If the appearance of the AG was designed to impress Judge Burch, there was no indication that it did. For the first time, His Honor seemed slightly impatient.
The next five witnesses added some color to the proceedings. All were working men who earned their money from the sea in various ways. All were natives of the area or had lived there for many years. All were middle-aged and white, and none of them really wanted to be there.
Skip Purdy went first. He was forty-five, a shrimper whose father had been a shrimper. He’d been fishing, for money and for pleasure, the waters around Camino Island and the Camino River since he was a kid. He knew all the islands well, including Dark Isle. No, he had never set foot on it, had no reason to, and knew no one who had. He had never seen any sign of life there — no human, no animal, nothing.
On cross-examination, Steven asked, “Mr. Purdy, you still run a shrimp boat, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you should be out there today, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Instead, you’re here in this courtroom, correct?”
“Pretty obvious.”
“Are you being paid to testify?”
Monty had prepped his witnesses well and the question was expected. “Yes, sir, I’m being paid, same as you.”
“How much?”
Monty stood with a smile and said, “Your Honor, please.”
“Objection sustained. Do not answer.”
“No further questions.”
“You are excused, Mr. Purdy.”
Donnie Bohannon owned a charter service and specialized in catching sailfish in the Atlantic. He was forty-one, with the lined, bronze face and bleached hair of a man who spent his life in the sun. He had never been to Dark Isle but passed by almost every day, to and from the central marina in Santa Rosa. In the past eighteen years, he had seen nothing on the beaches. Hurricane Leo hit it hard and destroyed many trees, but there was no sign of life.
Roger Sullivan was a fishing guide who worked the bay side in smaller craft. The one-mile gap between Dark Isle and the mainland was a prime breeding pool for grouper, wahoo, and flounder. He passed close to the island every day and had seen no signs of life in many years. There was once a herd of deer, but they disappeared after Leo.
Ozzie Winston was a retired harbormaster at the Santa Rosa marina and a native of Camino Island. Brad Shore ran a scuba operation. Their testimony was more of the same: a knowledge of Dark Isle based on years of passing by it, familiarity with its legends and stories, and certainty that there had been zero human activity on the island in their lifetimes.
Monty’s point was simple and effective: Even if Lovely visited her island for years, as she claimed, those visits had stopped long ago.
As the lunch hour approached, he made the decision to rest his case. In preparation for the trial, his strategy had been to attack the credibility of Lovely’s case by casting doubts about her story. However, she had done a marvelous job in holding her own, and Monty was convinced Judge Burch was sympathetic to her.
What else could Tidal Breeze and the state of Florida prove? Dark Isle had in fact been inhabited by former slaves, both before and after statehood. Lovely claimed to be the last of their descendants and her testimony was believable. How could they prove otherwise? The archaeologists had found a real cemetery.
Judge Burch was always ready for lunch, but when he realized the lawyers were winding down he said, “I’ll allow each party to take a few minutes for a recap. But I don’t need to hear much. Mr. Mahon.”
The lawyers were caught off guard, but none had an advantage. Steven stood, without notes, and said, “Sure, Judge. We began this dispute with Tidal Breeze denying everything, the usual tactic. Tidal Breeze denied humans ever inhabited Dark Isle and denied my client ever lived there. We know now that those denials were hogwash. It’s so refreshing to see the state of Florida suddenly have a keen interest in the island. For almost two hundred years the state had nothing to do with it. No schools, no roads, no bridges, no clinics, no electricity, no phone service. Nothing, absolutely nothing, Your Honor. Lovely Jackson and her people lived in poverty on their island. Health care didn’t exist. Diseases were common. The life expectancy was at least twenty years lower than average. But they survived because they had to and because they were proud and treasured their freedom. Now, the state has crawled into bed with a big-time developer, Tidal Breeze, and the state is in this courtroom right now fighting for ownership of Dark Isle.
