A Death in Live Oak Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Tiffany

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  October: Seventy-Four Years Later Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by James Grippando

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  JANUARY 2, 1944

  Nothing changed.

  The first Sunday service of the new year ended in song, as always.

  Let Jesus lead you

  Let Him lead you

  Let Jesus lead you

  All the way.

  Gospel music was the heart and soul of Mission Baptist Church of Live Oak. Not another house of worship in Suwannee County had a more enthusiastic choir and congregation. From opening procession to final hymn, Sunday morn at Mission Baptist was ninety minutes of inspired vocals, hand clapping, and alleluias, with enough sermon and scripture to give old-timers a breather and youngsters the love of God.

  All the way from

  Earth to heaven

  Let Jesus lead you

  All the way.

  Lula Howard loved to sing. Her fifteen-year-old son shared her passion, which was no surprise. Willie James was her only child. Lula had poured herself into raising him right, even singing gospel to him in utero, starting with his first kick. He was the strongest tenor in his sophomore class—in both sophomore classes, some boasted; though, admittedly, neither Willie James nor anyone else at Frederick Douglass High School had ever heard the singing voice of any student across the street at the whites-only Suwannee High.

  “That’ll do,” said Lula’s husband, glancing in the rearview mirror. James Howard was behind the wheel of an old Buick that was “new” to him. Willie James was on the passenger side, seated behind his mother, where he’d been singing the same traditional gospel hymn since leaving the church parking lot.

  “Oh, let the boy be,” said Lula.

  “Like a broken record back there,” said James, grumbling. “At his age he could at least throw in a little Dixie Hummingbirds or Golden Gate Quartet every now and then.”

  Lula smiled and caught his eye. “He’s a good boy, James. Thank the Lord for that.”

  There was no argument. Lula was right. Willie James had a hard-to-explain quality that, in the eyes of friends and relatives, would somehow propel him past the grim life of smothered dreams and limited opportunity. Even James had seemed to come around in the last few months and believe in the possibilities. Lula’s formal education had taken her only through the sixth grade. James had even less. Twenty-plus years in Florida logging—an industry built on forced labor and peonage—had left James jaded, but suddenly the Howards were the proud parents of the only black teenager in Live Oak to land a job at the white-owned dime store. With her husband off to war, Mrs. Dott needed extra help. Not that a boy his color would have dared to step up to the counter, plop down his dime, and reach into the canisters for a fistful of Dubble Bubble, root-beer barrels, and other “penny candy.” As a dutiful employee, however, Willie James had earned the manager’s trust, working before and after school that autumn. Mrs. Dott made him full-time over Christmas break. Main Street shops were closed on Sundays, so Willie James had the day off. His father had no such reprieve.

  “What time will you be coming home tonight, James?” asked Lula.

  “Huh?”

  James was a good listener, as far as husbands went, but his hearing had slipped—a hazard of working at a sawmill.

  “Will you be home for supper?” Lula asked in a slightly louder voice.

  “Dunno,” he said. The mill was shorthanded with men off to war. Second shift on Sunday was supposed to be a half day, but a three-month timber harvest of the Mattair Springs tract had been keeping crews busy well into the evening, seven days a week.

  “I’ll pack you something,” said Lula.

  The drive continued to the outskirts of town, beyond the old railroad junction that dated back to the Civil War, where settlers and rail workers would rest in the shade of a massive oak—which, the story goes, is how Live Oak got its name. A live oak is never leafless, canopied year-round. Lula knew of no prettier sight than a centuries-old pillar of strength rising from a Florida pasture, its mighty limbs stretching out above the slash pines, palmettos, and white-sand roads.

  James was alone in his thoughts, and Willie James was enjoying the breeze on his face with the window down. Lula checked her pompadour hat in the side-view mirror, and then her gaze drifted across the old crack in the windshield. It started on the passenger’s side at the upper right corner, angled downward, then made a wide left turn in the shape of a “C” before dropping off sharply and disappearing into the dashboard. “Kinda like the Suwannee,” Willie James had once remarked, and Lula had listened in awe as her then eleven-year-old son proceeded to explain the circuitous path of the legendary river, which originates in the Okefenokee Swamp of south-central Georgia and hooks past Live Oak on its ceaseless journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Lula had never thought that big. The river, her dreams, and everything she’d ever known began and ended in Live Oak, where she was born and raised.

  “Sorry about that,” said James, as the car bounced across a pothole. They’d reached the end of the highway. Pavement gave way to gravel, until finally the road became a one-lane path of white sand covered with fallen pine needles, which at least kept some
of the dust down. The Howard residence was like all the others in the area, a two-bedroom frame house that predated the Great Depression. The clapboard siding needed a good whitewashing, for which Lula had been saving pennies in a jar since moving in.

  James pulled up outside the gate, where the ground scrub had been flattened into a defined parking space. The engine continued to sputter even after he pulled the key from the ignition, as if the ten-year-old Buick had a mind of its own. They climbed out when the car settled, but the tailpipe emitted one last gasp as they started toward the house. North-central Florida had been dry and unseasonably warm since Christmas, and Willie James removed his suit jacket and tie before reaching the front door. James led the way inside and walked straight to the bedroom to change into his work coveralls. Lula went to the kitchen to pack her husband’s lunch and, just in case, his supper.

  “Bye, Mama,” said Willie James. He’d snuck up behind Lula at the counter, and as soon as she turned, he planted a quick kiss on her cheek.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Just out back. Gonna teach Mugsy a few tricks.” Mugsy was a stray mutt that had followed Willie James home from the dime store.

  Lula cut an extra slice of meat loaf on the sandwich board. “Take this. He’ll learn faster.”

  “Thanks, Mama,” he said, and Willie James went quickly out the back door.

  Lula woke on the couch. The radio hissed from across the living room. She’d been listening to gospel music but dozed off, and the dial had drifted between stations.

  Lula switched off the radio and checked the clock on the end table: five minutes past twelve. The sun was streaking through the open window, floating dust mites aglow, as if to confirm that it was 12:05 p.m., not a.m., and that Lula hadn’t slept away the entire day. It would be hours before James returned from the sawmill. She sensed that she was still alone in the house, but she called her son’s name nonetheless.

  “Willie James?”

  It was always Willie James—never just Willie, not even to his friends—and he always answered his mother if he was within earshot. She waited, but there was no reply.

  A car door slammed outside the house, startling Lula. She walked to the window, pulled the curtain to one side, and watched. Three white men were standing beside a sedan, talking. One stepped away and started toward the house. The other two waited at the gate. The lead man came to the screen door and knocked hard—much harder than necessary. Lula collected herself and went to the door.

  “Yes, sir?” she asked through the screen.

  “Where is James?”

  Lula had never seen his face before, but she didn’t dare break Jim Crow etiquette and directly ask a white man who he was or what he was doing, even if he had just shown up on her front step unexpectedly. “James is not here.”

  “My name is Phillip Goff,” he said with a measure of self-importance. “I need to find James.”

  “He’s gone to work.”

  “Where’s he working?”

  “At the Bond-Howell Lumber Company.”

  “Where is Willie James?”

  Lula hesitated, her concern growing. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know,” said Goff, his tone accusatory, if not threatening.

  “I—I fell asleep after church. He was—”

  Lula stopped, having heard the back door open. A call came from the kitchen.

  “Mama?”

  She glanced at Goff, who seemed perversely pleased to see Willie James enter the living room. A horrible feeling came over Lula, strong enough to make her wish that just this once her son had wandered off without telling his mother where he was headed—someplace no one could find him.

  “I saw the car pull up,” said Willie James. He went to his mother and stood beside her. “Everything all right?”

  Goff yanked open the screen door, stepped inside, and grabbed Willie James by the collar. “You’re coming with me, boy.”

  Lula shrieked. “Why? What for?”

  Goff jerked Willie James forward, forcing himself between Lula and her son.

  Lula could barely speak. “What’s this about? What has he done?”

  A pistol suddenly appeared, and Lula was staring straight down the business end of the polished barrel. “He’s coming with me,” Goff said.

  Lula stepped back, her heart pounding with fear. Goff pulled Willie outside, forced him down the front step, and marched him down the walkway toward the gate. Lula hurried after them, pleading.

  “Why are you doing this? What has Willie James done?”

  Goff ignored her and pushed through the front gate to the waiting car. The other men jumped into action. One opened the rear door and the other helped shove Willie James into the back seat.

  “Mama!”

  “Quiet!” Goff shouted, turning the pistol on Willie James.

  Lula lunged for the door, but Goff knocked her to the ground.

  “Please don’t do this!” she said, climbing to her knees. “Sir, I’m begging you! Sir!”

  Goff slid into the back seat beside Willie James and pulled the door shut. His accomplices jumped into the front seat. The engine roared, the rear tires spun, and Lula shielded her face from a spray of dirt, sand, and pine needles. She pushed herself up and gave chase through a cloud of dust, her arms pumping and lungs burning.

  “Willie James!” she cried, the tears streaming down her face. Lula ran as fast and as far as she could, but the car got away from her. It continued beyond a hummock of oaks and disappeared from sight, the trail of dust evaporating into the clear blue sky.

  At the end of the sandy road she fell to her knees, sobbing as she gasped for breath, wishing that her husband hadn’t gone to the sawmill that Sunday, hating the town she was born in, and calling on her Lord and Savior to watch over Willie James.

  OCTOBER

  Seventy-Four Years Later

  CHAPTER 1

  The Suwannee River winds through the forested wetlands of north-central Florida like a tea-colored ribbon, its chilly waters connecting one small town to the next. Beneath it flows the watery underworld of the Florida aquifer, a limestone labyrinth of interconnecting caves and caverns that discharges billions of gallons of spring water every day. Feeder springs near Live Oak rise up through the riverbed and flow directly into the Suwannee—crystal-clear waters stained “black” by the tannins of vegetative decay. Countless other springs serve smaller rivers across the region, which eventually flow into the great Suwannee or its tributaries. The recreational king among the feeder springs is Ichetucknee. Tubing down the Ichetucknee—a long, lazy float in an inflatable inner tube—has been a veritable rite of passage for generations of students from the University of Florida in Gainesville, to the south, and Florida State University in Tallahassee, to the west.

  “Shee-it, this water is cold!” shouted Percy Donovan. He was waist deep in the river. His girlfriend was afloat on an inner tube, and Percy was being a gentleman, guiding her away from the launch site so the current didn’t carry her straight into the brush along the riverbank.

  “It’s not cold,” said Shawna. “The guy at the tube rental said it’s seventy-two degrees all year.”

  They’d met at UF, but Shawna was from Chicago. Percy was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale. “Seventy-two degrees puts enough ice in my veins to dunk on LeBron,” said Percy.

  Shawna laughed and splashed him, which sent Percy scurrying back to shore like a skipping stone in reverse. His friend Kelso watched from the bank, nearly falling over in laughter.

  “Such a pussy!”

  It struck Percy as funny that the fraternity brother calling him “pussy” was the only one in the group wearing a wet suit. Kelso, too, was a south Floridian.

  There was nothing unusual about fraternities and sororities teaming up for a day trip down the river on a Saturday morning—even in early October, when most of the country was raking leaves but Florida was still sweating. It was the first time, however, that the black Greek-letter organi
zations at UF and FSU—the “Divine Nine,” as they were known—had coordinated such a trip. By eleven o’clock, more than sixty men and women were adrift in the lazy current. Some had “rafted up” into groups of six or eight to share conversation and laughter on the six-mile journey. A few couples broke off for an innocent kiss and a slightly less innocent breach of the “no skinny-dipping” rule. Every now and then, a shriek could be heard, followed by group laughter, as Kelso emerged from the black depths in his wet suit, upended an inner tube, and sent another bikini-clad student into the river for an involuntary swim.

  “Kelso!” shouted Shawna, as she splashed to the surface. She was his third victim.

  “Ha!” said Percy. “Who’s cold now?”

  Shawna climbed back into her inner tube. “Cold? You ain’t seen cold till you seen tonight, Percy.”

  That drew a chorus of “ooohs” from friends.

  The group followed the bend past the halfway point, and Percy was beginning to wish that they’d signed up for the ninety-minute float, not three hours. His butt was cold, the sunbaked rubber singed his skin every time he moved his leg, and holding on to an extra inner tube while Kelso swam off to play Loch Ness monster was getting tiresome. Of course there were the marine science and horticulture majors who could have stayed all day and then some, pointing out every natural wonder along the river. Tall cypress trees rose from the marsh, their limbs reaching out over the river, providing ample shade for those who wanted out of the sun. Near the mouth of springs, the unstained waters were so clear that rafters appeared to float on air above the sandy riverbed. Every now and then a young woman shrieked at the sight of a motionless alligator or a turtle sunning itself on the banks. It was beautiful, unlike anything Percy had seen growing up in South Florida, which wasn’t “the South” at all.

  A shrill scream suddenly jolted Percy from his oneness with nature.

  What the hell?

  It was very different from the playful screams Percy had heard earlier; this wasn’t just another reptile sighting or sneak attack by Kelso. A couple of sorority sisters—the lead rafters who’d rounded the bend first—were in the water. Their inner tubes were floating farther downriver without them. Their arms flailed and legs kicked against the current as they frantically struggled to swim back to the group.