“Some of us guys do. Runnin’ an airboat, for a member of a tribe, is like gettin’ your driver’s license when you’re a teenager. It’s the transportation you gotta have if you wanna get back in the glades.” He grinned. “I’ll leave it at that. Considering the terrain, we’ll probably use the airboat to transport the body. Are you with Hendry County SD?”
O’Brien smiled. “No, used to be with Miami-Dade, homicide. I’m a consultant.”
“Cool, man. I better get over there. When the detectives are done, it’s bag ‘em time.”
O’Brien nodded. When the man walked away, O’Brien waited a few more seconds, turned and stepped inside the airboat. He crouched down as low as he could, examining the inside area of the bow. He got down on his hands and knees, working from the bow back toward the stern. The surface was wet, about a quarter inch of water in the deck, the water soaking into the knee area of O’Brien’s jeans. Right before the elevated operator’s seat, on the inside wall or gunnel of the airboat, O’Brien spotted two small stains.
He crawled closer. Even without forensics testing, O’Brien had been around enough crime scenes to identify dried blood. He could tell it wasn’t splatter from the impact of bullet or blunt force trauma. It was from blood that had dripped, and the only force was the force of gravity pulling it down as somebody loaded a body onto the airboat.
He used his camera to snap a picture, kept low as he exited the airboat. He walked to the area where he’d first found the skid marks from an airboat landing. O’Brien stepped, carefully—heel to toe, counting to himself. When he made the last step, the final measurement, he whispered, “Almost eight feet.”
He looked toward the crime scene in the distance only to see Detective Henry James staring back at him from about fifty feet away. James said nothing, turning around and walking toward a throng of forensics techs, detectives, and the coroner examining the remains of Frank Sparrow.
FIFTY-SIX
It was the body language near a dead body that O’Brien watched. Forensics techs photographed and examined the corpse, waving off deerflies and mosquitoes. O’Brien stood back at the perimeter, observing Wynona Osceola leading the investigation. She was measured and meticulous, speaking with a lanky, balding coroner. She took notes, spoke with CID forensics techs, and conferred with an officer and older detective from the Hendry County SD. It was the interactions from some of the male members of her department that caught O’Brien’s eye.
Detectives Jimmy Stillwater and Henry James seemed to go through the motions of an investigation, but not with the extent O’Brien had seen most detectives initiate. There were, of course, no bystanders on the island to interview. No doorbells to ring in search of witnesses. But there was the inspection of the body.
Dead men may not talk, but O’Brien knew there was always forensic sign language from the dead. Especially when another human being triggered the death. Sometimes the cause of death is immediately visible. Other times, not so much. After vultures feasting, today was one of those moments.
But scavengers didn’t cause the two holes in the side of the skull.
Detectives Stillwater and James weren’t kneeling down to examine the skull. They relied on an inspection done by Wynona, the coroner, and the techs wearing CID on the back of their shirts. The coroner said something to one of his assistants. The men spoke in somber quick tones, slapping mosquitoes as they unzipped the body bag. Two techs wearing latex gloves moved in position to lift the skeletal and partial mummified remains into the black bag.
Wynona stepped back, watching. After the body was lifted and bagged, she studied the ground where it had been. There was a distinct discoloration. The soil darker, almost as if someone had drawn a classic chalk diagram, marking how the body was positioned.
The forensics techs, officers and detectives, huddled in small groups, talking, exchanging notes and then walking back to their respective vehicles. O’Brien watched detectives Stillwater and James speak with the coroner, all three men nodding, Detective James lighting a cigarette.
Wynona approached O’Brien. “The consensus is this … that’s Frank Sparrow’s body. We’ll do dental and DNA tests, but it’s pretty much a given, based on the ring he always had on is right hand, body size, clothing, and the fact he wore ostrich skin boots. Exact cause of death should be known at autopsy, but with two rounds to the head … now comes the toughest part. Telling his family.”
“Did you see any other signs of bullet entry or exit?”
“No, of course there’s very little flesh left. An autopsy should catch that if it happened. Two in the head usually does it. Do you think there could be more rounds?”
“Maybe. Let’s see what the autopsy indicates.”
“Can I ask why you’d think there could be rounds to other parts to the body?”
“Just curious, that’s all. Are you going to deliver the bad news to the family, or will one of your colleagues be the messenger?”
“I’ll do it. We all know Frank’s wife, Malee. But I probably know the family the best. I grew up in the same neighborhood. All I can tell them now is that we’ve found a body. Maybe, somehow, when the positive ID is known it might soften the horrible news somewhat.” She watched the members of her department pack equipment and leave, the body carefully loaded onto a makeshift gurney and lowered into the airboat. She blew out a long breath. “Normally, not that a murder is the norm here, we’d load the body into the unmarked coroner’s van, and they’d drive it in for the autopsy. But the van would never make it out here. The coroner had to park on the paved road and ride in with a sheriff’s deputy. The airboat operator will meet him at a landing about a mile down the road.”
O’Brien watched the teams leave, the operator cranking the engine, prop blast causing the saw grass to bend and weave. He looked at Wynona. “I found blood inside the airboat.”
“You did what?” She stared up at him.
“The inside gunnel wall. Near the operator’s seat. I made a quick inspection while most of the attention was diverted to the body.”
“How much blood?”
“Two drops. I’ll show you.” He brought the image up on his phone screen.
Wynona studied it. “Maybe the operator cut himself.”
“Could be, or possibly it’s Frank Sparrow’s blood.”
“What? If I’m hearing you correctly, does that imply what I think you mean?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“So you’re saying that one of the department’s airboats was used to transport Frank Sparrow’s body out to this hammock?”
“The only way to know for sure is to run a DNA test.”
“Would that suggests the killer, or at least an accomplice, was involved in Frank’s murder?” She exhaled, looked down at her notes, and then raised her eyes to O’Brien. “What prompted you to climb into the airboat?”
“I could say because it was the only one here.” He smiled. “It’s just a feeling I get sometimes when I’m looking for lost puzzle pieces. I try to match the colors or the edges and build the picture. In this case, it was the airboat skid marks we spotted before we found the body. The airboat had come out of the water, resting partially on the shoreline. The operator from your department told me he prefers to dock it like a boat because it’s easier to leave since there’s not a reverse gear. He doesn’t want to rely on someone pushing the boat back into the water.”
“So that would indicate the airboat that came ashore with Frank’s body had at least one passenger, maybe two people to dump the body and push the boat back out into the water.”
“Unless someone was already on the island and waiting. Maybe they’d driven across the muddy road we followed. That’s not likely. But someone is covered in the mud of this crime—this murder. I believe if we solve the killing on this island, we’ll also unravel the murder near the mound in Citrus County. And that will absolve Joe Billie.”
“Our next step is to get those blood drops tested. And I have to do it without setting of
f alarms. At this point, I don’t know whom I can trust in the department. But first I have to give some horrible news to a woman I know might not handle it.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
O’Brien could hear the first scream from his Jeep parked in front of the Sparrow home. It was the kind of scream no one ever wants to hear. It was a long shrieking wail of absolute sorrow, grief, and misery. The mournful cry that ricochets forever in the souls of a murder victim’s family. Police, especially homicide detectives, experience it too often. And sometimes it echoes in their dreams.
Wynona Osceola stood at the front door of a ranch-style home hugging and holding a woman from collapsing. She comforted a woman that O’Brien assumed was Frank Sparrow’s wife. O’Brien could make out the sobs, the painful crying, a language that needed no words and was shared on a universal stage of war and crime.
The sad reaction was the same evoked from families when they answered the door and were met by two somber military officers in uniform delivering grim news. Most of the time the messengers didn’t have to say anything initially. They were couriers of death doing the best they could to comfort and support the living. Their very unexpected presence, often standing in the shadows of an American flag on display at the patriotic homeowner’s front door, was more than enough.
O’Brien sat in his Jeep remembering the times he’d brought the same horrible news and the gut wrenching reactions. He looked across the neighborhood of brick homes, late model cars and trucks. A dozen children laughed, shouting and playing soccer in a park across the street.
A woman pushed a baby stroller on a sidewalk under the boughs of a large oak. She stopped, lifting the toddler from the stroller, pointing to a mother duck leading her young ducklings to a pond. The baby clapped and giggled with delight, the woman kissing her child on the cheek. As O’Brien watched them, something stirred in his heart, scrapbook memories tucked deep inside places he rarely visited. Moments like this reinforced the good—the absolute love found on one side of the coin. The other side was the opposite, dark and evil. When the coin was spinning, it was hard to separate the two sides.
O’Brien thought about that—the flip of a coin, the force of gravity bringing it to earth. Heads or tails? Good or evil? What would he face? He watched the mother fasten her child in the stroller, the warble of a cardinal coming from the top of a palm tree. Even with the pain of death at the Sparrow home, the ebb and flow of life in the neighborhood moved with a rhythm of similarity.
Except for one person.
O’Brien spotted him when the man first drove by the Sparrow home, the Buick SUV going slower than the posted 25-miles-per-hour speed limit, the tap of the brakes a hundred feet or so after the vehicle passed the home. The driver, behind tinted windows, appeared to be alone. He wore dark glasses, glancing into his rearview mirror when there was no moving traffic on the residential street. The only other vehicle on the street was O’Brien’s Jeep.
He watched the Buick disappear, taking a left at the stop sign. Maybe nothing, he thought. Maybe not. He looked up at the Sparrow home, Wynona nodding and finishing her talk with the woman, comforting her. O’Brien’s phone vibrated.
He answered and Dave Collins said, “I’ve been doing some research on Wynona Osceola. First, she’s apparently directly related to the legendary warrior, Osceola. His real name, incidentally, was Billy Powell, fathered by an English trapper and trader. He had gray-blue eyes and light skin for a Native-American. His mother was from a tribe of Indians called Red Stick. During the government’s war with the natives, she escaped from Georgia with her only son to Florida where they joined the Seminoles and he was given the name Osceola. The rest, as they say, is history. The only reason I bring this up is because of Wynona’s record with the FBI. Maybe it’s connected with a gene pool back to Osceola.”
“How so?”
“She scored top of her graduating class at Quantico. Not only was she considered highly intelligent with great analytical skills, she also was known to be fearless. And she set records in marksmanship classes. She’s a deadly shooter. As a Special Agent, Wynona volunteered for the toughest assignments. And she got more than one. The last, however, may have been her Waterloo, her breaking point.”
“She told me about working undercover near Detroit when she and her partner broke into the house of a radical Islamic sleeper cell after they heard an honor killing going down.”
“That would be the one. Some damn nasty stuff occurred.”
“She was reprimanded for using excessive force.”
“Did she tell you she emptied twelve rounds into the father, at least eight rounds coming after she put one between his eyes?”
“She wasn’t specific.”
“After that, she stepped over to where the mother had held her daughter’s arms down on the floor and Wynona hit the woman so hard across her mouth she lost a tooth. Except for that incident, and a time she challenged a decision made by her supervisor—a decision Wynona believed would lead to unnecessary risks on an early morning raid, her record is sterling.”
O’Brien watched Wynona comfort the woman on the porch. “Thanks, Dave. How’s Max?”
“Fine. Nick just took her for a walk. He’ll, no doubt, stop at the Tiki Bar where he enlists Max to help him approach attractive women. Between Nick’s Zorba the Greek charm and a cute dachshund, they make an enduring pair.” Dave chuckled. “Oh, something else about Wynona.”
“What?”
“She may be suffering from a job-induced form of PTSD. She was close, almost like a sister to her partner agent. He was taken out in a hit not long after their raid on the home in Dearborn. Because she didn’t wait for backup and charged into the home, and him following her lead, she apparently took his death very hard. Maybe a lot of guilt.”
“A teenage girl’s life was on the line. There was no time for backup.”
“No one disputes that. The agent who was killed left a wife and three young daughters. The home that he and Wynona raided that night was funneling money and information to one of the most radical, Islamic jihadists groups in the Middle East. The imam who ran the local mosque, a guy long suspected of underground activities and ties to the overseas group, was arrested and charged with multiple counts of violence. His arrest comes directly from some of the work done by Wynona. The Bureau suspects a jihadist’s hit was issued for her as well. But there’s not much they can do because she refused any sort of assimilation program to tuck her away somewhere.”
O’Brien watched Wynona holding the distraught woman’s hands, helping her back inside the house. The woman’s posture bore the weight of a mountain. O’Brien glanced at the kids playing in the park. “She’s not the type to be tucked away, any more than a wild mustang can be corralled. And so Wynona returned to the sovereignty of the Indian reservation, her home—a place to her that has no fences. Just kids kicking a soccer ball, traditional brick homes, and billons of dollars in income from gaming profits.”
“I detect a note of empathy in your voice, Sean. How deeply are you working with her?”
“She’s my only liaison on the rez, and she’s close with Joe. At the moment, she’s comforting a woman who just learned her husband was murdered, his body left to scavengers in the glades.”
“I assume he’s the dead body you found.”
“Most likely it’s Frank Sparrow. He had shots to the back of his head. We’ll see what the autopsy reveals. I believe it’s connected to the murder of Lawrence Barton. And now the only way to disprove the charges against Joe is to prove the link between the two.” O’Brien gave Dave a brief summary of the discovery of Sparrow’s body and the blood he spotted on the airboat. He disconnected as Wynona approached.
She got inside the Jeep and said, “I feel so helpless and so very sorry for Malee Sparrow. I never would have told her except for the fact she’d know in a matter of hours that we found something, a body. I said we’d know more after the autopsy; but at this time, initial evidence is pointing to the body being that of h
er husband, Frank.”
“What you just did is one of the worst parts of the job. The best part is hearing a jury return a verdict of guilty against the killer.”
“Let’s go, please.”
O’Brien started the Jeep and pulled away. Wynona released a pent-up breath. “Malee wanted to know if she could come to the morgue to ID her husband’s body. How do you tell her there’s nothing left to ID because the damn vultures and bugs ate his face?”
O’Brien said nothing for a few seconds. “Wynona, you did your job, and you did it well.”
“Let’s head back to the station. The airboats are kept in a fenced paddock area. I’ll get a forensics tech to analyze the blood. Malee Sparrow deserves a definitive answer.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
The CID forensics specialist was waiting when O’Brien and Wynona arrived. The tech was in her late twenties, brown hair in a ponytail, a wide smile when she saw Wynona approaching. The tech stood in the shade of a guava tree next to a fenced paddock behind the police department. It was late in the afternoon, shadows growing longer. She carried a kit about the size of a small toolbox.
Wynona said, “Hi, Erica. We appreciate you taking some time to do this.”
The woman smiled, a slight pucker of dimples on her face. “No problem. It’s in my job description.”
“Sure, but it’s short notice. Erica Wilson, meet Sean O’Brien. Sean, this is Erica, the very best forensic investigator we have.”
She extended her hand. “Welcome to the rez.”
Her grip was firm, eyes penetrating, looking up at O’Brien. “Thank you. It’s been an interesting visit so far.”
She laughed. “I bet. Wynona gave me a brief rundown. It’s gotta be a whole different world working homicide with Miami-Dade.”
“Yeah, it was. But that’s been a while.”
“Wynona tells me you’re Joe Billie’s friend. Maybe his BFF.”
O’Brien smiled. “I’m not sure if Joe has a BFF. But we’re close. I was hurt one time, bleeding heavily back in the Ocala National Forest. Joe used some mud to stop the bleeding. Today, you can barely see the scar.”
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