Black River (Sean O'Brien Book 6)

by Tom Lowe

  Laura refilled the coffee cups and returned to the couch. She put the cotton gloves back on and lifted the first document, setting it aside, and then holding the second page to read. “This isn’t part of the contract. It’s a letter written by a Civil War soldier—Henry—to his wife. Jack and I thought the wife might have been the woman in the painting. So maybe it’s the connection you’re looking for, too.”

  “Was there an addressed envelope in any of the magazines, or did you only find the letter and that contract?” O’Brien asked.

  “Just the pages you see here. Anyway, he apparently wrote this and sent the letter and this unknown Civil War contract to his wife when he was about to go into battle again. Here’s what he wrote to her: ‘My dearest Angelina…I miss your sweet smile more than I can ever convey here with pen and paper. During short times away from battle, I remove your photograph from my rucksack just to gaze at your beauty. I want you to know how much I miss you, and how I long to return to your arms, to hold you like we had no promise of tomorrow. That’s what this war does, it promises nothing but the separation and loss of families. The more I am out here, away from you, the more I see the ugliness of war. However, now I have no choices except to follow my fate. Urgent military matters called President Davis away from our appointed rendezvous three times, thus I have had to carry the document with my person far too long. I fear the document will be discovered upon my capture or death by the Union forces. I feel the CSA can no longer sustain any hope. Therefore, I have sealed it in the envelope and asked a kindhearted gentlemen farmer I met to place it in the post. Finally, as I look at your beautiful photograph near the river, close to where the strong box was lost, I remember how we also lost our dear friend, William, in death that horrible night. Considering the circumstances and the ravages and downward spiral of the CSA in this dreadful war, the diamond from the Crown Jewels must be returned to England, if possible. William sacrificed his life trying to bring it ashore. In his name, and following the terms of the agreement between the CSA and England, the diamond must be returned. The strongbox is probably resting in the mud on the belly of the river, not far from where the photograph of you was taken. There is a handle on the strongbox. Perhaps your brother, or your father, using a grappling hook, could search for the box, bring it to the surface, and then return it to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. God willing, I shall one day come back to your loving arms to restart our lives together. I miss and love you with all my heart. My life and love, always and forever, I dedicate to you. Your loving husband, Henry.’

  Laura looked up from the letter to O’Brien, her eyes watering. “The first time I read that I cried. And now I’m doing it again. Maybe the man who wrote this, Henry, is the puzzle piece you’re looking for. I’m sorry, but I so miss Jack.” She reached for a box of tissues on the end table, removing one and drying her eyes.

  “Please, don’t apologize. I can’t imagine the pain that you’re going through. That letter did answer the question. So one of the Crown Jewels, on loan from England to the Confederacy, was lost in the river. Maybe not far from where the woman in the photo, or in the painting, was standing. Is that where your husband located it?”

  “Yes. Jack was about half way done with his documentary on how the CSA Secretary of War, John Breckinridge, managed to escape, using three boats to sail from Florida to Cuba to England. Jack thought Breckinridge knew about the diamond, but it wasn’t part of the lost Confederate gold from the treasury. That diamond, called the Koh-i-Noor, in the contract, has lots of political history and turmoil behind it. We learned that, at one time, the country of India owned it. Apparently, it had belonged to many dynasties over the years. In 1850, about ten years before the Civil War, the diamond was taken, some argue stolen, from the Shik Empire by the British East Indian Company and secretly ushered from India to Britain where it was grouped in with the rest of the British Crown Jewels. The diamond became the property of the monarch, which, at that time, was headed by Queen Victoria.”

  O’Brien finished his coffee. “Do you think the finding of this contract and the connection of the letter to the diamond is the reason your husband may have been murdered?”

  “Yes. Jack was a diver, and a darned good one. He got some of his friends, most of them re-enactors, and they used pontoon boats and underwater cameras to search the bottom of the St. Johns River. They weren’t sure where the spot was—the exact place where the woman stood in the painting, but they searched—made quick dives to avoid attracting alligators. And they did it every Saturday morning for more than two months. Most of the search area was near where Dunn’s Creek flows into the river. Finally, Jack and his best friend, Cory Nelson, pulled the strongbox from the river mud and the diamond was inside. He kept it in a safety-deposit box the first month. This is where you really have to understand my husband, the code he lived by, his longtime allegiance to the traditions of the Old South, and what honor is supposed to mean. To honor the intent of the contract and the wishes of the soldier who wrote the letter to his wife, Jack was trying to figure a way to return it quietly to England without creating an international incident.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “Many people in India believed at that time, and apparently many still do today, that the diamond was embezzled by the British, taken out of India and given to Queen Victoria without the knowledge or consent of the Indian government. They want it returned.”

  “Did Jack get video of the diamond?”

  “Yes, but he didn’t want it released until he’d returned it to England and his documentary was done.”

  “Did you show the footage to police?”

  “I gave it them on a flash drive. I also gave them the names of the three men on Jack’s production crew. Jack has his own camera gear, and he used one of our bedrooms as his office and editing area.”

  “Is that where the raw video footage is, here in the home?

  “Yes. There are a couple minutes of video. Would you like to see it?”

  “I would.”

  “Follow me.” Laura led O’Brien to a back bedroom converted to an office. It was filled with Civil War memorabilia, framed vintage photographs of the war, Andersonville Prison, soldiers with the look of lost hope on gaunt faces. Laura pointed to a vacant part of one wall. “That’s where the painting of the woman by the river hung until Jack let the movie company borrow it.” She turned on a computer, found the file, and played the video.

  O’Brien watched it carefully. The images opened with one man in a diver’s wetsuit pulling a rope, hand-over-hand. O’Brien could tell they were on a pontoon boat in the center of the river. Within seconds, a wet and rusted strongbox, about the size of a small toolbox, was pulled from the river, water dripping off of it. A diver emerged from the river, lifting his dive mask. He spit out his mouthpiece regulator and shouted. “Yeaaah, baby! We found it!”

  “That’s Jack,” said Laura.

  Another diver surfaced beside him, removing his mouthpiece and grinning.

  Laura pointed to the screen. “That’s Cory Nelson, Jack’s producer and best friend.”

  “I met Cory on the movie set.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, he mentioned that someone named Silas Jackson, a re-enactor fired from the set, had an interest in the painting.”

  Laura said nothing, her thoughts suddenly distant. She looked back at the computer screen.

  O’Brien watched the two divers climb up the diver ladder. Jack looked toward the camera and said, “Maybe it’s an old toolbox. Or just maybe it’s a strongbox that’s been resting down there on the river bottom since the Civil War. The only way to find out is to open it.”

  Paula Jordan stood in the open doorway and said, “That’s Daddy! That’s my Daddy!”

  Laura inhaled deeply, biting her bottom lip. “Yes it is, sweetheart. Your daddy was hunting for something in the river. Something that has a lot of history.”

  “What’s his…tor…ee?”

  “Things that happe
ned in the past.”

  Paula held up her coloring book. “I colored the butterfly!”

  “You did a beautiful job. Show Mr. O’Brien.”

  `O’Brien knelt down and looked at the page. Paula said, “I made the wings yellow and the butterfly’s head pink. She’s a girl.”

  O’Brien smiled. “That’s one of the most beautiful butterflies I’ve ever seen.”

  Paula grinned wider.

  Laura said, “Go start the next page and we’ll celebrate by having an ice cream, okay?”

  “Okay.” She turned and walked quickly toward the kitchen.

  O’Brien stepped back to the computer on the desk. He played the rest of the video. It revealed the strongbox lid opening, the camera operator zooming closer. A hand reached in, two seconds later, removing a dark leather pouch. Someone said, “It’s dry as a dinosaur bone in that box. The seal worked well for 160 years.” There was laughter, the sound of the river chop lapping against the pontoons.

  The shot pulled wide and Jack Jordan stood there in his wetsuit, water rolling from his black hair down his angular, grinning face. He untied the leather pouch and lifted out a large diamond. “Wow! It’s big as an egg,” he said, holding the diamond between his thumb and forefinger, the sunlight pouring through the brilliant stone and creating rainbows of light moving against Jack’s face. “This thing, I do believe, is the diamond known as Koh-i-Noor. It’s probably priceless. Its value for us though, in this documentary, isn’t monetary…but historical—proof that England played a covert role in the American Civil War. My wife and I found the contract between England and the Confederate States of America tucked between in the pages of an old magazine we bought from an antique store. The contract, and a hand-written letter from a Confederate soldier, pointed us in the direction to search a specific area of the St. Johns River to look for the strongbox that held the diamond. England secretly was supporting and partially financing the Confederate war effort. And per the terms of the 160-year-old agreement, signed by Jefferson Davis and Lord Palmertson—the British Prime Minister at the time, the diamond is long overdue to be returned.”

  Jack looked at the diamond in his hand and then back at the camera. He smiled, used the tip of one finger to brush a drop of river water from his nose. “Maybe the Queen will offer a small reward, or at least a plane ticket to London to return it.” The shot slowly zoomed in, the diamond filling the frame in a fiery burst of colors, then the image cut to black.

  “That’s all there is,” Laura said. “I get so emotional seeing Jack there, on our pontoon boat. It’s like he’ll walk through the door any minute, but he never will again.”

  “I want to check something on the video.”

  “What?”

  O’Brien turned and used the mouse to reverse the images in the video. “I may have seen something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” O’Brien watched the screen. He didn’t blink, moving the images frame-by-frame. Then he stopped, leaning closer. “There.” He pointed to the riverbank in the background. “There’s a small flash. It’s the sunlight reflecting off a lens.”

  “You mean reflecting off a telescope or binoculars…like somebody’s spying on them?”

  “No.” O’Brien enlarged the picture some. “It’s a little blurry when we go in close, but there’s a man standing near that big cypress tree. And the lens he’s using is mounted to a rifle. Someone was following your husband and his crew. The shooter had them in his sights when they pulled the diamond out of the river. But for some reason he chose not to shoot.”

  Laura held one hand to her mouth, her eyes moving from the screen to O’Brien and back. “Dear God, Jack was being stalked.”

  “The question is by who? Who was the person or persons, and when did he or they first become aware of what Jack was doing?”

  Laura said nothing, her thoughts racing. “Only Jack’s production crew, but these are guys he’s known and worked with for years. They’re like brothers. They weren’t treasure hunters. Their treasure was unearthing artifacts that could prove or disprove American history—especially the Civil War. Jack wanted the finding of the diamond to remain very confidential. He was amazed by the contract between the CSA and England, and he felt it could be made public without the need to display the diamond. He was profoundly moved by what the Confederate soldier, Henry, wrote in the letter to his wife. Jack wanted to find the lost diamond and fulfill a soldier’s last request on earth. What began as one of his documentaries soon became his passion—his mission.”

  “Did anyone else know about the discovery of the diamond or the contract?”

  “Not that I’m aware. Jack and the team kept that quiet. He wasn’t sure what part, if any about the diamond he’d use in the documentary…at least until it was returned to England. Jack mentioned the contract to a wealthy man, a Civil War buff, who was one of the investors in the movie Black River. His name’s Frank Sheldon. My husband had worked as a design consultant on the construction of Frank Sheldon’s schooner. Jack said that Mr. Sheldon was interested in partially underwriting Jack’s documentary. Frank Sheldon is a software billionaire who’s almost finished building an exact replica of the American sailboat that beat the British in the first America’s Cup race. That original sailboat was bought and used by the South as a blockade runner during the Civil War.”

  “Didn’t it sink in the St. Johns River?”

  “Yes, I’m surprised you knew that. Frank Sheldon told Jack that he wants to sail his new boat to England to re-trace the original sailboat’s final trans-Atlantic voyage.”

  O’Brien said nothing. He stared at the image frozen on the computer screen. He looked up at Laura. “I know that place on the river where the stalker was standing.”

  Laura leaned forward. “What? You do?”

  “Yes, a friend of mine—he grew up on the river—recognized it. I showed him this photo of the woman standing near the river, and he knew the spot. We went there.”

  Laura glanced down at the computer screen and then looked at O’Brien without moving her head. “Did you find something?”

  “A cigar stub, some loose change on the ground, and something that may have accidentally fallen out of that guy’s pocket. A Minié ball from a musket. But the guy on the video isn’t holding a musket. It’s a modern rifle with a scope. The stogie, lose change and Minié ball were all near the cypress tree you see in the video.”

  Laura held her hand to her mouth. “Dear God. That man, that blurry image on tape, is he the one who killed Jack? Where’s the stuff you found?”

  “Exactly where we found it. If it’s evidence that can connect the stalker to the death of your husband, it’s better left where police can find it.”

  “Police! They never even spotted what you just saw on the video. Maybe they aren’t trying too hard. It’s easy and convenient to label it an accident when a 100-million dollar movie is employing hundreds of people and spending lots of money in the county.”

  “I have a friend in the Volusia County Sheriff’s office. He’s a detective, a good guy. I’ll let him know about the shooter in the background on the video, and I’ll tell him where to find the Minié ball and cigar stub. In the meantime, to speed up the investigation before the movie production leaves, you can do something.”

  “Me? What can I do?”

  “Go public.”

  “What?”

  “With the video, or a portion of it. With your permission, I’ll edit the video and take it from the point a few seconds beyond the spot where we can see the lens reflection in the background. No need to make that public and risk the guy leaving, although with his hat on and the blurring, he’s really unrecognizable.”

  “By public…do you mean upload the video?”

  “Yes. You need help. You need it quickly, and you need it for three reasons. First, you’re up against big money—a huge Hollywood studio and its movie being financed by multinational investors. Public opinion moves a case up the judicial chain fa
ster. Whoever took Jack’s life to steal the diamond doesn’t give a rat’s ass about honoring a dead Confederate soldier’s wishes. He couldn’t care less about fulfilling a 160-year-old contract, or returning the diamond to the Crown Jewels. He most likely wants to fence it—to sell it to a private collector and walk away with millions.”

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “Time. Time is crucial. The people who can afford a rock like that would prefer to buy it without the stain of stolen merchandise or the label of blood diamond attached to the transaction. For a few others, it’s an adrenaline rush to buy a legendary diamond, although stolen, to keep in a safe on a yacht or mansion and show it to friends when fifty-year-old scotch seduces the swagger. But the common knowledge that the diamond is stolen in connection with a murder can make it more difficult to move. And, third, for your and Paula’s safety. As long as you’re secretly holding the contract and have proof of the diamond on video, you’re at risk of being taken out in an effort to conceal the truth by destroying any witnesses and existing evidence.”

  “What are you suggesting, Sean?”

  “Let’s upload the video to YouTube, send a link to key international media, such as the BBC. If it goes viral, the investigation into Jack’s death becomes top priority because its will be part of a worldwide consciousness. There’ll be lots of global media interests, cable news shows will keep it from going stagnant, and prosecutors will be quick to take it to trial if an arrest is made. Laura, it’s going to thrust you into the public eye. So the question is…do you want to do it?”

  “I have to do it.”

  Dave Collins was almost speechless. On his way back to his river cabin, O’Brien called Dave and filled him in on his conversation with Laura Jordan. Dave asked, “So are you telling me you actually saw, what appears to be, an authentic contract between Britain and the Confederate States of America and a diamond the size of a goose egg pulled out of the river?”