The Beginning (Whispering Pines Book 1)

by Charles Wells

  ***

  Jacobs eased the patrol car closer to the ditch on the side of the road. Catfish, Meadows, Squires and Edie rode in the rear seat while Gail and Chuck sat up front with Jacobs driving. Catfish said, “If it was left up to me, we’d have pushed this car into a hole someplace. It’s the first thing they’ll be looking for.”

  “I know, Catfish.” Chuck said. “But if somebody comes along the road here and they notice us down at the cemetery, they’ll see this police car and figure, why bother calling the sheriff’s office? They’re already here.”

  Jacobs climbed out and opened the rear door for the others. Chuck helped Gail out and cautioned her of the sudden drop where the ditch began. Jacobs, Meadows and Catfish gathered the tools from the trunk and closed it quietly.

  Chuck took the flashlight, helped Gail and Edie across the ditch, over the fence, then flicked the light on and searched around in the bushes. He spotted a game trail. “Is this the one, Edie?”

  “She shrugged, “I don’t know. Which direction is the cemetery from here? I’m lost in the dark like this.”

  He pointed but Jacobs corrected him by several degrees. Either way the trail led away in the general direction. “Let’s try it,” Chuck said.

  The woods were dark and there was no moon in the sky. Chuck held one light to spot the way while Squires saved the other for the task ahead. Each person in line had to follow the one in front almost blindly

  Catfish stumbled several times and every once in a while a tree branch would slap at his face. Squires, not doing too well his own self, noted that Meadows had little trouble with the trail. “You’ve been in the woods quite a bit, haven’t you?”

  “I was raised around worse than this. Besides, I had lots of practice lately while keeping an eye on the runway and the beaver project at the dam, too.”

  Catfish, at the rear of the pack, said, “My daddy used to say a rattlesnake would bite the third person in a line of people walking past him like this. Who’s number three?”

  Squires, walking just behind Chuck and Gail, said, “Shut up, Catfish. You are clumping around back there like an elephant in a mouse hole.”

  Catfish laughed. “We’re huntin’ skunks, not elephants.”

  The game trail curved away into the blackness. Chuck paused. “This must not be it.”

  Jacobs said, “Yea. I told you the cemetery was more over this way. That trail should start angling more to the right soon.”

  Chuck moved across a clear area and lost sight of the trail. He kept moving straight and picked it back up as the weeds closed in around him once again. The six of them plodded on for another fifty feet until Chuck found where the trail crossed an old rusted fence. Everyone bunched up and peered into the emptiness ahead. “This is it.” Chuck said. “Grandpa’s grave should be over this way about thirty feet.”

  Jacobs shook his head. “I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I came in from the back like this.”

  Chuck stepped across the fence, helped Gail and then Edie, and said, “Come on I can find it.”

  They crossed the squeaking fence and moved about searching. Chuck continued to follow the game trail remembering that the grave was close to that.

  Catfish, again at the rear of the group, looked back into the darkness. He wasn’t happy about being in a cemetery at night, let alone digging into one of the old graves. He kept asking, “What if Matt’s body is in there?” The idea of seeing a decomposing Matt frightened him worse than the thought of some spirit not liking their intrusion in the graveyard. A cold shiver ran down his back and he glanced around again but saw nothing.

  Chuck spotted an area of dull rusty colored red near the edge of the trail and pointed. “This is it over here.”

  They worked their way through the knee-high grass and looked down at the brick topped grave of Tom Veal in silence.

  Chuck said, “These bricks have been moved around lately. Can you tell it?”

  Jacobs nodded while Meadows squatted and examined them more closely. “It’s pretty hard to tell in this light.”

  Chuck pointed, “Right now the bricks are lined up like fireplace bricks, off set with half of one brick lapping over on half of another. The only way I’ve ever known those bricks to be laid out was end-to-end, butted together and squared directly on top of one another. I noticed it when I was here Friday morning.”

  Squires spoke, “Then somebody has been here digging for sure. If your theory is right, Chuck, then his body should be down there.”

  “It’s not there,” Gail said again.

  Meadows pried a brick loose with his fingers. “I can see chips of the old mortar lying around. Somebody did break this apart recently and the dirt under feels pretty soft, fresh dug maybe.”

  Catfish asked, “Wouldn’t they have busted up a bunch of the bricks, tearing them loose from the cement like that?”

  Chuck shook his head. “They didn’t use cement too much back in those days. They used an old mortar mix that doesn’t bind together like cement. It breaks apart fairly easy.”

  Meadows started lifting bricks and stacking them to one side. Jacobs joined him but Catfish was hesitant. Chuck, Gail and Edie stood watching. He whispered to Gail “I should be helping.”

  Gail grasped his arm and said, “No. You are in no shape for that. You take it easy. You’re still pale and I imagine your poor head is killing you.”

  He smiled. “I saw my poor head in the mirror earlier. I could win a prize for the Mr. Ugly contest.”

  Blake stopped a moment later to wipe sweat from his forehead. Even at night, the Georgia humidity would cause huge beads of it on anyone doing heavy labor. When he noticed Catfish standing back watching, he pointed at one of the shovels and said, “You’ll get your turn as soon as these bricks are out of the way.”

  Catfish stepped over, knelt down and began moving three bricks to their one. He didn’t want to be the individual to find Matt’s body on the end of a shovel.

  Meadows took the first turn with the shovel while the others stood back watching. A moment later, he paused to catch his breath and said, “The dirt is soft. Somebody has been in here recently digging.”

  Squires took the next ten minutes and then Catfish for a nervy five. He would gently press the tip of the shovel into the dark earth, expecting it to strike Matt’s body at any moment.

  By the time, Meadows returned to the dig, the hole was several feet deep. He placed the tip of the shovel against the floor of the hole, shoved it in with the tip of his foot, and immediately struck something. The others moved closer and leaned inward trying to see. Catfish’s eyes grew several sizes larger.

  With Squires holding the light, Frank squatted in the hole and sifted through the dirt until his fingers caught something that looked like blue jeans. He brushed across it; clearing the dirt away and the Levi jeans emblem of a back pocket appeared.

  Catfish said, “Come on out of there and let me take a turn.”

  He helped him out of the hole and then stepped in. With a few cautious thrusts of the shovel, he cleared the dirt further away, then dropped to his knees and scratched with his hands. When he next stood, he was holding a man’s billfold.

  Blake moved the light closer and watched Catfish flip it open. A Georgia driver’s license was in a side slot. The name to the left of the picture said “Robert B. Ackerman.”

  “Huh” Catfish said then held it up to Jacobs and said, “It’s Bobby Ackerman, not Matt.”

  Chuck felt a ton of weight fall from his heart. He gave a deep sigh of relief and sat down atop the piled dirt. Blake said “Ackerman. Isn’t he a young kid that works for Max Pary? Who killed him and left him like this?”

  Nobody spoke so Blake motioned at Catfish and said, “Let’s get him out of there and keep digging.”

  Jacobs cautioned “The crime lab needs things left like they are right now. We could be wrecking forensic evidence here.” Nobody said anything as Catfish picked up the shovel again and started digging.

&n
bsp; A half hour later, they had freed the body of Ackerman and moved further back and into the darkness. Jacobs looked at the bloody wound on the boy’s left side stomach area. “He’s been in the ground a week or so, not much longer. That’s about the time Matt turned up missing. Looks like somebody stabbed this guy with an axe or something.”

  Gail, sensing more details than she wanted to admit, said, “Matt killed him with a pick axe. It was self-defense. Matt swung the axe and killed him.”

  Chuck looked at Gail. “You’re picking all that up right now?”

  “Yes, and it’s clear in my mind. This happened recently, probably in the last week or less.

  Meadows took the next round of digging and immediately struck something hard, metallic and long. He cleared away most of the dirt on top of the box then looked up at Blake and said, “This is a military cargo packing box. It seals watertight and you can pump the air out too. There’s a release catch on the side. Should I open it up now?”

  Jacobs nodded and watched him feel around the sides of the box, then tug at a release lever. A hissing sound emitted from the crate and the lid popped upward an inch, then using both hands, he pulled the cover away and peered inside. The box, filled to the top with bags of something white, lay open. Catfish asked, “Sugar? Why would anybody want to stash all this sugar out here?”

  Using the tip of a pocket knife, he punched a small hole in one of the bags and raised the smudged blade tip to his tongue. He tasted and then spat. “It’s not sugar, Catfish. It’s cocaine, pure cocaine. I’d guess the street value on this much would be at least two or three hundred thousand dollars, depending on how it’s cut, maybe more.”

  Jacobs whistled softly. “Wow. No wonder they’re running around killing people. That’s a lot of money. Do they bring this stuff in by truck?”

  Meadows shook his head. “They got an old C‑130 big four engine military surplus airplane. They fly down to the Bahamas, Mexico or Columbia, somewhere like that, pick up a load and bring it back here. I guess they stash it here and wait for somebody to pick it up or whatever. Being as there are no safe warehouses in the area, this grave is probably the safest place to hide it. We may have to dig up the whole cemetery to see if there’s more.”

  Blake sighed. “Yea but are we right back where we started? Is Matt’s body down there deeper, under that crate?”

  “No it’s not,” Gail said again only this time everyone nodded in agreement.

  Jacobs said, “If Matt isn’t here then we can’t prove who this stuff belongs to unless we catch them red handed. Plus, if Gail is right and Matt did kill Ackerman, then you can bet Brooks will try to pin that on us or him one. We might be putting a new monkey on Matt’s record, murder.”

  Chuck said, “Okay. Let’s get out of here for now. We’ll go back to the original idea and get out of town. We can wait in Macon. Maybe the state and feds can put enough evidence together to put most of them away for a while. That will put Max Pary out of the narcotics business at least.”

  Silently everyone nodded. Chuck, with Gail beside him and held tightly in his arm, followed the rest of the group back out of the woods. Catfish asked, pointing at the body of Ackerman. “We just gonna’ leave him laying out for the buzzards at sunup?”

  Blake said, “He’s right. Why don’t we toss some of the bricks over the body? The state lab boys Jacobs was talking about might appreciate it.”