House of Secrets (31 page)

Sexton pointed out nearby landmarks. A wrought iron fence, a nearby flagpole. He handed the Big Gulp to Pixie and said, “Make sure Joel drinks this.” Then the old man headed through the door, stamping the mud from his feet. Novak waited, then went back inside. He was just inside the entrance, doing what looked like an Indian dance. He stamped his foot and slapped his hands against his legs, turning east, then west, then north, then south. He almost touched her with one move as she passed. She ignored him. The invasion of these strange people only continued. They browsed around the library, the old man in the books, Pixie near the computer, reading the medical texts she’d pulled.

The old man asked Novak if he could cash some checks, pulling out a handful. The boy named Joel kept talking about his airline reservation.

The Sarasota-Bradenton Airport bordered the campus. Joel kept telling Pixie and Willie he had to be dropped offthere. His plane was leaving at three o’clock. Then Joel would go back outside, smoke another cigarette, and drink from the Big Gulp. Soon the young man seemed to be slurring his words more, losing coordination. At one point, Willie and Pixie had to support him by the arms. Novak studied Pixie at the computer. Those dark eyes. Maybe she was beaten up. Maybe she was an abused woman. She found a brochure for a battered women’s shelter and walked over, discreetly handing it to her. But Pixie was lost in her own baby story again. She’d had to leave the baby in the camper to go to another campsite, she was saying. She said she had to have sex with a man there so he would feel guilty and wouldn’t call the police when she took his wallet. When she returned she found the baby dead.

Suddenly the old man was there. Right next to them. “You ain’t going to no funeral,” he said to Pixie. “You can’t get your story straight.”

His bony fingers grabbed Pixie by the collarbone, lifting her up like a magician doing an elevation. Then the old man pushed her hard into the edge of the computer table, her tummy hitting the edge. “Remember last time,” he said. “You better get your story straight.” Novak returned to her reference desk, still watching, still listening. She thought of calling the emergency number again, but they’d already humiliated her one time. She didn’t want to get into it with them again. Novak eavesdropped on a conversation between the old man and Willie. Pixie and Joel were outside, smoking. Willie was saying Joel wanted to get back to Ohio. Joel wanted to go back and “testify,” Willie said. “If Joel testifies, he is going to get on the stand,” the old man said.

“That retarded boy is going to start telling stories. And get everything all mixed up.” That was the reason they brought him to Florida, the old man said. His face was red, his fists clenched again.

“The only way he is going back to Ohio is in a body locker,” the old man said. “A body locker?” Willie asked. “Like Vietnam. When they send the dead home on the plane in a silver locked chest.” Minutes later, Joel came back inside, staggering. He told the old man he had to go to the airport. His plane was leaving. “You don’t have enough money for a bus, let alone a plane ticket,” the old man said. “Yes, I have a hundred dollars,” he said. The old man told Joel he didn’t have $100 earlier. Where did he get it? Joel said people in Ohio had wired it to him. He seemed to be trying to stand up to the old man. The old man frisked his pockets, finding nothing. “Where’s that hundred?” he demanded. When Joel didn’t answer, the old man clamped one hand around his nose, slapped his other hand under his chin, pushing his head back.

Again, cat-like. Discreet. Then his fingertips grabbed Joel by the esophagus, squeezing. “Where’s the money?” he demanded again. “In a bag in the car,” the young man named Joel finally said. The old man, who Gail Novak later identified as Eddie Lee Sexton, marched Joel out of the library toward the parking lot. And just like that, they all were gone. It was a Tuesday, one of the Sextons later would remember, the day after Pixie, Willie, and their father had returned from yet another Ohio trip. In the morning, Ed Sexton had cooked everyone breakfast. Egg sandwiches. Later that morning, Sexton and his son Willie went for a walk. By the time they got back, May Sexton was preparing for a picnic. The patriarch had brought a couple of buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken back from Ohio, and the side fixings from the Colonel. Pixie and Sherri helped their mother pack the car. Half the family was having a picnic. May, Ed, Skipper, Matthe Chris, Kim, and Dawn would go. Pixie, Willie, Sherri, Joel, and Shasta remained behind. What happened in the couple of hours between the time the group left and returned to the campsite would constitute a new chest of secrets within the Sexton family. Safe to say, by dark Campsite Number 18 looked as if it could have been any typical family at any Florida campground. The boys sat in the Nissan for a while, listening to rock music, the windows rolled up, out of earshot from other campers and their dad. A barbecue was lit. Dinner cooked. Dishes washed. The young ones were put to bed. Later, somebody built a campfire. The Sextons all sat around, listening to the flames crackle and the occasional rustle of an animal back in the brush. The chill of the Florida night pushed everyone closer to the fire circle, their silhouettes dancing in the dark treetops. They were all Sextons.

Little Skipper Lee, and now Joel Good, were no longer among them. Even Joel’s clothes were gone. “A good snitch is a dead snitch,” the patriarch said, the flames leaping like puppets in his eyes. Ranger Yale Hubbard had seen some of them at the park office, or on his daily tours through Little Manatee. The girl named Pixie always came up and paid for the registration, the husband she called Joe usually in tow.

She told Hubbard her father was an author, working on a book on Indians. He had to make frequent trips to Ohio to meet with his publisher and pick up advance checks, she said. Hubbard had seen the cars come and go. She was a pretty girl with a big problem, other rangers joked after she left. It wafted in through the open window when they took her registration money. The girl had the worst body odor anyone had ever smelled. Hubbard met Eddie Sexton. The ranger kept the meetings to brief chats. You linger too long with some of those older campers, you could easily lose a half a day. “He could have been a writer,” Hubbard later recalled. “There’s some pretty strange writers out there. And he didn’t appear to be a dummy. He looked like he was thinking all the time. He always knew exactly what he was saying. He planned ahead before he spoke.” When Hubbard began noticing three teenage boys roaming the campground, he sharpened his observations again. It struck him a little odd that they all dressed in military fatigues. He scanned them for weapons, but saw none. He was a little concerned about breakins or maybe hunting in the park.

But they never gave him a reason to question them during their entire stay in the park. Hubbard chatted with Willie Sexton the most often.

He asked about the wildlife. There were foxes and bobcats and snakes, Hubbard said. They talked about the manatee, the giant, gentle water mammal, the state animal that swam up the rivers in the coldest months.

Willie seemed like a rather innocent, vulnerable kid. “I wouldn’t call him retarded or anything like that,” Hubbard would later recall.

“I would just say he was slow.” On Thanksgiving, the park all but emptied, but the Sextons stayed. After the holiday, Little Manatee began to fill again, the girl named Pixie returning to the office to re-register, never paying for more than three days at a time. The family would stay nearly two months. It was only much later that Yale Hubbard would realize that the husband named Joel wasn’t coming with her to the office anymore. It didn’t raise a flag. They always had cars coming and going. They had relatives nearby in the county, they said. Old man Sexton usually kept to himself. He’d see him disposing of trash at the Dumpster, or walking down the camp road with his wife.

Only once did he show any sense of humor. Sexton was walking down the middle of the road. Hubbard approached behind him in the park truck.

Sexton lingered on the pavement, waiting until the bumper got close.

Then the old man wiggled his butt, like a startled game bird. As if to say, Go ahead. Here I am. Get me if you can. l Wise afiriendly Tuesday, December 7.

Steve Ready tossed his pen on a pile of reports and picked up the ringing telephone. It was the secretary at the sheriff’s department’s detective bureau. “We just got an anonymous tip that Eddie Sexton is at his brother’s house at a Third Street address,” she said. “He’s supposedly leaving in ten minutes.” Moments later, Ready was behind the wheel of the Celebrity, another detective and a K-9 unit on their way in separate cars. The address was Orville Sexton’s, Eddie’s older brother, whom Ready had avoided interrogating while he staked out the Massilon postal box. The house wasn’t a half mile away. Eddie Lee runs into the neighborhood, Ready figured, the dog will hunt him down.

Ready didn’t linger for pleasantries when Orville Sexton opened the door to his ramshackle two-story. He walked right past him into the living room, the other officers scrambling up the stairs, searching room to room. “Your brother here?” Ready demanded. “No, he ain’t here,” Orville Sexton said in a nearly unintelligible mountain drawl.

“Was he here?”

“Yeah, about four hours ago.”

“Did you know he’s wanted?”

“I didn’t know that, Mr. Ready.”

“Did you give him money?”

“I didn’t give him nothin’, Mr. Ready.” Ready’s eyes darted from Orville Sexton to his wife Sarah, also in the living room. The 68-year-old former coal miner looked like he’d stepped off Tobacco Road. He and his wife were in their bare feet, their soles black with dirt. Orville was missing a toe. A small child was standing in the room now, apparently a grandchild. The house was a mess. A decaying couch squatted across from a large projection TV.

“Call me Steve,” Ready snapped. The detective’s patience was running out, not only with Orville Sexton, but the entire family, the entire Sexton case. Ready walked over to a telephone. “This place is a sty,”

he said. “I’m going to pick up the phone. And I’m going to have human services here. You’ll be lucky if they don’t take this child.” Sarah Sexton complained she had a bad heart. “Damn right you’re going to be sick, lady,” Ready said. “I want to know where the hell Eddie is at.”

She asked, “Who’d you say you worked for?” He told her the Stark County Sheriff’s Department. “I’m going to call the sheriff,” she said. Ready picked up the phone himself and handed it to her, saying, “You go right ahead and do that.” He thought, who was she kidding?

Ready turned back to Orville. Where was Eddie? Where had the entire family been all these months? He could hear Sarah Sexton leaving a message on the phone. Eddie had been there with Willie and Pixie, Orville said. Beyond that, he didn’t know a thing, he said. The phone rang. Sarah Sexton answered, saying, “Yes, Officer Ready is here.

He’s just yelling and cussing and screaming at me.” She handed Ready the phone. “Hello,”

Ready snapped. It was Sheriff Bruce Umpleby. “Steve, what is going on there?” he asked. “I’m looking for Eddie Sexton.” The sheriff said the woman was complaining. “I’m just doing my job, Sheriff.”

“I know you’ll do it in a professional manner, Steve,” he said. “Yes sir, I will,” he said. The two other policeman gathered in the living room. They’d found nobody. As Ready worked his way to the door, he asked, “Did Eddie make any phone calls here?” No, Eddie made no calls, Orville said. They looked at him blankly. “I’ll be back,” Ready said.

The detective stopped at the door, turned around and pointed. Adding, “And next time, I’m bringing the DHS.” If anybody asked, the official story in Campsite Number 18 was that Joel Good had been picked up by a woman in a red Nissan. He’d received a letter from his aunt Teresa, Pixie later told a brother, reporting that his grandfather was deathly ill. Nobody had seen him since. Eddie Lee Sexton’s mind continued to churn between his nightly Bible readings. One night in the smoke-choked camper, he hatched a plan to rob a bank in Tampa. Pixie would do surveillance. Willie would get the money with a gun. Eddie would be the wheel man.

But like so many of Sexton’s schemes, the plan never got farther than the talking stage. They did rob a convenience store one night, Skipper would later claim. Three of them wore camo and ski masks. The old man had a 9mm semi-automatic. He and Willie hit the store, while Skipper waited outside in the car. Another night, Skipper was convinced his father killed someone. The patriarch came back from a trip to town shaking and chainsmoking cigarettes. He’d never seen his father rattled. “He didn’t talk for a while,” Skipper would later recall.

“And what you gonna think? He’s done something really bad.” Locally, there were no reports filed on felonies that matched the Sextons’

descriptions. Later, none of the siblings could remember names of towns or roads, let alone the names of banks and stores involved. The same would not be true of other marks. There were more trips back to Ohio. In a little over four months, the Sextons put nearly 50,000 miles on the new Sentra. One day, Eddie Sexton took Skipper and Willie aside. He talked about “erasing” Eddie Jr. and Otis Sexton in Ohio.

After they killed Otis, they would “take out” Eddie Jr., his wife, and his children, save one. Eddie Jr. had a new son, born in 1993. He proposed using the child as a replacement for the buried Skipper Lee.

On a frigid Canton evening in early December, Otis Sexton received a call from a neighbor, saying, “There’s a car full of people watching your house.” Otis turned off all the lights in the house, then went upstairs and looked out a bedroom window. He could see a light-colored car parked on the street out front, the glow of cigarettes inside. He found his .357 Taurus and watched for an hour. They’d had problems with a drug house in the neighborhood. When he pushed the curtain aside, the car drove away. Skipper Sexton later recalled that he, Willie, and his father were in the car. “We were just going to wait until he came out and blow his ass away. Then torch the house. We sat there for about two and a half hours, and we seen the curtain come open in the top window and I think it was him that looked out. We jetted.”