by Tom Lowe
I picked up my pace—walking fast, moving toward the place Jeremiah Franklin had died. Mosquitos followed me, high-pitched droning near my ears and neck. I turned up my collar and jogged the remaining one hundred yards to the bridge. It was an odd silhouette in the sunset. Steel beams, broken cables, girders missing—the ribs of an old bridge straddling the slow-moving river. The remnants resembled pieces from a giant erector set long ago abandoned. Left to rust. Left to give witness to a road less traveled.
I stepped up to the entrance to the bridge, most of the wooden planks long since rotted away. Two were still there, at the very lip of the bridge. I knelt down and searched the first plank. Jesse’s phone was in the spot where he’d left it. I stood, slipping the phone into my back pocket.
Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off a triangle section about seventy feet in dimension. I ducked under the tape and played back the details Jesse had given me. Where they were standing when the first shot was fired—the position of Jeremiah’s chest, his stance. Wind movement in the leaves. Whether Jesse recalled the sound of a bolt-action between shots. I knelt down and studied the tracks, boot and shoeprints, the trodden area left behind from an earlier investigation.
I walked toward an ancient oak, wide knotty trunk, the tree Jesse had described. It was the place he’d carried Jeremiah and tried to take refuge, the place where he returned fire. I spotted specks of dried blood on fallen oak leaves, dark red spots of blood on ferns near the base of the tree. It wasn’t the season for the oaks to loose leaves. There were more than a dozen, green leaves on the ground. I remembered Jesse saying he heard a bullet rip through the branches. And then he heard one make a thud.
I walked closer to the tree, looking at the trunk from its base up to one of the first mammoth limbs. And there it was—a bullet hole. Fresh. The old tree was oozing a trace of sap from the hole. It was as if the tree had been wounded. I thought back to the night I’d dug the buckshot from the tree on the reform school property. It was an oak very similar to the one I was standing beside. One was shot fifty years ago, and the other a few hours ago. Both rounds, no doubt, coming from the same seeds of anger with roots probably as deep as the tree in front of me. I could tell from the angle of impact the general direction where the shot had been fired. I knew the round could be dug from the tree and, depending on its condition, used for ballistics.
Now to find the spot where the shooter stood.
I turned and looked across the Chipola River, through the black silhouette of the old bridge, near a very small clearing on the riverbank, to the left of a bald cypress tree. It was a perfect trajectory. But I needed a closer look. The only way to get there was walk across the bridge. The wooden floor was gone, crossbeams mostly gone. I stepped up on one of the rusty girders, walking heel-to-toe over narrow cables and beams that straddled the river. I looked at the water maybe fifteen feet below me, moving slowly, the current causing the slight spinning vortex of an eddy off the riverbank. I could see a large alligator in the water, its knobby eyes and back protruding from the surface.
I approached the halfway mark, my weight causing the rusted joints to creak, a slight breeze across the river delivering the scent of schooling fish and damp moss. I heard the long hoot of an owl. It was getting darker. And somehow the rusted old bridge felt like a bridge to nowhere, connected to a road never traveled.
But I had to cross it.
SEVENTY-THREE
I was almost across the old bridge when my phone vibrated. I walked the last few steps, trying to get off the rickety bridge before reaching in my pocket for the phone. It went to voicemail as I stepped off the last corroded beam. I was now on the opposite side of the river from where Jeremiah was killed. The call came from Deputy Parker. I played the message. “Sean, the lab ran the prints from the glass. There isn’t a match to the print from the shotgun shell. So it looks like Zeke Wiley wasn’t the shooter that night when Andy Cope was shot, or at least he didn’t load that particular shell into the chamber. Where are you? Call me.”
The sun slipped behind the western edge of the forest leaving beads of daylight that were dissolving into shades of gray. It was the final ten minutes or so between the afterglow of day and the stark darkness of night—a twilight world of no shadows. Fireflies rose up from the ferns, the portable lanterns in their bellies pulsating with a color that matched the swaths of sunlight reflecting from low hanging clouds. It was all the nightlight I needed to make my way to the clearing by the massive bald cypress tree that I’d spotted when I stood in the same spot Jeremiah stood right before a bullet went through his body.
I swatted a black haze of mosquitoes and walked through thick underbrush in the direction of the cypress tree. I glanced down at the river, the dark water reflecting the deep blood red hue from the clouds. A water bug moved in a clockwise rotation on the surface of the river. The gator was gone. I walked another hundred feet and came near the cypress tree.
I circled the tree, coming closer on each rotation, examining the dark muck soil for traces of an assassin. I didn’t have to look long. The first thing I spotted was the dull glint of a brass casing. I knelt down and used the tip of my pen to lift it from the weeds. The casing was a .308. I sniffed the open end, the fresh odor of burnt gunpowder. Jesse said he remembered hearing three shots fired. I found evidence of one. The shooter probably picked up the other two casings, missing the one I found in the weeds.
I set the casing down exactly as I found it. Deputy Parker could officially bag and tag the evidence. I just needed to see it, to smell it. I looked to my right, to within a couple of feet from the base of the tree. Human tracks. Boot prints. I stepped next to the prints and knelt. Even in the diffused light, even in the sepia tone brown pigment of the forest, the print was distinct. There were at least a half dozen. Most positioned as the shooter would have stood, braced against the tree, facing the direction where Jesse and Jeremiah were standing next to the bridge.
I stared at one boot print, the unique tread design right down to the pyramid shape on the heel. I touched the tread pattern with the tips of my fingers, the black soil cool. I looked up at a full moon rising over the river, the clipped hoot of a great horned owl coming from deep in the woods. A breeze came through the cypress tree causing the ashen beards of Spanish moss to sway. I looked back down at the print. I knew the design came from military combat boots. And I knew that whoever wore them had hung the noose from the tree in Mrs. Franklin’s yard. He was one of the two men who entered Jesse’s room, severely beating and branding him.
And now he’d been here. He’d murdered the only living witness the prosecution would have had to testify in court as to who killed Andy Cope. How did he know Jesse and Jeremiah were going to meet here? What was I missing? I returned Deputy Parker’s call. When he answered I said, “Got your message about the print. Although Zeke Wiley didn’t load the shotgun, he was there that night. He was part of the posse, men hunting a boy.”
“That’s a horrible visual. Well, at least our search is becoming narrower. Not a whole lot of suspects remaining.”
“There’s at least one. And his time is coming.”
“We’ll get him.”
“Ivan, before Jeremiah died he told Jesse who killed Andy.”
“He did? I’m sure he didn’t share that with Detective Lee. Who did it?”
“Hack Johnson. Although we’ve lost Jeremiah, we have a name and it’s the last words Jeremiah uttered before he died. So you can take that information to Lana Halley, take it along with the print the FBI pulled from the shell, the boot print pattern, and the fact that state attorney Carson may be related to Johnson, and you’ve got enough to get a court order to obtain Johnson’s prints and his DNA.”
“Whoa…run that by this ol’ country boy a little slower. You believe the SA, the highest ranking prosecutor in the district is blood kin to one of the most corrupt families in the Florida Panhandle?”
“Yes. And the sooner you can meet with Lana, the quicker she can get a judge
to sign an order for you to pick up Hack Johnson. Who in the department can you trust?”
“The sheriff’s a stand up guy. There are plenty of deputies there who’d take a bullet for me and vice versa.”
“You might want to pick your best backup when you take him in. If his print matches, you’re on your way to solving what is definitely one of Florida’s coldest cases.”
“Where are you?”
“Bellamy Bridge. I found the spot where the shooter stood. It’s across the bridge, down the riverbank, a large lone cypress tree next to the river, maybe eighty yards from where Jesse and Jeremiah stood. I left for you a .308 cartridge on the ground near the tree. It came from the shooter’s rifle. And the boot prints here match the prints at two crime scenes.”
“So they have the pyramid in the heel?”
“Yeah.”
“This guy gets around. We gotta stop the crazy bastard. I’ll correlate all the evidence and take it to Lana Halley in the morning. Maybe it’ll be enough to get Jesse a bond and give us a ticket to take ol’ man Johnson directly to jail. O’Brien, when we wrap this, I owe you the coldest beer in town.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Look, you can reach Lana now. She can get the judge to sign an order when you give her what you have.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “No better time than the present. I’ll keep you in the loop.” He disconnected. I stood next to the cypress tree, soft moonlight coming between the whiskers of moss, the chant of bullfrogs on the riverbank. I looked at the Bellamy Bridge, the moonlight casting the vertical beams and cables in dark silhouette. Something about the old bridge suddenly felt ominous, as if it were a bridge to tragic times.
I looked away, back to where I’d left the rifle casing. I could see the glimmer of moonlight off the casing less than ten feet away. What I couldn’t see was what I just felt. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The inertia pushing the dominoes had ceased somewhere, and I hadn’t seen it coming. How could I have missed it? I called Caroline Harper. When she answered, I said, “When you spoke with Jesse…when he told you he was going to meet Jeremiah…you tried to reach me, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“When you couldn’t reach me immediately, did you call anyone else?”
“Yes. I was so worried that I called the young man we met at the coffee shop. Deputy Parker. He’d given me his card that day. I know you trust him so I wanted to see if he might help Jesse, maybe bring him home if he’d used painkillers and shouldn’t be on the road. Is everything okay, Sean?”
Someone was beeping into my phone. Dave Collins calling. “Caroline, I have to go. Everything will be fine.” I disconnected and took Dave’s call. He said, “The tracker on Jesse’s car has been in the same position, of course, since he was arrested. His car was probably impounded. However, the second tracker, I’m seeing some very fast movement right now. Did the deputy ever place it on the DA’s car?”
“At this moment, I doubt it. I’m pretty sure it’s still in his car because he’s either working for Jeff Carson or the Johnson family, and right now they’re all the same.”
“As the haystack burns the rats run. He must be one hell of an actor to fool you.”
“Sociopaths can do that, sometimes. Maybe I wanted to trust him too much.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Sean. It’s fixable. I don’t hear that tone in your voice often. Maybe in a blue moon when something’s backfired, and that doesn’t happen often.”
I stared up at the moon over the tree line. “It’s happened now. Deputy Ivan Parker, the man I saw as trustworthy, has to be involved in this. I’m not sure to what level, but I know he alerted the trooper, probably a pal of his, when Jesse was en route to meet Jeremiah.”
“Where are you?”
“Bellamy Bridge area. The place where Jeremiah Franklin was murdered.”
“If the tracker is in the deputy’s car, as you believe, he’s coming toward you and he’s in one hell of a hurry to get there. Be ready, Sean. Looks like you’re about to have a dangerous fight on your hands.”
“You have the app to follow the GPS signal from my phone. Now is a good time to turn it on. If you don’t hear from me, if the signal stops or if it goes stationary, send in the troops. Call Carly Brown with the FBI in Tampa, maybe the U.S. Marshal’s office in Tallahassee or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. I have no idea what I’m about to face. It could be half a dozen deputies who might believe anything Parker tells them.”
SEVENTY-FOUR
I didn’t use the flashlight on my phone as I crossed Bellamy Bridge. I needed to save battery power, and I didn’t want to be a moving target in the event Deputy Parker had a scoped rifle trained on me. I walked across the cables and beams using the moonlight as my guide. I stopped, gripping onto one of the vertical beams to steady myself. I looked down at the river, the bright light from the moon reflecting in red dots. Some were moving slowly. Some stationary. Most about half a foot wide—the space between alligator eyes just above the river’s surface.
I walked slowly across the twin cables. Like a duck on land. Halfway there. The thick cables wobbling each step I took. A breeze from the west brought the scent of wood smoke somewhere in the forest. My phone vibrated. I couldn’t answer and maintain a surefooted balance. I was less than fifteen feet from the other side when it happened. One of the cables dropped out from under me. I went down, catching myself. Grabbing the other cable with my hands. I dangled just a few feet above the dark river. Mosquitoes alighted on my neck, drilling into my bloodstream.
I held on, moving hand-over-hand toward the riverbank. Sweat dripping down my back, a sulfur smell coming from the water. Ten feet more. I gripped the rusted cable, shards of rust and metal falling on my face. I continued the climb. The thick wire groaned like mooring lines on a dock in a rising tide. And now the cable felt like a macabre trapeze with no safety net.
Five feet to go.
I swung my legs up to the riverbank. I pulled myself out from under the bridge, standing on land. My hands bled. Sweat in my eyes. I ran down the dark trail, patches of moonlight squeezing between the trees. I listened to a voice message from Dave. “Sean, he’s just pulling into the trailhead parking lot. No movement from the tracker, so I’d say he’s parked and out of the car. Wish I knew if he came alone or with others. Prepare for the latter.”
I calculated the time and distance. Dave left his message three minutes ago as I was dangling from the bridge. I knew that the trailhead parking lot was approximately a twenty-minute walk to the bridge. Parker, if he wasn’t waiting to ambush me in the parking lot, had been on the trail for roughly two and a half minutes, assuming it took him thirty seconds to lock and load. I didn’t know if he had night-vision glasses or an infrared night scope on a rifle or shotgun.
I stepped behind thick undergrowth and called Lana. Got her voice-mail and whispered, “Lana, it’s Sean. At the Bellamy Bridge I found evidence that someone other than Jesse shot Jeremiah Franklin. On the north side of the river from the bridge, at the base of a huge cypress tree, is a spent rifle casing. Boot tracks at the site will match those left in Mrs. Franklin’s yard where the noose was found. The tracks will match the same found on the blood in Jesse’s room when he was attacked. They’re very distinct, a pyramid shape at the heel. I have an audio recording of the trooper ordering Jesse into the woods. Deputy Ivan Parker is complicit in this. He knows I’m here, and he’s on his way to stop me. So if you have someone in law enforcement you can trust, you can send him or her my way. Just tell them to say Lana sent me.”
I walked quickly, keeping to the shadows. Looking for a tree to climb. One of the things I learned in the military was the psychology of the human hunter. Maybe, in the day of giant pterodactyls sailing down to grab prey, our relatives looked up when hunting. But today, when armed with high-powered assault rifles, the hunters usually kept their eyes sweeping the ground in front of them. Not above them. As a sniper, I used high elevations for a trajectory advantage. Toni
ght I had to use it as a tactical advantage, especially if Parker brought another hired gun.
The breeze became still. I stopped on the edge of the trail, standing in silence. I cupped both hands behind my ears, listening. Trying to pick up any noise that was inconsistent with the night sounds of the forest. Crickets chirped in the dark crevices. Cicadas chimed in for a short stanza and then ebbed, as if nature played two notes from a harmonica, pausing to take a deep breath before the next performance. It was when the crickets and cicadas stopped in mid-song that I knew it was because they sensed danger. And that danger was usually manmade.
I spit on both hands, rubbing saliva on my face and forehead. Then I knelt down, finding loose dark soil, rubbing the dirt on my face and the back of my hands. Listened once more. Nothing. Then I walked quietly, hunting for the right tree.
I found an ancient live oak with an immense girth, the trunk knotty and expansive. There were plenty of hand and footholds. It’s thick limbs extended well beyond the width of the trail. I climbed. Silent. Controlling my breathing. Listening. The whine of mosquitoes followed me up the tree and into the branches. I steadied myself, holding onto smaller branches. I walked along one of the limbs that crossed the path. The trail, the direct pathway, was now fifteen feet below me.
I squatted on the limb, ninety-five percent of my body hidden from anyone on the trail coming from either direction. I waited under the light of a full moon. Ignoring the mosquitoes. Watching shadows in the moonlight.
Waiting for the first shadow to move.
SEVENTY-FIVE
I lifted my Glock, holding it. Waiting. The moon was directly over me, soft light coming through the branches and leaves. I could see well. Maybe one hundred feet down the trail. I spotted a fat raccoon waddling across the path, stopping to sniff something, and then vanishing into the undergrowth. From somewhere above me came the quaking sound of a nighthawk diving for insects. I didn’t look skyward, keeping my eyes on the trail.