Cemetery Road (Sean O'Brien Book 7)

by Tom Lowe

  He remembered the elderly, white-haired judge who wore a black robe and a reputation of stubbornness. In God We Trust was highlighted on the dark wood wall behind the judge’s bench. He never looked at Jesse as he sentenced him to ninety days in the Florida School for Boys. It might as well have been ninety years, because if Jesse lived ninety years, he felt his soul would never be cleansed of those ninety days. He blew a long breath out of his cheeks, his chest hurting. He glanced at his watch and walked toward the Waffle House.

  Approaching the restaurant door, Jesse could see his reflection in the glass, and he could see the patrol car making another round down the street, the same officer in dark glasses looking toward the Waffle House as Jesse went inside.

  Half of the booths were filled with diners. Four people sat at the counter, two paramedics, radios on their belts, and an earpiece in one ear. Jesse walked by the counter, looking for Harold Reese. What the hell would he look like today? Jesse spotted one man, sitting alone in a back booth, the furthest one from the front door. It was Harold.

  Jesse walked up to him and said, “Been a long time. I think the last time I saw you was at Daytona, the time Dale died.”

  “Yep. He was the best. Junior’s junior. What can I say? How you been, Jesse?”

  “Somehow I find a way to climb outta the fox holes of life, barely.”

  “I know what you mean.” Harold wore faded jeans and a NASCAR T-shirt. His whiskered face was deeply lined from age and the Florida sun. He had the look of a man who’d made his living outdoors, a farmer or fisherman.

  Jesse took a seat opposite Harold. “I sure appreciate you meeting me.”

  “No problem. We sort of grew up together.” Harold sipped black coffee.

  “Man, what keeps you here. After the shit you experienced at the school, how could you have walked the same streets as those butchers through all these years?”

  Harold looked out the window to the steeple of a church in the distance. He turned his pale blue eyes to Jesse. “Where could I have gone? I got deep roots in Jackson County. My granddaddy fought the yanks in the battle of Marianna. I have forty acres, a small house that’s long been paid off. I hired on with the post office and somehow managed to stay as a letter carrier for thirty years, and then I retired. I was lucky, after a lot of failures, to find a good woman who could put up with me, my quirks. And today we have two grandchildren.”

  Jesse smiled. “I’m happy for you. You’re a better man than me.”

  “On the phone you told me about Curtis Garwood’s death. Reading his obituary made you want to come back here, why?”

  “Because it reminded me of how our lives got derailed off the tracks by some mean sons-a-bitches that never paid for what they did. I’ve been thinking about this for years.”

  “You picked a helluva time to start your crusade. Most of those men are dead. The state attorney looked at it a few years back. Said nothing was prosecutable, statute of limitations and whatnot.”

  “Murder’s prosecutable. Curtis’s death—by the way, he took his own life, brought back memories of Andy Cope. They were good friends. You remember Andy?”

  “Yeah. His sister has tried more than once to get an investigation going. But man, you’re talking about a kid who vanished a long time ago.”

  “I know they killed Andy in there one night. It was the night Andy told me and Curtis he was gonna run away. He wanted me to go with him, but I was too damn scared. I heard the shots, between booms of thunder. I’d just taken the garbage out. I didn’t see ‘em killing Andy, but we never saw him after that night. He never ran away. They shot him. Curtis was never the same. He never talked about it either. There’s no mistaking the sound of a 12-gauge shotgun firing double-aught buckshot. I’ve fired enough rounds through the years.”

  Harold looked around the restaurant. “Jesse, lower your voice. This town’s got bigger ears than you understand. You need to go talk with Andy’s sister, Caroline Harper. See what she’s been up against. I’ll give you her address.”

  “Caroline Cope…I remember her. So she’s been trying all these years to find Andy?”

  “I believe she gave up on finding him. She’d hoped to find what happened and who did it. Now, I think she just wants to find Andy. To find his grave, I guess.”

  Jesse looked across the restaurant for a second. “I remember Andy and Caroline walking home from school. Always together. He tried to take care of her, and he was just a kid, too.”

  “Yeah. Her husband died a few years ago, heart attack. She has one daughter who lives in California. When the state attorney was looking at claims of child abuse in 2010, right before they shut the place down, Caroline was doing all she could to get investigators to look into what happened to Andy. She didn’t get very far. Nobody in this town wants to go there. It’s like they just want to distance themselves from a sleeping evil right on the edge of Marianna. I’ll give you directions to her place. Another thing, the state’s got that place up for sale. They may have an offer on it. I heard a developer wants to build houses and golf courses—a damn country club.”

  “Somebody’s got to stop that. Nobody should be playing golf over the bones of kids. I got to do something quick—”

  “Ya’ll ready to order?” A waitress approached the table. She was in her early forties, green eye shadow, a fingernail-sized birthmark on her neck, and graying hair in a ponytail.

  Harold said, “Just more coffee, Lisa”

  Jesse leaned back in the booth. “That’s fine for me too.”

  She nodded and left. Jesse lowered his voice. “I believe there are a lot more bodies buried around that school. There has to be. We both knew kids like Andy who simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. They didn’t run away, Harold. For God sakes, you know that. Nobody has a right to build over them.”

  Harold stirred sugar into his coffee. “Jesse, you ought to leave it alone. Just go on back to Jacksonville and forget it, okay?”

  “No, I can’t. Not any more. I stopped at the school on the way here. It’s all locked up. Spoke with a security guard, Johnny Hines. Remember him?

  Harold nodded. “What’d you tell him?”

  “I asked him if Hack Johnson was still above ground.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Let’s put it this way, he didn’t say Johnson was dead.”

  Harold released a deep breath. “You asked the wrong guy. Hines is tight with the Johnson family. Might as well be on their payroll. Now they know you’re in town.”

  “You were a letter carrier. What’s their address?”

  “He lives way the hell back in the swamps. He’s got a hundred acres, fenced. His family lives back there in trailers, doublewides. They pretty much sum up the definition of survivalists. I heard the grandsons cook meth and sell it. One of those boys, his name’s Cooter Johnson, drives around town in a late fifties model Ford truck, painted canary yellow. He shoots pool a lot at a place called Shorty’s. But if I were you, I sure as hell wouldn’t go in there alone.”

  “I got no beef against a grandson. I’d like to pay the old man a visit, though.”

  “You don’t know if it was him who killed Andy. Johnson was one of the meanest. He liked to see blood fly on the first lick of the strap. You could never get to him today. And if you decide to head back in those swamps, then you’ll be doing what Curtis did. You’ll be committing suicide.”

  SEVEN

  Curtis Garwood left a clue, but he didn’t leave a name. Before I returned Dave’s call, I remembered in Curtis’s letter he wrote that he’d sent a copy to Andy Cope’s sister. I stood on my dock and called Dave. He answered after a half dozen rings. “Sean, I was just leaving the Tiki Bar, heading back to Gibraltar for an espresso. Where are you?”

  “Standing in wet swim trunks.”

  “Poolside, no doubt, with a lovely lady, perhaps?”

  “Max is the lady. The river will do as a pool in ninety-nine degree Florida heat. Who’s my visitor?”


  “Name’s Caroline Harper. She drove down here from the panhandle, Jackson County to be exact.”

  “Let me guess—Andy Cope, the boy Curtis mentioned in his letter, was her brother.”

  “Was seems to be the operative term. I spoke with her briefly. Met her in the marina office paying my slip rent. She was asking where she might find you. I told her that you and I were friends and that I could get a message to you if it was important. After some gentle prodding, she shared that she’d received a copy of Curtis’s letter and then wanted to meet Sean O’Brien, someone who might help find her deceased brother’s grave. Sounds like a tall order to me.”

  I said nothing. The sound of a bumblebee darting in and out of the lavender trumpet flowers that were growing across an embankment and down my seawall invaded the momentary silence. The flowers were thick, and in the breeze they resembled cascading water spilling over a sluice into the river.

  “Are you there, Sean?”

  “Yeah, I’m just thinking.”

  “Did you, perchance, pick up the second letter or package Curtis mailed to the postal box?”

  “No.”

  “Understood. Whatever it contains, I surmise, will be in someway linked, even by proxy, to Miss Harper or most probably to her brother, Andy.”

  “I think the reason Curtis sent a second package is because he knew, if I opened it, if I take it, I would deal with whatever’s in the envelope and accept his offer.”

  “It’s not as much an offer, Sean, as it is a challenge, a proverbial Oedipus riddle. And speaking of the Greeks, Pandora’s box was not a box. It was a simple looking jar—until it was opened.”

  “And it was a myth, but don’t tell Nick.”

  “What shall I tell Miss Harper? I left her at a corner table in the Tiki Bar overlooking the marina. She ordered hot tea and said she’d wait there until I told her whether or not I reached you. Time hasn’t been too kind to her, Sean. She has the thousand-yard stare, the look of someone who’s been denied of the one thing that propels all human growth.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hope.”

  I watched Max chase a field mouse as we walked toward the cabin. Dave exhaled in the phone. “I can tell her you’re not accessible, send her back to the Florida Panhandle. You’re under no obligation to meet someone who sort of materialized here at the marina, connected to you only because she was copied on a letter addressed to you. This is not a chain letter, however, it has that ominous feel. What would you like for me to convey to Miss Harper?”

  “Tell her to order another cup of tea. I’ll be there soon.”

  EIGHT

  Caroline Harper seemed out of step in a dockside bar filled with people who walked to the beat of a different drummer. The Tiki Bar was about half filled with shrimpers, deck hands, boat captains, weekend bikers, and tourists on all-day happy hours. It wasn’t hard for me to spot her. She sat alone, reading a book at a corner table in the bar. The rustic bar was a restaurant stripped of any pretense. It sat above the marina water on stilts. Its thatched roof of dried palm fronds was somewhat covered in pelican poop, the wooden sides of the bar faded from time and salt water. Plastic windows were rolled up, and a breeze carrying the scent of garlic crabs and broiled fish drifted across the Ponce Marina.

  Dave had described her well—early sixties, platinum gray hair pinned up, the pensive face of a woman who’d endured a hardscrabble life probably more difficult than most. She’d set her paperback book on the table, one of a dozen large wooden spools previously used by utility companies to store power-lines. The tables were shellacked, turned on one end and bolted to the knotty pine floor, which was stained from spilled beer, grease, and sometimes a splatter of blood.

  Max followed me through the restaurant, her tail wagging when Roberto, the cook with a full beard and belly to match, came from the kitchen near the bar and said, “Hey, little Max. You wanna fry?”

  She snorted and Roberto used one of his large hands to lift a French fry from a bamboo basket lined with newspaper. “Sean, last time I saw Max, Nick Cronus brought her in here and let her sit on a barstool for a little while.”

  “She likes German beer. It’s the dachshund in her.” I grinned. “Come on, Max. One’s enough.” She followed me across the restaurant to Caroline Harper’s table, diners in tank tops and shorts pointing at Max and smiling. Caroline Harper looked up, not sure whether to smile or ask me a question. I said, “Are you Miss Harper?”

  “Yes. Please call me Caroline.”

  “I’m Sean O’Brien. Sean works fine for me.” I smiled.

  “Thank you for willing to meet with me. Please, sit.” Her pale blue eyes tried to mask worry, maybe fear. She glanced down as Max approached, sniffing the base of the table and sitting next to my feet. “Your dog is so precious. My neighbor had one for years. How long have you had him or her?”

  “Definitely her. Long enough to know each others quirks.” I smiled, letting her take the time she needed, hoping my comment would put her at ease.

  “It looks like she knows her way around this restaurant. How’d you choose a dachshund?”

  “I didn’t. My wife Sherri did a few months before her death. And so now it’s Max and me.

  “I’m sorry for your loss. Your friend, Dave, said sometimes you live on your boat here at the marina.”

  “I have an old cabin about fifty miles inland. My boat’s an ongoing work in progress.”

  “Is that the boat Curtis Garwood chartered?”

  “Yes.”

  Her chest rose, she swallowed dryly. Caroline reached in her purse and withdrew a photo, placing the picture on the table toward me. It was the image of a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen. Handsome. Staring directly into the camera lens. “That’s a picture of my brother, Andy. Curtis mentioned him in his letter to you.”

  I said nothing, picking up the photo and looking closer at it. I could see a dusting of freckles across the boy’s forehead. I set it down. “And I’m sorry for your loss, too. He looks like a fine boy.”

  She smiled. “He was…he was the best older brother a girl could hope for. We did a lot together growing up. Andy had to grow into…he became more of a protector for me than our stepfather. I’d always suspected they’d killed Andy while he was being held in the Florida School for Boys. My family received a letter and a brief call from the warden telling us Andy had run away. But where would he go? He was only thirteen. I’d heard talk that there might be hidden graves of boys killed and buried on that reform school property. I’ve tried to get the police to open a file, to start a case. They still call him a runaway, a missing child. And after all these years, they won’t do anything, especially in Marianna.”

  “And then you received a copy of Curtis Garwood’s letter.”

  “Yes! It was like a new door had opened where one had been nailed shut for years. I was so sorry to read Curtis took his own life. I remembered him as a kid who had lots of those little Matchbox Cars. When the other boys didn’t spend time with Curtis, Andy did. Curtis was always trying to get money to buy more of those little cars.” She bit her lower lip, looking at her brother’s picture. Then she raised her eyes up to me. I could see a vein pulsating on the right side of her neck. She took a deep breath. “Sean, would you…could you maybe look into Andy’s disappearance? He didn’t deserve that fate. He was just a boy—a child. He was sent there because he skipped school twice. The principal wanted to make an example out of Andy. My brother was so bored in that country school. He had a quick mind, and he could make a hundred percent on tests without having to study. He liked the library and read voraciously, something our stepfather ridiculed him for doing. He simply didn’t like Andy, and our mother was too scared, a self-inflicted learned weakness, to do anything about it. Our stepfather accused Andy of stealing money from his wallet. He even called the police to our house to scare Andy. A few weeks later, Andy told me in confidence that he suspected one of his friends, a boy who’d been at our house that day, had stolen the money.
But Andy never accused him of it. You know who that boy was, Sean?”

  “Curtis Garwood.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “That’s impressive. How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “Andy said two days after the money went missing, Curtis had a dozen new Matchbox Cars.” She leaned back in her chair, watching a family enter the restaurant and take seats around two of the spool tables. She stared at a boy who was about the age of her brother in the picture. She said, “That family just seated by the waitress is a happy family. You can tell by their smiles, by their joking with each other. The oldest boy reminds me of Andy. The boy handed his mother the menu first. He’s quiet. He’s considerate. You can tell. He’s going to have a chance to come of age, to live his life. Andy never got that. It was as if he was born in the wrong time to the wrong family.” She looked at me and said, “Will you help me?”

  “I’m not sure what, if anything, I could do. If your brother was killed, his killer or killers are probably dead by now. There may be no one left to bring to justice.”

  “Sean, my brother, and other boys like him, were considered by the state as nobodies. Throwaways. No one was ever held accountable because no one cared. Even if you can’t find any of the men responsible for my brother’s death, maybe you can somehow find my brother’s grave. A few years after Andy never returned home, my mother divorced our stepfather. She married a decent man. They’re both dead, buried in a plot next to my grandparents. I want to find my brother’s hidden grave and bring him home to the family plot. Will you help me?”

  I nodded. “I’ll look into it. Do what I can. At this point, I don’t want to promise you something I can’t deliver.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong, Sean. You’ve already delivered it to me. You’ve given me something I haven’t felt in almost a lifetime.”