“Good,” Bo had said. “Be careful, and don’t go anywhere without a police escort.”
“You think I’m as foolish as you?” Ezra had asked. “T. J. and Lila will be just fine. As long as you stay the hell away.” The old man then hung up the phone.
Bo put his arms through the sleeves of the ruined shirt. He slipped on his jeans and knocked on the holding cell door.
At the checkout window, he was given his wallet and car keys. His Sequoia had been impounded, and the clerk gave him a ticket with directions to the city lot.
A minute later, Bocephus Haynes was discharged from the Madison County Jail.
He saw the person who had posted his bond leaning against the driver’s side of a rusty sedan in the parking lot. Bo trudged toward the man, feeling the fatigue of ten days with virtually no sleep. When he reached the hood of the car, he asked, “Why’d you post my bond?”
Rick Drake took a tentative step forward. “I didn’t. It was General Lewis. She said you hadn’t yet, so . . .”
“So she interfered.”
Rick took another step closer. “Bo, I’m so sorry about your wife.”
Bo glared at him. “Is Powell dead?”
Rick shook his head. “He’s still in critical condition in ICU.”
“What about the Professor?”
“Bo, can I take you home so you can get cleaned up?” Rick asked.
Bo kept his eyes on Rick as he walked around to the passenger side of the car. Finally, he looked at his reflection in the windshield. The sight of the bloodstained shirt made him wince. It was one thing to see the button-down in a laundry bag but another to visualize it on his body.
I hate you, he heard Jazz’s taut voice whisper in his mind as he peered at himself. Then he gazed down at his hands, which were covered with scabs. The jail nurse had gotten the glass out of them, and the X-ray she’d taken revealed no fractures.
“Answer my question, dog,” Bo said, peering over the top of the car at Rick. “How is the Professor?”
“He’s in the hospital. After he found out what happened to Jazz and Wade, he passed out and was admitted for exhaustion and dehydration.” Rick paused, and when he spoke again his voice cracked with emotion. “The cancer has also spread to the brain and he’s having hallucinations.” He looked down at the ground. “It doesn’t look good.”
Bo chuckled bitterly. “Ain’t nothing good.”
For a long minute, neither man said a word. “Bo, what can I do?” Rick finally asked.
Bo glared at him. “Nothing. Everything’s already done.”
49
Rick checked into the Muscle Shoals Marriott at 9:00 p.m. On the drive over, he’d spoken with Powell’s mother, who said there had been no change. He also called Tommy McMurtrie, who said the Professor was in a holding pattern. “He’s really weak. The fluids they are pumping into him may be helping, but he’s just not himself.” Finally, he called the General.
“How’s Bo?” Helen asked.
“He’s . . . not right,” Rick said, shivering as he remembered Bo’s haunted eyes when Rick dropped him off at the city lot. Rick had said goodbye, but Bo hadn’t responded. He’d just looked at Rick for a second and then exited the vehicle.
“He’s been through hell.”
Rick had felt another shiver. “I think he’s still there.”
“Do you know where he was going?” Helen asked.
“No, but I didn’t even mention the trial. He was supposed to help me with the case, but—”
“There’s no way,” Helen interrupted.
“I didn’t think so.”
They had said their goodbyes, with Helen promising to check up on Bo and wishing Rick luck on the trial.
We’re due for some luck, Rick thought as he rode the elevator to his room. When he inserted the key, he immediately saw the blinking light on his hotel phone, indicating he had a message. His stomach tightened. Please, no bad news tonight.
Rick pushed the button on the phone and began to unpack as a shaky voice came out of the speaker. “Mr. Drake, this is Harm Twitty. I . . . I’m sorry, sir. I just can’t do it. I know I told you I’d be there for you, but I can’t testify. Not after the shooting last week and everything’s that’s happened. They’ll kill me. I know it.” There was a pause, and Rick heard another voice—female and monotone—in the background. Did I hear that right? Rick thought. Sounded like “All boarding for Dallas.” More static. Then Harm again. “I’m sorry, son. I hope you win, but life’s too short and I don’t want to end up like Rel. Goodbye.”
Rick sat on the edge of the bed and glared at the telephone. He listened to the message two more times. Harm Twitty was his ace in the hole. He was the witness who placed Manny Reyes in Bully Calhoun’s employ. He checked off the box establishing an agency relationship. Ronnie Corlew would help with that argument, but all Corlew could testify about was a couple of instances of seeing Manny and Bully together on the golf course. Harm had seen more. Harm had watched a pile of money exchange hands between Manny and Bully Calhoun in the days before the murder of Alvie Jennings.
And now he’s heading to Dallas. And beyond that, who knew? Rick had him under subpoena, but judging by his voice on the message, Harm Twitty didn’t seem to care much about the consequences of violating a subpoena. He’s gone, Rick thought.
And so is my case.
“Shit!” Rick screamed, punching his left hand with the fist of his right until his palm stung with pain. He ran his hands through his hair and thought about everything that had happened in the last few days. He could have continued the case until June during the conference call with Judge Conner last week, but he’d stubbornly forged ahead, not realizing what Rel’s death might do to the witnesses the investigator had gathered.
But I spoke with Harm. I talked with him after the shooting. Hell, I spoke with him a couple hours after the conference call with the judge, and he said he would be here. That he would honor the subpoena. I spoke with him again three days ago and he said the same thing.
“He lied to me,” Rick said out loud, pacing the carpeted floor of the hotel room. Or did he? Maybe someone got to him. Maybe Kathryn Calhoun Willistone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Rick stopped and gazed up at the ceiling, realizing he would never know. All that matters now is he’s gone.
Rick took out his cell phone and dialed the number for Ronnie Corlew, who answered on the first ring. “Hey, Ronnie, it’s Rick Drake.”
“Hey, son, we still on for this week?”
Rick exhaled with relief. “Yeah, man. Won’t need you until Tuesday morning. Got you a room reserved here at the Marriott.”
“Sounds good. I’m going to come over tomorrow and get eighteen holes in on the Fighting Joe. Then I’m gonna eat at the revolving restaurant at the hotel. Want to meet there for a drink and go over everything again?”
Rick smiled. “Sounds good, Ronnie. Thank you.”
“Have you heard from Harm?” Ronnie asked. “I tried to call him to see if he wanted to ride over together, but I couldn’t get him.”
Rick cringed at the thought of his two star witnesses sharing a ride together but then realized he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. “Come alone, OK, Ronnie? I don’t want the defense to be able to argue we are in collusion.”
“Alright, man. Sorry about that.”
“No worries.”
“Tuesday morning then?”
“Yep,” Rick said, and they exchanged goodbyes.
Thank God, Rick thought, pressing the “End” button and immediately dialing the number for Carmella Purdy, the neighbor who’d seen Manny Reyes walking along the Jennings’s driveway. Ms. Purdy likewise answered the phone and said she would be there on Tuesday. Again, Rick sighed with relief. He’d pick the jury tomorrow, deliver opening statements, and if they got that far, he’d call LaShell Jennings as his first witness.
On Tuesday, he’d call Ronnie Corlew and Carmella Purdy. Then I’ll have to rest.
/> Rick Drake closed his eyes, relieved that Purdy and Corlew were still on the team, but knowing that not even a handpicked jury would find Bully Calhoun guilty of Alvie Jennings’s wrongful death with only that scintilla of evidence.
“Shit!” Rick screamed again, kicking the mattress and then howling in pain as his foot caught the metal edge of the box spring. As he tried to walk off the pain, four loud knocks on the door stopped him in his tracks.
Rick reached inside his pocket for his Glock and brought it out without hesitation. He tiptoed toward the door and spoke in the deepest voice he could muster. “Who is it?”
“A friend.” The voice was female and vaguely familiar.
Rick cracked the door until the chain caught. He squinted at the redheaded woman standing outside. “Jill?” he asked. It was the waitress from the Waffle House in Jasper.
The woman nodded and gave a sheepish smile. “Didn’t recognize me without my uniform.”
Rick almost said, “And the new hair color,” but stopped himself. “I’m sorry about Rel. I know . . .” Rick trailed off because he didn’t know anything. He had only assumed there was a relationship between Jill and Rel.
Jill bit her lip. “Thank you.”
“What do you want?” Rick asked.
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “To help. If I can.”
“How?”
“Did Rel ever mention to you an angle he was working in Auburn?”
Rick Drake felt a warm tickle in his chest. He undid the latch and the door swung open. “Yes, ma’am, he did.”
50
Sandra Conrad sat in the rubber chair by her son’s bed in the intensive care unit of Druid City Hospital. She had barely slept in the ten days since learning of her son’s shooting. Her husband, John David, was out in the waiting area, not able to sit and watch their boy “hooked up to all these tubes anymore.” She wiped a tear from her eye and repeated a phrase she must have said a thousand times since Powell’s admission to the ICU.
“Wake up, son,” she said, her voice cracking from the fatigue and the horror that perhaps her boy, her only child, wouldn’t wake up. That he’d never open his eyes again.
As she’d done for the past three days, Sandra placed her son’s iPod on his chest and played the songs she knew he loved.
She sang along with Willie Nelson as he crooned “Whiskey River” and “Always on My Mind” and kissed Powell on the cheek. As the music played, she heard the ding of two more text messages from her phone and she gritted her teeth with irritation. It seemed like everyone in Decatur wanted to know her son’s condition by the hour. She knew she should be grateful for such caring friends, but she hated the obligation she felt to return every message.
Sandra rocked her body back and forth in the chair and tried not to cry. Thoughts of preparing for a funeral crept into her mind, and she blocked them. No, no, no. My boy is going to live. He will live.
When these torturous thoughts came, she turned the volume on the iPod up louder. Now a jazz number by the great Ella Fitzgerald came through the speakers and Sandra smiled. She loved her boy’s taste in music, which consisted of outlaw country, Mississippi blues, and jazz. She continued to rock, whispering softly over and over again, “Wake up, sweet boy. Wake up. Wake up.”
Finally, a nurse gently knocked on the door and came in. “Mrs. Conrad, visiting hours are over.”
Sandra wiped fresh tears from her eyes as Merle Haggard’s haunting voice rang out in the tiny room. It was a song Sandra had never liked that much, even if it was about a mother. Sandra leaned over the bed and grabbed the iPod.
When she did, her son’s hand reached out and clasped her own.
Sandra Dale Conrad felt her heart constrict as she sensed the pressure in her fingers. She looked at her boy, whose eyes were still closed. “Powell! Son!” She felt him grip her hand again, and then her sandy-haired son, who had always talked too loud despite her admonitions to speak with an inside voice, croaked out the most beautiful word that God had ever created.
“Momma.”
51
The only Waffle House in Lauderdale County was on Florence Boulevard about three-quarters of a mile from downtown. Rick and Jill sat in a booth, and Jill turned and stretched her right leg out on the portion of the seat she wasn’t sitting in.
“Any reason why we couldn’t just talk at the bar at the hotel?” Rick asked. “The one on the top floor revolves and gives you all different views of the Tennessee River.”
“Sounds lovely, hon, but I feel more comfortable here.”
Rick nodded, trying to remain patient. It was now past ten o’clock at night and he was due in court at eight thirty the following morning. He’d need to get up at four to prepare and practice his opening statement. They’d driven from the hotel to the diner in Jill’s minivan, and Rick had immediately recognized it as the vehicle that was waiting on them outside the courthouse just before the bullets started firing. He hadn’t said anything when he’d gotten into the van, but now that Jill was “comfortable” he thought he would wade in.
“You saw the shooting,” he said. “It was your van that we were going to get in to leave.”
She bobbed her head up and down and took a cigarette out of a pack in her purse. Lighting up, she held out her now-empty coffee cup to their waitress, who was passing by. “Can you top me off, sugar?” Jill asked, and the waitress smiled. Seconds later, cigarette smoke mixed with the steam rising off the fresh cup of java to create a cloud in front of Jill’s face. She wiped a hand across the air and smiled at him. “Sorry.” Then she sighed. “Yes, I was there. I saw the whole thing.” She paused. “I saw Rel die to protect you.”
Rick felt a lump in his throat and gazed down at his own untouched coffee mug. The last thing he wanted to do now was drink caffeine when he planned to go straight to bed once he got back to the hotel. He swirled the liquid around in the cup and finally met her eye. “I’m sorry.”
“Rel felt so guilty about his brother’s death. He . . . held himself responsible.”
Rick shook his head. “But he wasn’t. Alvie saw something he shouldn’t have seen. He saw a deal being made that led to a powerful man’s death. Bully Calhoun was never going to let Alvie live.”
Jill peered down at the table. “I met Rel a month before Bully Calhoun was killed. He’d come in after working his job at the post office and have a cup of coffee. One night, I let him take me home and we . . .” She smiled and puffed on the cigarette. “Well, you know. After that, he started coming in more regular, and about twice a week he’d go home with me.” She took another drag on her cancer stick and looked around the restaurant. “You want to hear something crazy?”
“What?” Rick asked, growing even more impatient.
“I think it was Rel who killed Bully Calhoun.”
“Get out,” Rick said, cocking his head at her.
“I’m serious. Rel told me that he worked as a manager at McDonald’s before taking the postal job. Now why would someone making the kind of money a manager does quit and be a postman? And Rel was an investigator too. If he was going to quit, why not go back to doing what he had done before?” She shook her head. “But no, he goes and joins the post office and just happens to have a route that carried him right by the Jasper Country Club.”
Rick felt a chill go down his spine. There was a ring of truth to what she was saying. He thought of one of his last meetings at the Waffle House in Jasper with Rel. Something the man had said. I’ve chopped off the head of the snake, but we still got to get the tail. Rick had asked him what he meant, and Rel had clammed up. But now . . . It makes sense.
“He quit the job with the post office a month after Bully’s death. And then he starts working with you in the shadows on your case for Alvie’s family.”
“I never paid him,” Rick said. “He said he didn’t want any money for it.”
Jill’s eyes glistened. “Like I said, whether true or not, Rel felt guilty about Alvie’s death and blamed himse
lf.”
Rick gazed down at his coffee cup, knowing that the liquid inside had probably gone cold by now. He still hadn’t heard what he’d come here to hear. “Tell me about the Auburn angle, Jill. What was Rel up to in Lee County?”
Jill puffed on the cigarette and sipped her coffee. The waitress put down a plate of waffles, and Jill took her time applying butter and syrup. She crushed the Camel out in the ashtray and cut a bite of waffle off with her fork. As she chewed her food, she pointed her fork at Rick. “For a long time, I didn’t figure it out. He’d be gone for the weekend, and I’d ask him where and he’d just say he was working Alvie’s case. About a month ago, he slipped up and told me he was going to Auburn. I’d asked him why he was going to that godforsaken place, and he said there was a person there who might unlock the whole case. If he could just get the SOB to talk.”
“Who?” Rick asked.
Jill took another bite of waffle and washed it down with a sip of coffee. Then she pulled something out of her purse. Appropriately enough, it was a napkin, and Jill pushed it across the table.
Rick grabbed it and read the words written in black ink on the paper. The handwriting wasn’t Jill’s. It was chicken scratch that had to be the late Rel Jennings’s. Rick read the name and number written on the napkin and cocked his head. Then he looked at Jill.
“You recognize that name?” she asked, her eyes glowing with satisfaction.
“Lawson . . . Snow.” Rick said the words slowly, trying to recall where he’d heard them before. He couldn’t. “No, ma’am. I don’t. Should I?”
Jill took her pack of Camels and lit another cigarette. After taking a quick puff, she said, “You would if you were from Jasper or Oakman or Carbon Hill.” She took another drag. “Or Parrish.”
“Why is that?”
“Because for thirty years, Lawson Snow was the sheriff of Walker County.” She snorted and took another puff on the Camel. “You like irony, Mr. Drake?”
Rick raised his eyebrows, waiting for the punch line.
“Lawson Snow was the crookedest sheriff that ever lived, and he was so deep in Bully Calhoun’s pocket that he could have told you Bully’s exact change every day.” She paused, milking the story. “But you wanna know what folks in town called him?”
The Final Reckoning (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 4) Page 20
