* * *
After I finished excavating the ravaged skeleton, Angie scanned the grave with the metal detector again, and again the instrument squealed angrily in her hands. The signal was strongest in the area where the top of the chest had lain. I dug deeper with the tip of the trowel, watching closely for the glint of metal. As I flicked aside a pea-sized clump of earth, I heard the faint clink of metal on metal, of trowel on artifact. “Got something,” I called, and Angie came over to crouch beside the grave as I dug deeper. A small hollow took shape beneath a miniature dirt cliff, and tiny avalanches of sandy soil broke free and trickled down. And tumbling down in one of these crumbling little landslides was a disk of blackened metal, two inches across and a half inch thick, its rim rounded and its weight slight enough to hint at hollowness. A seam around its equatorial edge, and a corroded bulge that might once have been a hinge, seemed to corroborate this notion. Might it be a locket, a boy’s memento of his mother?
It was not a locket. What it was, I saw as Angie carefully pried it open, was a compass.
We had just found the remains of Buck, I felt sure.
I felt something else, too, something I’d never felt before during an excavation: I felt tears streaming down my face as the story of the boy’s death emerged from the ground.
The diary had told us that Buck had died the night he tried to escape. The bones now told us that Buck had died the most painful, brutal death of all the boys we’d found here.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Buck checking his compass by the light of the moon, picking a direction, and starting to run. And then I saw him tumble to the ground as a guard’s bullet tore into his leg from behind and the guards closed in on him for the kill.
Leading the pack — a rifle still clutched in his one good hand — I imagined Cockroach.
Chapter 28
Six days after we’d followed the dog’s track across Moccasin Creek and into the fern-carpeted burial ground that was the Bone Yard, a caravan of vehicles, my truck among them, trundled away from the site, and FDLE released the scene. I smiled wearily as I noticed the sun slanting low through the trees to the west. Sheriff Judson had told us to be gone by sundown, and now we were, although a few extra suns had come and gone before Judson had gotten his wish.
As I bumped along the dirt road that led from the Bone Yard, I paused at the pipe-cross cemetery for a final look. My eyes drifted upward from the crosses to the vault of live-oak limbs fringed with resurrection ferns. Were the ferns a cynical commentary on the futility of our efforts to raise these boys from death, or might they be a hopeful portent of progress and justice? Or did it depend on what happened from here out?
I opened my cell phone and called one of the Knoxville numbers in my speed-dial list. “Osteology; this is Miranda.”
“Miss me yet?”
“Do I know you?”
I was teetering between confusion and indignation when she laughed, a clear peal of laughter that brought an instant smile to my face. “Hey, Dr. B. Are you ever coming back, or have you jumped the fence for greener pastures?”
“I’m headed for the barn,” I said. “FDLE just released the scene.”
“So you’re done? It’s over?”
“Actually, it’s really just beginning.” The governor had appointed a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory, I explained, and the state attorney had empaneled a special grand jury. Leaders of the state senate and house of representatives had announced that they intended to hold hearings when the legislature reconvened in January. Stu Vickery would head an ongoing task force dedicated to identifying the remains of the seven murdered boys and determining whether charges could be brought in any of their deaths. FDLE had established a toll-free citizen tip line, staffed around the clock, to take calls from the school’s former students, their relatives, former employees, or anyone else who could shed light on this dark chapter in Florida’s history of juvenile “justice.” Genetic samples from the skeletal remains were being run through the agency’s DNA lab, and genetic testing would be offered free of charge to possible relatives. The skeletal material from the seven graves had all been sent to Gainesville for cleaning and study. In short, the complex case could take months or, more likely, years to sort out. By then, most of the school’s former employees and many of the boys who’d spent time there would be dead. Former superintendent Hatfield, surely a logical target of prosecution, was dead — the medical examiner had concluded that he’d been strangled, though so far FDLE had no leads in his death — and most of the people who’d worked for him were probably dead or dying, too. “If anybody’s ever charged, I’ll have to come back to testify at the trial,” I said. “Maybe it’s too late to bring anyone to account. But at least the wheels of justice are finally starting to turn.”
“Sounds like you put a few dollops of grease on the axles, at least. Good for you.”
“Did you get a chance to water my plants and check my mail?”
“Of course. Three times. Your plants looked like they hadn’t been watered in a month. Now they’re looking pretty good — and they’re asking if you can please just stay in Florida. You got lots of bills and a few checks, or lots of checks and a few bills, but nothing that looked really pressing. Certainly nothing that looked interesting enough to steam open.”
“So nothing hand-addressed from San Francisco? Or Japan?”
“Nothing from Isabella? Not unless she disguised it as a fund-raising letter from the Sierra Club.” She hesitated. “If she’s trying to stay off the FBI’s radar, she probably isn’t going to be your pen pal, Dr. B. Look, I know it’s not my business, and I know you hate being in limbo about her — especially the pregnancy thing — but I think you need to assume she’s gone, with a capital G.”
“How can I do that, Miranda? She’s probably pregnant, and the baby’s probably mine.”
“I’m just saying,” she said.
During the awkward pause that followed, I put the truck back in gear, left the pipe-cross cemetery behind, and continued down the dirt road toward the ruins of the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory. “So what’s going on in Anthropology? Have the culturalists taken over the department while I’ve been gone? Have you taken over the department while I’ve been gone?”
“Both.” She laughed. “Actually, things are pretty dead around here. In the boring, figurative sense of the word. We’ve had two ID cases. One was a homeless guy who made the mistake of passing out on the railroad tracks just before the two A.M. freight train rolled through. The other was a floater in Tellico Lake — you remember that empty fishing boat that ran aground last month with the motor running wide open? That guy finally washed up. Oh, and some woman called in a tizzy yesterday because she’d found human leg bones in her backyard — she watches all the crime shows on TV, so she knows a lot about bones — but they were from a deer.”
She was right; it did sound quiet up there. I felt relieved, but I also felt let down and expendable. “Sounds like you’ve gotten along just fine without me.”
Miranda could read me like a book. “I lied,” she cheerfully lied. “We’re up to our eyeballs in bodies and bones, the phone is ringing off the wall, and I’m tearing my hair out. For God’s sake, hurry home. Please.”
I smiled. “Aww, y’all do need me up there. Okay, then, I’ll drive home tonight and see you on campus tomorrow.” I said good-bye to Miranda and stopped again, this time for a last look at the vine-covered chimneys and charred vestiges of the school buildings — the buildings where boys I now felt I knew had lived and suffered and even died.
Angie, Stu, and I had agreed to rendezvous for a parting dinner at the Waffle Iron before I hit the road for Knoxville. On the way to the diner, I detoured to the Twilight to retrieve my meager wardrobe and toiletries. I phoned Angie, who — along with Stu — had headed straight to the diner. “Y’all go ahead and order for me,” I said. “I’ll be there by the time they get the cat skinned and fried for me.”
As
I caught sight of the motel’s sagging sign a hundred yards ahead, a truck, painted in the splotchy greens and browns and grays of camouflage, pulled onto the blacktop and accelerated hard in my direction. By the time it passed me, it must have been doing eighty. As it rocketed past, I saw the driver’s grizzled, hard-featured face staring at me with venomous eyes. His window was open, his elbow was resting on the door frame, and his short-sleeved shirt was whipping in the wind.
His arm ended at the elbow.
Without stopping to think about what I was doing, I made a sand-slinging U-turn in the parking lot of the Twilight and gave chase. By the time I was well under way, he had a half-mile lead on me, and the gap seemed to be widening. I fumbled for my cell phone and hit redial. It rang four times, then Vickery’s voice mail answered. “Stu, it’s Bill Brockton,” I heard myself shouting. “This probably sounds crazy, but I think I just saw Cockroach. He was tearing away from the Twilight when I got there. I’m following him now, or trying to. Call me back.” I was fumbling with the buttons to end the call so I could try Angie’s cell phone instead, when my right wheels drifted off the shoulder and the truck lurched wildly. As I jerked the steering wheel and the truck fishtailed back onto the pavement, the phone flew from my hand and vanished under the passenger seat. In the distance, the truck disappeared around a slight curve, and when the road straightened — just beyond the faded road sign that marked the Miccosukee County line — it was empty clear to the horizon, where the asphalt shimmered and flowed into the darkening sky.
Dumbfounded, I continued hurtling down the road, but suddenly I caught sight of a pair of fresh, heavy skid marks. They ended in a sharp turn to the right, where a small dirt road threaded a gap in the line of pines and scrub growth. I stomped the brake, laying down two skid marks of my own, then slammed the truck into reverse and careened backward to the turnoff. A weathered mailbox clung to a leaning post; the four faded letters that had not peeled off read DSON. Peering down the road in the fading light, I thought I saw fresh tracks on the ground and dust in the air. I turned and followed, slowly now, and when I glimpsed a clearing ahead, I eased the truck to a stop, got out quietly, and continued on foot.
A hundred yards farther down the dirt lane, an unpainted house and a small barn shared a small, blighted yard. I didn’t see the camouflage truck I’d been chasing, but I tasted its dust.
The door of the barn was open, and through it I heard the faint sound of crying or whimpering. I crept forward, and the closer I got, the more certain it seemed that someone was in distress or pain inside the barn. I risked a quick peek through the door, but could see nothing in the dim interior. Then I heard a hoarse whisper from inside. “Help me. Please help me.”
The words sent chills through me, and I slipped through the doorway. Two steps in, as my eyes began to adjust, I froze. Dangling from a beam just ahead of me was a thick leather strap, five feet long and four inches wide, with a wooden handle at one end. The handle dangled from a wrist thong, which was looped over a peg in the beam.
I was just beginning to notice that the strap was swaying gently to and fro — I was just realizing that the sway was worrisome and the plea for help might have been a trick — when I felt myself pitch forward to the dirt floor.
* * *
The first thought I had, as I began to come to, was that my head was clamped in a vise, and that somebody had cranked the vise down hard enough to hurt like hell. The second thought I had was that someone had whacked me in the back of the head, and hard.
My third insight was that I was lying facedown on a narrow iron bed, and that I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I raised my head, sending a spike of pain shooting through my brain, and saw that my hands were tied to the bed’s metal headboard.
“It’s been a while since I’ve used this,” said a voice behind me. “Hope I haven’t lost the touch.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the wide, flat strap undulating, and I heard a rasping, slithering sound as the leather snaked across the rough floorboards.
I also caught sight of a human shadow undulating as the right arm swung the strap back and forth. Something about the shadow struck me as odd, and gradually I realized that the shadow of the left arm was incomplete, and that I’d followed the driver of the truck into a trap.
“You’re Cockroach.” The strap stopped its slithering, and somehow the quiet was even more sinister than the sound of the leather sliding over the wood. “Cochran. I thought you were dead. I thought you died in the fire.”
“Whole lotta people thought that,” he said. “It suited me to let them think that.”
“But if you weren’t the guard who was killed, who was it?”
“Nobody. A phantom. ‘Burned beyond recognition’ covers a multitude of sins. There was some shit about to hit the fan even before the fire. So I made a deal with Hatfield. Let the fire burn the slate clean. For the school. For him. For me. You’re a professor, right? Bet you read a lot of books, don’t you?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Ever read Tom Sawyer?”
“I think so. A long time ago.”
“Remember when Tom gets lost in that cave, hiding from Injun Joe?”
“Vaguely.”
“He finally gets out, and gets back to town, just in time to walk in on his own funeral.”
“I do remember that. But you didn’t walk in on your funeral, did you?”
“No, I didn’t walk in on it. I walked the other way. By the time they got around to burying my empty coffin up here, I was in west Texas, down around El Paso, where my people come from. Stayed there for forty years, under the radar, till you came along and started pulling skeletons out of the closet.”
“So to keep us from finding the closet, you killed Winston Pettis and his dog?”
“I never killed that man or that dog.”
“I don’t believe you. You had the motive.”
“I don’t give a shit if you believe me or if you don’t believe me. But you’re a damn fool if you think I’m the only one with something at stake here.”
“Who else? Look, if you untie me and cooperate with FDLE, I’m sure you can get some sort of deal.”
He spat out a laugh. “Neither one of us is stupid enough to believe that. We both know there’s no way to square this. I’d built a life, I was on the home stretch, but that’s gone. You saw to that. And for that, you need to be punished.” The strap began to slither again, tracing faster, rhythmic figure eights on the floor. “I never beat a grown man before. I’m not sure I’ll like it as much as I liked putting the strap to a boy, but I’ll give it a try.” He gave the strap a quick swing, and it hit the edge of the mattress with enough force to make the bed shiver. “What I like about this barn? The hayloft is right about the same height as the ceiling in the shed at school was. So you’ll hear the strap when it’s coming over the top, just before you feel it. You’ll figure out the timing after just a lick or two.”
I was desperate to stall for time. “One thing I don’t understand. Why did the young boys get more beatings than the older boys?”
“Oh, easy. A young boy feels it more. The old ones are harder. Tougher. They don’t give you the satisfaction of seein’ ’em squirm and hearin’ ’em squeal. Besides, if you start ’em in on it nice and young, sometimes you’ll find one that takes to it. Gets a taste for the hurt, you know? Likes it. Does things on purpose because he wants to be facedown on that bed feeling that strap come down.” As he said it, something in his voice got huskier, thicker, nastier, and it made me feel sick with disgust.
Before I could answer, I heard him draw a deep breath, and then I saw the strap slither backward, out of my line of sight. The movement was followed by a slight hiss, and then a slapping sound — the slap of leather hitting the rough wooden ceiling at the top of its arc overhead — and a grunt of effort. Suddenly I felt an explosion of heat and pain on the backs of my thighs. Involuntarily I cried out in pain. “One,” said Cochran. “I believe my aim’s a little off. Gettin’ kinda rust
y. If you were a boy, I’d tell you that if you make a sound, or if you move, I’d start counting all over again, from one. But with you, it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll just keep counting, ’cause I don’t have to stop at twenty, or forty, or even a hundred. I can just keep going as long as you’re breathing. Maybe longer, if I feel like it.” The strap snaked off me and out of sight, and I thought he was winding up for another blow, but he paused. “You can bite that pillow if you want to. Or holler if you want to. You can try it both ways. You can try it as many ways as you got the stamina for. Toward the end, I figure you might be whimpering a little bit, and then you’ll get pretty quiet for the last of it.”
He took another breath, and this time I heard the soles of his shoes scraping the floor slightly as he pivoted into the windup. The strap seethed through the air again, slapped the ceiling, and exploded onto my buttocks. This time I’d stiffened up, bracing myself for the blow, but still it made me gasp. “Two,” he said. “How’s that feeling? You think you might could develop a taste for this, Mister Fancy Forensic Scientist?” The strap slid off me and slithered away; his shoes pivoted, and the leather seethed and slapped and exploded again, this time onto the same spot as the previous blow. It felt as if my flesh were splitting open all the way to the bone. I groaned. “Three,” he counted. “You know, after I went to Texas, I didn’t get a chance to do this. I thought about trying to get work in a boys’ school down there, but they didn’t have anyplace as good as what I’d left. And I figured I’d best lie low anyhow.” Swishpivotseetheslapexplode. “Four. But you know what?” The only answer I could manage was a moan. “There’s a lot of illegals smuggled across the border from Mexico. Sometimes they bring their kids with ’em. Five. Sometimes the parents don’t survive the trip, for one reason or another.” He paused to breathe and wind up again. “Six.” I felt myself on the brink of losing consciousness again. “So then the smuggler — the ‘coyote,’ the smuggler’s called — the coyote’s got this kid on his hands. So every now and then, I’d get me a boy. The girls, they’d end up somewhere else — in a cage in somebody’s basement in El Paso, or in a brothel back across the border in Juarez — but there wasn’t as much market for the boys. Seven. You’d be surprised how cheap you can buy a little ten-year-old wetback boy.”
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