by Ron Fisher
“Sheriff, I overheard Laverne Dollar talking about moving the operation to somewhere called Ray-Ray’s cabin. Maybe that’s where they went.”
“Who is Ray-Ray?”
“I don’t know. Somebody they knew at one time, I think. It sounded like he’s not even around now. Maybe dead. An old friend or a relative perhaps.”
Bagwell said, “By saying that in front of you, I’m assuming they weren’t planning on letting you leave there to tell anybody about it.”
“You’re right about that. Laverne had a lethal dose of fentanyl ready to give me when your men broke in.”
“We’ll charge them with that, too,” Bagwell said. “Attempted murder. But if they now think you got out of there alive, they’d probably forget about going to this cabin, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t think so. At the time they talked about it, I was pretending to be knocked out. I don’t think they knew I heard them.”
Bagwell looked at my face. “I can see where they roughed you up a bit. If you need a paramedic to look at it, they’re here now.”
“I’m okay, Sheriff. Compared to a blitzing linebacker’s elbow through a face-guard, this ain’t nothing.”
I almost got Bagwell to smile.
“Ray-Ray, huh?” he said. “We’ll see what Wade Dollar knows about him and his cabin.”
There was no smoke at all coming from the lab now, and the firemen began to emerge, bringing their equipment with them.
One of them came over to speak to Bagwell.
He said, “They had the place set up to incinerate deliberately. Beats anything I’ve ever seen. They triggered it by a wall switch a few yards up the tunnel. Guess they done it as they left. It had to be something extremely flammable and long burning. Maybe with a small explosive of some kind to set it off. The Fire Marshal can probably tell us. They made damn sure nothing would be left. It’s just a blackened hole in the ground now.”
“Is it safe to go in? I want to see,” Bagwell said.
“To tell you the truth, Sheriff, I just don’t know. We went in, but you might have noticed we didn’t stay long, and we were wearing our protective clothing and boots, including face masks, but they aren’t much more than surgical masks, so, we might have already made a big mistake. This fentanyl stuff—which is what I understand we’re dealing with here—is all new to me. We’re just a small-town fire department. I don’t know what was aerosolized by the fire, or if it’s dangerous, or what precautions to take. Hell, it might even be dangerous breathing the air out here. We need to get some experts in. My advice to you, and everybody else is don’t go in there until we do. I’d shut this whole junkyard down and get whoever lives here out until further notice.”
Alvin and I were listening. He turned to me, raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m ready to get the fuck outta’ here. Whaddya say, homeboy?”
Bagwell looked like he might want to join us. He was wearing an expression like he was already smelling something noxious.
“DEA Agent Underwood is still here,” he said. “I need to get him. This sounds like a job for the Federal Government.”
The fireman went to his truck and Bagwell stood casting an eye around the junkyard, probably looking for Agent Underwood. If the possibility of breathing dangerous air wasn’t enough to make me want to leave, the prospect of seeing Agent Underwood again, was.
“Can we go now?” I asked Bagwell.
He gave it some thought. “Sure,” he finally said. “But I need to see you tomorrow. There’s a lot more to talk about here.”
I Said, “What about the dealer called Doughboy that hangs out in the Tiger’s Tail, and the bartender there, Terrell Dent? Are you going to round them up? They’re involved with the Dollars and this business somehow.”
“Looking for them now. Doughboy’s real name is Homer Addis, by the way.”
“And the rest of the Dollars who live here?” I asked, thinking about the boy with the cat. “I saw a little boy here earlier. You’re not leaving them here with all these unanswered safety questions, are you?”
“The kid belongs to Wade Dollar’s son, Benny, and his young wife. We’re getting Social Services out here tomorrow to look into their situation. But now I think we ought to get them all out of here tonight,” Bagwell said.
“Let’s hit the road, Alvin,” I said.
How? He asked.
I suddenly realized what Alvin meant. The Jeep was a half-mile away, where we’d left it to get to the deer blind.
“Think we could get deputy dog over there to give us a ride?” Alvin said, looking at a police car parked by the fence, a uniformed cop standing by it.
“Let’s walk,” I said. “We could probably use the fresh air.”
“Right behind you,” Alvin said.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Eloise woke up when I got in Saturday night—or early Sunday morning—which was more accurate. I guess she was sleeping with one eye open, waiting for me. We sat together for a while, and I’d told her everything about the events at the junkyard. She listened raptly, saying very little other than uttering an occasional “Oh” or “My God, J.D.”
When I finished, Eloise sat there looking at me with misty eyes.
She said, “I don’t know whether to laugh with joy that you came out of this alive or scream at you for being such an idiot for going there in the first place. You can’t keep doing things like this, John David. I don’t know what I’d do if anything . . .”
She leaned over and hugged me without finishing.
“Thank God for Alvin,” she said, “At least you had the good sense to take him with you. But I’m mad at him too for going along with it.”
She went back to bed after that, and I headed to my bedroom. Sleep came quicker than I’d expected, exhaustion overpowering my lingering adrenalin rush.
I slept until almost noon, and Eloise was sitting at the breakfast table when I came down. She gave me a look that said she had something on her mind.
“What?” I said to her, expecting her jump on me again. But she surprised me.
She said, “I think we should put out a special edition of the Clarion. This drug bust is a major story, and who knows more about what happened than we do? Or, you do, to be precise. We could certainly put out a far more comprehensive presentation of the story than anyone else.”
“The TV news will have run it before then, Eloise. In fact, they’re probably already running it.”
“Okay, so it won’t be a scoop. But that doesn’t matter. Neither TV nor any other news outlet will have the details that we do. They weren’t there. You were. If we could get it out Monday—even late afternoon—it would still be news.”
I sat and gave it some thought. “The story from a reporter’s eye-witness viewpoint,” I said. “Up close and personal, with a bit of human interest. Not about me, but by me, and we tie in Kelly’s assault. That could be interesting.”
“Maybe Pulitzer territory, John David.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Eloise. But it would be a unique angle, I’ll grant you that. You’ve become quite the newspaperwoman, big sister. Grandfather would love it.”
“Don’t make me cry, John David.”
Mackenzie came into the room. “Why are you making Mom cry, J.D.?”
I told her about her mom’s idea.
She said, “I love it. I want to help.”
“Okay,” I said to Eloise, “call in what staff we’ll need, and I’ll go visit Kelly for a little while. I feel like I ignored her yesterday with all that was going on. The drive will also give me some quiet time to organize my thoughts and start framing a story. I’ll see you at the Clarion.”
#
Kelly lay unchanged, of course, and I did my daily ritual of kissing her forehead and holding her hand. Doctor Mathis stopped by and told me he was still planning to bring her out of the coma on Tuesday and had scheduled it for eleven in the morning. I got butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. I tried hard to follow
Dr. Mathis' lead and stay positive. Sometimes it worked for me, sometimes it didn’t. Tuesday loomed large for me, both with anticipation and fear.
I stayed for about thirty minutes and was off to the Clarion forming a basic outline in my head of the story that I would write for the special edition.
#
Eloise was waiting for me when I got to the Clarion, and we sat down together for a planning session. She said she’d called the sheriff’s department and there would be a press conference at two o’clock today at the front gate of the junkyard. However, no one would be allowed inside, which means we can’t get any photographs of the actual lab. I told Vickie Sayers that—she’s also the paper’s photographer now—and she said that wouldn’t stop her. She’s got one of those camera drones, and she’ll sneak and get some aerial shots.”
“Is there anything she doesn’t do?” I asked.
“Not much. That girl is a piece of work.”
We discussed the basic layout of the issue: number of articles, content, who would write what, last-minute ads from regular advertisers that she could drum up, the aerial photographs, and so on.
That done I said, “Have Vickie cover the press conference, too. And get her notes of all the opioid research she did for me and give them to Joanne McKinney. Have Joanne do an ‘all-you-ever-wanted -to-know-about-opioids’ background piece. And maybe we’ll even rerun Kelly’s original editorial too. Then everybody has a part.”
Eloise said, “Oh, I almost forgot. Sheriff Bagwell wants you to call him. He says he has a couple of questions for you.”
“When are you going to start calling him Arlen, Eloise? Give the poor guy a break, will you?”
“Shut up, John David, and mind your own business.” She was wearing a smile when she said it.
Eloise left to attend to matters and I picked up the phone and called Bagwell.
“Sheriff Bagwell.” He answered.
“This is J.D., Sheriff. You wanted me to call you?”
“I was wondering if you can remember anything else the Dollars said about this Ray-Ray or his cabin. Anything, no matter how small or insignificant you may think it was.”
“They said it was deserted, rundown and all grown up around it. By calling it a cabin, I assumed it was in the mountains somewhere. And like I said, I don’t believe this Ray-Ray is around any longer. Perhaps he’s dead. But as to who Ray-Ray was to the Dollars, they didn’t say. I don’t know if he was a friend or a relative.”
“I’ve questioned Wade Dollar and his wife at length about this guy and his cabin,” Bagwell said. “They claim they don’t know anything about a cabin, or anyone named Ray-Ray. I tend to believe them. Wade’s trying to get as far away from this thing as he can. If this Ray-Ray was a relative or something, I can’t find him. I’ve had people combing the land records for Pickens and Oconee Counties, and the adjacent counties over in North Carolina, but can’t find any other property belonging to any Dollar.”
“What about Doughboy, did you get him yet?”
“Can’t find him. Maybe he’s with the Dollars, or helping them hide somewhere.”
“How about Terrell Dent?”
“He’s still in the wind too. We’ve talked to all the other employees there, a bartender name April and two daytime bartenders, George and Kenny. None of them seem to know anything.”
If Bagwell only knew, I thought. April was still keeping her mouth shut and probably would until the whole gang was rounded up.
I got off the phone and went to work. This was a complicated story to write. How did I make it an eyewitness report without making it a story about me? Reporters should stay out of their stories. The Dollars and the drug bust was the news, but in this case I guess I was too. It was a delicate tightrope I would have to walk.
Later, Alvin called. He was sitting in a chair outside Kelly’s door. “All quiet here, he said, “They got any leads on the Dollars yet?”
“As a couple of minutes ago, no. I was just talking to Bagwell. He’s still trying to find Ray-Ray’s cabin. If the Dollars had any sense—which I know they don’t—they’d be on the way to someplace that doesn’t extradite. But who knows? I’ll come over and spell you later.”
“Don’t bother, I’ve slipped a friendly hospital security guard a few bucks to watch over her tonight.”
“Good, I’ll get the Clarion to reimburse you.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’ve also told the nurses they need to be on the lookout for anyone who doesn’t belong. I particularly trust one of the night nurses. She’ll keep an eye on Kelly for me too. She’s a fine-looking, young black woman who seems to have taken a certain interest in me.”
“Why is that not surprising?” I said and rang off.
I had the story almost finished at about nine-thirty p.m. My mind was mush, I was beat and needed a break. I decided to face the story with fresh eyes in the morning. The others had already left, and I would check their work then too.
Hopefully, we would have it all set up, stories and ads in their proper places, the digital edition prepared, and everything done by late afternoon tomorrow. If Eloise could have the pressmen standing by and ready for the run, the paper should be on the streets and on the way to our subscribers by six in the evening.
I turned out the lights and locked up the Clarion.
#
Everyone was already in bed when I got to Still hollow. I made myself a sandwich from some leftover ham in the fridge, poured a glass of cold milk, and went out to the den to eat it. I turned on the TV low to not wake anyone and found a sports program on a cable station. For the past week, I’d been ignoring my chosen profession. I saw that back in Atlanta, the rebuilding Braves, with a couple of seasoned veterans and a team full of incredibly talented newcomers were tearing up their division, and were the talk of baseball. The personal drama that had surrounded me for the past few days had displaced the excitement of sports in my life. I felt completely out of touch with it. Kids games played by grown men didn’t seem all that important to me at the moment.
I finished my sandwich and went to bed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Monday morning early, I was back in Kelly’s hospital room. A young security guard sat in the chair outside Kelly’s door. I got him a cup of coffee to keep him awake, handed him an extra twenty dollars for his help, and thanked him for being there. A pretty young nurse came in twice while I was there. I didn’t ask, but I was sure she was the one who had a crush on Alvin. That seemed to happen to many women when they met him.
Kelly was her usual. I sat and told her about the special edition Clarion we were putting out today. I even told her we were re-running her editorial. Common sense told me she couldn’t hear me, but some small superstitious niggle in the back of my mind said she could. Either way, it didn’t hurt to talk to her. It might not help her, but it helped me. I’d found myself talking to her more and more as the days went by.
I thought about tomorrow, the big day. Could Dr. Mathis bring her back to me? Would she ever be the same after this? I left those unanswerable questions alone. I would know that a little more than twenty-four hours from now.
Alvin showed up and spelled the security guy outside her room. We talked about the authorities’ progress in catching the Dollars—or the lack thereof—and the unsuccessful hunt for Ray-Ray’s cabin.
“Somebody has to know where it’s located, and who Ray-Ray is,” I said.
“Maybe the guy was just a friend,” Alvin said. “Or an old running buddy. Laverne’s an asshole, but he’s bound to have friends who know him and his history. We need to find one of them.”
I thanked Alvin again for playing hall-monitor outside Kelly’s room and said I’d come and spell him as soon as we could put the special edition to bed.
By noon I was in my office checking my story for spelling and typos. I’d finished it in an hour, read it over and decided it was good to go as soon as I could do that.
I looked over Vickie and Joanne’s shoulders and s
aw that their pieces were progressing nicely. They should be able to finish them in a couple of hours, I thought. Vickie’s story of Bagwell’s news conference was excellent as usual, and Joanne was doing a remarkably good job with hers. I realized I’d let Joanne’s low-key personality and willingness to cover the most mundane community news make me believe she might be a little sub-par on the writing end. She surprised me with what so far was a concise report of the ugly details of the opioid crisis, written like a crack reporter. We only had two full-time reporters, and I now believed they were both good at it. I was pleased and proud of them.
Eloise said the pressmen and delivery people would be there mid-afternoon, as would Jason, ready to do his part in turning it all into the digital edition. Everything was on track, and she seemed to have it all well under control. She said she would get me for a last-minute approval if I wanted; otherwise, my job was done. And here I thought I was running things. My big sister had just let me know she was still my big sister.
She showed me the photography, which she’d given a whole page. Other than a shot of Bagwell and DEA agent Underwood standing at a podium, it was all shot from overhead with Vickie’s drone, and still interesting to see. Vickie had gotten closer to the burnt-out back-end of the Buick than I’d expected, and with some further enlarging, it was as if you were right there. Unless one of the TV stations had sent in their helicopter—and I didn’t think they had—no other news source would have that shot. Add that to the first-hand aspect of the story, and nobody could match the Clarion’s extensive coverage of this story.
I hugged Eloise. “You hit this one out of the park, sis.”
“We hit it out of the park,” she said and hugged me back.
I felt her tears on my neck. Eloise’s cry box had always had a hair trigger—she would cry regardless of the emotion—joy, sadness, anger, it didn’t matter. The result of an exceptionally tender heart. It was just one of the reasons I loved her so.
