by Ron Fisher
He gave me a thoughtful look. “You came to the Dark Corner to write a story about these people,” he said. “I'd say you got a humdinger.”
“Everything but a happy ending,” I said.
EPILOGUE
Eloise, Mackenzie, and Kelly had all come with me to visit Taylor Johnson in the medical facility in Greenville he called home. Millie Johnson and Alvin Brown were there, too. It was my first time back since Jamal’s funeral service. As much as I hated funerals, I attended because Taylor had asked me too. Alvin and I had kept Millie Johnson company, and gave her our arms to lean on—my good one since the other one was in a sling.
It was a beautiful day outside, and Mrs. Johnson opened the blinds to let the sunshine stream into the room. She had brought a large tin of her incredible peanut butter cookies and we all sat in chairs surrounding Taylor’s bed, munching on the cookies and talking.
Chuck Norman now lay buried in a Tryon Cemetery, and ironically, Teddy and Natasha rested not far from him. They didn’t charge Chuck’s mother for shooting her son, an act that was generally thought to have saved my life. She still lived in her big home on Hunting Country Road, ostracized by her neighbors. I heard that she was in failing health, attended around the clock by a live-in nurse she brought down from somewhere up north.
There was reputed to be a for-sale sign in front of Wilson Kroll’s castle, although the bets were that he would buy his way out of his legal troubles. But his stud business and reputation in the community—and probably with his Cleveland friends—was irreparably damaged.
Alvin pretended he was disappointed he didn’t get his licks in with Chuck, but that was Alvin. In general, we were all working hard on our personal versions of closure.
Natasha’s family had taken over her education trust, and transferred the recipient award from Jamal to Ronnie Dill. I was proud of myself for playing a small part in that.
Millie Johnson had wholly supported the decision to offer Jamal’s financial aid for college to Ronnie Dill. In fact, between the Ladds and Mrs. Johnson, they helped Ronnie Dill’s mother serve her worthless, abusive, husband divorce papers and got him kicked out with a restraining order to keep him from coming back. The Ladds also helped Mrs. Dill find a good-paying job as a maid for another family on Hunting Club Road.
“So how is the Dill boy doing?” I asked Mrs. Johnson.
“That boy's already improving his grades, with a whole nother' year to go. He’s bound and determined to get into a first-rate college. I'm so proud of him. He’s even stopped saying ‘ain’t,’ and words like that. I heard from Mrs. Dill that he’s even gained some weight.”
As to my relationship with Kelly, we had slid back into our long-distance relationship and shoved our respective phobias under the rug. A voice in my head said, to be continued.
I noticed Taylor looking at me.
“It wasn’t . . . your fault . . . J.D.,” he said.
“I know that Taylor, but Jamal didn’t deserve what he got. He was a good kid. Everybody said so.”
“Not that. I’m not . . . your fault. Stop blaming yourself . . . for me.”
I stared at him lying there, unable to move, hooked up to the lines and tubes that kept him alive, overwhelmed that he was concerned about me and my feelings. No words could describe how much I admired Taylor Johnson’s courage and character.
I’d told Agent Smith that the story I would write about the Dark Corner didn’t have a happy ending. I was wrong. Just knowing Taylor and the rest of the people in this room was my happy ending. These were my friends. This was my family.
THE JUNKYARD
© 2019 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. The Junkyard (J.D. Bragg Series Book 3). Published by MysteryRow.
“There are no secrets that time does not reveal”
Jean Racine
This book is dedicated to the memory of Ruby Anderson Fisher.
7/18/1919 – 7/9/2018
My ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank all those who helped me so much with THE JUNKYARD, the third book in my J.D. Bragg mystery series. First, my Beta Readers, Jeff Upshaw, Patrick Scullin, Tom Monroe, and Ross Puskar. THE FISHER GROUP as always—Hal, Mary Ann, Travis, and Wil Fisher—for all their insight, design and production wizardry. Thanks for Dylan Fisher too, for being there as an inspiration for all of us. Thanks to my Tasmanian friends Jason and Marina Anderson at Polgarus Studios for their excellent work and advice, and to my new Australian friend Graeme Hague whose copy editing makes this a much better book. Finally, thanks to my incredibly smart and talented family—Michael and Staci, Chip and Beth, and Mackenzie and Jamie. You guys remain the greatest.
PROLOGUE
Pickens County, South Carolina.
Kelly Mayfield sat in her living room in her favorite chair, re-reading William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways for the third time since she’d discovered the book in her teenage years. The author’s unforgettable journeys along America’s backroads always made her spirits soar, creating a wanderlust that made Kelly want to pack a bag, gas up the car, and go on a road trip. The destination wouldn’t matter, as long as an untraveled road lay ahead, and an unexplored adventure waited around a bend somewhere.
Maybe she could talk J.D. into a drive into the mountains this weekend and stay at some cute little bed and breakfast somewhere. He was on his way up from Atlanta, but with the ridiculous traffic there on Friday evenings, there was no way to know what time he would arrive.
John David Bragg, my long-distance lover, she thought. She closed the book and shut her eyes, thinking about him. She loved him, there was no doubt about that, but theirs was a relationship difficult to maintain. He lived in Atlanta where he was happy with his work as an investigative journalist, while she was a hundred and forty miles away and the editor of a small-town newspaper. Running the Clarion was her dream job.
And the Clarion had its own complications where she and J.D. were concerned. It was how they met. John David had inherited the paper when his grandfather died, but J.D. had no desire to operate it. Kelly had worked for his grandfather and with family money bought a twenty-five percent interest in the paper. J.D., with his seventy-five percent, became absentee publisher, leaving her and his older sister Eloise to run it.
J.D. stayed entirely out of the business. It left them with a relationship dilemma that they would eventually have to face; she didn’t want to give the paper up and move to Atlanta, and J.D. hated the thought of running a small-town newspaper, especially when it was in the same small town where he grew up.
This was the elephant in the room which kept them from ever discussing the subject of a permanent future together.
Kelly heard a rattle in the kitchen. It sounded like ice cubes falling into the ice bin in the refrigerator and triggered a thirst for something cold to drink while she waited for J.D. to arrive. Something with a little scotch in it, perhaps. After all, it was the beginning of a weekend with the man she loved, and not the time to dwell on that elephant in the room.
She went into the kitchen, took a cocktail glass out of a cabinet, placed it in the refrigerator door, and punched the button for ice cubes. She heard the rattle again, but it wasn’t the icemaker. It was coming from the back door that led off the kitchen to the patio. If it was J.D., she thought, why would he come to the back door?
As she stared at the door, the molding beside the lock splintered and the door crashed open. Two men wearing ski-masks rushed in. One of them overwhelmed Kelly quickly, driving her into the kitchen t
able and bending her backward.
He was on top of her, eye to eye, their faces so close she could smell garlic and onions on his breath. Kelly couldn’t see enough through the small openings in the mask for any chance to recognize who he might be.
She pounded her fists frantically against the side of his head.
With the weight of his body pressing her flat against the table, he released his grip from her shoulders and tried to grab her flailing fists.
“Get off me!” She yelled, raging inside, determined to fight. She gritted her teeth and tried to head-butt him hard, hoping to get him in the nose. He sensed it coming and turned away, taking the blow on his ear and the side of his head. He grunted, and Kelly knew she had hurt him. He swore at her with a guttural, almost animal-like growl that she barely understood. He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off the table, her head bouncing on the tile. A kick to the ribs shot pain through her like a stab from a knife. Another to her head sent the room spinning. A final kick made Kelly’s whole world go dark.
The doorbell chimed.
The two men stood frozen, listening intently. The doorbell rang again, accompanied by a rap on the door. A phone somewhere in the house rang several times, then stopped. There was another bang on the door. Louder, and more aggressive. Kelly’s assailant looked down at her body for a moment, then both men fled out the back door and into the night.
On the front porch, a pizza delivery guy turned and walked back to his car, angrily pitching the pizza box he carried onto the front seat beside him. He stared at it, then lifted the lid, pulled out a slice, and took a big bite. He drove away, cursing under his breath and eating the undelivered pizza. It was the second time Kelly Mayfield had been called a bitch that night. This one she didn’t hear.
CHAPTER ONE
I walked up onto Kelly Mayfield’s front porch, a headache from the hundred-and forty-mile drive from Atlanta beating a tympani solo in my head. The first twenty miles had taken almost as long as the rest. If Atlanta rush-hour traffic wasn’t usually dreadful enough, a recent fire underneath an Interstate had collapsed a bridge and shut down a main artery, turning all of Atlanta into a parking lot.
A cardboard hanger like the “Do Not Disturb” signs that come with your hotel room was attached to Kelly’s doorknob. It had the logo of a chain of pizza restaurants on it—most likely our dinner for tonight, I thought. I rang the doorbell, and when Kelly didn’t show up right away, I used my key and let myself in.
I sat my suitcase down, called her name and she didn’t answer. In the bathroom, probably. I went into the kitchen and found her. Prostrate on the floor. I shouted her name and rushed over, but she didn’t move. Someone had savagely beaten her, bloody wounds on the side of her face and in her hairline, her right eye almost swollen shut. I checked for a pulse and found a heartbeat, thank God.
A call to 911 got the police and an ambulance coming. Kelly didn’t stir once while I was waiting for them. At least, she was still breathing—if only haltingly.
First responders were there in minutes. They took one look at Kelly and ordered a Medivac helicopter to rush her to the Greenville Memorial Hospital, saying something about it being the nearest Level One trauma center. They worked on her until the chopper set down on the golf course fairway across the street. Kelly had leased a home in the Pickens Country Club neighborhood only for the view; the verdant golf course out her front windows, and the Blue Ridge Mountains on the northern horizon behind.
They let me ride in the chopper with her, and if her condition changed, I didn’t see it. She was still breathing, and I took that as a good sign.
When we arrived at the hospital, they rushed Kelly in and pushed me away from the gurney, pointing to a waiting room, saying they would inform me when they knew something.
This was the first moment I had the opportunity to call anyone, but I didn’t know who to call, other than my sister Eloise. She was not only Kelly’s partner at the Clarion but loved Kelly almost as much as I did. I couldn’t call Kelly’s parents, they were elderly with advanced Alzheimer’s, and both in a memory unit of a nursing home in North Carolina. They probably wouldn’t understand what I would tell them. And Kelly was an only child with no brothers or sisters. She had other relatives somewhere, but I didn’t have their names or phone numbers. I decided not to worry about that now and hoped her condition wouldn’t reach a point that would make me have to find them.
I called Eloise. She answered on the third ring and sounded sleepy. She must have gone to bed early, which she often did.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Oh, hey, little brother, are you up here? Kelly said you were coming for the weekend.”
“I’m at Greenville General Hospital. I’ve got some bad news.”
“Are you hurt? Did you have an accident?” she asked anxiously.
“It’s Kelly, not me.”
“What? What’s happened to Kelly? We left the Clarion together today. She seemed fine. She said she was going home, order a pizza, and wait for you.”
“Someone broke in on her. She’s been assaulted and severely beaten. I found her lying on her kitchen floor, unconscious. They brought her here by Medivac air transport, and I made them let me ride in the helicopter with her. She was breathing when they brought her in, but still unresponsive. I’m waiting to hear something from the doctors now.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“Nobody has any idea. Do you?”
“No. I can’t even imagine who would do something like this. I’m on my way, John David, and I’m bringing Mackenzie. She’ll want to come too.”
That didn’t surprise me. Mackenzie was my teenage niece, and now a cub reporter at the Clarion, working part-time and juggling it with her senior year in high school. Kelly was teaching her the newspaper ropes, and the two had become very close.
“Can I bring you anything?” Eloise was saying. “I’ll bet you haven’t eaten a bite.”
One of my sister’s firm beliefs was that any crisis is better handled on a full stomach.
Another of her tenets as a true Southerner was that home cooking was the only real food.
“Don’t eat that hospital food,” she added. “I made fried chicken and biscuits for dinner. I’ll bring you some.”
CHAPTER TWO
Pickens County Sheriff Arlen Bagwell came into the waiting room along with who turned out to be two plain-clothes detectives. I knew Sheriff Bagwell. We’d first met way back when I was a teenager, and he was just a deputy. Then we became better acquainted two years ago when he investigated my grandfather’s death. Our other connection was on a personal level. Sheriff Bagwell, a divorcee, held an unreciprocated crush on my sister, Eloise. I wondered if he’d decided to come along with his detectives for that reason—hoping to see Eloise here. He would get his wish. Eloise would soon be here.
I stood up and met them. Bagwell was a tall, lean man with a brush-cut and the deportment of a marine drill sergeant. Soft-spoken, he had a zero-tolerance for those on the other side of his ideas of law and order. He was an honest man whom I’d grown to respect and even like despite his lack of a gregarious nature and the fact that we didn’t always see eye-to-eye.
After Bagwell introduced the men as Detectives Jud Chapin and Clyde Bates, he offered his commiserations for what happened to Kelly. He knew all about our relationship.
I told him I was waiting for the doctor to come out and tell me how she was, and I asked him what he knew so far about Kelly’s assault.
“We haven’t been able to learn much yet,” he said. “Other than her attacker was most likely a male and he broke in through the back door. The CSI people are at the scene. Do you have any idea who could have done this, Mr. Bragg?”
“I can’t imagine anyone who would do this to her,” I said. “Was she sexually assaulted?” I was afraid to hear the answer; fearful she would suffer emotional injuries as well as the physical ones that this animal had inflicted.
Bagwell hesitated a moment
. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to the doctors, but I doubt if they’ve done a rape kit yet. The doctors are probably attending to more critical matters right now.”
“Oh Kelly . . .” I said before I realized I’d even said it.
“Do you know if she had seen any strange or suspicious men hanging around, or following her lately?” Bagwell asked.
“If so, she didn’t tell me. My sister may know.”
“Do you know if Ms. Mayfield had any enemies?”
I thought about that. “Every reporter makes their share of enemies if they’re good at their job,” I said finally. “They write things about people that can make them mad. Or they come down on the side of some issue that angers its opponents. But I don’t know, or can’t imagine, a specific incident that would cause anyone to do this. Eloise would know more about that than I would. I’m pretty hands-off when it comes to the Clarion.”
“If there was a theft of anything, we can’t determine it,” Bagwell said. “She still had her watch on, and her wallet and cell phone were in her purse, found in the living room along with a laptop computer. Nothing in her bedroom seems to have been disturbed, and it appears that her jewelry wasn’t touched. So, this doesn’t look like a burglary. The beating was such an act of utter savagery that it seems like there was something personal to it. I guess it could have been some violent sexual pervert, but hopefully, the rape kit will help us determine that.
Did Kelly have enemies? Last spring a man on horseback tried to take my head off with a polo mallet because I was sticking my nose into his business. Why not Kelly? I needed to find out what she was working on.
I thought of the pizza delivery hanger on the front doorknob and told Bagwell about it.
