Fallout (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 2) (11 page)

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 ninety 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.

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.

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.

“I picked up the stuff to make a pot of beef stew when I went to the store this morning. You need to get you one of those electric cook pots or some firewood, Sheriff. I had to scrounge through the woods to get enough wood to cook with,” she chided.

“Yeah, I don’t do much cooking. Actually, I don’t do
any
cooking,” Joshua replied, “It’s easier to eat out or just pick something up,” he said, nodding to the plate lunch he held in his hand. He set the box on the table, opened the fridge and set the plate inside.

“At least I found the clothesline while I was scrounging for firewood.” Emma elaborated, “I thought I would wash your bedclothes and bedspread. I found spares in the linen closet. If it’s okay with you, I thought I would straighten up the back bedroom and sleep there until I get your place good and clean, and then I can come ever so often and clean to keep it that way.” Suddenly, Emma remembered the voice that had whispered in her ear the night she hid there after escaping the Dixon brother’s hellhole. She hoped it did not whisper to her tonight when she decided to go to bed.

Joshua told her that it was fine with him if she stayed; however, it really was not. He was used to living alone and after all the years he had been there by himself, he preferred it that way; he liked his privacy. He liked walking around the house naked. Occasionally he even sat out on the porch in the buff.

“What you got there?” Emma asked, nodding toward the box and files.

“A box of unsolved cases from the 1930’s and some mug shot books I thought I would look through.”

“Are you trying to find out who all those women were; the ones that belonged to the heads that were in the mortuary?”

“Yep, thought I would give it a shot. Surely,
someone
had to of missed them.”

“I could help if you’d like. I did well with reading comprehension and problem solving in school. I haven’t been out long enough to forget,” Emma said innocently, however, he thought she was insinuating that his age may make him forgetful. I’m not
that
damn old, thought Joshua as he removed the lid from the box.

Emma stretched to her highest height trying to see into the box. The phone began ringing just as he started to reach into the box.

“You want me to get that?” Emma asked.

“Nah, I’d better get it. Most likely it’s the station.” As Joshua moved toward the phone, Emma hurried down the stairs into the cellar with the armload of linens. When Joshua answered the phone, it was John Metcalf.

“What’s going on?” Joshua asked grumpily.

“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, but Cook and Davis returned from Bayou La Batre with the prisoner. I don’t believe this boy is our perpetrator. For one thing, he is too young. The boy they brought back is not even a Mexican; he’s Vietnamese. Well, he’s half - his daddy was an American soldier, a colored man from what he says. It looks like the boys down in the Bayou would have known the difference. The place is filling up with Vietnamese and mixed blood Vietnamese since the Vietnam War ended. Most of 'em are in the fishing business down there.”

“Yeah, I figured it was a wild goose chase. That’s why I didn’t stick around until they got back with him. Anything else come to light about the killer yet?”

“No sir, nothing except the separate blood types I told you I gathered from the crime scene. The sketch came in from Atlanta, but looking at it, he looks like a dozen other Mexicans that work around here. Many of them favor each other a lot. Well, they look alike to me.”

“He’s probably long gone by now,” Joshua replied. “He could be in Texas if he jumped the right trains. Hell, for all we know, he could be in Mexico. If you hear anything new, let me know. And, John, get some rest.”

“Yes, sir, I intend to do that as soon as I test the prisoner’s blood.” Joshua shook his head and said he would talk to him later. He hung up the phone and then walked back toward the box. He saw Emma coming up the steps from the cellar. The radio was playing the song Joshua heard the day before, the one about time in a bottle. As Joshua reached into the box, he thought that
time
was what the box held. Time had stood still for the cases contained within it. He stopped and poured himself a shot of whiskey and drank it, then lit a cigarette. Emma, was watching him, she noticed his hesitant behavior.

“Do you want me to help you? I will gladly help any way I can. It is the least I can do after all you have done to help me.”

Joshua responded by reaching into the box and pulling out the first of about a dozen folders and handing it to her. Emma pulled out a chair and sat down. The folder he handed her was labeled ‘Elsie Collier - April 1931’ eagerly, Emma opened the file.

Joshua took the next file out of the box and looked at the label. It also had the month of April and 1931 written on it. The name on the folder was Glen McDuffie. He opened it and began reading. From what he read, he deciphered that Glen McDuffie and Elsie Collier had gone on a picnic together. They told Elsie’s parents they were going out Tanner Williams Road to the swimming hole at the camping area on the Escatawpa River. The investigators thought they may have run off the embankment in the dark and plunged into the lake. The county was in the process of damning Big Creek to make a lake for the city’s water supply. They were also building a spillway there.

When they saw no signs other than the equipment tracks, they figured the teenagers had run away to get married; however, both sets of parents disagreed with their findings. They said that their children had no need to run away to get married because both families were all for them marrying. The teenagers never turned up. Joshua searched through the folder, looking for the type of vehicle the teenagers were driving. There was no mention of a make or model of a vehicle at all.

“Was there a vehicle mentioned in that report?” he asked Emma. However, Emma did not respond; she was sitting, staring into the folder.

“Emma?” Joshua called. Still, she did not respond; he reached out and touched her arm. Emma sat staring as if in a trance. He grabbed her arm and shook it. This time he got a response; she jerked her arm away. Joshua’s intense green eyes stared deeply into Emma’s soft brown ones; he saw fright in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Emma mumbled. “As soon as I read the word ‘campground,’ I was back to that night; the night they murdered those campers and took me.”

Joshua could see that she was shaken, and he understood why. He did not know anything to say that would make a difference; what was done, was done.

“I thought I could do this, but I can’t,” Emma said as she closed the folder and slid it across the table. She stood and walked out the back door. Joshua debated going after her, but then heard her moped start up. He hoped she would be all right.

He opened the folder she had slid to him. As he read it, he discovered that there was no mention of a vehicle in that one either. Back in those days many people still used a horse and buggy to get around so they may not have been driving a vehicle; but still, there should have been some notation as to their mode of travel, especially considering the Authorities thought they ran away together.

Joshua set those two folders aside and took the next one out. It was dated May 1932; this one had unknown female written on the label. When he opened it, a black and white photo of a nude, decapitated, mutilated body was the first thing he saw.
Boy does that look familiar
, he thought to himself as he removed the picture and began reading. He did not know how long he read before he heard Emma as she walked in and sat down at the table. He was deeply engrossed in the detective’s description of the condition of the body and the dumpsite. He knew it was not his mother’s body because it was too early in the decade to be her; however, he was now sure that Earl and Vernon Dixon’s father or grandfather was murdering women before his mother disappeared. His worst fear was as good as confirmed in his mind. He looked up as Emma sat back down at the table.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff.” she said, “When the pain comes, I have to do something to ease the memories. And when the pain comes from
that
, then everything is alright for awhile.” Joshua could tell from her eyes, that she was high on something. He looked at her arms.

“What are you shooting?” he asked. He could see the fresh track mark on her arm. She was not yet a heavy user from the looks of her arm unless she was injecting somewhere besides her arm.

“I just use a little Smack once in a while when the memories get to be too much to handle. I don’t want to drink beer or whiskey to relax; I’ve seen what that does to people. Bubba uses Smack all the time, and he never seems screwed up like mama or my uncles always did drinking.”

Joshua decided he would not lecture her on drug use,
yet
, but he needed to find out who this ‘Bubba’ was so he could put him out of business.

Joshua Stokes did not have a problem with the recreational use of marijuana; it was a natural herb. He enjoyed a joint himself occasionally. However, he did not approve of the manufactured stuff at all. It gave folks a false sense of wellbeing; it was also highly addictive, and it was dangerous. He knew Heroin and Cocaine was all the rage in places like Hollywood and New York. Hell, they were glorifying the use of it in movies these days, but he had seen what it could do to some folks.

Little Joey Capps was one of them; he thought he could fly when he was high. If his friends had not of stopped him he would have jumped from the top of the fire tower on Firetower Road. That was a good 100 feet off the ground!

“Please don’t be mad at me and freeze me out, Sheriff Stokes. I know that it is wrong, but I promise you, I only use it when it gets bad.” Joshua took a deep breath and looked into her eyes.

“There is stuff you can use to relax that is not as dangerous as Heroin.”

“Heroin? He told me it was Smack…”

“Smack
is
Heroin, Emma, and it’s dangerous. I am not going to tell you what you need to do, you are smart enough to figure that out on your own; however, there are alternatives, marijuana is one of them. It’s not going to give you that immediate rush; it does not work that way, but it will definitely take the edge off. It’ll help you to relax and chill out. I use it myself when I get stressed.”

Emma smiled. “I knew you were cool. Thank you for caring,” she said as she stood. She then came around the table and kissed him on the cheek.

Joshua’s mind went immediately to what she had said at the cemetery.
Poor
kid
, he thought, she has had a lot to deal with in her short years on earth, no wonder she turned to something to ease the pain. Emma excused herself, saying that she needed to lie down for a bit. Joshua just nodded and kept reading.