Andy smiled at the memory. People called him Mr. Walton all day long, but when the words came out of Darla Ford’s mouth, they made him hard. Even now, after having enjoyed Darla’s talents for over an hour, he still felt the tingle. Seventy-three years old, and he could feel the beginning of an erection thirty minutes after his last one.
Darla Ford was a goddamn miracle.
Two minutes later Andy stepped out the front door of the Sundowners Club and breathed in the humid August air. Even at just past one in the morning, the temperature must have still been in the low nineties. Andy took a long drink from a tall Styrofoam cup and closed his eyes, hoping for the slightest hint of a breeze. The bartender, whom Darla and the other dancers called Saint Peter, had fixed him a Long Island Iced Tea for the road. Even on top of the three bourbons he’d had earlier in the night at Kathy’s Tavern and the two beers he’d consumed inside the Sundowners, the drink tasted good and strong.
“You sure you’re OK to drive, Mr. Walton?” Darla’s voice came from behind him, and Andy opened his eyes. She and Saint Peter were coming out of the door, a set of keys in the bartender’s hands.
“I’m fine, darlin’,” he said, smiling down on her.
Darla stood on her tiptoes and gave him a soft peck on the cheek. “Be careful,” she whispered. Their eyes held for just a moment, and Andy knew her admonition had nothing to do with drinking and driving. She licked her thumb and dabbed his cheek where her lipstick had left a mark. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Andy said, squeezing her hand and taking another sip of the Long Island tea.
“He doesn’t have far to go,” Saint Peter said after locking the door. He winked at Andy, and Andy nodded.
When Peter Burns had been a teenager, he had worked three summers on Andy’s farm, doing odd jobs and fixer-upper projects. Live and work in a place for five decades, and you touch a lot of folks. Some in a good way. Some bad. Andy figured his impact on Peter was positive, but who the hell knew? The boy had grown up to pour whiskey at a strip club on the edge of town. He probably wouldn’t be giving many speeches in his life thanking those that made it all possible. And what of Darla? She was a twenty-five-year-old stripper making a few extra bucks by sucking Andy’s seventy-three-year-old dick in the upstairs VIP room of the same place.
Just give me the Nobel Peace Prize, Andy thought, watching as the cars driven by the bartender and the stripper pulled out of the gravel parking lot. The only vehicle left was Andy’s rusty, gray Chevy Silverado truck, and he trudged toward it, feeling old and depressed.
He hadn’t planned on visiting Darla tonight, but the confrontation with Bo Haynes had put him on edge. He had told Maggie that he needed to “go out for a while,” and she had surprisingly not fussed over him, even though it was her birthday. He figured she probably knew where he went on nights like this—he had never made much effort to hide his nocturnal adventures—but since the death sentence had been handed down by his oncologist last fall, Maggie had finally and mercifully decided to look the other way.
The neon lights of the Sundowners Club flickered off, and Andy blinked to adjust to the darkness. The lot was now almost pitch dark, the only light coming from the half moon above. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket, finally finding them and clicking the unlock button on the keyless entry.
When he climbed into the front seat of the truck, he immediately noticed it. The smell . . . He turned quickly, but there was no one in the truck. But there had been, he knew. The smell was unmistakable. And vaguely familiar. Like a stale cigar . . .
His heartbeat now racing, he placed the key in the ignition but hesitated before turning it. Be careful, he thought, hearing Darla’s soft voice in his mind.
Andy Walton had made a lot of enemies in his seventy-three years. Funny thing, when you were once the Imperial Wizard of the Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, people tended to hold a grudge. Didn’t matter what a man had done since. That he had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local college, that the farm was now leased by a black man who utilized black laborers, or that his businesses employed over 10 percent of the people of Giles County.
None of that made one tinker’s damn. He had once worn the robe and hood. People had a long memory when it came to the Klan.
Andy tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking again about the run-in with Bo Haynes at Kathy’s Tavern. The hate he had seen in Bo’s eyes.
Forty-five years ago, Andy and nine other members of the Tennessee Knights had lynched a black field hand named Roosevelt Haynes on Walton Farm. Roosevelt was a meddler and had to be dealt with. Andy knew that he would have eventually been able to forgive himself for the killing.
If only the boy hadn’t seen. If only Bo . . .
Andy closed his eyes and turned the key. The truck didn’t explode, and truth be known, Andy hadn’t thought it would. But he had enemies, and he was about to make a few more.
Andy Walton was an old man. A man who had put down the robe and hood of the Ku Klux Klan in 1976 and made millions in the stock market. So much so that Newsweek did an article on him in 1987. “The Warren Buffett of the South” it had been entitled. The article hadn’t left out Andy’s Klan history but focused on how he had reinvented himself as a financial wizard. The theme was that money didn’t care what a man’s social beliefs had been. Money had no conscience.
Unfortunately, Andy Walton did have a conscience. And for forty-five years, it had eaten at him. Ever since he had looked through the holes of the hood and into the terrified eyes of the boy. And heard his screams.
He could still hear them at night. They came to him in his dreams.
Andy also had stage four pancreatic cancer. He was going to die in a month, and he wanted the screams to stop before he did. He wanted . . . what did the shrinks call it? Closure.
He knew he would probably still end up in hell—he had done too many bad things in his life. But maybe he wouldn’t have a front row seat.
Andy put the truck in reverse, feeling a deep resolve come over him. Now was the time, he knew. Right now. If he delayed much longer, it might be too late.
Gazing through the windshield, he saw that Highway 64 was deserted. The ride to the sheriff’s office would take no more than ten minutes. The story he would tell would take longer, but he doubted Ennis would mind. Andy eased his foot off the brake and started to back out.
He stopped when he saw the figure in the rearview mirror, blocking his path.
Andy slammed the gear back in park and reached under the seat for his pistol. He usually kept it . . .
It wasn’t there. Damnit, he thought, remembering the familiar scent he had inhaled when he had first opened the truck.
He looked in the rearview mirror again, but the figure was gone. He spun around, blinking his eyes and trying to focus them in the darkness, seeing nothing. “Where—?”
Four loud knocks came from the driver’s-side window.
Andy spun toward the sound, his heart pounding in his chest. Then as his sight adjusted, recognition slowly set in. “Jesus Christ,” he said. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes and clicked the automatic button for the window to lower.
It was halfway down when he saw the shotgun pointed at his head.
Andy chuckled bitterly. “So you’re gonna shoot me, huh?” He started to say more, but then he saw the thumb click the safety of the gun off.
His question had just been answered. Andy looked into the cold eyes. “Well . . . fuck you then,” Andy said.
Funny thing what a man does when he knows he’s about to die. Andy Walton didn’t try to open the door or fight, and he didn’t duck. Instead, he slowly turned his head and looked out the windshield toward Highway 64.
Into the darkness.
The gun fired, but Andy didn’t hear the sound of the blast before the shot entered his brain and killed him.
He only heard the screams of the boy . . .
4
The 911 call was made at 2:30 a.m.
“Emergency Services,” a monotone female voice answered. “What is your emergency?”
“Yeah, I’m a long-haul trucker and I just passed a brush fire off Highway 64 about a half mile west of the Sundowners Club. Looks like it might be on part of Walton Farm. There’s a lot of smoke. If the fire department doesn’t get out there fast, the whole place is going to be up in flames.”
“Thank you, sir. Can you—?”
The phone went dead on the other end of the line.
5
The fire trucks arrived at 2:54 a.m. Chief Woodrow “Woody” Monroe had been fast asleep when he received the call from dispatch and was still groggy as he walked through the tree-lined dirt path that led to the clearing. Woody had lived in Pulaski all of his life except for the eleven months he had spent in Vietnam in 1967 chasing Charlie. He had seen things during those 337 days in Southeast Asia that still haunted his dreams.
What he saw now as he stepped through the smoke and into the clearing was as bad as anything he’d seen in the Vietnamese jungle. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, involuntarily retching and dropping his hands to his knees.
“Chief, are you all right?” A young sergeant, Bradley Hill, had put his arm around Woody. “Chief . . . ?”
“I’m OK, Brad. It’s just . . .” He pointed, and Brad nodded, his eyes wide with shock and horror.
“I know, sir. What should we do?”
Woody started to respond, but his words were drowned out by the most piercing scream he had ever heard in his life. Woody turned to see a woman in a bathrobe, her hands covering her mouth.
Woody had known Maggie Walton for over fifty years, and he had never seen her outside her home when she wasn’t dressed to the nines, her hair always perfectly coiffed. Now here she was, one of the wealthiest women in all of the state of Tennessee, dressed in a green bathrobe, her white tresses tousled all over her head, tears streaking her eyes.
“No!” she screamed, running toward the fire.
“Oh, shit,” Woody said, stepping toward her, but she was already past him. “Ms. Maggie, you can’t—”
“Andy!” she screamed. “Andy!” She fell to her knees ten feet from the flames.
“Ms. Maggie, you need to back away.” Woody dropped to one knee beside her.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Woody. This is my land. Mine. And that’s . . .” She pointed. “That’s . . . my . . . my . . . Andy!” She rose and tried to step closer to the fire, but Woody grabbed her around the waist and held tight. He felt the woman’s strength as she tried to wiggle free from him. “Ms. Maggie, I’m so sorry.”
Eventually, she stopped trying to break away from him and again fell to her knees. “Andy,” she whimpered. “No.”
“Chief Monroe, we have to—” Brad started, but Woody cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“The fire hasn’t spread past that tree,” Woody said, squinting harshly at the young sergeant. “We’ve probably got five minutes before it does. The sheriff will want photographs. Take at least five from every angle you can get. Then start hosing it down. Tell the other men to hold steady until you’ve taken the pictures. I’ve got to make some calls.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Brad began barking instructions to the other men, Woody took out his cell phone and dialed the home number of Sheriff Ennis Petrie.
On the fifth ring Ennis’s groggy voice answered. “Hello.”
“Ennis, we got a situation out here at Walton Farm.”
“What is it?” the sheriff asked, his voice more alert.
Woody started to talk, and then another bloodcurdling scream came from below him, followed by a low, almost-guttural moan. “Ms. Maggie,” Woody whispered, squatting and patting her back. Maggie Walton gazed with dead eyes toward the fire.
“What in the hell was that?” Ennis asked, now hyper.
“That was Maggie Walton, Sheriff. She’s . . . very upset.” He paused, turning away from the woman so she wouldn’t hear what he was about to say. Glancing back at the fire, he spoke into the phone, forcing the tremor out of his voice. “Sheriff, Andy Walton’s body is hanging from a tree on the northeast corner of his farm with a noose tied around his neck and one half of his face shot off. He’s . . .” Woody Monroe paused, closing his eyes, this time unable to keep the whine from his voice as Maggie Walton continued to moan in agony behind him. “He’s on fire, Ennis. He’s been shot and hanged . . . and his body is on fire.”
6
Bocephus Haynes opened his eyes when he heard the sirens.
He was still half-asleep, the dream lingering as it always did. Seeing his father’s stretched neck. Flailing at his father’s legs as they dangled below the branch of the tree. Hearing the laughter of the white-robed men mixed with his own screams . . .
He gazed upward at the ceiling fan as the sounds from the dream gradually subsided, replaced by the sirens. Getting closer?
Bo rolled out of bed, forcing himself to sit up straight, and the sudden movement made him dizzy. His throat felt like sandpaper, and when he tried to swallow he nearly gagged on the half-chewed cigar that still hung out of the corner of his mouth. He spat the remainder of the stogie on the floor and rose to his feet.
The nausea hit him like a freight train.
He stumbled through the law office to the back door, fumbling in the dark for the knob. He took hold and twisted, then stepped outside and vomited over the railing. Blinking his eyes and clutching the railing tightly, he vomited again. And again. Finally, after a last dry heave, he relaxed his frame and sat on the top step, placing his elbows on his knees and taking several deep breaths.
The sirens were now even louder, and the sound of them pounded in Bo’s head as he began to look himself over. He was still wearing his clothes from the day before—khaki slacks, oxford button-down, and brown Allen Edmonds loafers. Since he’d moved out of the house and into the office, it wasn’t unusual for him to have slept in his clothes, or, for that matter, his shoes. What caught his eye was the dried, caked mud covering the heels and soles of both loafers.
Bo blinked, his mind starting to work despite the horrific hangover. What happened last night?
Everything after he left Kathy’s Tavern was a blur . . .
He slipped off his shoes and set them on the top step. Then he shuffled on socked feet back into the office. When he turned on the light in the hallway, he noticed that he had tracked mud the entire length of the hall. Looking through the open door of the library, he saw that the tracks ended at the pullout sofa he now called a bed. An empty pint of Jim Beam lay on its side, top off, on the hardwood floor below the sofa. He must have dropped it there before he crashed. Again, he asked himself, What happened last night?
A collage of images began to play in his mind, and he felt a cold chill on the back of his neck.
“No,” he whispered.
The sirens were now deafening, and through the cracked blinds at the end of the hall, Bo saw three sets of blue and white flashers. “No,” he whispered again. He swallowed and tasted the bile in his throat. He turned for the back door but stopped in his tracks when he saw them.
Ennis Petrie, the sheriff of Giles County, Tennessee, and Hank Springfield, his chief deputy, stood in the doorway. Behind them, Bo saw two more deputies and four squad cars, all with their flashers on.
Three squads in the front and four in back, Bo thought. No.
“Bo,” Ennis said, taking a cautious step toward him. “You left the door open.”
“Sheriff,” Bo said, wiping his mouth and hoping he didn’t have vomit on it. “Hank. What can I do for you fellas?”
“You’re under arrest, Bo,” the sheriff said, removing a pair of handcuffs from his belt buckle.
“For what?” Bo asked, his heart pounding in his chest.
Ennis took another step toward him, eyeing Bo with detached curiosity as he placed the cuffs on the attorney’s wrists. “For the murder of Andrew Davis Walton.”
7
The holding cell wasn’t much
bigger than a closet. Three of the walls were yellow cinder block, fading white with age, while the wall to Bo’s right was made of glass, presumably so someone could watch the questioning from behind it. The floor was concrete, and the sealed sliding door had a small plexiglass window. Inside the cramped space the cell smelled of disinfectant mingled with traces of sweat and body odor. Bo had visited the Giles County Jail on numerous occasions and remembered that his suits always contained this same stale scent when he took them off at night, sometimes making him gag.
Outside the cell the hallway reverberated with a cacophony of sounds. Bo covered his ears to the noise: officers yelling unintelligible jailspeak to each other, the jingle-jangle of inmates shuffling along the floor in their shackles, the whooshing and slamming of doors opening and closing . . .
Bo sat at a metal desk that filled up most of the cell, gazing at his massive reflection in the window. With his size and strength, he knew he could be an intimidating physical presence. But he felt anything but intimidating now. Dressed in orange prison garb—his clothes had been taken for “testing”—his head throbbed from a hangover, and his stomach felt like acid. Outside of a Styrofoam cup of water they’d given him, he’d had nothing to eat or drink since throwing up at his office, and he knew he wouldn’t be hungry for several hours. He placed his forehead on the desk, relishing the cold feel of the metal, and rubbed the back of his head.
Two loud knocks jarred him upright. The door slid open, and Sheriff Ennis Petrie walked inside, taking the seat across from Bo at the metal desk. Ennis wore a tan button-down shirt with his name stenciled over the front pocket. He was about five foot eight with thinning, reddish-blond hair, a mustache that matched his diminished mane, and a potbelly that hung over his belt. Though physically unimpressive, Ennis had a calm, cool manner that had made him an effective lawman.
“Bo, I read your Miranda rights to you at your office immediately after you were arrested. You agree with that, right?” the sheriff asked.
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