Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (29 page)

“Your boss is a crook. I don’t know a better way to say it.”

“I’m not going to justify that asinine comment by responding. So get out of my way before I file a restraining order against you.” She walked around me, pointing her remote key at the Subaru, the locks popping open.

“Four people were murdered in a boat explosion and Jeff Carson helped cover it up through maritime legal maneuvers. The person who owned the yacht was James Winston, the same guy whose company is bidding on the reform school property. Carson was his attorney in Miami. Winston’s wife and three others died in the explosion. And now Winston wants to turn the reform school property into a posh Florida version of Beverly Hills. He’s paying Carson to make it happen. I have video on my phone of Carson meeting privately with Winston at the Jackson Country Club.”

She leaned against her car, face flush, eyes searching for nothing that was visible. Her mind seemed to be replaying events of late. She looked at me. “Are you sure? Are you positive?”

“Yes.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit the button to play video. I held the screen so Lana could see it but away from what I thought would be camera angles poised on the buildings. I watched her eyes absorb the moving images, watched the misplaced trust in her boss bleed from the corners of her soul. She moistened her lower lip, a dry swallow, inhaling deeply through her nostrils.

“I don’t even know what to say.”

I studied Lana’s eyes, looking for traces of deception, looking for clues of a refined performance. There were none. “Here’s the challenge: Carson will try his best not to leave an electronic trail. He’s either had payments wired into an offshore account, or he’s been paid cash. You need to set a trap for him.”

“Me? How?”

“Catch him in lies. To get a grand jury indictment against Carson, to find probable cause, as a prosecutor you can—”

“Wait! Okay? I know what I can and can’t do in my job. You’re asking me to go behind the state attorney’s back, behind the backs of the other assistant SA’s in the district, and present enough evidence to a grand jury—people from here, with the result to have an arrest warrant issued for Jeff Carson.”

“The result would be prison time. Lana, it’s not just about a massive development on property that probably has a hidden cemetery and should be sanctified, it’s about murder or murders and the abuse of kids through the years.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the picture of Andy Cope. “It’s about him and others like him. He never walked out of that school. His sister believes his body is still there. Others, people like Jesse Taylor, believe more kids are buried there. Some children killed by people assigned to their welfare. It’s about doing what’s right, regardless of the time that’s passed.” I told her about both of Curtis Garwood’s letters.

She reached for Andy’s picture, holding it in her hand. “He looks like my sister’s son. Sean, to present to a grand jury, I will need a lot more than cell phone video of Jeff Carson walking into the country club with James Winston. Even though Jeff may have been Winston’s
lawyer before, it shows no wrongdoing. It implies the possibility of improprieties, but that can’t be prosecuted. I need proof. This is overwhelming, to say the least. I didn’t have time for lunch and I’m a little lightheaded. I need time to process this.”

“We don’t have a lot of time. Maybe you can begin processing over dinner. My treat. It’ll give me a chance to show you more evidence I have, what I have coming, and a further connection I might be able to prove. And then you’ll have something to take to a grand jury.”

She looked at the photo again. “What was his name?”

“Andy…Andy Cope.”

She held the photo closer, her eyes boring into the image. “This is Andy Cope?”

“Yes.”

“This is the boy that Jesse Taylor talked about. Even though it’s black and white, I can make out the freckles across his nose and cheeks.”

She handed the photo back to me. “Lana, this is an opportunity to right a long overdue, horrible wrong and injustice. Will you help? Will you do something no one else has done in decades?”

She looked beyond the courthouse, beyond the gnarled old live oaks, the last traces of a setting sun warm against her face. “I want to believe this is why I became a prosecutor—to give the dead, the murder victims, a voice. Maybe we can find Andy. In this small town, it’s going to be hard to conduct an investigation from the state attorney’s office. If this is a farce and it doesn’t pan out, if I screw up, I’ll be out of a job. Maybe out of a profession if I’m disbarred for conducting a witch hunt. But if what you say is correct, it’s worth the damn risks.”

“Did you tell Jeff Carson that Jeremiah Franklin is the only living eyewitness to the shooting of Andy Cope?”

“I didn’t put it quite like that. In my briefing report, I listed it. So now, much to my chagrin, I told him.”

“Who did he tell? That person could be responsible for leaving a warning, in the form of a hangman’s noose, in the front yard of an elderly black woman, Jeremiah Franklin’s mother.”

Lana pointed to one of the largest live oaks. “That tree, the biggest, I’m told it was the tree they used to hang a man in 1934. Was he guilty of murder? Maybe. Was the mob, people who ignored due process of the law, guilty of murder? Yes.” She turned her head toward me, her blue eyes soft in the setting sun. “I’d like to think, to hope, those days are deep in the past. But the longer I’m in this job, the more certain I am that isn’t so. I’ll do what I can to help you find Andy Cope, and maybe we’ll find his killer.”

FIFTY-SIX

A
full moon punched its way through swirling dark purple clouds, the moon rising in the distance behind the Jackson County water tower. The tower was suspended more than one hundred feet in the air, supported by four steel girders. Jesse Taylor glanced at the tower as he drove slowly through the night, the moonlight casting the massive tank in silhouette. He remembered long nights in the reform school, looking out the bedroom window, watching the moon rising above the old wooden water tower. He remembered the smell of sulfur in the water, the taste gritty, as if tadpoles had been swimming in the well water.

On the drive back to my motel room, my phone vibrated. I recognized the number. Deputy Parker. I answered and he said, “O’Brien, I just wanted to let you know that I rode out to Jeremiah Franklin’s place. He wasn’t there. I spoke with his mother. She has no idea who hung the noose in her yard. I found a solid boot imprint next to the tree. Took some close-up photos of it. If we find a suspect, we might get a match.”

“Good, and speaking of matches, a friend of mind in the FBI used an electrostatic process to lift a print from that shotgun shell I told you about. All we have to do is find a match today
and we’ll connect fifty years of a neglected cold case into the moment. I’ll copy you on the print. FBI ran it through all known databases. Got nothing.”

“That means I have to put some boots on the ground. Start pounding on doors.”

“Who can you trust in your department?”

“A few guys.”

“You might want to ride with a trusted partner when you start pounding on locked doors. I believe this thing is a lot deeper than I originally thought.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel that in my gut.”

Jesse pulled his car into the Heartland Motel parking lot. He parked a few spaces away from his room, number 29, wrapping the Army blanket around his shotgun and pistol. He pulled the door handle release, about to get out of his car when he noticed someone in the side-view mirror walking across the lot. A woman, bottle blonde, short brown leather skirt, stacked high heels, and a low-cut blouse, ambled down the outside walkway, glancing at the numbers on the doors. She stopped at number 17, looked at something written on a folded cocktail napkin and then knocked.

An unshaven man opened the door, standing in the threshold. He wore a white T-shirt outside his blue jean shorts. No shoes. Baseball cap on backwards. He gestured for her to come in. She glanced over her right shoulder toward a pickup truck in one corner of the lot, the yellow parking lights on.

Jesse looked back at the truck, barely making out the profile of a driver—a man, the orange glow of a lit cigarette bending back and forth as the man smoked. Jesse locked his car and walked around some shrubs, avoiding the overhead lights down the strip, quickly entering his room and locking the door.

He set the pistol on the dresser, shotgun on the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and called Caroline Harper. “Jesse, where are you?”

“Back at this fleabag motel. Who would have thought this little town had hookers crawlin’ out like roaches?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“A little.”

“There’s no such thing as a little for someone who has a problem with alcohol.”

“Maybe, Caroline…just maybe the problem isn’t with alcohol…maybe the problem’s with me. If I could fix me, and stay fixed, I could follow the yellow brick road. Maybe ol’ Oz has a heart for me, too.”

“Jesse, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with your heart. You can get help. I’ll help you if you let me.”

“I drove out to the old school. Don’t know why, really. Just started drivin’ and next thing I know, there it is—like some damn ghost town. I parked across the road and just sat in my car, lookin’ through the fence and razor wire to the buildings and the old water tower. The place reminded me so much of the pictures and old film of the World War Two death camps. Something snapped, Caroline.”

“What happened?”

“I got outta my car and crossed the street right up to the damn fence. And then I walked along the fence. Every time I stopped to touch it, I thought electricity was shooting through my fingertips, up my arm, and shocking my brain. When I came upon a locked gate at the south end, I pulled my pistol and shot the lock off the gate.”

“Jesse, you’re out of jail on bond. They’ll throw you back in and forget you exist.”

“I picked up the lock and stopped by the gate at the main entrance. Johnny Hines was there in his neatly pressed rent-a-cop uniform.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him I found the lock that way, all shot to hell and back. I told him to deliver it to Hack Johnson with a warning—advising him to lock his doors and windows ‘cause something bad is comin’ to visit him.”

“Jesse, I know how angry you are coming back here, the state about to turn the school into a neighborhood with houses and tree-lined sidewalks, but you’re letting your anger drive you to do things that will land you in prison, or worse. If you can find it in your heart to forgive those men who did those horrible things to you, then you no longer allow them to hold a dark place in your heart. You free yourself by not being chained to their evil.”

Jesse said nothing, sliding the blanket off his shotgun, cradling it across his lap.

“Are you there, Jesse?”

He looked out the window in the darkened room, moonlight coming through the slats in the blinds. “I’m here.”

“Have you spoken with Sean?”

“Not since I was locked up when he came to the jail before you made bond. I have to find Jeremiah, and I need to do it alone. That’s the only way he’ll talk, and maybe now he won’t say anything. I don’t know. I messed things up and now I have to get right with him to gain his trust. Sean can take it from there. Bring in the fuckin’ troops at that point. Give Jeremiah a safe hideout, and we’ll get through this.”

“Sean and the FBI found a fingerprint embedded on the brass part of the shotgun shell Curtis found the night they killed Andy. Jesse, they’re trying to locate a match.”

“I bet I know where to find it.”

“Let them find it, okay. Sean has spoken with Jeremiah, too. So it’s not like Jeremiah doesn’t know him.”

“I’ve always cleaned up my own mess. I have a history with Jeremiah, just like I do with you. We all came from the same dirt-poor families. In a strange kinda way, we tried to take care of one another. I want to do that today for you, okay. It’s not just about Andy, it’s about you.”

She was silent for a moment. “Thank you, Jesse. That’s very kind.”

He watched a shadow move outside in front of his window. It looked like the profile of the woman, the prostitute who was doing her thing two rooms down.