Missing Witness (26 page)

Morgan had placed the island under surveillance, and he knew that the Willowby property manager, Leonard Moore, checked the island every Wednesday, during the daylight hours, like clockwork.

Which is why Morgan decided to make his trip to the island during the night on Wednesday. It would be a full week before it would be visited again. By then, if all went well, Morgan would have what he was after.

The moon was drifting between clouds, but there was enough light to see without the benefit of any boat lights or flashlights. They spotted the dark outline in front of them. Robideau cut the outboard engine to a slow purr.

As the boat drifted up to the shadowy dock, Robideau grabbed it, hopped off, and tied up.

“You stay here with the boat,” Morgan whispered to him.

Then Morgan signaled to Putrie to follow him up the path to the high ground—to the ruins of the old house. Putrie was carrying a duffel bag. Halfway up the winding, sandy walk, he tripped over a tree root and fell facedown.

“Blackjack…let's turn that flashlight on,” Putrie said, rubbing his face as he got up from the ground.

“No flashlights. The only light we're going to use is the penlight I've got, and that's going to be used only when we get to where we're going,” Morgan growled. “Besides, the human eye adjusts to the dark. So start adjusting.”

“Tell that to my face,” Putrie whined. “I think I just broke my nose.”

Even with his limp, Morgan made it to the ruins of the Youngblood house before the other man. He stood before the overgrown foundation,
the two standing chimneys, and the urns where the front of the house had once stood.

Morgan squatted down in front of the two urns and ran his fingers across the raised stone letters spelling out the name
YOUNGBLOOD.

As he did, he thought of the newspaper article Putrie had retrieved in his research, and of the letters I-Y-U, from the hieroglyphics inscribed on the seashell. They had concluded that I-Y-U was short for
In Youngblood's Urn
.

“Be in there, baby,” Morgan whispered as he caressed the urn on the right.

Putrie arrived at the site, puffing heavily.

“So—you think it's in there? Gold, silver, diamonds?”

Morgan half-turned toward Putrie and shook his head.

“Course not,” he barked. “Give me the duffel bag. What I'm looking for is the big clue. The last clue. I figure this is where it is. The last piece in the puzzle. Then I know exactly where Teach stashed his loot.”

Morgan grabbed the bag and took a hammer out.

“Don't break it. Just take the top off.”

With that, Putrie reached out to the onion-domed top of the urn and tried to lift it off. But it wouldn't budge. Either because it was cemented down originally or because the accretions of the years had fixed it, it was immovable.

“You really think Blackbeard would have put the last clue to his buried treasure in an urn where the top could be taken off? Where anybody could just look right into it?” Morgan said with a sneer. “Shine the penlight right on the name.” He pointed to the letter B among the stone letters.

With one swing, Morgan cracked a large hole in the urn. He carefully retrieved the shards and motioned for Putrie to give him the penlight.

He shined it inside. Then he thrust his hand in, impatiently feeling around the interior. He took the hammer and smashed the rest of the urn, with stone chips flying everywhere. With the penlight he eagerly eyed each shard to see if something had been written on the inside.

“Nothing. Nothing!” he complained bitterly.

Morgan leapfrogged over to the left urn, hammer in hand, and swung directly on the name
YOUNGBLOOD.

Again he shined the penlight into the interior. Then he let out a string of profanities as he broke the second urn apart and carefully scrutinized the interior of the stone shards.

When he was satisfied that nothing—absolutely nothing—was contained in the urns, he slowly rose to his feet, cane in hand.

Putrie, foreseeing an eruption of violence from his boss, took a few steps back.

“I got a charley horse in my leg from squatting,” Morgan said softly. “Putrie, come over here and give me a hand, will you?”

Putrie edged his way closer to his boss, who seemed to be limping more than usual.

When Putrie got within an arm's reach, Morgan grabbed him by the hair and yanked him closer. Then he swung the butt of his cane as hard as he could into his stomach.

Putrie doubled over, gasping for air, and fell to the ground.

“You see, it's like—it's like this is a big classroom…” Morgan said philosophically, waving his cane in the air, “and I'm the teacher—and you're the student. Now it's all pass–fail, see?”

Morgan waited for a few seconds until Putrie was able to regain his breath.

“And you flunked…”

With Putrie stumbling behind him, Morgan began walking back to try to find the path that led to the dock. But the moon was now entirely covered by clouds, and it was difficult to tell the features of the island or find the path that led down to the dock. Still concerned about flashing too much light, he ended up walking farther than he intended. Putrie was stumbling along behind him.

Finally, he grabbed the duffel bag from Putrie, and pulled out a full-sized flashlight. It was then that he realized they were only a foot away from the front gate of the cemetery. He flashed the beam in a sweeping motion across the cemetery, beyond the limbs of the large oak tree, and into a clearing beyond. Putrie suddenly noticed something and stared, transfixed.

“I think we've gone too far. I think we're at the other end of the island. I think the path is back behind us,” Morgan said as he clicked off his flashlight.

He turned—and saw Putrie staring, as if in a trance. The younger man was now beholding the verification of his privately constructed theory.

Morgan took a step toward him. “Putrie, you moron, you look like you've just seen a ghost. What's your problem?”

Orville Putrie turned slowly, and when his eyes met Morgan's, he smiled a nervous little half-smile. But he said nothing.

In fact, he just kept smiling, and he said nothing for the rest of the walk across the island, nor even when they climbed into the skiff and motored back across the waters of the sound to the mainland.

39

I
N HIS RESEARCH ON THE SUBJECT
of piracy along the Carolina coast, Will was eventually led back to a study of the practice of maritime law in the 1700s in the American colonies.

In 1718, at the time of the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet, the American colonies were still possessions of the English crown. As such, they usually followed the same forms of law as in England. But one chief difference lay in piracy cases.

In 1696, the English Parliament had passed an act that created the first “admiralty courts” in America—then called the “Vice Admiralty Courts”—in Virginia and North Carolina—specifically to try cases of piracy and maritime and sea-trade matters in the colonies.

The crown then issued commissions to the governors of those American colonies to appoint “commissioners” who would act as judges in place of the common-law juries. The point was to do an end run around the colonial juries, who were, in the view of the crown, too quick to acquit their fellow colonists.

The absence of trial-by-jury in those cases, not surprisingly, caused an uproar among the American colonists.

So, in 1718 in the American colonies, a pirate could actually be charged criminally under one of two different procedures. The usual was to be charged, as Dr. Rosetti had first indicated, in the specially created admiralty courts. But as Will observed, admiralty courts, having no “jury of one's peers,” gave a strategic advantage to the prosecution and a distinct disadvantage to the defense.

All of that made very intriguing history, but it didn't answer the question that had plagued Will since his conversation with Dr. Rosetti on his research ship—why was Isaac Joppa treated differently than the other defendants who were later tried in the Admiralty Court of Williamsburg,
Virginia? Why, instead, was Joppa's case referred to a grand jury, which then issued an indictment against him?

To Will, that meant that if Isaac Joppa had been arrested and brought into custody, he could have demanded a jury trial—unlike those tried before an admiralty court. The average jury of merchants and landowners might have been more likely to view Joppa's defense sympathetically, as opposed to the political figures, government officials, and naval officers who would have acted as the commissioners—the judges—in an admiralty court.

Those were the thoughts preoccupying Will as he sat at the kitchen table—with files scattered throughout the kitchen and living room. He had the sea cottage to himself. Fiona was out running some errands with Aunt Georgia.

He had spent the morning reading for himself the diary of Randolph Willowby. Fiona had done a fine job picking up most of the salient points.

There was one short entry, however, that she had missed. It caught Will's eye immediately.

A few months before he had lost his battle with cancer, Randolph Willowby, apparently then preoccupied with reconstructing the history of Isaac Joppa, had contacted the county clerk to check into the criminal charges that had originally been lodged against Joppa.

The clerk had referred Willowby to the county archivist, who had informed Willowby that in 1719 the criminal indictment against Isaac Joppa for piracy “was dismissed.”

Will wondered why it would have taken until the following year for the local magistrate in Bath, North Carolina, to dismiss the indictment. The reason for the dismissal—Will assumed—was that Isaac Joppa was presumed to be dead.

But that information should have been available immediately after the Battle of Ocracoke Inlet—because witnesses came forward to verify that he had been shot as he tried to swim away from the ship.

All this supported the possibility that the locals in Bath were aware that Joppa had survived the battle after all. Perhaps reports of a white man bearing a description similar to that of Joppa, living with the Tuscarora Indians, had made their way back to the settlements.

Will decided to contact the archivist personally. After several calls, he had a short conversation with Mrs. Helen Atwater. She pulled up a microfilm of the court record from Bath, North Carolina, for 1718. She verified the issuance of the indictment against Joppa at that time. Then she fast-forwarded to 1719. She also verified, as Randolph Willowby had reported
in his diary, that approximately one year after the indictment had been issued, it was “dismissed.”

“Is there anything else written there in the court entries at the time of the dismissal in 1719?” Will asked.

“What type of information are you looking for, Mr.…”

“Chambers. I'm an attorney. I'm staying in the Cape Hatteras area for the summer. Can you see anything, by way of an additional explanation, for the dismissal of that indictment at the time?”

“Well, there's a name.”

“What kind of a name?”

“Douglas Littlewood. Apparently the court clerk at the time.”

“Yes, that would be the standard procedure. But anything else? Anything other than the fact that the indictment was dismissed, and the name of the clerk?”

“Well, there's something here. I did take Latin, but it's been a number of years—”

“A Latin phrase of some kind?”

“Yes, I believe it's two Latin words…”

“Would you do me a favor?” Will asked with an urgency in his voice that the archivist was now able to detect.

“Certainly, Mr. Chambers.”

“Would you spell out, very carefully, those two Latin words?”

“Certainly. Do you have a pen?”

“Absolutely. Go ahead…”

“The first word is R-E-S…”

By now, Will's heart was already beating faster. He had an inkling—an unsupported but strong suspicion—what the next word might be. And if it was so, Will could hardly believe the implications.

“And the next word? What's the next word?” he asked urgently.

“Okay, here it is. J-U-D-I-C-A-T-A.”

There it was. He had been right. He was astounded.

“You're sure that's what it says?” he asked excitedly.

“Of course I am,” Mrs. Atwater replied, slightly offended by the question. “It's right here in front of me.”

“Is there anything else? Any other entries?”

“No. That's the last entry in the Isaac Joppa case. The next entry has to do with a Horace Clemens, who was charged with stealing a horse.”

“Mrs. Atwater, was there ever a trial in the Isaac Joppa matter—that you can determine? Any reference to a court hearing or a trial after the grand jury—but before the dismissal?”

Mrs. Atwater paused on the other end for a few moments. Then she answered.