Missing Witness (51 page)

So what about the strange inscription that looked like a Y interposed over an I, with an upside down U next to it?

Then Will had a thought. He looked up Dr. Rosetti's number on his cell phone and rang it, but just got his voice mail. He decided to just leave a quick message that he needed some historical information about a date in 1718.

He snapped his phone shut and looked out over the rolling blue-gray ocean, in the last remnant of daylight, and thought of all the sea stories he had ever read. Powerful tales generated by the power of the ocean. Melville's
Moby Dick.
Stevenson's
Kidnapped
. Dana's
Two Years Before the Mast.

And of course there was the Bible's account of Jonah, who had tried to flee from God and was swallowed by a great creature of the sea, then spit out onto dry land three days later.

Will glanced again at the scrap in his hands. The ocean breeze was stiff now, and the little piece of paper began flapping. The last ray of light was breaking here and there in the gray clouds. A picture was forming.

Will stopped dead in his tracks, his feet buried in the cold sand. Icy water washed over his feet.

He stared. Was it really a Y over an I? Was it really an upside down U?

Or was it something else?
Death is swallowed up in victory
. He remembered the Bible verse. The one he'd spoken to Jonathan Joppa in the hospital.

And then the mass of dots—disconnected, oblique—began to form into a picture in his mind. Something he had seen. He had been there.

Suddenly Will was beginning to grasp the meaning behind these strange symbols.

And with that realization, he felt something…something ominous. A penetrating cold raised the hair on the back of his neck and swept down his spine.

72

W
ILL
C
HAMBERS
'
VOICE REFLECTED
stunned disbelief. So Jonathan Joppa, at the other end of the telephone line, repeated what he had just said.

“After yesterday's service, the board of overseers at Safe Harbor fired me as pastor.”

“I'm so sorry…”

“I appreciate that, Will. I'm…trying to put things together in my own mind. Trying to decide where God is leading me in all of this. I've done some thinking. Maybe it's for the better. Although I also had some other bad news.”

“What was that?”

“I received the soil engineering report on Stony Island. The soil tests and percolation tests indicate that the island probably cannot support any kind of major construction project, in terms of residential or condominium units. According to current zoning, we could continue using the big lodge, the existing outhouse, and the other outbuildings. But the idea of converting it into a development of condos doesn't look possible.”

“Well, in light of all that,” Will said, “maybe I've got some good news for you. Or maybe not. Maybe some strange news. It's hard to explain…”

“What is it?”

Will glanced out the window of his Corvette. The sky was still gray, but the wind was blowing only mildly, and there was very little rain coming down.

“Look, Jonathan,” he continued. “How would you like to go for a boat ride?”

“Now?”

“I know it's getting dark. But the storm looks like it's waning. And this really is urgent. I may be totally off base on this. On the other hand…let
me just explain it to you when we meet. Can you get down to the marina where we launched from last time?”

“Sure. Do you want me to call ahead and have them get a launch ready?”

“Yes, and if you can grab some rain slickers that might be good. It's still drizzling. I just want to take a quick trip to Stony Island and then come right back. Then I can still get over to the hospital to visit Fiona and Andrew.”

“Will, I trust your judgment on this…If you think this is important…”

“I'm afraid it is. And if I'm right…well, we may have to get an immediate court order. A security detail…Just hurry—I'll meet you at the marina.”

Will hung up and pulled over to the shoulder. He called up Dr. August Longfellow's home number and rang it immediately.

After ten rings, Longfellow picked up.

“Dr. Longfellow,” Will began, “I have an urgent and rather unusual request for you.”

“Sure. Anything.” Longfellow said cheerfully. Then he added, a little sheepishly, “Listen, I never got a chance to apologize to you. I think I should have been a bit more candid about my driving suspension. You know, the way it came up in court during the trial—”

“Forget about it,” Will said quickly. “We won. You were great. But here's the deal…I need you to check on some historical facts for me…like right now.”

“Sure,” Longfellow said, intrigued by the urgency in Will's voice. “I'll just turn the stove down under my jambalaya. What do you need?”

“You know the book you've been working on, dealing with regional North Carolina history, particularly along the Outer Banks?”

“Yeah. It keeps dragging on and on. My publisher is complaining because I keep asking for extensions. Maybe it's just me…we scholars have a notorious habit of getting bogged down in minutiae, and getting top-heavy with the research…but then we don't get around—”

“Dr. Longfellow,” Will interrupted, “do you have any data…any historical research about the original owners of Stony Island? All I recall is that Malachi Joppa bought the island from the widow of a guy by the name of Youngblood and let Mrs. Youngblood live out her days there. Which only amounted to about a year or so….”

Longfellow was silent as he stirred his dinner.

“I'm thinking…”

“Let me narrow this down even further,” Will said, pulling his Corvette back into traffic. “I need to know everybody that lived on that island prior to Reverend Malachi Joppa getting it.

“All right—”

“And something else…”

“Yeah?”

“I need to know who died on the island.”

“Oh my, this is beginning to sound rather gothic,” Longfellow said with a chuckle.

“If you've got the information, I'll need it in the next forty minutes or so.”

“Oh,” the professor said, laughing, “that's good. I was afraid you might really be in a hurry.”

“I'm sorry about the rush. I'll be able to explain it later. Call me on my cell phone. Do you have that number?”

“Sure. It's right here on my caller ID.”

“Thanks, Dr. Longfellow. I really do appreciate this.”

“By the way,” Longfellow said, putting his spoon down on the stove and taking his phone into the cluttered living room, where he immediately started wading through stacks of papers, “exactly where are you going on this dismal night?”

“For a boat ride,” Will said somberly, “I think I'm heading to a crime scene.”

73

F
OR
O
RVILLE
P
UTRIE, IT WAS NEVER
a matter of physical courage. He was puny and outmatched when it came to violent crimes or physical confrontations. He always left that kind of thing up to Carlton Robideau or Blackjack Morgan. And between those two, Carlton was clearly the more powerful. But Morgan was more vicious—exceeding his scuba-diving assistant in the sheer audacity of his aggression.

That is why, even though nothing was said, Putrie knew exactly what had happened to Robideau. And he knew who it was who had taken care of him. If there was one thing that Blackjack Morgan wouldn't tolerate, it was people on his payroll, or in his life, who didn't keep their mouths shut. His old girlfriend had been like that—and then she disappeared. Now Carlton.

Because Reverend Jonathan Joppa had won ownership of Stony Island, Morgan's plans for a drug operation based there had evaporated.

And Carlton was gone. He was likely bobbing with the fishes somewhere at the end of a weighted line—clearly food for the sharks.

The way Putrie saw it, he was all alone in the task at hand. The clock was ticking. Morgan wanted to strike at the most likely location for Blackbeard's treasure before Joppa took full possession of the island. Morgan wanted answers from Putrie. But he had managed to dodge him for the last few days.

And now it was Orville Putrie's time to win—and for Blackjack Morgan to lose. Putrie didn't need brute animal muscle. He would triumph now because he had a one-fifty-three IQ. And he had used it to figure everything out.

But he did need a little muscle for this one last thing.

In the drizzle and windy dark of Stony Island Putrie found this final part repulsive…even for him.

He had rented a small skiff with an outboard. Put a hand truck in. And a flashlight. Together with a metal detector—and a shovel, of course.

He had had to hurry. Morgan was still looking for him.

Putrie had found the spot and positioned the light. At the start, he'd been a little queasy about it. But that was foolish, he'd thought. So he'd started digging.

The moist ground, in the drizzle of rain, was muddy. His first task was to dig through the tangle of weeds and vines that had overgrown the area. Years of neglect. Why hadn't anyone else figured it out before now?

Perhaps
, Putrie thought to himself with a smile,
because there was never anyone quite as smart as me.

He kept digging. The soft sandy ground was heavy. Down, deeper and deeper. Every so often he would stop, pull the metal detector into the hole, and turn it on. It would hum, but not give off the shrill sound he wanted to hear.

The tiny mosquitoes and night bugs had found him and were swarming around his head. He kept digging, occasionally waving off the flying invaders.

He was starting to feel exhausted. He hadn't counted on the sheer stamina needed to dig to this depth.

He stopped. He thought he heard something. He whirled around in the hole, nearly tripping over the shovel, and looked out into the gloom of the overgrowth. But there was nothing.

He continued to dig. Another six inches. He was having difficulty breathing.

He put the metal detector onto the bottom of the hole—and a high-pitched, warbling tone came out.

“Oh yeah, oh, oh yeah. This is it. Baby, oh baby, this is it,” he said, giving an exhausted cackle.

Just a few more inches now. He tossed the metal detector out of the hole. With a second wind he furiously sped up his digging.

Then he stopped.

A sound. Was it a sound?

He strained to hear, but there was only the faint howl of the wind, the crash of the surf down at the shore, and the surging of his own pulse in his ears.

Then his shovel hit something. Suddenly he had a momentary sense of revulsion. But he had come too far to hesitate. He was nearly five feet down, now. It had taken him two hours of digging. And now he would know, at last. The sleeping were about to be disturbed.

But then he stopped short. Everything ceased as he froze in the hole.

And then, in slow motion, as if something else were moving him, he felt himself turning around. He looked up out of his hole.

Out of the hole he had dug at the foot of the ancient, blackened oak—the tree that had swallowed up the marker within its trunk, and that sheltered the Youngblood grave plot under its limbs.

He peered up into the darkness—and screamed. From his bowels.

Putrie threw his arms out in front of him like he had been electrocuted as he beheld the dark figure standing over him, now, at the edge of the grave.

74

W
ILL HAD JUST ARRIVED AT THE MARINA
when Longfellow called him back. He waved to Jonathan Joppa, who was already there throwing some rain slickers, a battery-operated lantern, and a flashlight into a skiff.

“Say again?” Will said.

“I said that I came across a survey that had been done by a researcher named Collier,” Longfellow repeated. “He was doing a review of eighteenth-century cemeteries along the coast. What was then called Joppa's Island, now called Stony Island, was unusual because of the graves located there.”

“Who is buried there?”

“Ebenezer Youngblood—”

“Right. The original owner.”

“Oh. So you've done some of your own research on this.”

“I went out to the island once before the trial. I saw the cemetery.”

“Okay. Then you probably saw several markers. One for Ebenezer. One for his wife. Another for an infant child that died. And…let's see…also his mother and father. And that's it.”

“Any way to tell which marker is which? They look like sandstone…and the writing is pretty much erased.”

“You know, some of the better-preserved cemeteries have these little maps…but I don't think I've got anything like that. Frankly, I'm amazed I saved this survey.”