by Tom Lowe
“What’s that?”
“Hope.”
She reached in her purse and removed a second, identical photo of her brother. “Please, take this. If you need a reminder of what I’m hoping for, it can be as close as your shirt pocket. Where will you start?”
“By looking in a post office box.”
NINE
There’s something odd about opening a post office box that’s not yours. It’s almost like opening a letter that’s not addressed to you. I thought about that, stepping inside a post office I’d never been to, opening a box I’ve never seen. I walked up to box 129 and inserted the brass key. And there it was, a manila envelope fitting neatly into the large box. I glanced over my shoulder. Three people, less than twenty feet from me, stood in line at the counter to claim packages or buy stamps. The clerk, late fifties, bloodhound eyes, glasses perched at the tip of his nose, looked over at me with a detached glance.
I pulled the package from the box and read the address. The same neat handwriting, the same fountain pen. Curtis Garwood had written my name in the address, but at this point, it didn’t make it much easier. I started to open the large padded envelope on a table used for preparing packages. I glanced at one of the three cameras I’d spotted entering the building and thought otherwise. If it was some kind of physical evidence in the killing of Andy Cope, the evidence chain had been broken a long time ago. But there was no need to empty the contents on government cameras.
I walked across the parking lot to my Jeep, the hot sun on the back of my neck. I sat behind the wheel, lowering the windows and using a knife I carried in my console to carefully open the package. There were two stacks of one hundred dollar bills, a hand-written letter, and something at the bottom of the package. I looked inside and saw a shotgun shell. I found a pencil in my console, inserted it into the open casing and lifted out the shell. It was a spent shell—the casing, and it was one of the older varieties, a paper casing with small images of pheasants on the exterior. I lifted the shell to my nose. I could smell the faint odor of burnt powder from a 12-gauge shell that was probably fired a half-century ago. I set the shell on the top of the console and read the letter—most likely the last thing Curtis Garwood wrote in his life.
Dear Sean –
If you’re reading this, I can assume you’ve decided to take the job, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I’ve enclosed fifteen thousand dollars for your expenses and time. That’s the best I could do. The shotgun shell I’ve included in here was used to kill Andy Cope. I say that because I was hiding when I saw three men chasing Andy one night. I‘d taken the trash out and decided to spend a few minutes smoking a cigarette behind a brick tool shed. A thunderstorm came from nowhere. That’s when I heard them chasing somebody. It was three men. Although their backs were turned to me, as they chased him, I heard one of them yell, “Stop! Don’t make us cut you down, Andy.”
The man who yelled was the one we called the Preacher, because he liked to quote old testament Bible verses before he beat us. He had a tattoo of the Southern Cross on his right forearm. He called his tattoo the Southern Cross of Justice. They shot the first round in the air. Andy stopped and turned around. Then there was a crack of lightning and Andy ran. The man in the center, I believe it was the Preacher, shot him in the back as Andy ran toward the only oak tree in the field. That’s where he fell, at the base of the tree.
The men picked up the first shell casing. But they couldn’t find the second. In that burst of lightning, I saw the casing fall behind a log. The next morning I found it, and I’ve kept it all these years. I hid that night while they picked up Andy, his head hanging down and his body limp. I knew they’d killed him, and I knew they’d do the same to me if I told anyone. I have few regrets in life, but that’s one I’m taking to my grave. Wherever they buried Andy, I believe other boys were buried there, too. They had no right to do that to kids, and that’s all we were – scared kids. I hope you will find courage and success where I could not. And I pray for your soul, Sean, because if you go there, you will meet some people who sold theirs a long time ago.
Sincerely,
Curtis Garwood
I sat there for a few seconds, thinking about what Curtis had written, thinking about what Caroline Harper had said, the mournful loss of her brother. I picked up the spent shotgun shell again, looked at the indentation strike mark on the primer, lifting the casing to my nose for a moment. Somewhere in the mixture of scents, the tarnished brass head, the scorched powder, was the scent of death. Not tangible in the physical sense, but perceptual in the sense of the unconscionable, gunning down and shooting a child in the back.
I reached in my shirt pocket and took out the photo of Andy Cope, the smattering of freckles just visible on his forehead, the bright look of optimism and courage in his eyes. I knew there was something about Andy that stayed with Curtis Garwood throughout his life. Maybe it began as a debt of boyhood gratitude for keeping Curtis’s theft a secret. Maybe it was because Curtis knew Andy was going to escape the night he was killed and he was forced to witness Andy’s execution. For Curtis, it was the one-two punch of guilt and grief that he fought all his life because of the good he didn’t do, until now, and he blamed himself because no one else could.
On my way back to the marina I would call Caroline Harper and tell her what I found. Then I’d plan a trip to Jackson County, and there I had no idea what I’d find.
TEN
The last time Jesse Taylor entered the Jackson County Courthouse he left in a deputy sheriff’s car. And, today, he was here to see the sheriff. He’d called to make an appointment, but was told the sheriff was tied up in budget meetings. Asked what it was in reference to, the receptionist said Jesse could speak with an investigator within the cold case division.
The investigator was forty-five minutes late. Jesse sat on a hard plastic chair inside the receiving lobby of the sheriff’s department. Three chairs down was an African-America woman, leafing through a tattered copy of People Magazine, one of the pages falling to the floor. She picked it up, glancing over to Jesse. He could see that her face was slightly swollen on the left side, her left eye dark with bruises. She quickly turned her head.
Jesse looked at the clock on the wall close to the reception desk. More than fifty minutes late. He got up and walked over to the woman behind the counter. She stopped pecking at the keyboard in front of her, looking up at Jesse. “Yes sir.” Her tone was flat. Hair bobbed around her ears, round face, multiple piercing spots on her earlobes. No earrings.
“I was wondering if you heard from Detective Larry Lee. He’s almost an hour late.”
“He’s still in the field. Last communications he said he was heading back to the station. Detective Lee knows you’re here, sir. It’s been a busy day. Active cases are a priority.”
“You mean over cold cases.”
“I didn’t say that. Please, just have a seat.”
Jesse turned to walk back across the lobby just as two men came in from the entry hall. They were laughing at something. One wore an open brown sports coat, white shirt and khaki pants, badge barely visible on his brown belt. He had a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard on an angular face, toothpick in one corner of his mouth. The other man was tall, wide-shoulders, his dark hair cut military style. He picked up two messages on the desk, waited for the receptionist to press a button under her counter to allow him access to a locked door near the desk. He turned to his partner, “Catch you in a few. We’ll go over the Barfield case.”
The man in the sports coat nodded and turned toward Jesse. “Are you Mr. Taylor?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m Detective Lee. How can I help you?”
Jesse looked around for a second. “Do you have somewhere we can talk, maybe an office?”
“This’ll be fine.” He pulled out a small notebook. “I can jot down what you have to say and take it from there. As I understand it, you wanted to meet about an incident at the Dozier School, correct?”
> “They called it the Florida School for Boys when I was there. What I want to talk to you about isn’t no incident. It’s murder.”
The detective tilted his head, lower jaw tightening. “Murder? What murder, and when did it allegedly happen?”
“It was in 1965. The victim’s name was Andy Cope.”
“How do you know this?”
“I heard the shooting.”
“So you were in juvie. What were you in there for?”
“I took a car for a joyride.”
“You stole a car, right?”
“No, it was my old man’s car. Rather than punish me like a father, he liked to have the county do it. He could spend more time drinking. Detective Lee, the night that Andy was killed I knew he was going to make a run for it. He wasn’t at breakfast the next morning. His family never saw him again, and they were told Andy ran off, maybe hitchhiked outta there. But it never happened.”
“You heard a shooting, which meant you never saw it, correct?”
“Yes, but—”
“Ever see a dead body?”
“No. Didn’t have to. Andy wasn’t the only one not to make it outta there alive. A kid told me he saw a black boy’s severed hand in the hog slop one day.” Jesse glanced at the woman sitting in one of the plastic chairs. She closed her eyes for a moment. “Detective, you got a lot of cold cases on that property. And there are people here in this county that never were investigated for them.”
“Mr. Taylor, a case, at least to me, gets cold if I don’t have somebody in cuffs after forty-eight hours, not fifty years. And this county has investigated allegations such as yours. The state attorney says there has never been sufficient evidence to prove or disprove abuse or even a killing in the old school. Some fellas like you filed a class action suit, think it was in 2010, and the judge threw it out because it vastly exceeded any statute of limitations.”
“That doesn’t apply to murder.”
“There’s no dead body, no crime scene…nothing.”
“Look…if they build condos and golf courses over that land, the devil will do a dance over graves ‘cause he was at the school when I was held there. I could see it in the eyes of the men who beat me. See the hate and the downright evil. They were the criminals, not the kids. Maybe you can take a team out there and start doing some digging. I’m bettin’ you’ll find graves of kids never reported dead in any official records.”
“Mr. Taylor, I want to thank you for coming by today. However, I’m not going to get a court order to start excavating hundreds of acres of property based on hearsay. Now, I’ve got other pressing cases I have to get to.” He closed his small notebook, turning to leave.
“Detective Lee, you know an old timer here by the name of Hack Johnson?”
The detective looked at his pen, clicking the top and placing it in his shirt pocket. “Can’t say I do. Why?”
“Because he could lead you to where they’re buried.”
The detective stared at Jesse for a few seconds in silence, the soft buzzing of a phone call coming from behind the reception desk. He walked away, his hard soles loud against the tile floor, exiting left through the same door that his partner had used.
Jesse shook his head, turned and started for the entrance door when the black woman set the People Magazine down and said, “Sir.” She stood and walked his way.
Jesse stopped. “Yes?” He tried not to stare at her eye, partially swollen shut—the white of the eye strawberry red.
She glanced around, lowering her voice. “I didn’t mean to overhear your conversation with the policeman, but I heard you talking about a killin’ at that reform school.”
“Do you know something about that?”
“Way ‘fore I was born, they sent two of my grandma’s boys there. One time I heard her tell my mama that my Uncle Jeremiah, when he was a boy in there, he saw ‘em shoot a white boy.”
Jesse looked over her shoulder at the receptionist. “Let’s step out in the hall.”
“I cain’t be gone long. My boyfriend violated his ‘straining order. Now he’s gonna go straight to jail.”
Jesse looked at her eye. “He hit you?”
She nodded, sniffling.
“Come on.” He led her to the hallway. “Let me ask you something, did your Uncle Jeremiah ever go by the name Jerry?”
“Some folks called him that. When he was little they did mostly, I’m told.”
“Where’s he now?”
“He stays in an old school bus parked in a pecan grove somewhere. My mama, his sister, said after he got outta that reform school he was never the same boy. He don’t talk much. He’s a picker. Apples. Grapes. Watermelons. Stuff like that.”
“You mentioned two boys. Did Jeremiah have a brother in there?”
“His name was Elijah. I never met him. Grandma says those men tol’ her Elijah up and run away from that reform school. Grandma and my mama said they never saw him again. Nobody did. Grandma believes they kil’t him in there. Buried his lil’ body somewhere. All she wants to do now is put flowers on his grave. But there ain’t no grave to go to.”
“How do I find your grandma?”
“I’ll write down her address. There’s a picture of a redbird on her mailbox. If you go to her house, go in the daytime.”
“I understand. Thank you. What’s your name?”
“Sonia Acker. All my life I heard stories about my lost Uncle Elijah. My grandma has one picture of him. He was about nine, dressed for church on an Easter Sunday. He had the biggest smile. She keeps that picture on her mantle next to a picture of Jesus. Write down your number. If I see my Uncle Jeremiah, I’ll give him your number.”
Jesse wrote his number on the paper napkin she gave him. “Take care of yourself, Sonia.”
“I don’t know where they put Elijah. But if you find boys buried at that school, look in two places. Look for a graveyard for white boys and one for black boys. They won’t be buried together.” Her eyes filled with water, a single tear falling from her swollen eye onto the marble floor in the hall of justice.
ELEVEN
I walked down L dock toward my boat with payment-in-full from a dead man. The money was still in the envelope. I didn’t count it. No reason to. There was no return address on the package. And for me, there was no turning back. I’d made the commitment to Caroline Harper. By opening the sealed package, I’d closed the deal with Curtis Garwood too. And now I had a narrative of Andy Cope’s last day on earth, a description of a tattoo, the name of a man Curtis called the Preacher, and a 12-gauge shotgun shell.
And fifty years from the point of origin—from the day the shell was fired.
A squadron of gulls flew over the marina just above masts of the sailboats, the gulls laughing, darting toward Ponce Lighthouse. I walked down the dock, playing over in my head the two conversations I’d had with Caroline, the one at the Tiki Hut and the other on the phone when I called her after I’d read Curtis’s letter. She didn’t know anyone called the Preacher in Jackson County. Had never heard her mother mention a person by that name. The description of the Southern Cross tattoo meant nothing to her. But she was intrigued with the possibilities of what the shell casing might bring. “At least that’s real evidence,” she’d said.
But what were the real odds of ever finding the shotgun? Betting men simply wouldn’t wager. Caroline said I’d given her something—hope. But I was doing so on speculation, the probabilities so low that that no one could calculate those odds. I’d have to figure a way to improve them, to shorten the distance, condense the years between a crime or crimes and the perpetrators.
I walked toward a 42-foot Sea Ray, open cockpit, exterior painted deep blue. I heard a woman laugh, smelled a whiff of cigar smoke. They were in the cockpit—an older man and a younger woman, the music up. The man was in his early sixties, mostly bald, wearing an unbuttoned, green tropical shirt, belly hanging over the swim trunks, a thick gold chain buried in his chest hair. A stogie was in one corner of his mouth. He s
ipped scotch from a heavy cocktail glass before setting the drink on a table. “I’m getting more ice,” he yelled, turning to enter the salon.
The woman was in her late-twenties, sitting in a lounge chair, black hair swept up, dark tortoise shell glasses on a striking face. She wore a bikini top, exposing ample cleavage, white shorts not much larger than bikini bottoms. She was deeply tanned, a rum punch in one hand, fingernails fiery red. Norah Jones was on the wireless speakers singing Turn Me On. The woman lowered her sunglasses and smiled at me, uncrossing and crossing her feet at the ankles, slightly shifting her body in the lounge chair. I returned her smile and kept walking.
I walked toward Jupiter, my 38-foot Bayliner I’d bought for ten cents on the dollar in a DEA sale. It was at the very end of L dock. I knew Max was either on Dave’s boat, Gibraltar or Nick’s boat, St. Michaels. She had the best of both marina worlds—the relaxed and quiet crossword-puzzle-solving atmosphere around Dave’s boat, with a Gershwin tune or jazz usually played softly. She might choose to be on Nick’s boat, St. Michaels, following Nick in a Zorba-the-Greek dance. It all depended upon whether she wanted a nap or if she was hungry.
It was Nick’s boat at the moment. I spotted her sitting in a canvas chair, opposite Nick. He sat with a reel he’d removed from one of his many rods. Nick was using a light oil to clean the reel, a web of fishing line piled next to his bare feet. He was animated, gesturing and chatting with Max. She seemed to listen patiently, and then she turned her head my way, jumping from her chair, tail wagging. Nick looked up. “Sean, you walkin’ like an Indian or what? Didn’t hear you, and I don’t even have my music on. How long have you been standing there?” He glanced down at the package in my hand.
“Just got here. How’s Max?”
“Hot dog’s the best. She’s a watchdog. Gulls stay off St. Michaels when she sits out here. Max is better than a wooden owl. Gulls are on to that decoy crap anyway. Kinda like a crow sits on a scarecrow’s stuffed shoulders.” He grinned, pleased with his analogy. “So, what the hell did you find in that post office box. Looks like you brought it to your marina home, and that probably isn’t cool. I can tell ‘cause Max looks worried.”