Chapter 20
When Caley arrived at the hospital, she was told that Bubba had been periodically coming in and out of consciousness. He was still in critical condition but improving. The nurse told her that if he came around, even for a short period while she was there, it would be OK to ask him a few questions. When she entered the patient room, Bubba’s closed eyes, gave her a chill. All she could think was what if he never opened them again. Stupid she knew, but it was her first thought. He had a breathing tube in his mouth and a needle in his arm connected to a vital signs monitoring station. His injured left arm was in a cast and hoisted up above his body. Caley could see the bandages around his bare upper body where he had received gunshots. She hated the antiseptic smell of the hospital. She sat down beside the bed and gently picked up Bubba’s good right hand. He seemed to respond to her touch, but she was not sure as he didn’t open his eyes. After about ten minutes, he did open his eyes halfway and smiled. At least Caley saw the corners of his mouth rise, she thought. It could have been a grimace from pain as easy as it could have been a smile. In either case, she was glad that he was able to recognize her presence. As she squeezed his hand, she was now certain that it was a smile on his face in spite of the terrible pain he must have been experiencing.
She sat there another 30 minutes holding his hand. Then she saw Bubba trying to move his lips. When she moved her head within a few inches of his face, she heard a sound come from his lips, but couldn’t recognize them. “Hhh…hoose,” was barely audible.
“Are you trying to say house, Bubba,” Caley whispered.
Then he squeezed her hand and made another sound. “House.” It was clear this time.
“What house Bubba?”
“House by Flood’s”
“The old house up the road by Flood’s Place, is that what you are trying to say Bubba?”
Then she felt a very distinctive squeeze of her hand, and his half-open eyes closed again. In spite of his fragile condition, Bubba still had a sense of awareness and realized that Caley would be desperate to find his attacker. She sat there another hour holding his hand. Her hand was moist from sweat. She was not a medical professional, but she knew he would come out of this. What she also knew was that she was on the right track of identifying his assailants. Somewhere among the interrogations, they had made, there must have been a clue that she and J.D. had missed.
Back at her office, Caley told J.D. what Bubba had communicated to her. The two of them then went over all of their notes on the various interrogations they had conducted with the people that had been brought in, as well as the interviews of people they had spoken with in the field. On the whiteboard in Caley’s office, they started a visual display and made notes summarizing where they were on the case. At this point, they had no physical evidence that would lead to any one person. On the other hand, there was an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence that led to Flood’s Place and the Cobb Club.
“Let’s have the blood samples we collected at the clubhouse compared to Bubba’s blood. If that is where he was shot, that will give us a lead on his attacker,” said J.D.
“I agree, and hopefully Bubba will be able to tell us more about what happened to him eventually.”
“Yes, but we can’t wait. There are several crimes in that area, that may or may not be related, but I’ll bet they are. The unidentified bones we found, missing people, and the attack on Bubba are just the events reported so far.”
“What about Bubba’s car, did your forensic team find any useful information in it yet?”
“No. Being submerged underwater erased any possibility of fingerprints that may have been left, and there was no other physical evidence to help us,” said J.D.
“I’d like to go back out and question Oats Schoenfeld again, what’d you think?”
“OK, let’s do it.”
When they arrived at Flood’s Place, Oats was sitting outside at one of the picnic tables eating boiled peanuts from a small bag. As they walked over to the table, Oats started the conversation right away, “Wattda you two want now, I done told you all I know, and I don’t plan to say no more, so you are wasting your time snooping around here.”
“Oats we need to ask you some more questions about your clubhouse up the road. This won’t take long,” said J.D.
“I done told you everything about that house. It is used by the boys and me for meetings, and sometimes they go up there just to relax and enjoy themselves.”
“Well, I need you to tell me about the fights between club members at the house. Who had the fight or fights that left the blood on the floor.”
“We had several fights in the house over the past couple of months.”
“Who Oats? Give us the names of who was fighting.”
“Al and Tee had a fight, I think.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“Who knows, they probably don’t know themselves. It was probably just some argument between two drunks that got out of hand. I doubt if anyone knows what it was about.”
“Anyone else have a fight Oats?”
“Not that I know about, but the boys don’t always check with me when they go up there.”
Caley and J.D. asked several more questions and Oats was unable or unwilling to provide any helpful information, so they decided to go back to Jeff’s house to see if he was home. As the car pulled into Jeff’s yard, he was sitting on the porch dozing off. Jake gave off a lazy howl but didn’t move from his prone position on the floor beside Jeff. The dog’s howl startled Jeff. Half asleep, he jerked his head up to see the two law enforcement officers approaching the porch.
“Good morning. Come on up and have a seat,” said Jeff.
Caley went up first and sat in the remaining rocking chair on the porch. J.D. sat down on the top step and leaned back against the porch post. Jake, having an instinct the visitors were friendly, ambled over and sniffed Caley’s leg and wagged his tail. Jeff pushed his wide-brimmed straw hat backward with two fingers and spit a wad of tobacco from his mouth into the yard a few feet away. Then he said, “what you two doing out here today?”
“Jeff we wanted to ask you some more questions.
“What kinda questions?”
Did you know the boy or his parents that were recently run down over on Public Landing Road?” asked Caley.
“Nope, I never heard of ‘em before. The only black people I know are the ones that live right around here. The ones who help me tend my crops.”
“Have you heard that Agent Vandi was shot?”
“I heard somin’ bot it.”
“What did you hear Jeff?”
“Just that he was found on the Combahee and was shot.”
“What kind of rumors have you heard about the situation, Jeff?”
“Not nutin. I mind my own business, so if I did hear anything, I wouldn’t repeat it.
“Jeff, we heard you recently joined the Cobb Club. What made you do that? They are a bunch of rough people. You don’t seem to be the typical member of that group.”
“Just did. Wanted something to do after my Lizzie was slaughtered.”
“What’d you mean slaughtered Jeff? I thought your wife perished in a storm.”
“Never would have been out in that storm if she was properly tended to like she was s’posed to be.”
“You mean by Cyndi Cooper.”
“That’s the one alright.”
“Jeff, the whole affair was ruled as an accident. It was certainly a terrible misfortune, but unpreventable. You don’t hold Cyndi responsible do you?”
Jeff’s rocker, which had been maintaining a slow pace, began moving faster. Caley noticed the chair movement right away. She was an experienced interrogator. Smaller clues than this had helped her solve cases before. She didn’t know what it meant yet, but she sensed Jeff becoming more agitated, as they talked about Cyndi.
“Damn right I do. Lizzie was in her c
are, and she let her wander out into a storm. I’m not sure it wasn’t done on purpose.”
“Now Jeff, you know that isn’t true.”
“I don’t know nutin’ of the kind, all I know is that the bitch paid for it.”
“What do you mean she paid, Jeff?”
“She paid.”
The chair rocked a little faster.
“Well Jeff, I don’t see how you can say she was responsible for Lizzie’s death when it was thoroughly investigated, and all the facts ruled her out as doing anything wrong,” Caley continued to probe.
Now Jeff’s chair began moving back and forth more rapidly. Then he realized that in his anger, he had said more than he should. He didn’t reply to Caley’s last comment. The rocking chair stopped, and he just looked straightforward as if staring into space.
“What do you mean, ‘She paid for it’ Jeff?”
Jeff’s only answer was, “well me and Jake gotta take our noonday nap if you finished askin’ questions.”
Caley figured there was no need to question Jeff any further. However, her investigative intuition was alerted. Jeff’s strange behavior could be normal for a person who had lost his wife. Still, he seemed to be laying the entire cause of Lizzie’s death at the feet of Cyndi. Maybe it was just the emotions of a bereaved man. Or maybe it wasn’t. Cyndi was still on the missing person’s list, and at this point, every clue, no matter how insignificant, had to be considered.
After leaving Jeff’s house, J.D. suggested that they go by Public Landing Road, where Al ran down the boy. Not having a better idea, Caley pointed the car in that direction. As they turned onto the road, they saw an old man slowly walking in the same direction they were traveling. Caley stopped abreast of the man on the right side of the car and J.D. said, “good morning.”
“Mornin,” said the black man with a full head of fuzzy white hair.
“You live around here?” said J.D.
“Oh yeah, I lives just up yonder on the right by the landing.”
“My name is J.D., and this is Caley. We are trying to find out something about the boy that was run down on this road, and about a SLED special agent that was found hurt on the river. Have you heard about these crimes?”
“Oh Yes, sir. Everybody ’round here heard ‘bot ‘em. Sure was bad ‘bot ‘dat boy. I seed him all the time when I wuz out walking. He wuz just as nice as he could be, very respectable and everything. Most yun’uns now days don’t have no respect for grown people.”
“I guess you’re right. What is your name sir?”
“I’m Moses. My momma give me that name, cuz she said it wuz from the Bible, and she wanted me to grow up being a fine man, her being religious and all.”
Moses had been around the Lowcountry all his life. He made his living as a fortuneteller, reading palms and tarot cards. He often told people about his mother naming him after the Biblical figure. It was doubtful whether Moses had any real apparitional powers, but he was convinced he had. Whether it was serendipity or the Pygmalion effect, when he made a prediction, strangely enough sometimes it turned out to be true. In any event, the older generation Geechee people were very superstitious, and his rate of accuracy was good enough that his regular customers kept coming back. The story about his namesake added to his myth among the local people and his fuzzy white hair added to his legend as a mystic.
“Tell me, Moses, what do you think happened to the Agent Vandi?”
“Oh my, ‘dat’s a mystery alright. I been praying every night for a vision to tell me sum’in bot ‘dat man, Mr. Vandi. You know Mr. Vandi was born right up the road from here. I no’d him when he was a little boy. No’d his daddy too. He used to come down here to the river and go swimming. Back then, us black folk couldn’t swim on the weekends cuz dat’s when the white folks used the river landing for swimming. But Bubba and a few others would slip down here early on Saturday and Sunday morning and go in the river. I used to just watch ‘em having fun.”
“What have you seen in your visions Moses? Have you seen anything at all that would help us find his assailant?”
“No sir, but I’s get’in a sign. I wake up sometimes seein’ a bad man draggin’ him around and throwing him in ‘da river up yonder. I can’t see the man’s face yet who’s doing it. I keep trying, and I jus’ know it’s gonna come to me any time now.”
The conversation went on for a while and J.D., while not superstitious in any way, felt that maybe there was a chance that Moses could help them. Not necessarily by his mystical powers, but because he talked to most of the people in the area and would pick up on any rumors or other information that may give them a lead.
“Well Moses, it’s been nice talking with you. Here is my card. Call me if you get a vision or remember anything that will help us. We know where you live and may want to stop back and talk with you some more. You keep working on that vision. Maybe you will be able to help us. ”
“Yes, sir.” Moses waved as they departed. He closed his eyes, and carefully held the business card between his two outreached palms as though he was trying to get a vibration from it. Finally, with a smile on his face, as though he had accomplished his goal, he put it in his pocket. Then he slowly walked along and watched the rising dust that hid the car as it traveled down the road ahead.