Black Jack Point (3 page)

Whit grabbed his forensics kit and followed the young deputy down past the manicured lawn, through the thick growths of wildflowers
and the high grass. Ahead was the wide bowl of St Leo Bay; Black Jack Point occupied the northernmost stretch of the bay’s
reach, with Port Leo south and at the middle of the curve. The bay breeze shuffled the hot, sticky air, and on the wind Whit
heard the murmuring voices of the deputies, of the Department of Public Safety crime scene crew. For a moment, the crowd out
of sight, the voices sounded ghostly, even in the eye-aching sunlight. He remembered being here as a boy, Patch telling the
local kids he let fish and swim off his little dock,
You know, Black Jack Point’s haunted by old Black Jack himself, and by pirates and Indians and settlers that got scalped,
got their throats cut. Be sure nothin’ don’t grab your foot while you’re swimmin’. It won’t let go. They like a young soul
best. Taste goooood.
And the safe thrill of being scared and being fairly sure that Patch was joking. Mostly sure.

They hadn’t moved the bodies. The hole was deep, nearly six feet, the soil threaded with torn grass. He knelt at its edge
while the DPS crime scene tech snapped off photos. The group was silent now, the buzz of the mosquitoes the loudest sound.

Patch Gilbert lay on his back, arms spread, dirt still covering most of him, his mouth open wide and loam pooling between
broken teeth. His face was ruined, beaten into pulp, a plane of graying hair askew on his scalp, little broken tiles of bone
peeking through his forehead. Thuy Linh Tran lay atop one of Patch’s arms,
as though he cradled her in a comforting hug. Dirt was scattered on her bloodshot irises. A bullet hole marred her forehead.

Whit slipped plastic bags over his shoes, carefully stepped down into the grave, touched Patch’s throat, then Thuy’s. He wrote
down the time on his death scene form. For the record. Suddenly the promise of tears burned at the back of his eyes and he
wanted to cry for this funny, good old man and this generous woman, but he didn’t want to lose it. Not in front of this crowd.
He felt David’s stare against his back.

Whit stepped back out of the grave. He began his work of detailing the scene for the inquest report and the autopsy orders,
keeping his eyes on the papers. It was easier that way.

David knelt down by Whit. ‘I think the man got hit with a shovel. Hard. Repeatedly. Probably even after he was dead. Wonder
why the killer shot her, though. Maybe broke the shovel on him, couldn’t use it on her.’

‘Patch would have fought hard,’ Whit said.

‘He’s an old man,’ David said.

With about ten times the heart and guts you’ll ever have,
Whit thought.

‘Makes me think of a case I read,’ David said. ‘Up in Oklahoma, ’65 or ’66, old couple got killed while out walking, buried
right off a hiking trail …’

Whit tuned him out. David loved to recite old police cases from true crime collections as though they held all the beauty
of love sonnets. All the details and none of the context. Whit bit his lip. When David paused for breath, Whit asked one of
the techs to take extra photos of their faces, of their wounds. The techs did, and measured the depth of the bodies, carefully
clearing more dirt back from the corpses when one of them gave a little cry of shock.

‘What is that?’ The tech stepped back from where Thuy’s feet still lay partly buried and Whit saw two curves of brownish skull
exposed.

‘Look here,’ another tech said, clearing away dirt next to Patch’s knee. A crooked brown bone of finger, bent as if to beckon.
‘Old bone. Real old.’

‘Don’t touch it,’ Whit said. ‘stop the digging.’

‘Why?’ David asked.

‘There’s other remains buried with them. I got to call the guy in San Marcos. This closes down everything.’

‘We’re not stopping. This is a serious crime scene—’ David began.

‘They talked about site analysis in JP training. You have to stop the dig.’

David took a breath of infinite patience. ‘What guy in San Marcos?’

‘Forensic anthropologist. I don’t remember his name. But he’s got to check out the site. They must’ve gotten buried in old
unmarked graves.’ Whit wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘You can’t move ’em until the FA’s here with his team.’

‘Judge Mosley’s right, David,’ one of the DPS techs said quietly. ‘He’s talking about Dr Parker. He can be here in forty minutes.
DPS sticks him on a chopper and rushes him down here.’

‘Fine,’ David said. His lips went thin as wire. ‘Get this guy here, then, quick.’ He turned away from Whit to confer with
the DPS team.

Whit took out the notepad he used at death scenes, jotted down descriptions of the bodies, talked in a low voice with the
DPS photographer while she snapped footage, told her what angles would help him at inquest. He tried not to look at Patch
and Thuy’s broken faces.

Instead, he kept glancing at the old, worn bones.

*

The forensic anthropologist – a banty rooster of a man named Parker, a fortyish fellow with a shaved bald head and sporting
a Yankees cap – arrived by DPS chopper within an hour, accompanied by a team of graduate students armed with dental picks,
brushes, trowels, string and stakes.

Whit left them to their work, spoke words of comfort to Lucy and her cousin Suzanne and the Tran family, all waiting up at
Patch’s house. He came back down as the afternoon began to melt into night. The Port Leo fire department set up lights so
the work could continue. Parker and David talked a lot, David losing patience and getting it back. The team sifted dirt from
the site, carefully, and found more bone fragments, little pebbles of teeth. When Parker got up from his digging to gulp a
cup of water, Whit cornered him at the jug on the back of a DPS truck.

‘So what is this looking like, Dr Parker?'

‘Off the record, Judge?'

‘Yeah.’

‘Because I don’t like to commit before all the data’s gathered.’

‘So don’t commit.’

‘We haven’t removed bones yet but there’s at least two skeletons in there, more likely three. They’re badly disarticulated
– they’re not laid out as if they were buried and then not disturbed again.’

‘Why would the new bodies be on top of them?’

‘I think these old bones were dug up, dumped back in the dirt, and your murder victims dumped on top of them. The whole site’s
a jumble. I mean, bones that look that old, you expect it. Ground settles over time, bodies sink. But these seem, well, shuffled.’

‘Anything other than the bones?’

‘Latches. Nails. Locks. A few slivers of wood.’

‘Locks?’

‘Locks.’

That was freaky, Whit thought. Why would you put a lock on a coffin? ‘You said wood. From a casket?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Wouldn’t a casket have kept the bones better organized?’

‘Apparently not these.’ Parker finished his water. ‘Don’t think they were buried in caskets. Coffins would have mostly rotted
away by now, anyway.’

‘These bones … how old are they?’

‘The wetter the soil, the browner the bones get over time. These are pretty brown. We’ll assemble the skeletons as much as
we can tonight and tomorrow. We’ll probably remove the bones in the next few hours, once we’ve cleaned away the dirt, gotten
samples, sifted, photographed and mapped the site. If we can identify the make of the nails and latches, that can help us
date the bones.’

‘The family of the murder victims are friends of mine,’ Whit said. ‘We’d like to get Mr Gilbert’s and Mrs Tran’s bodies out
of there as soon as possible.’

‘We’ll hurry,’ Parker said, a softening in his tone for the first time. ‘You’ll need to transfer the old bones to my custody
for examination, Judge.’ Whit nodded and Parker headed back to the dig, flush with light from the fire trucks.

The diggers worked tenderly, quietly around Patch and Thuy, as though the couple slept and the techs were gentle spirits,
come to grant them sweet dreams. Finally they were done. The bodies were lifted out slowly, placed on clean sheets. Whit filled
out an authorization for autopsy, had David countersign it. He watched the bodies taken away by the mortuary service for autopsy
in nearby Nueces County. The service people carried the bodies
carefully on their stretchers. The forensic anthropologists continued their work around the old bones, industrious and steady
as ants.

By midnight, Wednesday fading into Thursday, the FA team had put an astonishing assortment of bones – including three human
skulls, brown as walnuts – into paper bags. Whit signed over the bones to Parker and the FA team headed to Corpus Christi
to sleep and finish their work. Lucy slept upstairs. Whit had showered and lain with her until she dozed off, then come down
to Patch Gilbert’s empty den at two a.m., unable to sleep. He watched an old
Perry Mason
rerun. Perry’s was a perfect world for you, one where justice ticked along sure as clockwork.

Whit let the TV mumble along and sat in front of the bay window. He cracked open the window so he could hear the murmur of
St Leo Bay. The night was dark, the moon shy behind clouds, the fireflies glowing and vanishing like candle wick embers, just
snuffed out between wet finger and thumb. The fire truck lights still blazed over the now-canopied site, an officer standing
watch.

The old house was full of the old man, his laughter, his teasing. On a side table there was a bottle of Glenfiddich that Whit
had seen Patch open only last week. He found two shot glasses and picked up the bottle. He poured the shots of fine Scotch,
one for him, one for Patch.

He didn’t touch either drink for a long moment, then downed both. The Scotch burned his throat a little, made his eyes water.
Closest to tears he would get.

Patch. Thuy. Promise you. Whoever did this won’t walk.

He went to bed, curling next to Lucy, shielding her from the night.

‘Patch Gilbert wanted a hundred thousand dollars. Raised real quietly,’ Gooch said. ‘You know how I feel about publicity.
I’m not talking to the police, but I’ll tell you about the deal.’

Gooch opened a Shiner Bock. He and Whit watched the noontime sun play along the ripples in the Golden Gulf Marina. The summer
live-aboards were gearing up for lunch, the inescapable Jimmy Buffett tunes drifting across the waters, lunchtime beers popping
open, hung-over throats clearing and gearing up for another half day of lazy life.

‘Am I supposed to be grateful?’ Whit pulled a soda from the cooler. ‘Goddamn it, Gooch, don’t you do this to me.’ Thursday
morning court had been full – traffic and small claims – but Whit was distracted, bug-eyed from lack of sleep and anxious
to hear back from Parker on the bones and the Nueces County ME’s office on the autopsies.

‘I don’t know that I was the first or only person Patch approached.’ Gooch leaned back in the lounge chair, took off his T-shirt
in the bright sun, closed his eyes. His chest was big and broad, dark with tan but white where the scars lay. One, small and
blossom-shaped, looked like a bullet wound, another like a healed slash across his abdomen, another like a long-ago stab in
his shoulder. He never talked about the scars.

‘Why would he ask you for a hundred thousand bucks?’

Gooch opened one eye to stare at Whit.

It was strange to have your closest friend stay an
enigma. Gooch could stare down hired killers, practice the intricacies of hand-to-hand combat, and make troublesome people
disappear into federal custody. He was a fishing guide, captain of a premier boat named
Don’t Ask,
and yet something far more. He was one of the ugliest men Whit had ever seen, with a face a mother might reluctantly love,
but he had charisma that drew certain people like moths to a flame. Gooch had saved Whit’s life several months ago, disposing
of drug dealers with all the ease of a priest dealing with tardy schoolgirls. And Gooch had made it clear that explanations
as to the
how
would not be forthcoming. Whit had sensed that Gooch waited then, to see if the friendship would survive, if Whit would respect
his obsessive need for privacy. Whit was glad to be alive and pretended like nothing had happened.

‘People consider me resourceful and discreet,’ Gooch said.

‘Ah,’ Whit said. A heavy sailboat crawled into the marina; on it, three women in bikinis turned their faces and flat bellies
toward the warm sun. Whit watched them lean against the rails in glorious idleness.

‘So what level of detail you want?' Gooch asked.

‘Go deep.’

‘Fine. Patch was a steady client of mine. Took him and some of his old army friends fishing. He knows I know a lot of people.
People with money. So he asked me if I knew of folks who might be interested in a very quiet, private investment. People who
could part with a hundred thou and not blink.’

‘Patch could have sold some of his land if he needed money.’

‘Apparently not an option he considered,’ Gooch said. ‘I told him I would need to know more. He said he’d tell me more if
I got an investor or two willing to talk to him.
I told him I couldn’t waste the time of wealthy people, that I had to consider these folks were my clients and if this was
some half-assed scheme it was going to make me look bad. Shit, maybe he was selling life-size Chia pets, you know?’

‘He gave you no indication why he needed this money?’

‘Just asked me to line up some multimillionaires. Which, frankly, represents a very narrow slice of my client pie.’

‘And you think he approached other people?’

‘He struck me as being in a hurry. I asked why he couldn’t go to a bank; he said he wanted it quiet. But fast. I believe the
term he used was “hot and big enough to blow this town off the map”.’

‘So he wanted no attention now, but whatever he was working on would create a great deal of attention later.’

Gooch sipped beer. ‘So there’s your anonymous tip. Was it good for you?’

‘Maybe he was blowing smoke, Gooch. Maybe he owed someone a big chunk of money. Someone decided to collect.’

‘Possibility,’ Gooch said. ‘You knew him better than I did. Was he a gambler?’

‘No. He was always just the nice guy who’d let you swim and fish off his land. I’ve never heard of him having debt problems.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘Patch? He bragged about taking Viagra. He was incapable of being embarrassed.’

‘An old man bragging about medicated hard-ons is one thing,’ Gooch said. ‘Maybe he had a deep dark secret that had finally
grabbed him by the throat. Or someone close to him was in trouble and needed the money.’

‘Not Lucy.’

Gooch clicked tongue against teeth, cleared his throat, watched a little red sailboat putter out into the bay.

‘Don’t start dumping on Lucy again,’ Whit said.

‘Lucy is lovely. Charming in a giddy, goofy sort of way. Impeccable ass.’

‘But.’

‘I’m not sure she can read a book, much less a mind on the other end of a phone.’

‘Why can’t you like my girlfriend?’

‘I don’t want to see you conned.’

‘She’s not a con artist.’

‘Yes, telephone psychics are known for their high ethical standards.’

‘You haven’t really gotten to know her.’

‘That’s true. If you’re happy, I’m happy. Fucking deliriously happy.’

Whit stood. ‘I’ve got to get back to the courthouse. I’ll let David know what you said.’

‘But you’ll keep my name out of it?’

‘Yes. I’ll try.’

‘Patch wasn’t a quitter,’ Gooch said. ‘I’d look hard to see if he found that money someplace else.’

‘Found his wallet and her purse.’ David sat in the one straight-back chair in Whit’s small office. It was shortly after one
o’clock on Thursday afternoon. ‘Dumped in beneath the bodies. Cash and credit cards gone.’

‘So this was a robbery gone wrong?’

‘Burglary, Judge,’ David said. ‘You know the difference.’

Maybe it was a robbery turned burglary, or the other way around, but Whit decided to be rock-solid polite. Act like a judge
for once. Let David be acid; acid was just asshole with a different final syllable. ‘A burglary, then?’

‘Yeah. Tran and Gilbert cut short their stay in Port A,
head home two days earlier than expected, catch a perp breaking into the house. Perp kills them both, buries them on a remote
stretch of the Point where they’re not likely to be found for a while.’

‘The killer laid Patch’s head open. There’s no sign of that attack having taken place in the house,’ Whit said.

‘Then it didn’t. Maybe they took the old folks from the house, hauled them down into the oaks, killed them there.’

‘They. Sounds like more than one person. And for all this effort they got a little cash and silver? They don’t bother with
the electronics?’

‘Look, Your Honor. You spend a little more time in this business, you’ll see things usually aren’t too complicated. Criminals
are dumb as stumps. If they were smart they could go be investment bankers. Or judges.’ A hint of amusement surfaced in his
tone. ‘Killer or killers got surprised, they kill the old folks, they take off.’

‘Why bury the bodies? Why not just dump them in the bay?’

‘They’d float up faster.’

‘It’s quicker to tie weights to someone’s feet than to dig down deep enough to hit old graves,’ Whit said. He started to mention
the anonymous tip from Gooch, but David raised a hand.

‘Listen, Judge. You pretty sure you gonna rule these deaths as homicides?’

‘Of course, yes.’

‘Then that’s all you need to worry about, Your Honor. Anything beyond that, you‘re stepping on my toes. And my toes, they’re
real tender. They get hurt real easy. And my feet hurt, I’m in a bad mood. We’re clear?’

‘Yes,’ Whit said. ‘I’m going in to Corpus, to meet with the ME and with Parker and his people around four. They have to sign
custody of the old bones back to me.
You want to go?’ He’d mention the tip then, let David squirm the whole thirty miles into Corpus. Better than listening to
talk radio.

‘Sure. That’s fine. I got a suspect to go question this afternoon.’

‘You do? Who?’

‘Pick me up around three. We’ll head into Corpus.’ David winked, put on his Stetson, stepped out of Whit’s office, said a
hearty hey to Edith Gregory, Whit’s secretary, then headed out down the courthouse hallway with a strut. ‘I’ll tell you about
my suspect then if the mood hits me.’

‘Oh, you’re gonna be in the mood,’ said Whit.

Alex Black closed the door to his room at the Sandspot Motel and flicked on the light. With its freeze-your-ass air conditioner
and an ongoing next-door groan-a-thon from a couple he dubbed the Honeymooners, this temporary home held few charms. He wanted
to leave. He wanted to go to the storage unit and run his hands over the coins, feel the heft of the Devil’s Eye, say a silent
fuck you
to every archaeologist and bureaucrat who had ever crossed his path. Instead he sat down and called his father on his cell
phone.

‘Bert Exton’s room, please.’ He waited for the hospice receptionist to connect him, endured bad muzak for a few moments.

‘H’lo?’ Tired, weak-sounding.

‘Dad. How’s today been?’ Alex said.

‘Only about a three. Yesterday was a nine. Felt great. You shoulda called yesterday.’

‘Well, soon as I finish up this dig, Dad, I’m coming to Miami. See you for a spell.’
And get your poor ass out of that death trap, and we’ll go to Costa Rica. Let you die peaceful under a beautiful sky. Maybe
near some ruins.
just for old times’ sake,
Alex thought. ‘How’s that sound?’

‘That’d be great.’ Weak cough. ‘You liking Michigan?’

‘Sure.’ What Dad didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Dad thought he was on an Ojibwa artifacts dig. ‘Good place to spend the summer.’

‘Bureaucrats giving you hell?’ A little rally in Bert’s voice.

‘No, sir. No one’s giving me hell.’

‘That’s good. Proud of you, boy.’

What Dad didn’t know.
‘So tomorrow’s gonna be, what, at least a six? You keeping a good attitude?’

‘Screw optimism. Yeah. We’ll aim for a six. You get here, maybe you sneak me in a six-pack, okay?’

‘Sure, Dad.’ He’d sneak in freaking Moet for the old guy. Alex said his good-byes, hung up. He had buyers lined up for the
coins – dealing strictly in cash, no questions asked. And he could find a buyer – probably a Colombian trader – for the Devil’s
Eye, but a big emerald like that he’d have to move carefully. Even getting it appraised would draw unwanted attention. He
could be in Miami in a week, any loose ends wrapped up.

Stoney was the one remaining problem.

He lay back down on the bed and began to imagine various deaths for Stoney Vaughn. Quick ones. You didn’t want to spend any
extra time with Stoney if you could help it.