Onyx Webb 8

by Diandra Archer

  As Quinn suspected, there was no way on earth Juniper would agree to taking the life of another living being—not to mention having to do it again and again—just so she could stay.

  Quinn wanted her to but couldn’t blame Juniper for leaving. In fact, he was proud of her. For the brief time Juniper was alive, she was the best person he’d ever known.

  She still was.

  In addition to Juniper’s sudden departure, Quinn had to come to grips with the fact that Wyatt Scrogger had not killed his sister.

  Living without Juniper was the greatest pain Quinn had ever endured. The second greatest pain—the knowledge that he’d testified against Wyatt at trial and played an instrumental role in putting him on death row—was upon Quinn now.

  Suffocating him with guilt.

  Quinn knew that facing Wyatt would be difficult. But what other choice did he have? Quinn had abandoned Wyatt once. He could not abandon him again.

  Hence the decision to go see Wyatt on death row.

  Koda offered to go with him, but Quinn declined. He needed time alone to think about what he was planning to say, and the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Jackson, Georgia—three hundred miles to the westeast of Charleston—would give him time to come up with something.

  As much as Wyatt Scrogger wanted to express his true feelings about spending almost thirty years on death row, his lawyer made it clear that any outward show of hostility could hurt Wyatt’s most recent appeal—which was probably sound advice. But if Wyatt didn’t release at least some of the anger, he’d implode.

  Hence the idea for writing a book.

  Now, three years after he started, Wyatt was finally done. And none too soon. His fourth execution date was only eight days away.

  During his thirty years of incarceration, Wyatt’s lawyers had appealed his conviction numerous times on a variety of grounds. False arrest. Incorrect jury instructions. Improper admission of evidence by the judge. Exclusion of evidence by the judge. Lack of sufficient evidence. Juror misconduct. Sentencing errors. Ineffective counsel. Unethical acts by the prosecutor.

  Who said state-appointed lawyers didn’t earn their pay?

  Wyatt had also been granted five stays of execution, which is how he came up with the idea for the book title:

  Extended Staycation: My One Billion Seconds on Death Row

  by Wyatt Allen Scrogger

  Wyatt’s lawyer informed him that he could not profit from a book, even if he found a publisher.

  A law had been enacted after rumors that serial killer David Berkowitz—also known as Son of Sam, who terrorized New York during the summer of 1976—was shopping his story to publishers and movie studios.

  Wyatt didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in making money on the book. It was simply a release. Besides, where would he spend it?

  The book was divided into three parts:

  Part One: How Nice People End Up in Bad Places

  Part Two: Dealing with Life Twenty-Four Seven in an Eight-by-Ten-Foot Cell

  Part Three: Death Row Humor That Really Kills It!

  The first section of the book was the hardest since Wyatt couldn’t remember many details of the night of June 2, 1979, the night Juniper Cole went missing and was presumably murdered. What Wyatt did know was that he was no murderer.

  But he was a liar.

  For 11,507 days, Wyatt pretended he wasn’t angry. He acted like his date with the hangman didn’t bother him. He told others he’d found God and forgiven the people who’d testified against him and worked so hard to convict him.

  None of it was true.

  Wyatt was angry beyond words, so he said nothing. His impending execution date hung over him like the sword of Damocles. And he most certainly hadn’t found God. Besides, shouldn’t it be God’s job to find him?

  And speaking of forgiveness, screw them all.

  The DA, Cecelia Jaing, who railroaded him at trial…

  The judge, Susan Fullerton-Morse, who often fell asleep…

  The person who planted the evidence in his car…

  The jury who convicted him in less than an hour…

  And his friend, Quinn Cole, who testified against him.

  Yes, screw them all.

  Especially Quinn.

  Now, after almost thirty years, Quinn was coming to visit.

  Wyatt almost refused the visit but thought it might make a good addition to the final chapter. After all, in the end, that’s all Wyatt and Quinn’s friendship had ever been.

  A joke.

  Quinn was met by the warden, who escorted him to the room where the visit with Wyatt would take place. “Like I told your friend when he came up here in August, last-minute visits like this aren’t standard protocol.”

  “Does Wyatt know I’m coming?” Quinn asked, ignoring the man’s obvious displeasure.

  “Sure does,” the warden said. “Didn’t seem too pleased.”

  Koda had warned Quinn that Wyatt didn’t look anything like the pictures Koda had seen of Wyatt during his trial. But nothing could have fully prepared Quinn for the sight of the old man in the orange jumpsuit who was led into the room and seated on the other side of the large metal table.

  “You look good,” Quinn blurted, unable to come up with anything else.

  “That’s funny,” Wyatt said. “You look like shit. What did you do? Get trapped inside a Golden Corral and decide to eat your way out?”

  “You should have seen me two months ago.”

  “I sure hope you’re not here to sell me some Amway,” Wyatt said. “I’ve been plowing my entire prison paycheck into a retirement account. I think it’s all the way up to $19.23.”

  “I don’t have time for jokes, Wyatt.”

  “I do. You know, I’ve been thinking about asking the warden to let me do a special show for the other inmates before they punch my ticket. I’m thinking of calling it ‘Wyatt Scrogger: Live from Death Row!’ Here, tell me what you think. I called my lawyer the other day to find out about my appeal. He said I sounded funny. I said that’s because I’m calling on my cell phone. Funny, huh? You know what they call your last meal on death row? Ciao time. Get it?”

  “Stop it, Wyatt,” Quinn said.

  “No, wait, I’ve got more. They asked me what I wanted chiseled on my headstone—I said a map of the prison sewer system. They say the only thing that’s certain in life are death and taxes—in retrospect, I would have preferred taxes.”

  “Enough, Wyatt. I get it.”

  “You get it, Quinn? You couldn’t possibly get it unless you lived it.”

  “I saw Juniper,” Quinn said.

  Wyatt shook his head. “Oh, man, is that why you came here? To start spinning the same ghost in the mirror bullshit? Did Koda Mulvaney send you?”

  “It’s not bullshit, Wyatt. I saw her. We sat in the same room. I held her hand. We talked,” Quinn said. “Juniper told me what happened that night. How the guy took her from the fountain in Forsyth Park. I know what he did to her. And I know it wasn’t you, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt said nothing.

  “I’m going to help you get the hell out of here. I know the clock is ticking, but one way or another I’m going to get you out.”

  “Yeah, well, you better hurry,” Wyatt said. “In eight days, the State of Georgia is going to stick a needle in my arm, and it’s not a flu shot.”

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  AUGUST 17, 2009

  Noah slid in the booth opposite Sheriff Clay Daniels, eager to hear what Clay learned about the hundred-dollar bill the guy in the Firebird had given him the night of the restaurant opening a month earlier.

  “Well?”

  “Good news, bad news,” Clay said. “Which do you want first?”

  “Start with the bad news,” Noah said.

  “My contact at the DEA said testing the bill for marijuana would be a waste of time.”

  “It took a month to not run a test?”

  “Yeah, well, you’re dealing with the feds,” Clay said. “Now, you w
ant the good news?”

  Noah nodded.

  “The good news was they got a hit on the serial number,” Clay said. “The feds are slow, but they’re thorough. The serial number hadn’t even crossed my mind. Turns out the bill was among a batch of hundreds taken during an armed robbery of a KeyBank branch outside Spokane, Washington.”

  “Holy shit,” Noah said. “So, what does this mean?”

  “The DEA is going to want to interview you,” Clay said.

  “Me? Why?”

  “They’re going to need a description of the guy, what he said, stuff like that. They’ll probably want you to sit with a sketch artist, too. You didn’t happen to get the license plate, did you?”

  Noah shook his head. “Listen, Clay. I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think this guy is the bank robbing type. I think whatever he’s into, it’s drugs.”

  Clay nodded. “Yeah, that’s what my friend at the DEA thinks, too. Which is why they’re so interested. They think that whoever robbed the bank in Spokane used the money to fund a pot-running operation up north—but are buying the pot from a grower down here.”

  “So, if they get one—?”

  “—they get the other,” Clay said. “Two birds with one stone, that kind of thing.”

  Noah remained silent, thinking things through.

  “What is it?” Clay asked finally.

  “I’ve got a problem,” Noah said.

  “What?”

  “Well, I didn’t tell you everything,” Noah said.

  Noah explained to Clay how the scruffy man in the red Firebird had gotten on his radar in the first place.

  “So, are you telling me this man, whoever he is, is a friend of your grandmother’s?” Clay asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Noah said.

  “Great!” Clay said. “All we need to do is talk to her and—”

  “No,” Noah said, shaking his head. “We keep my grand-mother out of this.”

  Clay leaned forward to make sure they weren’t overheard. “It’s not that simple, Noah. Withholding information from the DEA is a felony. A felony. You get caught, they’ll send you to prison. No, check that. You’ve involved me by telling me, Noah. They’ll send us both to prison.”

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t care,” Noah said. “I’ll talk to the DEA and give them a description, but I’m not saying a word to them about Kizzy’s involvement in this. And if you’re a friend, neither will you.”

  Ellen approached the table with a pot of coffee, but when she saw the intense looks on the men’s faces, she did an abrupt about face and scurried off.

  “FineOkay,” Clay said. “We’ll do it your way. But the sooner we wrap this thing up, the better. If you see the car at your grandmother’s house, get the plate number.”

  “I’ve been staying at the lighthouse most nights,” Noah said.

  “Okay, well, if he shows up here again, you call me on my cell phone,” Clay said. “Morning, noon, or night, okay?”

  Noah nodded.

  Clay shook his head. “I must be crazy.”

  “You’re crazy? I’m the one who’s living with a ghost,” Noah said.

  “Uh, speaking of Onyx…” Clay said, his words drifting off and left hanging in the air.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I kind of screwed up,” Clay said sheepishly. “It seems I accidently said something I shouldn’t have—to Tara.”

  “Oh, no, tell me you didn’t,” Noah said. “You told Tara—?”

  “We’d had some wine, and it just slipped out,” Clay said.

  Noah shook his head. “Onyx is going to flip. You know that, right? We can’t tell her Tara knows.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking just the opposite. MThat maybe we should be proactive and go to Onyx and explain what happened.”

  “We?” Noah said. “When did this become a we thing?”

  “When you asked me to lie about your grandmother to the DEA,” Clay said.

  LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA

  DECEMBER 13, 2010

  By the time the FedEx package arrived with the case notes from Maggie, Newt had been off his meds for five days. His mind was clear. His math skills had returned. And, so far, he hadn’t slipped into one of his frozen states.

  Now, after reviewing Maggie’s files, it was time for Newt to make a list of facts and assumptions.

  Facts were ironclad data points that were indisputable and not subject to change. Assumptions were things deduced by the facts but were subject to change as more facts were discovered.

  Newt was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, but Sherlock Holmes was fiction created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Making deductions based on wit, logic, and observations—like body language—was highly overrated. Watching for signs of lying and/or honesty could lead one astray since bad deductions could still be gleaned from supposedly reliable facts.

  On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes was a master at the process of elimination, discarding improbable and illogical assumptions and, therefore, whittling down the number of possibilities that needed to be considered.

  The benefits of that could not be overestimated.

  For Newt’s computer program to produce an accurate prediction of where the Leg Collector would abduct his next victim, he could not allow himself to conflate the fact-based evidence with his assumptions—no matter how strong or obvious he felt the assumptions to be.

  Newt grabbed the files, a fresh box of black fine-point Sharpies, an empty legal pad, and a large glass of water.

  Then he began.

  First, the facts:

  Newt started with the most obvious data that was, by its very nature, indisputable: theThe Leg Collector’s victims.

  Name

  Marital status

  Sex

  Age

  Race

  Height

  Weight

  Hair color

  Eye color

  Where they lived

  Point of abduction (if known)

  Date and location the body was discovered

  State and condition of body when found, positioning, and staging of the body

  Other (including any physical abnormalities, birthmarks, killer “signature,” etc.)

  The first victim was Joselyn Knox: single, female, twenty-three, Caucasian, five feet six inches, 80.5 pounds, blonde hair, green eyes, taken somewhere between her home and a friend’s house. Her naked, legless body was found July 19, 1980, propped up against the base of James Oglethorpe’s statue in Chippewa Square.

  An additional calculation was used for determining Joselyn’s weight at the time of abduction since weight was an important marker in terms of the type of women the killer targeted—thin, heavy, average, etc.

  Joselyn’s body weight at the time of discovery was 80.5 pounds, which was adjusted to 122 pounds to compensate for the missing thighs, lower legs, and feet.

  The entire process had to be completed for all forty-two of the Leg Collector’s known victims.

  It was tedious work.

  Next came the risky part—the assumptions—the first of which were assumptions regarding the anagrams themselves.

  Newt felt the first three anagrams were the most important because they set the tone for everything to follow.

  The first three were:

  Victim #1: Joselyn Knox (anagram: “Spike Heel Tiger”)

  Victim #2: Deborah Deegan (anagram: “Athens Mortuary”)

  Victim #3: Martha Crowley (anagram: “Hellcat Fib”)

  So, what did the anagrams mean? There were hundreds of possibilities for each. In the end, Newt settled on:

  Spike Heel Tiger = I Keep Their Legs

  Athens Mortuary = Smarter Than You

  Hellcat Fib = Call The FBI

  The implied messages were clear:

  The killer didn’t take their legs or remove them—he kept them. He collected them. As such, Newt believed something traumatic had happened in the killer’s background regarding legs—most
likely his.

  Next, the killer perceived himself as smarter than other people, which was a good thing. Serial killers who thought they were smarter than everyone else were always tripped up because of their hubris.

  And, finally, the killer wanted the FBI chasing him—he thought they were playing a game.

  The big question for Newt was just how much weight to give to the information given to him by Koda Mulvaney—information supposedly provided by the ghost of Juniper Cole.

  The piano prodigy had gone missing on June 2, 1979—one year before the first known Leg Collector victim. Her body was never found. Therefore, there was no way to say definitively that Juniper was taken and murdered by the same person who killed the other girls.

  Except for her contention that she’d been abducted by a man in a wheelchair who worked as a photographer for the Savannah PD around the exact time the murders started—a.

  man who, supposedly died in 1990, but was And had been seen in the station alive just three week earlier—and d.

  And had dropped his camera with pictures of a victim on it.

  If Juniper Cole had been one of the Leg Collector’s victims—it also meant that an innocent man, Wyatt Allen Scrogger, was about to be put to death by means of lethal injection in eight days.

  Newt felt he was getting close to catching the Leg Collector, but now the clock was ticking.

  In the end, Newt decided to include Juniper Cole as one of the Leg Collector’s victims—an assumption that could radically alter the results calculated by the computer program Newt had created.

  The official name of the program was the Predictive Data Algorithm—PDA for short. Around the FBI everyone referred to it as DSP—the Drugged Spider Program.

  Newt had studied research on a spider’s ability to spin webs so perfect they could be considered art—like something created by Rembrandt or Michelangelo.