He never searched for business. It came to him. Word-of-mouth. Referral. Sometimes falling into his lap, as by an unseen hand. Occasionally, his clients were people who’d tried conventional methods but were dissatisfied, people looking for closure. Wounds needing to be cauterized. He’d taken cold cases, cases nearly forgotten except by those who were victims or the victim’s family. They never forget, and in the case of a murder, the family never heals completely. Never.
O’Brien popped the cap off a cold Guinness, lifted Max in one hand and climbed the steps to the fly bridge. He set her on the bench seat, unzipped all of the isinglass, the breeze coming from the east. He sat in the captain’s chair. The air was warm, carrying the scent of blooming hyacinths and sea salt. He sipped the beer, looking across the marina. Soft lights from the moored boats reflected from the dark water like neon veins off a rain-soaked, urban street. But these streaks of light moved, stretching and bobbing with the current and rising tide—broken and cracked rainbows drifting in the dark.
He lifted Max from the bench seat and set her in his lap, she curled into a ball, exhaling a slight whimper. He scratched her behind the ears, sipped his beer and thought about his conversation with Joe Billie. Joe had no alibi for the day of the killing. He was, or had been, on the property, some part of the thousands of acres that made up the ranch.
It was the rancher’s testimony, at least his answers to the detectives’ questions that pointed toward Joe. That was circumstantial at best, a big gap. But it was the history between Joe and the dead man that closed the gap. Gave it plausibility, which often led to verdicts found in the revelation of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Subjective at best, but it has convicted innocent people. Time and time again.
O’Brien watched the light from Ponce Lighthouse sweep out to sea, making an arc into the dark abyss. A sliver of moon hung in the sky above the lighthouse like a crooked smile in the heavens. Are you telling me everything, Joe? O’Brien thought. With an elaborately staged murder scene, why had the perp not made a greater effort to connect physical evidence with Joe? Why rely on the testimony from the landowner to point the weathervane toward Joe with very little force to convict?
Or maybe the evidence was there. Planted like a prop in a crime movie.
Maybe the investigators had overlooked it.
Why Joe Billie?
The crime spoke of revenge. But what had Joe done that someone would kill another person to avenge by indictment—by putting Joe through a murder trial? Could it be that Joe was afraid of something or someone, or was he protecting someone? O’Brien knew Joe was fearless. He was uncompromising in fairness. And, he was a man who wouldn’t break a sacred trust, even if he had to take a fall. To find the killer, O’Brien would have to learn what Joe knew and why that secret, if it is covert, was worth facing a murder charge.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, fatigue rising in his shoulders like the tide lifting the boats. He looked up at the moon with its narrow curved smile shining down on him, a court jester in the night. Why Joe? Why after five years did the grave robber appear in an area Joe frequents? Was anything removed from the mound on the rancher’s property? O’Brien would leave early in the morning to speak with the rancher, and if he was lucky, he’d get permission to see where the body was found.
He looked down at the marina water, the moon’s sultry smile reflecting from the murky surface like a faceless grin captured in a shadowy mirror. A lone dark cloud from the east came over the sea, drifting in the sky far above the lighthouse, the crooked grin sinking into the depths of the black water.
TEN
O’Brien left Ponce Marina before dawn. Max curled up in the front passenger seat after they’d been on the road for a half hour. He drove in silence, occasionally glancing at the screen on his phone, following the digital map across the state from the Atlantic coast to near the Gulf of Mexico.
He’d risen early, made a pot of coffee, and spent less than ten minutes finding Lloyd Hawkins’ house within a series of satellite images he’d downloaded. The images depicted the lay of the land, the vast expanse of the privately held ranch bordering the primitive Withlacoochee River. He learned the ranch was for sale, and some of the ground-level images were from the listing realtor’s website.
It was the bull’s eye near the entrance to the property that O’Brien focused on, the ranch house. He could tell it was a structure that reflected Old Florida, a time and period when the beaches were free of high-rise condos and resorts with sprawling golf courses and all of the chemical maintenance the courses required. The ranch house, according to the realtor’s prospectus, was built in the 1940’s after the patriarch of the Hawkins’ family, Raymond Hawkins, bought almost eleven thousand acres of land. His son was Lloyd Hawkins, the current owner and seller.
Max stretched and looked up at O’Brien. “Max, I wonder if Lloyd Hawkins is having his coffee about now?” She snorted, turned in the seat, stood on her hind legs and looked out the window, the sun above the tree line, miles of forestland on both sides of Highway 44, east of Pine Lakes, Florida.
O’Brien’s phone rang. Max eyed the phone in the center console. O’Brien answered and Dave Collins said, “Good morning. I assume that you and Max are en route to the property where the victim was found.”
“We got an early start.”
“Surprised you’re taking Max. You could have left her here.”
“I know, and I appreciate that. One of the reasons I’m taking Max is her DNA.”
“I still can’t fathom that she, a dachshund, descended from wolves. And I say that with all respect to Miss Max”
O’Brien chuckled. “I don’t know about the wolf lineage, but she’s part of the hound dog family, which means she has a very acute nose. Max might be able to uncover something the investigators overlooked.”
“Speaking of investigation, I did a little digging after you and Nick left last night.”
“What’d you find?”
“The property you’re heading too has quite a history, a history that for the most part is fairly unknown to the general public.”
“How do you mean?”
“That mound, the centerpiece of the murder scene, is a real North American time capsule. It apparently was directly in the path, the northward march of Hernando de Soto and his conquistadors after they landed in what is now known as Tampa Bay. This was the first real European expedition into the New World. More than six hundred men, heavily armed, all setting out to search for gold as they’d done earlier in Peru. But the natives of this new land weren’t extending the welcome mat to the men, horses and pigs. Recently, archeologists with the University of Florida conducted dutiful and systematic excavations of the mound. They found a lot of glass beads, beads which bore something know as a chevron pattern, multi-layers of colored glass, indicative of what the Spanish had at the time.”
“I wonder why the beads wound up in the mound.”
“No one knows for sure. The mound is indeed a burial ground. Skeletal remains of native people were found among the Spanish artifacts. A silver pendant and some iron tools also were found.”
“Maybe the victim was there to dig for more silver pendants and glass beads.”
“I think he may have been looking for something else.”
O’Brien drove up quickly behind a famer on a tractor moving slowly, one tire on the pavement, one bouncing along the shoulder of the road. O’Brien passed, glancing in his rearview mirror. “Looking for something else. What’s that?”
“I came across an Associated Press article from a couple of years back. The story was about an old diary found in an attic in a Minnesota home. A soldier, a WestPoint graduate, who was an Army lieutenant during the last Seminole War, had written the diary. He wrote that his squad had found Chief Osceola’s hideout. It was in a remote cove along the Withlacoochee River, less than a half mile from a great mound that resembled a mountain rising from the Florida flatlands. That’s in the area you’re heading. The diary was sold at a
uction. I’d wager you could guess who bought it.”
“The murder victim.”
“Bingo. Lawrence Barton, the same guy that Joe Billie found sifting through the Seminole graves, purchased it. What else might have been written in that diary? Maybe some of the grave robbers that dig into these ancient mounds aren’t looking for bones. They’re looking for hidden gold or silver that, according to legend, was buried by pirates with the intent to one day return and claim their treasure.”
“I doubt there’s gold or silver in any Seminole grave sites. Florida has no precious metals. But each day we have a sunrise above one ocean and sunset in another sea. That’s treasure enough for me.”
“Indeed, Sean. However, as Plato said, treasure lies in the eyes of the beholder. For some, tangible means spendable. Here’s a footnote I discovered in the article … when Osceola was captured under a white flag of truce, he was held at the old Spanish fort in St Augustine, Castillo de San Marcos, before being shipped to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, where he soon died. One of the attending physicians, Dr. Fredrick Weedon, cut off Osceola’s head after his death. The head was embalmed and put on display in a surgical museum in New York City. It was eventually lost, some believe, stolen. Rumor has it that the decapitated head was secretly returned to Osceola’s home in Florida. If so, the question is where? Was it buried in a sacred location?”
“Maybe Barton, for some macabre reason, and since he had the old diary and a history of looking for Seminole artifacts, was looking for Osceola’s head in the burial mound.”
Dave grunted. “Perhaps. If Barton did dig it up, I would imagine that even mild-mannered Joe Billie would find that action alone plenty of reason for retribution. At this point, of course, it’s all speculation. However, considering the history of the land there, the past involving Joe and Barton, the present situation is, unfortunately, plausible in the suspicious eyes of many police investigators, and maybe a DA or two. In other words, you have your work cut out for you.”
Max uttered a low growl.
O’Brien saw something, an animal, in the middle of the long dirt road.
Dave asked, “Where are you now?”
“I’m on the ranch property. Heading down a hard-packed dirt road. Max spotted a large, wild hog, one of those razorbacks. It was in the road before it trotted off.”
“The razorbacks aren’t indigenous to Florida, or anywhere else in the nation. They, too, go back to de Soto and the trail he blazed across a half-dozen states. Some of the Spanish hogs escaped. They’re bloodline has survived more than 450 years in that harsh swampland. Let’s see what else from the past you might uncover in there.” Dave’s cell connection sounded as it he was talking from the bottom of a pool.
O’Brien looked at his phone. “No bars, Max. No connection. From this point, I’m going to rely on your nose.”
ELEVEN
Wynona Osceola’s freedom died with the girl. Wynona thought about that as she searched for a body that was years and circumstances apart from the dead girl. But today it was a report of a man missing, some feared dead. No discovery of a body, yet. Wynona’s gut told her otherwise. She stared at the computer screen as if the data and potential leads could confirm what she already felt.
Her eyes burned, a headache coming since she’d skipped lunch. She ignored it because a man was missing and his family feared the worst. So Wynona tracked probable leads. Made phone calls. She scratched at the shell of a crime that had yet to crack, even to emerge. But her instincts told her something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Where was Frank Sparrow? Why and how did he vanish?
Wynona was the last detective to leave her desk in the Seminole Police Department after a long day. It wasn’t unusual for her to work lengthy hours. She had the stamina, the perseverance. And she had the drive. It’s what made her good at hunting criminals. It’s what caused her to leave the FBI. Wynona looked younger than her thirty-five years. She had the high cheekbones of her Seminole ancestors, smooth dark completion, enigmatic eyes with the strength and mystery of black pearls, and shoulder-length hair to match.
The other detectives had left three hours ago, while the sun was still shining over the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation bordering the Everglades. But she knew, deep down, the only reason Frank wasn’t coming home was because he couldn’t. That didn’t mean he was dead. Not yet. Not if she could help it. After a crime—a murder, detectives have a forty-eight hour window before the heat begins to fade, before perps crawl deep into the slime, before witnesses were intimidated or paid off.
Frank Sparrow had not been seen or heard from in three days.
Wynona had issued a Bolo alert for Sparrow and for his car. So far, nothing. She had an uneasy feeling, based on hearsay—based on rumors whispered among some members of the tribe, that if she found Sparrow’s car, she might find his body in the trunk. Sparrow had always been outspoken. You knew where you stood with him. Did he finally push someone too hard? Make an enemy of the wrong person? Wynona thought about that, playing back bits of conversations she’d had with members of his family, friends, and even the times she’d spoken with Sparrow at municipal or social gatherings.
Frank Sparrow, where the hell are you?
It was two hours later, dark, when Wynona drove to her small brick home in a neighborhood on the eastside of the reservation. Her body was beginning to ache from fatigue. She’d left the front porch light on when she’d went to work in the morning. Out of habit, and because of her circumstances when her career ended with the FBI, she kept the outside lights on—always.
Wynona walked up the three steps to her front door, moths orbiting the porch light, tree frogs chirping in the night. She looked at the security camera near the light. She’d installed another camera above her back door and five more inside her home. All were triggered by motion, and all could send an immediate alert to her phone. There had been one alert earlier today. The interloper was a backyard squirrel.
Regardless, from training and experience, Wynona placed her right hand on the butt of her pistol entering her home, and she kept it there as she checked rooms. Paranoid. She was still alive. Not the case with her former partner, an agent who was murdered a month after they burst into what they believed was the home of a sleeper cell, a radical Islamic jihadist family. But it wasn’t. It was worse, if that was possible.
Wynona removed her holster stepping into the kitchen. She stood at the refrigerator for a second and then opened the freezer door. She took out a bottle of Grey Goose, poured a double shot into a cocktail glass and sat at her kitchen table, the roll of thunder and a flicker of lightning in the distance. She looked out her backyard doors, an unhurried silvery rain dancing off the concrete patio under the floodlight. She sipped the vodka, closing her eyes, the rain droning from the outdoor umbrella on the deck.
Tomorrow was only a day away. Maybe we’d find Frank Sparrow.
Maybe we’d find him alive.
TWELVE
O’Brien glanced at the satellite images he’d downloaded and stored in his phone. He calculated that he was less than a quarter mile from the ranch house. He drove through a winding dirt road, limbs from sprawling live oaks arching over the path, the sunlight gone, and a transparent gray inside the tunnel of trees. Through the open windows in the Jeep, he could smell damp moss and blooming jasmine. La Florida, O’Brien thought. The Spanish called it the land of flowers.
The old home resembled the real estate photos. A For Sale sign was planted at the edge of the gravel driveway. The realtor’s picture and name were on the left side of the sign, Gail Vargas, smiling and wearing a dark blue suit. A red-tailed hawk circled the sky above the home. The bird seemed to be looking at something in the front yard.
The house was a 1940’s era, constructed mostly from massive wood beams, and slate-rock stone. The large chimney was built with coquina rock, aged the color of autumn leaves over time. There was a sprawling screened-in front porch strewn with whicker chairs and a wooden bench swing.
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sp; O’Brien counted three outbuildings; two that looked like barn structures and one that was a weathered cabin. A motorcycle was parked in front of the cabin. A twenty-year-old Ford pickup truck parked in front of the ranch house. Three mud-caked four-wheel ATVs were lined up to the left of the house.
A dozen chickens strutted across the hard-packed yard, pecking at fallen and rotting acorns and seeds. Three smaller chicks followed. There was a horseshoe pitching area to the far right of the house, fresh sand around the iron stakes separated forty feet apart. Next to the right side of the house, appeared to be cages on stilts, about five feet above the ground. Most of the cages were partially covered in a blue plastic tarp.
Max stood on her hind legs, small head out the Jeep’s window, her nose testing the warm air. “Hang tight, Max. You stay here will I go see if anyone’s home.” Max looked back at O’Brien, and then she watched the chickens slowly parade across the yard, a low growl rumbling from her throat.
And then she spotted the dog, to the left of the screened porch. Max’s growl changed gears, deeper. The dog’s collar was connected to a chain. The animal appeared to be a mix of Labrador and Rottweiler, black, thick body, dark face, and hidden eyes. It stood, head lowering, red tongue just showing.
O’Brien got out of the Jeep, closing the door loud enough to be heard if a television or music wasn’t on inside the house. He walked down a shell rock path leading up to the screened front porch. The front door opened and man stepped onto the porch. “Can I help you?” he asked from the shadows inside the porch.
“I see your place is for sale.”
“Yes sir. Did Gail send you?”
“You mean the Gail the realtor? No, she didn’t. I saw the listing online.”
The man opened the screen door and stepped out. O’Brien could see he had the weathered face of someone who’d worked outside most of his life. He wore a stained Stetson, plaid western shirt tucked inside his worn jeans, ostrich-skinned boots. He extended his hand and said, “Name’s Lloyd Hawkins, welcome.”
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