Black River (Sean O'Brien Book 6)

by Tom Lowe

  “I saw the diamond on video. I saw the contract in person…it was signed by Jefferson Davis and the British Prime Minister who, at that time, was Lord Palmertson. I snapped a picture of it.”

  “Sean, this little Cliff Note from the past was indeed missed by historians. Imagine what Ike Kirby will say. It’ll create some big buzz across the pond.”

  “It was missed because it was supposed to have been missed. Covert. Confidential. At least it was until that painting and a stack of old magazines made their way into an antique store.”

  “But uncovered when an elderly man with a Civil War photo approached you out of the blue.”

  “It was partially revealed when Jack Jordan was killed on the movie set. At least the window into the past was cracked. The video of his discovery on the river could send it into the stratosphere. I’m putting in a call to a friend of mine at the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Dan Grant. I’ll point him to what I have, the shadowy video of the man with the rifle aimed at Jack Jordan when he pulled the strongbox with the diamond out of the river. And there’s the cigar stogie lying next to a dropped Minié ball and twelve cents in change. Could be prints, DNA, maybe even a ballistics match with the round that killed Jack Jordan.”

  “Even if you never recover the painting, Sean, you’ve earned your compensation. Is his widow, Laura, uploading the video of her husband opening the strongbox and finding the diamond?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she should wait until police have finished their investigation?”

  “She’s convinced they’re all but finished. She gave them a flash drive of the video.”

  “Did they spot the stalker with a rifle?”

  “If they did, no one told her. The investigation continues, but at what pace and what price?”

  Dave exhaled into the phone. “Well, your discovery on the bluff overlooking the river, and on the video, definitely shows motive and probable cause in the death of her husband. The video will, no doubt, light a fire under the DA’s butt. The question is…who did it? Who knew about this fabled diamond and its connection to India, Britain, the Confederate States of America, and the Royal Family?”

  “Jack Jordan’s documentary production crew. There was a cameraman, a sound guy, and Jack’s dive buddy who was working as his producer. According to Laura, her husband has worked with this team for years and all are trustworthy.”

  Dave grunted. “That, of course, means nothing when a priceless diamond is found.”

  “There was apparently one person outside of Jack Jordan’s inner circle.”

  “Who?”

  “Frank Sheldon. Sheldon is the software billionaire who’s building an exact replica of the schooner that beat the English in what became known as the America’s Cup Race. That sailboat was sunk during the Civil War in a deep tributary to the St. Johns River.”

  “I never heard that story. Is this the Frank Sheldon who won the last America’s Cup?”

  “That’s the guy. According to Laura, he’s an investor in the movie, Black River. Jack was hired two years ago as an historical consultant when Sheldon began designing plans for building the replica of that fabled schooner. Sheldon is a Civil War buff, someone who spends money on collectable relics. She said he’s planning to sail the yacht to England soon, covering the same route as the original schooner did when she was sailed from England to America to be used as a Civil War blockade-runner. Laura says that Jack told Sheldon about the documentary he was making and his quest to find a rumored legendary diamond, and he wanted to know if Sheldon might make a donation to the project due to its educational value.”

  “Did he invest?”

  “Laura wasn’t sure.”

  Dave was silent a moment and then said, “There’s always some kind of puzzle piece, mosaic irony, in these things, even things that have been sleeping quietly in the gut of the old river for a century and a half. As the puzzle pieces come together, we get insight into how greed causes some men to crawl into the muck where it breeds. When you first mentioned the diamond, Koh-i-Noor, since I’m sitting at my computer, I pulled up a history of this rock.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Well, let me scan and surmise at the same time. It’s the only multi tasking I find that I can do with some decorum of efficiency anymore. If it’s the real one, the Koh-i-Noor…it’s, no doubt, priceless. At one time, it was the largest known diamond in the world. It was cut down to 106 carats. Koh-i-Noor means Mountain of Light. It gives a whole new definition to the words blood diamond. The diamond was mined out of India in the eleventh century and has changed hands in a bloody history within Indian dynasties. A half dozen leaders of these dynasties have owned the Koh-i-Noor, including the Sikh Empire where it was taken when the British raised their flag over the citadel of Lahore in India. After the diamond was smuggled to England, Prince Albert personally supervised the cutting. When finished, it was kept in Windsor Castle, not in the Tower of London, until after Queen Victoria’s death.”

  O’Brien said nothing.

  Dave grunted. “Sean, I can almost hear you thinking through your phone.”

  “I’m thinking about that picture puzzle you mentioned. The pieces, at least the edges, are aligning and an image is beginning to form. And the woman in the painting by the river will be somewhere in the center.”

  “Maybe it’s a good time to contact your client and call it a day, because now the trail of the painting you’ve been following has led to a movie set where it was stolen—a painting owned by a couple who found it in an antique store. One half of the couple is dead. Yeah, I’d say it’s gone far beyond a simple case of locating a missing painting. Add apparent murder to the mix along with the unearthing and theft of the world’s most valuable diamond, and toss in the exhuming of a contract between the Confederacy and Great Britain, you’ve got an international stage. The question is, Sean, when that video goes viral—and it will—when that curtain opens on this global stage, will you be there…or will you exit before all hell breaks loose?”

  Silas Jackson opened the door to his weather-beaten trailer and stepped outside under a canopy of cypress trees deep in the Ocala National Forest. He carried a metal coffee pot, dented and stained from years of use. Three chickens pecked at the hard, barren ground, scattering as Jackson walked to a circle of rocks, the trace of smoke from last night’s fire a ghost in the morning air. Roosters and a dozen fighting cocks paced in A-frame coops built under a large live oak tree. A leaden dawn hung over the forest like a gray shawl, thick and humid as the dew-stained Spanish moss sagging from the trees in the still morning.

  He wore his Confederate slouch hat pulled low, just above his thick, dark eyebrows, tufts of dark hair sprouting and curling up from under the hat. His sideburns were long and heavy. Black eyes hard as polished stones. His uniform unkempt, worn ragged from the elements and hundreds of Civil War reenactments.

  Jackson threw kindling pieces and split wood into the pit, unscrewed the top from a mason jar, tossing gas on the timber. He lit a wooden match on the side of his boot and lobbed it into the pile. Orange flames erupted. He sat on his haunches in front of the crackling fire, white smoke swirling up through the cypress limbs. He set the coffee pot on top of the flames and waited for the water to boil.

  Jackson watched the chickens, yellow flames reflecting off his eyes, the call of a mourning dove coming from somewhere deep in the Ocala National Forest. He poured coffee into a tin cup, steam rising off the black coffee. He pursed his lips and blew across the open cup. Jackson sipped and thought about the events of the last few days.

  Beyond the perimeter thicket came the sounds of horses snorting, hooves in the mud, and a whinny from one horse. Jackson set his cup on a rock bordering the fire and stood. He reached in his pocket, removing a pouch of tobacco leaves, biting off a plug and chewing, his mouth small, lips tightened, hawk nose scarred from too many battles to count. As two men rode horses into camp, he spit tobacco juice in the center of t
he fire, a drop of dark saliva clinging to his lip.

  “Mornin’ Captain,” said the tallest man. Both were dressed in Confederate uniforms. They dismounted and tied their horse’s reins to low hanging tree branches. They were in their early thirties, unshaven, lean, wearing scuffed boots. Jackson turned toward them as the men approached. He said, “Ya’ll boys keep on eating food on that movie set and you gonna be too big for your mounts.” He grinned, teeth brown from tobacco stains.

  “Yes sir, Captain Jackson,” said the shorter man, smiling through a full ruddy beard. “It’s just that they got food from the crack of dawn to late in the evening. We wish you were still on the movie set. Nobody knows the Confederate cause like you, right Bobby?”

  “That’s the damn truth,” said the man called Bobby, a toothpick in one corner of his mouth, his bloodhound eyes lethargic. “I hope they don’t cut out the scenes you were in, Captain?”

  Jackson snorted. “Do you think I give a flyin’ shit about that? The only reason I agreed to be an extra in the movie in the first place is on account that I want Hollywood to get it right when it comes to tellin’ the story of the South and how things played out realistically in the war.”

  Bobby nodded and said, “Well, Captain, things are playing out all over the Internet that seem to be giving an unrealistic image of the Civil War, at least as far as the South is concerned.”

  Jackson’s chewed the tobacco and raised his head, morning sunlight falling on one side of his face under the hat. “Whadda you mean?”

  “Jack Jordan, you knew him better than Doug and me, anyway it looks like a few weeks before he died on set from that stray Minié ball, he’d found something in the St. Johns River, and what he found has set the damn Internet on fire.”

  Jackson spit out of one side of his mouth. “What’d he find?”

  The short man called Doug said, “A diamond, Captain. Big as a goose egg.”

  Bobby said, “Somebody uploaded a video to the Internet, and it shows Jack on video in a pontoon boat finding this huge friggin’ diamond in a strongbox that he brought up from the bottom of the river. In the video, you can hear Jack talkin’ about how the diamond belonged to England at the time of the war, how it was tied to a contract signed by Jefferson Davis that says England was backing the South in the war and the diamond was part of all that. Anyway, the video is exploding online. Getting millions of views all over the world, especially England and even India. On CNN last night, they were saying that if the diamond is the real deal, it’s got a long history that goes way back to some emperor in India and to the Queen of England.”

  Jackson lifted his cup up from the campfire rock and tossed the remaining black coffee into the fire. He watched the steam rise into the morning air for a moment, and then his mouth turned down. He spit out the tobacco plug like it was a hairball, a bitter taste suddenly in his mouth, his face pinched. “Did the news indicate the whereabouts of the diamond or this supposed contract?”

  Bobby shook his head. “The news is saying that Jack’s wife said the diamond was stolen from him, taken from the film set. She’s calling his death a murder. And she said she has the original copy of the contract between England and the South in a safe deposit box. Hell, I feel pretty good believing that England was backing what the South stood for during the war. I wonder why England didn’t bring over the big guns and help us beat back the yanks? What’d you think, Captain?”

  Jackson stoked the fire with a branch he’d broken off a pine tree, the flames bristling, yellow pinpoints of light locked in his hard, black irises. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think everything the South fought for during the war is coming to realization right now. Country’s gone to hell. I can’t recognize it no more. Jack Jordan might have been good at re-enacting battles, but he talked too much. Boys, some folks call me a doomsday prepper—a feller who’s preparing for mayhem and civil bedlam. It’s gonna happen. That’s why I got thousands of rounds in my trailer, a fully stocked underground bunker. Plenty of canned food and water for a country boy like me to survive. We’ll take the nation back. That diamond is property of the Confederacy, part of the Confederate treasury during the war. And the contract Jack Jordan found was between England and CSA President Jefferson Davis—nobody else. A confidential document like that has no business winding up on the fuckin’ Internet.”

  The men nodded as Jackson stood. He stepped closer to the moss-stained trailer, reaching in his pants pocket for birdseed. He tossed seed on the ground, the three chickens trotting to the food. Jackson squatted, “C’mere Gladys,” he said, easing closer to a ruddy colored hen. Jackson grabbed the chicken, holding it to the ground, squawking, feathers flying. He pulled a serrated knife from his belt and sliced off the bird’s head. He stood, the chicken ran twenty feet and collapsed.

  Jackson turned to the men and said, “Most people in this country are just like that chicken. Running around with no head. No direction. Ya’ll boys want to stay for lunch? I make a damned good fried chicken.”

  “I’m fine with coffee,” said Bobby.

  Doug nodded. “Me, too.”

  Jackson grinned and walked to the fire pit. He tossed the chicken head into the flames and watched it burn, the beak popping like tinder, the smell of feathers broiling. He squatted, pulled a thin cigar from his coat pocket, bit off one end, spit it out, and stuck a small branch into the fire. He waited for it to catch, and then used the flaming stick to light his cigar. Jackson blew smoke out the corner of his mouth, holding the burning limb between him and the men. He looked over the flames and said, “Somebody needs to put a match to that contract. Burn it. President Davis earned that much respect.”

  O’Brien could tell Detective Dan Grant would rather have been somewhere else than entering the Boston Coffee Shop in downtown DeLand. O’Brien sat at a table in the back of the shop, ordered a mug of coffee, waiting with his laptop open and ready. The shop smelled of fresh-ground coffees and croissants just from the oven. Two college students sat near the front, one girl studying from a textbook, the other online with her tablet.

  Detective Grant, early forties, skin the color of light tea, square shoulders, wide chest, walked through the restaurant, making eye contact with no one—his eyes locked on O’Brien. The detective’s large wingtip shoes hammered across the hardwood floor. Grant pulled out a chair, exhaled like he’d just walked up a long flight of steps. He sat, and O’Brien said, “Thanks for coming, Dan.”

  “Sean, I don’t have a lot of time. I have to be in court in a half hour.”

  “This won’t take a lot of time, two minutes.” O’Brien adjusted his computer so Grant could easily see the screen. “The video I’m going to show you is the full length.”

  “And it’s two minutes?”

  “Yes. The version on YouTube has been edited, but only slightly.”

  “How?”

  “Let me show you.” O’Brien hit the play button, stopping ten seconds into the opening. “The guy in the pontoon boat, look over the guy’s shoulder…right here.” O’Brien used the tip of a coffee stirrer to point to the screen. “See the man standing on the riverbank, next to the tree?”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s sighting down on the man in the boat. The reflection is off a rifle scope.”

  “Who’s the man in the boat?”

  “Jack Jordan.”

  “The guy killed on the movie set?”

  “The same.”

  “Where’d you get the video?”

  “From his widow. I wanted to give you this version. The rest of it, all one-minute-and forty-nine seconds is climbing the YouTube charts. Probably viral by now.”

  “I heard something about that. What the hell’s going on, Sean.”

  “Who’s investigating the death on the movie set?”

  “I believe Larry Rollins was on that one. He’s a good detective, aggressive, been with the department almost twenty years. His daughter actually got a small part in that movie.”

  “Then ma
ybe Rollins should write himself out of the investigation script.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his daughter’s on the movie company’s payroll for one. Most importantly, with someone sighting down on Jack Jordan here on the river’s edge, a few weeks before his death on the film set, it shows he was in somebody’s crosshairs. His wife believes he was murdered. I’ll show you the video and you’ll see why.” O’Brien hit the play button.

  Grant watched the video intently, to the point where it faded to black at the end. He asked, “Why didn’t she show this to Detective Rollins?”

  “She did. She gave him a copy on a flash drive.”

  “Well, the video definitely proves the existence of the diamond, assuming it’s real and not planted for some reason. The guy behind the tree, though, is very hard to spot. Maybe Larry missed it. If you hadn’t pointed it out, I’m not sure I would have seen it.”

  “Did you see the uniform?”

  “Beyond the hat, I couldn’t make out his clothes.”

  “Looks like a Confederate uniform. Re-enactor maybe. I’m sure your team can enlarge the images.”

  Detective Grand shook his head. “So we may be looking at the murderer…a few weeks later, he pulled the button for real.”

  “See if your guy, Larry Rollins, spotted it. Laura Jordan told investigators that her husband had been carrying that diamond; at least it was locked in his van the day he was killed. She said the detective, maybe Larry Rollins, told her there was no physical or forensics evidence of a break-in found on or around the van. He added that the case wasn’t closed, pending autopsy results, although the investigation, thus far, has failed to produce an indication her husband’s death was anything but a tragic accident.”

  “Larry’s a bull dog. Prior to what you’ve shown me, everything I’ve heard about the death pointed to a really bad accident. It looked like some Civil War re-enactor got so caught up in the movie stuff he forgot it’s all make believe and that he was supposed to be firing blanks.”