“That would be conjecture. I don’t like to speak in terms of guesses because it requires me to second-guess the action of someone else. What if I was wrong?”
“What if you’re right? Sometimes you have to go with your gut.”
“And sometimes that will conflict with your heart.”
“Joe, someone is wanting you to take the fall for a horrible crime. In all my years as a prosecutor, I have learned this fact; often the cover up is equal or greater than the original crime. So the question I ask is this: is the murder of Lawrence Barton the original crime or a heinous cover-up for something else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sometimes, the guilty person will work hard to shift suspicion to someone else if the perpetrator thinks he or she can do it without being traced to them. This is not some small time felony that somebody is trying to lay on you. There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. I’m trying to find the boundary here. Justice can only be achieved when the mystery ends. Have you told me everything?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back in her chair. “When I take a case, I look at it through the eyes of a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and the jury. As a prosecutor, I’d wave these three facts in the face of a jury. First, you’re history with the victim. Second, you were physically on the property when the murder happened. And the final nail in the cross, the evidence police found in your truck.”
“Someone put it there.”
“I know that.” Lana glanced across the room toward a deputy standing near the door. She lowered her voice “As your defense lawyer, I’d say thousands of people assumed guilty of a crime had a prior history with the victims. That means nothing in terms of real evidence. You being on eleven thousand acres of rural property is pure happenstance. You’re out there each Wednesday. Somebody, in this case—the real killer, knew that. But the fly in the legal ointment is the physical evidence connecting you, or at least your truck, to the crime. Sure, it could and was planted. What I have to create, in the minds of a jury, is reasonable doubt. To do that, I want to shift suspicion to someone else.”
“Who?”
“The real killer. That’s where our mutual friend will have to dig deeper than ever before. You saved Sean O’Brien’s life once. Knowing Sean, he’ll stop at nothing to return the ultimate favor. There’s something else I’d do if I were prosecuting this case.”
“What is that?”
“Due to the heinous nature of the crime, if convicted, I’d ask for the death penalty. And here in Florida, that would probably happen. We have a lot of work to do.”
FORTY-FOUR
O’Brien lifted his phone as it vibrated. Dave Collin’s text read: Watched a live TV news shot of Joe’s arrived at the sheriff’s department. Looked like a macabre Hollywood premiere without the red carpet. Lot’s of cameras.
O’Brien looked at Wynona and said, “Joe’s at the sheriff’s department. His attorney is there. Seems to be a lot of media interest.”
She nodded. “I imagine some of that has to do with the horrific nature of the crime. The victim, despite his hobby of digging in cemeteries, was a college professor. Joe, with his Seminole heritage, is someone they’ll label as a loner who keeps to himself. It’s all the sensational stuff that sells tabloids.”
“So, who can you trust?”
“For the most part, everyone I know. The chief of police is a no nonsense man with integrity. He hired me after my time with the FBI. Our tribal chairman is honest and a brilliant businessman. He helped guide the tribe from making a living doing roadside alligator shows for the tourists; to the many business interests we have today. He worked alongside Frank Sparrow for years. Detectives Jimmy Stillwater and Henry James are the two I don’t trust. And I don’t trust Charlie Tiger anymore.”
O’Brien’s phone buzzed. He read the incoming text. It was from Lana Halley. I’m with Joe. They’re placing him in a holding cell. We’ll have an initial appearance before a judge in the morning.
O’Brien looked at Wynona. “That was Joe’s attorney. She’s with him, preparing for the first appearance before a judge in the morning.”
“Good news. Do you need to be there?”
“It’ll be brief. His attorney is one of the best. She’ll handle it. I might be of more value to Joe spending a little time here on the rez.”
“Thank you.”
“As of yet, you haven’t found Frank Sparrow’s body, and that’s assuming he didn’t simply board a plane under an alias and leave.”
“His roots are here. His family and close friends are here.”
“I think he’s here, too.”
“You do?”
“Where have you and your department searched so far?”
“Many of the canals, and they’re all over the rez. We combed his property, looking for fresh earth. He has fifteen acres. We looked in dumpsters, ditches, and sections of the glades where Frank loved to fish. We looked in the trunks of the three cars his family owns. We used cadaver dogs, working areas where Frank enjoyed hiking. Big Cypress is huge. We did surveillance by air—the chopper, nothing but miles of forests, water and saw grass.” She paused and lowered her voice. “Should I bring a unit with a cadaver dog?”
“No, let’s spend our time talking with people. And we might start with Kimi Tiger. I’m staying the night. I saw those chickees for rent across the road.”
“They’re simple but nice. Clean beds. Warm and dry. There are showers and bathrooms there, too.”
O’Brien looked at the check the server had left. Wynona reached for the check and said, “I have it.”
“Not while I’m holding it.” He grinned. “Maybe I’m old-fashion, but I still believe in treating a lady to dinner.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
He placed fifty dollars on the table. “Let’s go. I have to book my chickee.”
They entered the gravel parking lot. Out of the sixteen original cars, five were still in the lot. Three were new arrivals. One was a pickup truck parked near the dugout canoe. One was a red Ford Mustang. And one was a car O’Brien recognized, a gray BMW SUV. The car was parked in a back corner of the lot, under the extended limbs of a banyan tree. Moonlight reflected from the front windshield, but O’Brien could see the driver’s window was partially down. And behind the tinted class was the soft glow of a cell phone as someone made a call.
He wondered whom Charlie Tiger was calling.
O’Brien turned to Wynona. “We’re being followed.”
“Where?”
“The gray BMW in the back of the lot under that banyan tree. I don’t imagine there are a lot of BMW M-5 SUVs around. But I know of one. Charlie Tiger drives it. Someone is in the vehicle, and he’s on the phone. I’d like to know why he’d follow us and who he’s calling.”
“I can barely see that vehicle. It’s almost lost in the shadows.” She looked up at O’Brien, a light breeze swaying the philodendrons next to the front door. “I told you there are different levels of darkness and there are shadows that try to hide. Maybe what Sam Otter offered you is already helping. We can always go over there and ask Charlie if he’s having car trouble.”
“I think he’s calling trouble. I’m walking you to your car.”
“I have a Beretta under my jacket.”
“I’m hoping you won’t need it tonight.”
He walked with her to a department-issued unmarked Chevy. He waited for her to open the car door and get inside. She got behind the wheel and lowered the windows. “Thank you for dinner, and the escort, too.” She smiled, starting the car. “You aren’t going to approach Charlie Tiger over there are you?”
“Not now. But soon. Goodnight, Wynona.”
O’Brien stepped to his Jeep. The BMW driver’s window now closed. A cloud crept in front of the moon, the shadows dying and becoming a swathe of darkness around the car under the banyan tree.
FORTY-FIVE
He could see his shadow in the moonlight, the moonlight drenching the E
verglades as O’Brien walked to his rented chickee. His unit was the last of a dozen chickees built one after the other, the row extending to the edge of the glades. After checking in at the campground office, he had brushed his teeth in the men’s bathroom and followed a hard-packed dirt path covered in pine straw to his chickee. He carried a single duffle bag in one hand, Glock wedged under his belt, his shirt loose.
He unlocked the wooden door and stepped inside, turning on an overhead light. The floor was made of plywood stained the color of brewed tea. Intersected cypress logs supported the A-frame. The thatched roof was made from palmetto. The single bed was to the left of the small room. The patchwork blanket across the bed was Seminole in design, serrated patterns of red, blues and greens. One pillow. O’Brien placed his bag on the bed. There were two windows with thin, white curtains pulled back revealing the glades, black water glimmering at the base of saw grass.
Looking at the chickee’s craftsmanship, he thought of Joe Billie and how Billie would be sleeping in a holding cell tonight. O’Brien opened the door to a screened-in back porch. He stepped outside. There was a single rocking chair next to a small wooden table. He removed his Glock, set it on the table and sat in the chair. Leafy banana plants grew to one side of the chickee and around the steps leading from the porch.
A soft breeze came across the glades bringing the fragrance of swamp lilies, ferns, and the sandalwood smell of saw grass. Under the moonlight, O’Brien could see far across the glades, the slow movement of surface water reflecting the image of the moon, silhouetted palm hammocks dotting the glades likes islands in the stream. Outside the screened porch mosquitoes whined in the warm, humid air. Bats and nighthawks performed aerial acrobatics in the dark, the erratic sound of air against their wings as if someone briefly opened a car window at high speed.
O’Brien closed his eyes for a moment. He listened to bullfrogs croaking in raucous singsong refrains, gators bellowing mating calls, a night heron’s cry at the moon, green frogs clinging to the porch screen. From under the wooden porch came the musty smell of copulating blacksnakes, fish spawning on the beds—the glades immersed in radiant moonlight, simmering in carnal cycles and oozing the pot liquor of life.
O’Brien stood. He was tired, a dull ache in his back. He went inside, locked the door, and undressed to his T-shirt and shorts. He pulled a flashlight out of his duffle bag, turned off the overhead light, placed the Glock under the pillow and crawled into bed. The mattress was somewhere between hard and firm. Although exhausted, his mind was active, playing back the day’s events.
He thought about the time spent at Charlie Tiger’s house. A facade of strength in the face of his wife, Nita, but her eyes telling a different story. Their daughter, Kimi’s, body language during conversation—fingernails chewed down, long sleeves in the Florida heat to hide her cutting, the thousand-yard stare as he and Billie were leaving. He replayed the stilted conversation with Carlos and Tony. “Is it just me, Tony, or do you find this guy really offensive?”
He thought about text messages from Dave Collins and Lana Halley: ‘Looks like a macabre Hollywood premiere without the red carpet. Lot’s of cameras.”
‘I’m with Joe. They’re placing him in a holding cell. We’ll have an initial appearance before a judge in the morning.’
O’Brien felt fatigue behind his eyes, taking the clarity off his thoughts. He stared at the thin white curtain over the chickee window, the banana plants swaying in the night breeze, a fracture of lightning somewhere over the glades.
He closed his burning eyes, his mind replaying the events with Sam Otter, the sizzling yellow light from the lantern in the chickee falling across hundreds of jars on the shelves, the walk in the woods to the ancient bald cypress tree. He could see Joe Billie as the elder man chanted something and blew smoke into Joe’s face. O’Brien recreated the moment before the old man released smoke into his face, distant lightning ensnared in the medicine man’s black eyes, the smell of rain across the glades, the carrion birds circling against a slate sky.
O’Brien opened his eyes.
He replayed Joe’s explanation of what Sam Otter mumbled, “Those are young birds in the distance. He tells me the adults have come and gone.”
O’Brien looked at his watch. Too late to call Wynona Osceola.
But he knew the first place they’d search for Frank Sparrow’s body.
FORTY-SIX
The sound was distant, but yet somehow close. It was a hushed flutter of wings. Not bird wings. Something different. Similar to the hard flapping of a wet flag in the wind and rain. O’Brien could hear them coming. Same time every day. He knew the sounds of their boots walking by the dimly lit room where he was held prisoner chained to the floor. His prison was the back room of an Afghan house made from mud bricks. A plastic shower curtain hung over the door. They were coming.
Today would be different.
O’Brien sat in the center of the floor acting as if his hands were still secured in the rusty chains. Once a day only, one of the guards would point a pistol to the back of O’Brien’s head and lead him into the brush. O’Brien had no more than one minute to relieve himself. It was the third time when he had spotted a Bic pen half buried in the sand. When the guard sneezed twice, O’Brien, his hands cuffed in front, picked up the pen and slid it under his pant’s lining. In the little time he had between changing of the guards, he used the clip from the pen to fashion it into a lock pick. Then he worked at freedom, trying and failing. Finally, he hit the sweet spot in the lock. Click.
He curled his chain-wrapped hand over the pen, lowered his head, feigning illness. Dried blood covered part of his face from the beatings. Three lower teeth were loose and oozing blood. He listened, not for the sound of the men’s combat boots, but rather for the soft steps of the man who wore the sandals. He was their leader, a lean man, almost as tall as O’Brien. Today would be different.
Mallah Zardah entered the room. Two skinny bearded men wearing traditional shalwar kameez followed him. Both of the foot solders carried AK-47s and RPGs, long knives sticking from their grimy tunics. One man began setting up a tripod and a cheap video camera.
Zardah always wore the same dusty clothes of an Afghan warlord, tiqiyah hat, thawb coat, Russian made Makarov pistol strapped to his side. His face was the shade of mahogany, dark beard streaked with gray, eyes cold as black marbles. Zardah squatted in front of O’Brien and set a wicker basket next to him. O’Brien could hear the buzz of flies trapped in the basket.
“Major O’Brien. Your country has abandoned you. You are expendable.”
Zardah reeked of body odor, sour sweat, and curry.
“If they were coming for you, Major, they already would have come, yes?”
O’Brien said nothing.
Zardah farted and spread a handful of white almonds on the hard-packed dirt floor. He cracked one, holding it in his long slender fingers, nails packed with black dirt. He ate. He stared at O’Brien, his eyes aloof. “Maybe you could convert to Islam, Major O’Brien. You recite a prayer called the shahada, look into the glass eye of the camera, renounce your country for what it is really doing, and … and you live.”
O’Brien said nothing, waiting for the precise second to strike.
Zardah paused, spitting a piece of almond on the ground, lifting the top from the wicker basket. Three flies escaped. “You recognize the head, do you not, Major? It is that of one of your men. His dog tag indicated his name was Samuel Rogers. My men liked the roundness of his head for their soccer game. And now they need another football. As you can see, the head of Rodgers is quite damaged. It does not bounce well.” He grinned. “When I was a child, my father fought the Russians. It was in the Baghlan Province. When they captured a Russian soldier, my father and his men would slice open the enemy’s stomach. The man’s guts baked under the Afghan sun. It was a slow death.” He stared at O’Brien for a reaction. He got nothing.
O’Brien watched the soldiers. He waited for the precise moment. One man was busy t
rying to replace a battery in the camera. The other man looked out the open door, watching a flock of turkeys strut by the entrance.
Zardah chuckled, reaching for another almond. O’Brien moved catlike, shoving the pen deep into Zardah’s left eye. Blood spurted across the white almond shells. O’Brien snatched the pistol from the Zardah’s tunic. He aimed at the man behind the camera, shooting him in the throat. As the second man raised his AK-47, O’Brien shot him in the chest, the round hitting his heart.
Zardah, blood pumping from his right eye, flayed his hands, reaching out. O’Brien pointed the Markov directly into Zardah’s good eye. “This one’s for Sam Rodgers.” He pulled the trigger, stood and grabbed one of the dead soldier’s AK-47’s and two clips of bullets. He bolted through the plastic curtain door into the heat. He ran, turkeys scattering, goats bleating, O’Brien running in the shadows of the mud brick compound, following a dirt switchback leading into the mountains.
He could hear a member of the Taliban yelling to others, trying to rally a quick chase. O’Brien knew he had precious little time to put distance between him and some of the most fierce fighters in the world. He ran hard. Lungs burning. He followed a twisted goat path into the stone. The massive cloud formation covered the sun, and O’Brien found himself running through a dark valley. The smell changed from cedar trees and wood smoke to the sweet odor from the flowers of coconut palms.
O’Brien stopped running. Now, somehow, in a different place. He walked through dark green ferns in deep woods, blood red bromeliads hanging from limbs. The steely sky resembling tarnished silver. There was no birdsong in the trees. The leaves rustled in the wind. He heard Joe Billie’s voice, as if it was spoken in a cave. ‘I even spotted one of those chameleon cameras they use to see if game comes though the areas they want to hunt.’
O’Brien looked around the woods, searching for Billie. He cut his eyes up to see tree limbs swaying in the breeze. A dead branch fell from a cabbage palm. A large crow circled the tree line, turned and flew toward him. He could hear the rapid beat of the wings. It was coming closer. Flying hard and fast coming directly toward O’Brien. It struck him in the chest.
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