by Tom Lowe
He set the pistol on the dresser, shotgun on the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and called Caroline Harper. “Jesse, where are you?”
“Back at this fleabag motel. Who would have thought this little town had hookers crawlin’ out like roaches?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“A little.”
“There’s no such thing as a little for someone who has a problem with alcohol.”
“Maybe, Caroline…just maybe the problem isn’t with alcohol…maybe the problem’s with me. If I could fix me, and stay fixed, I could follow the yellow brick road. Maybe ol’ Oz has a heart for me, too.”
“Jesse, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with your heart. You can get help. I’ll help you if you let me.”
“I drove out to the old school. Don’t know why, really. Just started drivin’ and next thing I know, there it is—like some damn ghost town. I parked across the road and just sat in my car, lookin’ through the fence and razor wire to the buildings and the old water tower. The place reminded me so much of the pictures and old film of the World War Two death camps. Something snapped, Caroline.”
“What happened?”
“I got outta my car and crossed the street right up to the damn fence. And then I walked along the fence. Every time I stopped to touch it, I thought electricity was shooting through my fingertips, up my arm, and shocking my brain. When I came upon a locked gate at the south end, I pulled my pistol and shot the lock off the gate.”
“Jesse, you’re out of jail on bond. They’ll throw you back in and forget you exist.”
“I picked up the lock and stopped by the gate at the main entrance. Johnny Hines was there in his neatly pressed rent-a-cop uniform.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I found the lock that way, all shot to hell and back. I told him to deliver it to Hack Johnson with a warning—advising him to lock his doors and windows ‘cause something bad is comin’ to visit him.”
“Jesse, I know how angry you are coming back here, the state about to turn the school into a neighborhood with houses and tree-lined sidewalks, but you’re letting your anger drive you to do things that will land you in prison, or worse. If you can find it in your heart to forgive those men who did those horrible things to you, then you no longer allow them to hold a dark place in your heart. You free yourself by not being chained to their evil.”
Jesse said nothing, sliding the blanket off his shotgun, cradling it across his lap.
“Are you there, Jesse?”
He looked out the window in the darkened room, moonlight coming through the slats in the blinds. “I’m here.”
“Have you spoken with Sean?”
“Not since I was locked up when he came to the jail before you made bond. I have to find Jeremiah, and I need to do it alone. That’s the only way he’ll talk, and maybe now he won’t say anything. I don’t know. I messed things up and now I have to get right with him to gain his trust. Sean can take it from there. Bring in the fuckin’ troops at that point. Give Jeremiah a safe hideout, and we’ll get through this.”
“Sean and the FBI found a fingerprint embedded on the brass part of the shotgun shell Curtis found the night they killed Andy. Jesse, they’re trying to locate a match.”
“I bet I know where to find it.”
“Let them find it, okay. Sean has spoken with Jeremiah, too. So it’s not like Jeremiah doesn’t know him.”
“I’ve always cleaned up my own mess. I have a history with Jeremiah, just like I do with you. We all came from the same dirt-poor families. In a strange kinda way, we tried to take care of one another. I want to do that today for you, okay. It’s not just about Andy, it’s about you.”
She was silent for a moment. “Thank you, Jesse. That’s very kind.”
He watched a shadow move outside in front of his window. It looked like the profile of the woman, the prostitute who was doing her thing two rooms down.
“I mean it, Caroline. To bring closure to you is what I think the man upstairs wants me to do. Look, I broke a bottle of vodka across a fence post at the school. The bottle was almost full. I didn’t need it. Somehow, that released something disgusting inside me. I don’t want to drink, don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. I’m gonna take a quick shower, and if you haven’t eaten, I’d like to buy you dinner.”
There was a knock at his door.
Jesse stood from sitting on the bed. Caroline said, “Are you there.”
He spoke in a whisper. “Yeah, somebody’s at my door.”
“Don’t answer it.”
“I think it’s the prostitute. I’ll get rid of her.”
Another knock. Slightly louder. “Special delivery for anybody lookin’ to get lucky.” It was a woman’s sultry voice. Jesse set the shotgun down on the bed and walked to the door.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Lana Halley silently read Curtis Garwood’s two letters, her eyes moving across the page. We sat in a back booth in an Applebee’s Restaurant. She looked up at me. “This is so sad. The post-traumatic stress that men like Curtis, Jesse Taylor, and others have suffered with and are probably still suffering from is appalling. And this has nothing to do with corporal punishment in Florida before the state banned it. This kind of abuse has everything to do with torture, pedophilia and murder.”
“Those crimes are horrible by their very nature, but morally bad behavior is compounded by allowing it to continue. And that’s what happened even when allegations of repulsive crimes were brought to the attention of people who oversaw the state’s reform schools.”
Lana lifted her cup of coffee with both hands, looking out the window, a light rain falling across the parking lot. She turned back to me. “I’m not sure what to do, Sean, and that sounds so damn weird coming from me. That’s only because I use the letter of the law and the tools the office has to prove and convict those guilty of crimes. But when the crimes are almost historical in time and when my boss appears complicit, I have to become a spy to do my job in a covert world. That’s not where I’m comfortable.”
“The facts, the physical evidence—once it’s gathered, will level the playing field for you somewhat. Who can you trust?”
“There is one assistant SA that I know I can trust. His name is Alex Bell. I used to trust Detective Lee, helped to prosecute at lease a dozen of his cases. You think this senior deputy you mentioned, Ivan Parker, is one of the good guys?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She inhaled deeply and sat straighter in the booth. “Okay, let’s do this. Parker needs to find a matching print. Maybe it’s from the patriarch of the Johnson family. Maybe it’s someone else. We won’t be able to drag an old man into an investigator’s office for fingerprinting. But, if I can get a court order, Deputy Parker can take the prints in the field. The question boils down to probable cause, and that’s not a half-century old print on a shell casing when we don’t have a body.”
“The double barrel shotgun I told you about would narrow the gap.”
“If it was the gun that fired the deadly blast, that would be a chess match movement that’s hard to counter.”
I reached into my shirt pocket and lifted out a small Ziploc bag, the piece of buckshot inside.
Lana leaned closer. “What’s that?”
“Buckshot, double aught, to be exact. Fired from a 12 gauge. I dug it out of an old oak tree on the reform school property. It’s the tree Curtis describes in his letters. If the gun in the back of the Johnson brother’s pickup truck is the 12 gauge, bingo. And if we find Andy Cope’s grave, locate his body on that property, and if forensics testing uncovers buckshot like this in his body…our perp is nailed.”
“That’s a whole lot of ifs, Sean.”
“They’re all connected problems. All we have to do is solve one, then another, and suddenly we’re about to cause a house of cards to fall flat.”
“You have to promise me something?”
“What’s that?”
“You can’
t go all cowboy on me. You can’t go in places with guns blazing and people dropping like flies. There has to be a system, if not, why have a system? No vigilante shit, okay O’Brien?”
“In this case, the criminal justice system failed, it failed in a lot of ways. I’m always willing to work within the system as long as it’s working. But when there are criminals within the justice structure calling the shots, I’m forced to change strategy.”
“Just no body count on my watch. What do you do next?”
“You need to take evidence to a grand jury. I need to go find it for you.”
Jesse Taylor stood next to his room door for a second, listening to the rain falling in the parking lot. He held his phone to one ear.
Caroline said, “Are you okay, Jesse? What’s going on?”
“I’m gonna tell her to go away.” Jesse looked through a slat in the blinds. It was the same prostitute he’d seen earlier. He couldn’t see anyone else. “Hold on Caroline.” He set the phone down on a table and slid the chain lock off the door. The woman looked younger up close, her red lipstick smeared, sheen of perspiration on her breasts.
She smiled and said, “Saw you sitting in your car. You looked a little lonely. Thought I could cheer you up. A lollipop is only fifty bucks.”
Jesse nodded. “If you saw me sittin’ in my car, you didn’t see me go into this room. How’d you know this was my room?”
The shrubs moved. Jesse could feel no wind blowing. Her smile dropped, eyes dead. “Fuck you, old man.” She bolted away.
Before Jesse could slam the door, two men pushed through the shrubbery, wearing ski masks, black T-shirts, jeans. They attacked. Jesse managed to connect his right fist into the side of one man’s head. The larger of the two, more than 250 pounds, rushing Jesse like a linebacker, slamming him against the dresser, the TV falling to the floor.
The blow knocked the air from Jesse’s lungs. The big man drew back and smashed his fist into Jesse’s mouth, the hard punch loosening teeth, blood filling into his mouth. He lifted Jesse to his feet, the second man pounding Jesse’s stomach, cracking ribs. Then the smaller man drove his left fist into Jesse’s forehead, opening a deep cut, a flap of skin dangling over Jesse’s eyebrow, blood pouring down his face.
The big man backhanded Jesse, knocking him across the bed. He picked up the shotgun, pressing the end of the barrel into Jesse’s nose. He said, “Listen up, cocksucker. This is your last chance. You clean your sorry ass up and drive outta here before first light. Most of us voted to kill you. You got real damn lucky on this draw.”
The second man pulled the padlock from his pocket. He ignited a lighter, butane gas hissing in the blue flame. He held the flame to the center of the lock, moving the fire around the perimeter of the bullet hole. The man’s eyes were wide, animated through the opening in the ski mask. He held the lock by the curved shackle, stepping next to Jesse, grabbing his wrist and pressing the hot side into Jesse’s forearm. Smoke rose from singeing hair and burning flesh.
Jesse clinched his teeth, closed his eyes, refusing to scream.
The man lifted the lock, satisfied with his work. “Now that’s a tat. It’s really a brand. We branded your ass like an animal. Looks like a square doughnut.” He laughed.
The two men backed up a few feet. The big man emptied the shells from the shotgun, scooping them up and setting the gun against a wall. They left leaving the door wide open. Jesse tried to stand, tried to fight the darkness descending, tried to keep the bile from boiling out of his stomach.
He could hear the wail of sirens in the distance. Caroline must have called 911, he thought. He attempted to sit up, looking out the open door to the parking lot. Through the blood running into one eye, through the smoke in the room from his scorched flesh, he saw the same pickup truck. A man in silhouette sat behind the wheel, the orange glow of a burning cigarette like a distant planet in the dark universe.
Jesse leaned back across the bed, the stink of his burnt skin and hair hanging in the air, the room filled with the coppery smell of blood—the odor of a slaughterhouse.
FIFTY-EIGHT
I was paying the check at Applebee’s when Caroline Harper called. “Sean! Jesse’s been hurt! I don’t know how bad he’s injured. They came in his room and beat him. I heard it on the phone. I called 9-1-1. Dear God it was awful. He’s at the hospital—”
“Caroline, slow down a second. What happened?”
“I was talking to Jesse on the phone. He was in his room at the Heartland Motel, and men burst in and attacked him. They were beating him horribly. I hung up and called for help. I don’t know if they found the men who did it to him.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll call you when I know something.” I disconnected and turned to Lana. “That was Caroline Harper. She said Jesse Taylor was attacked in his motel room at the Heartland Motel.”
“That’s in the city limits. Is he alive?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to the hospital.”
“Please call me, okay? Let me know.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you, Sean.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me.”
I drove toward Marianna, used my phone to find the address to the Jackson County Hospital, but decided to head toward the motel first. There would be little I could do immediately at the hospital. Maybe there was something I could discover at the crime scene, assuming I could get access to it. A fight, unless it was a stabbing or resulted in a homicide, often didn’t warrant an investigation beyond interviewing witnesses, if there were any.
Driving to the motel, I thought about how, in the moment of trauma, a wrong decision can have a negative domino effect. As a detective, I used to work backward to find the source, the thing that caused the chain of events, looking for the origin, the first blow of kinetic damage. This would sometimes lead me to arrive before the last domino fell—before a serial killer took his next victim. A two-by-one-inch domino can knock down a domino fifty stories high if the moving energy and mass builds between the sequences of falls—the order of events. Lynch mobs can be the result of one person pressing the collective buttons of like-minded people causing a human tsunami to roll over reason.
Jesse was his own worst enemy, pushing the wrong buttons.
I spotted a Marianna police car in the parking lot of the Heartland Motel, an officer in the driver’s seat speaking into the mic. A second officer stood near the open door to a room, notepad in hand, interviewing a guy in a white short-sleeve shirt and a red polka-dot tie. I assumed he was the night clerk. A man in a bathrobe stood outside one room, smoking. The other guests were either oblivious to the fight or had gone back in their rooms and bolted their thin doors. I parked in a far corner of the lot and followed the long walkway in front of the rooms.
I could smell burning marijuana coming from the threshold of one room, the throb of country music behind the door. When I approached the officer, he’d just finished his interview with the skinny man wearing the wide polka dot tie. The man flashed a nervous smile at me, walking back toward the office, a key ring hanging from his belt and clanking like a sidewalk Santa.
The officer was in his early twenties, rangy jaws, and thick black eyebrows. He closed his notepad as I approached, the clipped verbiage and static of a police radio on his belt. He stood square to me, feet about eighteen inches apart. I smiled and said, “How’s Jesse?”
“How do you know him?”
“We’re friends. A mutual friend called me. She was on the phone with Jesse when it happened.”
He started to reach for his notepad, hesitated to appraise my intentions. “What’s this friend’s name?”
“Caroline Harper. I’ll give you her number. She called you guys when she heard the fight going down. I used to work homicide at Miami-Dade. Fights, especially domestic, often resulted in homicide.” I could see him relax a notch. He reached for his notepad and pen. I asked, “How was Jesse when you found him?”
“Paramedics got here
first. They had him stabilized. A witness said two men in ski masks jumped in a black or dark blue truck and peeled out of the parking lot. What’s your name?”
“Sean O’Brien. The description of the getaway vehicle matches about half the trucks in Jackson County. Does it appear to be a robbery?”
“The room is trashed, and that’s probably because of the fight. When the hospital releases him, he’ll have to tell us if anything is missing. His wallet was still on him when they rolled Mr. Taylor out of here. There’s a shotgun and pistol in there. It’s odd why he wouldn’t use one of the firearms to defend himself.”
“That often means the victim knew the perp or perps. Or Jesse might have been surprised and jumped. Are you stringing up crime scene tape?”
“No. The manager is keeping the door locked. He’s keeping the help away in the morning. Apparently Mr. Taylor prepaid for another few days, so the manager is leaving it like we found it.”
“Mind if I take a quick look? I might be able to tell if something’s missing.”
He glanced toward the lot and the squad car, the dome light on, his partner filling out a report. “Since you were a cop, I’ll extend a professional courtesy, but I’ll go in with you. Don’t touch anything. If, for some reason, your friend doesn’t make it, this does become a crime scene.”
“I understand.” I walked into the room, the officer close behind me. The smell of alcohol and charred skin clung to the stained carpet and bedding. Blood had soaked into the sheets on the bed. “Did you notice whether he’d been burned?”
“We smelled something. Wasn’t sure what the hell it was. Burned skin, maybe. There was nothing obvious. He had blood all over his shirt. I could only see lacerations to the face. Knuckles on his right hand looked swollen. We’ll check with him at the hospital for further damages and to see if he wants to press charges. But with the perps wearing ski masks, that’s unlikely.”
