Post Facto

by Darryl Wimberley

  About that time Connie’s headlights speared the side of Leb’s shed and I saw the back-up lights flash on as she threw the Suburban’s tranny into reverse.

  “Damn you, Colt!”

  I could feel my heart hammering. And then that subtle tug in the chest. That mild restriction.

  Not now! I told myself. Not now!

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” I fastened my seat belt with one hand as I reached for the ignition with the other. “But next time, you’re driving.”

  I have tailed a mark before. On several occasions actually. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to hide in Boston traffic than on a flat road in the middle of the flatwoods of northern Florida.

  “Kill your lights,” Colt directed me.

  “You fucking crazy?”

  “There’s a moon. She’s got taillights.”

  So for, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty minutes or a year, depending how you measure time, I dragged behind Connie’s outsized Suburban like an iron filing pulled by a magnet.

  It couldn’t have been more than five or six miles up the blacktop that she swerved at some completely invisible intersection into a stand of pine trees.

  “Don’t lose her,” Colt chided, and I hit bottom following the taillights ahead.

  “Where in the wide hell are we?” I asked.

  “Flatwoods,” Colt answered calmly.

  “That covers a lot of ground,” I bit back.

  “She’s slowin’ up. Back off.”

  I fell back as far as I could and still keep Connie’s tail-lights in sight. We probably had not covered another half mile when Sheriff Buchanan nodded out his window to an island of palmetto.

  “Pull in over there,” the sheriff directed. “From here on in we walk.”

  One thing you lose driving is the smell of your surroundings. I had just come from a football game and could still smell in my clothes the odor of fresh-cut Bermuda grass and mustard and hot dogs. Those lingering aromas were overwhelmed now by the damp belly of a swamp redolent with the fetid rot of leaves and animal life, countless and infinitely small carcasses of bacteria teeming with the bud of growth that was new even in November.

  “You all right?” Colt asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Can wait in the car, you want to.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Come on then.”

  I had to walk damned near as fast as I could to keep up with Colt’s easy lope. The trail we followed snaked for maybe another quarter mile before terminating abruptly in a glade cleared of trees. I spotted Connie’s Suburban, parked with a pair of ratted-out pickups beside a goose-neck trailer, at least thirty feet long with push-outs on either side and a satellite dish on top. There were fold-out chairs arranged in a fire pit in front of the travel-trailer, and a pair of recliners. Colt and I worked our way in close, settling finally behind a copse of scrub oak downwind from the fire pit.

  “Hell of a love nest,” I whispered to Colt.

  “I don’t think it’s that kind of nest.”

  “What is it, then? Colt—?”

  “Shhhh,” he warned me, and I saw a blade of light open with the trailer’s door. Connie Koon emerged from the interior with Roscoe Lamb right behind. I heard Connie’s laugh, high and nervous along with Roscoe’s graveled reply.

  And then a light went on, an argon light mounted on a pole beside the fire pit, and three other figures stumped out of the single-wide to join Connie and Roscoe. These were young men, Latino, all three dressed like gangbangers in those low-hung shorts with baggy legs. T-shirts untucked and loose as tents. The first two were covered in tattoos; those I didn’t recognize, but the third young man was immediately familiar, an enormous teenager, smooth-muscled and sloppy.

  I nudged the sheriff. “That’s Raul Herrera. He hangs with the Uribe boy.”

  “Edgar,” Colt whispered. “Now listen up.”

  The three younger men sauntered out to the fire pit with Roscoe and Connie. Connie pulled up a chair beside the pit, chattering some nonsense. One of the tattooed Latinos produced what looked like a corncob pipe and a plastic bag.

  “Gimme that shit,” Connie ordered.

  Tattoo replied in Spanish and his buddy turned over the bag of crystal. Raul Herrera hung back this whole time, hands in pockets, as Connie shook out crystals of metham-phetamine into the bulb of the pipe. Roscoe Lamb offered his lighter. Connie took a long pull, then offered a hit to Roscoe Lamb. He shook his head.

  “I ain’t here for that.”

  Roscoe tapped the side of his chair with a grimy knuckle.

  “Si, si,” one of the tattoos acknowledged, and left his posse to reenter the trailer. Connie was laughing when he came back with what looked like a grocery bag.

  Roscoe made some demand which I missed. But then he repeated it.

  “I said count it for me, amigo.”

  The Latin kid replied with some curse or insult that brought Roscoe to his feet. Here’s a man in his late sixties bowing up to a pair of bangers and Connie doesn’t even register what’s going on. She is jazzed. Oblivious. Herrera sees what’s happening. The kid shifts to take a position nearer the trailer.

  “Oh, fuck it, count it for him,” the bagman’s compa directed casually, and immediately things settled down.

  The bagman found a seat by the fire and began to sort bills, by currency apparently, into neat piles for Roscoe’s inspection.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Colt whispered. “Let’s go.”

  I hung at Colt’s hip during our long retreat. By the time we reached my 4-Runner, I was shaking like a leaf.

  “That was a meth lab, wasn’t it? We’ve got a fucking cartel cooking meth right here in our own backyard!”

  “Give me your car keys, Clara Sue. Hand ’em over.”

  Sheriff Buchanan eased my SUV from its hiding place, the tires digging briefly before finding traction in the soft sand. He checked the rearview mirror to make sure we wouldn’t be spotted as we plunged by the light of a fitful moon back to the hard road.

  “You okay?”

  “There was a time when I’d have been just dandy,” I snapped. “Back when I thought I was bulletproof.”

  “We’re safe, Clara Sue. Nobody’s following us.”

  “Have you ever seen that posse before?”

  “Only the kid.”

  “I hate the Herrera boy being involved,” I said.

  “You don’t know that he is involved,” Colt cautioned.

  “Come on, Sheriff, he was standing right in the middle of it.”

  “He might have no choice, especially if a relative is involved. Roscoe Lamb, on the other hand—I have an informant who’s been telling me for weeks that Roscoe is a player.”

  “So why were you following Connie Koon?”

  “First, you have to agree to keep tonight’s episode off the record. Comprende, cousin? All of it.”

  “Certainly,” I acknowledged. “This is back story. Deep in the back.”

  “At least for now.” Colt emphasized that point. “But to answer your question about Connie Koon: A few months back I was having coffee at Carl’s café and I noticed Connie slipping out the door to take a phone call. Now that behavior in itself doesn’t mean a damn thing.

  “But then Roscoe made some kind of excuse to leave, and on his way out the door I saw him jabbing in numbers on his cell phone. This happens a couple times, enough to seem like a pattern anyway, so one day I followed Connie’s Suburban. She left the café and headed straight for Colored Town. Couple minutes later she eases through that gap in the fence surrounding the water tower. I knew there had to be some sort of rendezvous coming. I expected to see Roscoe Lamb actually. Thought maybe Roscoe was getting himself somethin’ from Connie besides a latte and milk.

  “But it wasn’t Roscoe meeting Connie under the water tower; it was Officer Martin Hart.”

  “Marty? Marty Hart was banging Connie Koon?”

  “No, no.” Colt s
hook his head. “Marty wasn’t a lover. He was a shithead and a snake, and if I’m right he was pushing crystal.”

  “Where’d The Weasel get methamphetamine?”

  “I got a couple theories,” Colt said, checking his rearview. “I also have a source could be involved, and he’s in real danger. I hope you can appreciate that.”

  “This isn’t for print, Colt. You made that clear.”

  We passed the prison at about that juncture, the spread of dormitories pristine inside that razor-wire perimeter, a glow of Spartan architecture lit in argon. Colt doffed his hat and ran a hand through his hair.

  “I have an informant in danger and I have no idea how to protect him. You can bet that Roscoe Lamb’s got protection. For all I know, half of my own deputies are on the take, and God only knows who he’s got working for him inside the prison.”

  “Why’d you bring me, Colt? Why’d you want me involved?”

  He donned his Stetson before answering me.

  “Because if something happens to me, I want you to contact Special Agent Andrew Sandstrom at the regional office for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Live Oak. You get hold of Andy, you tell him what you saw tonight along with everything you and I have discussed. You can trust the FDLE, Clara Sue. Those boys are straighter than Eliot Ness, but don’t breathe a word to anyone else. Not to Randall, not the Pope—nobody.”

  “I never gave up a source in my life.”

  I clenched my hands to still a sudden pain in my chest.

  “You all right, Clara Sue?”

  “Just get me back to the Clarion.”

  We didn’t exchange another word on the drive back to town. Sheriff Buchanan pulled my SUV into a slot behind his cruiser at the curb in front of my newspaper.

  “Twenty minutes till midnight.” Colt showed me his watch.

  “As promised,” I acknowledged weakly.

  I could see the cone of my husband’s desk lamp through the streetside window. Colt tossed me the keys as I dragged out the passenger-side door. I waited until Colt’s cruiser pulled around the corner before entering my place of business.

  “It’s me,” I announced, locking the door behind.

  “’Bout time.” Randall barely looked up from his monitor.

  I hung my keys on a hook screwed into the counter and pushed through the batwing doors on the way to my husband’s workstation.

  “You and Colt have a nice ride?” he asked.

  “Not bad.”

  I ran my hand through Randall’s hair, gold and unkempt.

  “I love you, you old coot. I take you for granted too damned often, I know, but—”

  He cut me short with a kiss. Just a quick, light buss on the lips.

  “Must be one hell of a story you’re not telling me about.” Randall settled back to work.

  I never could fool Randall.

  “I can’t say anything. Really.”

  “Long as it’s got nothing to do with cousins kissing.”

  Thank God it didn’t.

  Randall and I put the paper to bed around three in the morning, barely in time to make the printer’s deadline in Gainesville.

  “I’m hauling my butt to bed,” Randall declared.

  “And a fine butt it is too.”

  “Not gonna get you anywhere, Clara Sue. I am limp as a dishrag.”

  “See what we can do about that.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Laureate Hornets Lose to Lake Butler Tigers

  Bid to Renovate School on Hold

  Ghosts Seen at Dowling Park

  The Clarion

  I woke the next morning eager for work. Randall knew I was back in the saddle, maybe a couple of saddles.

  “Just be careful,” he advised over our morning coffee. “This isn’t Iraq. You’re not protected by a platoon of riflemen.”

  My ride with Colt triggered the same junkie’s high I used to get when embedded with patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Sheriff Buchanan had made it clear I was off the record for that story. No horse to saddle there. But there remained the campaign to push Butch McCray off his property, and the mystery attached to his mother’s hope chest. Those were horses inviting a ride, if I could find a saddle to mount them.

  All I had was an empty trunk and a history riddled with loose ends, and my only source was a centenarian in an old folks’ home. It’s never a good idea to hang your hat on any single source of information, so first thing I had to do was ferret out any documentation that debunked or supported the outlines of Hattie Briar’s narrative. I started by paying a visit to Dan Hewitt, Clerk of Court. The Clarion, I believe I’ve mentioned, piles its two stories of brick and wood directly across the street from the courthouse which, along with the fact the court’s clerk is a cousin, makes it easy for me to verify things like voter registration, or tax assessments, or, occasionally, wills and deeds.

  I spent maybe an hour at the courthouse poring over dusty folios filled with instruments of another age, yellowed parchments penned by hand in flowing cursive. I found Harold McCray’s will which left his wife Annie all “earthlie goods and properties.” That document was dated in June of 1939 and I was not surprised to see that Hattie Briar’s uncle was a signing witness. The coroner’s report for Harold McCray was on file as well, a “gunshot wound” cited as the “accidental” cause of death on the 8th of December 1953.

  A week before the Christmas of 1953, Annette McCray produced a will making Kelly Lamb her sole heir and executor, effectively ceding old man Lamb the homestead she inherited from Harold. That will was notarized in the county courthouse two weeks before Annie and Kelly were married.

  Roughly three months later, Butch’s mother was found at the end of a noose.

  That chronology, at least, followed Hattie’s account. Not that it did me any good. Whatever Hiram Lamb was looking for was clearly not on file with the county clerk. I left the courthouse, crossed the street to the Clarion and grabbed my laptop before climbing the rickety stairs leading to my second-story roost. My great uncle used to keep an office on this floor, long before it housed a newspaper, and I had taken the judge’s aerie over for my own use. It’s not luxurious. A worm-eaten timber panels the walls, and lengths of ancient pine a foot wide plank the floor. It’s cold in the winter and too warm in the summer, but I love lounging at my vargueno beneath the naked beams of that lofty study, settling my coffee on the sills of lead-paned windows to view the courthouse and street below.

  There was still a sampling of Judge Boatwright’s notes and formal correspondence filed in a pair of heavy wooden cabinets atop which I lodge my coffee pot and condiments. But what I most treasured was stacked floor-to-ceiling along the walls; these were back issues of the Clarion that dated back to the early 1900s. I’d already rummaged those stacks looking for details of Harold McCray’s death and his wife’s suicide, and I could always return for a closer look. But in light of my interview at Dowling Park and my courthouse research, I doubted any account from the Clarion would contradict official records or Hattie’s recollection. Those were not the columns of most interest to me.

  What I was looking for in the Clarion’s fading back issues was some mention of Shamrock and its company-run school. I remembered Hattie Briar mentioning that Annette McCray had been employed for some period of time at the mill in Shamrock. I hoped to discover among the staff or faculty at the school a viable candidate with some link to Butch’s mother. Before plunging into those stacks, however, I fired up my modern wireless for a Google of “Shamrock, Florida,” and within moments found testament to a vanished city.

  Turns out that Shamrock, Florida, was established by Putnam Lumber Company in 1928 within walking distance of Cross City. This was an enormous mill town that confirmed Hattie’s description, a community built from stoop to shingle with Yankee money solely for the purpose of harvesting Suwannee River cypress and pine. Growing up in Laureate, I’d heard my relatives or elders make mention of Shamrock, but I’d no clue its operation was so vast or
sophisticated.

  Or so relentless.

  According to the company’s history, the Shamrock mill at its peak cut 140 million board feet of timber each year, all hardwood, a mix of red cypress and longleaf yellow pine. I saw grainy black-and-whites of the skidders that hauled in those enormous trees from the deep swamp along with shots of Ross carriers big as buses forking dimensioned lumber in yards that seemed to have no horizon.

  Workers toiled round the clock to load lumber and lath thirty railroad cars at a time from immense sheds constructed directly alongside privately owned railroad tracks. A tree that took centuries to grow could be felled distantly, snaked to the railhead, hauled to the mill, sorted, planed, cut to dimension, and stacked to dry within hours.

  But by 1959 the trees were gone. An enormous crew of men, not to mention their wives and children, was simply let go and the mill was shut down. However, Annie McCray signed her pernicious will in 1954, which gave me some hope that I might yet discover a reference to the teachers or administrators responsible for running the company-owned school, some detail that would connect Annette McCray to some likely confidant or confederate. By noon I had learned everything I could from web-based sites.

  It was time for some old-fashioned legwork.

  I decided to bracket the dates of Harold McCray’s death and Annette’s marriage to Kelly Lamb, which meant I’d need to pull every issue of the Clarion from November of 1953 to January ’55, but as I made my way through stacks I was captivated by papers that chronicled the years from the Great Depression to World War II. These were papers set up in type cases and printed with honest to god presses and I wondered, reading them, whether I would be capable of such craftsmanship or labor.

  It was hard not to linger over the people featured in these aging columns, characters right out of Steinbeck, men and women in khaki or denim posing beside a corn crib or sugar cane mill. The occasional photo from overseas, a cocky local posing beside his Sherman tank or B-17. I was wasting time, of course. The period that I needed to research was nearer to the Korean War. With some regret, I thrashed through another sheaf of newspapers, leaving Roosevelt and World War II behind to reach the 1950s. I was chuckling over a photo of Harry Truman when I spotted an article bannered beneath, “Shamrock School in Crisis.”