Onyx Webb: Book One Page 15

  He wound his way along the path through Leolyn Woods and past “Inspiration Stump,” where mediums still held outdoor services twice a day during the summer months.

  Dane made his way to the pet cemetery where residents of Lily Dale had been saying good-bye to their beloved companions for over a hundred years. He found the little marker he and his father had made together the summer between sixth and seventh grade, and brushed the snow off with his hand until the words were visible:

  Duffy, Laid to Rest in This Place, 1995.

  That the dog had visited the night before, even if for only half a minute, served as confirmation that those we love are never really gone.

  Finally, Dane knew what he had to do.

  Ten minutes later, Dane returned to the house and told his parents everything.

  “This girl, did Koda say what she looked like?” Ingrid asked.

  “He said she was pretty,” Dane said.

  “Of course,” Paul said.

  “Pretty and gray,” Dane added.

  Paul and Ingrid exchanged glances. “What kind of state is he in, son? How is Koda coping?” Paul asked.

  “Coping?” Dane said. “He’s not coping. He’s out of his mind. I’ve never seen him like this. Koda is the most unflappable person I’ve ever met, and now? He can’t sleep, won’t eat, just sits there… waiting.”

  “You know, we’d be glad to work with him,” Ingrid said.

  Dane shook his head. Having Koda come to Lily Dale—to meet his parents and see Dane’s humble beginnings—was out of the question.

  “Well, maybe we could recommend someone,” Paul said.

  “Not from here,” Dane said, “not from Lily Dale.”

  “What about that new guy people have been talking about?” Ingrid asked. “You know, the one down in St. Augustine. What was the man’s name again?”

  “Vooubasi?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, that was it,” Ingrid said. “Vooubasi.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1935

  Ulrich had been seeing Claudia twice a week for almost a year when she broke the news.

  “I’m pregnant,” Claudia blurted without warning.

  “Fine, I will pay for an abortion,” Ulrich said.

  “Sorry, baby,” Claudia said. “I’m Catholic. Abortion is out of the question.”

  “Adoption?”

  Claudia shook her head. “No, we’re going to have to find another option.”

  “What other option could there be?” Ulrich asked.

  “Think, silly,” Claudia said. “Think!”

  “What? You want me to divorce my wife?” Ulrich asked.

  “I told you, I’m Catholic,” Claudia said. “Besides, a divorce would take too long.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” Ulrich asked.

  “I want you to kill her,” Claudia said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Claudia said.

  “No, it is out of the question,” Ulrich said. “There is no scenario under which I would kill Onyx.”

  “Ever? Really? Let me outline one for you,” Claudia said. “How much do you owe The Owl now, four large?”

  “The Owl? What does…?” Ulrich stammered.

  “Let me put it another way, sweetie,” Claudia said. “What do you think would happen if my daddy found out that—in addition to owing him $4,000—you also knocked-up his little girl?”

  Bombs began exploding in Ulrich’s skull.

  “And not only did you knock me up, but you refused to do the honorable thing and marry me,” Claudia said.

  What was she saying?

  “That’s right, sweetie,” Claudia said, taking a drag from her cigarette. “Faustino Spilatro is my father. And my three overly protective brothers—Fortunato, Flavio and Fabrizio—work for him, running his bar. Is that enough of a scenario for you?”

  The Owl…

  The Night Owl…

  Oh, God.

  The Night Owl was where Ulrich met Claudia for the first time. And what had The Owl said when he’d threatened him?

  “You don’t pay? I’ll send my three sons to collect.”

  Ulrich thought he might throw up.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Claudia said. “I’ve read up on all the ways you can do it, and the best is probably poison.”

  “Poison?” Ulrich repeated, as if in a state of shock.

  “Yes,” Claudia said.

  “You want me to—?”

  “Poison her, just like you would a rat.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Savannah, Georgia

  February 17, 1981

  Born in China, educated in England, married in South Africa, and divorced in New Jersey, thirty-five-year old Cecelia Jaing’s life had literally taken her to the four corners of the world. Now, as the youngest assistant district attorney in the history of Georgia, Cecelia finally felt like she was home.

  She glanced up from her work and saw it was time to go.

  The first time the death penalty had been carried out in the state of Georgia was the public hanging of Alice Riley from a large oak in the center of Wright Square in Savannah. Cecelia was sorry she’d missed it. She was also sorry she’d missed the five hundred hangings that followed.

  What was interesting, Cecelia thought as she grabbed her purse and headed out the door, was that the people of Georgia felt that hanging someone by the neck until dead was perfectly fine for almost two hundred years. Then, suddenly, hanging was cruel and unusual punishment. There had to be a more reliable and humane method of putting someone to death.

  Which led to the implementation of the electric chair.

  Cecelia felt her heart begin to race as she drove past the prerequisite crowd of protestors, a common sight at state executions; so common, in fact, that an execution without one would somehow seem incomplete.

  But it wasn’t the protestors that bothered her. It was the fact that no matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t get them to spell her name correctly. A protestor held up a cardboard sign that read: “Chang the Clang is a Murderer!” As in the sound a prison door made when being slammed. It was a nickname she enjoyed.

  “It’s not Chang, you moron—it’s Jaing. Jaing!” How in the hell was she going to get elected governor if people couldn’t find her on the ballot?

  At 11:50 p.m., Cecelia watched as two prison guards strapped convicted wife-murderer Osvaldo Montezuma Sanchez into the electric chair. Lovingly referred to as New Sparky, the device had arrived at the state prison in Jackson just months earlier, having replaced Old Sparky.

  Which had proved to be unreliable.

  Assuming things went as planned, Cecelia would be in her car and heading back to Atlanta in less than twenty minutes.

  Things didn’t.

  Osvaldo Sanchez was offered the opportunity to address the family and the other witnesses who had been invited to attend his execution.

  He took it.

  “I would like to recite a poem,” Sanchez said.

  A poem? Christ! Cecelia thought. What’s next? Maybe they’ll give him a guitar, and he can serenade the grief-stricken family. Then what, a few magic tricks?

  Osvaldo Sanchez took a few steps forward, looked around the room—stopping for a second on each face—and started humming a tune.

  Softly at first, so low Cecelia could barely hear him.

  Ummm, ummm, ummm…

  Then a bit louder:

  Ummm, ummm, ummm, ummm…

  It must be a prison tune of some kind, Cecelia thought.

  Even louder now:

  Ummm, ummm, ummm…

  Osvaldo turned his head, looked Cecelia Jaing directly in the eye—gave a slight, almost imperceptible smile—and began to recite:

  Brown bricks that are worn with age,

  Metal bars that suppress the men’s rage.

  Initials and dates, scratched with a nail

  So little to do when your life is a
jail.

  That which we eat, the tasteless mush,

  “Lights out now! It’s ten o’clock—hush!”

  Then morning brings another harsh day

  In the state of dread, in the state of GA.

  Ummm, ummm, ummm…

  The searing heat that starts by eight

  So thick like water, it can suffocate.

  The chains that clink, the chains that clank,

  “Not tight enough? I’ll give them a yank!”

  The guard keeps watch, cradling his gun

  Licking his lips, just hoping I’ll run

  Ain’t nothin’ the man would enjoy as well

  As firing the shot that sends me to hell.

  Ummm, ummm, ummm…

  But the end of my time belongs not to him

  For the light in my eyes when it finally dims

  Won’t lock on a guard or gaze at a gang

  But rather the bitch, miss Cecelia Jaing.

  “Jaing the Clang,” with her long painted nails;

  “Jaing the Clang,” who controls all the rails.

  “Jaing the Clang,” who knew the true story,

  But traded the facts for limelight and glory.

  Ummm, ummm, ummm…

  The “Jaing the Clang,” in pursuit of career, who

  Heard them say guilty then ordered a beer.

  “Jaing the Clang,” who believes she will win.

  But just you wait—and think again.

  The execution of Osvaldo Sanchez took twenty-nine minutes, during which time the innocent Hispanic man choked, jerked, snorted, drooled, and literally cooked to the horrified gasps of the assembled media and incessant sobs of family members.

  “Do you think the governor will push to end executions in Georgia?” a reporter called out as Cecelia pushed her way through the protestors, who had grown from a small group of usual wing-nuts to an increasingly outraged mob.

  “I have bigger fish to fry,” Cecelia snapped.

  Admittedly, it was not the most politically correct response under the circumstances, but one that guaranteed she’d be quoted on the front page of every newspaper in the country the next morning.

  What would they be chanting if they knew that Sanchez was telling the truth? That someone had come forward years earlier and provided incontrovertible evidence that proved Osvaldo Sanchez could not possibly have committed the crime, and Cecelia had decided to ignore it.

  Cecelia knew that making the information public would have called her professionalism into question—which was out of the question—even though doing so would save an innocent man’s life.

  In any case, Sanchez was off her to-do list. Now, it was time to turn her full attention to a new case, one that involved the disappearance of a local girl named Juniper Cole, who’d been abducted on the night of her senior prom.

  Though the body had never been found, there was enough evidence to put the scum in the same chair Osvaldo Sanchez’s limp body was being pulled from at that very minute.

  What was the guy’s name? Oh, yeah, that’s right.

  It was Wyatt.

  Wyatt Scrogger.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Desoto, Missouri

  March 26, 1925

  Our Lady of the Open Arms was larger than Katherine had expected, but otherwise it was like every orphanage she’d ever seen; a central, brown-brick building with an attached chapel, rectory, and infirmary, all of which were surrounded by a series of smaller buildings that had been added over the years.

  Unlike many of the other missions God had sent Katherine on, getting there was easy.

  Over the previous twelve years, Katherine had been sent to a variety of places—some thousands of miles from her home in St. Louis. This was just forty-seven miles to the south.

  The morning after the tornado vision, Katherine turned on the radio and heard the news. An enormous twister had crossed the Mississippi River at 2:33 p.m. the previous afternoon, ripping through the town of Gorham and obliterating everything that stood in its path, taking thirty-four lives in less than five minutes. Moving next in a north-easterly direction at an average speed of sixty-two miles per hour, the monster twister set its sights on Murphysboro, Illinois, not too far from the Illinois-Missouri state line.

  Fifty minutes later, 695 lives would be lost, and two thousand more seriously injured.

  Thomas Bilazzo and his wife, Luisa, were among the dead, of that much Katherine was certain. Why would God have sent her to an orphanage otherwise? Beyond that, she had no idea what her mission was. Certainly God didn’t want her to adopt the boy? Then again…

  “God doesn’t send you out for eggs unless he wants you to make an omelet,” Katherine’s mother used to say when she would share the details of her latest vision.

  Her father, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with God or his daughter’s visions. “No God of mine would have taken you from us,” he would say. “Six years, in torment, wondering if you were alive or dead, why would any God do that to a parent?”

  That God had returned Katherine home to them—alive—made no difference.

  Katherine entered the large front doors of the orphanage and found the office.

  “I’m here about Tommy Bilazzo,” Katherine said.

  The nun at the desk checked a printed list. “I will summon Sister Mary Margaret,” the nun said. “It may be a while. There are chairs in the hallway, if you’d like to take a seat.”

  Katherine couldn’t sit.

  She was filled with energy, as if an electric charge had been placed within her. It was always the way she felt when God sent her to do His work on Earth.

  To fill the time, Katherine walked the halls of the large building, which looked to have been built sometime in the mid-1800s.

  In the distance, she could hear the sound of children singing.

  Ding dong, bell, the pussy is in the well.

  Who put her in? Little Johnny Flynn.

  Who pulled her out? Little Tommy Stout.

  What a naughty boy was that,

  To try to drown poor pussy cat,

  Who ne’er did him the slightest harm

  But kill all the mice in the farmer's barn.

  It was a song Katherine knew all too well. She’d been forced to sing the tune again and again in Obedience Everhardt’s cellar—the old woman sitting across from her in a rocking chair, doing her knitting—Katherine never knowing if she was singing it for the last time.

  Enough of that, Katherine thought.

  Thoughts of her time in that place had stopped making her cry long ago. The only thing left now was the desire to do God’s work in whatever form that work might take.

  As she glanced along the wall, a picture caught her eye…

  It was a black-and-white framed photograph of a nun and an older woman with a long gray ponytail standing in front of the orphanage.

  Suddenly the words to the second verse of the song entered Katherine’s mind without even having to think:

  Ding dong bell, the pussy is in the well.

  Who took her there? Little Johnny Hare.

  Who'll bring her in? Little Tommy Thin.

  What a jolly boy was that,

  To get some milk for pussy cat,

  Who ne'er did any harm,

  But play with the mice in his father's barn.

  Katherine took a step closer, studied the old woman’s face. It was considerably older than she’d remembered—more wrinkles, the skin sagging around her chin—but there was no doubt.

  It was Obedience Everhardt.

  Maybe God had not brought her here to adopt Tommy Bilazzo, Katherine thought. Maybe he’d brought her here to kill Obedience.

  Katherine had waited for over twenty years for this moment to arrive, and now—completely unexpectedly—here it was. What would she say if she came face to face with Obedience? What would she do to her if she was provided the gift of ten minutes alone in a room with her? Did she have the courage?

  The fantasy in Ka
therine’s imagination was interrupted by the sound of footsteps echoing from the end of the corridor.

  “I am Sister Mary Margaret,” the nun said as she approached. Katherine immediately recognized her as the same nun in the photograph on the wall. “I understand you are inquiring about one of our new arrivals, Tommy Bilazzo?”

  “The woman with you in this picture,” Katherine said, “This is you, correct?”

  The nun glanced at the photo. “And you are…?”

  “I’m the one who got away,” Katherine said.

  “Got away?” Sister Mary Margaret repeated. “I’m quite certain I don’t understand.”

  “Do you know where she is?” Katherine asked.

  Sister Mary Margaret nodded and said, “Yes.”

  Katherine’s heart skipped a beat.

  “She’s exactly where we buried her,” the nun said.

  “She’s dead?”

  “Quite dead,” Sister Mary Margaret said. “Hanging yourself with a rope will tend to do that to you.”

  The nun’s words hit Katherine with such force the air was knocked from her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe. “When?” Katherine finally managed.

  “Day before yesterday,” Sister Mary Margaret said.

  Katherine couldn’t understand it. Why would God bring her to where Obedience was after all these years, only to have her get there two days too late to do anything about it? “I don’t… I don’t… Why?” Katherine said leaning against the wall to steady herself.

  Sister Mary Margaret reached out and grabbed Katherine’s arm, holding her upright. “Come, child, come with me,” the nun said soothingly.

  Katherine and Sister Mary Margaret sat in the back pew of the chapel, a large white statue of Saint Therese of Lisieux looking down on them.

  “I imagine I should be happy,” Katherine said, “knowing it is finally finished and in God’s hands.”

  “But you’re not,” Sister Mary Margaret said.