by Lila Beckham
Joshua left there and drove straight to Hannah’s house. He sure hated to go there and rub salt in old wounds by having to bring up Willie and Lacey’s deaths, but he was the sheriff and it was his duty to keep the peace.
When he drove up to her house, Hannah was outside hanging laundry on the line. He literally saw her chest fall at the sight of him driving up.
He watched her sigh and then saw her shoulders droop even lower.
This part of his job was something that he had grown to dislike. He had never enjoyed having to talk to next of kin neither, but he’d done that many a time too.
Hannah turned and went back to hanging laundry. Joshua sat there a moment, deciding to have a smoke. He lit a cigarette and smoked as he watched Hannah hang clothes.
She finished what she was doing, picked up her clothesbasket and then walked over to his car.
“You got another one of those, Sheriff? I have been trying to quit, but it is not easy, especially trying to raise two hardheaded boys.
“Yep, I can imagine.” Joshua offered her a smoke. Hannah took it and leaned forward; he lit her cigarette, watched as she inhaled deeply, and then exhaled slowly, exactly as he did, when trying to release his frustrations.
“Look Sheriff, I know you come to talk to me about the boys fighting. I am not going to say that I did not know it was going to happen, because I did. I cannot say as I blame Willie Jr. either. Those boys have been agitating him for several years now, threatening him too. The boy can only handle so much before he snaps.
When they dared them to show up for a fight, our boys took it to them. They ended up biting off more than they could chew. Resentment is a mighty sword in a knife fight, Sheriff.”
“Hannah, I know it has been hard on y’all, but it has also been hard on Autry’s family-”
“Don’t you think I don’t know that, Sheriff, but they just won’t let sleeping dogs lie. Every chance they get, they’re stirring up shit. Willie Jr. has so much hatred in his heart for their daddy that he cannot separate it, especially when they will not let him. He lost his mother and his father. He was just an innocent little boy when all that happened, and in many ways, it has kept him from maturing and functioning the way he should.”
“I know it’s hard, Hannah, I heard your mama had her place up for sale. Maybe if she moves them out of here, it will be easier for Willie’s younguns to get their lives in order.” Hannah let out a low chuckle, but Joshua knew it wasn’t laughter.
“There won’t ever be any order in their lives, Sheriff. It is too late for that, but yes, she is selling it. She’s selling it to a man who plans to open an old-time country store. Mama will be moving out of there in a week or two, but five miles and a state line is not going to make much difference if you ask me.”
“Naw, probably not, but we can hope. How about you, Hannah, how are you?”
“I don’t even want to go there, Sheriff. I still cannot bring myself to talk about it, even with my family.
I think the hardest part of all of this is when you look into your family’s eyes, the children’s eyes, and you see the questions there. They all expect me to know why all that happened and I don’t. I feel helpless.” Hannah picked up her laundry basket. “I have work to do, Sheriff. You have a good day,” she said and began walking toward her house.
Joshua backed out of Hannah’s driveway and drove back to Moffett Road. He looked at his watch, debating on driving back into town. He was still not a hundred percent. He looked at the sketch lying on the seat and decided that one more day was not going to make a difference. She was dead, they did not have any missing person’s reports that he was aware of, and he was tired and hungry.
Joshua knew that much of his not feeling well had to do with the wreck he was in, and even before the wreck, he was not sleeping well. It seemed the only sleep he got here-lately was on his porch and it was not restful sleep.
Maybe I need to put me up a bed out there, he thought to himself, remembering that some folks still had sleeping porches for when the weather was nice.
Joshua picked up the microphone and radioed the Sheriffs Office. He told Mattie, the dispatcher, he was heading home and that was where he would be if they needed to get in touch with him.
He drove into the parking lot of the café in Wilmer and ordered a blue plate special to go, figuring he would take it home and whatever he did not eat he could feed to Jack, but before he could get back on the road, the radio was buzzing.
It was Mattie telling him that another body had been found. This body was off Aldock Road in a wooded area of Chickasabogue Creek, near the intersection of Interstate 65, where the old campground used to be.
“When will it ever end,” Joshua muttered as he turned toward Mobile.
“When you’re six feet under, Hoss, when you’re six feet under,” he heard his grandfather say.
“I know, Papa,” he said as he flipped on his lights and siren to part the traffic so that he could get there a little quicker.
22
Caledonia
Emma awoke to the sound of voices echoing through the surrounding trees. She jumped up, frantically looking around. She expected to see workers hacking their way through the vines and undergrowth along the riverbanks with machetes; but all she saw were the trees alongside the river and a few small scurried animals.
She heard the voices again. This time, she listened closely. The soft soulful sound of Negro voices echoed around her, but she could see no one.
“Hey, he, hi, ho, off to werk the fields we go” they sang. Suddenly, Emma remembered the ruins of what appeared to be an old wooden dock jutting out into the river. At least, that is what they appeared to be in the dim light when she came out of the river. Moreover, she remembered the outline of a house through the trees.
Her eyes searched the bank across the river for the dock and the house, but due to the amount of rainfall, the river had risen. It was now a foot or so deeper than it had been. If there were one there, it was underwater.
Emma was certain she saw short pilings in the formation of a dock and she was determined to swim across the river and search for it.
She could see where the old dock should have been because the foliage was different in that area. It was not as tall, nor as thick, and there were not as many trees. What trees were there, were years younger than the others were and were neither as tall nor as big around the younger ones.
Emma dove into the river and began to swim across. As she did, a searing pain shot through her arm, it reminded her of the burning pain she had felt the night before as she escaped Earl and Vernon for the second time.
She gritted her teeth and swam until she reached the other side. It was not as easy as she thought it would be, because the current was swift after the rain.
When Emma reached the bank on the other side of the river, she was glad it was sandy loam, not slick or muddy. She climbed out of the water and took off the jacket so she could look at her arm. There was a puncture wound above her elbow; it had gone all the way through her arm, from front to back. The wound on the back felt bigger, but it was hard to tell without being able to look at it. Emma reached down, dug into the earth, and grabbed a handful of soil, which she packed into the wounds to stop the slight bleeding caused from swimming across the river.
She climbed a path leading upward from the river and stood atop the bank surveying the area.
Once up there, she could see the ruins of a house. Before daylight, she had seen the house standing tall and mighty within the trees… was it a ghost house? Was what she saw, Caledonia, the plantation as it had been in its hay day, back when it was still standing?
Forgetting the ruins of the dock she originally swam across for, Emma walked over to the ruins of the house; they were several hundred feet from the river.
When the building was whole, it must have stood three stories tall for her to see it from the other side of the river. Now, there was only the lower block portion of the building left. Off to the sides,
Emma saw some of the original woodwork. Grayed with age, it was left to rot by scavengers that had taken the best pieces of what was left after the building was destroyed by fire.
Emma walked the perimeter of the house, imagining it as it was back in 1850.
The essence of the house was secretive; she could feel eyes upon her. She did not know if it was critter eyes or human eyes, but someone or something was watching her.
Emma wondered what secrets the land held. Was the story her father told her of the Copeland Gang’s slaughter of the Moffett family true, or was there more to this place than he knew; she suspected the latter.
Emma felt sad as she walked within the heart of where the home had stood. A gentle sadness caused her to become melancholy. She kept walking; from corner to corner, she explored the home. She could see it so plainly in her imagination that it became real.
Emma saw another building just behind the back of the home. The walls were a little more complete than the scattered rubble of the plantation house. She could see it jutting up from the earth, but as she moved toward it, it seemed to shrink. Maybe because she was walking uphill.
She crossed the width of the main house and just before she crossed the threshold of where the back door would have been, she stepped onto something that echoed, hollow beneath her feet. Emma stopped to examine it.
The source of the sound was a few boards that undoubtedly remained from the floor. She stamped her foot lightly, it sounded hollow underneath.
Emma bent down, raked the soil away with her hands and then tried to pick up the boards. There were four of them strapped together and they were very heavy. Each must have been over a foot wide and three inches thick.
Emma tried with all of her mite to pick up the boards, but failed miserably; she was just too weak.
She looked around for something to use as leverage to raise the boards. Emma had learned about using leverage from her math teacher, Mike Wallace.
Emma found a cinderblock and rolled it; flipping it end over end until it was beside the boards. Then she looked for a strong loose board or pole that she could use to slide under the boards and over the cinderblock. That way, she could use her weight, much like a seesaw to lift the boards, but the few loose boards she found were too badly decomposed to use.
Frantically, Emma searched for something else to use.
She spied a fence post a few yards from the ruins and headed in that direction. When she reached the edge of the floorboards, the ones she was trying to lift, the ground suddenly gave way and the earth swallowed her up!
Thankfully, the fall was short. Emma landed first on her feet then on her behind. The earth above, fell down around her, revealing an opening several feet in diameter. She was in a room of some sort, maybe a root cellar. Emma spun around slowly to view the entire room.
There were shelves and racks on three of the walls and a stone fireplace on the other. A set of stairs ended underneath where the floorboards were that she was trying to raise up to see what was underneath; now I know, thought Emma as she continued to survey the room.
The floorboards above were the remains of a trapdoor that led down to the cellar.
The shelves were lined with canned goods and the remnants of canning jars and bags of condiments lay strewn on the floor in front of them. The bags of salt, sugar, and flour were molded with age.
She knew what they were, because she could make out the writing on the cloth bags. There was also an old rocking chair, a couple of ladder-back chairs, stools, a washtub and other utensils in the room. Emma hoped there was a lantern somewhere in the room.
As she continued to look around, Emma caught a glimpse of something dark that moved into the corner. At first, she thought it was a shadow-person, but then decided it was her shadow, she saw.
She looked down and saw something piled into a corner underneath the stairs.
Emma moved toward it. When she got close, it looked like a bag of bones leaning against the wall.
It was indeed bones. It appeared to be the skeletal remains of several people.
Emma leaned over and grabbed a hold of some of the cloth. It was a dress. She picked it up. When she did, a tiny skull fell out and rolled across the earthen floor!
23
The Killing Fields
Joshua Stokes was not immune to the sight of a corpse, especially a headless corpse, even though they were mannequin-like in appearance. Nor was he immune to the sickness he felt when he had to look at them.
The bloodied neck and mutilated body parts told him these were not mannequins strewn across the fields of his county; they were flesh and blood human beings.
This one was no different.
As with the other murders, this woman’s breasts and genitalia had been mutilated, but this one had a level of brutality they had not seen before. The body had a wooden object protruding from the woman’s private area.
“Does this mean that the killer’s violence toward the women is escalating? Deputy Cook asked, trying not to stare at the body.
“Probably,” Joshua said as he walked over to his patrol car and lit a cigarette. John Metcalf walked over.
“Sheriff, I have photographed and gathered any material that looked out of place. We might have lucked up this time; we have a set of tire tracks. Maybe we will find some hairs or fibers in them.
As soon as the plaster sets up, I will bag those to preserve any evidence that is stuck in there.”
John Metcalf scratched his head, looking more upset than Joshua had ever seen him look on other cases.
“I hope so, John. I do have a couple of leads I am following,” he said. He then reached into his patrol car for the sketch he had gotten from the tattooist.
“This is probably our last victim, the one with the rose tattoo,” he said, handing the sketch to John Metcalf. Metcalf stared at the sketch a moment. Joshua saw his eyes light up with recognition.
“I think I might have seen this girl, Sheriff.”
“Really… where at” Joshua asked casually.
“I picked her up hitchhiking a few months ago. At least I believe it was her. Her hair was longer though. She was with Ken McCullough. They said they were coming back from California.”
“You didn’t happen to catch her name, did you?”
“I think he called her Dee-Dee, but it’s probably a nickname. I haven’t seen either one of them since then, but Ken, he wanders the country; he fashions himself a real hippie; looks the part too. He was longhaired, greasy and grungy looking. They both had flowers painted on their faces. I thought the hippie movement was over, but apparently not for everyone.”
“Apparently not,” Joshua replied. “I still see quite a few hippies wandering through the county. People like them are what make a case like this harder to solve.
There are just too many young folks wandering like nomads these days, teenagers running away from home, going off on their own. Some that disappeared several years ago, and have not reconnected with family, are assumed to be with a band of hippies somewhere. Their families have just given up looking for them.
Some of them have never even been reported missing.
You would think after the Charlie Manson case that folks would put forth a little more effort into looking for their younguns.”
Pearl’s daughter Emma, briefly crossed Joshua’s mind as he remembered Pearl saying that she had not missed a day of school in all those years. Then, just not show up for work. Pearl had not seemed concerned or at least she was not showing it if she was.
Maybe I am reading more into it than I should, thought Joshua, but in his line of work, it paid to be suspicious of everyone and everything.
“Nowadays, the world is not as safe a place as it used to be,” he said, lighting another cigarette and inhaling deeply.
“No Sir, its not. We know that, and most people should know that too,” Metcalf speculated. “But, there is not a whole lot we can do, is it.”
“No, I reckon not.”
Depu
ty Cook walked over and began giving his report to Joshua. John Metcalf went to check on the plaster casts of the tires. He hoped they were hardened enough to bag and tag. After listening to Deputy Cook’s report, Joshua told him to write up a full report when he reached the station, then he handed him the sketch of the girl.
“This may be our tattooed lady,” he told Cook. “John Metcalf said he thought he saw her a few months ago, hitchhiking with Ken McCullough.
Run McCullough through the system and see if anything comes up. While you are at it, ride over to his daddy’s place and see if they know his whereabouts.
Call me when you find out anything. I think y’all can handle the rest of this; I am going home.”
“Alright Sheriff, I will let you know what I find out. Did you ever get yourself checked out?” Cook asked, and Joshua could tell he actually showed a little concern this time. He shrugged it off and leaned against his patrol car.
“I’ll be all right, Cookie. Just do your job. It makes my job a whole lot easier.”
“Yes Sir,” Cook replied and then turned and walked away. “Sheriff” Cook said, stopping short. “They’re turning all these fields along the bayous into killing fields.
What are we going to do about it? This shit just can’t keep happening… I can tell you, it is starting to bother me real bad; been having some weird ass dreams.”
“I think a dumping ground is more of what I would call it… I’ve been thinking on it Cookie. I hate to do it, but I reckon I am going to call in the big guns.
This makes two women in a week and if we count the others, we know we are bound to have a serial killer on our hands. I have just been putting it off because those federal boys will come in here and then we won’t have any authority at all.”