Black River (Sean O'Brien Book 6) Read online

  Footprints.

  They were scarcely visible in the wet dew. But the prints were there. Leading from the porch to the far end of her driveway. Kim walked back inside her home, shutting the door with force, locking the bolt lock. She read the note: Dear, Miss Kim, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But this rose has more than a similar scent. Its changing color represents Confederate blood. It is a beautiful flower, as you are a beautiful woman.

  Kim stepped rearward a few feet, her back touching the wall in her living room. She stood there, breathing fast through her nostrils. Light from the sunrise poured through the glass pane window at the top of the door, striking the rose she held in her hand. Kim lowered her eyes, the rose suddenly looked inflamed, as if it was smoldering in her grip. She felt a chill, goose bumps popping up on her arms. For an eerie moment, Kim Davis thought she could see inside the petals, see the molecules moving, the lifeblood of dead soldiers flowing through the deep red petals.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, slowly releasing the air in her lungs. She whispered. “Focus. I’ve dealt with my share of freaks before…he’s just one more in the lineup. Now it’s time to get the hell out of my life.”

  Kim walked into her kitchen, tossed the rose and note on the table, picked up her phone and dialed Sean O’Brien. It went immediately to his voice-mail. At the beep, she said, “Sean, hey, it’s Kim. During the night, I received a special delivery. One single rose with a creepy note delivered to my mailbox. I don’t know for sure who did it. But I have an idea, and it could be related to the Civil War, just like that painting you’re trying to find for the old man. Honest to God, I hate to say this…but deep inside me, my gut is telling me that, somehow, they could be related. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

  The first thing O’Brien noticed was the inconspicuous, the silence. Joe Billie sat in the rear of the canoe, paddling so quietly that O’Brien looked back twice to see how he did it. Even in the aluminum canoe, Billie made no noise. No sound of the paddle against the canoe. No sound of the oar pushing against the river current. O’Brien wasn’t concerned about a stealth approach, dipping his paddle in the dark water, pulling straight back—the twirling whirlpools of water burping up a slight whoosh sound.

  They paddled for more than an hour up the St. Johns, the river becoming wider each mile. Max sat in the center of the canoe, her eyes following the flight of ospreys diving for fish. She watched as an alligator, half the length of the canoe, swam unhurried across the river. The big alligator’s eyes, nostrils, and part of its thick back breaking the dark surface. Max uttered a low growl when an emerald-green dragonfly alighted on one edge of the canoe.

  Joe Billie stopped paddling for a moment. He lifted his wide-brim hat off his head and ran one hand through his long, dark hair. The air was still, humidly rising like an invisible steam from the river and black water creeks that merged and joined the river’s passage to the sea. Billie smiled at Max and said, “That dragonfly is the best hunter out here. Much better than the gator.”

  “How so?” O’Brien asked.

  “The dragonfly has four wings. Each can move independently. It can fly in any direction, including upside down. The dragonfly attacks its prey from behind, in midflight. The insect it catches never is aware it was stalked until the dragonfly begins tearing the insect’s face off.”

  O’Brien squinted in the sun. “Let’s be glad they aren’t four feet long.”

  Billie grinned, putting his hat back on his head. “Ever notice how many women wear dragonfly jewelry?”

  “I’ve seen a few wear them as lapel pins.”

  “Those aren’t so bad, but when a woman wears dragonfly earrings, that’s when I try not to think how tasty an earlobe might be to a real dragonfly.”

  O’Brien laughed.

  At that moment, the dragonfly rotated its large saucer eyes and flew across the river, less than three feet directly above the alligator. One predator leaving a slight wake. The other leaving no trail. O’Brien said, “You have to wonder who’s been here the longest, the gator or the dragonfly. Both, no doubt, have a lineage to the dinosaurs.”

  Billie used his paddle to point. “See that jetty, the bluff with the big cypress tree?”

  “I see it.”

  “I believe that’s where the woman in the picture stood.”

  O’Brien slipped the photograph from the folder. He held it up and studied the shoreline. “Let’s take a look. We can walk around the area and look back over the river. That’ll give us—or at least me, a better perspective.”

  Billie dipped his paddle back into the water. O’Brien did the same. Both men were quiet the ten minutes it took them to cross the river. When the bow of the canoe slid under cypress limbs and nudged onto the riverbank, O’Brien jumped to the shore and pulled the canoe farther out of the current. Two white herons, stalking fish in the shallow water, took flight, beating their wings, sailing across the river. Max hopped from the canoe onto soft sand, Billie following. They walked up a slope, past a huge cypress tree, into a small clearing covered in lush ferns and wild red roses. Near the edge of the clearing hundreds of gnats hovered in flight above the ferns. The air smelled of wet moss, black mud, and fish.

  O’Brien held up the picture. He walked about thirty feet inland and then turned around, again holding the picture. “More than 160 years later…the woman in this photo stood right about here. The trees and foliage have changed, that cypress tree was small, but the river is basically the same. I can almost see her standing in front of us, her back to the river. Photography was new, so she might have been a little hesitant.” He glanced down at the woman in the photo, and then studied the landscape. “She may have been hesitant, but she didn’t look nervous. This spot is beautiful…and so was she. I wonder where she’s buried.”

  Billie shook his head. He watched two roseate spoonbills slowly walk around knotty brown cypress knees protruding from the river at the shoreline, the birds pink feathers a stark contrast to tea-colored water. “Sean, this most likely is the area where she stood alive…see the width and the bluff…but it wouldn’t mean she died here. Why are you interested in her grave?”

  “Just trying to put the puzzle pieces together.” O’Brien looked across the wide expanse of river, the forlorn call of a train whistle in the distance. “She may have taken the secret of the river to her grave. You mentioned something your ancestors spoke about on the river. You said it was bizarre, very dark. What was it?”

  Billie stood next to O’Brien and pointed to the far shoreline, almost a mile wide. “Over there. Pretty much opposite where we are standing. The elders spoke of a great sailing ship that went under the river. But it didn’t go all the way under. They watched, hidden in the bushes, as the soldiers sank it. The ones in the gray coats. They didn’t blow it up. They bored holes in the hull. ”

  “Confederates?”

  “Maybe. The ancestors said that night the river ran red with blood. The blue coats and gray coats were fighting all night. Gunboats everywhere. Smaller boats going down. Bombs exploding. Men screaming and swimming for their lives. Many were injured. They tried swimming to shore. In those days the gators were larger and a lot more of them in the river. The elders heard the crunch of bones, screams of men being eaten alive.”

  “Causalities of war that never made it into the history books.”

  Billie nodded. “Bad as all that was, the thing I remember hearing as a kid, spoken from the lips of a very old medicine man at the time, was what happened to one man captured by the blue coats.”

  “What?”

  “It might have had something to do with that huge sailboat that was sunk. The soldiers caught this guy and later that night they hung him from the highest mast that was sticking out of the water like a big cross. They say it looked like the soldier was crucified rather than just hung.”

  “How so?”

  “Because they used a hook, a boat anchor. Tied his hands behind his back and ran the hook through his
shoulder. Then let him hang from the tallest mast, swaying in the breeze, and dying. A foot over the river. An easy leap for the gators. It was ugly. The remaining band of Seminoles slipped further into the Ocala Forest to let the whites fight it out. The elders retold that story for generations.”

  O’Brien said nothing. He stared across the river.

  “Sean, I don’t know if what I told you is the secret of the river you heard mentioned, but I’m sure it’s something, once done, was so wicked it was kept quiet. Never discussed. Especially by the soldiers who did it. You think the woman in the photo was somehow connected to what went on here during the Civil War?”

  “Yes. Maybe her husband, brother, or father was one of the soldiers out there on the river the night your ancestors saw it running red with blood.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “I’m trying to decide. I mentioned the antique dealer in DeLand, the guy who had bought the painting made from the photo…he said a husband and wife bought it. Couldn’t remember their names until he saw a picture of the dead husband on the news. Shot. Apparently accidental…and on that movie set. Killed by a stray Minié ball from rifles that were supposed to be unloaded. Now that I know that the mystery painting, which was made from the original photo of the woman in this file folder, was owned by the Civil War re-enactor shot on a movie set…things are becoming more complex. Working crime, I never found irony or coincidence in motive.”

  Billie nodded and stepped closer to the large cypress tree. He studied the mud between the ferns at the base of the tree. “You used the word crime. But a moment ago you said the shooting was apparently accidental.”

  “That’s quoting initial police reports released on the news.”

  Billie squatted and touched the mud and sand with the tips of his fingers. “There’s some boot prints here. Unique prints. Look at the ridges—like some old-style combat boots.”

  O’Brien stepped closer and studied the prints. “Custom made. Probably by hand.”

  Billie nodded and pointed. “Looks like whoever stood here probably took a stick of gum from his pocket. Here’s the silver wrapper wadded. There’s some change…two pennies and a dime. Maybe this fell out of his pocket as he was getting his lighter. He crushed the stogie with the heel of his boot.” Billie used a small forked twig to lift something from the mud and sand. “And would you look here?” He stood, holding the object from the tip of the twig. “Sean, you mentioned that stuff about coincidence. What are the odds that we’d fine this?”

  O’Brien studied the object. “Very slim. Maybe that came from the war going on here 160 years ago. But most likely it came from the guy’s pocket when he dropped it. That’s a Minié ball. Could be fifty caliber. Makes a nasty exit wound. I’m betting the guy killed on the movie set, was killed by a Minié ball.”

  “Makes you wonder who was standing near this tree and why.” Billie set the Minié ball back where he found it.

  O’Brien looked at the picture in his hand and lifted his eyes to the river. “Maybe the secret is beginning to reveal some of itself. That Civil War re-enactor was killed at least twenty miles from here on a movie set in the Ocala National Forest. So why did this photo lead us to a spot? It’s miles from where the re-enactor died, but yet that Minié ball in the mud seems to make the place where he was killed appear a lot closer. Like you said, Joe, who was standing here…and what was he doing?”

  She tried to sound fearless. O’Brien could hear the alarm in Kim’s voice. On his way back to Ponce Marina, he called Kim, and she told him about finding the rose. After she read the note he said, “Those shoeprints in your front yard…did you happen to use your phone to snap a picture before the dew evaporated?”

  “No. Sean, I’m not a police investigator. My mind doesn’t work that way. I just want this guy to go away. The stuff he wrote on the card is bizarre.”

  “One line is from Shakespeare…‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ I’m thinking about the implication of what he wrote…the rose changing its color and the Confederate blood analogy. What rose changes colors?”

  “I don’t care! Maybe I can get a restraining order.”

  “Where are the rose and the note?”

  “On my kitchen table.”

  “Put the rose in a vase with water.”

  “Sean, are you crazy?”

  “It’s evidence. Keep it alive. Snap a picture of it. Bring the rose and the note to the marina—to Dave’s boat, Gibraltar. I’ll call to let him know we’re coming.”

  No one in the cemetery noticed the man. He kept his distance. Just another mourner visiting a grave in a remote section of the cemetery. But there were no graves in the nearby woods. He wore dark glasses and a Scottish tweed hat, his features vague in the distance from the gravesite where Jack Jordan was about to be laid to rest.

  Laura Jordan sat in one of the metal folding chairs, her daughter next to her, dozens of friends and family sitting or standing near the open grave. The humid air smelled of flowers and fresh dirt. A green canvas awning, held in place by white metal poles, cast a section of the mourners in shade. Most wore sunglasses. Some wiped away tears trickling from behind the dark lens. A few used hand-fans to circulate the steamy air around their faces.

  They listened to a tall, thin minister with a ruddy face and hair to match speak eloquently of Jack Jordan, the difference Jack had made in his community, his love of family, country, history, and God. “For those fortunate enough to have spent time with Jack, you couldn’t but help but feel good in Jack’s presence,” said Reverend Simmons, glancing from the crowd of about one-hundred, looking up to the blue sky for a beat, then lowering his eyes to the flock. He nodded and smiled, almost like he remembered a joke he wanted to tell. “His positive spirit was infectious, giving anybody who knew him a brighter day. Jack would rather be off on his next adventure, searching for lost history. Always curious. Always probing for lost puzzle pieces. As much as he loved history, it was the present and future with his family that he treasured the most. Laura and little Paula were his light in the night.”

  Laura blinked back tears and held her daughter’s tiny hand. She glanced across the cemetery, her fragmented thoughts swirling in variegated images of the last days she’d spent with her husband. A movement in the neighboring pine trees caught her eye. A man stood in the thicket and watched the funeral. Laura wondered if he was one of their friends. Maybe someone who’d rather grieve alone, a friend who preferred to keep in the background. But all of their mutual friends were here. She wasn’t sure, but it appeared he lifted a pair of binoculars to his face. The Reverend Simmons eulogy was now a faint soundtrack in her mind, lost in the warble of blue jay calls, soft sobbing, and the sound of a horse trailer passing by on the country road.

  Laura swallowed dryly, glanced down at her daughter. Five seconds later, when she looked back toward the woods, the man was gone.

  After forty-five minutes, most of the mourners had left the cemetery. Less than a dozen cars remained in the parking lot lined with large moss-draped oak and palm trees. Cardinals and wrens competed in song with choral chirrups and warbles. Laura and little Paula walked Jack Jordan’s mother and father to their parked Lincoln. There were long hugs and warm tears as they said their goodbyes, Laura’s mother-in-law promising that she would stop over tomorrow to visit and bring some more pictures of Jack when he was a boy. Laura nodded, thanked them, and then took Paula by the hand, walking across the hot cemetery parking lot to their car.

  A shiny new Ford pickup truck was in the space beside Laura’s car. A man wearing dark clothes, approached the truck, coming from the direction of Jack’s grave. Cory Nelson smiled at Laura and Paula. Nelson, tall, broad shoulders, military haircut, removed his sunglasses and said, “I was just giving Jack my final farewell. How you holding up now, Laura?”

  Laura glanced down at Paula. “It’s going to be hard without him.”

  Nelson nodded. “I’m always here for you and Paula. I never thought I’d
see a day like this. Jack was just…he was just larger than this life in everything he did.” Nelson leaned down and hugged Paula. “You take care of your mama, okay”

  “Okay, Uncle Cory.”

  He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers and stood just as a car engine started. It was at the far side of the lot. The last car, a gray BMW sedan, windows tinted. Laura watched Nelson’s eyes following the car. There was the no hint of recognition. Laura turned to look at who was leaving. She could barely make out a Scottish tweed hat pulled low. The driver wore dark glasses and didn’t slow or wave. Windows up. Identity sealed. She thought about the man she’d spotted at the edge of the woods during Jack’s service. She looked up at Nelson. “Who was that?”

  He placed his sunglasses back on. “I couldn’t make out his face. Maybe someone Jack knew.” Laura could see the reflection of the car in the curved lens of the dark glasses, the automobile extending like a stretch limousine, somehow strange and incompatible with the lyrical sounds of birdsong in the oak trees. Over Nelson’s wide shoulders, high above a distant field of wildflowers, Laura saw black carrion birds riding the air currents, circling the smell of death below the deep blue sky.

  Max scampered down L dock a few feet in front of O’Brien. He carried the file folder in one hand. He paused to watch a forty-three-foot Viking inch into its slip, diesels gurgling in the marina water, two laughing gulls flying above the boat. A man in wrap-around mirrored sunglasses stood at the wheel adjusting the bow thrusters. Another man in swim shorts and a Miami Dolphins tank top stepped to the rear of the transom, tossing a line to a waiting boat owner standing on the dock. Max barked once, welcoming the fishermen’s return, and then trotting toward the end of the pier, head held high.

  Kim was already there, sitting at a round table on the cockpit with Dave and Nick. O’Brien could see the rose in the center of the table, paper plates, cheese and a bottle of wine. Dave looked up and said, “Sean and Miss Max, welcome aboard. Kim brought the floral arrangement. Nick delivered a half-bushel of stone crab claws on ice. And I’m breaking out a couple of bottles of chardonnay I’ve been chilling.”