The Final Reckoning (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 4)

by Robert Bailey

  Tom glanced at the officers with the recording device. “We’ve got him,” the same officer who had wanted an additional thirty seconds whispered.

  “Is he alive?” Tom repeated for the third time.

  “I think we’ve talked long enough now, don’t you? One last thing. If anyone besides you comes to where I am right now, the boy dies.”

  The phone clicked dead before Tom could answer, and everyone in the room looked at the short, squat officer who was now rising from the stool, his eyes wide with excitement. “Griner’s Supermarket?”

  “Right down the highway. A half mile north.” Tom was already heading for the door. When he reached it, he turned to Bo. “Keys?”

  Bo reached into his pocket and flipped them to him. “Can you drive?”

  “I’ll manage,” he said, turning the knob and striding toward Bo’s car. He could literally hear the thump of his heartbeat.

  “Tom, stop!” Helen called after him, but Tom ignored her. When Tom reached the driver’s side, Helen grabbed his arm. “I said, stop!”

  Tom turned on a dime. “What do you want?”

  “Are you just planning to drive down there like a cowboy with pistols firing?” she asked, gritting her teeth. “JimBone Wheeler is a trained killer. An Army Ranger. An assassin. What if he’s waiting on the roof and picks you off just like what happened to Jasmine Haynes? What if the pay phone blows up when you get there? What if you find Jackson’s body? Tom, Wheeler clearly wanted to be found. He must have another message for us.” She paused. “At least let me and the deputies in the squad cars out here follow you.”

  “And risk my grandson’s life? Have you lost your mind, Helen? You heard the man. If anyone comes with me, the boy dies.”

  “It’s a bluff, and even if it’s not we can stay far enough back that he won’t see us.”

  “Are you willing to take that risk? I am not.”

  “He’ll kill you,” Helen said. “It’s a setup and you have to know it. He wanted his location to be found for a reason. Please, Tom, give me thirty minutes so I can get some officers to flank the place and give you some backup.” She took a step closer, and when she spoke again, it reminded Tom of a schoolteacher scolding a kid for being too aggressive. “You need to let the law do its job.”

  “Enough!” Tom said, feeling a coughing fit coming on and swallowing hard to prevent it. “I don’t know what I’m going to find, but I’m tired as hell of waiting on the law.” He pointed at the five police cars that dotted his driveway. “The law has utterly failed to protect my family. Ironic, isn’t it, since I’ve devoted my whole life to practicing and teaching it?” He leaned close to her. “The law has failed, Helen, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to save my grandson. Either get on the bus or get out of the way.”

  Helen’s eyes flashed fury, but Tom didn’t wait around to hear whatever she planned to say next. He climbed behind the wheel and cranked the ignition.

  Seconds later, he was on Highway 231 North. In the distance, he saw the sign for Griner’s.

  77

  The General was correct. JimBone Wheeler did leave a message.

  Taped to the pay phone outside of Griner’s Supermarket was a folded piece of paper. Hesitating only for a second, Tom snatched it and walked back to the SUV. Once inside, he opened the crinkled sheet and read the note. After waiting a couple of seconds to let his eyes rest, he read it again. The adrenaline rush of the past two hours had now passed and his head felt heavy with fatigue. Come on, Bill, he thought, hoping Bill Davis would come soon with drugs that would make him strong enough to follow through with the orders on this page.

  Tom sighed and put the SUV in reverse. Five minutes later, he pulled into the driveway at the farm as Tommy, Rick, Bo, and the two officers who recorded the earlier call barreled out of the house. He noticed that Helen’s black Crown Vic was gone, and he cursed under his breath. “I was too hard on her.”

  He opened the door and limped toward the carport.

  “Professor—” Bo started, but Tom held up his hand.

  “I need to sit down.” One of the officers opened the door to the house, and Tom made his way to a chair by the kitchen table. Once he was seated, he took in a deep breath and exhaled. The other men gathered around the table, waiting. Finally, Tom handed the note that had been taped to the phone to Bo.

  Bo peered down at the Professor, who nodded at him to read the message.

  “At 2:00 p.m., walk across the highway toward Trojan Field. When you get inside the gates of the stadium, stay on the sideline closest to the entrance. Bring your cell phone, but do not come armed or I will kill the boy. At 2:15 p.m., I’m going to call you. If you don’t answer, the boy dies. If you aren’t where I’ve told you to be, the boy dies. I have the school being watched and if I see any cop activity whatsoever, the boy dies. Bring Drake with you and no one else, and your partner also better be unarmed or the boy dies. If I see your nigger friend Haynes, your son the doctor, or any damn body else, I’ll kill the kid. Just you and Drake.”

  Bo folded the note. “What time is it now?”

  “10:25 a.m.,” the squat officer answered.

  Tom leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, trying to get in a position where his back didn’t hurt. The morphine had worn off, and his fuel tank of rage was beginning to run low. Come on, Bill, he thought again. Then he peered up at the two officers, who had taken up their positions at the island. “I think you fellas need to skin out.”

  “Professor, we’re under strict orders from General Lewis not to leave the premises,” one of them said.

  Tom let out a ragged breath but kept his eyes fixed on the deputy who had spoken. “You heard what the note from Wheeler said. Any cop activity and my grandson is dead.” He rolled his neck to the side, feeling another jolt of pain begin at the base of his skull and run down his right leg. “Now, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Get off my farm.”

  The squat officer blinked away as Tom pierced him with the look he used to give his law students when they hadn’t read the assigned cases. “OK,” the officer said. “What about the guys out front?”

  Tom looked out the bay window at the patrol cars guarding the house. Those cruisers had the crest of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department emblazoned on the side of them.

  All this law, he thought again, remembering his argument with Helen, and my grandson is still gone.

  “They need to go too,” Tom said.

  Ten minutes later, the police presence at the house had vanished and the only people left were Tom, Rick, Bo, and Tommy. Tom gazed at the digital clock on the microwave oven to the left of the island. 10:40. “Gentlemen, we have three hours to figure something out.”

  “We should let the General know what’s going on,” Bo said, but Tom waved him off.

  “No need for that. I’m sure the two fellows I just booted out are already on the phone with her.” He sighed. “Helen doesn’t do well when she’s not in control of a situation.”

  “I’d feel better if she were here,” Bo said.

  “Me too,” Rick added.

  Tom closed his eyes and opened them.

  “Dad, are you OK?” Tommy asked.

  “Yeah, son. Just thinking.”

  “Professor, I’m sure you know this,” Bo began, walking slowly around the island, “but if you and my believer follow these instructions to the letter”—he was holding the note in his hand—“then it’s possible that JimBone may let your grandson live, but—”

  “But he’s gonna kill us,” Rick interrupted. “And he may kill Jackson too.”

  Bo nodded at him. “I can’t see why he’d set up a drop-off like this without a plan to obtain his ultimate revenge.” Bo paused. “His final reckoning.”

  Tom stood from the chair and placed his hands on the island. He leaned into it, trying to stave off another shimmer of pain.

  “What choice do we have?” Tommy asked, not hiding the anguish in his tone. “If Dad and Rick don’t follo
w the instructions, then my son is dead. If they do follow his rules, then everyone may die.” He sighed and walked back to the table, sitting down and placing his face in his hands.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Tom finally said, peering at Rick Drake and marveling at how much the kid had aged over the past four years. He looked at the door to the carport, remembering a morning three and a half years earlier when the hotshot young attorney had knocked on that door and asked Tom to come back to the courtroom and try the Willistone case. That kid had been wide eyed and green. Full of piss and vinegar. The man who stood in front of him now wore the worry lines of tragedy in his gaze. He’d lost his father to JimBone Wheeler and Manny Reyes. He’d almost been killed himself a week and a half ago. And if he walked across Highway 231 with Tom in less than four hours, he might die today. “Rick, this is a lot to ask of you. I—”

  “I’m in,” Rick said. “I wouldn’t have a career or a life of any kind . . . if it wasn’t for you. I’ll call Judge Conner and ask for a recess of the trial this afternoon.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was firm and unwavering. “And come two o’clock, I’ll be walking across that highway with you.”

  Tom’s eyes stung with tears. All he could manage was a nod. And then the baritone voice of Bocephus Haynes rose to fill the four walls of the kitchen. “‘Greater love hath no man than this,’” Bo said, placing a hand on Rick’s neck, “‘that a man lay down his life for his friends.’” He paused. “John, Chapter 15, Verse 13. I don’t remember a lot of Scripture, but I do remember that one.”

  For several long minutes, the farmhouse was quiet.

  Thomas Jackson McMurtrie peered at his son, his best friend, and his partner. They were seated at the kitchen table, each lost in his own thoughts, which Tom suspected were tinged with a number of competing emotions. Regret. Anger. Determination. And most of all, fear. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown.

  Fear of death.

  Tom wasn’t thinking about death anymore. Nor was he imagining what the afterlife might bring. His mind had been saturated with those concepts for the past fourteen months and he had no use for them now.

  There was something else tugging at the corners of his brain. Something he had remembered from long ago. “This is my home,” he finally said, startling the others with the intensity in his tone but talking almost as much to himself as the others. “Hazel Green, Alabama, is my home. My father and I built this house with our bare hands.” He pointed though the window of the door to the carport. “Those hundred acres out there are McMurtrie land.” Tom began to feel the rage burn within him again. “My land.” Then he pointed through the bay window. “That school across the street is my school. I was one of the first graduates of Hazel Green High School. I got in my first fistfight on the playground behind the third-grade pod, had my first kiss at the gymnasium, and had my first taste of Jack Daniel’s under the bleachers of Trojan Field.” Tom gritted his teeth. “The best football player to ever suit up at that stadium over there . . . was me.”

  More silence as the other men watched Tom. Finally, Bo cleared his throat. “Professor, what are you—?”

  “I wasn’t a saint as a boy,” Tom interrupted, still gazing through the glass, paying Bo no mind. “I got in trouble just as much as any other kid. I dipped snuff and chewed tobacco. I smoked my first cigarette when I was sixteen.” He paused. “And I played hooky some too.” Tom smiled. “I skipped school in the fall to bring in the crop with Daddy.” He paused. “And I skipped in the winter and spring because I was up to no good.” He chuckled. “Paid for it too. Momma nearly delimbed a whole tree, snapping off switches and tanning my legs and ass up.”

  “Dad—” Tommy’s exasperated voice broke through. Tom silenced his son by looking squarely in his eye before moving his gaze to Rick and then holding it on Bo.

  “I know this part of the county like the back of my hand,” Tom said, his tone matter-of-fact as he walked over to the sink. “The land . . . the people.” He turned on the water and let the liquid run over his fingers. “Even the water.” Tom nodded to himself. “Especially the water.”

  “Professor, where is all of this leading?” Rick asked.

  “Have y’all had you a taste from the sink?” Tom asked, ignoring his partner’s question and firing off his own.

  None of them answered, and Tom smirked. “Fine, I understand. You think I’ve lost my marbles.” He paused. “But do you know where this water comes from? And the water over at the school? And the water down at Griner’s? And at all the houses down Charity Lane?”

  Again, all he got in response were wide eyes.

  “In 1956, me and Daddy built a well out on the southeast corner of that farm out there.” Tom paused. “Didn’t do it alone. Had help from some of our neighbors, but by the spring of ’58, we had water flowing to almost every home in Hazel Green. You see, underneath the well there are pipes that take the water to all of these other places.” Tom smiled, spreading his arms out in front of him. “The county helped us with those, and because pipes can sometimes get clogged and need to be inspected, the county forefathers did something else.”

  “What?” Bo asked, and Tom could see the gleam in his friend’s eye.

  He’s beginning to get it.

  “In all of their wisdom, they constructed a tunnel system under the ground.” Tom gazed around the room, seeing that he had their full attention now. “Nothing exotic, but tall enough and wide enough that a man could get in there and check things out.”

  “Could me and Tommy use it to get close to Trojan Field?” Bo asked.

  Tom sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Now that I don’t know. I never worked the tunnels.” He paused and a wistful grin played on his lips. “But there’s somebody who does.” He looked at his son and friends. “If he’s still alive and we can find him.”

  “Who is it, Dad?” Tommy asked.

  “You remember me telling you stories about Logan Baeder?”

  Tommy raised his eyebrows. “The left-handed kid from New Sharon that could throw the ball ninety miles per hour.”

  Tom nodded at his son. “Would’ve played in the majors if he hadn’t thrown his arm away in middle school.” Tom paused. “Logan and his daddy, John Henry, built the tunnel system.”

  “Professor, if this guy is still alive, how old would he be?” Bo asked.

  Tom thought about it, doing the math in his head. “He was four years ahead of me in school, so . . . seventy-seven maybe?”

  “Does he still live in . . . what did you call it? New Sharon?”

  Tom chuckled. “That was the name of the school. It’s long since closed by now, but I suspect Logan hasn’t strayed far from home.”

  “How close?” Rick asked, and Tom could hear the excitement in his partner’s voice.

  “Just a few miles northwest of here.”

  “In Hazel Green?” Bo asked, pulling the keys to his Sequoia out of his pocket.

  “Technically, yes,” Tom said. “But the folks there call it something else.”

  “What?” Rick asked.

  There was a glint in Tom’s eyes. “Y’all ever hear of a place called Lick Skillet?”

  78

  At 10:55 a.m., Kathryn Calhoun Willistone wired half a million dollars from her bank in Jasper to an account she’d opened a month earlier at the International Bank of the Cayman Islands. She’d made it happen with five minutes to spare.

  Once she had returned to the limousine, she reached into her purse and popped a Xanax, hoping the drug would chill the anxiety that had enveloped her. As the limo pulled away from the bank, Kat’s cell phone rang and her stomach twisted into a knot. This time the number wasn’t the sheriff’s, but since she didn’t recognize the digits, she presumed the worst.

  “Did you wire the money?” the voice from this morning asked.

  “Yes,” Kat said. “Just now. It’s done.”

  “Good. And the plane?”

  “Working on it, but I’ve got to be in Floren
ce at one for that trial that you were supposed to get continued by fulfilling your end of the deal, remember? If I’m going to make it on time, then I need to leave.”

  “Forget the trial,” the killer said. “That’s about to be over. The lawyer for the Jennings family is going to be unavoidably detained.”

  Kat managed a tentative smile. “Good,” she said. “But that airfield is small and there’s not much space. I’ll do the best—”

  “You’re Bully Calhoun’s daughter, for Christ’s sake. Make it happen in the next hour or I release the sheriff’s tape recording of you. Want to listen to it again?”

  Kat’s smile faded. “That won’t be necessary,” she said.

  “Get the plane,” JimBone Wheeler snarled.

  And then the line went dead.

  Kat Willistone had always been a practical woman. She grew up with money and power, and so she took it as her birthright and was attracted to those traits like a pig seeks out mud. That was what led her to seduce Jack Willistone, who had been married at the time he first began a relationship with Kat.

  Now almost forty years old, Kat knew her childbearing days were almost over and, truth be known, she didn’t enjoy living in the Calhoun mansion by herself all that much. When Jack was murdered, she’d scratched and clawed to keep half of his life insurance proceeds. When her father was assassinated, she figured she’d use the eight million in insurance to eventually move away from Jasper. The island of Saint John had always intrigued her.

  But then Rick Drake sued her father’s estate all over the state of Alabama, and she had to put her plans on hold. But now . . .

  As the limo pulled up the driveway to the Calhoun mansion, she dialed Virgil Flood’s number. He answered on the first ring and sounded out of breath. “Kathryn, I’m glad you called. The trial has been recessed until tomorrow morning. Jennings’s lawyer has had an emergency.”

  Kat felt a sense of warmth spread over her body as she imagined the blue waters of Saint John. “OK, I’ll meet you at the courtroom tomorrow in Florence,” Kat said.