by Lila Beckham
He drove along the causeway for about a mile and then pulled into a small park that sat along the bay waters. Joshua parked and then walked out onto a short dock that jutted out into the briny water of Mobile Bay.
A gentle breeze blows his memories back to childhood; this time, he remembers. He is wading in the water, holding onto his mother’s hand. He looks up at her. She is also in the water, wading knee deep at the waters edge. Her soft brown eyes are aglow with happiness. She holds tightly to his hand and is telling him not to let go because she does not know how to swim… the young Joshua looks around. There with them is Vivian; she is young and vibrant like his mother. Mattie, with her tattered rag tied on her head and an umbrella shading her from the sun, sits on a stool smiling a toothless smile. A young black girl, that must be Georgia, is on her knees building a castle in the sand. It is just the five of them.
Underneath the pines, behind Mattie, a picnic blanket lays spread out on the ground, the remnants of their meal drawing flies. When he looks past the blanket, an old station wagon parked at the other end of the small park catches Joshua’s attention. A man watches them from a distance; his stance seems familiar.
A sudden gust of wind brought Joshua from his reminiscing. He lit a cigarette and walked back toward his patrol car. He felt much like a small boy who was lost and alone as he got into his car and drove out to the main road.
Joshua drove to the courthouse and went straight to the records office. A girl with an unruly mop of dark hair peeked up at him from under fringed bangs. Mischief filled hazel eyes questioned him as to why he is standing in front of her desk. He noticed that the freckles across her nose ran no further than just below each eye. She turned her eyes from his to look at her nails, and then blew the dust off them. She then gave him a look that asked if he was dense or something.
He did know how to take her; she seemed laid-back and lazy. Joshua asked her to gather and bring the arrest records and mug shot books from 1930 through 1940 to his office. When she gave him a strange look, he ignored her.
“It may take me a minute or two to get them together for you, Sheriff. But, I will start on it now,” she said quickly when he raised an eyebrow at her. He was about to tell her to snap to it. From the looks of the place, she did not do much more filing than she was doing when he walked up to the partition and that was to file her nails.
Joshua left there and walked toward the evidence room. There was a steel door now where once there had been just a normal door; it was locked. Aggravated, he turned back toward the desk, but the girl from the desk was coming toward him with a set of keys. She unlocked the door, let him in, showed him where the lights were, and even that there was a flashlight in a desk drawer in case he needed it and then left.
In the room, there were boxes piled from floor to ceiling stacked on rows of back-to-back shelves that were at least thirty feet in length. On the end of each row was written the years that were placed on each row of shelves. On the furthermost row to the left were 1750 - 1850, the second from the end was 1850 - 1875, and the next was 1875 - 1900 and so on. Joshua located the 1925 - 1950 shelves and began his investigation of the records housed on it. The lighting sucked; it forced him to procure the flashlight and return. He had been in the room before, but it had been at least twenty-five years since he had.
The writing on the end of the boxes was faded with age, many hard to read. Some boxes were light, not filled with much. Several were heavy, filled with papers and other evidence that had been stored away. He went from box to box; shining the light on each until he made it to the end of the row… he was overwhelmed.
Joshua did not know where to start. Most of the boxes held ordinary paperwork from murder cases and robberies that were tried in court, solved, and the perpetrator sentenced to time in jail or sent off to Holman Prison to serve out their sentence or to be executed.
He was about to give up when he saw a box on the bottom row that was covered with dust. Spider webs also ran from the corner of the shelf to the box. He pulled it out from under the others and shined his light on the writing on the end. The words UNSOLVED jumped out at him!
As he toted the box to the desk at the front of the room, he wondered how he had overlooked the box the first time he searched the room; but then remembered that the room and boxes were not nearly as neat as they were now.
The lighting at the desk was much better. Once there, he read the rest of the writing on the front of the box. It said, unsolved reports, 1930 thru 1940 - filed by Joseph Jernigan. When he read the name, a mental image of the man flashed through his mind.
Joshua remembered a Detective Jernigan; he was part of the City of Mobile’s Police force, not the County. Joshua was on the Cities force until he bought the cabin. That was when he transferred to the County Sheriff’s Department. When working for the city, one had to live inside the city limits.
He remembered that Jernigan had once walked up to him, started to say something, and then changed his mind and walked away.
It happened several years after Jernigan’s retirement.
Joshua was a newbie, straight out of training. At the time, he thought that maybe the older man was going to harass him because some already had. Then, he thought that maybe Jernigan just wanted to share his knowledge with him or give advice, as several of the older detectives on the force had done.
Now that he had found the box, Joshua wondered if what Jernigan was going to say pertained to something that was inside the box.
As he lifted the lid off the box, his hands began to shake; he needed a drink. He shoved the lid back down and then toted the box to the front office of the records room. The girl was still filing her nails; this did not sit well with Joshua. He cleared his throat as he began to walk past the desk.
“You cannot just take that with you, Sheriff. You will have to sign for it the same as everyone else does,” the nail filing girl said sarcastically.
“Have you started pulling those records I asked for yet?” he asked gruffly, setting the box on the counter.
“Yes sir, I pulled the records you requested and had a runner take them; they are waiting for you in your office. Please sign here,” she said, sliding a sign in-out sheet across the counter.”
Joshua was surprised. He looked to her nametag to see who this girl was that at first seemed not to do anything except file her nails, but was very efficient.
In brightly colored letters, the name ‘Sandy’ swirled across her nametag.
“Thank you, Sandy. I appreciate it very much” he smiled, because he honestly did appreciate it. If everyone that worked in the City and County Sheriff’s department was as efficient as she was, including him, they might get things done quicker.
He looked down to sign the sheet of paper she had slid to him and noticed that she had written a box number and the date. He wondered where she got a box number from, so he asked.
“Every box has a number, Sheriff, see,” she said, pointing with her pen to a corner of the box. Written on the corner was the letters and numbers MB UN 1930-40. He guessed that the MB stood for Mobile, and UN stood for unsolved. He knew the 1930-40 was for the year spread.
“Do you know if there are any other boxes with UN on them?”
“Yes, Sir, there are a couple, undoubtedly Joseph Jernigan took the time to separate these records from all the others and box them up; his name is on the others too. I heard he done this in his spare time after he retired from the force. That’s dedication, don’t you think?” she asked. Without awaiting an answer she said, “I could pull those boxes for you if you’d like.” She gave him an impetuous grin.
“Not right this minute, Hon, but when I finish going through this one, I may want to look through them.” Joshua picked up the box and turned to leave.
“Any time, sweetie, just give me a shout when you want them,” Sandy said to his back as he walked away.
Joshua wondered if Joe Jernigan was still alive and then doubted it, considering he would have to be nearly ninet
y years old. Joshua made it out of the building and then headed across the courtyard toward his office. The only thing that separated the county sheriff’s department from the city’s police department was a courtyard; they were both located in the courthouse complex.
It was rare that Joshua actually went to his office. His back porch had been his office for most of the years he had been sheriff. When he opened the door, his office was neat as a pin and the mug shot books and arrest records were stacked on his desk. He actually could not remember the last time he had spent a substantial amount of time there; however, he knew that he would be with this coroner’s inquest coming up. He did not know what to expect out of that yet.
He knew there were several vying for his position should he be ousted before elections came up again. He hated to break it to them, but he had about decided to go ahead and run for another term. There were still open cases he needed to finish and four more years were not going to make that much difference to his retirement. Joshua set the box down and picked up the first mug shot book; Sandy had stacked them from the earliest to the latest. He was mainly interested in the years before, during, and after his mother disappeared. He never realized how many arrests the force made in a single year until he flipped through the first book. This is not getting me anywhere, a weary Joshua thought to himself as he lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
He had thought that he could just flip the mug book open and he would see the man that he had seen watching them as they picnicked at the small park on the bay, but he was obviously wrong. There were just too many of them and he did not get a very good look at the man; it was so long ago. He decided he needed to go through the box first; maybe there were some leads in it and he could follow up on those.
Just as he was about to open the box, there was a knock on the door. Cook had come to tell him they were back with the prisoner. Although Joshua wanted badly to look through the box, it was going to have to wait. He stood and then lit another smoke.
As he and Cookie walked across the courtyard to the county jail, he wondered about the Mexican they now had in custody. He had to remind himself that he could not walk in, kick this perpetrator’s teeth in and castrate him no matter how badly he wanted to. What in the world possessed men like him and the Dixon brothers to do such horrible things to women? There was surely a section in the Lake of Fire reserved for men such as those lunatics; for that matter, any man that mistreated women.
His grandmother raised him to respect women. She told him that even if Eve did listen to the serpent and eat from the Tree of Knowledge that women were to be reverenced and were due respect because their wombs bore the burden of replenishing the earth and they went through pure hell to bring a child into the world.
Joshua knew he had never had the best of luck in choosing women, Francine was proof of that; however, he was sure that one bad seed did not ruin the entire crop. Furthermore, he had never had the urge to harm a woman, even Francine, when he walked in on her with her lover a few days before she died in the wreck she and her lover had on Firetower Road. Karma had a way of taking care of people who done wrong, he had seen that too many times not to believe it.
In the twenty some odd years since his wife’s demise, he’d had several affairs, but he always managed to keep them at arm’s length. He let them know from the get go that he was not looking for a wife, all he wanted from them was a little feminine companionship. If they were all right with that, then he would spend a little time with them. If things began to get too constricting, he would cut them loose real quick-like. Even though he had never even kissed her, Kathy had been the only woman to pique his interest in more than just a temporary arrangement in many a-year. She carried herself like a lady. However, she was a married woman. Kathy was humble and quiet, but when she did talk, her voice was soothing as a summer rain.
Cook opened the door to the jailhouse and let Stokes go ahead of him. As they neared the interrogation room, Joshua sensed evilness and he smelled a vile odor. The entire building felt as if a veil of gloom had let down over it.
10
The Mexican
The Mexican sat handcuffed to a chair at a table in the middle of the room. He did not even look up when they walked in; he appeared extremely young. Although Joshua was sure the Mexican spoke English he had asked Deputy Calvert, who spoke fluent Spanish, to come in with them; he followed them in.
“What’s your name, son?” Joshua asked. When the boy did not respond, Cook slapped the table hard and in a low, harsh tone said, “The Sheriff asked you a question boy! You had better answer him or do you want us to have to do this the hard way?” Joshua glanced at Cook whose harsh tone surprised him. The Mexican looked up at them; Joshua could tell the boy was afraid. He then mumbled something in Spanish. The only thing Joshua understood was the word English. He turned to Calvert who told him the boy said he did not speak English. The boy did not look old enough to be the man they were looking for; at least according to witness reports and what Uncle Joe had told him.
“Ask the boy where he got the clothes he’s wearing,” Joshua told Calvert. Calvert did as he asked, and the boy answered him.
“What did he say?” Joshua asked, and then looked toward Deputy Cook who was pacing in a corner of the room; he could tell Cook was seething. He could understand his anger, but thought it a little much considering Cook had no direct ties to the victims.
“He said a man traded him these clothes for his clothes. He did not want to trade. He said the man was mean and he was afraid of him.”
Joshua knew something was not right about the scenario that was playing out in front of him. He had felt something evil when he came into the building. Suddenly, everyone in the room, even the Mexican boy began to laugh and point at him as if they had gotten something over on him. When he tried to speak, the words would not come. The more he struggled to speak, the harder it was to make a sound.
When Joshua finally forced a word out of his throat, he woke. He was in his office chair. His cigarette lay on the floor; it had burned a long dark line in the carpet.
“Damn, I must’ve fallen asleep,” he mumbled aloud. He shook his head trying to clear the fog out of his brain. What a dream, he thought to himself and wondered why he had dreamt such a dream to begin with.
He reached down, pulled the burnt cigarette from the carpet, and threw it in the garbage. By the clock, he could tell that he had slept for over an hour. He knew he was not getting enough rest, but this was the first time he had fallen asleep in the middle of the day in a very long time.
“I’m getting too damn old for this shit,” he mumbled as he stood and stretched. He figured the size of the room was what caused him to dose off to sleep; it was small.
Joshua was claustrophobic. He did not like confining spaces, nor did he like restrictions on his person. He opened the blinds and the windows before trying to look through the box again. Fresh air helps most things, but the exhaust fumes stifled the fresh air from the bay. He remembered then why he did not spend much time downtown. Joshua stacked the mug shot books on top of the box and then toted them to his cruiser. He’d had enough of the city for one day.
He drove down Church Street until it ended at the Church Street Cemetery where all the famous, as well as infamous, Mobilians were interred. Joshua turned right onto South Washington Avenue and took it all the way to Springhill Avenue, which would take him west to Moffett Road.
He did not breathe easy until after he passed under the I-65 Bridge; that was when the air began to smell fresher. He reached under the seat, pulled out his emergency bottle of whiskey and took a sip, just enough to calm his nerves. He shoved his Steppenwolf tape into the 8-track player and lit a cigarette. By the time ‘the Pusherman’ began to play, he was cruising through Semmes; he relaxed and sang along.
Seven minutes later the Wilmer Town Hall sign came into view. He pulled in to the café and ordered himself a plate to go. When he got home, he was surprised to see Emma’s baby
blue moped parked by his front porch. He had forgotten all about her being there when he left that morning.
“Now, I know I’m getting too damn old,” he mumbled. “I can’t remember something from morning to afternoon anymore,” he grumbled to himself.
When Joshua got out of his patrol car, he could smell food cooking; an aroma he was not use to smelling around his cabin. He looked down at the Blue Plate Special he held in his hands. He could put it in the refrigerator for later he reckoned. When he stepped up onto the back porch, he set down the plate lunch and out of habit, bent to dip dog food out of the container into Jack’s bowl, temporarily forgetting that Jack was dead. That was when he saw that the porch had been scrubbed clean; the bloodstains were gone from the swing as well as the floorboards beneath it. It smelt of pine tar and cleanliness, the way it had before Mrs. Moffett died.
11
When the Pain Comes
He could hear music playing inside the cabin. He was surprised to hear Emma listening to the song “War Pigs,” by the group Black Sabbath. He knew the Dixon brothers had listened to that type of music while they held her captive and tortured her. He would have thought that would be the last thing she would want to listen to, but everyone processed their emotions and worked through their problems differently. He reckoned that she had her own way of dealing with what happened.
The main door was standing open; the screen door was not locked. The heat from the wood stove greeted him as he stepped into the kitchen. The radio sat on the kitchen table by his bottle of whiskey. He turned the music down a couple of decibels, poured himself three fingers of liquor into a glass, drank it, and then went back out the door to get the box of records and mug books from the backseat of his patrol car. On his way in, he noticed the plate lunch he had set down and grabbed that as he went inside.
“I wasn’t expecting you for a while yet,” Emma said as she walked into the kitchen from the hallway. She was toting an armload of linens.
