Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1)

by Hollyday, Thomas

  “Don’t make him mad, kill him,” the voice of his sergeant from long ago at Fort Jackson Army basic training hammered back into Frank’s consciousness. “Don’t make him mad, kill him.”

  Then Jake made his move as his right hand reached out to pull Maggie off the hill. She stepped back. He muttered, “Damn you, woman,” and leaned forward to grab again at her arm. As he did, Frank instinctively hit Jake hard, his right fist smashing against the surprised man’s jaw. Jake fell back, collapsing on his back in the mud. He looked up, his hand touching his jaw, his face showing pain but only for an instant. Jake scrambled to his feet, his hands and body alert.

  Frank waited for the next onslaught, nursing his fist with his left hand.

  “Maybe it’s over, Frank,” said Maggie.

  “No,” said Frank. Cheeks, the other two officers and Spider were rushing to Jake’s aid. There was a flash of metal as Spyder pulled out a small revolver and pointed it at Frank, his silent grin still there. Maggie instantly threw her digging trowel at Spyder’s arm knocking the gun out of his hand. Spyder grunted as blood spurted from his wrist. Cheeks unfastened the hasp on his service pistol. Billy, from his place with the businessmen, raised his hand and called out, “You hold up, Cheeks. I don’t want no guns.”

  The crowd murmured but did not move forward. The guards stayed back waiting for orders. Spyder, glaring at Maggie, stood still, his revolver still on the ground, blood dripping from his wrist onto the mud and spattering his well shined leather shoes.

  Jake wiped his face leaving a streak of mud across his forehead, swore, and rushed again at Frank, knocking him off balance. Both of them crashed off the hill and into the mud, pummeling, scratching at eyes, seeking advantage. They rolled in the muck. Frank was hit hard in the stomach and crawled to his knees, his face still against the ground. Jake stood up over him and grabbed a shovel from the nearby sifting table. He raised the rusty tool over Frank. Just before he could bring it down on Frank’s head, Maggie yelled, “Look out. He’s trying to kill you. Somebody stop this.”

  Billy took a few steps towards the hill. He was too late. Jake moved forward, all his body weight behind the blunt weapon. Just before the shovel reached his head, Frank was able to roll to his side. The shovel continued and hit the mud, its impact throwing dirt and water through the air, the handle snapping with a loud crack. Jake gave a surprised look at the broken tool, then flailed at Frank again and again with the piece of handle. Frank on his part tried to fend off the furious blows with his arms.

  Suddenly there was a new sound, a new cry. Jake stopped, his concentration broken. He looked over his shoulder, still holding the shovel handle above his shoulder. The line of human butterflies opened in its center. There, Soldado came forward from the beach, the cat preceding him.

  Soldado was startling, tall, angry, with yellow, white and black paint on his bare skin, a red cape across his shoulder. The metal jaguar head hanging from his waist reflected in the sun from its golden metal jaws. Soldado held aloft a torch, its flames flying out into the sunlight as he moved it back and forth. He repeated over and over one word, loud and distinct, and fully understood by the crowd. It was the word “fire,” and it was like a trumpet to the crowd.

  The shuffling steps of the people speeded their advance on Jake, their hands stretching in front as if to grab him and tear him to pieces. “Fire” was chanted over and over, sound rumbling over the site, easily matching the roar of the bulldozer. One by one, Frank saw other torches raised among the crowd, flames licking at the air, bits of fire falling off. The people had become a furious army, torches their weapon, and their intent seeming to scorch or to burn Jake, to burn Jake with his own kind of weapon.

  Moments passed. The crowd became even more vicious, prodded by the angry shouts of encouragement by the Pastor, Soldado and Birdey Pond. There was also the ever-present sight of the skeletons. Even if the police had wanted to stop the mob, they would not have been able to accomplish this easily with the few men they had. Jake, still holding the splintered wooden handle, saw Soldado and the crowd, then looked back at Frank, fear and confusion in his eyes. He stood at the edge of the large pit, his back to the great pile of skeletons and bones. Then he raised the handle preparatory to crashing the wood against the prone Frank.

  “Look out, Frank,” screamed Maggie.

  Jake hesitated, allowing Frank to suddenly twist his own body and kick hard at Jake’s belly with his bare feet, leaving blobs of filth on the remaining whiteness of Jake’s suit. The surprise of the blow made Jake drop the shovel. Picking it up, he swore at Frank. At that moment the ledge of soft earth on the side of the excavation collapsed under his weight. Jake lost his balance and fell, lurching backward, one hand still in a tight fist, the other waving the handle.

  As Jake realized what was happening to him, he tried to move his arms behind his body to shield himself from the sharp up thrust bones of the resurrected skeletons. Those arms, failing to protect him, moved upward almost like supplication, but more like vaudeville.

  Frank, meanwhile, scrambled to his feet, fists ready to take advantage, as Jake fell, out of control, backwards into the grid pit. As Jake’s body came down heavily into the excavation, the bones that were torn out by the wild crowd the night before, the bones of the slave children who had been so hideously burned to death, cracked like pistol shots against Jake’s body weight. Some broke from the impact but others tore into the back of Jake’s careful white suit with spurts of blood as they thrust out through his stomach and chest. As he was impaled on the skeletons, small grinning skulls flew into the air from the impact, turning slowly above Jake’s prone and crooked body, then dropping back around him, partially burying him in bleached bone and blood.

  One by one, the bones came to rest, each one making small ripples in the water of the pit. Jake stirred and moved upward, first leaning on his right elbow then raising himself, his face contorted with pain, his back bleeding from multiple cuts from the sharp bones. Frank saw the killing wound. A large thigh bone, likely a part of the strange ancient giant, was protruding from Jake’s chest, blood gurgling at its browned base. Jake attempted to grasp it, to pull it out of his back where it had entered. He managed to stand and stagger forward. He stepped up to the edge of the pit and then fell forward into the muck, motionless and silent, the bone upright like an arrow above his body, his knees still down in the pit. In a few more moments of convulsions, he had slipped back into the excavation, lying on his stomach.

  The only noise was that of the diesel engine. A sense of surprise pervaded the crowd. Frank, his desire to hurt Jake gone, kneeled beside the horribly wounded man. Billy, Maggie and the Pastor rushed forward. Frank attempted to turn Jake’s mouth upward from the puddle of water.

  Soldado stopped several yards away, the cat motionless at his side. Soldado crushed his torch into the wet mud where its flames sparked and died. The forward shuffle of hundreds of warrior feet stopped, the chant hushed to ripples of noise. Other torches were lowered and extinguished. Then there was no sound except the rumble of the bulldozer engine. The cat hissed and jumped up on Jake’s back, sniffing at the bloody bone. The old man approached Jake’s writhing form. Standing over him and looking towards the sky, Soldado raised both arms, then put them down and walked back through the crowd, toward the riverside. The cat jumped off Jake’s back and went with Soldado.

  Jake’s hand slowly pulled at his back, its motion slowing then finally halting as his blood flowed out on the muddy ground. His face turned sidewise in the mud, looking up at Frank . His body was twisted with pain from the multiple wounds but he made no sound. Two police officers brought up a blanket from which was handed to the chief.

  Billy tenderly placed it over Jake. “The ambulance is coming.” he said.

  Spyder stood in the background, still holding his wounded hand. He did not speak. His grin was gone. Jake turned his head to the other side and saw his old friend, Billy, his gray police uniform splashed with mud. Jake whispered, with a sli
ght smile, aware of what had happened to him and how seriously he was hurt,

  “Goddamn it, Billy, I think I’m cleaned out.”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help you this time, Jake.”

  “Looking out for yourself,” Jake gasped, his smile jerking across his face with the waves of pain. “I would have done the same thing.”

  “You ain’t done yet, old friend. You just had an accident, that’s all. You fell. You’ll be all right.”

  Jake was having trouble getting his breath. Then he tried to raise his head once more. His eyes turned towards the island. A steady flow of blood came from the corner of his mouth and ran over his tanned cheek. His lips moved, trying to form words, but his voice, once strong and familiar to all of them standing and kneeling around him, was silent. His face had lost its look of pride. Frank thought he noticed a tear moving down Jake’s face.

  Jake tried once more to say something. Frank bent closer to hear. Jake gasped from the pain and his eyes dulled, staring without life. Frank knew he was dead.

  The Pastor stood up. “It’s a sad time when any man dies,” he said, moving away.

  Billy was still on his knees next to his childhood friend. He said, “Jake was a better man than people gave him credit.” He slowly pulled the blanket over Jake’s head.

  Soldado turned and walked back towards the riverbank, the crowd parting to let him through. The people, as if they were still fearful of Jake, even in his death moved closer to the body. A line formed and one after another, white, black, young and old, filed by the corpse. They stood around in clusters. Frank saw in those faces not only fear but an astonishment, as though the people expected the very still and dead body to raise up off the ground, stand up and become Jake Terment again.

  Spyder walked quickly toward the highway. Spyder climbed into one of the Terment Company cars and kicked up dust as he raced out the lane, narrowly missing the white gateposts. It was the last time that Frank or anyone else in River Sunday saw Spyder.

  “I ain’t going to hold you, Doc. You was just defending yourself. There won’t be any charges,” said the chief almost in a whisper, looking around at the hundreds of people. He motioned to the operator to shut off the bulldozer engine.

  The shriek of the River Sunday ambulance came through the trees at the edge of the site. The ambulance team quickly removed Jake’s body from the pit. He was carried to a patch of matted grass. The Terment Company guards clustered around the corpse and stopped the line of viewers.

  “Who’s going to tell his wife?” Billy asked the mayor. The mayor didn’t answer him.

  Then out on the site, the banner was pulled taut. Carefully, men and women at each section of the great orange flag pulled it out over the shipwreck and laid it down in the sun, placing it as a shroud over the ancient dead. A faint breeze sent tremors across the cloth.

  Jake’s body was finally put into the white truck. The siren was turned on and the ambulance slowly moved out the gate.

  “I’m going to make sure that’s the last Terment ever walks on the land of this farm,” said the Pastor.

  Chapter 23

  Charlie and his yellow bulldozer were gone, the machine loaded on a flatbed truck and removed. The great roll of debris from the destroyed farmhouse was still perched beside the site, the red paint dry, a small puddle of the red blotched on the soil. A stylish television reporter from a Baltimore station was standing near the bulldozer roll, her cameraman recording her report.

  “Jake Terment, a true American hero, was killed in a strange accident yesterday in this muddy field near his ancestral home here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In the words of the town mayor, one local man who had known Jake Terment since childhood, ‘Jake Terment was the best thing ever happened to River Sunday. We don’t know what we are going to do down here without him.’

  “As we reported earlier in the financial news, the Terment Company offices in New York are closed today partly in mourning for Jake Terment and partly because the company has declared bankruptcy. Acting President Spyder, of the Terment Company, who was formerly a close aide to Jake Terment, stated that the company is highly leveraged and failure to finish this Maryland project has caused several large loans to come immediately due. The Acting President insists that every effort will be made to repay joint investors on projects throughout the United States and to maintain Terment Company stock values.”

  “That’s a laugh. I bet those suckers will get nothing,” said the Pastor.

  “That reporter’s national. I was interviewed this morning, Frank. You were still sleeping,” said Maggie.

  “What did she ask?”

  “She couldn’t understand what prompted anyone to have a fist fight with Jake Terment. She was amazed at the demonstrators. You’re going to get a call, Pastor. I told her about your General Store and the fire and she wants to do a follow-up story. She also spent some time out on the road talking with the butterfly people who are out there handing out materials.”

  Maggie smiled, “Oh yes. She wants to meet the jaguar man.”

  “Good luck to her,” grinned Frank.

  “I showed her around the site. She had many questions about our discoveries. Her main point was, however, that the television public was very shocked by Jake’s accidental death. He was such a popular and well known businessman.”

  “I got no problem after a man is dead if people see him as better than he was,” said the Pastor.

  “I think Soldado and that cat just scared the hell out of Jake, but I wasn’t going to tell her,” said Maggie.

  “I felt sorry for Jake. As bad as he seemed to be, I don’t think he deserved to die.”

  “You’re getting to be the old Frank again,” said Maggie.

  “You’re a better man than I am,” said the Pastor.

  “Where is Soldado anyway?” asked Frank.

  “Nobody will see him again for a while,” said the Pastor. “He’ll take his boat and go hide down on some creek in the southern Eastern Shore or out in the Wilderness Swamp.”

  Maggie handed Frank a cellular telephone. “I’d like to know about that bell.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Frank. They sat in the grass on the edge of the site.

  In front of them there was great activity in the dig area. Several teams of Maryland archaeologists and specialized personnel had been brought in from other projects around the state. A variety of sophisticated electronic instruments were being set up to penetrate the soil.

  “Cathy was put under special orders by the Governor yesterday afternoon to get this project straightened out,” said Maggie. “The new orders are that the site and especially the skeletons are to be excavated and studied with great care.”

  There was dirt on Maggie’s forehead. Frank reached over and rubbed it away. She smiled. He dialed the call.

  “You and the Pastor would enjoy this place I’m calling,” said Frank. As he waited he described it to them. “It’s a large room lined with books. In between there are large multi-paned windows which look out on the city of Boston. Small iron staircases climb among the bookshelves. Alcoves display ship models and marine items like compasses and sextants marked with the names of famous ships. In the center of the room are long massive wooden tables with researchers working among piles of papers and research reports and computer terminals. There are great glass exhibition cabinets with ancient logbooks displayed and in spaces among the bookcases there are antique paintings. When you stand at the door you feel like a ship, ready to knife through the room, your mind filling with knowledge the way a ship’s sail fills with wind, ideas tumbling around you like waves, tidbits of exciting data winging by like strange sea birds. The lights hang from the ceiling and illuminate all this in strange shadowy ways that reflect differently each way you turn. It’s like being able to see the history in that room from different perspectives, almost different centuries, each time you move your eyes.”

  He paused, listening. “Research room please.”

  After anothe
r wait, “Is Antonius there?”

  He looked at Maggie. “The secretary is trying to find him. He’s a tall guy with long grey hair. He towers over the other researchers.”

  He smiled as he heard the boisterous voice on the other end. “Antonius, it’s Frank Light.”

  “Frank Light,” said Thomas. “It’s good to hear from you. Where are you? At that university?”

  “Still there. How are you?”

  “Putting books back in the right places.”

  “You and your systems,” said Frank. “The reason you have to work so hard is that nobody can understand your filing systems. I tried and failed. I don’t know any of us who ever really figured it out up there.”

  “So what’s happening?” asked Antonius.

  “I need a favor.”

  “Sure,” said Antonius.

  “We’ve got an old ship’s bell down here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “A marsh near a little town called River Sunday, Maryland.”

  Antonius sighed, “The Maryland town where the big name real estate guy got himself killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re working on that same project?”

  “The same.”

  “Tell me more,” said Antonius. Frank nodded at Maggie and the Pastor. He knew Antonius was hooked.

  “We need to know about the name lettered on the ship’s bell we found.”

  “Sure. What’s the name?” asked Antonius.

  “The ‘Adam and Eve,’ said Frank. “Also it says ‘London.’ There’s no date on the bell but we think the wreck was about 1690-1710.”

  “Hold on. Let me get to my files.”

  Frank put down the telephone. “He checking his computer.” He returned the telephone back to his ear. They waited in the hot sunlight.

  In the space which had been Grid Q where they had found all the slave skeletons there were now five workers.

  “They have found more layers of those skeletons,” the Pastor said.