Missing Witness (18 page)

Putrie knew what Morgan was searching for, and he also knew that if he broke the I-Y-U code he would be the first man since Edward Teach who would know the location of Teach's treasure.

He smiled. When he broke the code, he would know where the treasure was before Morgan did. That would then present him with an interesting, even laughable, choice.

He could choose to tell Morgan immediately.

Or, on the other hand, maybe he wouldn't.

26

W
ILL DECIDED THAT HE WOULD SET OUT
to locate and interview Oscar “Possum” Kooter.

That day was hot and humid. There was a haze in the sky that extended along the horizon, so that the line between the gray, iron-colored ocean and the sky was no longer discernible. The atmosphere above and the sea below seemed to be one unified expanse in the still, calm heat.

Will kissed Fiona goodbye and left the seaside cottage. It was already in the nineties, and it was only midmorning. In his island shirt and casual pants he was already sweating through to the leather of his bucket seats.

He was driving inland. Away from the refreshing sight of wide, deep water. Into the flatlands and the swampy regions of the coastal plains. Though not as plentiful as in the bayous of Louisiana or the tropical marshes of Florida, alligators could still occasionally be found there, Will had heard—within the black, odorous waters.

Will motored along an endless stretch of narrow country road. Tall grass and trees were mired in the canals on either side, and the air was overpowered with the stink of swamp gas. There was little sign of human existence for nearly an hour as he drove through the Alligator River basin. Occasionally a white crane would sweep overhead, and a possum or two would slowly edge along the dirt road.

Will slapped a baseball cap on his head to stop the sweat from stinging his eyes. Finally, he came to an intersection of dirt roads. The road he had been traveling intersected with another road—a clay-colored smaller one.

At the fork there was a gray, wood-sided general store—a square building with a tall false front to it and a lone gas pump outside. A large, rectangular sign simply said,
KOOTER'S.
The store could have been painted at one time, though Will was not sure in whose lifetime.

Then he noticed an elderly woman on the front step, sitting perfectly still. Her arms were slack, her shoulders slumped, and each hand was
resting on a knee. She was wearing a dirty, loose-hanging dress. Her hair was disheveled and white as limestone.

“I'm looking for Oscar Kooter…” Will yelled out.

She gave him a funny look.

“
Possum
Kooter.”

The woman nodded. Then she slowly, almost painfully, lifted an arm and pointed down the smaller dirt road. But she never spoke.

“Thanks,” Will replied quietly. Then he began slowly driving down the rutted, clay-colored track.

After more than a mile of bouncing over the potholes and ruts, Will noticed something strange. Suddenly, the road had widened, and it was now paved with old, broken concrete. Weeds were sprouting in the cracks. An old highway sign on the side, entirely red with rust, had been blasted full of holes with buckshot. Whatever the name of the highway had once been, it was now long forgotten. Except by the local folks—like the old woman, perhaps. Or Possum Kooter. Wherever he was.

A half mile later Will saw a building up ahead. As he approached it, he saw that it was a house, of sorts. Out of the front, like a seagoing porch, the prow of an old, peeling fishing boat was jutting straight out.

The front yard was littered with corroded weather vanes, buoy markers, ancient metal signs advertising brands of talcum powder and molasses that had not been sold for decades, huge sea anchors standing upright, driftwood in all shapes, aged captain's wheels from sunken boats, crab pots, chipped and mildly grotesque lawn ornaments—chiefly of the deer and coachman-holding-lantern variety—and a bizarre collection, on the far side of the house, of old washing machines lined up in fairly regular columns.

Will pulled to a stop. Something, just a thought, warned him to keep the car running.

Dismissing the idea, though, he turned off the ignition and walked to the sagging front porch, which was directly adjacent to the ship that was sticking out of the house. Everywhere were piles of seashells, bird decoys, car license plates from several states, hubcaps, ropes, and fishing lures. There were piles of rubber boots and lamps, wooden crates with faded writing from foreign countries stamped on them. Some objects defied identification—like the large glass balls of various hues that were scattered around the porch.

Will stared. Like so many of the other oddities on the property, the balls looked to be part of an avalanche of flotsam and jetsam—as if the oceans
of the world had deposited a part of their floating junk many miles inland. Here. At this strange house on the swamp flats.

Will looked closer at the large glass bulbs.

“Them's glass floats all the way from the Orient…”

Looking up, Will saw a man—short, stout, and with a full beard. On his head was a dirty captain's hat with a black patent leather brim that was cracked down the middle.

The man smiled, revealing a row of missing teeth on the bottom and a few missing on top. His eyes were ignited by some inner fire of information.

“From the Orient. Yessir. Singapore maybe. Or Hong Kong. The harbors of Hong Kong, I'd wager. The Chinamen, see, great fishermen them…see, them Chinamen would tie their fishnets with these glass floats at the corners. But sometimes they'd go loose. And the glass balls would float away. Sail away. Over the oceans. Hurricanes. Calm weather. Over they go. Weeks. Maybe years. Floating. Bobbing. On the waves. Down the coast. Around the horn. Past the Banks. And into the inlets. Can you imagine that, my boy? Down to where old Possum Kooter can get ahold of them. Treasures. All of them. Yessir. Treasures of the world. Come to rest. Here in my front yard.”

“Mr. Kooter?” Will said, cautiously extending his hand.

“No mister. Just
Possum. Possum to
you.
Possum to
everybody,”
the man shouted out and did not take his hand, but doffed his stained captain's hat.

“Okay,” Will said, trying to break into Kooter's narrative. “Mr. Kooter—”

“Possum!”

“Sure. Right. Possum Kooter. I don't think we've ever met…”

“No, sir. I don't believe we have. Don't recollect. What's your last name?”

“Chambers. Will Chambers. I'm an attorney from Virginia. But I'm working down here in North Carolina on a case—”

“Chambers, you say?”

“Right. Will Chambers. As I was saying—”

“You got kin here in North Carolina?”

“Well, as a matter of fact I do. Anyway, I traveled down here—”

“Now let me see here…you kin to a judge by the name of Chambers?”

Will's eyes widened. He shook his head in disbelief and chuckled.

“Well, yes I am. I've got an uncle. Bull Chambers.”

“Righto, yessir, just as I thought!”

With that, Kooter did a funny little sidestep, like a sailor doing a limping jig.

“You know him?” Will asked incredulously.

“No, sir. Can't say that I do. But I do know that there's a Bull Chambers…county judge, maybe? No…circuit judge. Circuit judge for a long time. Am I closing in?”

“Yes, you are,” Will said. “He's been retired for a couple of years. But he was a circuit judge. He was pretty well known around the state…”

“Good judge?”

“Yes, he certainly was.”

“Honest judge?”

“Tremendously honest,” Will replied. “He's been sort of a hero of mine…”

“Good. That's real good. Because I got no truck with a dishonest judge. No offense intended…”

“No, sir. No offense taken.”

“You interested in any of my treasures?”

“I'm afraid not. I'm actually here on a legal case. I had some questions for you.”

“That's what I was afraid of. Lawyers. Always full of questions.”

“I'll try to make this as simple as possible,” Will began. “I'm trying to find out some facts about a man who lived several hundred years ago in the area of Bath, North Carolina. His name was Isaac Joppa. He was charged with piracy. At the time of the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet, when Edward Teach—Blackbeard—was killed, along with most of his pirates—Isaac Joppa was on board his ship. There was some question as to whether Joppa was one of Teach's pirates, or whether he just accidentally happened to be there at the time. Anyway, depending on what the facts are, my client, Reverend Jonathan Joppa of Manteo, North Carolina, may inherit an island under the last will and testament of Randolph Willowby.”

“Willowby?”

“Yes,” Will said, noting a flash of recognition on Kooter's face. “Do you know Mr. Willowby?”

“Know him? Why I manned his boats for twenty-two years. Before my injury. Before I went out on pension. First, I started handling his little flat boats, working the crab pots for his fishing and crabbing company. You know, the crab pots in and out of the inlets. Then he moved me up to captain of a couple of his fishing rigs. He was a right one, that Frederick Willowby. Full of gruff and bluff. Sure, he was an honest man. But he had a lot of vinegar. He had the sting of a Portuguese man-o-war.”

“You said
Frederick
Willowby. Not
Randolph?
”

“No. Randolph was the kid. He picked up where the old man left off. And he was like his father—in some ways—but in some ways not. The old man was all business. Randolph…well…good at business too, I guess. But a little bit more friendly. He talked with the shop folks. To the fishermen. To the captains. He walked the aisles in the canneries and talked to the little people.”

“You knew Randolph Willowby? You worked for him before your injury?”

“Sure. Last three years. Then I slipped from some rigging, fell fifteen feet to the deck of a ship. Broke my spine. That was it. The jig was up. I'm a pension man now.”

“So…how well did you know Randolph Willowby?”

“Mr. Chambers…you got a whole lot of questions. And it's way too hot out here on the porch. You come on in where I got some fans set up. We'll talk.”

Kooter wheeled and disappeared through the torn screen door, which slammed loudly behind him.

Will followed, still amazed at the revelation from Kooter. Amazed that this pilgrim from civilization, with his bizarre house of oddities tucked in the back swamps of North Carolina, had been personally acquainted with Randolph Willowby.

For Will, the task was now clear. He had to find out whether amid the labyrinth of Kooter's personal information there was at least a shred of evidence for Isaac Joppa's innocence.

27

“S
O, DID YOU EVER DISCUSS ANYTHING
with Randolph Willowby about the history of the North Carolina coast, or Blackbeard the Pirate, or a man by the name of Isaac Joppa?”

Will and Kooter were seated in the stifling heat of the living room, surrounded by the incessant roar of floor fans and the flutter of newspapers flipping open and closed with the breeze from the fans. Kooter leaned back in a bent aluminum-frame beach chair.

“I did have myself a couple of conversations—just Randolph Willowby and me—when I worked for him. That's right. That's a fact.”

“What did the two of you talk about?”

“Fishing, mostly. He grew up along the Banks like I did. We were both deepwater boys. Born and raised along the coast. We talked about them kind of things.”

“Did you talk about anything else? About this Isaac Joppa person, who was a long lost relative of Randolph Willowby's?”

“Well, sir,” Kooter said, taking off his stained pilot's hat and sweeping the sweat off his balding head, “there was one conversation…”

“And?”

“You see…even from when I was very young…I was always collecting stuff I found along the beach. Stuff that floated into the bays and the sound. Little treasures I bought and traded with other people who found things on the beach. So I'd tell folks about it once in a while. Randolph Willowby—I told him.”

“Did you talk to him about something that you found?”

“Not exactly found…”

“Well, if it wasn't something you found, what was it?”

“There was this lighthouse keeper…back when lighthouses were not run automatically. They had lighthouse keepers, who stayed up in the lighthouses to make sure the lights were on and the ships were being warned.
Well, that lighthouse keeper had a son. Can't remember the father's name. But the son's name was Frank. Frank said he got this particular little piece…pretty little piece…from his dad. And his dad had gotten it from an uncle of his. Now that uncle had said that he got it from his dead father. Well…not exactly from his dead father…when you're dead you don't give anything to anybody. Fact is, that when this fellow's dad died, he found it in a trunk in his attic. Nobody really knows where it came from. Although, the uncle…he says that his dad had told him, before he died, that this little piece was kept by the Tuscarora Indians. And then was traded by the Indians to some white man. And the white man passed it down to his family. That was the family line I'm telling you about. And then, finally, it gets to the lighthouse keeper's son…and then it gets to me. Funny how things get passed down that way. I didn't pay that much for it. But at the time, this son of the lighthouse keeper acted like I was paying a lot of money for it. I figure it was worth a lot more than that.”