Lowe, Tom - Sean O'Brien 08

by A Murder of Crows

  O’Brien smiled. “What makes you think I don’t want to go onto Sam’s property?”

  She turned toward him, a daring look on her face. “So, now you’ve bonded with the oldest medicine man in the Seminole Tribe.”

  “Let’s ask him.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “I detect a hesitancy on your part.”

  She turned and looked toward the Everglades, the sky overcast. Large clouds with bellies of lead gray seemed motionless, steely watchmen sheltering the cusp of the universe. Wynona exhaled. “There’s no hesitancy. It’s out of respect that I don’t enter his property. My mother took me there as a child when I was sick. That’s when I first saw the ancient cypress tree you mentioned. Your tight bond with Joe Billie is what got you onto Sam Otter’s place. Something Sam recognized in you allowed you to stay.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t wear out my welcome.”

  “You told me you were awakened at 3:47 by an insect flying around your room.”

  “I was.”

  “Do you think it was a coincidence that seconds later you saw the car headlight swoop across your curtains?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that Sam Otter knows how much you are trying to help Joe. I’ve heard that Joe is like an adopted grandson for Sam. He would probably do anything to protect him from harm.”

  O’Brien smiled, glancing at Wynona. “So if I get the inference, you’re suggesting that when I was awakened at 3:47 by a large flying insect … it was more than chance, correct?”

  “Correct.” She folded her arms across her breasts. “Sean, your can’t use logic in this one, or deductive reasoning. It doesn’t apply. Sam Otter gave ... never mind, just let it go at that.”

  “I’m grateful for any help I can get. And I prefer being awakened by a palmetto bug over a scorpion.” He tried to hide his smile.

  She laughed. “We don’t have scorpions in the glades.” She looked at the far horizon beyond the vast prairie of saw grass. “But we do have bodies out there. If you want to dump a body, the Everglades is the place to do it. In the last two decades, they’ve found more than two hundred and fifty bodies—victims of homicide, out here. For every one found, we estimate two more were not. Through the years, some of the Seminole men, while out hunting, would find bodies. Some had been dismembered. Some were down to the skeletal remains. Rarely could the bodies be identified. Sometimes dental records would help. The glades, with the heat and humidity, and the predators, have a way of eating things down to the bone. With the glades proximity to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, this river of grass became the biggest dumping grounds in the nation for dead bodies. And now we search for Frank Sparrow.”

  “We don’t know that he’s dead; and if he is, he sure as hell might not be here.”

  “But we, or at least me, can’t stop looking. Turn right at the next intersection. We’re about a mile away from Sam’s property.” She glanced down at the Jeep’s center console, looking at the canning jar. She gestured. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Speaking of Sam Otter, he mixed it for Joe and gave it to him before we left.”

  She lifted the jar, unscrewed the top and sniffed, replacing the lid. “I’ve smelled something like that when I was a girl. It was at one of the Green Corn Dances. I believe it’s an extremely powerful medicine.”

  O’Brien drove a little above the speed limit. From a distance, he spotted the giant bald cypress tree towering over the glades. “Joe sipped out of that jar right before he was taken in to custody by Jimmy Stillwater and the others. Why do you think he drank some of it?”

  “It is said to purify the soul. The drink removes physical and spiritual contamination. I’ve heard it brings great clarity of thought to the person who consumes it. But you have to know how much to drink. Too much might result in a level of consciousness so high it might be difficult for the drinker to know if he is hallucinating or if what he sees, thinks, and even feels, is the real thing.”

  “Why would Joe drink some of it right before Stillwater and the others arrived?”

  “Maybe he knew they were coming.”

  O’Brien drove on, glancing to the northeast. He spotted a black vulture flying from the gut of an ashen cloud, the lone bird riding the air currents above the Everglades. O’Brien glanced over to Wynona, her arms folded, thoughts somewhere else. “See that hardwood hammock way over there?” He pointed.

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “Is there a road leading to it?”

  “Most of the time you’d have to take an airboat. Only certain times of the year when the glades aren’t at high water.”

  “How about this time of the year, as in right now? Can we drive to it?”

  “In this Jeep we should be okay. There’s a shell and mud road, not much wider than the Jeep, about a quarter mile on our right. Why there?”

  O’Brien gestured to the sky, the vulture dropping below the clouds, circling, growing smaller above the palm and hardwood hammock. “Because our eye in the sky may be leading us to something.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Joe Billie knew the next three minutes could change the rest of his life. Before his court appearance, Lana Halley briefed him on what she expected the judge would do—he’d read the charges and ask him if he understood those charges. What Lana didn’t know is whether the judge would set bail or not. It was the not part that Billie thought about as he waited to be led into the Citrus County Courtroom, waited to hear capital murder charges directed at him.

  Three sheriff’s deputies escorted Billie into the courtroom. He wore an orange jumpsuit with the words Citrus County Jail across his back. The deputies led him to an area in the front of the courtroom where a dozen other people, all dressed in orange, sat waiting for a first appearance. Some had lawyers in the room. Others did not. Those arrested faced charges ranging from child abuse to armed robbery. Only one was charged with first-degree murder in what could prove to be a salacious trial. And that’s why the news media and spectators packed the courtroom.

  Lana Halley sat in the front at a long wooden table with three other attorneys, each representing different clients. Members of the district attorney’s office sat at a table a few feet away. Lana wore her dark hair up. She was dressed in a navy blue suit. She looked across at Joe Billie and nodded, her body language confident. She opened her briefcase, removing a legal pad of handwritten notes, quickly scanning them before the judge entered. She glanced over at the DA’s table. Normally there would be a junior-level assistant prosecutor, maybe two depending on the caseload and the gravity of the cases. Today there was three, one just taking a seat. And one was the district attorney himself, Gerald Carson.

  That spoke volumes. Often the DA’s office didn’t have time to review all of the cases before a first appearance. The vast majority of cases were routine crimes—parole violation, domestic abuse, theft, and burglary—processed and prosecuted on the assembly line of justice.

  “All rise,” barked a bailiff. Judge Tanner Willmore entered the courtroom, walking quickly under the flowing black robe, carrying a thick file folder. He was tall and sinewy, pushing sixty, gaunt face, hair dyed the shade of brown shoe polish.

  He gestured with his left hand. “Be seated. Court’s in session.” He sat behind the bench, put on wire-frame glasses, and flipped open his file folders. “First case, state verses Joseph Billie.” He lifted his head. “Is Mr. Billie present?”

  Lana stood. “Yes, your honor, my client, Joe Billie is here.” She looked at Billie, motioning for him to stand. Lana could hear the click of cameras coming from some news media. Billie stood, his face placid. He looked directly at the judge.

  Judge Willmore sat a little straighter. “Mr. Billie, you are charged with a capital offense—murder, in the death of Lawrence Barton. Do you understand the charges against you?”

  “Yes, I do.” Billie’s voice was direct, yet controlled, a calm tenor.

  “Reading the district attorney’s report, there
appears to be enough to go to trial. So at this time you will be remanded to the county jail until arraignment.”

  Lana said, “Permission to approach the bench, your Honor.”

  “Granted.”

  Lana escorted Billie toward the judge’s bench. The DA, Gerald Carson, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and blood red tie, stood and followed. He was in his mid-fifties, gray hair neatly parted on the left, tanned angular face. Lana said, “Your Honor, my client has no criminal record. He’s lived in the area all of his life. His family is here. And I’d wager that his roots in Florida go back further than anyone in the courtroom. So he is definitely not a flight risk. We are requesting a reasonable bond to be set.”

  “The state disagrees,” said Carson, his baritone voice carrying. “On the contrary, Mr. Billie is not only a flight risk, but he’s charged with one of the most heinous murders I’ve seen in twelve years as a prosecutor. It wasn’t enough to kill the victim—he had to scalp him as well, sending a message. If bond is granted, what kind of message does it send to criminals?”

  Lana shook her head. “My client’s not on trial here today. He’s only present, in a first appearance, to hear charges, not to be judged by the state’s innuendo. He’s a victim too, and not to be adjudicated in the court of public opinion for the benefit of a sensational news story during an election year. We’re talking about a man’s life and his reputation. He was born and raised here. Joe Billie will go nowhere until his innocence is proven in court.”

  The judge leaned forward in his chair. “You’re correct, Miss Halley. Mr. Billie will go nowhere because he’s going to be held in the county jail until such time that the court can schedule a formal bond hearing. And that will be a week from today, 9:00 a.m. Next case.”

  The judge opened another file folder. Lana stared at Carson for a moment, a patronizing gleam in his eye. He turned and walked back to the state’s table, his assistants both had approving expressions on their scrubbed faces.

  Two bailiffs approached Billie, each poker-faced, gun belts squeaking as they walked, black shoes shiny. Billie looked over to Lana and said, “It’ll be all right.”

  “Let’s go,” said one man, touching Billie on the shoulder. They stood on either side of Billie, leading him to an exit door. He turned and looked back at Lana, nodding, as if to say, ‘don’t worry.’

  Lana walked back to her briefcase. Hearing the murmur in the audience, the clicking of cameras, a half dozen video lens trained on Joe as he left the chambers in handcuffs—she knew it wasn’t going to be all right.

  It was going to be a fight for his life.

  FIFTY-TWO

  There was no obvious marking. No turn here sign. From the main road, the path was almost hidden. It was an area off the shoulder of the road where the thick mangrove bushes grew the least—a gap in the foliage. The break was a little larger than the width of O’Brien’s Jeep.

  Wynona leaned forward in her seat, pointing. “That’s it. The old trail goes three quarters of a mile through the glades to the hardwood hammock. The entrance is to your left. Maybe it’s passable, even after last night’s storm. If we’re lucky, we can get there. And if we’re even luckier, we can get back.”

  O’Brien looked up at the orbiting vulture, the bird vanishing into the haze of a cloud. He slowed the Jeep, easing off the road. “If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know it was there. It’s sort of like a partial tunnel into the mangroves, the way in almost invisible. But at this point, it’s a rabbit hole we need to go down.”

  “Where’s White Rabbit when we need him? When I was a little girl, my favorite book was Alice in Wonderland. Even at a very young age, I could recite the lines that Lewis Carole wrote. But I wasn’t sure what they meant.”

  “When Carole wasn’t writing children’s books he was a mathematician and a philosopher. So that might be why it’s hard to explain.”

  “Maybe. I just loved the way characters spoke. Especially Cheshire Cat and Mad Hatter. When Alice asked the cat which way should I go? He answered, that depends on where you are going. When Alice said she didn’t know, he said it doesn’t really matter then. I felt like that about half way through the FBI academy. But I finished.”

  “Sometimes, to find what matters, we have to go down a few dead-end roads. Let’s hope this is not one.” He stopped the Jeep and got out.

  Wynona opened her door. “It may be nothing more than a dead deer. If you have a machete in the Jeep, you might want to find it.”

  “Let’s go see if there’s anything to see.”

  “Now you sound like a character found through the looking glass. If you mean tire tracks, probably not after the rain.” She got out and followed him to the opening in the mangroves.

  O’Brien knelt and studied the surrounding grasses. After less than half a minute, he stood, walking toward the entrance. Wynona followed, inspecting the area. He could smell the sulfurous odor of exposed mangrove roots, earthworms and fish. O’Brien looked for signs of snapped branches, tire tracks, shoe or boot prints. “It doesn’t look like anyone has driven in here recently. But, like you said, the rain could have washed away evidence of humans or vehicles on the path. Maybe what the vulture is circling is a dead deer or gator.” He pointed. “I see proof a raccoon took a dump near the trail.”

  Wynona chuckled. “It’s time to go see if there’s anything to see.”

  They got back in the Jeep, O’Brien using four-wheel-drive. They entered the morass of vegetation, white mangrove limbs scraping the sides of the Jeep and the windows. O’Brien tried to keep the tires centered on the muddy road, straddling the ridges that were about a foot above the dark water.

  He drove slowly, the splish-splash of rubber slapping mud holes filled with water. He could hear the crunch of the tires breaking the shells of apple snails. An Everglades kite, resembling a red-tailed hawk, beat its wings, dipping its talons into the shallow water grasping for prey and sailing over the saw grass.

  Wynona watched it a moment. “That kite’s entire food source is the apple snail, sometimes the rams horn snail. You only find them out here in the glades. If the sugar industry pollution keeps killing the snails, it’ll kill the kites. What’s next?”

  O’Brien said nothing, keeping his eyes on the narrow muddy road, winding its way through saw grass, swamp bay trees, water oaks and cypress draped with Spanish moss. Spindly air plants, most of them blood red, resembled sea urchins clinging to the bay trees. Many of the bromeliads were more than three feet in diameter.

  They were getting close, the Jeep’s tires throwing mud, spinning. The wooded hammock was larger than a football field, thick with palms and oaks, the shore dotted with cypress trees. O’Brien surveyed the trail as he tried to keep the Jeep from slipping into the water. He said, “I haven’t seen any signs of car or truck tires anywhere along this beaten path.”

  Wynona nodded. “But we’re almost there. Could be a wild goose chase or maybe we’ll find something.”

  O’Brien sped up a notch, driving over a tree limb in the center of the trail. Then he slowed and gunned the engine for a second, driving through standing water and up onto the banks of the dry hammock. He stopped the Jeep a few feet from the shoreline and cut off the motor. A wisp of steam rose from the Jeep’s hood. He turned to Wynona. “Do you know this hammock well?”

  “It’s one of a few dozen I visited growing up around here, but I don’t know it well. It’s been years since I was out here. It’s places like this where Sam Otter goes to gather the plants and things he needs for the medicines.”

  “Maybe there’s a cure for cancer in this island of exotic flora in the heart of the glades.”

  “The question now is if you were going to dump a body out here, where would you leave it?”

  O’Brien looked around, scanning the thick forest of palms and old oaks. “That might depend on how you arrived. If no one drove down the dirt track we were just on, maybe they came in by airboat. I say we walk the outer edge of the hammock. If we s
ee an area where a boat came up on the shore, that’s point A.”

  “And maybe it’ll lead to B.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  O’Brien and Wynona walked under canopies of cypress trees and water oaks, wet mud sucking at their shoes. Hungry, yellow-eyed deer flies followed them, looking for opportunities to draw blood from skin. O’Brien studied every foot of the shoreline, searching for signs of man. The saw grass rippled in the breeze and seemed to travel into infinity. Everglades’ kites hunted the wetlands, darting in and out of the dark water.

  Wynona stopped, pointing to a narrow cove. “Look at that. I never get tired of seeing them.” More than two-dozen roseate spoonbills, pink feathers bright as cotton candy, stood in shallow water. They moved their heads back and forth, their long bills underwater, churning the shallows in search of small fish and mollusks. The birds spotted O’Brien and Wynona. All of the spoonbills froze, standing rigid, their rosy feathers reflecting off the black water, giving the illusion of twice the number of birds. After a few seconds they ignored the humans and continued feeding.

  O’Brien said, “Let’s walk around the cove. Maybe we’ll have less muck to deal with on a little higher ground.” They approached stands of live oaks and palms. O’Brien noticed an enormous gumbo-limbo tree among the palms. Its oversize limbs were larger than the trunks of most trees. The olive colored limbs grew up and out, parallel to the ground, twisted, as if sketched by an artist for a dark, animated movie. And then one of the limbs moved independent from the rest of the tree. The limb slithered. O’Brien stopped walking, looking up at a massive snake in the tree. He glanced over at Wynona. “That’s a Burmese python, and it may be fifteen feet long. When you were growing up around here, I bet you never saw pythons in the glades.”