by Ron Fisher
The J.D. Bragg Mystery Series
Box Set: Books 1 – 3
CADILLAC TRACKS
DARK CORNER
THE JUNKYARD
BY RON FISHER
CADILLAC TRACKS
© 2018 Ron Fisher.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Fisher, Ron. Cadillac Tracks (J.D. Bragg Series Book 1). Published by MysteryRow.
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This book is dedicated to Romie and Ruby. Without them I wouldn’t be here. Literally.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is my first novel, and I hope there will be many more to come. But just getting to this point took a lot of work— and a lot of help. So, I’d like to thank the people who so freely helped me with the journey: Hal Fisher, Mary Ann Fisher, Wil Fisher, and Travis Fisher of THE FISHER GROUP for their design and production skills. Michael Fisher, Mackenzie Squires, Jamie Squires, and Chip Fisher for their invaluable and talented help, love, and encouragement. I couldn’t have done this without you you guys.
PROLOGUE
Eastatoe Valley, Upstate South Carolina, February.
The Bluetick hound came out of the woods behind Cecil Hood’s farm and stood in the thin shadow of a leaf-bare sweet gum. She stabbed her pointed nose into the air several times, and then followed the airborne scent she was tracking into the open pasture and toward a weathered old barn.
Back in the woods, a young voice called her name. The dog turned and looked, torn for a moment between the familiar call and primordial instinct. The urge to follow the hunt prevailed, and she moved on, the hair on her back bristling to an uneven ridge along her spine.
A small, sandy-haired boy came running out of the trees behind her.
“Damn you Jody,” the boy said, “you get back here right now.”
He watched in dismay as the dog ignored him. They had strayed too far this time and were gone too long, even for a Saturday. But when Jody picked up the scent of a coon back in the woods and took off after it, the boy followed in a run without thought of place or time or what his dad would do to him if they weren’t home by suppertime.
Jody finally treed the animal in a fork of a giant poplar. The boy stood and listened to the music of her baying while the old coon stared down at them. After a while, the boy managed to tear the dog away, and they made their way home. Along the way, Jody picked up a new scent and was off again. Now there they were on Mr. Hood’s property, a mile from home and the sun going down.
The boy watched as the dog began to stalk something near the barn. Some kind of old farm machinery sat on the ground beneath the open loft; something was draped over it—a sack of fertilizer or a cover perhaps, but it was too far away for the boy to tell. He wondered whether a cat was lying on it. Jody would chase a cat almost as quick as a coon.
“C’mon, Jody. C’mon girl, let’s go!” the boy coaxed, trying to create an excitement in his voice that might lure her away. Killing Mr. Hood’s cat—or worse, a chicken—would surely get his hide tanned if his daddy found out. He turned and ran back toward the trees, all the while looking over his shoulder, calling and whistling, hoping Jody would join the game. Finally, the dog gave in and bounded after him, the bond of a boy and his dog winning over older, wilder instincts. They ran into the woods, the dog on the boy’s heels, leaping and barking, caught up in a newer, more light-hearted chase.
In the darkened door of the loft, the man standing in the shadows inched closer to the opening and watched them retreat into the forest. He stood and listened as the dog’s excited yelps faded into distant echoes. Only then did he look down at the old man lying prostrate across the disc harrow on the ground below. He probably would have died just from the fall, the man thought, but the edges of the machine’s circular blades, sharpened to turn the hardest earth, made his death certain. One of the steel discs had cleaved Cecil Hood’s skull from his eyebrow to his hairline, the pooling blood turning the Carolina clay underneath an even deeper shade of red.
CHAPTER ONE
Atlanta Georgia, the end of March.
“John David, Mr. Lowe would like to see you in his office.”
It was Burt Lowe’s secretary. “Now?” I asked.
“Yes, now.”
I hung up the phone and took the stairs up to Lowe's office two at a time, not because I was that eager to see him, but because I couldn't stand the suspense of why the publisher of SportsWord magazine—and the man who signed my paychecks—wanted to see me.
A summons to Burt Lowe’s office rarely bode well. Rumors of layoffs were rife around the coffee machine, but then again, they always were. Competition was stiff and the ever-shrinking business of the printed word was always a concern. Were it not for our online version, the magazine would probably have already gone under. But if I were getting chopped, I couldn’t see Burt Lowe swinging that axe; he’d leave that to Joe Dennis, my editor and immediate boss. Burt Lowe dwelled in the managerial stratosphere where he could pay as little attention as possible to those who wrote for his national sports magazine, preferring to deal with issues he actually had a talent for, like bottom lines and sales figures. To him, writers were just entries in a column entitled “overhead expenses.” Not that I was that much of an expense. Nobody ever got rich working at SportsWord.
However, despite the slightly-above-poverty-level salary, I liked my job and didn’t want to lose it. For one thing, I wasn’t stuck on a single-sport beat like I had been in my previous positions. Covering one sport, day in and day out, took a professionalism I didn’t seem to have. I was easily bored, and as history has proven, when I get bored, I get into trouble. Boredom was the breeding ground for most of my problems with ex-employers—the emphasis here on “ex.”
At SportsWord, I was considered a general sports journalist. I followed the story, regardless of the sport, which gave me a broader, more news-rich field in which to work, and a chance to do real investigative reporting, the one thing that kept my brain from atrophying.
I also liked Atlanta and didn’t want to leave. Atlanta was almost hometown to me, since I grew up just over the state line in South Carolina.
Lydia Wells, Lowe’s elderly secretary, sat at her desk outside his door, watching me approach. She gave me the once-over with an expression that said my faded jeans, Vortex Bar and Grill T-shirt, and worn Chuck Taylor’s were beneath any civilized standard of sartorial acceptance.
I couldn’t help thinking how much she reminded me of Doris Mozingo, my grandfather’s longtime secretary back in South Carolina. They both shared the distinction of being the only women I knew whose mere presence could intimidate me into a condition just short of paralysis. On those rare occasions as a kid when my grandfather allowed my sister and me to visit the small-town newspaper he published, Doris Mozingo always made me feel like she could see right into my head and read any acts of mischief that lurked there as easily as she could read that week’s paper. She made me want to confess to something, whether I was guilty or not. Lydia Wells wielded the same power. This morning she looked especially dour, her silver hair pulled back and pinned so tightly to her head that it gave her eyes an Asian tilt—a Chinese dowager in a pin
striped pants-suit. I wondered if she enjoyed turning a six-foot-three, two hundred and twenty-pound man into an errant schoolboy.
She stabbed a red-tipped thumb toward the door behind her. “They’re waiting for you.”
I took a step and then stopped. “They?” I said. “Who else is in there?”
“The best way to find that out is to go in,” she said, showing me the top of her head, already busy with something else.
I had been dismissed.
On the walls around her desk, framed covers of famous athletes from past issues of SportsWord looked down on me as if they knew something that I didn’t, and it wasn’t good. With that heartening thought, I tapped once on the door of Lowe’s inner sanctum and entered.
Burt Lowe was behind his desk waiting for me, elbows on the arms of his chair, pencil-thin fingers forming a tent in front of his face. I tried to read his expression, but couldn’t tell if he was pleased as punch to see me, or sorry as hell.
“Have a seat, John David,” he said, gesturing to a chair in front of his desk.
Stan Gilmore, the magazine’s portly lawyer, sat in a wingback chair to one side, his eyes fixed on a spot of carpet just beyond the tips of his highly polished shoes, his several chins resting upon each other like a layer cake gone askew. He wore the expression, as always, of a man who smelled something foul.
I sensed someone behind me and turned. Seated on the sofa against the back wall was Barry Beal, the world famous tour golfer, and the subject of my latest investigative efforts. He was glaring at me like he wanted to tee me up and drive me out Burt’s window. Next to him was a natty little man in a well-tailored suit, bowtie, and large black-rimmed glasses. I didn’t know him, but something told me Stan Gilmore wasn’t the only lawyer in the room.
Barry Beal was once a star on the PGA tour, but now at the end of his career, he was missing more cuts than he was making. He missed the cut again at the Houston Open last Friday, and flew to Atlanta over the weekend to work on his game before the Masters kicked off in Augusta this week. I was currently running down a tip that he assaulted—and maybe raped—a young woman at a local hotel last Sunday night.
Beal was, in my opinion, a disgrace to the game. He was long rumored to be a sexual deviant, but no one had ever been able to prove it. I planned to change that.
For a second time, Lowe asked me to sit. I gave him a raised eyebrow and sat down, angling the chair to one side so I could face them all.
“You obviously know Mr. Beal,” Lowe said before gesturing to Mr. Bow Tie. “This is his attorney, Arthur Pitt.”
I smiled a private smile. Could I spot them or what? Lawyer Pitt and I exchanged slight nods, Beal continued to glare, and nobody offered to shake hands. I turned back to Lowe.
“What’s this all about, Burt?”
“Mr. Beal tells me you’re doing a story on him. Is this true?”
“He knows I am,” I said. “I tried to get an interview with him all day yesterday.”
“Mr. Beal has given me his side of the story, now I’d like to hear yours,” he said.
I glanced at Beal, then back at Lowe. This was beginning to feel like a poorly rehearsed play.
“Seems Mr. Beal likes to beat hell out of his dates—and who knows what else.”
“That’s a goddamned lie,” Barry Beal said, lurching forward from the sofa.
Arthur Pitt placed a restraining hand on his arm and spoke to him in a voice too low for me to hear. Beal settled back down and resumed glowering at me.
“If you have substantiation for that accusation,” his lawyer said, turning his attention to me, “you’d better produce it, because you’ve just slandered my client.”
“Oh, I have substantiation,” I said, and wondered if they could tell I was lying. Truth was, so far, I couldn’t find the alleged victim. Without her verification, all I had to go on was a tip from a hotel bartender, who didn’t witness the actual event but he did see the woman before and after the attack.
Arthur Pitt wasted no time replying. “That is impossible, Mr. Bragg, because there’s simply no truth to these outrageous accusations.”
“My sources say otherwise,” I answered. “They say that Barry had a little after-hours match play with some chick at the Palace Hotel in Buckhead, and she lost.”
“That is bloody preposterous,” Beal said loudly, his words edged with the accent of his native South Africa.
“Don’t dignify that with a comment, Barry,” Arthur Pitt chimed in.
“Sweet young thing,” I continued, looking at Beal. “Maybe half your age. One brown eye, one black. Ring a bell?”
“I’m not putting up with this,” Beal said, and started to get up, but again, Pitt kept him seated.
“This man tried to ruin me with his lies once before,” Beal said, “and I will not allow him to do it again.”
“Lies?” I said. “I witnessed that particular story with my own eyes and ears, and you know it.”
“Then why did your newspaper fire you?” Beal said. “I should have sued you then. I won’t make that mistake twice.”
“I was fired because I worked for a chicken-shit outfit that was easily bluffed,” I said. Burt Lowe refused to meet my gaze when I said that, and I felt a sudden blast of déjà’ vu.
“Gentlemen, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Arthur Pitt said. “As unfortunate as that incident was, it’s in the past and the damage is done. We can only try to prevent the same thing from happening again. As you may know, this is Master’s week, but Barry is so upset over this, he’s thinking about withdrawing.” He pointed at me. “The ridiculous accusations and insinuations this man has been making have totally destroyed his concentration and his ability to play his best.”
Beal could withdraw from any tournament he liked but it wouldn’t be because of anything I was doing. My guess was he was playing so poorly that he didn’t want to face the embarrassment of failing to make the cut for the third tournament in a row.
“Will the woman in question substantiate the allegation?” Burt Lowe asked me.
“If her jaws aren’t wired too tight to talk.”
“A yes or no answer is what we want, John David,” Stan Gilmore chimed in.
“The story is a work in progress, for Christ’s sake. I haven’t been able to talk to her yet.”
“And why is that?” Lowe asked.
I sighed, and I’m not a sigh’er. This was getting to me. “I can’t find her,” I said. “But I will.”
“Do you even know her name?”
“Not yet,” I said reluctantly. I saw the hint of a smile appear and then disappear on Barry Beal’s face.
“So, you haven’t talked to this alleged victim, you don’t know her name, and you don’t know where she is,” Gilmore summed up. “What corroboration do you have?”
It was getting hard to tell which lawyer in the room worked for SportsWord and which one worked for Beal. I directed my answer at Burt Lowe.
“I have a source who saw this woman with Beal in the hotel bar, all grins and giggles, then later, she’s found in the parking lot with scrapes and cuts, a bloody lip, and one eye swollen shut. According to my source, Vitali Klitschko looked better after the Lenox Lewis fight.”
Pitt interrupted. “The woman with Barry at the Palace bar on that particular evening was someone who simply joined him for a drink. Afterward, Barry retired to his room for the night. Alone. If something happened to her later, while she has our sympathy, Barry is in no way responsible.”
“So who is she?” I asked. “Let her tell me that. If she says he didn’t do it, then that’s the end of it.” I looked over at Beal. “And pigs may fly into the Georgia Dome and crap all over the Falcons at kickoff—but hey, anything’s possible.”
Beal turned an even brighter shade of red and stood up. This time Pitt didn’t try to stop him. “Do you see what I mean about him, Lowe?” Beal said. “You call this unbiased journalism?”
Beal looked at Lowe while pointing a stubby finger at me.
“If this man represents the kind of people you have working for you, then this outfit is in serious trouble. You know where I stand; now I’d like an answer. Are you going to put a stop to this or not?”
Lowe picked up a stack of papers on his desk and moved them an infinitesimal distance, then re-stacked them neatly, his brow furrowed as if the task required his utmost concentration. He glanced at Stan Gilmore as if to draw from a friendly source of support before responding. “Without this woman’s affirming statement, or an eyewitness, we will not pursue this story any further,” he finally said, never looking at me.
“This is bullshit,” I began, with more on the way, but Stan Gilmore cut me off.
“We don’t print rumors, John David,” he said. “SportsWord is not a supermarket scandal sheet.”
Barry Beal got up to leave and gave Lowe a hard look. “You’d better throw a rope around him,” he said, gesturing toward me. “Because if I read one line about this anywhere—or hear one more word spoken about it—I’m going to assume it came from him. And I’m going to hold all of you responsible.”
He glared at me one last time, wheeled, and stormed out the door. Arthur Pitt nodded to Lowe and Gilmore, ignored me, and followed him out.
I was the first to speak after they left. “Can you believe this guy?” I said, standing up and shoving my hands deep into my pockets. “I’m going to hold you all responsible?” Who does he think he is, the Don Corleone of golf?”
“He’s won a dozen PGA tournaments, including three majors, John David,” Stan Gilmore answered. That’s who he is.”
“Spare me the hero worship, Stan,” I said. “The man’s over the hill. He hasn’t finished in the top ten in years. Besides that, he’s a kinky son of a bitch who gets his rocks off by knocking women around.”
