by Tom Lowe
The voice on the PA came again. “You’ve got ten seconds to surrender. You are outgunned ten to one. The man holding the hostage…drop your gun.”
I looked at Hack Johnson and the rest of the gang. If the old man signaled for an assault, all hell would break loose. I’d take twenty bullets before the count of two. I kept the barrel in Earl’s ear—the ear now bleeding.
The next voice on the PA came from a woman. “Sean, it’s Lana…put down your weapon. We know what happened on the trail and how that trail led you here. Please put down the gun.”
Hack Johnson stared at me. His grandson, Cooter, was about to come out of his skin. They both looked beyond me at the firepower all pointed at them. Hack cut his eyes back to me. “I might be old, but we ain’t done…you and me.” To his men he said, “Fold ‘em boys. Ain’t no use in gettin’ all shot up in a barn when we can beat this shit in a courthouse. It’s all about family law, brothers.”
Slowly, I withdrew the pistol. I held it out by my side for a second before dropping it to the ground. I kept my grip on Earl, now using both hands. His body in front of me was my only form of life insurance.
Each man laid his gun on the ground. The voice on the PA was one of the officers. He said, “Place your hands on top of your heads, fingers interlocked, and walk out single file, one-by-one and keep your hands on your head.”
I released Earl. He interlocked his fingers together, hands on his head, joining the others in line, walking out into a blaze of white lights. I watched Hack Johnson slowly stand, his face tight, defiant. He took his place last in line, laced his arthritic fingers together on his head and shuffled outside. I stepped over to him. “You asked me what I wanted.” I reached into my shirt pocket and lifted out the picture of Andy. I held it near the old man’s face. “This is why I’m here. Justice for a little boy that’s long overdue. Justice for a boy named Andy Cope. A boy you shot in the back.”
Hack Johnson looked at me through his smudged glasses, his eyes wide and filled with hate and denial. Remorse wasn’t in his DNA. I slipped the photo back in my pocket, careful not to get blood on it. I watched as law enforcement processed each man, arresting and reading rights before they were loaded into sheriff’s vans. I looked at the plainclothes investigators. There were a half dozen. Detective Lee wasn’t in the mix.
From my left, two people ran up to me. Paramedics. One man and one woman. The woman said, “Sir, you need medical attention.”
“What I need is ice.”
The man said, “Sir, please step over to the ambulance. You don’t have to go to the hospital if you don’t want to, but we need to take a look at your injuries in better light. Give you something to stop the bleeding.”
I nodded and followed them, investigators following me. The paramedics cleaned me up as one detective from the sheriff’s office questioned me. Another investigator from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement took notes and asked a dozen questions. A few minutes later, Lana Halley and a man I didn’t recognize approached. He was dressed in a uniform, an older man with silver hair, wide shoulders and accepting eyes. Rare considering the occupation. Lana said, “Sean, thank God you’re okay.”
“How’d you and the troops get here so fast?”
“Your friend, Dave Collins, you have someone with excellent communication skills.”
“Dave’s a talker.” I tried to smile.
“He’s also great at recon and strategy. He could tell us exactly where you were, and he could tap into the microphone on your phone. He’d alerted the FDLE, U.S. Marshal’s office and the FBI before I could. He was like a movie producer bringing all the components together, literally under the gun. Sean, I’d like for you to meet Sheriff Mark Monroe.”
The sheriff nodded. “Pleased to meet you. I want to thank you for going out of your way to help. Looks like you’ve been through one helluva fight. I’m deeply sorry one of them was my deputy.”
I shook my head. “That’s not your fault. Parker fooled me, too. The guy who shot Jeremiah Franklin is in the barn. He’s dead. Name’s Ace Anders. He’s the one to the right. The other is Solomon Johnson. Anders rode with Deputy Parker to the trailhead. Stayed behind for some reason. I guess Parker thought I was easy prey. He shot at me twice, close range with his rifle. I had no choice but to stop Parker. How and why he’s associated with a radical hate group, I don’t know. But he was.”
The sheriff grunted, looked away for a second and then looked at me. “Ivan was a complicated man. A stern granddaddy raised him in some of the strict and bygone ways of the Old South. I’m afraid Ivan took a few of them to an extreme. He was dedicated to uncover justice, mostly his interpretation of it, as I’m beginning to discover. My men found a big damn meth lab in one of these buildings. We suspected it. Now we know it.”
“I’ve suspected Hack Johnson was a pedophile and a child killer. Now I know it. I’m betting his prints will match the one the FBI found on the shotgun shell. Sheriff, your team just might solve one of the coldest cases in Florida. And in doing so, maybe it’ll curb this kind of child abuse in places where kids are supposed to be helped, not raped and killed.”
“Let’s hope. Much obliged, Mr. O’Brien. We’ll get all of your statements in detail.”
“Something else, Sheriff. That black Ford pickup to the right has a shotgun in the rack. I can see its silhouette through the windshield. It’s an old gun. I know because a couple of the Johnson boys pulled it on me. I’d be willing to bet it was the gun Hack Johnson used at the reform school when he was hunting kids.”
Sheriff Monroe looked toward the pickup truck. He turned to one of his deputies. “Don, take that shotgun and tag it as potential evidence.” The sheriff tipped his hat and left, issuing orders to deputies, the stammer of police radios sounding like music to my ears.
Lana turned to me. “We’ll get Hack Johnson’s prints and expedite his DNA. I’d get his blood, but I think ice water runs in his veins. If he’s Jeff Carson’s father, and if we can get one of the guys arrested to turn state’s witness detailing Carson’s complicity in any of these crimes, Carson can share a cell with them for all I care. We’ll have a read on the old man’s prints by midday tomorrow. After they’re done with you here, where will you be?”
“Swallowing aspirin, using ice, knocking back a scotch and counting the hours until midday tomorrow.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
I was on my second cup of black coffee at the Blue Plate Diner, reading the latest news piece Cory Wilson had written for the Jackson Patriot, when the call came. He’d been writing a series of articles, each probing the Johnson family and their connection with state attorney Jeff Carson. He also detailed Caroline Harper’s hunt for her brother’s grave. I answered and Lana said, “I bet you could use some good news.”
“I like conversations that begin like this.”
“You’ll like the fact, did I say fact? The fact that Hack Johnson’s right thumbprint matches the print lifted by the FBI from the shotgun shell. He can lie, he can cheat, terrorize kids and deny it all…but he can’t refute his own print. You got him, Sean.”
“It wasn’t just me. It was the evidence and the help of others like you…and in the end it was Hack Johnson who got himself.”
“I’m in the sheriff’s office. They had more questions to ask you, but this revelation seems to have stymied that. I’m going to a grand jury immediately. We’ll get a court order to begin looking for bodies on the reform school property. That will stop the sale of the property, at least temporarily.”
“Permanently if we find mass graves. And we begin with the grave of Andy Cope.”
“Hack Johnson won’t talk.”
“He’s not the only person alive who knows were Andy is buried.”
“Who else?”
“Zeke Wiley. He’s at the Cypress Grove Senior Center. If you or the sheriff can take him to the school property, have him lead you to the grave. And we might find more graves.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Oh, one
more thing. Cooter Johnson is turning state’s witness. He say’s he’ll testify that his father and grandfather had a long, personal, and on-going relationship with Jeff Carson. Carson was paid to look the other way in cases involving the family’s manufacture of meth. He turned a blind eye to the sale and distribution of pot and cocaine in cases that could have implicated the family. Cooter refers to Carson as ‘Uncle Jeff.’ I’m almost shaking telling you this. Not in a million years. Gotta go.”
I called Caroline Harper and told her what had happened. She listened quietly. I said. “We’re getting a court order to look for Andy’s grave.”
“Oh thank God above! I never thought I’d live to see this day.”
“It may take a while, but if Andy’s buried there, he can be found.”
“Sean, I don’t know what to say except thank you.”
“Hold any thanks until we find your brother. In the meantime, someone else who’s been lost for a long time is about to be set free. The state attorney’s office is releasing Jesse. This is the time, maybe more than anytime since he was in the school, that he could use a friend.”
“I’ll make arrangements to pick him up and we’ll go to dinner. Thank you.” She disconnected.
I sipped lukewarm coffee and called Dave. “Well, hello Sean. Anything new to report from Jackson County.”
“Just the fact that I’m alive, thanks to you.”
“All in a day’s work. Actually, all in a couple of hours work. But it’s never a job when you’re having fun.”
“Can’t say getting my jaw fractured and a couple of ribs cracked was a lot of fun.” I told Dave what happened and added, “We have a match on the thumbprint found on the shell—it’s Hack Johnson’s print. Lana’s getting a court order to find Andy’s grave, and the graves of others believed buried on the property.”
I heard Dave sigh. A second later he said, “If there are dozens of graves, and that’s an if—then this could become a case of serial killings handed down through the generations of guards who worked there. This could become one of America’s greatest tragedies—one that has taken place for one hundred and eleven years. If this leads to mass unknown graves, you’re walking a long and frightening path, Sean. Presumably, because at the end of it, are the graves of innocent children—victims of those entrusted to help them.”
SEVENTY-NINE
They brought Zeke Wiley to the reform school property in a sheriff’s car. And the sheriff himself was driving. Other police agency vehicles were already there. Cars and people from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were there, too. Forensic workers. People from the coroner’s office stood by, waiting. I counted seven TV satellite trucks and a half dozen small microwave news trucks. National and regional media jockeyed for best positions. Reporters and camera operators set up tripods. A man in jeans and a black T-shirt sat on a backhoe, the engine turned off. Other men from the sheriff’s office had shovels and evidence bags.
Caroline Harper and Jesse stood under the shade of an oak, Jesse comforting her. I watched Jesse study Zeke Wiley’s every step and physical nuance. Even from fifty feet away, I could see the disgust on Jesse’s face. Caroline patted her eyes with a handkerchief. Jesse placed an arm around her shoulders and watched a squirrel bury an acorn. The sky was hard blue, a light breeze from the east. A mockingbird cackled from one of the big oaks.
I stood next to Lana Halley as the sheriff walked slowly with the old man. Neither man spoke. Everyone followed, walking from the main parking lot, between two buildings, past a cottage and toward the small cemetery with plastic PVC pipe as grave markers. No names on any of the graves. Nothing but faded plastic pipe and grass choked with weeds.
Reporter Cory Wilson, with a photographer, snapped pictures of Zeke Wiley leading the procession across the property. The other reporters and videographers followed for best spots to catch the old man and the sheriff in search of a hidden grave—maybe more. The national media picked up Cory Wilson’s series of stories. They were all here. CNN, Fox News, the TV networks. Major newspapers. And everyone watched the slow processional to search for a shallow grave with very deep consequences. The expression on the old man’s face looked redemptive, somehow at terms with what he was about to do—what he was about to reveal after so many decades of hidden secrecy.
Lana glanced up at me and said, “So, just maybe Andy was buried in that small cemetery with the rest of the boys. Some were said to have died in a fire during the twenties.”
“We’ll soon find out.”
Wiley walked past the marked cemetery, more than two hundred feet to a more remote, secluded area. He stopped at the base of a large pine tree, looked to his right and then to his left. He stepped to the center, in a northward direction. It looked as though he was counting silently, his lips moving, calculating distance with each small step he took. When he was about fifty feet north of the lone pine, he stopped and pointed to the ground. “There. He’s buried somewhere right in this immediate area. I need to sit.”
I heard Caroline sob. The sheriff turned and signaled. “Set up the tape here, Brad and Tucker. Everyone else, please keep your distance.” Two men rolled out the yellow crime scene tape, cordoning off a square about fifty feet in four directions, pounding in stakes and wrapping the tape around the top of each stake. Then the sheriff motioned for his team to dig. Everyone formed a semicircle outside the tape, watching the body recovery and forensics teams. The sound of shovels removing topsoil, the click of cameras, a news videographer raising his tripod and camera. Caroline looked away for a few seconds. A female deputy escorted Zeke Wiley to the shade of an oak. He sat in a foldout chair someone had brought.
A tall man, wearing a shirt with the word FORENSICS on the back, stopped digging with his shovel and knelt down, now using a hand trowel, “Found something. Very shallow.”
There was a murmur in the crowd. More camera clicks. The mockingbird stopped chortling. The sheriff walked up to what now appeared to be a gravesite. He observed as the team used trowels to excavate the soil. The coroner, an older man with a neatly trimmed white beard and bifocals, squatted beside the excavation. He spoke softy with the investigators, nodding his head and pointing to different areas of what appeared to be human skeletal remains.
The sheriff shook his head, swatting a fly, and walked over to speak with other members of his team. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat and spoke to the media and anyone else within earshot. “Folks, this is now a crime scene. You people in the news media, we’ll answer your questions as soon as we can get some definitive results. In the meantime, our investigators and forensics folks will go about their jobs in an expeditious fashion. Seems to me too much time has already passed. There appears to be human remains in that grave. Most likely from a child, considering bone and skull size. We’ll remove the body, and along with the FDLE, conduct DNA and dental tests. We’ll have a news briefing as soon as we know something.”
One network reporter, a lean man with close-cropped white hair asked, “Sheriff, can the coroner estimate how long the body has been there?”
“No, not at this time.”
Another reporter, a woman from CNN asked, “Are you going to search for additional graves?”
As the sheriff was about to answer, Zeke Wiley stood, raising his hand in the air. The sheriff looked at him. “Yes, Mr. Wiley?”
“There are more graves…more are in this area.” His face was flush, his eyes wide, lips pursed, his chest rising and falling quickly.
Reporters circled Wiley, peppering questions. He held up his hands, closing his eyes for a moment, and then looking toward the blue sky, folding his hands as if in prayer.
The sheriff motioned to three deputies. “Ya’ll get him into a squad car. Get the air conditioning running. Give him some water.”
The deputies nodded, walking up to Wiley, one deputy saying to the media, “That’s it for now. Please give this man some room. Show some respect, okay? Mr. Wiley let’s get you in the cool of an air-conditioned
car.”
One of the forensic workers, a woman, sleeves up, rubber gloves on, knelt over the grave and used a small brush to remove debris. I watched her. Stop and start. Brush and examine. The expression on her face was intense. Curious. Thorough. Professional. She lifted a long pair of forensic tweezers from her kit. Prodded. Then she lifted something from the hole. It was small, the size of a peanut. She examined it and signaled for the sheriff. He walked over, spoke with her, looked at the object and watched her place it in a small plastic bag.
The sheriff stepped over to the news media. He paused, choosing his words carefully. “One of our investigators located an object lodged into a pelvic bone. We’ll look at it in the lab, but I’ve been around long enough to know double aught buckshot when I see it. Whoever’s in that shallow grave was apparently shot.”
A reporter started to ask a question. The sheriff raised one hand. “We’ll take questions later.”
I watched a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigator approach the sheriff, talking quietly, the sheriff nodding. The investigator, early fifties, a face that indicated he’s seen some of the worst of the worst, turned and looked at the media. His jacket was off. White dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. Tie down a notch. He said, “In view of what we’ve just found, and for a number of reasons…we need to thoroughly excavate this property. A forensic anthropology team with one of the universities has been following the news stories. Our office received word that they’ve requested permission to come on the property, using ground-penetrating radar to search for anomalies, or skeletal remains. We see no reason to deny their request as long as they work within law enforcement parameters to find and excavate other human remains, should they find them. This might become an arduous process, considering the size of the property, but we extend the invitation for the professor and her graduate students to help us locate more graves, God forbid that they’re really out here.”