Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7) (36 page)

He followed the path into the woods, thick trees on both sides, birdsong coming from beyond the perimeter of foliage. The humid air smelled of pinesap and wet moss. Clumps of ferns grew along the edge of the trail. He wanted to run, to jog down to the river to meet Jeremiah. Mosquitoes orbited his head, whining in his ears, probing his neck. He swatted them, rolling down his sleeves, the burn on his arm stinging.

Jesse walked as fast as he could on the path, sweat rolling down his back, the taste in his throat was like gunmetal. He passed two rustic benches, longing to sit for a few seconds to catch his breath. He continued. Around the final bend, the trail opened up to a bridge he remembered as a boy. The Bellamy Bridge always had a spooky look, he thought. Rusted iron and cables straddling the Chipola River. The floor had rotted away long ago. He remembered one of his teachers telling the class it was the oldest bridge of its kind in Florida. It replaced wooden bridges that had carried settlers and soldiers from one side of the river to the other. The old metal bridge still stood, crippled but a testament to another era.

Jesse stopped at the bridge, looked down at the slow moving river, cypress trees lining its banks, a white heron hunting in the shallows of cypress knees poking above dark water. He couldn’t see Jeremiah anywhere. Not by the old bridge, underneath it, or along the riverbank.
He’s gone. Too damn late
.

“Hey, man…what took you so long?”

Jesse turned around. Jeremiah stepped out from the thicket, smiling. “Skeeters would eat me alive if I hadn’t brought some spray. Looks like you could use some too. Jeremiah pulled a small bottle of insect repellent from his pocket and handed it to Jesse.

Jesse sprayed his hands, face and neck. “Thanks. I forgot how bad the bugs could be down here.”

“They ain’t bad on the river, wind and whatnot. Just walkin’ through the woods is a bug love fest.” He grinned.

“I didn’t see your car. Where’d you park?”

Jeremiah pointed to the right of the bridge, to the water. A johnboat with a small outboard motor was tied to a cypress tree. “I came in my boat. I always preferred rivers to roads, anyhow. Caught me two fat catfish while waiting for you.”

“I’m damn sorry I’m so late. Lot of shit happened on the way here.”

Jeremiah nodded. “You look all tattered and tore, Jess. Like a scarecrow got a thumpin’ by the crows.” He smiled.

“Have sure as hell been better. I’m hoping what you tell me will make a lot of folks better. Caroline Harper…your mother…and a lot of guys like us who’ve been carrying this weight far too long.”

Jeremiah blew out a long breath. “I hope so. Maybe that former policeman friend of yours, Mr. O’Brien, can do something. He seems the real deal.” Jeremiah looked at the river, the cry of a limpkin coming from across the water, an anhinga standing on a cypress stump, wings extended, drying feathers in the warm sunlight. “Jesse, I think you know who it was that kil’t Andy. I used to see him occasionally when I’d go in to town for things. He’d always give me a hard stare. If pure evil can be seen in a man’s eyes, you can see it in his. Windows to hell, I call his eyes.”

“Who was it, Jeremiah? Who shot Andy?”

Jeremiah swatted at a mosquito in the air, looked up at Jesse and said, “It was—”

His shirt exploded in a bright red flower of blood. The sound of the shot came a millisecond later. Jeremiah fell to his knees.

Jesse ran to his fallen friend, taking him under the arms and dragging him behind a tree. A second bullet echoed through the forest. Jesse pulled out the pistol, firing once in the direction of the shot. The forest was quiet. He could hear the trickle of eddies swirling around the cypress knees. A fish jumping in the river. There was no human movement. Nothing but the sounds of Jeremiah trying to breathe. Jesse knelt beside him, pressed his hands to the bloody wound. “Hold on! Just breathe. We’ll get through this together.”

“It’s…it’s…okay…”

“Don’t talk. Rest. I’m callin’ 9-1-1. We’ll get you to a hospital.” The sweat loosened the bandage on Jesse’s forehead, the bandage flapping. Jesse tore it off.

Jeremiah coughed, blood trickling out of his mouth.

“Hold on! Don’t you think about dyin’ on me. We’ve been through too much. You’ll make it.” Jesse tried to smile. He found his phone, hands bloody, shaking. He was trembling so bad he could barely hold the phone. He punched the numbers 9-1-1. No signal. “Fuck!’ No!”

Jeremiah coughed again, his chest rising and falling. “Hold on buddy. I’ll carry you outta here.” Jesse wiped the blood from Jeremiah’s mouth.

“Come closer.”

“Please…hang in there.” Jesse looked in his old friend’s eyes, the light leaving, death approaching. Jesse’s eyes welled with tears. “No…

“Closer…”

Jesse lowered his head, turning his ear to Jeremiah’s lips, a rustle of breath, like the sound from a seashell, coming from his lips and in the whisper came the name of the man who killed Andy Cope. And then Jeremiah let out his last breath on earth.

Jesse sat up, holding his old friend’s head in his hands, tears spilling down both cheeks and dropping onto Jeremiah’s face. Jesse looked up through the outstretched limbs of ancient cypress trees, patches of blue sky in the distance, feathers of white clouds floating in the sky. He screamed to the heavens. “Nooooo…”

His voice traveled over the old bridge, into the deep woods, echoing and fading, the sound of a woodpecker drilling into a dead tree across the river.

SEVENTY

I
calculated that I was less than ten miles from Jesse’s location when Deputy Parker called. “Sean, we found Jesse Taylor. It’s bad. Hikers in the vicinity of the old Bellamy Bridge heard shots. They flagged down one of our units in the area. The deputies found Taylor walking out of the woods covered in blood. He was carrying a pistol. Taylor was arrested for murder.”

“Murder?”

“Details are sketchy. We have units on the scene. Detectives and forensics en route.”

“Who did Jesse allegedly kill?”

“He told the arresting deputies that Jeremiah Franklin was shot. Says he didn’t do it. Who the hell knows anymore? I’m headed that way.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“You might want to keep your distance. Detective Lee is there or he soon will be. He won’t tolerate you near a crime scene, not after you calling him out that night at Shorty’s. Gotta go.”

He disconnected. I slowed my Jeep, thinking about what I just heard.
Jeremiah Franklin dead
. I knew Jesse would never kill Jeremiah Franklin. And I knew, with Detective Lee investigating the killing, Jesse probably would be railroaded and found guilty for a crime he didn’t commit. I continued driving to the Bellamy Bridge area, thinking about the killing of Andy Cope, knowing that it was connected to the killing of Jeremiah Taylor. Fifty years apart, bullets propelled when pulled by the same trigger of hate and human prejudice. I didn’t know for certain who killed Andy. I didn’t know who killed Jeremiah, but I did know that now I had two murders to solve—and solving one would, no doubt, bring closure to the other.

I spotted the flashing blue lights down Jacob Road. A battery of sheriff’s cars on both sides of the road—deputies waving motorists through the profusion of flashing lights and the staccato blasts of police radios. I saw the white ubiquitous van—the vehicle that’s sent in lieu of an ambulance. It was a nondescript coroner’s wagon.

And then I saw death concealed.

They rolled Jeremiah on a gurney from a trailhead leading into the woods. A white sheet draped over his body, a dark red stain near the chest area. They lowered the gurney to the ground, collapsing the legs, then lifting it up and rolling it into the stark metallic grotto of the van. A plump man with a white moustache, wearing a dark blue shirt with the word CORONER across the back, supervised the loading of the body.

I thought about the day I met Jeremiah on his property, the old school bus his converted home. I remembered the story he told me about his migrant friend shot and killed in a motel parking lot somewhere in Michigan.
‘I sat there in the dark in that motel room. Drank all the beer. About four in the mornin’ I lifted the Bible off the nightstand and looked up what Carlos
had referred to. It says all people are like grass. Their glory is like the flowers in the field. The grass dies and the flowers fall, but the word of God stands forever. I gotta remember that now more than ever.’

A tall deputy standing in the center of the road looked at me and yelled, “Let’s move! Nothing to see people.” I drove around him, looking at the various squad cars, trying to spot Jesse sitting handcuffed in the back of one. I saw Deputy Parker talking with a man in plainclothes, someone I assumed was an investigator. I drove another one hundred feet, pulling off the road, beyond the last parked squad car. I carefully lifted the glass with Zeke Wiley’s prints on it and placed it in a small paper sack.

And then I walked back toward Parker.

He ended his conversation with the man, both nodding and going separate ways. I approached Parker. He looked at me, a frown on his face. He said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not at the crime scene. I assume it’s back in the woods. Where’s Jesse?”

He gestured to a sheriff’s car parked in the middle of the pack. I could see Jesse staring out the window, his face looking in the opposite direction from where they were loading the body into the van. I thought of that night at Shorty’s when he was placed in the back of the deputy’s car and driven away. I looked at Parker and asked, “What’d he say when he was arrested?”

“I hope you’re not referring to Miranda rights.”

“No.”

“Says he didn’t do it. He says someone from the brush shot Jesse. He’s not sure where. He says he returned fire. One shot. And guess where he got the gun?”

“Where?

“From a state trooper. He stole it.”

“Stole?”

“The trooper had stopped him for speeding. He’s saying that Taylor jumped him, stole his gun and cuffed him to his steering wheel.”

“Why would Jesse jump a trooper for giving him a speeding ticket? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know. Forensics apparently lifted gunshot residue from his right hand. The pistol is the trooper’s so this is quickly looking real damn bad for Jesse.”

“Can you speak with him? Ask him what happened before he gets orally pummeled by Lee and others.”

Parker looked around, eyes anxious. “I can give it a try.” He walked quickly to the sheriff’s car, opening the front door, leaning in to speak with Jesse. After less than thirty seconds, Parker stood, closed the door and walked back to me. “He said emphatically that he didn’t do it…but he knows who did and said he’ll only tell that to you. He said get me Sean O’Brien. So that ball’s in your court. I’m the unlucky deputy who has to tell Mrs. Franklin that her son, Jeremiah, isn’t coming home. It never gets easier.”

I looked back toward the squad car, a deputy now standing next to it and talking with Detective Lee. The deputy nodded, got into the car, and drove away, Jesse turning his head, looking out the rearview mirror. I lifted my hand in an awkward wave.

Deputy Parker said, “He’s going to need a damn good lawyer.”

“It’s all about the physical evidence. I have a glass for you.”

“Glass?”

I handed him the paper sack. “I was visiting the Cypress Grove senior center and happened to meet a fellow named Zeke Wiley. He was working at the reform school when Andy Cope was killed. Wiley drank from the glass. Good prints. Even visible with the eye. Maybe you can have your lab take a look. If one of the prints matches the one the FBI lifted from the shell, we have more of that physical evidence.”

He nodded. “That’ll be great for the Andy Cope case, but we’ll need something a little more current for Jesse Taylor.”

“They’re the same case, just a half-century apart. All we have to do is connect the dots.”

I turned and walked back to my car, feeling the heaviness, the weight of two murders on my shoulders. The white van with Jeremiah’s body drove by me, the driver in dark glasses, brawny hands gripping the wheel. I looked at the Bellamy Bridge sign on the side of the road, knowing that the old bridge was more than a modern crime scene. It was the bridge over trouble waters in the area. I thought about the press conference in three days. I had less than three days to find enough evidence to stop the sale of the property.

And that meant I’d have to find something physical connecting decades and people, somehow exonerating Jesse while convicting someone else. I had about two hours before dark. I was sure the crime scene would be processed in less time than that. They already had “their man.” Maybe it would give me time to return. Time to look for something Detective Lee may have missed…or tried to hide.

SEVENTY-ONE

I
t was a call I didn’t want to make. I sat in a McDonald’s parking lot, a cup of black coffee in one hand. I punched in Caroline Harper’s number. When she answered, I told her what happened to Jeremiah and Jesse. There was a long pause. When she spoke, her voice was strained, drenched with sorrow. “I don’t know Mrs. Franklin well, just in passing. I want to visit with her. I’m not sure what I can say. There are no words, really. Maybe I can just be there to offer support. What can we do for Jesse?”

“He needs an attorney immediately. They’ve booked him in the county jail on first-degree murder charges. Can you have your lawyer go there as soon as possible?”

“I’ll call him when we get off the phone.”

I heard her exhale. “Sean, no one would ever fault you if you decide to walk away from all of this. All I was hoping to do is somehow get a court order to hunt for my brother’s grave. God forbid did I ever think others would die in the process. I’m at a loss. I don’t want you to—”

“Hey, wait a second. I didn’t sign on for the first half only. I’m here for whatever it takes to start digging out there. Sometimes it takes a few charges to get over the castle wall. If I can’t climb the wall or penetrate the gate, I’ll figure a way to build my own Trojan horse.”

“Thank you, Sean.” I heard a sniffle in her voice as she disconnected.