The Righteous Path: A Parker County Novel (The Parker County Novels Book 1)

by James D F Hannah

  The first robbery had been as perfect of a bank heist as one could have hoped for—something that would have been the pride of a Hollywood movie. Nine thirty on a Monday morning. The Guthrie National Bank—the largest bank in three counties—almost busted at the seams with cash from the weekend night deposits, money dropped in by businesses from the nearby Guthrie Mall and shopping plazas.

  The lobby was active but not full when the car pulled up outside and three men ran in. Fast and coordinated. Knocked out the security guard at the entrance first then moved their way throughout the bank. Ski masks and military-grade assault weapons. They said only the bare minimum, ordering everyone to the ground, and had the tellers empty their drawers. Took IDs from the tellers and threatened to kill anyone who put an exploding dye packet into a bag.

  In and out, four minutes, plenty of time before the state police got there.

  First haul: half a million.

  It was a hell of a big deal when the Feds showed up—elbowing in for space where state police, county, local cops—everyone with tin pressed into a badge, it seemed. The Feds found what everyone else found.

  Which was nothing.

  No suspects. No leads. No clues. Nothing. An operation as slick as buttered shit down a warm tin roof. Only trace of anything was the getaway car—a Ford Escort stolen two counties over, left abandoned in a Walmart parking lot. No fingerprints.

  A professional crew, the Feds determined. Organized crime, maybe out of Pittsburgh or Chicago. Come down into the sticks and take out easy targets for fast cash. Expect to see more of these, they said.

  Two weeks passed. Nothing. Things settled down.

  Then the crew showed back up. On a Tuesday. Just to shake things up.

  As smooth as the first. Took out the guard. Worked through the customers, cleaning out wallets and purses, any cash deposits they might have planned on making that day never going into the accounts.

  Another threat to the tellers, warning them off the dye packs.

  Except there was a new girl working. Tina Miller. Three weeks in. Had been off the day of the first robbery because her kid had come down with a stomach bug. This girl, twenty-three. The stories the newspapers wrote about her afterward, she sang the first alto in her church choir. Volunteered at her son’s preschool. “Sweetest young woman ever,” was what several people said.

  The teller next to her saw Tina slip the dye pack into the bag. Didn’t get to say anything. The barrel off a sawed-off shotgun was so close to her head, she smelled gun oil.

  The gunman behind the counter—the one watching everything—he noticed Tina and the dye pack as well.

  And he shot her.

  The screaming and chaos that followed the gunshot helped the gunmen escape. It was the moment where everyone in the bank found out getting shot wasn’t like in the movies. The gunshot cut through Tina’s chest and pierced a lung. She flew backward off her stool like she’d been struck by a car and slammed into the cold white tile. Her heart kept pumping, blood flowing into her lung, and she coughed up red streams. Crying the entire time, her eyes never moving from the photo of her children on her workspace. She took a few minutes to die, to choke on her own blood. She was gone before the ambulance sirens had even gotten close.

  The Feds danced their way in again and doubled their efforts this time. Because you rob a bank, there’s a federal crime. But murder someone during the commission of a federal crime, that’ll put you in the gas chamber.

  The town held candlelight vigils for Tina, and churches raised money to help with her funeral expenses, and someone started a trust fund for her son for college. Her husband, John Miller, was a miner, a nice-enough guy who found himself thrust into attention he didn’t want, a widower at twenty-four. He told one of the morning news shows, through tears streaking down his face, that he hoped the person who’d killed his wife burned in hell for the rest of eternity.

  And then again, just like that, nothing. The FBI, the local police—no one found shit. No one could explain it, either. Most bank robberies were low-return affairs, and the folks who committed them almost always got caught. But these guys, this was like something out of a movie. A magazine referred to the crime as “a hillbilly version of Heat,” the DeNiro-Pacino heist flick. West Virginia politicians didn’t take to the comment kindly and went on a multi-day tirade about it before the magazine issued an apology.

  “So whoever attacked Carlton thinks he had something to do with the Guthrie bank robberies?”

  “And Campbell and Dodson.” Matt shrugged. “The first question is did Campbell? Since whoever broke into his house and beat him senseless was convinced he did. We can prove a connection for Campbell, Carlton, and Dodson through the Everlasting Knights. And no matter what Campbell says, I’d bet you five bucks his attackers are the same people from the Carlton attack and the duo from last night.”

  Crash patted the papers on the table. “Once I got home last night, I did a little research on Dodson.”

  “Color me surprised. What did you find out?”

  Crash flipped through the papers on the table. “Dodson sold the flower shop to Winthrop nine years ago, did the whole ‘snowbird’ thing and migrated down to Florida. He’d owned the shop for about thirty years prior, him and his wife. Winthrop was right about the Chamber of Commerce and the Everlasting Knights. Dodson was eyeball-deep into both.”

  “What’s he up to now?”

  “In the most realistic terms, he’s down to about six feet below. Complications from a stroke three years ago.”

  “But whoever set off that explosion last night, they didn’t know that. They thought Dodson still owned the shop.” Matt ran a hand across the back of his neck, twisting his head around, searching for the cracking noise. The weariness swept over him like an avalanche.

  “What now?” Crash said.

  “I’ll talk to Campbell,” Matt said. “Anything new on Carlton?”

  “I called this morning. Nothing’s changed.”

  Matt stood and stretched. Things popped and cracked that he wasn’t sure were supposed to make those noises, and he felt like he sounded like wax paper. He blew out a long, deep breath and smiled at Crash a big, goofy grin.

  “Let’s go fight crime,” he said.

  Through the glass door, Crash saw Rachel moving back and forth in the kitchen, trying to look like she wasn’t watching when she was.

  “She won’t be happy,” Crash said.

  “She won’t, but she’ll be okay today.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Hell, I might be dead by then.”

  Crash repacked everything into her messenger bag. “Aren’t you people supposed to stay positive and shit?”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  21

  Matt drove over to Gary Campbell’s house and knocked and waited. No answer. He checked around outside the house and saw nothing that showed any kind of activity. He peeked into the garage. It was empty.

  He scribbled out a note on the back of a business card, asking Campbell to call him at his first opportunity, and circled his cell phone number for emphasis before he wedged it in the crack between the door and the frame.

  In his car, he reached for his wallet and rifled through it for a moment until he found the business card Iris Warner had given him, then called her.

  She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Warner, this is Sheriff Simms. How are you today?”

  “Whenever the police call, it’s safe to presume things could be better.”

  “Maybe I’m calling to tell you, you won our annual potluck dinner raffle.”

  “Did I?”

  “Depends on if you attended the potluck dinner and bought tickets.”

  “I did not.”

  “Then most likely, you didn’t win. But I’d like to talk to you if you have a few moments.”

  “Being in Parker County means you’ve got nothing but time, I’ve noticed.” She told him h
er hotel and gave him the room number. He said he would be on over.

  The Wiltshire was the closest that Parker County had to a hotel. Everything else was chain motels that sprung up in the aftermath of the ATV trails the county set up two decades prior. Those were built on reclaimed surface mining sites, the intent being to charge people a premium to tear through the mountains on four-wheelers. The motels intended to give them a place to rest before going at it again the next day. Someone somewhere saw all of this as an investment in the state, a way to boost tourism and bring out-of-area cash into the community, and it had, but it wasn’t a constant stream of revenue and nowhere near enough to balance the revenue lost once coal collapsed.

  The Wiltshire had been something to see decades before when Serenity had been—as the sign on the city limits proclaimed—“the heartbeat of the American coal industry.” Crystal chandeliers had hung from the lobby ceiling. The tile floors had gleamed like diamonds. During the Prohibition, bootleggers kept the bar stocked with illegal booze, and the sounds of Chicago jazz pressed against the inside walls, threatening to shake the stones loose.

  Parties at the Wiltshire were the stuff of legends. It had been where the monied few of Parker County went to escape the resounding poverty that encroached on their idyllic little chunk of the American Dream. Coal barons, railroad operators, timber kings—hell, even the family that owned the Parker County Herald-Tribune—came to celebrate that they were surviving and thriving while the rest of the world stood in lines for soup. They listened to jazz music performed by black musicians who couldn’t even spend a night in the hotel. The owners brought in a French chef from Paris who maintained an open-all-hours policy in the kitchen, serving at the whims of drunken guests at three in the morning.

  Time caught up with everyone, though, and as fortunes faded, so did the glamor of the Wiltshire. Chandeliers came down. The swing and jump jazz that had filled the halls became the country radio station broadcast from two doors down. Veal and lamb disappeared from the restaurant menu, and eventually the restaurant itself closed. By the times that Matt remembered, the Wiltshire had become a stop station for railroaders, somewhere to sleep until they caught the next train back home. The glories and glamor of long-ago times faded and left nothing behind but the faintest hint there had once been something great.

  Matt’s shoes clicked against the marble lobby floor. The tile was worn and needed cleaned. The furniture, threadbare and faded and thin in patches, showed the stuffing underneath. The elevator trembled on the ride to the fourth floor. Upstairs, the hallway was narrow and confining, and he half expected to see a pair of creepy twins at the other end. The carpet had been red once—vibrant and deep and the color of fresh blood—but had faded now to something almost pink, or “salmon,” Rachel might have said. Matt wasn’t sure what the difference would have been, but he knew that Rachel would.

  Iris opened the hotel door after Matt’s knock. Dressed in a plain white T-shirt that somehow looked expensive, and blue jeans. Her face was blank and impassive when she saw Matt, and she stepped aside and motioned him into the room.

  It was a suite with a small living room area with a couch and a love seat and a coffee table, and the bedroom next to it. A laptop was open on the coffee table next to a cup of coffee with thin tendrils of steam rising from it. Matt eyed the coffee with a desire he normally saved for Rachel, or women like Iris Warner. It was a moment where he pondered what had happened to his priorities.

  “Can I interest you in a cup, Sheriff?” Iris said. She gestured to a coffee maker resting on a counter.

  “Please. Black.”

  Iris filled a cup—an actual stoneware mug—from the pot and handed it to Matt. He nodded his thanks and sat down on the love seat. Iris sat across from him on the couch.

  “I always bring a coffee pot with me,” she said, reaching for her own cup. “Hotels have gotten terrible about coffee, and I believe it to be a thing that most separates us from other members of the animal kingdom.”

  “Agreed. The ability to use tools and to use those tools to pour hot water over ground coffee beans. I know a guy—not a friend, per se—who has the same peccadilloes about coffee as you. Perhaps I should introduce the two of you.”

  Iris smiled and sipped from her cup. “Is matchmaking part of the sheriff’s job around here?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend dating this guy. He’s a jerk. He just has a litany of coffee issues.” Matt leaned back in the couch. The furniture hadn’t been in style in decades, and the wear was apparent, and he felt the nudge of springs underneath his ass poking through the cushions.

  “What can I do for you today, Sheriff?” Iris said. “I heard the explosion last night. I thought we were under attack, and then I wondered who the hell would attack here.”

  “We haven’t had a good earth-shattering kaboom in a few years. Someone blew up the flower shop.”

  “Someone set off a bomb in Serenity?”

  “Nothing so technical. It appears they ignited a natural gas line to the furnace.”

  “That seems...random.”

  “And yet, it is unlikely to be random.”

  “You have to have a fair amount of intent to blow up a florist.” Iris sipped her coffee. “Your little department has a lot of balls in the air. How do you manage?”

  “We plug away, and we drink plenty of coffee.”

  Iris smiled. “I like you, Sheriff. You seem to be one of the better people left in this hellhole.”

  “I’m rather fond of this hellhole. I work hard to keep it safe.”

  “I meant no offense, Sheriff. I grew up here. But I’m someone who knows mountains get confused with walls, and they end up being barriers that not only keep people in, but they keep ideas out. It’s why I ran as far and as fast as possible, the first chance I had.”

  “Escape seems to have suited you.”

  “I’ve made a life that’s mine, that no one else can lay claim to. There’s something to be said for building something that doesn’t have another person’s name attached to it. Family and names, that’s half of what drives this place. You grow up, people ask you, ‘Who’s your family? Who’s your parents? Oh, you’re so-and-so’s little brother, or little sister, or third cousin twice removed.’ It doesn’t give you much chance to have autonomy.” She drank more coffee. “My last name was Campbell. My father owned a chain of grocery stores called Campbell’s Market. That’s hard to escape.”

  “Worse legacies to have.”

  “Not when everyone around you is poor and they assume you’re rich because your last name is on signs and billboards. Don’t misunderstand me; my family had money. We had satellite TV in 1982, so I was watching MTV when other kids weren’t even sure what it was. We bought a new car every three years, and we took two weeks every summer to go to Myrtle Beach. Money earns you friends for a while, but it also gets you a lot of resentment you can’t do anything about, because you’re a kid and that shit is out of your control. And when business declined, that became the headache of watching my parents working to keep up appearances while trying to make sure the lights stayed on.”

  “Was that about the time Walmart came to town?”

  “Yes. You had a gleaming, twenty-four-hour grocery store option, this limitless set of choices, and there was no way to compete with that. If I had the capacity to muster something resembling sympathy for my father, I would have felt bad for him because he busted his ass to keep things going, but the tide turned against him. He tried to compete, but customer loyalty only goes so far, and then you choose between loyalty to a grocery store and affording to feed your kids.”

  Matt nodded. “Was your father friends with a man, name of Peter Carlton?”

  Iris seemed to let the name wander through her mind. “There was a Carlton who Gary did business with. Worked at a bottling company?” The last part, she said toward Matt as though seeking confirmation of the fact.

  “That would be him.”

  “I think he and the old man, they may
have been in one of those groups old white guys like to join. The Eternal Brotherhood of the Sleepless Knights—that kind of bullshit.”

  “Did Carlton come around much?”

  “Some. It was a long time ago, Sheriff. I’m not sure why you’re asking me these things and not him. Or is the old man still being difficult?”

  “He wasn’t what you’d term enthusiastic about talking before, and I doubt he’ll be chattier now.”

  “This Peter Carlton, he was attacked, wasn’t he?” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, putting her hands together. “You think my parents and the Carltons were picked for a reason?”

  “I can’t say. What I know is that we don’t have much, so anything we find out, it’s more than there was before.”

  “You should write fortune cookies with dialogue like that.”

  “I practice in front of the mirror at home.” Matt’s coffee had cooled, and now it tasted bitter. He set the cup aside. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “It’s your job, so you’ll ask it anyway, and I suppose you asking permission is your way of being polite.”

  “Why don’t you and your father speak?”

  Iris smiled, but any hint of warmth or humor dissipated behind her eyes. “I caught my father cheating on my mother. It wasn’t long before he closed up the stores. I came home from college—it was a surprise visit, and I hadn’t warned them ahead of time the way I normally did—and I walked through the front door and I heard my father on the phone. He was telling someone he’d be over later that night, and he said something about his wife not knowing, that he wouldn’t risk her finding out. It short-circuited something in my head, and I turned and left.

  “I drove around for a while, and when it got dark, I parked away from the house but where I could watch the driveway. About nine that night, he pulled his car out, and I followed him to some white trash trailer park in the boondocks. He—” The words turned sharp, and she had to choke out what followed. “This pregnant bitch walked out and hugged him.” Iris tried to keep her face hard and cold. “She hugged him, kissed him on the cheek, and they went on inside. That’s when I put the pieces together. My father, the motherfucking asshole, had gotten this cunt pregnant.”