When she lifted and spun her head to look at me the movement scared the hell out of me. My knees flexed and my heart jumped in my chest.
“Why, Mr. Freeman. What are you doing here?”
I don’t think I exhaled until I sat down next to her. Margery Jefferson was wearing a dark shawl over her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was pale. She maintained her quizzical look, as if she’d been expecting someone else.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jefferson. You OK?” I finally asked, looking away.
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“Uh, is the reverend here, ma’am?”
“My husband is at home, Mr. Freeman,” she said. “Are you looking for him or for your Mr. Mayes, sir?”
It was my turn to be anxious.
“Has Mark Mayes been here?”
“He was waiting outside when I arrived,” she said, turning her face back to the altar. “We spoke for some time. He was very comforting, Mr. Freeman. He told me of the things you had found out for him, the past about his family. He reminds me very much of Mr. Jefferson when he was that age. Full of questions and wonderings.”
I stayed silent and scanned the polished wood floor, the open door to the back of the church, the pure white cloth covering the altar.
“I don’t know whether to thank you or to despise you for bringing out these truths, Mr. Freeman. I am asking the Lord to guide me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, standing up, not knowing how else to answer.
“I suspect you will find Mr. Mayes at our home,” she said. “I gave him directions.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.
My tires spun in the wet grass when I pulled away from the church. I drove back through town and then west on the blacktop road, thinking that my speed might alert the local law. The sun was up full by the time I pulled in between the oaks in Jefferson’s front yard. When I got out I quietly closed the door. The air was still and the dust I’d raised caught up and settled around me. The reverend’s car and Mayes’s small sedan were parked side by side next to the house. The veranda was empty and the front door closed. I took a survey of the windows before moving to the side of the house. I hesitated before rounding the corner, then stepped out onto the two- track that led to the barn. In the distance the angle of the sun threw a shadow across the half-opened barn door. It was forty feet of open ground, and I felt naked without a weapon.
“Reverend?” I called out with no expectation of an answer. “Mark Mayes? It’s Max Freeman.”
The call returned nothing, and I had little choice. I walked upright and slowly toward the barn, concentrating on the shadow and any possible movement. The air held the smell of sun on grass and the odor of turned dirt. When I got to the door, I hesitated again, then scanned the back of the house, unnerved by the flash of sunlight on the panes of glass.
“Mayes?”
When I stepped into the space of the open doorway, the smell of cold dust touched my face. The windowless room was dark and I pulled on the metal handle to let in more sun. The low, waist-high swatch of light caught the shined black leather of the reverend’s shoes.
He was in his dark suit. The coat unbuttoned. The black shirt wrinkled up with the twisted position of his body. The white cleric’s collar stained on one side by dirt from the rope. He had fastened one end high at the top of the center beam that ran from ceiling to floor. The joists that formed the floor of the second story had provided the crosspiece, and it appeared as though the reverend had measured carefully so that his chest was positioned at the intersection. I had seen enough dead men to know that to cut him down would be fruitless.
“He didn’t wait for my forgiveness, Mr. Freeman.”
The words snapped my head around, and for the second time that morning my heart jumped.
Mark Mayes was sitting cross-legged on the floor behind me, exactly where the shock of the sight of a hanged clergyman had probably dropped him to his knees.
“Why would he do such a thing, Mr. Freeman. The Lord would have long ago forgiven what his grandfather had done.”
I helped Mayes to his feet and backed him out of the barn and into the sunlight.
When we got back to the front of the house, I sat him down on the steps of the porch, opened my cell phone and called O. J. Wilson. Mayes didn’t flinch when he heard me ask the dispatcher to send the sheriff to the Jefferson home.
“You know, after Mr. Manchester told me about my great-grandfather’s watch being found, it was like everything in my head just fell together,” Mayes started.
“He hadn’t run out on his family. He had been true to his beliefs. Ever since I was a kid I had this ache to believe in God, and I wondered where it had come from, how it had gotten inside me. I guess I wanted to know it was him, Cyrus Mayes.
“Then, when Mr. Manchester told me about the Jefferson in the letters and what you’d found, Mr. Freeman, I couldn’t get it out of my head. The grandson of Cyrus Mayes’s killer chose this, the ministry? How? I looked up the address of the church and drove over. I talked with his wife and asked her if I could talk with him, to maybe, I don’t know, maybe offer some kind of forgiveness.”
The silver crucifix he wore around his neck was out of his shirt. He had been handling it while he sat quietly in the barn and prayed. The glow of his innocence bothered me. Maybe I was jealous.
“Yeah, maybe you did,” I said.
CHAPTER
23
Wilson showed up with a squad car following him into the driveway. He greeted me coldly.
We stood in the shadow of the big oaks. Mayes deliberately avoided looking back at the open barn door, and the uniformed cops, one with sergeant stripes on his arm, seemed at a loss as to what to do with the bristle they carried into the place. The sheriff’s face held a look of tight-lipped resolve.
“Hank, keep these two separated, please, until I can get their independent statements,” he said, and then spun on his heel and headed for the barn. I went to sit in my truck while one of the deputies took Mayes to the squad car. The sergeant started over to me but when I looked up and met his eyes, he saw something in them that made him stop short, and he took up a position about fifteen feet away. I didn’t say a word. After a time I watched Wilson step out of the barn door and head back our way. He bypassed us and went to the trunk of his Crown Victoria and popped the trunk. He came up with what I recognized as a fingerprint kit and I watched him return to the barn. He was gone several minutes more and then came out with the kit and again disappeared into the trunk of his car, concentrating on something there. When he was finished, he called me over and my guard came with me.
“I am not a man who likes to be wrong, Mr. Freeman, but my daddy taught me to at least admit it when you are.” There was no question in the statement, so I did not feel compelled to say anything in return.
“I have taken enough latent print courses at the FBI to make a good guess that the fingerprints of the now-deceased Mr. Jefferson appear to match those on the .405 casing that we found at the first murder scene,” he said. “We’ll have to get them over to the expert in Orlando, but I’m guessing we’ve got some shaking out to do with all this, Mr. Freeman. So why don’t you and I sit down and talk a bit.”
Wilson used his cell phone to call the county medical examiner’s office. When he was through he gave his deputies instructions on how he wanted the scene sealed off, and then turned to me.
“Come take a knee with me, sir.”
He led me over into the shade of the oak, and when the sergeant started to follow, he waved him off.
“It’s OK, Hank,” the sheriff said.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Freeman, I’d like to leave your friend there in the car.”
I looked over at Mayes, and when I turned back, the sheriff read the confusion in my face.
“Gotta do this one by the book, sir.”
We settled under the tree and I told him how I had arrived at the church at 6:10 and found Mrs. Jefferson there. I desc
ribed where and how I had found Mayes and how I had left the scene out back just as he found it, except for my adjustment of the front door.
He nodded, and then it was his turn.
“You must have left the church just before we got there, son. Mrs. Jefferson called Judy down to dispatch and told her she’d found her husband hanging dead in the barn when she got up. She said she didn’t know what to do but to go to the church and pray.”
She had known he was dead before I had arrived. I tried to rerun her words and wondered why I hadn’t caught it.
Wilson then gave me a short version of his own ten-year investigation into the Highlands County murders. The facts weren’t much different from those that Billy had come up with in his research, but from the lawman who had lived the cases and had obviously let them burn in his head for so many years, it was painful to see him try to accept the truth. The reverend had carried out the killings as some kind of warped retribution against evil. The twitch of violence in his bloodline had surfaced in a way he could somehow justify.
While we spoke a van from the medical examiner’s office arrived with another county squad car. Wilson’s sergeant spoke to the driver and he backed down the driveway to the front of the barn. The van emitted a piercing beep for as long as the transmission was in reverse. I cringed with each beat, and saw Mark Mayes squeeze his eyes closed.
“I have seen Reverand Jefferson two or three times a week for a decade. Attended many a prayer meeting at his church,” Wilson said, looking off in the direction of the van. “I’m having a hard time with all this, Mr. Freeman. What possesses a man?”
I wasn’t qualified to answer such a question, and when I remained silent, he stood and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I need to speak to Mr. Mayes, and then you two can go. I will eventually need that rifle that the reverend gave you.”
“I’m sure the ballistics reports on the weapon will be extremely thorough, Sheriff.”
While Mayes was being interviewed I called Billy’s office and home before finally reaching him on his cell. The connection was bad.
“I’m down in Miami-Dade,” he said. “The lawyers for PalmCo are trying to get an injunction to block any excavation of the site that we put in the probable cause filing. They’re trying to use some angle about sacred Indian burial grounds through the name of some Miccosuki tribesman they dug up, excuse the expression.”
“Christ,” I said. “Lawyers.”
“It’s a stalling tactic,” Billy replied. We’ve already got a Collier County sheriff’s detail out there securing the site, and I’ve warned the PalmCo boys that if they play us on this, we’ll be glad to get the media involved.”
“We built Florida on the bones of our workers.”
“Exactly,” Billy said.
I told Billy about Reverend Jefferson’s suicide and the sheriff’s preliminary fingerprint analysis.
“Is Mayes all right?”
I looked over to the patrol car where Wilson was still talking with the kid. Mayes was nodding his head, being deferential and polite.
“The kid’s got some faith,” I said. “And finally some answers.”
“And more to use it on than he bargained for,” Billy said.
When the sheriff was done talking to Mayes he escorted him over to where I was standing and shook my hand.
“I’ll have to have both of you come in later to make official statements. I hope that won’t put you out much. I know you’ll have some pressing engagements down south,” he said.
Mayes climbed into his car just as another squad car was pulling in. I could see Mrs. Jefferson’s profile through the backseat window.
“May we go back to the church for a few minutes, Mr. Freeman?” Mayes said, watching the car through his window. I nodded and he pulled out ahead of me without waiting.
When we pulled down onto the dirt drive to the church, a worn and rusted truck was parked in the grass. I stopped next to Mayes’s sedan and got out.
“Can I suggest that you get a hold of Billy as soon as you can?” I said. “He’s going to have some things to tell you. There’s a forensics team working the spot in the Glades where we found your great-grandfather. Billy can probably arrange to have you taken out there if you want.”
He waited a few seconds and then said, “I don’t think I’m going to have to, Mr. Freeman.” We were still standing next to my truck when a couple came out of the church. He was big and round- shouldered with thick, workingman’s hands. The woman was small and angular and sagging at the shoulders with some invisible weight. The man opened the passenger-side door of the truck for her and then got in and drove away.
“I’m going to go inside for a minute if you’d like to join me,” Mayes said, and turned away.
I watched him disappear through the church door and then sat back looking at the sun filter down through the leaves and onto my hood. I had been up for nearly forty-eight hours, and my head felt filled with cotton though I couldn’t call it sleepiness. I was bone- tired, but my grinding had not stopped. I reached back behind the seats and found the bag I had stuffed there after hosing myself off at Dawkins’s dock and took out an evidence bag.
Mayes was in the front pew when I joined him inside. His hands were folded in front of him, but instead of bowing his head he simply stared up at the cross behind the altar. I sat down beside him and tried to match his gaze but couldn’t hold it for long. I took the gold watch out of the plastic and held it out in my palm beside his knee and he finally shifted his eyes down and reached out to take it. He held it with the tips of his fingers as though he was afraid of a brittleness that was not there.
“It still opens,” I said.
He found the catch and flipped it open, then turned it so he might read the inscription. A single tear rolled down his face, leaving a shining streak. He looked back up at the cross.
“He was a good and pious man, wasn’t he, Mr. Freeman?”
“I believe so.”
“Then I should forgive him,” he said. It was not a question, and I did not feel the need to answer.
CHAPTER
24
When I got back to Billy’s penthouse I slept for fourteen hours, the first six or seven in my clothes. I woke late in the evening and took a shower with the full intent of staying up, but when I lay back on the bed I turned my head into the pillow and was gone again for another six or seven. It was still dark when my eyes snapped open, my heart thumping in fear that I didn’t know where I was, nor did I have any concept of the correct day or even the year. My fingers went involuntarily to the soft disk of scar at my neck. I reached over and turned on a bedside lamp, and it took me several minutes to calm myself.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and padded out into Billy’s kitchen. The only light came from the dimmed recessed spots that glowed above the counter space and at the front entryway. I had a magnificent headache, and my immediate guess was caffeine withdrawal. I had gone without coffee for longer than I had in many years. I set a ten-cup pot to brewing in Billy’s machine and stepped out onto the patio to wait. The ocean was black, and against all odds I couldn’t see a single light on the ocean. There were no fishermen, no freighters and no way to judge the horizon—or even the era. There was only the sound of the surf on the sand, the way it has moved up onto land for millions of years. For the rest of the night I sat with coffee, waiting out the darkness and watching light come into the world.
Shortly after dawn I heard Billy moving about inside, and he joined me with an obscene concoction of blended fruit and vitamins and a copy of The Wall Street Journal.
“Welcome b-back, Mr. Van Winkle.” We clinked mug to crystal and caught up.
The judge in Collier County to whom the PalmCo attorneys had presented their injunction had apparently not been the recipient of enough PalmCo political money, and they squelched their argument. The excavation had already begun. Billy had sent Bill Lott to be his representative. The old CIA man was grumpy as hell over having to spend
days in the Glades fighting mosquitoes and the heat, but he was fascinated by the project.
“He c-called last night to tell us they had already f-found an intact skull. They weren’t sharing too m-much with him until he convinced them of his experience with l-law enforcement. Then they l-let him have a look,” Billy said.
“They can’t tell in the field if it w-was one of the b-boys or Cyrus, but there was an obvious shattering hole in the back of the skull. They’ve already ruled it a h-homicide.
“Lott thinks a lot of the b-bones and fragments will be spread out from the animals that would have g-gotten to the bodies. B-But in that insect-rich environment, he says it t-takes only a few days for a body to be st-stripped to the bone. So they th-think they’ll find the others.”
“That ought to get PalmCo spinning,” I said.
“It already h-has. There are three agencies in on th-this, including someone from the park service. One of them is already l-leaking info to PalmCo. And an acquaintance of m-mine at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel called on a t-tip he got, so the press is onto it, too.”
“So there goes our media threat.”
“Doesn’t m-matter,” Billy said, looking a bit pleased with himself. “Their attorneys left a m-message with my office today. They w-want to meet.”
I let him enjoy his lawyerly reveling for a couple of minutes before asking him his opinion on what they might do.
“They will p-probably offer some c-compensation to the families. Not b-because they had any direct h-hand in the deaths, but b- because it w-was their project years b-back and they want to show r-respect for the workingm-men who sacrificed their lives to b-build the trail.”
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