Stillborn Armadillos (John Lee Quarrels Book 1)

by Nick Russell

  "I want to hear it from her," the judge said evenly.

  She held her head high and glared at him but refused to speak.

  "Jesus Christ, Lorraine, quit being so god damn stubborn and answer, will you?"

  She jerked her head towards her husband and hissed, "If you were more of a man, you'd have been the one kicking that prick's ass, not me, and I wouldn't be standing here. But no, I had to do your job. So don't you dare tell me what to do!"

  "That's it," the judge said, rapping his gavel. "Deputy Westfall, take her back to her cell. And keep her there until this time tomorrow."

  "No, please don't do that to my mom," Herbie begged.

  As Maddy led the defiant woman out of the courtroom, the judge looked at the boy with sympathetic eyes and said, "I'm sorry, son, but I'm not the one doing it to your mom. She's doing it to herself."

  ***

  "If I ever get that stupid and stubborn, promise me you'll shoot me," Maddy said an hour later as they sat across from each other in the bullpen. "I mean, it's not like Judge Taylor didn't give her plenty of opportunities to avoid going back to jail."

  "Some people are just too dumb for their own good," John Lee replied.

  "Your face looks terrible."

  "Okay. Your ass looks too big in that uniform."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Oh, I thought we were trading insults."

  Maddy gave him a haughty look and said, "I was showing concern for your injuries. And by the way, my ass looks just fine, in or out of uniform."

  "Mea culpa. I think that's Latin for 'oops, my bad.'"

  Andy Stringer came in and sat down at the table. "Did you hear the latest?"

  "No, what's up?"

  "Obie put in for sick leave. Said he's still having chest pains even though the ER over in Perry checked him out and said he's fine."

  "Why am I not surprised? I wonder how long he'll ride that train?"

  "Just as long as he can," Maddy said. "You know Obie, if there's a way to get out of work and get paid at the same time, he's going to milk it for all it's worth."

  "I know what those boys done was stupid and all that," Andy said, "but I've got to tell you, it was funnier'n hell, too!"

  They all laughed, picturing Obie huddling terrified in his car as the boys threw firecrackers onto the roof. Their fellow deputy had shirked his duty and made others carry the load for him too many times for anybody to have much sympathy for what he had gone through.

  Andy studied John Lee's face and said, "That woman sure messed you up, son."

  "It only hurts when I breathe."

  "You making any progress on those skeletons yet?"

  John Lee told them what he knew, and how he suspected the victims had come from one of the turpentine camps, but had no way to prove it at that point.

  "Did you talk to anybody at Somerton? Maybe they have some old records or something."

  "I talked to Troy yesterday. He said that big tornado that came through here back in the 60s destroyed a building where they had their old company records stored."

  "How did that go?"

  "What? Seeing Troy?"

  "Yeah. Didn't you guys have some history back a long time ago?"

  "We ran around together when we were kids," John Lee said.

  "Okay. I was thinking there was a hassle about some girl or something. One of you stole the other one's girlfriend or something."

  "Oh, those boys tried to pollinate anything within reach," Maddy said. "My brother was part of that rat pack."

  "Yeah, we had us some fun back in the day," John Lee agreed. "What can I say? Life happens and sometimes people just drift apart. Troy did invite me to go fishing with him. Said he's been riding the desk pretty much all the time since his daddy semi-retired."

  "So are you at a dead end in the investigation?"

  "I don't know," John Lee said. "I was thinking about talking to some of the old timers around here to see if any of them can tell me anything about those days."

  "Donald Perry."

  "Who?"

  "Donald Perry."

  "Mister Donald? The janitor from when we were in high school?"

  "Yep."

  "Is he even still alive?"

  "Yes, he is," Andy said. "He'll be a 95 years old on Thanksgiving. And he still gets around just as spry as if he was in his 60s."

  "You're kidding me?"

  "Nope. You know where Anderson Farms Road crosses Copperhead Creek?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's where you'll find him," Andy said. "He's down there most every evening, fishing off the bridge there. I just stopped and talked to him the other day. That old gentleman knows just about everything that went on around here back in the old days. And he's still sharp as a tack. You ought to look him up."

  "Thanks for the tip, Andy. I'll sure do that."

  "I always liked Mister Donald," Maddy said. "Tell him I said hello."

  "I will," John Lee assured her.

  He set off for Copperhead Creek, eager to talk to somebody who might help him take the investigation of the skeletons to the next level.

  Chapter 39

  A blue three wheeled bicycle with a wire basket attached to the handlebars and a larger wire basket mounted in back between the rear wheels was sitting beside the road, its paint faded and the fenders dented. An old black man wearing a wide brimmed straw hat was seated on a folding chair on the bridge. He turned when he heard John Lee's Charger pull up and smiled when he recognized his visitor.

  "John Lee Quarrels! That you, boy?"

  "Yes, sir, it is. How you doing, Mister Donald?"

  "Not bad for an old nigga. How 'bout yourself?"

  "I can't complain."

  "Don't do no good anyway," Mister Donalds said, extending a gnarled hand to shake. Even at his age, his grip was firm. "Nobody really cares, they just listenin' to be polite, and all the while you're talkin' they's ignorin' you and wonderin' what they goin' to say next."

  "I expect that's true. You catching anything?"

  "Got me a couple sunfish and a bullhead."

  John Lee looked in the white five gallon plastic bucket next to the man's chair.

  A pickup approached and slowed down as it came to the bridge, rattling across on the wooden planks. The driver, one of the Davidson brothers, John Lee wasn't sure which one, raised two fingers from the steering wheel in salute and John Lee waved back.

  "You come out here for a fishin' report or you got somethin' else on your mind?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do."

  John Lee took the evidence bag from his pocket and removed the brass tag. "Have you ever seen one of these before, Mister Donald?"

  The old man brought it close to his face and studied it for a moment, then handed it back. "Yep. Seen more than one of them in my time."

  "They tell me it's from the old turpentine camps."

  "That's a fact."

  "Mister Donald, did you hear about those three skeletons we found out on Turpentine Highway a while back?"

  "Heard somethin' 'bout it. Didn't pay much attention. Man gets to be my age, he don't much give a care about all that's goin' on in the world. If I can sit up and take nourishment in the mornin' and my bowels move sometime in the day, that's about all I kin ask for. Well, that and that those bowels let me know ahead of time what they're goin' to do."

  John Lee chuckled. "I guess that is important, isn't it."

  "Yes, suh, 'deed it is. Now why you askin' me about that there piece of metal, John Lee?"

  "We found it with those three skeletons we dug up. Fellow over at the historical museum told me about the turpentine camps and said it was an ID tag for one of the workers there."

  "He told you right."

  "He also told me about how things were back then, Mister Donald. About how those workers weren't much more than slaves sometimes."

  "That's true, son. Black or white, if you found yourself in one a those places you could kiss your ass goodbye, 'cause it belonged to the comp
any from then on."

  "I heard that sometimes people tried to escape. And I heard that when they did, sometimes they got beat. Or worse."

  "Heard the same thing myself."

  The old man's red and white plastic bobber dipped under the water and he pulled back sharply on the rod, setting the hook. He reeled in another palm sized sunfish and took it off the hook, dropping it into the bucket. Picking up an old tin can from the pavement next to his chair, he fished inside and brought out a night crawler, and re-baited his hook. Wiping his hand on his pants leg, he cast the line out again, never having gotten up from his chair during the whole process.

  When he was done, he asked, "Why you messin' 'round in this stuff, John Lee? Whatever happened to those men whose bones you found, it was a long time ago."

  "It's my job. I want to find out who killed them."

  "Why? What good's it goin' do after all this time?"

  John Lee shrugged. "It just don't seem right that whoever did it got away with it."

  "Lots of things ain't right in the world, son. Never have been and never will be."

  "I know that. But I just can't let this go and pretend nothing ever happened, can I?"

  "I don't know. Can ya'?"

  "No, sir, I can't."

  "Probably whoever killed them has been dead forever."

  "I expect so," John Lee said. "But I still want the world to know who did it."

  "One thing a nigger learns pretty early in these parts is that sometimes it's best to mind your own business."

  "I like to think those days are long gone," John Lee said.

  The old man picked up his fishing pole and hooked a finger over the line and pulled backwards just a touch, feeling for any tug of resistance that might tell him something was near his bait on the other end. Satisfied, he leaned it back against the bridge's low railing.

  "I'd like to think so, too. Don't get me wrong, it's a different world than what I grew up in. But even now they's people that liked it the way it was in the old days. Would like to see things go back that way."

  "Yeah, that's true, Mister Donald. But they're wrong, and it's better now."

  "Don't kid yourself," the old man said, turning his lined and leathery face his way. "There's people right now in this county who'd string a nigga up and not think a thing 'bout it, if they thought they could get away with it."

  John Lee knew the man was right, and he nodded his acknowledgment.

  "Did you ever hear of some of the things that happened out there at those camps, Mister Donald?"

  "Heard a lot of things. Saw some things, too."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Didn't you hear what I was sayin' to you, boy? I didn't get to be this old by talkin' about things that weren't none a my concern."

  "Mister Donald, I'm not looking to cause you any trouble, sir. I'm really not. But I don't know where else to go with this. I wasn't around back in the old days, when the freedom marchers were doing their thing and all that, but I learned all about it in history class. I learned about all those folks who come from up north to stage sit-ins and walk with the blacks to try to change things. That wasn't any of their concern, either. And some of them got beat up pretty bad. Some even died because they got involved. But they did it, because they wanted to make things right."

  "When I was eight years old, me and my friend Joseph was playin' with matches and we wound up burnin' down his pappy's tool shed," Mister Donald told him. "When I was fifteen I was introduced to sex by my cousin Charlie's wife while he was workin' diggin' ditches up around Lake City somewhere. I think I was about that same age when I swiped a silver dollar from my grandmammy's purse. That was money she was saving up to buy a new dress and hat for Easter Sunday. I used that money to buy me a bottle of moonshine and I got so drunk I 'bout puked myself to death, yes I did. I done some other things I ain't proud of, too. Even cheated on my wife one time with a gal I met in a gin mill, back when I was a young buck, full of piss and vinegar. What I'm sayin' is, I've been carryin' around plenty of guilt for most a my life, just like most people. So you bringin' any more to me? It's goin' to be pretty low down on the list for me to worry about."

  John Lee was frustrated and couldn't think of a way to get through to the old man, to unlock the secrets he had hidden in his memory.

  "I'm sorry, Mister Donald. I never meant to try to put you on a guilt trip. I'm just so damn frustrated that somebody killed those three men. Tied their hands behind them with barbed wire and made them get down on their knees and shot them in the back of the head like that when they were helpless. I was talking to a lady over there in Tallahassee at the crime lab, and she showed me the bones from one of them's wrist. She showed me gouges right into the bone from that barbed wire, where that poor man tried to get free. I just keep thinking about that, and I can't let it go. What could they have done so bad to deserve that?"

  "Ain't nobody ever deserved that."

  "No, sir, I don't think so either."

  Another car went by, with a teenage couple inside. John Lee nodded at them but they ignored him. Three or four other vehicles passed by before Mister Donald reeled in his line to check his bait, then cast it out again.

  "There was five of us families that lived close together in a group of little shacks. My friend Joseph that I told you about, my grandpappy and grandmammy, a family called the Wilsons, and my Uncle Wayne and his wife and kids. A few times a man on the run from the camps would come through our place. Sometimes they'd stop long enough to ask for a drink of water or directions or somethin' like that. They's always scared to death and desperate. Usually it weren't much longer before the woods riders with their dogs come through, right on their trail."

  "What did your people do?"

  "What could we do? We'd give those men a drink a water and point them in the right direction. That was about it. See, back in those days, if ya' tried to hide one of 'em, ya' was in for punishment. You might even find yourself carried off to one of the camps. Sheriff would say you was aid'in and abet'in whoever was tryin' to escape. So when the riders came to camp we jez' said 'yes sir' or 'no sir' and hope'd they go on about their business. Usually they did, but sometimes they'd decide to tear a little house apart, looking for whoever they was trailing. Don't think they really believed they was there, but they wanted to make their point about who was in charge. And if one of us tried to say anythin'? Best thing was going to happen to us was gettin' thumped upside the head with a club. I remember when Roland Wilson tried to keep 'em from paw'in through his wife's underwear drawer. They took him out in the front yard and tied him to a tree and whupped him with an old blacksnake whip. Whupped him half to death, a laughin' the whole time."

  "Do you know of any men who disappeared from the camps during that time?"

  "Lots a men disappeared, John Lee. Some escaped, a lot more just was gone. If a man died in one of the camps, all the camp boss had to say was he died from an accident or got sick or somethin' and they buried him out there. Weren't nobody gonna come around askin' questions."

  John Lee pulled his cell phone from his pocket and found the picture he had taken of the photograph of the horse mounted man he had taken at the museum.

  "Does this fellow look like anybody you would remember, Mister Donald?"

  The old man looked at the picture and John Lee noticed his body stiffen. Not much, but there had been a reaction.

  "No, suh," Mister Donald said, shaking his head.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Didn't I just say I didn't know who that was?"

  "Yes, sir. I was just hoping..."

  "Boy, I'm an old man. How you 'spect me to remember every cracker I ever seen in my life?"

  John Lee was sure there was something there, but he didn't want to push the issue and have Mister Donald close up on him completely. He'd wait and try to ask him again another time, if necessary.

  "I talked to Troy Somerton at the lumber products company, asking if he knew of any way to trace that tag number back to one
of the workers. But he said all of their records got destroyed in a tornado a long time ago."

  "I don't 'pect he'd tell you anythin' even if he did know," Mister Donald said. "Who do you think was runnin' those camps? It was Somerton Lumber Company. Do you suppose any of that crowd is goin' to admit anything about those days?"

  "Do you think they knew what was going on in those camps?"

  "Course they knew! How could they not know! You think back in the slave days the master didn't know that the overseer was out back whuppin' the slaves and screwin' their women if he took a mind to? Mr. Lincoln might'a have put an end to slavery way back in the old days, but people like the Somerton's? They never got that message. I don't know who pulled the trigger on the gun that killed those men you found out there, John Lee. But I can tell you one thing. It was Somerton money that paid for the bullets."

  Chapter 40

  John Lee tried to shave, but quickly gave that idea up when the razor touched his lacerated cheek. He had never worn a beard before, but thought that maybe he would grow one for the duration, while his face healed. He brushed his teeth, washed his mouth out with Scope, and walked naked into the bedroom, where Beth Ann was waiting for him. He sat on the side of the bed.

  "You okay, John Lee?"

  "Yeah, it's just been crazy lately."

  She sat up and rubbed his back and shoulders. "You're all knotted up and tight. Here, you lay down on your stomach and let me give you a massage."

  Beth Ann had gone to the Volusia School of Massage in Port Orange and was actually quite good at it, though she had never practiced the skill when she returned home to Somerton County. He stretched out on the bed and she began working on his legs, expertly kneading the muscles.

  "Does that feel good?"

  "It sure does. Damn good."

  She worked her way up to his buttocks.

  "How about that?"

  "Uh huh."

  Moving up to his lower back and then his shoulders, he could feel the tension releasing as she seemed to work every muscle, one by one. "Ya know, John Lee, there's a thing called a happy endin'."

  "I think by the time you're done I'm going to be sound asleep."