Taking his foot from the accelerator, Rory peered down the road ahead of them. Nothing. Maybe if they turned around and went back and checked to see if –
"Stop! Stop, stop, stop," Chet yelled.
Rory screeched to a halt, fishtailing back and forth on the road.
"Back up, back up back up," Chet said urgently. He turned around in his seat, looking back to the right.
Rory put the pickup in reverse and accelerated.
"Stop, stop, stop," Chet said in an urgent whisper. He was looking out at something.
Rory hit the brakes and the Ford slid to a backward stop. He turned in his seat, looking at where Chet was looking and realized he had missed the gap in the line of trees where a large, rickety barn sat back off the roadway. To the right, behind the line of trees, he could see a number of other outbuildings and an old two-story house. Somebody was pulling the barn doors shut, but Rory caught sight of the front end of the red, heavy-duty pickup truck inside.
Chet's voice was an amazed whisper as he stared, "That's Luther's place. That can't be."
"Who's that?"
Chet turned his head and looked at Rory. After a few seconds, he said, "Sheriff Luther Ponder."
Rory was surprised. But at the same time, he wasn't.
Shaking his head, Chet stared at the dashboard, "I can't believe he would have...."
Rory put the truck in gear and drove forward quickly before pulling to the shoulder of the road where he parked, hidden from the barn by the trees. He pulled out his Baby Eagle 9915 RL Polymer 9mm handgun, "Only one way to find out."
"But...we can't...he's the sheriff...."
Rory looked across at Chet, "And why would the sheriff be putting possible evidence of a murder in that old barn? Because that's what that truck is. Is that barn your local evidence locker? Is it?"
Chet licked his lips. Then he took a deep breath and nodded. He climbed out of the passenger side.
Rory got out and met him at the back of the Ford pickup. Together, they ran low back to the corner of the tree line. Not seeing anyone, Rory and Chet moved in a crouch to the dirt road off the main roadway and towards the left side of the rickety barn. Reaching it, they pressed their backs against the old, weather-beaten boards.
Chet looked along the length of the barn and then whispered. "There's no door on this side of the building."
Rory nodded and waved him forward. They ran low across the front of the barn to the far side. Rory peeked around the corner and then whispered, "There's a window on this side and it looks like a door farther down." He looked towards the other buildings.
Chet moved up beside Rory and he stretched his neck, "I don't see anyone at the house. Or at those other buildings either."
"Does he live alone?" Rory asked.
Chet nodded and whispered, "His daddy died last year."
Rory waved the gun and they moved down along the side of the barn. They moved to a dirty window where Rory carefully peeked inside. He rubbed some of the dirt away with the side of his hand for a better view.
Moving up beside Rory's shoulder, Chet peeking through the window himself.
They could see the red, heavy-duty pickup truck parked inside, front end facing the barn doors. A man appeared beside it. He set something down on the barn floor and then disappeared off to the right. A minute later, the man came back and placed something else down before disappearing again.
Chet crept forward to get a better look and got up on his tip-toes, peering inside. He turned to Rory quickly and whispered, "It is Luther Ponder. And he's got some body filler and sanding equipment beside the truck...."
"He's going to cover over the evidence," Rory concluded.
"We have to stop him," Chet whispered urgently. "Right?"
Rory nodded and moved quickly towards the door at the far end of the barn. Reaching it, Rory tested the old handle. It squeaked a little as he pressed it down. Rory slowly pushed the door part way open and it groaned in protest. He stopped and listened.
They could hear Ponder shuffling back and forth over the barn floor, obviously in a hurry.
Rory slowly squeezed through the doorway.
Chet followed. He started to close the door and it groaned.
Turning quickly and shaking his head no, Rory put a finger to his lips.
Chet froze on the spot and listened.
Luther Ponder was still moving back and forth.
Rory turned and slowly crept past the old animal stalls. The barn smelled of old hay and dried manure.
Chet stayed close behind, creeping low. He wrinkled his nose, passing a hand under it.
Putting a hand up, Rory motioned for Chet to stop in his tracks.
Chet crouched and looked past Rory.
Luther Ponder was working with something on the floor beside the truck.
Rory started moving slowly again toward the Sheriff with Chet following closely behind. Twenty feet away from the truck, Rory rose to his full height and aimed his weapon, "Don't move."
Luther Ponder whirled around. He held a large sander in his two hands.
"Put it down. Now!" instructed Rory.
Ponder stood taller and puffed his chest out, sneering at Rory, "Do you know who I am?"
Chet stepped up beside Rory, "Yeah, you're the idiot Sheriff who's covering up evidence of a murder."
Ponder looked only half surprised to see Chet Calhoun standing beside the out of town stranger.
"I won't ask you again," Rory said as he motioned with the gun for Ponder to drop the sander.
Luther Ponder dropped it, wiping his hands on his pants. He gave Rory a half-smile, "What do you mean covering up a murder? You can't really prove that –"
Chet hitched up his pants, "Yes, we can." He pointed at the side of the red pickup, "Those paint markings on the side of that pickup will match the ones on the sides of Nora-Jane Jackson's Lincoln. You killed Nora-Jane. How could you? You knew her?"
Luther Ponder licked his lips and ran his hands through his brown hair. He looked panicky. "Look," he said. "I didn't kill her. I didn't really know what was going on until–"
Chet took a step and yelled, "Is that your truck or not, Luther?"
"Yes but–" Ponder looked this way and that again. "It must've been that stupid Buster Connor." He swore as he ran his hands through his hair again, "He borrowed my truck. And I didn't see the damage or the paint transfer until I was told to pick it up on the Clarkson Sideroad. Ask Buster–"
"Can't. He's dead," Chet said with finality.
"What? How–?"
Chet's words were hard and bitter, "My old friend followed me up towards Cherokee Ridge, thinking I was looking for the treasure. And he was going to kill me."
Ponder looked stunned. He looked at Rory and asked in a quiet voice, "You killed Buster Connor?"
"No," Chet said forcefully. "Somebody shot him between the eyes with a rifle from some distance away. Guess they didn't want him talking to us."
Ponder put his hands over his eyes and rubbed them, "This is going sideways," he whispered.
Chet bared his teeth in anger, "Didn't think you'd get caught because you're the Sheriff, right? You shoot Buster and then–"
Ponder shook his head no as he put his hands out, "Look. I'm being set up here. They asked me to pick up the truck on the Clarkson Sideroad. They said Buster had a job to do up on the Ridge. I didn't know they were going after you, Chet. I swear it."
"Who are 'they'?" Rory asked.
Ponder shook his head vigorously no, "I can't say."
Chet turned to Rory, "Can you get him to move away from the truck?"
Rory nodded and waved the gun at the Sheriff.
"Look," Ponder said as he stepped away from the truck, "You don't understand. You don't know who these people are. What they're capable of doing...."
Chet opened the passenger side of the heavy-duty pickup truck and looked inside. A moment later, he yelled, "You son of a bitch, Luther." He reached across for something in the truck cab, then s
tepped back, slamming the door hard, making both Rory and Luther Ponder jump. Chet held a large roll of yellow, tinted material and he began to unroll it. He looked at, flipped it around and examined it closer. It had old signs from the Knights of the Golden Circle sketched across it. He lifted his eyes, looking at the Sheriff with menace in his eyes, "This is the oilskin Corry Haney had hanging over the whiteboard in his house."
Ponder sneered at Chet and shook his head, "You can't prove that–"
Chet held the oilskin up and yelled, "See the torn corner on this side, Luther? Do you see it? Do you? That will match the torn piece that we found still attached to the whiteboard inside the Haney house."
Ponder licked his lips.
Rolling the yellow, tinted material back up, Chet's hard eyes remained on Ponder, "This is proof. Not only did you sneak into the Haney house to get this, it says you killed those kids!"
Luther Ponder shook his head vigorously again, "No. No. No. I didn't. You can't prove that."
"The authorities will," Rory said. "Once we show them this truck–"
Ponder snickered, "You idiot. Many of them are the authorities. You can't fight them. They're state troopers, they're FBI, Judges...they own the system."
Rory narrowed his eyes, considering what Ponder had just said. Then he took a deep breath, letting it out in a soft curse, "He's probably right, Chet. Probably get off somehow, with all the friends he has. So...as far as I'm concerned, this evidence is good enough for me." He extended his arm and aimed his Baby Eagle directly at the head of Sheriff Luther Ponder.
Ponder backed up a step, his hands out, "No, no, no, no. You can't just–"
Chet hitched up his pants, "Executing a child killer won't bother me either. Go ahead, Rory. Do it."
Ponder was frantic, "No please. You don't understand–"
It was Chet's turn to sneer and his voice was hard, "Did those poor kids plead like that before you killed them? Did they Luther?"
Ponder looked over at Chet, "You don't get it, do you? Those kids ain't dead."
Chapter 17
RORY AND CHET looked at each other in shock. Neither man had expected that. Both men looked back at the Sheriff, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. Rory finally decided Ponder was lying. He gave the Sheriff a hard look as he shook his head and lifted the gun, aiming directly at Ponder's head again.
Ponder held his hands near his head and cringed, "I'm telling you the truth mister. Those kids ain't dead."
Chet cocked his head as he looked at Ponder. "So...if they ain't dead, where are they?"
Ponder screwed up his face, "If I tell you, I'm a dead man–"
Rory took a step forward, bringing the handgun closer to the Sheriff's head, "You can't lie your way out of this–"
Ponder took a step back, waving his hands in front of him, "I ain't lying. I mean it. They're alive. Isn't that good enough–?"
"No! And if you don't tell me right now, I'll consider you a child killer," Rory replied firmly. "And like Chet says, I have no problems executing a child killer." He took a breath, "Chet, count down to three."
Chet cleared his throat and hitched his pants up, "1...2 –"
Luther Ponder swore, "Okay, okay." He shook his head, took a deep breath and blew it out in frustration, "Okay...look...the kids are working on a big, old cotton plantation down in Mississippi. All the kids are down there. They're all working, okay. They're fine–"
Chet raised his arms and yelled, "They're on a plantation picking cotton! How stupid do you think we are, Luther? Huh? How stupid – shoot him, Rory. Do it–"
"No, no, no," Ponder cried. "The cotton picking is still done by machinery today. It would be cheaper, but we can't have the kids working out in the open like that. Not yet anyway."
"Talk sense, Luther," Chet yelled. He stepped forward, his fists in a ball, "Talk some damn sense."
Ponder swayed in anguish, pushing his fingers through his brown hair. "Look, it was old Tuck's idea–"
Rory glanced at Chet and back to Ponder, "Who?"
Ponder just pushed on as he looked at Chet, "You know about the Knights of the Golden Circle. How the Golden Circle was–"
"A ring of slavery states," Chet stated harshly. "The Southern States, Mexico, Central America, South America Cuba, the Caribbean islands, blah blah blah. We don't need a history lesson. Where are the kids," he yelled.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Ponder said as he held his hands out towards Chet. "The original Golden Circle was to have black slaves. The Southern slave-holding class would build an economy so big the government couldn't do nothing about it–"
"You can't tell me you're kidnapping black children. Corry and Emma were white," Chet yelled in frustration. "How stupid do you think we are?"
Ponder shook his head, "No, no, no. It isn't about blacks. It would be too difficult to hold them down today anyway. But think about it. Where's all our clothes from the big stores coming from? Who's building all the running shoes and the tennis shoes for the big sporting goods companies?"
Rory and Chet looked at each other, wondering where this was going.
Ponder ticked them off on his fingers, "Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Congo, Somalia, Bangladesh, Mali and a whole bunch of other countries who use children in their factories. It's cheap labor that we can't compete with. You know that. All the good American jobs are disappearing and going over to those countries. And we don't do nothing about it. But the Knights of the Golden Circle did. We're doing something about it. Think about all the kids running around today, nobody taking care of them. We dug up a number of the smaller treasure caches and Old Tuck built a factory in Guatemala. That was the first one. There were others in places like El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Columbia. The newest is in Mississippi. Your kids are there. But unlike those countries overseas, we're taking care of them. Hell, most of the families in Central and South America were happy to see them go–"
Chet Calhoun's voice was an incredulous whisper, "You have to be shitting me. You absolutely have to be–"
Crack!
Rory took two steps and dove behind the rear end of the heavy-duty pickup truck as soon as the rifle shot registered in his brain.
Chet was right behind him, landed heavily on the ground behind Rory.
Scrambling around to his knees, Rory used the wheel as cover. Chet scrambled around on his knees behind him, dust and straw from the floor leaving a trail in the air.
Crack!
A bullet pinged off a piece of metal somewhere behind Rory and Chet and both men ducked.
Silence.
Rory looked around behind him, whispering, "Chet?"
Chet was crouched over and he slowly lifted his head, "I'm...I'm okay."
Rory nodded and peeked around the side of the pickup, holding his handgun up and at the ready.
Chet moved forward on his hands and knees, looking over at the door and the window of the barn and then peering around the truck as well, "Where...where did those shots come from?"
"Looks like from the barn doors at the front," Rory said. He looked over at Sheriff Luther Ponder. "But just like up at Cherokee Ridge, the first shot wasn't for either of us."
Chet looked over, "Oh crap."
Ponder was lying on his stomach, head turned towards the red pickup. Half of his face was blown away.
"Shot in the back of the head," Rory said quietly.
A distant screeching sound was heard as a vehicle ripped away on the highway.
Rory was up quickly, heading for the barn doors.
Chet was right behind him.
The barn door was open about 6 inches. Rory pushed the big doors aside and ran for the roadway.
Running as hard as he could, Chet stayed close to him.
Reaching the highway, they both saw a vehicle disappearing in the distance off to the right.
Chet cursed.
"Yeah tell me about it," Rory said as he put his handgun back into the holster under his camouflage jacket.
Rory looked down at Chet's hand, "You still have the oilskin?"
Chet looked down to see he still had it in his hand. He had squeezed the rolled-up oilskin in his hand so hard it was bent in a U-shape. "Yeah, I guess I do."
Rory looked back at the partially open barn door. Then he gestured to their pickup just ahead, "Get in the pickup and get ready to leave. I'll be right back."
Before Chet could say anything, Rory was running back to the barn. Chet headed straight for the pickup and got in the driver's side. He gently unbent the oilskin and placed it across the back window ledge of the cab. The keys were still in the vehicle and he started it. His heart jumped into his throat when the passenger door was ripped open–
Rory climbed in, "Let's go."
"I almost peed my pants," Chet complained as he put the pickup into gear and drove onto the roadway. A moment later, he asked, "What did you do back there?"
"I wiped your prints off the pickup truck," Rory explained.
Chet's eyebrows went up in surprise as he pressed down on the gas, "I never thought of that. I guess I wouldn't make a very good criminal."
Rory smiled and looked across at Chet, "Are you saying I would?"
"Well...just better than me," Chet replied. He shifted in his seat, "Now what?"
"Do you have any idea who this Old Tuck is?"
Chet shook his head slowly, "I have absolutely no idea. I've never heard that name before. Ever."
Rory nodded his head slowly as they drove. "Okay. Let's take this pickup and the all-terrain vehicle back to your friend. We'll have to get out of here. If Ponder is half right, we can't trust the police around here, that's for sure."
"So we go on the run?" Chet asked.
Rory looked at Chet, "Or take a trip."
Chet nodded, and gripped the steering wheel tighter and accelerated, "Mississippi, here we come."
Chapter 18
MISSISSIPPI
"BUT MISSISSIPPI IS SUCH A BIG STATE. How do we even start to figure out where they are?" Donna-Lou Haney asked from the back seat of Rory's black Jaguar XKR-S. Chet had insisted they pick up Donna-Lou before they had even dropped off the pickup and the all-terrain vehicle. And Rory couldn't blame him. There was a good possibility the local Knights of the Golden Circle would go after anything else Corry might have in their house. And Donna-Lou Haney would be in the way. Better safe than sorry. Although, having her along might make it difficult if they did find the children. After a stop to sleep in Atlanta and a six-hour drive, they left the State of Alabama and entered Mississippi.
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