Brockton’s in here with me. He’s all right. But if you shoot, you might hit him.”
“Brockton, can you hear me? You in there?”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “But I’m tied up. Kinda beat up, too.” Through the fog of pain, I struggled to remember something, but what?
Seth
. Why had the sheriff said Seth? Who was Seth? I knew the name, but didn’t know why.
“Delozier, get your ass out here.
Now
. Hands up.”
“Coming.”
I heard a clatter, and saw the handle of the lash bounce and twist as it hit the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my relief was short-lived. Delozier’s legs crossed my field of view. He grasped the handle of a tool that was leaning against the wall of the barn, and I saw to my horror that it was an ax. He walked quickly again to the bed where Cochran was tied. In the surreal glow of the blue strobes, I saw the shadow of the ax rise and then descend with a splintering, sickening thud. “Twenty-one, by God,” Delozier whispered. He turned and walked slowly to the door, the ax hanging from his right hand. “I’m coming out.”
When Delozier reached the barn door, he stopped.
“You,”
he gasped in the direction of the sheriff. “I
know
you. It’s been forty-five years since you and Cockroach put my friend in the trunk of your car, but I’d know you anywhere, you sodomizing son of a bitch.” He made a low, growling sound—an enraged, animal sound—and ran out of the barn, ran toward the strobing lights. A gun fired—once, twice, in quick succession, and, after a pause, a third time. The third shot was followed by a silence so heavy it seemed solid.
In the silence, I heard the answer to the question I’d asked myself a moment before: Seth was Cochran’s first name. The sheriff knew Cochran, and knew him well, I realized; he’d known him well enough to let Cochran select boys for him to molest. The sheriff had known that Cochran didn’t die in the fire at the school. And he’d known that Cochran was here; maybe he’d even known that Cochran was luring me into a trap.
And maybe now the sheriff was going to finish what Cochran had started.
“Brockton?” Judson appeared in the doorway. My only hope, I decided, was to pretend I hadn’t heard what Delozier had said just before the sheriff shot him.
“Who’s there? Sheriff, is that you? I think I blacked out for a minute. Did I just hear a gunshot? What happened? Are you all right?”
There was a pause while the sheriff took in what I’d said, turned it over in his mind, evaluated it, decided what to do. “He came at me,” Judson said. “Delozier. He went crazy, said some crazy stuff, and came at me with an ax. I shot him in self-defense.” The sheriff walked slowly toward me. His gun was still in his hand.
“Sheriff, could you untie me?”
He didn’t answer. He was standing two feet away, looking down at me, his gun still in his hand.
Suddenly I saw his head turn slightly, listening. I heard it, too: a car careening down the dirt road, then the sound of locked-up wheels sliding to a stop; a door being flung open. Stu Vickery raced into the barn, his weapon drawn. “Agent Vickery,” said the sheriff slowly. “Glad you could make it.” During the tense silence that followed, I heard my heart thumping. “I was just about to untie your man Brockton here, but I’ll let you do it instead.”
Should I warn Vickery about the sheriff?
Could
I warn him, without causing the sheriff to start shooting?
Vickery lowered his gun and stepped toward me, stepped between the sheriff and me, and then—just as I was about to shout a warning—spun and aimed his gun at Judson’s chest. “Put down the weapon, Sheriff.”
“Vickery, have you lost your goddamn mind, or are you just bound and determined to ruin your career?”
“Put down the weapon, Sheriff. You’re under arrest.”
“The hell you say.” The sheriff’s gun began coming up.
“Put it down.
Now.
”
“Under arrest for what? For shooting a murderer in self-defense?”
“No. For
being
a murderer. You’re under arrest for the murder of Winston Pettis. We’ve got evidence that puts you at the scene of his death.”
“You’ve got shit, Vickery.”
“We’ve got genetic evidence that puts you at the scene. You really shouldn’t chew tobacco, Sheriff. Filthy habit. All that juice. All that spit. All that DNA. One of our crime-scene techs found a nice wad of your spit in Pettis’s yard. Perfect match with the wad of spit you left in the ferns the day we found the graves.” Vickery paused. “That’s not all. We found the tracking collar you took off the dog. One of our divers pulled it out of the Miccosukee River. It’s got your thumbprint on it, Sheriff. And there was a .45 in the mud beside it.”
Judson’s eyes flickered as he took in Vickery’s revelations and evaluated his options.
In the darkness outside, I heard a siren racing toward us and, underneath it, another one. Judson heard it, too, and lowered his gun. Suddenly he was an old, weary man.
“I
can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Angie said. She was holding my left elbow and carrying my briefcase as I hobbled toward my truck. Vickery, at my right elbow, had my duffel bag slung over his shoulder. We were crossing the parking deck of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where I’d been treated for the lacerations Cochran had inflicted with the strap. “If not for you,” Angie went on, “I’d have always had some lingering doubts about Kate. Some fear that maybe she really had shot herself.”
“I was glad to help. I know it doesn’t bring your sister back, but I’m glad you feel that some kind of justice has been done.” She nodded. I chose my next words carefully, hedgingly. “I hope the sheriff up in Mocksville doesn’t give you too hard a time.”
“Actually, he called me this morning. Apparently he’s decided I’m telling the truth. They found out Don was at his new girlfriend’s house drinking until six in the morning”—she rolled her eyes in disgust—“when they had a big fight and she threw him out. So he would’ve gotten home, drunk and upset, just before he sent me that text message. And my nosy next-door neighbor, who is
always
spying on us, bless her heart, told the sheriff’s investigator that my car and Ned’s were both in the driveway from five-thirty, when she got up, until eight, when we left for work. So it looks like I’m no longer a suspect, and they’re calling it a suicide.”
“That’s good news.” I was relieved not just for Angie’s sake, but for the sake of my own peace of mind, the settling of my own questions about whether she’d taken justice into her own hands. “You think he killed himself because he really did feel guilty about Kate?”
She shrugged. “You know, this might sound crazy, but really? I think he killed himself because he owed the universe a suicide.” Her eyes brimmed with tears, but her face looked open and peaceful; poignant, but not grief-stricken.
“Well, Doc, we really appreciate all you did for FDLE,” Vickery mumbled through his cigar after a moment. “You’re sure your feelings won’t be hurt if we take it from here?”
“My backside’s too painful for me to notice anything else hurting,” I said. “Besides, my globe-trotting colleague in Tampa is back from Africa, and the lab in Gainesville is staffed up again, so you’ve got plenty of anthropology brainpower in Florida now.” My gait was an odd, stiff-legged waddle, partly because of the painful bruises and lacerations left by the strap, partly because of the layer of gauze the emergency-room doc had applied to my thighs and buttocks.
“You sure it’s a good idea to drive back to Knoxville this soon?” asked Angie. “Why don’t you stick around and heal up a few more days? We’ll be glad to put you up at the Duval. You’ve earned it.”
“Naw,” I joked, “the Twilight’s spoiled me for anyplace else. If I can’t stay there, I’ll just crawl home to my own bed.”
“We’ll ship a snake up your way every week or two, if you want,” said Vickery. “Just to make sure you don’t forget us.”
“Hey, thanks.” I laughed. “So, do y’all think it was Cochran or Judson who put that cottonmouth in my room?”
“My money’s on Judson,” Angie said. “And considering how Pettis and the dog ended up, you’re mighty lucky to have gotten off with only a scare. Judson’s a bad guy.”
“You think the tobacco juice from Pettis’s yard and the prints on the tracking collar are enough to convict him of Pettis’s murder?”
“It’s a pretty strong case,” Vickery asserted. “Your testimony will help a lot. We’ve also got tire impressions from the Pettis place that match the tires from the sheriff’s truck.”
“But I thought the tire tracks at Pettis’s were from old, worn-out tires. Didn’t Judson’s truck have newer tires?”
“
Brand
-new tires,” Stu stressed. “We found the old ones at the county garage this morning. The mechanic will testify that he took ’em off the day Pettis was killed. I think we’ve got enough to get a conviction. Judson must think so, too—he’s looking for a deal, and he’s willing to talk. He says Cochran killed Hatfield, because Cochran was afraid Hatfield would tell us he wasn’t really dead.”
“How convenient,” said Angie—not for the first time in this case—“since Cochran’s no longer around to deny it.”
“He also says Hatfield and Cochran had half a dozen pals who regularly came and molested boys,” Vickery continued. “They called it ‘the chicken-hawk club.’ One of the members was a high-ranking aide to the governor; one was deputy commissioner of corrections. Conveniently, as you say, both those guys are dead now. But Judson says he’s got photos that implicate them.”
“I still find it hard to fathom,” I said. “The systematic abuse—the torture, no other word for it—heaped on those boys by the very people who were supposed to put them back on the right path.”
“I’m telling you,” Vickery repeated. “This world’s one big crime scene. I hate it that we dragged you into such a messy corner of it.”
“Me, too,” Angie agreed. “I really thought all you’d be doing was taking a quick look at a skull. Instead, you got backbreaking work, deadly snakes, and a beating that could have killed you—
would
have killed you—if Delozier, aka Skeeter, hadn’t shown up. I’m so sorry.”
I thought back over everything that had happened since I’d first stepped off the plane in Tallahassee. I was stunned to realize that only thirteen days had passed.
Despite the pain I felt, and knew I’d continue to feel for days, I found myself smiling. “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I’m not. Most interesting two weeks I ever had.”
Vickery studied the end of his cigar, looking hesitant—almost shy, even. “So here’s another possibility, if you’d be interested in extending your Florida vacation by a few more days,” he said. “Mind you, I understand if you want to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible. But I’ve got a little place down on the Ochlockonee River, right on the bay. It’s about the only thing I’ve been able to hang on to through my divorces, except for my bad habits. Nothing fancy—just a fishing shack, really, which I guess is why I’ve been able to hang on to it. But the view’s pretty, and there’s a dock with a ladder, and the salt water’d be good for those welts you’ve got. There’s good mojo at that little place. I don’t get down there very often these days, but every time I do, I wonder why the hell I waited so long, you know?”
“I’d better head on home to Knoxville,” I said. “But thanks for the offer. Can I have a rain check?”
“Anytime.”