“Son-of-a-bitch!” Beau smacked his hand down on a rock, then shook it as if he was surprised at the pain. “Who called us, then? The sheriff do it just because the law says he’s supposed to, even when he’s not doing anything else by the book?”
“Don’t know. I do know that we’re probably not going to learn much here. You might want to go on down to Monroeville to the courthouse. Sheriff’s office is there. That’s where they took him.”
Beau turned away in disgust, heading back to his car. Then he stopped. “Thanks, Boggs. Didn’t mean to blow up at you.”
“’S okay, boss.” The man grinned. “It’s happened before. Prob’ly happen again ’fore it’s over.”
It was nearing midnight when Beau got to the Watkin County Sheriff’s Office, part of a new blond-brick county complex that had been built off to the side of the old red courthouse, which stood squarely in the middle of the road in the middle of town. Beau hadn’t had any dinner and had ruined a new pair of shoes. His mood could be summarized as mean.
But he met his match in that category when he met Buford Dodd. Not that the sheriff wasn’t pleasant on the surface—and neither was he hard on the eyes. He stood level with Beau at six-foot-one, though he outweighed the doctor’s runner’s body by a good forty pounds, most of which was muscle packed in his thighs, arms, and shoulders. Dark-haired, black-eyed, with perhaps a touch of Cherokee blood somewhere down the line, Buford Dodd was one handsome country sheriff who hadn’t gone to fat. He didn’t sound like a typical cracker either, the kind who sold trucks on television commercials; his voice was soft, rumbling, and warm, with a good-ole-boy chuckle just waiting for an opportunity to surface. But there was a warning in his eyes, which could go suddenly small, shrewd, and piglike, and behind that chuckle was a serpentine rattle. Buford Dodd was not a man to cross.
“Reckon we wasted your time, coming all the way up here from Atlanta,” Dodd said. Then he shook Beau’s hand, hard. “But I been hearing about you the past couple of years, so I’m glad we had this opportunity to meet.”
“Glad to meet you, too. Never a waste of time—just our job,” Beau lied. “So, you’ve got the body here?” He glanced around the room, where three deputies slouched here and there like hunting dogs. The overhead fluorescent lights made everybody look dead.
“Yep.”
“Had anybody look at it?”
“The coroner’s been and gone. We’re ready to release it to the family as soon as they get here.”
“Who’s the coroner in this county?”
“Doc Johnson.” Dodd grinned slowly, sharing the joke with his deputies, who grinned back. “He’s the vet.”
Beau didn’t even blink. “Mind if I take a look?”
Dodd hoisted his left buttock down off the counter where he’d been partially resting himself. “Not a’tall,” he said, and led the way to the morgue.
Forrest Ridley had probably been a handsome man. But it was a little hard to tell after the vicious beating he’d taken—presumably down the almost 750 feet of rocky falls. Though the body was fully dressed, contusions and abrasions were apparent about the face; the nose and right arm and left leg were at angles that indicated fractures. The neck was broken. And the flesh showed that the body had been in the water for more than a couple of hours. It was fortunate that the weather had been cool.
Even so, the little room, whose walls were painted mint green, was filled with a distinctively sweet and nauseating odor.
“Guess they’ll want to get him buried pretty quick,” Dodd observed.
Beau raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “Guess so. Of course, they can do that since there’ll be no autopsy. Do you mind?” He gestured toward the body.
“Be my guest.”
Beau reached over and opened Forrest Ridley’s mouth.
“What you looking for?” Dodd asked.
“Foam. You usually see it if the victim inhaled water while still alive.”
“Huh.” Three beats passed. “See any?”
“No.”
“Well, I’d imagine he was already dead by the time he hit any considerable water, wouldn’t you? Banging himself down all those drops from the top.”
“Probably. What do you think caused that?” Beau was pointing at a round hole through the man’s shirt just below the right shoulder, inches above the heart.
“Some of those rocks are awfully sharp. Fall like that, Doc Johnson said you’re likely to see all kinds of things. Said you can’t tell one thing from another.”
*
“So, could you?” Samantha asked.
“Could I what?”
“Tell one thing from another?”
“I can tell you that what I was looking at was no puncture wound from a rock,” Beau said, his face grim. “It was a gunshot exit if I ever saw one.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?” Sam demanded.
“Samantha, you know as well as I do that Sheriff Dodd’s judgment is law in his jurisdiction. If he says the man died accidentally, he did. Open and shut, no autopsy, no inquest. What I want to know is what you’re going to do about it.”
“Me?”
“I can’t imagine that you’re going to stop here, once you’ve got going. Not with a body, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s not my job. It’s police business.”
“Ha! Since when did that ever stop you?”
“How do you know what would stop me?”
He gave her a look. “I’ve read every word you ever wrote in the Chronicle, Sam. I know you don’t get those kinds of stories by sitting on your sweet can waiting for the cops to feed you.”
She ignored the anatomical reference, and she was not going to ask him why he’d read the San Francisco paper.
“Besides,” he continued, “you’re ignoring the fact that there’s not going to be any investigation.” He waved Bernice over and requested a fresh carafe of coffee. Then suddenly he grasped Sam’s hand as she reached for the sugar. “Come on, Sam. Let’s do this.”
She jerked back as if the waitress had just scalded her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about working together on this story, this case, whatever you want to call it.” His voice dropped. “I’m talking about spending some time with you.”
Sam pushed her hands against the table, trying to get as much space between them as possible. She shook her head. She opened her mouth, but no words came.
He looked straight at her, unblinking, unwavering. “I made a terrible mistake when I let you go. I’ve paid for it ever since. I’m sorry. I’ve always been so terribly, terribly sorry.”
She half-stood.
“Don’t go.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She held her hands in front of her as if to ward him off.
“Please. Just listen. I have so much I want to say to you. Every time I went to San Francisco, I’d hang out in front of your house for days, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. And since you’ve been back in Atlanta, I’ve visited my mother so much she’s asked me if I want my old room back.”
His old room that she could see from her bedroom window. The room she’d yelled curses at just the other night.
“I want to go back to that summer and do it all over,” he said. “Do it differently this time, so we have a life together.”
“What are you talking about? What about your wife?”
“Linda…” He shook his head, frowning. “It was a mistake, for both of us. Now she’s met someone else. I always hoped she would. We’ve filed for a divorce.”
“Well, that’s great, that’s just great!” Sam was out of the booth now. “I don’t give a damn about you or your marriage. Do you understand that?” Heads turned. She was yelling. She couldn’t stop herself. “What makes you think I give a shit about how you feel, about me or anything else? You think you can just waltz back into my life after all these years? Are
you crazy?”
“Probably.”
“Well, you can take your crazy and shove it!” She headed for the door, picking up speed, out the door. She was wet. Shit! She’d left her umbrella. Forget it. She slammed the car door. Hard.
When she glanced over, he was standing outside her window in the pouring rain.
“You didn’t hear a word I said,” he yelled.
She looked up at his wet face. “I heard you, Beau.” She rolled the window down just a crack. “I heard every word you said. But you said them about twenty years too late. What you think now has nothing to do with me. I don’t owe you.”
“I never said you did. I just want to spend time with you, Sam. I want to show you how sorry I am that I was such a creep.”
She turned the key in the ignition. “Get away from my car.”
“You going to run over me?”
“Maybe.”
His voice dropped. “Do you hate me that much?”
“Maybe.”
“They say hate’s just the flip side of love.”
She put the car in reverse, and he jumped back as it began to move. She called through the rain, “I wouldn’t count on it.”
She didn’t even want to think about what Beau had said. It was too crazy. It’d make her crazy. She punched in a tape of Linda Ronstadt’s greatest hits, turned up the volume, and sang along at the top of her lungs all the way home through the driving rain.
When she got there, George was in the study reading his mail with a magnifying glass. “Have you ever noticed that it’s bills that come in the largest print?” he asked.
Samantha gave him a hug. He hugged her back. They made her feel safe—his hugs.
“Jehoshaphat, you’re wet! What have you been up to this beautiful morning?”
George loved gray days. He said they gave him an excuse to do nothing but read.
Samantha threw herself into a chair facing her uncle and told him about her meeting with Beau, editing out the personal part, sharing with him what she’d learned about Ridley’s death.
“What do you think he was doing up there in Watkin County, anyway?” she asked. “And I wonder how long he’d been there. How long has he been dead? Did he really go to San Francisco? Why? And why was Queen so funny about the trip? Who would want to kill Forrest Ridley?”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. Who said someone killed him? How do you know he didn’t tumble over the falls, just like Dodd said?”
“I didn’t say he didn’t tumble. The words just popped out. But now that I’ve said them, I know that’s it. It was murder, George.”
He peered sharply at his niece, who had the same sixth sense, the same gift and curse, that he had always possessed. “You feel it?”
“In my bones.”
He shifted in his chair. “Well, we’d better get busy.” He chewed on the earpiece of his glasses for a few moments, then said, “You know, Sam, when you got back to the Constitution’s morgue, you ought to do some looking into land up that way.”
“Land? What does that have to do with the price of rice?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
They grinned at each other.
“But there’s lots of money changing hands, big money, as the city pushes its way north,” George continued. “There are some folks who commute from almost as far as Monroeville to work in Atlanta. Land values have gone through the roof up there.”
“How about drugs? Didn’t you say sometimes one can almost ski in those mountains on the white powder?”
George shook his head. “Could be. But I don’t think so. I think land’s what you ought to be studying. And I’ll do some asking around.”
“How do you know Forrest Ridley wasn’t just doing a little fishing and was robbed and killed?”
“Man didn’t fish.”
“Camping?”
“Not the type.”
“Hiking?” Sam asked. “I know he went for long walks. Their housekeeper said so.”
“Could be.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what do you think?”
“I think the whole thing’s odd, that’s what I think. I think Forrest Ridley was the kind of man who, except for walking his dog, thought of exercise as the reach between his office door and that of a limo or taxi. I think he mostly spent his time working and making money, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Well, Liza told you he wasn’t really happy with Queen.”
“So?”
“So cherchez la femme, my dear.”
“You’re a dirty old man, George.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
Seven
“You’re doing what?”
“Hoke, you’re shouting. I’m not deaf.” Samantha held the phone away from her ear.
“No, but you sure as hell must be dumb. What do you mean, you’re working on the Forrest Ridley story? There is no Forrest Ridley story. We have an obit writer, thank you. And a fine job she does, for an old lady who should have retired ten years ago.”
“I think someone murdered him, Hoke.”
“The police say it was an accidental death, case closed. But you know better?”
“Sheriff Dodd of Watkin County declared it an accidental death. That’s not the same thing.”
The line was silent except for the sound of Hoke’s sucking on a cigarette—and then he was shouting again. “You’d do anything for this corrupt sheriff thing, wouldn’t you? Even if you have to make it up. It’s not Forrest Ridley you’re interested in. It’s the sheriff!”
Sam stared at the receiver in her hand for a minute. It was an interesting coincidence—but no more than a coincidence. “I feel it in my bones, Hoke. There’s something there. You’re going to be sorry if we miss this one.”
“With the power Simmons and Lee wields in this town, I’m not so sure if this is going to be good news or bad news. Providing, of course, that you aren’t just whistling Dixie.”
Sam smiled. She’d hooked him. “Why, Hoke, I don’t know what you mean. I’m not even sure I remember the tune.” And then she hung up the phone—which rang again immediately. “Hello?”
“Sam?”
“Liza? Dear, I’m so sorry about your—”
“Can you meet me at Manuel’s? Now, please? It’s very important.”
*
The bar was fairly empty on this rainy afternoon. Remembering that she hadn’t yet had lunch, Sam settled herself into a booth facing the back door and ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell and a Virgin Mary.
Manuel’s Tavern on North Highland was, like the Varsity, an Atlanta institution. The original barroom with booths along one side was decorated with execrable paintings of proprietor Manuel Maloof’s heroes, FDR and JFK, as well as some pretty awful nudes. Long a favorite hangout of the city’s journalists and drinking liberals, it was a loud, comfortable, masculine watering hole. However, women were not only welcome, but protected by the ever-watchful bartenders. It hadn’t changed a whit in more than two decades. Sam hoped it never would.
“Hi, Sam. How’s George?” Manuel called from the bar. No matter how long a regular was away, Manuel always remembered, even though he had become a power in DeKalb County politics and had other things on his mind.
“Fine. He doesn’t get out as much these days. I’ll have to drag him in soon.”
“You do that. Awful about Forrest Ridley, isn’t it? I remember a party he gave once in one of the back rooms. It was…” Manuel’s words trailed off as he recognized the dead man’s daughter coming through the back door.
Samantha rose. “Over here, Liza.”
The girl’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, which completed her all-black costume. She was dressed much the same as the last time Sam had seen her—could that have been only yesterday? But today her black garb wasn’t a punk artist’s affectation. Today it was mourning.
“I’m so sorry,” Sam began as s
he had on the telephone, and again got no further as Liza waved her sympathy away. The girl couldn’t talk about that now—the fact that her father was dead, that she was never going to see him again, never going to place another basketball bet, never going to hear him call her by his pet name, “Miss.” She could only deal with the tangential.
“She’s locked herself in her room,” Liza said. Sam didn’t have to ask to know she was talking about Queen. “She’s hardly said a word to me—as if she were the only one…” Her voice broke. She took a deep breath and regrouped. “She’s constantly on the phone.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know. She has a private line. But”—Liza removed her dark glasses and stared straight at Sam—“I listened at the door once. She was saying, ‘Well, we don’t have long to wait, not anymore.’”
“What do you think that meant?”
“What do you think?”
Sam was tempted to say I asked you first, but refrained. “I don’t know. She could be talking about anything. What do you really think, Liza?”
“I think someone killed my father.”
The girl’s bluntness took Sam’s breath away. “Why do you think that?”
“He’s—he was—not a stupid man. He’s not going to go fooling around up there at the top of Apalachee and just fall. It’s clearly marked.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course, the falls aren’t all that far from Tate, where we’ve always spent at least part of every summer.”
“Your family?”
“All of us. The partners and their families. We’re all one big happy family, don’t you know?”
“You don’t really mean that.”
Liza gestured with one hand. “We used to be. When I was a little girl, I loved to go up to Tate. But when I was about fourteen, it started to change. Or I started to change. It began to choke me.”
“Tate did?”
“The whole thing. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Try me.”
“Well, maybe you do.” Liza sighed. “Everyone’s the same. There are rules for everything. What you do. What you say. Who you see. Where you go to school. What you wear, eat, think—or don’t think. Everyone follows the party line, the S and L party line.”
First Kill All the Lawyers Page 7
