The Orchid Keeper: A Sean O'Brien Novel

by Tom Lowe

  Yellow crime scene tape looped around wooden stakes hammered into the soft earth, marking off a square twenty feet in four directions from the body. Red-and-white emergency lights pulsated on marked SUVs, two ambulances and a fire truck. Three paramedics stood by, idle. A man and a woman from the police department’s forensic unit opened containers that resembled fishing tackle boxes. They slipped on rubber gloves, waiting for detectives and the coroner.

  “Poor guy,” mumbled a slender police officer to another. “Dying out here in the rain and mud.” The officers and emergency techs spoke just above whispers. If the man had been murdered, this was the first on the reservation in quite a while. He was non-Indian. A man fairly well-known running for public office in Florida. The monosyllabic communication on the radio channels seemed out of place in a strand of ancient trees and birdsong.

  Wynona met with a senior police officer, a middle-aged man in uniform who’d been on the force more than twenty years. His dark face was unreadable. Impassive black eyes that seemed to take in the scene and never blink. He had a serrated scar above his left eyebrow that was slightly raised, resembling a small lightning bolt. It looked like a white tattoo.

  He said, “The vic was shot in the upper right section of his back. Probably by a high-powered rifle. The round went through the chest. The exit wound looks to be a few inches below his collarbone. I’m no medical examiner, but I’ve seen plenty of gunshot wounds during my time in the military, and I’d bet the vic lost his lung right after he was hit. And that must have been a hell of a struggle to get from where we’re told Collier County deputies found blood and his backpack. The guy had to have had one incredible will to live, walking this far before falling over and dying.”

  Wynona asked, “Is Collier County sending detectives?”

  “Yes, we’ve been in near constant communication. Two of their investigators are on one their way.”

  “Where’s the person who found the body?”

  The officer motioned to a man who stood alone in black waders, next to a live oak tree. “Name’s Sammy Tiger. Says he was giggin’ frogs when he saw the body across this open space, and then he approached it. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve haven’t seen him in a while, but I recognize him from around the rez. Now, I think I’ll get reacquainted.”

  The officer smiled. “Sammy’s the kind of man who doesn’t have a whole lot to say about anything. He’s a stand-up guy, but you’ll have to ask all the right questions to get answers. Otherwise, he won’t volunteer much.”

  “I’m used to it in this line of work. And that response is not unique to the Seminole.” She left, walking over to where Sammy Tiger stood, the burlap sack at his feet. His face stoic. She could see a trace of sadness in the man’s eyes. Wynona nodded as she approached him. “Did you get any frogs before you stumbled onto this.”

  “A few.”

  “I know you’re one of the best. Can I see?”

  Sammy nodded, opening the burlap sack. Wynona used her flashlight to peer inside. More than a dozen frogs, some still clinging to life, eyes wide in the light, were in the bottom of the sack.

  “Sammy, I’m Detective Wynona Osceola. I’m investigating this case. Was he barely alive when you found him?”

  “No. He was dead.”

  “Is the body just as you discovered it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see any indication of anyone … a person … maybe a vehicle. Anything that could have been connected to this man’s death?”

  “Lightning came across, and the whole area lit up just as I walked out of the swamp. If it had not been for the lightning, I never would have seen it.”

  Wynona said nothing, looking from his face to the body sprawled on the ground, vultures riding air currents in the distance, the call of a crow at the top of a cypress tree. She reached in her sports jacket pocket and handed him a card. “Please, take this. If you can think of anything else that might help us, call me, okay?”

  He nodded and took the card, setting it inside his shirt pocket. “Can I go now?”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you for calling this in when you came across it.”

  He said nothing, picking up the gunny sack and carrying it across his left shoulder, heading back to his Jeep, swamp water dripping from the bottom of the wet burlap.

  Wynona walked toward the body, lifting the yellow tape and stopping next to the dead man. A woman with the forensics team took pictures of the body. Wynona looked at her and said, “Give me a few minutes, and you guys can finish your work.”

  “No problem, Detective,” she said, stepping back beyond the crime scene tape.

  Wynona put on rubber gloves and knelt next to the body, looking at Joe Thaxton’s face, his open eyes, the way his legs and arms were positioned. She examined his fingernails, his palms and the back of his hands. She studied the exit wound on the chest, waving away a blowfly the crawled toward the dried blood.

  She whispered, “Who did this to you? If it was an accidental shooting, why’d you run so far? Probably because this was no accident … am I right? Help me find the evidence to prove it.” She looked at the soles of his boots, examining the moist soil near the body.

  The forensics team stood less than twenty feet away, watching the detective. They exchanged glances as she spoke to the body, as if the dead man could hear her. The officers looked at one another and watched how thorough Wynona was, spending plenty of time simply observing the body from the head to the muddy boots. She didn’t take notes. Didn’t have to. She observed closely, occasionally glancing up and looking in the direction she thought Joe Thaxton had come before collapsing on this spot and dying.

  Wynona stood, lifting the yellow tape and stepping under it. She looked at the forensics team. “He’s all yours. After that, it’ll be an autopsy. I look forward to your reports.” She walked around the officers, looking at the damp earth, finding tracks that seemed to match the grooves on the bottom of Joe Thaxton’s boots. She followed the tracks south for more than fifty yards before coming to ankle-deep water.

  She stopped, looked up from a boot print to the extensive sawgrass in the distance. And then she looked over her shoulder at the crime scene. She wanted to backtrack as much as possible. It would prove hard to do, but she knew one man who had the skill to do it. She would call Sean O’Brien and ask him if he knew how to get in touch with Joe Billie.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Max and I walked from the dock back to the cabin. I lifted a white fluffy towel off a hook on the inside of the screened porch and dried the rainwater from her short fur. After I poured some food into Max’s bowl, I refilled my coffee cup. I had very little appetite for breakfast. We sat on the porch, soft rain tapping against the tin roof over the porch. The sound reminded me of one of my last sailing trips with my wife, Sherri.

  I looked over at a framed picture of Sherri. It had been taken when she was standing next to the wheel on our sailboat—the last time we sailed before her death from cancer. I remembered one morning, the boat anchored in a quiet cove off Cat Island, we sat under the Bimini canopy sipping Jamaican coffee during a rainy dawn. It didn’t matter if the rain was falling or the sun was rising—just being with her, and the way she chose to embrace whatever came our way, was the stuff of a good life. Rare and precious as the gift of life itself.

  My phone buzzed again. Max, curled in a wicker rocking chair, lifted her head. I looked at the caller ID. It was Cory Gilson. I answered, and he said, “Sean, a body has been found. It’s Joe Thaxton. Somehow, he managed to run, walk or crawl across the county line onto Seminole reservation land.”

  I listened, not mentioning that I’d just heard from Wynona Osceola. Cory said, “We’re back out here. My team found what appears to be some deer hunter stuff about 150 yards from where we located the backpack and drone controller. We’ll test it.”

  “What kind of things did they find?”

  “For one thing, a stogie cigar and one of those make-up compact’s hunters use to
apply dark color to their faces and hands to reduce the shine and blend better into the foliage. We’ll try to get a DNA sample from that. We found a wrapper from a trail mix bar. We might lift a print off that. And we found a boot print in the mud. If it was a hired gun, why would he be so careless to toss that stuff out?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t careless. Could have been planned and planted.”

  “It’s a possibility. But we don’t know that. We do know there were at least two dozen hunters registered to be in the area the first day of the season. Granted, 150-yards is a helluva shot. And tossing a stogie or dropping the food wrapper doesn’t necessarily put the shooter in the immediate scene of where we found the blood. We’ll process it all and see what, if anything, we can find. But since the body was found on the reservation, if it is a murder, it’ll be in the jurisdiction of the tribal police. To my knowledge, something like this has never happened in Florida, and there are a lot of Native-American reservations. The Seminoles have five, Big Cypress being the largest. And the Miccosukee have a large one less than twenty-five miles from where I’m standing.”

  “Cory, there is a detective working for the tribal police that I know personally. She’s Seminole. Her name is Wynona Osceola, and she’s very good. Wynona is a former FBI agent. After eight years, she decided to return home to make a difference locally. Maybe you can team up with her … an inter-police agency operation to see if you can get to the bottom of the shooting.”

  “Absolutely. We have a couple of deputies there now. I’m heading up there. I don’t know her on a personal level, but I’ve heard some good things about her. She’ll take the lead since the body was found on the reservation, but we’ll assist in any way we can. Hells bells, I’d like to turn it over to her right now. Maybe she could call Jessica Thaxton. But since I’ve been speaking with Mrs. Thaxton, I ought to follow through and let her know. Gotta hand it to you, Sean. You were right about this being a lot more than a missing persons case.”

  “I wish I’d been wrong.”

  Cory read from his notes. He said, “We may have a witness of sorts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A man called dispatch and said he was out in the glades doing some horticulture work and spotted what he believes was Thaxton’s truck. But, before that he said he saw someone in a hurry to get out of the area. Could it be related to Thaxton’s death? I’ll go interview the fella to see what he has to say.”

  “Do you have his name?”

  Cory squinted in the light. “Yeah, his name’s Chester Miller. Gotta go, Sean. I’ll keep you in the loop.” He disconnected.

  • • •

  Jessica Thaxton had dropped Kristy off at school when she received the phone call as she was parking in the lot of the campaign headquarters. She looked at the caller ID, recognized the number, and said, “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Thaxton, its Detective Gilson. I’m so sorry to deliver bad news to you.”

  Jessica felt her throat close. She tried to say something, but the words were trapped. Detective Gilson said, “We found Joe. He’d been shot once. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it. The body was found just across the boundary on the Seminole reservation by a member of the tribe—an older man. Joe had already passed by the time the man found him. He’d suffered a single gunshot to the back. I wanted to drive over and meet you in person to tell you, but the news media will be all over it. And I didn’t want you to see it on TV or read about it.”

  Jessica cried out loud, her voice coming in piercing, mournful cries, her hands shaking, chest on fire. She tried to catch her breath, tears spilling down her cheeks and across the back of her hands, gripping the steering wheel. “Was my husband murdered?” she blurted out.

  “We can’t confirm that right now. We’re investigating every lead we have. There are no witnesses that we know of at this time, but we did find material that may be evidence.”

  “What kind of material?” she cried, her voice cracking.

  “A partially smoked cigar, a food wrapper from a trail mix bar, and a make-up compact—the kind used by hunters to darken their faces. We’re hoping DNA will be on some of that, maybe a fingerprint or two as well.”

  “Where is Joe … where is my husband?”

  The body is with the county medical examiner. In this case, we have to do an autopsy to help determine the cause of death. We can release his body to you in a couple of days. Again, Mrs. Thaxton … I wish the word sorry could mean more. I understand how painful this must be for you, and I want you to know that we’ll do a thorough investigation. If evidence points to the death as a murder, we’ll vigorously pursue it until we find the killer. If it was accidental, a hunting accident, then that person could be up for manslaughter charges, too. We can discuss that later. Please feel free to call me with questions or if you need anything.”

  Jessica didn’t respond. She lowered the phone from her ear. She had to use two hands to push open the car door, a mockingbird chortling from a jacaranda tree near the sidewalk. Jessica felt so weak she didn’t know if she could stand. She managed to swing her legs from beneath the steering wheel to the open door. She slowly stood on the asphalt and looked at the Thaxton campaign headquarters decorated in American flags, a large banner with Joe’s smiling face.

  The distance from her car to the front door was only about fifty feet. She managed to take the first step in what became the longest and darkest walk in her life.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Chester Miller was thorough, his attention to detail superb. He met with Detective Gilson and a chief deputy sheriff. They’d pulled up in two cars—an unmarked sheriff’s vehicle and a marked cruiser. They drove down Chester’s long drive, parking near the cabin.

  Callie stood next to her grandfather as the men asked questions. When they told him Joe Thaxton had died, she could see a physical change in her grandfather’s face, his cheeks losing color, his jar-line popping, eyes narrowing. The chief deputy, a tall man with wide shoulders, military haircut, probing hazel eyes, said, “It may have been an accidental shooting, considering it was the first day of hunting season, or it may have been intentional. That’s why we’re here today, Mr. Miller, to get your take on exactly what you saw. If you were to see this guy again, the driver, do you think you could identify him?”

  Chester nodded. “I certainly could identify and recognize his features. He had a tanned face, thick black eyebrows, an all-business like look to his eyes, shaved head. No facial hair. Large hands on the steering wheel … big knuckles. I have no idea who he is or where he was heading in such a hurry.”

  Detective Gilson asked, “Did you see the license plate on the vehicle?”

  “Yes. I caught it from an angle on my truck’s side-view mirror. It was a Florida plate, but I couldn’t make out the numbers and letters on it. In my younger days I probably could have, but those days are long gone.”

  Gilson wrote something on the notepad he carried. “Do you think this guy driving the black car could have been a hunter? We get guys out of Miami who like to hunt, but not all of them own pickup trucks.”

  “If he was a hunter, he wasn’t wearing any kind of camouflage clothes. Looked to be in a dark shirt.”

  The chief deputy asked, “Did you notice whether he was wearing any hunters’ camouflage make-up on his face … you know, like the colors you might see on a combat soldier’s face to knock down the shine. Plenty of guys wear that stuff hunting, especially during bow and arrow season when they need to get closer to game.”

  “Far as I could tell, his face was as clear as yours.”

  Gilson nodded. He looked across at Callie and smiled. “I think it’s great that you’re out here helping your grandfather. Do you go with him when he’s replanting orchids in the glades and Big Cypress?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  “Why weren’t you with him when he found the pickup truck and saw the man in the car?”

  “I was going into Naples that day to get a filter for my camera and to buy some groceries
.”

  Gilson smiled. “You say you’ll be returning to college soon?”

  “Yes, winter term. But working with my grandfather, I feel it’s as if I’m earning a PhD in botany.”

  “You can’t beat hands-on learning,” said the chief deputy. “It’s what sticks.”

  Detective Gilson looked around the property for a moment. “We appreciate you calling the office and volunteering the information. Here’s my card. If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”

  “Happy to help if I can. From what I heard about Mr. Thaxton, I really admire what he was trying to do. I’ve been an environmentalist long before the term was part of the vernacular.” Chester half smiled. “I’ve been studying the flora and fauna so long in the glades and Big Cypress Swamp I can tell you emphatically and scientifically that the River of Grass is very sick. The orchids I’m replanting are some of the hardiest species. I fear the more fragile ones, like the ghost orchid, won’t make it.”

  Gilson closed his notebook and tucked it inside the pocket of his sports coat. He said, “The victim was shot once, through the back. He didn’t die immediately. He managed to walk a pretty good distance from where we believe he was shot. Unfortunately, it appears he bled out. We’d sure like to find and question the man you spotted out there.”

  Chester used one hand to hold on to the wooden handrail adjacent to the steps leading to the cabin’s front porch. “You fellas think the man I saw might have done it?”

  “We’re following all leads,” Gilson said. “If you see his car again, see him, or even somebody who looks like him, give us a call. We appreciate your time.” They turned to leave, talking in low tones as they walked toward their cars.