Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (35 page)

I smiled and said, “Everything in its place, right? Details matter, don’t you agree? Are you done eating?”

He nodded.

“I’ll take that out of your way.” I lifted his tray and set it on a vacant table next to us, and then I sat down across from him. “How are you, Zeke?”

He stared, trying to place me. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m okay. Do I know you, sir? Are you the new doctor?” His voice was croaky.

“No. And you don’t know me.”

He stared at me, his tea-colored eyes slowly blinking behind the glasses.

“But I know you, Zeke.”

“You do? How in the hell would that be?”

“I’ll show you.” I looked into his eyes, lifting the photo from my shirt pocket, keeping the image toward me until my hand got within two feet of his face. Then I turned the picture toward him. “I know you were there that night when Andy Cope was killed.”

The blinking behind his glasses became more rapid. He tried to swallow, a clicking sound in the back of his throat. His lower jaw quivered, lips pursing, air coming from his mouth. I could see the carotid artery flutter under his sagging turkey neck skin.

“After all these years, you do remember Andy. Do you ever think about him, Zeke? Do you ever think what he might be doing today had he lived? Maybe he’d have been an engineer. Maybe a scientist—someone who cleans up the oceans. Maybe a doctor—someone who finds a cure for cancer. But we’ll never know what Andy could have been because he was never given the chance. Why’d you kill him? Was it because he was running away? Were you trying to stop a prisoner from escaping? Why’d you do it, Zeke?”

“No…no…I didn’t do it. I didn’t shoot that boy.”

“I never said he was shot. How’d you know he was shot?”

He wiped the grease from his thin lips with the back of his left hand, the narrow yellow wedding band worn dull.

“Did you ever tell your wife what happened?”

“She’d died…long ago.”

“So did Andy, longer ago. If you didn’t do it, who did? Who pulled the trigger that night, Zeke?”

He said nothing, staring down at his hands—in the background, a contestant on
Jeopardy
answering a statement with a question in the background, a dining room server bussing tables behind us.

“Zeke, it’s time that Andy and the others boys had two things: recognition and justice. You can give it to them. At this point in your life, you can change things—make a difference. Help close old wounds. Not only for the families who never saw their children, again, but for the grown men living today who still carry those emotional scars.”

“Go…go…away!” his voice a littler higher, his left hand trembling.

The attendant bussing the tables, a middle-aged Hispanic man, approached us. He had a round face, a diamond in one earlobe. “Ever’thing all right?”

I smiled. “I should learn never to talk politics with family. Even after all these years.”

The man shrugged. “We are who we are.” He grinned, patted Zeke on his back and pushed a cart filled with dirty dishes out of the room.

I leaned forward, closer to the old man who folded his thin arms across his chest, harboring a conscience of deception. I lowered my voice. “Zeke, you may be in a senior center now, but if you don’t help bring closure to the deaths of Andy and the others, you’ll live your final days in a cell. And even at your ripe old age, the inmates pay closer attention to pedophiles and child murderers.”

He reached for the remote control to his wheelchair. I lowered my hand across his hand—bones like wooden pencils, skin malleable and crusty. “Zeke, I’m going to leave an envelope and a sheet of paper with you. You’ve got a choice. You can write down the name of the person who
killed Andy…or you don’t. If you feel in a talkative mood, you can write down what happened. If you do nothing, if you continue your silence, then you’re an accomplice to a child’s murder. And when I come back, it will be with the police and a warrant for your arrest. If you do the right thing, make sure you sign your name, seal the envelope and give it to the receptionist. ” I reached in my coat pocket for the envelope, paper and pen, setting them on the table. I wrote across the envelope. “My name is on the front of the envelope. They’ll hold it at the desk for me.”

I stood. He looked up at me, an opaque liquid dripped once from his right nostril. I stepped to the table with his dirty dishes, lifting the glass by the bottom, pouring the remaining water into the shallow rubber tub with other dishes. I walked away with the glass and the greasy fingerprints on it, looking back at Zeke Wiley who stared at the paper and pen in front of him, the haggard and frayed appearance of a man about to write his last will and testament.

In the parking lot, as I was unlocking my Jeep, the phone in my pocket buzzed. Dave Collins said, “I thought I’d give you a heads-up on the GPS tracker with the most movement—the one you hid in Jesse Taylor’s car.”

“What do you have?”

“I can calculate time and space with his movements. He’s driving fast, I’d estimate close to ninety. He’s on Highway 276 or Bump Nose Road—and that is the name. He’s headed north, almost running parallel to the Chipola River.”

“He’s going to meet the only eye witness to Andy’s shooting. He’s in a race to meet with Jeremiah Franklin. And I have a late start.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

J
esse glanced down at the speedometer, the needle below the ninety MPH mark. He eased up on the accelerator just as blue lights flashed in his rearview mirror. He looked into the mirror. A state trooper was not far behind, gaining. “Shit! Shit!” Jesse pounded the steering wheel with an open hand. He slowed down to the speed limit, sweat popping on his forehead, heart pounding. “I don’t need this crap now.” He scooped the spilled Vicodin pills off the seat, palming them back into the prescription bottle.

He tossed the bottle of pills under his seat, looking up into the rearview mirror at the trooper’s car. It was less than two hundred feet behind him. Instinctively, Jesse touched the pistol strapped and holstered above his left ankle. He pulled off the highway, slowing and stopping in a small clearing next to the road. The trooper pulled behind him.

Jesse could see the video camera mounted on the car’s dash. The shotgun barrel vertical next to the trooper. Road dust settling. The trooper put his hat on, opened his door cautiously. He had the lanky body of a pro basketball player. Long arms. Long neck. He walked up to Jesse, the trooper’s right hand very close to his holstered pistol. He said, “What’s your hurry?”

Jesse looked up, sweat trickling into the bandage on his forehead. “I got a bad damn prostate. Gives me fits. Gotta pee real bad.”

The trooper stared at him. “Plenty of woods around here. What happened to you?”

“Got jumped in Marianna.”

“They catch the guys who did it?”

Jesse said nothing for a few seconds. “You said guys. How’d you know it was more than one?”

“I didn’t. Lucky guess. You been drinking?”

“No.”

“You smokin’ weed?”

“No.”

“I need to see your license and registration.”

Jesse nodded. “In the glove box.”

The trooper rested his right hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, watching Jesse lean over to the glove box, opening it and fishing around loose papers. “I know it was in here before I left from home.”

The trooper pulled his pistol and aimed it at Jesse. “Get out of the car! Now!”

“What’s the matter with you? Why’d you pull a gun on me”

“Out of the car!”

“So you can shoot me?”

“I’m not telling you again!”

Jesse slowly opened his car door and got out. He raised his hands. “What do you want? Who you workin’ for? Is the whole damn county on the take?”

“Shut up! We’re gonna go for a little walk into the woods. Move!”

Jesse glanced back at the trooper’s car. “On video, they’re going to see you pulled your gun for no reason, drew down on an unarmed man.”

“Not if my dash-cam has a loose wire. Picture comes and goes. Move!” He grinned.

Jesse walked around the back of his car. In the distance, a truck filled with logs was coming down the highway. The trooper lowered his gun, moving his body between the approaching truck and Jesse. He said, “You act normal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean when you’re holding a pistol on me?”

The trooper said nothing, waiting for the truck to pass. As it blew by, he watched it for a second, looking at the truck’s side-view mirrors. Jesse lunged for the trooper’s pistol. He used both his hands. Grabbing the man’s wrist. Twisting hard, tendons popping. He dropped the gun, Jesse picking it up and rolling to the ground. The trooper charged. Jesse raised the pistol, aiming at his chest. “Stop! Another step and you’ll die. Hands up!”

The trooper slowly raised his long arms. “You broke my wrist.”

“You’re damn lucky I haven’t broken your fuckin’ neck yet. Walk to your car. Now!”

The trooper turned and walked to his car, Jesse following. “Open the door. Get inside.” The trooper did as ordered. “Toss the keys out the door.”

“They’ll hunt you down.”

“The keys!”

The trooper removed the keys from the ignition and threw them to the ground. Jesse picked up the keys, never taking his eyes off the man. “Now, take your cuffs and slap one on your left wrist first. Then you’re gonna stick your right hand through the steering wheel and you’re gonna cuff yourself to the wheel.”

“You’re a dead man. You’re just too dumb to know it.”

“Do it!”

The trooper complied, mumbling under his breath.

Jesse jogged to his car, pain shooting from his rib cage. He tossed the trooper’s gun on the seat beside him, started his car and squealed tires, pulling away. He was less than ten miles from the Bellamy Bridge. And at that moment in time, with a trooper’s car in his rearview mirror, it felt like he was a hundred miles from the old bridge and old friend.

SIXTY-NINE

I
followed the directions Dave gave me, heading for someplace on the Chipola River, somewhere I hoped to find Jesse and Jeremiah. I called Lana Halley. She answered, her voice just above a whisper. “Sean, I have a deposition in five minutes.”

“It won’t take me that long to tell you something about your boss.”

“What?”

“He’s mother is confined to the Cypress Grove senior care. Her name is Julie Carson. She worked at the reform school the time Andy Cope was killed. Hack Johnson was working there at the same time. I believe he raped her. I believe Jeff Carson is his biological son.”

“What? You say you
believe
. What do you mean?”

“Johnson has a tattoo on his right arm in the shape of the Southern Cross. I drew the cross on a napkin and showed it to Julie. She had a very adverse reaction, like a PTSD flashback when someone holds up a frightening picture of your past. If Jeff Carson is Johnson’s illegitimate son, and if he knows it, maybe that’s one of the reasons the Johnson clan gets away with…murder.”

“But if Jeff’s mother was raped by Johnson, why would Jeff do anything for them?”

“We don’t know the history—the dynamics, the lies, the greed.”

“What led you to approach her?”

“Jeff Carson’s chin.”

“His chin?”

“The cleft is unique—sort of makes a slight upside down Y pattern. When Hack Johnson’s son, Solomon, approached me in front of Ruby’s Coffee Shop, I saw an almost identical cleft in his chin. It was so similar it made me wonder if there could be a blood relation. Considering the circumstances—an apparent rape, Julie Carson may never have told Hack Johnson he’d fathered her child. Maybe she did years later. I don’t know. I do know that the clan gets preferential treatment in Jackson County. I saw it the night the grandson, Cooter Johnson, tangled with Jesse Taylor at the bar. Detective Lee had no interest in Jesse’s story.”

“A DNA blood test with the old man will speak volumes.”

“And if one of his fingerprints match that from the shell, I’d say you have more than enough for a grand jury. Speaking of prints, I lifted one from a guy named Zeke Wiley. He’s a resident of the senior center too. He was working at the reform school the time Andy was killed. He says he didn’t do it, but he does know Andy was shot, something I didn’t tell him. I’m going to give the print to Deputy Ivan Parker. If it matches the one from the shotgun shell, Deputy Parker will have an easier arrest. If not—he might need some help.”

Jesse drove north, heading for Jacob Road—the road that would take him to an old trail leading to the Bellamy Bridge. He punched in the numbers to Jeremiah Franklin’s phone. After
six rings and no answer, Jesse disconnected. “Hope you’re still there.” He tossed his phone on the passenger’s seat and drove faster. The road wound through thick forests, oak and pine trees. He turned right onto Jacob Road. He remembered the old trail through the woods that would lead him down to the river and the bridge. He hoped that he could still find the entrance to the trail.

After another mile, something positive. Jesse mumbled, “I’ll be damned. A sign of the times.” The state has erected a sign marking the head of the trail. Jesse pulled off the road, driving behind a thicket of trees on the opposite side of the road, the undergrowth hiding his car from passersby. He picked up the trooper’s pistol, sliding it beneath his belt, trotting across the road, one hand pressing against the binding around his ribcage.