The Secrets of Taylor Creek

by Michael Merson

  Before Nathan could say anything more, there was a knock at the door. The two looked at each other, and Nathan placed his finger up to his mouth and nose.

  “Don’t say anything,” he whispered. He then got up, grabbed his pistol, and quietly walked over to the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Preacher.”

  Nathan opened the door and allowed Preacher to enter. Preacher looked at Stormie sitting in the chair across from the bed. He looked at Nathan and handed him a sheet of paper with a name on it.

  “Who’s this?” He asked.

  Preacher looked over at Stormie once more.

  “It’s okay. You can speak in front of her. She knows everything,” Nathan said.

  “There’s another girl that’s missing. Bessie Jones,” Preacher explained.

  “When did she come up missing?” Nathan asked.

  “No one knows for sure, but she does the same work as the other girls. Her father is a drunk, and he’s been telling people that she’s missing,” Preacher responded.

  Nathan went back to his file and took out the list from the Eugenics Board and looked over it. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked over at Stormie.

  “She’s on the list,” he stated.

  ***

  Sunday, July 19, 1965

  Nathan and Stormie left her house in the boat right after midnight. The two had worn darker clothes, and they had covered the boat’s navigation lights before leaving the dock. The night was dark as the increasing thunderstorm clouds veiled the full moon high above. Stormie kept the boat at a slower speed as it glided along the calm waters of Taylor Creek. The lights from the docks that extended out from the properties were visible as the two cruised by each one until she saw the familiar house in the distance. She idled the engine down and then shut it off entirely when they got closer to the dock that led to the Arrington House.

  Nathan climbed onto the dock and held it there while he quietly looked toward the shore and just beyond it to the house.

  “Don’t tie on. Just hold the boat close to the pier,” Nathan whispered to Stormie.

  “Why?”

  “In case we have to leave in a hurry.”

  “Nathan,” Stormie said softly just as he had turned to leave.

  “Yes?” He asked, turning back toward her.

  “Be careful. I don’t want anything happening to you. I think that…” She started to say as he quickly pulled her to him and kissed her.

  “I know, me too,” he acknowledged before running off into the darkness beyond the edge of the dock, leaving Stormie in the boat alone and speechless.

  Nathan ran toward the house, carefully ensuring that he remained concealed in the shadows. He stopped just short of the back of the house. The music was loud, and he could hear people laughing and dancing to the music of Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

  He wanted to see inside, and he started to move closer, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sheriff Carter pulling up and parking toward the back. Carter was not in his uniform, but he still carried his gun and badge on his belt. He got out and then opened the back door and let three colored girls out. They were all dressed in evening dresses in various colors.

  “Now you ladies go inside and be nice to the guests,” Sheriff Carter ordered as he pointed to the back door and then followed them inside.

  Nathan once more started to get up and move to the side of the house to look through the side window when the back door suddenly flew open. Nathan watched as Dolly, the woman he saw at Judge’s Revenge the first night he was in town, come outside while being followed by a man in a suit.

  “C’mon darlin’, have some fun with Old Jeb damn it!” The visibly intoxicated man begged as he ran his hands over her body. The two made their way over to a car parked along the edge of the woods.

  “I don’t think you can even do nothin’; you too drunk,” she explained.

  Nathan ignored the two and carefully made his way over to the side window and hid in the bushes. He then lifted his head slowly and peered inside. He saw mostly white men with young colored women everywhere. Some people were drinking, laughing, and dancing. Others were getting more acquainted with each other before going upstairs.

  Nathan continued looking through the window until he thought he’d seen enough. He turned to go back the same way from which he had come. Slowly Nathan eased out of the bushes. He looked over toward the car for Dolly and the man in the suit. Nathan peered through the darkness and saw the two of them in the back seat of the car. The couple was oblivious to him or anyone else. Including the person lurking in the bushes next to them.

  Nathan watched as the man made his way closer to the car. He squinted his eyes for a better look, but all he could make out in the darkness was the person’s shadow.

  Suddenly he saw it! The shadowy figure carried a knife in one hand, and he was getting closer to the car.

  “Stop!” Nathan yelled as he ran across the yard toward the dark figure that quickly turned and ran into the thick brush after being discovered.

  Dolly and the man stopped. They exited the car but didn’t see anything except the rustling of the brush.

  “Who was that?” Dolly asked.

  “No one. Let’s get back to it.”

  Nathan ran after the dark figure with his pistol in hand for about two hundred yards before he lost him in thicker brush. Nathan dropped to a knee in a small opening in the thick brush. He listened for any movement in the blackness around him.

  You got to get him! He thought to himself.

  Suddenly, he heard a sound to his right, and he spun with his gun pointed outward, but he wasn’t quick enough. His assailant kicked the gun from his hand. Nathan then felt the punch to his jaw, and it sent him backward, slightly putting him off balance. As he tried to steady himself, he saw the blade of the knife being swung toward him. He attempted to move back out of the way but wasn’t able to avoid the edge of the blade as it sliced through his left arm just above his elbow.

  Nathan fell backward on to the ground close to where his gun had landed. He saw the attacker coming at him once more with the knife over his head. Nathan reached out for the .45 and rolled to his right. He quickly fired two shots behind his back and heard the attacker scream out loud. Nathan kept moving and fired four more shots until he landed on his knees and looked back at his intended target, who had apparently run away once more.

  “WHO THE HELL’S OUT THERE?” Nathan heard Sheriff Carter yell out from the back of the house.

  Nathan got to his feet and ran further into the brush. He made his way along the beach, back to the dock behind the cover of the trees that bordered the property. Finally, he made his way down the pier and found Stormie still waiting for him just as some of the guests from the party started walking down toward the pier.

  “Get us out of here!” Nathan said to Stormie as he laid on the bottom of the boat, bleeding badly from the wound.

  “What happened? Are you okay?!” Stormie screamed over the motor as she piloted the boat toward open water.

  She waited until she had the boat well away from the Arrington House before she shut the motor off and dropped down beside Nathan. He was still bleeding. The wound was long and deep, and she could see the exposed muscle and tendons.

  “I gotta get you to a hospital!” She said as she used a towel to wrap his arm.

  “We can’t,’ Nathan said as he sat up.

  “Why not?”

  “Hospitals ask questions, and they’ll call the sheriff,” he explained.

  “I know where we can go,” Stormie said as she placed a folded blanket under his head, stood up, turned the boat back on, and sped off into the night.

  Chapter 38

  Preacher was in bed when he heard the knock on the door at two in the morning. He was hesitant to open it until he heard the familiar voice of Nathan on the other side. Stormie had driven the boat back to her home and had gotten Nathan into his car and driven him over to Preacher’s h
ouse. Stormie had remembered that Preacher’s wife was one of the few colored nurses in the county, and she knew that she would help.

  Preacher’s wife, Regina, prepared her surgical tools, gave Nathan some pain medication that she had leftover from Preacher’s hernia surgery that he’d had last year. She was diligent and worked as quickly as possible to clean and close the wound. Stormie sat by Nathan’s side as he passed out.

  Preacher sat in a chair facing the front door with his double-barrel shotgun in his lap. He didn’t know if anyone would come looking for his guest, but he was going to be ready if they did. Willie and Sam were told to sleep on the floor in their room. They did as they were told, but they kept the door open and watched the adults down the hall.

  ***

  Charlie White made it a few hundred yards from where Agent Emerson had shot him. He stopped in a small opening in the woods next to the side of Taylor Creek to tend to the stomach wound. He was angry with Sheriff Carter, who made him sit in the woods all night while everyone else attended the party. He was also angry with Agent Emerson for interrupting him from doing what the sheriff had him in the woods to do. Finally, he was upset with himself for getting shot once again by the agent.

  “Damn it!” He said out loud.

  Charlie was there to look for someone specific. He waited for hours for the guy to show himself. When he finally did, to watch Dolly and her date in the car tonight, the FBI man came along and ran him off.

  I had him, and my knife was ready! It was going to be quiet just like the sheriff wanted. Until that damn FBI man yelled out! Charlie thought to himself and then angrily stabbed his knife into the ground next to him.

  Charlie blamed the FBI man for ruining everything. The only satisfaction Charlie had was that he had gotten the FBI man good. He knew that knife wounds could be worse than any bullet if the cuts were long and deep enough, and Charlie believed that the one he delivered to the FBI man was just that. For a moment, Charlie laid his head back and enjoyed the thought of the FBI man in pain.

  “Who dat?” Charlie said as heard someone coming out of the woods next to him. He gripped his knife tight and got ready for round two. But then he saw the person as they emerged from the brush.

  “Oh, it’s you. Well, just don’t stand there, help me up and get me to a hospital,” Charlie ordered to the familiar face as he started to stand.

  “What are you…?” Charlie started to say as the person he recognized grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back, dug a knife into his neck, and began a cross-directional cut across his throat. Charlie gargled and tried to use his hands to stop the attacker’s hands from moving the blade across his neck, but it was useless, and within seconds, Charlie felt himself slipping into blackness.

  He just stood there looking down at Charlie at his feet. He knew he’d been careless tonight. Charlie almost got him. He heard the cars in the distance starting up and driving away from the house. Finally, after he was sure Charlie was dead, he walked back toward the house to see if there was anyone left to play with. He left Charlie’s lifeless body there in the woods in a pool of his own blood with his knife still in the ground next to him.

  ***

  Ben was standing on the dock, looking out over Taylor Creek for the boat that he had heard speeding off into the darkness. He felt that it carried his wife and her new FBI friend who had apparently made an uninvited appearance at his Gentlemen’s Social. He bent down, and with his finger, he wiped through a thick dark red liquid on the dock. Ben was confident that he knew who the trespassers were, and he decided that it was just about time to finally deal with them once and for all.

  “I don’t know what happened, and I can’t find Charlie anywhere,” Sheriff Carter announced as he walked up to Ben on the dock.

  “He’s probably hiding because he screwed up again.”

  “Probably, but who fired those shots? I made sure he didn’t have a gun tonight.”

  “I believe it was the FBI,” Ben said smartly.

  “What do you want to do about Charlie?”

  “Nothing for now, but we need to be rid of all of our problems quicker than I once thought,” Ben said as he turned toward Sheriff Carter.

  “What do you want me to do tonight?” Sheriff Carter asked.

  “Nothing. But tomorrow why don’t you pay Agent Emerson a visit and see how he’s fairing,” Ben said as he wiped the blood from his finger onto Sheriff Carter’s shirt.

  Chapter 39

  Nathan awoke to find Stormie sitting on the floor. Her head was on the edge of the couch next to his. She was asleep, and for a few minutes, he sat there just watching her. He questioned whether he could protect her or not. He took his left hand and stroked her hair while thinking back to the boat and how right before he left her there that she was about to say something meaningful and important. Something that he felt and that he wanted to say as well but hadn’t brought himself to deal with yet.

  I’ve only known her for a short time. Can I really be falling for this woman? Have I’ve already fallen for her? He thought to himself.

  Across the room, Nathan saw Preacher sleeping in a chair facing the front door with a shotgun between his legs. Nathan knew that he was at the end of his rope last night, and so did Preacher. But his old friend had decided that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to him while he recovered.

  “I see that my patient’s awake,” Regina whispered as she walked out of the kitchen carrying a glass of water that she handed to him. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform and was about to leave for work.

  “Yeah. How long have I been here?” Nathan asked as he gently sat up, took a long drink from the glass, and then looked down at Stormie, who remained asleep.

  “Since about two o’clock in the morning.”

  “I don’t remember much after getting here.”

  “That’s because I gave you plenty of pain medication. I didn’t want you feeling anything as I was stitching up that arm. There are over 30 stitches in your arm. I had to stitch you up inside and out.”

  Nathan shook his head and looked down at the bandage and then to Stormie.

  “She ain’t moved from your side since you passed out last night. I offered her our bed to sleep in, but she wanted to be right next to you.”

  “I passed out?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes. You lost a lot of blood. The cut was bad. I didn’t know if I could stop the bleeding or not. To tell you the truth, I was really worried. We all were.”

  “Looks like you did a great job. I’m still here,” Nathan said and then smiled at her.

  “Well, of course, you are! I couldn’t let the man who saved my husband’s life die on my couch, could I?” Regina said just as Stormie began to wake up.

  Stormie took a minute to gather her senses, and suddenly she remembered where she was and the events of the previous evening.

  “Nathan, you’re okay!” Stormie said and quickly sat up.

  “I’m fine,” Nathan assured her as he caressed her cheek.

  “You alive?” Preacher asked as he stood up, placed the shotgun against the wall, and stretched his arms out wide.

  “I’m alive,” Nathan acknowledged.

  Preacher moved his chair closer to the couch and sat down. They were all glad to see their friend conscious once again. Nathan explained to the three of them about what had happened when he left Stormie at the boat. He told them that he didn’t get a good look at the man who cut him, but he was sure that he had hit him with the blind shot that he had fired from his .45.

  “I’ll call some of the local hospitals when I go in for my shift,” Regina said as she got ready to leave.

  “Good, and thank you again for saving my life,” Nathan said.

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll call my husband later when I find out if anybody came in with a gunshot wound,” Regina said and then kissed her husband before walking out the door.

  “What’re you going to do now?” Preacher asked.

  “I think we need to get o
ut on and around the water and start looking for Bessie,” Nathan answered.

  “Where are we going to look?” Preacher asked.

  “If we can get some people to drag the waters and search the area from Taylor Creek into Harlowe Creek and then around Galant Point, we may find her if our guy put her in the water like the others. And, if he’s the one who took her,” Nathan explained.

  “I’ll let everyone know this morning when my congregation meets. We’ll get everything organized and meet you out there tomorrow, bright and early,” Preacher explained.

  “Sounds good. If you have Bessie’s address, I’d like to go by there and speak to her family after I get cleaned up,” Nathan said.

  “I’ll get it for you and call you with it later.”

  “By the way, thank you and your family for saving my life,” Nathan said as he and Stormie started for the door.

  “No thanks needed. I owed you anyway.”

  Nathan and Stormie left Preacher’s house and drove over to Nathan’s room, where he cleaned himself up and put on clean clothes. He waited until Preacher called with the address for Bessie’s home before leaving.

  Nathan and Stormie drove over to Stormie’s house. Once inside, Stormie discovered that Ben had removed most of his clothes from the bedroom closet and some of his other personal items as well. Nathan went from room to room with his .45 in hand, making sure they were alone. He then locked all the doors and windows. Stormie took a quick shower and came out of the bathroom to find Nathan sleeping on the bed. She grabbed the alarm clock, set it for two o’clock, and laid down beside him. They both needed the rest.

  Chapter 40

  Nathan and Stormie arrived at 610 Maple Lane in Morehead City at four. The home that was believed to be Bessie Jones’ sat alone at the end of the street. It was more of a rundown shed than a home, and the surrounding yard was unkempt with car parts, toys, and trash spread about. Nathan knocked on the door while Stormie stood behind him. He waited a few minutes, and when no one answered, he knocked again but much louder than the first time.