Lovely shook her head as if chatting with an idiot. “The truth is that she’s dead, been dead a long time now. The truth is that many of my stories rely on ones handed down by my people, so I suppose it’s possible that some dates got mixed up.”
“So, are all of your dates mixed up?”
“I didn’t say that. You just did. You see, sir, my people didn’t have a lot of education. We didn’t have a schoolhouse or teachers or books out there on the island. The state of Florida didn’t care about us. We didn’t exist as far as it was concerned. Now it claims to be the owner. How nice. Where was the state of Florida a hundred years ago when it was building schools and roads and hospitals and bridges everywhere else? Not one penny was ever spent on Dark Isle.”
Monty suddenly wanted to sit down. He was getting nowhere with the witness. In fact, he was probably losing ground. His staff had pored over her book and her deposition and made a list of eleven discrepancies regarding dates and names. Now that list suddenly seemed worthless.
Diane’s list had thirteen mistakes, all of which had been discussed with Lovely, who was poised to explain them away.
Monty whispered to one of his associates and killed a few seconds. He smiled at Lovely, who was not smiling at all, and said, “Now, Ms. Jackson, I’m intrigued by these lost notebooks. When did you start writing in them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t write things down like you do, sir. On the island we didn’t always have pencils and pens and papers and notebooks, things like that to write with. I went to school in a little square building that we called a chapel because it was our only church. We were lucky to have two or three textbooks to pass around. I don’t know where they came from. Half the kids didn’t even go to school. My parents could barely read and write. I learned most of what I know after I left the island and went to school here, in the old black school down in The Docks. Even that school didn’t have a lot of extra stuff, not like the white schools.”
Monty felt like apologizing. He had planned to make hay out of the missing notebooks and portray them as important documents that should have been handed over during discovery. Now, the notebooks also seemed useless.
Again, he changed the subject. “Now, Ms. Jackson, on page seventy-eight of your book there is a rather graphic story in which Nalla, you ancestor, cuts the throat of a man who raped her. She then dripped his blood along the beach. Was this some type of a curse?”
Her eyes glowed as she nodded and said, “Yes, it was.”
“Can you describe this curse?”
“Yes. Nalla had powers. She was a doctor who could heal people. She talked to spirits and could tell fortunes. After she sacrificed the man called Monk she spread his blood in the sand and said any white man who came onto the island would die a horrible death.”
“And you believe this to be true?”
“I know it’s true.”
“How do you know it’s true?”
Lovely glared at him for a long time as everyone strained to hear what she was about to say. She leaned an inch closer to the mike and said, “I know the spirits. I know when someone has gone onto the island.”
Monty offered a proud smile, as if he had finally cracked the witness and discredited her. “But you were on the island three weeks ago, with the archaeologists, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Some were white, some were black. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And no one was killed or injured, no one died, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“What happened to the curse?”
“I was there and I lifted it.”
“So you have that power?”
“I do.”
“Is the curse still lifted, or is it back on the island?”
“I’m not sure. Why don’t you go find out?”
The laughter was instant, loud, and contagious. Not a single person tried not to laugh. Judge Burch covered his mike with his hand and enjoyed the moment. All the lawyers were amused. Some of the spectators practically howled. Even Monty couldn’t help but appreciate the humor.
Judge Burch finally tapped his gavel and said, “Okay, okay. Let’s have some order. Continue, Mr. Martin.”
Monty was still chuckling when he said, “I’ll pass, but thank you.” He stopped smiling and asked, “Now, before your visit, when was the last time the curse of Dark Isle claimed a victim?”
“Last spring, about a year ago.” Her matter-of-factness slowed Monty for a second.
He sized her up, or tried to, and asked, “Okay, what happened?”
“Four men went to the island. All four were dead within a week.”
“Four white men?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No.”
“Okay. What were they doing there?”
“Don’t know.”
“All right. Were their deaths reported anywhere?”
She shrugged as if she had no way of knowing. “Can’t say.”
“What caused their deaths?”
“A bacteria got in their skin.”
The cardinal rule of trial procedure is: Never ask a question if you don’t know the answer. Monty had learned this in law school and had adhered to it strictly for almost thirty years. But, at that moment, he simply couldn’t stop.
“And this bacteria was caused by the curse?”
“That’s right.”
8
Gifford Knox sat in the back row and reveled in Lovely’s performance. Next to him was Thalia Chan, a reporter for The New York Times, a woman he had known for a decade. Her favorite topic was environmental problems caused by big companies, and she had written several long pieces on Gifford and his exploits. She had seen him arrested twice, hauled into court, fined, and threatened. She had seen him testify in a coal ash case. Over the course of their friendship, Gifford had fed her many stories and plenty of inside dirt that was off the record. He was her favorite “unnamed source,” and he had never leaked something that wasn’t accurate.
Gifford had told her about Dark Isle months earlier. He had outlined the key players and repeated things he’d heard over dinner and drinks. He had not told her or anyone else about his fake accident and bogus lawsuit. Even for a bigmouth like Gifford, there were some things that should be kept quiet.
A big story in the Times was coming, and no one but Gifford knew about it. He couldn’t wait.
9
After a day and a half on the witness stand, Lovely was excused and allowed to sit at the table between Steven and Diane. Her performance could not have been better.
Steven’s next witness was Dr. Sargent, the archaeologist from Howard University. They went through the usual back-and-forth establishing his expertise — education, training, writings, experience, and so on. Of particular interest was his work with various African burial projects, beginning in Manhattan decades earlier and continuing to the present. On a large screen mounted in front of the jury box, Dr. Sargent started with a less-than-detailed map of Dark Isle, with most of the details given by Lovely. They included the approximate area of the settlement, the rows of houses, and the cemetery. He showed color photos taken during their recent expedition. Photos of the damage and debris caused by Hurricane Leo; photos of their team clearing the brush and foliage from the burial sites; photos of the actual dig. He said they found remnants of about eighty graves, some with wooden caskets, some without. He had photos of the badly deteriorated caskets. The cemetery was about twenty feet above sea level at its highest point. Leo’s storm surge on Dark Isle had never been determined, but the National Weather Service had decided that on the north end of Camino Island it had risen to twenty-seven feet. The eye then passed directly over Dark Isle, so it was reasonable to assume that the entire island had been under water. Even the most recent graves showed signs of severe water damage. Dr. Sargent said that, in his opinion, the graves and caskets were soaked with seawater for several hours, thus seriously degrading the samples needed for DNA testing.