Three Keys to Murder

by Gary Williams

  Fawn could see the excitement in Ralston’s eyes. “Stay calm,” she cautioned with a subtle downward wave of her hand. “Remember, the picture has been around awhile and has probably been studied more than a few times by people who know about history and architecture. The chances of it revealing anything are slim.”

  Yet Fawn could not blame Ralston for his exuberance. From her journalism training, she knew discovering the source of information goes a long way toward understanding the intent of the information. Since authorities only knew that it came from Lawrence Courtland but had no information regarding its history, they had no point of perspective from which to evaluate the diagram. She and Ralston, however, had strong evidence to suggest it was composed by the hand of Sarah Courtland, the mother of Osceola’s son, Coyle. It could prove to be the launching pad to understanding what Lawrence was doing in Fort Clinch upon his capture. It might also link to the current-day murders.

  Tate returned holding a sheet of paper with dark imprinting on one side. “Here you go. The actual drawing is only about half the size of this paper, so I enlarged it on the copier.”

  They thanked the man and departed the museum quickly, trying to mask their elation. Minutes later, they sat in the parked car, with the engine running and the air-conditioning on high, examining the scribbled lines.

  The crude picture was remarkably similar to the Fort Clinch guide map. The date in the upper-left corner read March 23, 1856. A top view, it showed the irregular pentagon shape with perpendicular arrows indicating direction. Fawn rotated the picture to orient the point formed by the north bastion to the top of the page. While the sketchy diagram was filled with imperfections, the section near the top right, which focused on the north bastion, had been drawn with considerable care. Meticulous, thin lines detailed the inside of the bastion.

  Fawn and Ralston studied the drawing in silence. Given the detail, Fawn shifted full attention to the north bastion. The view showed the open space of the bastion without any hint of cannons or other equipment visible at floor level. It was simply an empty space just as it appeared now. To the side was a small, sharply drawn box, which Fawn recognized as the enclosure where the steep, brick stairs spiraled to the top of the bastion. At the rear of the bastion was an aperture that led to the open-air space between the north bastion and the long, narrow gallery.

  Then she saw it.

  Ralston pointed to the north bastion. “Someone paid attention to details, but I’m not getting anything new out of this.”

  Fawn shook her head, feigning disappointment. “Neither am I.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost noon. You have to get to class, and I’ve got some errands to run. We’ll have to pick this up tomorrow.”

  Ralston reluctantly agreed.

  ****

  Back at her house alone, Fawn placed the drawing on her dining room table and retrieved a magnifying glass. She had refrained from mentioning what she saw to Ralston for several reasons.

  First, it could just be stray marks or age stains. With the naked eye, they were faint. Drawing any conclusions from a copy of the original drawing was dicey at best.

  Second, if this was what she hoped it was, she would have to take action without Ralston; action that would require her to break the law.

  Eyeing the image, there were faded, abbreviated, crossed lines over the exit of the gallery that led into the short courtyard before the entrance to the north bastion.

  Fawn recalled that, at the end of the gallery leading to the north bastion where it emptied outside before the entryway, there was a brick at the apex of the archway that had stood out among the others. Nearly imperceptible, the red brick was slightly smaller than the rest of the multitude of bricks, which formed the gallery walls. She had given it little consideration; had not even pointed it out to Ralston as it seemed insignificant, but the drawing of the fort appeared to have a tiny “x” placed at that exact location.

  Fawn lowered the magnifying glass to the page and the “x” grew large. The lines were disjoined as if someone had tried to erase the mark. Could it be a clue as to what Lawrence Courtland had been doing inside the fort in 1969? She felt a surge of excitement. Then her gaze slid to the uneven lines to the side of the gallery and bastion where less care had been taken with the details.

  One area in particular caught her attention. Excitedly, she went upstairs and grabbed a pencil and a sheet of onion paper. Back at the table, she placed the paper over the drawing of Fort Clinch and pushed it flat. She focused on some scribbled lines among the rampart between the north and northwest bastion. Carefully, she traced them onto the paper. When she finished, she held the paper up to the light.

  The two images were undeniable: a t-shaped apparatus with a formed head and a rectangle.

  It was a hammer and a block of wood!

  CHAPTER 22

  Ralston’s suggestion that there might be a secret place inside the fort had initially seemed farfetched, but with the discovery of the images of a hammer and block of wood in the picture—the identical items Lawrence Courtland had been apprehended with in 1969—the notion now seemed plausible. Fawn’s intuition also told her the murders by Coyle Courtland in 1865, Lawrence Courtland’s violent killings in 1969, and the current-day killer were all somehow tied to Fort Clinch.

  Given what they had uncovered, Fawn quickly hatched a plan. Acting more on impulse than thoughtful reasoning, the excitement consumed her. She ate lunch as she made preparations for the evening. Afterward, she drove to Mike’s house for a hammer, rope, and a small block of wood that she found in a scrap pile behind his garage. She returned home and added a flashlight to her ensemble.

  She called the National Park Service to confirm the fort’s closing time of 6 p.m. She made a second call to arrange a ride, then she lay down to rest for several hours in anticipation of the long night ahead.

  Sleep eluded her. She thought of Mike’s strange behavior, of Elizabeth Courtland, of her upcoming wedding. In the excitement of the day, she had pushed such things aside, but in the solitude, there was no way to avoid them. She eventually got up and put on a black T-shirt, black jeans, and dark tennis shoes. She took the rope and threaded it through her belt loop, circling her waist, eventually tying it into a knot. Then she draped the steel-clawed hammer from the rope, and wedged the small block of wood and her cell phone in one front pocket of her jeans, the flashlight in the other. The ensemble was a bit bulkier than she had intended, but with the loose fitting T-shirt, she hoped to mask everything underneath. She looked at her profile in the mirror. She looked as if she were in the first stage of pregnancy. No one would dare frisk a pregnant woman. Her only concern was that the gift shop attendant might recognize her and become suspicious she was back for a second time in one day. So she donned a baseball cap and dark pair of sunglasses to minimize her chance of being recognized.

  Her plan was simple: she would access Fort Clinch while it was open, then hide until the park closed and wait for all the rangers and employees to leave. She would examine the archway brick that seemed to be the focal point of the drawing. If she discovered anything, she would hold out until morning when the park reopened to tourists, then sneak out among the crowds. If caught, the consequences would be severe. It was for this very reason, the risk of arrest for illegal entry into a national park, that she could not involve Ralston. Being prosecuted for such a crime could mean his deportation from the U.S.

  As for her own fate, she was remarkably apathetic. She would take every precaution, but if in fact she was caught, so be it. She was willing to take the risk. An irresistible force was drawing her to the gallery and the north bastion, and she was content to heed its call.

  At 4:15, she drove to the recreational center across the street from the entrance to Fort Clinch and parked her car. Ensuring everything was secure underneath her shirt and in her pants pockets, she stepped out just as Lisa Fortney pulled up in her Ford Expedition. Fawn
climbed in.

  “Now are you going to tell me what you’re up to?” Lisa asked. “You know I don’t mind doing you a favor Fawn, seriously, but your being all ‘cloak and dagger’ is a little unnerving. What’s with the dark sunglasses and cap? And I know you haven’t gained twenty pounds since I last saw you.”

  “Trust me, Lisa. It’s one of those times when you honestly don’t want to know.”

  Lisa shook her head with a smirk. “Reporters,” she said in mock frustration.

  Normally, Lisa’s witticism would have brought a smile to Fawn, but she remained focused.

  Lisa continued. “So I’m supposed to go through the entrance, drive to the fort, and drop you off at the parking area. How long will you be? Should I come inside with you?”

  Fawn removed her sunglasses. “You can leave.”

  “How are you getting back to your car?”

  “I’m not. Not until the morning.”

  “Fawn, are you serious?”

  “Please, Lisa,” she could not suppress a hint of agitation, “no more questions. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “But Fawn, you—” Lisa sawed off her own words as she looked at Fawn, apparently realizing the determination in her friend’s eyes.

  Five minutes later, Fawn entered the gift shop to pay the entrance fee to Fort Clinch for the second time that day. She relaxed when she saw a different clerk—a young woman with long, sandy-blonde hair and a face full of freckles. There had been a shift change since this morning.

  Fawn moved slowly, careful to keep the contents underneath her shirt concealed and wary of any unnatural sounds that the items might make. She felt great relief when she left the gift shop and headed up the dirt trail that led to the fort’s sally port.

  Fawn reached the abbreviated drawbridge and walked through the sally port, arriving at the parade ground. Patron traffic had eased considerably since that morning. She walked purposely toward the gallery, which led to the north bastion. The air was still, the heat ever-present. An earthy smell rose from the natural courtyard. Perspiration formed on her skin under the dark material.

  Fawn entered the dark gallery. Strangely, she did not feel the same apprehension she had earlier. She moved through the narrow corridor to the end. Outside, she took stock of the archway and of the brick at the apex above her head. Her previous observation had been correct. The one brick was shorter than the surrounding bricks. She traced backward, farther inside. The bricks were interlocking, but given the same preceding patterns, it was odd that none seemed to have a brick as short as the one at the lip of the gallery. She reached up and touched it.

  Now was not the time for examining it.

  She moved before the entrance to the bastion. Instead of entering, she turned left and followed the trail along the curtain wall toward the northwest bastion. Grass and weeds had been allowed to flourish up the slope, and it was somewhere in this mini-valley—obscured from view between the rampart and the curtain wall—that Fawn began to search for a place to hide. She had noticed very few tourists dared this trail that ran the perimeter of the fort. The path was riddled with obtrusive weeds. She hoped to find a place on the side of the rampart, overgrown enough to afford cover, yet without a mass of insects.

  Fawn arrived at the entrance to the northwest bastion, practically running over an elderly man and his wife as they stepped from the gallery. The couple glared at Fawn, obviously surprised she was coming from the perpendicular path. Fawn apologized and proceeded. She followed the trail between the curtain wall and the base of the rampart, continually scanning the slope for thick pockets of vegetation where she could hide. The overgrowth seemed less than what she had remembered, and she began to feel uneasy about her strategy. What if the covering didn’t hide her? The odds of her finding terrain on the side of the rampart with enough weeds for total concealment were growing slim.

  Fawn stopped to consider her options. That morning, they had gone straight to the gallery and into the north bastion. Now she wished they had spent time at other areas of the fort where she might have reconnoitered an alternative hiding spot.

  An idea came to her. Maybe the best place to hide is not inside the fort.

  Fawn turned around and walked the narrow trail past the northwest bastion, following the path back to the open area between the gallery and the north bastion where she walked to one of the slotted windows. A short distance away, she could see a sliver of beach leading to the water’s edge. She checked once more to make sure no one was coming and stepped onto the base of the narrow opening. She squeezed through the window, hindered by the equipment she was carrying. She cautiously stepped outside to the ground below.

  Several feet away, a manmade gully paralleled the curtain wall. Fawn recalled seeing it earlier in the day when they were on top of the north bastion. Inside the trench were several heavily pocketed areas with grass and plant growth. She quickly picked out a location. If she could reach the ravine thicket without being seen, become hidden within the gully, chances were she would make it to nightfall without anyone knowing she was there.

  With considerable consternation, Fawn eased away from the wall, stealing an upward glance to ensure the coast was clear. She removed her cap and sunglasses and quickly ran along the edge before scampering into the trench, scurrying beneath the overgrowth, and settling on her hands and knees in a crouched position. She turned to look upward, pleased to see her view was almost completely obstructed by the foliage.

  Only then did she realize her hands, knees, and feet had slumped into the warm, wet earth. The trench had collected recent rain. Its depth placed it below the water line, which meant the pooled water created a muddy base. As if this was not aggravating enough, her period, which had begun on Monday morning, was now the source of harsh cramps.

  The gully may have been the perfect place to hide, but it would not be without extreme discomfort.

  Fawn found herself watching as the minutes ticked by, praying for time to speed up. Stuck in one position, her arms and legs slowly went numb. Every so often, she would jostle them until the feeling of a thousand pinpricks struck. Fortunately, the sun had fallen to an angle and the weed bed she was hidden beneath was shaded. This had brought mild relief from the heat.

  Awhile later, Fawn heard a loud speaker. A male voice announced that the national monument would close in 15 minutes. Between the mud with its unique stench, the weeds that caused her to itch, and the assortment of insects, which she had quietly and discreetly fended off, it was not a moment too soon. It had taken all her resolve to remain in place.

  Now came the most dangerous point in her plan. She had predicted the fort’s personnel would not walk outside the curtain walls, but she had no way of knowing for sure. More than ever, it was prudent for her to remain absolutely still.

  The minutes passed, and Fawn consulted her watch. At five minutes before six, another closing warning could be heard coming from inside the fort.

  The seconds crept by.

  Ten minutes after official closing time, Fawn heard two voices above her. She pressed lower on her hands and knees. The mud squished, sending up a fresh reek, and she stifled a gag. The voices stopped, then started again. After several minutes, the conversation faded.

  Ninety minutes later, after the fort had gone silent, Fawn lifted from the gully. She was dripping with mud. She checked the Cumberland Sound for activity. The water was clear of boats. Satisfied, she made her way back to the window at the north bastion and wedged her way through, again struggling with the extra bulk of tools. Water and mud dripped from her clothes.

  She reached the floor and froze. Muted voices came from inside the fort, echoing through the far end of the gallery from the parade ground. Fawn considered sliding back outside the window but remained in the shadows of the bastion. She backed into the far corner, contemplating her next move. The night grew ever darker with the failing light.

 
She strained to see her watch: quarter till eight. For the next 20 minutes, the voices continued. She overheard enough of the conversation to realize it was a clean-up crew.

  She was forced to sit patiently in the corner, nestled in the darkness of the gathering night. Without giving it much thought, she closed her eyes.

  She awoke, astonished that she had fallen asleep and even more surprised at the time: 11:38 p.m. The bastion was cast in darkness, and there was a stark stillness to the night. The scant moonlight that found its way inside the bastion stretched eerily in long, thick streaks across the floor. Her arms were caked in a thin layer of dried mud, and her pants legs were mushy and cold. The soggy odor stuck to her like a second skin.

  Fawn stood and listened intently, but all was quiet. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket. She knelt to the floor, laying the flashlight beside her so the light shone onto the rear wall as she removed the items from underneath her shirt, setting the hammer, block of wood, and finally the rope down. She looked at the rope, somewhat amused. She brought it for the mere chance climbing might be involved.

  She retrieved the hammer and small block of wood in one hand, the flashlight in the other. Fawn left the bastion, and made her way across the open area toward the connecting gallery a dozen feet away. Here, the humidity was more severe than inside the bastion. She moved slowly, training the light on the ground, and paused to look up. A star-laden sky hovered overhead, partially obscured by the cross beams.

  Fawn passed through the gallery archway cautiously, listening to ensure the fort was empty and no security guards or other personnel were still inside. Before reaching the end where the gallery spilled into the parade ground, she turned the light off. She climbed the two steps to ground level and warily examined the open grounds before her.

  Satisfied she was alone, Fawn turned and made her way back to the far end of the gallery.