Missing Witness, page 37
As the boat lurched over the choppy water, Will shouted to Jonathan, telling him everything. Halfway across the sound, the rain started pelting down, and both of them donned the slickers. As the skiff neared the island, Will turned the beam of the flashlight onto the dock. No boats were moored there. Then he scanned the beach, which was empty.
“So far so good.”
After tying off the boat, they sprinted up the sandy path, with Jonathan’s lantern lighting the way and the beam from Will’s flashlight bouncing wildly up into the trees ahead of them.
Jonathan, running at a good pace, was ahead of Will.
He turned left to head toward the little cemetery.
“We’re almost there,” he cried to Will, increasing the distance between them.
Then suddenly, Will lost sight of Jonathan’s lantern light. He was tempted to call out, but something warned him not to.
Instead, he focused his flashlight straight ahead. There was the gate to the cemetery. He flashed the beam left and right. Jonathan was not there.
He flashed the beam up a little, revealing, through the sheeting rain, the great oak tree with its immense spreading limbs.
Will had slowed to a cautious walk now, peering ahead. Searching for any sign of Jonathan. There was no sight of him.
And there was no sound except for the whining wind of the nor’easter, which, in its fickleness, had turned once more against the mainland and the islands—and the sound of rain pelting loudly on the hood of Will’s slicker.
75
WILL HAD A STRONG FEELING OF FOREBODING. Undefined, but palpable.
But it wasn’t until he walked through the gate to the cemetery and saw the hole that had been dug at the foot of the oak tree—at the grave of Ebenezer Youngblood—that he fully understood.
He knew he had made a terrible mistake coming to the island that night. But by then it was too late.
He stepped closer to the hole and gazed down into the grave as the rain poured down into it, the wind at his back now feeling more like a gale force.
Someone had dug down, and broken through to what occupied the grave, exposing it to the outside world.
There was a skull. As Will shined his flashlight down he could see the eye sockets. Below it, more scattered bones, surrounded by vines that had penetrated the coffin.
There was a crunch in the underbrush to his left.
He wheeled around, flashing his light.
A gun barrel was pointing at him, only a few feet from his face.
The bearer of the weapon stepped a little closer, through the sheeting rain, out of the shadows.
In a black raincoat and wide-brimmed hat, Blackjack Morgan was steadily pointing the revolver at Will’s forehead as he stepped forward.
He tucked his cane under his arm and patted down Will’s coat to make sure he was unarmed.
As he did, he was half-humming, half-singing some kind of off-key tune under his breath.
Will stood perfectly still, madly searching with his eyes for Jonathan Joppa. He was still missing.
Morgan was still muttering something in a sing-song voice, something vaguely familiar. Then Will recognized it. Only Blackjack Morgan would be sick enough to be singing that song, over an open grave, while threatening a man with a gun.
With a yo-heave-ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
“Putrie!” Morgan screamed over his shoulder, but with the gun still trained on Will. “Get out here!”
Orville Putrie stumbled from behind the oak tree. He was also holding a revolver and was wiping the water from his face.
“Get the good reverend up on his feet,” Morgan yelled.
“He’s still out cold,” Putrie replied. “You really whacked him. You know, if you fractured his skull, he may be dead.”
“What a wimp!” Morgan exclaimed, laughing. “I only bopped him once. Slap his face a couple times. He’ll come to.”
Several minutes later Putrie and Jonathan Joppa, who was still groggy and rubbing his head, appeared together.
Morgan was still laughing and singing his little song. Then he walked over to Putrie and whispered something in his ear.
“See—you can trust me, Putrie. I gave you one of my guns, didn’t I? Does that look like somebody who doesn’t trust you? I always take care of my people. And you’ll get a cut of this. But not the share you would have. That’s the penalty you get for trying to do this without me, see?”
Putrie eyed Morgan, but didn’t answer.
Morgan turned to Will.
“I’ve got a special job for you, big-shot lawyer.” Then he pointed to a blackened, ancient-looking metal box, about the size of a small suitcase, that was on the ground, and had been extracted from the Youngblood grave.
“Put this on the hand truck and wheel it down to your skiff. We’ll take yours. Putrie and I both anchored ours over on the other side. Yours is closer.”
But then he added, “If anything falls out of that box, I start shooting.”
The four of them made their way down to the dock through the slant of wind and rain. By now, the waves were surging over the dock, and the lightning was flashing closer, up within the cloudy recesses of the sky.
Jonathan and Will went in first, barely able to stand up as the boat rocked and slammed against the pier. Then the box went in. And then Putrie, finally followed by Morgan, who took his seat in the bow with his revolver pointed at Will, who was back at the outboard, given the task of motoring the boat through the swells.
As Morgan sat down his raincoat opened, and Will noticed two handguns stuffed under his belt.
Morgan shouted for Will to take them around the side of the island and pointed the way. As the small craft slammed down, then surged up again, the bow dropping and then lifting again wildly, Morgan sat unperturbed, smiling his Cheshire-cat grin.
Then Will caught sight of a large fishing boat anchored about a hundred yards off the shore. Morgan yelled for Will to steer over to the ladder on its side. As they closed in, Will noticed that Morgan had painted the bow with his name, BLACKJACK, and next to that, the image of two cards—one, the ace of spades, and the other, the king of clubs.
Morgan saw Will was looking around for some possible escape from the skiff.
“Don’t waste your time thinking about jumping,” Morgan yelled with a sneer. “I’ll shoot you in a heartbeat. Face it, I always win. I never lose.”
Then Morgan had Will tie off onto the side of the big rig that was bobbing wildly in the sea and told him to climb up.
With his handgun pointed at the lawyer, Morgan was following him up the ladder, just out of kicking range.
Then Jonathan Joppa made his way up. He was ordered to lift the heavy metal box up to Will.
When the box was safely on board and Joppa had climbed up, he and Will were told to go to the stern. Then, with his weapon still pointing at his two captives, Morgan barked out a command to Putrie, who was still in the skiff.
“Scuttle it!”
“How?” Putrie yelled up.
“Like this.” Morgan fired a couple shots into the middle of the skiff, which quickly began taking on water. In an instant, it disappeared under the waves.
Putrie scampered up the ladder, still clutching his revolver, and moved toward the bow, pointing it toward Will and Jonathan at the other end.
Morgan entered the wheelhouse, walking like a drunken man across the rolling deck. He turned on the ignition and kicked in the big, dual inboard engines.
Will looked down on the deck. There were two ropes with heavy drag anchors attached.
But there was something else on the deck also. And when he saw it, he knew that their time to escape was quickly evaporating.
There were two nylon ropes coiled up. At the end, each had been knotted through the hole of a large cement construction block. Anything, or anyone, tied to those ropes and thrown over the side would head straight down to the bottom of the ocean.
Will looked at Putrie, who was nervously clutching his weapon with both hands. Then Will looked down at the black metal chest on the deck. Then he glanced over at Jonathan, who was sitting with his head down and resting his hands on his knees, trying to maintain his balance on the rolling ship. He was groaning in pain.
“How’s your head?”
“Bad.” He lowered his voice and said, “Tell me that you’ve got a plan to get us out of this.”
“I’ll figure something out,” Will replied guardedly.
But he had already been considering their dilemma.
And had no idea how he was going to do that.
76
BLACKJACK MORGAN WAS HEADING the big fishing boat out to the open sea, that was clear now.
The storm was increasing in ferocity. That was also indisputable. The boat was rising up with each wave, then pitching and slamming down. The terrible undulations of water were pouring torrents up to the bow, against the wheelhouse, and flooding the deck.
And the black metal box was slipping a little this way, then that way, with each roll of the boat.
Will was now facing the inevitable.
With their skiff scuttled, Will and Jonathan could easily be presumed drowned in the heavy seas. They would probably be shot first, then tied to the cement and sunk to the bottom. And the nylon cord would weather the currents and salt water well. They would dangle, lifeless, down in the frigid depths, until time or the creatures of the sea reduced them to mere polished bones, buried in the sands of the sea.
And when it was discovered that Ebenezer Youngblood’s grave had been desecrated, speculation would run wild—but most of it would settle on the scenario that Jonathan, who had won the island, had dug the grave up with the help of his lawyer.
Whether they had found any treasure would be an unanswered question, but most folks would conclude that the pair had vanished in the storm while attempting to cross the sound in their skiff.
And Fiona would watch for Will. But he would not return to see her in her hospital bed. And then the next day, a police vehicle would drive up. Perhaps she would have little Andrew in her arms. And the officer would take off his hat and express his sympathies.
Will just hoped that Aunt Georgia would be visiting—in case Fiona collapsed after her world began to crumble.
He could play it all out, in an instant, in his mind.
And then, as the rolling ocean cascaded over the deck, causing Putrie to hang on for dear life, and as lightning flashed above them, something happened.
Anger, furnace-hot, was boiling over.
Deep inside Will, like a burning incandescence, there was a resolve. The kind that fires the soul, hot as lava, and lights up the mind.
Will would not let this happen. He would live to return to see his little family—his beautiful bride and his infant son. He would call upon the God of heaven to intervene.
Will silently petitioned the Ruler of the earth and all the seas, He who commands the waves and the great fish of the deep.
And now Will would act.
As the boat rocked wildly, he leaped forward, grabbing at the treasure chest.
But it was just beyond his grip, and as the boat rose up Will slipped backward to the stern, carried by gravity and the flood of seawater pouring down the deck.
Putrie screamed out a string of profanities and lunged at the box himself, waving the gun in Will’s direction and yelling for him to get back.
Up in the wheelhouse Morgan jerked around and glanced back, then steadied the wheel to meet the next crashing wave that engulfed the front third of his boat. The boat rolled to the side and pitched wildly almost straight upward.
Then Morgan whipped around again, just in time to see the black metal chest slide toward Will, and Will make a lurching leap toward it. Now his hands made contact, and he gripped it with all of his strength.
Putrie was sliding across the deck on his back in the flood of water, still trying to point his pistol in Will’s direction.
Jonathan jumped toward Putrie, landing on his legs.
Yanking him away from Will’s position, Jonathan was now on his belly, skimming across the deck on a torrent of water. He had his arms wrapped around Putrie’s legs.
But Putrie twisted so he could point his gun at Jonathan.
“Look out!” Will screamed.
But it was too late.
In the roaring wind and the crash of the sea, no one could hear when Putrie pulled the trigger.
But he had a stunned look on his face.
He pointed the revolver at Jonathan’s face and pulled the trigger. And again. And again.
Nothing.
Then it became clear, not only to Jonathan and Will, but to Putrie as well, that he had been betrayed by Blackjack Morgan—with a weapon that was not loaded.
By now Morgan had seen enough. He saw Will leaning against the stern rail, holding onto the black metal chest. Morgan was going to put an end to it all.
He jumped out onto the deck, his bad leg pumping at high speed like an oil rig badly out of kilter.
As he grabbed at the railing for support, he began firing his revolver at Will, narrowly missing him.
Will held the chest on the railing, ready to drop it over into the raging sea.
“You move and this goes into the water!” he yelled out.
Morgan was sliding himself along the side, inching his way closer to Will, half-crawling, half-swimming in the flood smashing down onto the boat.
“No you won’t,” Morgan screamed. “You don’t have the guts!”
“Watch me!” Will screamed back, and let the chest further down, out of Morgan’s sight. “You kill me—I know where I’m going,” he yelled, “but I drop this,” he glanced down at the box he was barely holding onto, “I let this chest go…and your whole world goes with it.”
But in the half-instant Morgan took to decide whether to shoot to negotiate, or lunge toward the dangling chest of treasure, he had forgotten one thing.
He had vacated the wheelhouse. And now, the wheel was whirling on its own, to the left and then to the right, with each wave that smashed against the bow.
The boat suddenly lurched to port side—at a perfect parallel to the oncoming waves.
The next wave crashed over the entire length of the boat, catching Will, the chest, and Morgan with its fury.
The box was carried up and out of Will’s grasp, and it slammed down onto the deck. Will was thrown to the far side, and Morgan, who had lost his weapons in the deluge, swam, clawed, and rolled over to the chest.
He grabbed onto it at mid-deck, where the ropes from the drag anchors and the nylon ropes tied to the cement blocks had intertwined into a tangled net that stretched from wheelhouse to railing.
A second wave smashed down, tossing the boat sideways in what was almost a half-barrel roll.
Morgan still clutched the box to his chest, but his legs and torso had become wound up in the tangle of ropes. The only way that he could free himself was to release the treasure chest, reach down, and separate the ropes that bound him.
Blackjack Morgan would not—could not—do that.
He kicked like a wild beast at the lines that wound around his lower half and screamed a flood of curses.
But the ropes became more tangled.
Orville Putrie was scrambling to his feet in a full-blown panic. Staggering to the box that contained the inflatable life rafts, he pulled one out, clutched it to his chest, and pulled the string to inflate the limp rubber raft. He leaped over the side and disappeared into the darkness.
And then Will and Jonathan saw it. A wall of water the height of a small building, plowing over the half-submerged fishing boat, crashing down, and now flipping the boat in a complete roll—one that sent Will and Jonathan flying into the night, and slamming into the cold ocean, underneath the boat. Down into the frigid, watery turbulence.
There was darkness and swimming for the surface, wherever it was. Will pulled himself upward, breaststroking as hard as he could.
He finally broke the surface, gasping for air. He could see the boat upside-down, lying on the water with its hull facing the sky, but only for an instant.
A massive wave caught the boat and rolled it back up—revealing Blackjack Morgan.
Will doubted his eyes at first.
Morgan was still tangled in the web of ropes, held down fast against the deck. But his face was white—as white as limestone. And his eyes were empty and staring.
And he was clutching—still clutching—the treasure chest.
But the box opened, and a frenzy of sparkling diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and gold pieces and gold dust, began pouring out of it.
All of Edward Teach’s loot captured from along the Spanish Main, around the capes, down to Cuba—gathered from his career of piracy and murder and mayhem—all of it, cascading out of the box in a twinkling, glittering shower, like a million fireflies. Out of the box still clasped to Blackjack Morgan’s chest—within his cold, lifeless grip.
The boat did one more powerful, groaning roll, and then began to quickly go under.
Will found a flotation cushion and held it fast, trying to keep his head above water through the massive waves.
The last thing he saw was the insignia on the side of the boat as it upended and began sinking straight down to the bottom. He witnessed the ace of spades and the king of clubs slipping below the waves.
And then the boat was gone.
That was when Will also saw Jonathan, about two hundred feet away, holding onto a round life preserver.
But just behind Will, where at first he did not see it, there was a ship, churning its way slowly through the wild sea. It was large, notably seaworthy.
August Longfellow had alerted the Coast Guard to keep an eye out for Will and Jonathan as soon as he saw on TV that the nor’easter had blown back in with redoubled power.
The Coast Guard, in turn, radioed a rescue bulletin to all ships in the vicinity.
Only one ship was near the coordinates of the quadrant in which Stony Island lay.
It was Dr. Steve Rosetti’s research vessel. And it had come to find, and to save, two souls, and to pluck them safely out of the bone-chilling waves of the sea.
