by Ninie Hammon
With the nosey newspaper editor in hand, the stage was set and Bubba realized just how much he had been looking forward to killing them.
“I want to thank ya’ll for coming to my little surprise party,” he said. “I promise you will have the time of your life. The last time of your life.”
“You don’t really think you can get away with this!” Seth was incredulous. “You think you can kill the sheriff and the newspaper editor, Billy Joe Reynolds and me and nobody will notice? You’re crazier than everybody says you are.”
Bubba almost laughed out loud. “You know, that’s exactly what Billy Joe said. Right before he said he’d never call Sarabeth and get her all messed up in this. But as you can see, he was persuaded to make the call.”
He casually kicked Billy Joe right in the face, knocking out one of the man’s front teeth. Sarabeth screamed, but Billy Joe only groaned. He’d been sliding in and out of consciousness for more than an hour, was likely going into shock.
He turned to Seth. “No, I don’t think I can kill all you fine people and nobody will notice. For starters, I’m not going to kill anybody.” He paused for effect. “Jimmy Dan Puckett is.”
He crossed to Seth in two huge steps, like a rhinoceros charging. Seth didn’t flinch.
“And somebody’s gonna notice, all right. Everybody’s gonna notice. Your deaths will be the biggest, most-watched event in Callison County history. It will be a spectacle you can see for miles in every direction.”
He turned to Sarabeth, sitting silently on the floor, her face swelling so fast you could watch it.
“The big city media’s gonna be all over what’s about to happen here today. You won’t be around to write it, of course, but somebody’s gonna have quite a tale to tell.”
He turned to Detective Hayes.
“Darrell, why don’t you describe for these folks what’s gonna show up tomorrow morning on the front page of every newspaper in Kentucky—the sad story of the deaths of three of Callison County’s most well-known citizens.”
The pale blond detective smiled and began to talk. Bubba watched Sarabeth’s face, saw her connect the dots about the scholarly police officer. Her stunned surprise was testimony to how good a job Hayes had done at keeping his cover all these years, being a mole for Bubba, letting him know when and where the busts were going to go down. A man in Bubba’s position needed a state police detective on a chain. Not for long, though. Hayes knew too much now. Soon as this business was over, Bubba would get rid of him. An accident, a car wreck, maybe. No, a drowning; the man liked to fish. When he had the time, Bubba would put his mind to it and come up with something credible. The state police detective wouldn’t live to see another Christmas.
“A little while ago, I radioed dispatch in Columbia and told them I was going to stop by Double Springs Distillery on my way home,” Hayes said. “I said somebody out here claimed they’d seen Jimmy Dan Puckett, the man who shot that poor little Davis girl. It wasn’t likely, but I was going to check it out anyway. I said I’d radio back if I found anything.” He paused. “But you know how these knobs are.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes you have radio coverage and sometimes you don’t.”
The normally taciturn Hayes began to warm to the story, waving a pistol in the air when he gestured. It was a small handgun with black electrician’s tape covering the handle.
“And when the television news crews shove a microphone in my face, I’ll get all choked up talking about it. I’ll explain how I came out here, just to check things out, came into the office, but nobody was here. Which struck me as odd, Seth not being in his office and the door unlocked and all.”
“So I went over to his house up by the woods. Nobody was there, either. But I did find Sarabeth’s car parked in front of it. And I found this.”
He reached down and picked up Sarabeth’s purse where she had dropped it when Bubba back-handed her.
“And this … ”
He used his toe to scoot Sarabeth’s camera bag away from her out into the middle of the floor. “ … sitting on the kitchen table.” He shoved the bag up next to Seth’s desk and placed her purse on top of it.
Then he looked at Seth and smiled. “You’ll like this part of the story.” He turned back and addressed the others.
“So I called out. ‘Seth! Sarabeth!’ Nobody answered. I searched the house then, and back in the master bedroom I found the bed all messed up, and these …”
He pointed to Sarabeth’s shoes. “Take them off.”
She just looked at him.
He cocked the gun and aimed it at her head and said softly. “You heard me, I said take your shoes off.”
Sarabeth reached down, removed her shoes and lifted them up to him. He gestured to the spot where her purse and camera bag leaned against Seth’s desk. “Over there.”
She tossed the shoes toward her purse. One landed on top, the other beside her camera case.
“Now, being the astute detective that I am, I put it together that Mr. Seth McAllister and Miss Sarabeth Bingham must have been up at his house playing a little game of bump and tickle while the distillery was shut down and nobody was around.” He glanced at Seth. “The way you look at her, it’s obvious you wish you had been. You should have moved faster, pal. You snooze, you lose.”
Then he continued his narrative.
“So if Seth and Sarabeth had been getting it on, where were they? Why’d she leave her purse and shoes and go wandering off somewhere? I get concerned. Sarabeth’s a fine, crusading journalist, after all, and a close personal friend and I’m beginning to get worried about her.”
He turned to Sonny, who sat as silent as a stone statue, his hands cuffed behind his back. “You’re just waiting for a chance to jump me, aren’t you, Sonny?” He took a step away from the sheriff as he spoke instead of toward him. “Don’t bother. You may be strong, but you’re not quick. You’ll be dead before you stand all the way up.”
He picked up the thread of the story where he left off, now including Sonny in his tale.
“I’m so worried then that I pick up the phone and call my good friend Sheriff Sonny Tackett. I explain the situation. He says he’ll be right over. I search the house and the office while I’m waiting, and pretty soon, the sheriff pulls up out front.”
He stopped. “You did follow the instructions Billy Joe gave you when he called, right? You didn’t tell anybody where you were going or why.” The sheriff said nothing, but it was obvious he’d done as he was told.
“The two of us set out to search the rest of the premises. I’ve got my pistol, the sheriff gets the shotgun out of his cruiser. We check the bottling room and the print shop. Nothing. The barrel warehouses are next and we start on the old ones up here by the office, the Family Five. And we see the catch is undone on the door of the middle one, Flying Ebony. Sonny slides the door open and goes in. I get to the door and then a terrible thing happens. Jimmy Dan Puckett opens fire on us.”
Hayes held up the gun in his hand, the one with the taped handle. “With this. And the slugs we dig out of the door on my cruiser where he missed …” He turned and said coldly to Sonny “… along with the slug we dig out of the sheriff when he didn’t miss, will match the slug the coroner pulled out of poor little Maggie Mae Davis.
“Jimmy Dan must have broken into Seth’s house and interrupted the big man and his girlfriend in the act. He’s been on the run, hiding out for more than a week. He had to need money. Maybe he broke in to get something to eat, too. I guess we’ll never know for sure why he did it, will we Bubba?”
Bubba took up the story.
“Nope. Nobody will ever know why Jimmy Dan Puckett showed up here today and kidnapped Seth McAllister and Sarabeth Bingham. ” His voice was as cold as a stone on the desert floor at night. “Because the only three people who know the whole story—Seth, Sarabeth and Jimmy Dan—won’t be around to tell it.”
Bubba looked back at Hayes.
“So, suddenly gunshots are flying at us. And that
’s when my good friend, Sheriff Sonny Tackett, becomes a hero. Yes siree, that’s how he’ll be remembered. There’ll be cops from all over the country at the ceremony. Cops show up at the funerals of other officers killed in the line of duty, you know. And I’ll stand up and tell them all what a fine man he was, what a hero he was, how he gave his life to save the life of a fellow officer, died trying—in vain—to save two poor hostages whose only crime was making whoopie in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“You see, when Jimmy Dan starts shooting at us, Sonny turns and shoves me back out the door, out of the line of fire. And that’s when he takes a bullet. Drops him right there in the doorway. I reach in and grab him, drag him out, carry him back to my cruiser. Just as I get there, Jimmy Dan starts firing at us both from the warehouse doorway, and when he runs out of bullets with this …” He waggled the gun with the taped handle. “… he picks up the shotgun the sheriff dropped and starts shooting at us with that.”
“And I call out to him, try to get him to give himself up, you see, but he won’t listen. Says he killed a kid and he’ll get the death penalty. Him holding hostages and all, I can’t very well return his fire. I mean, the man’s in a warehouse full of alcohol. I can’t very well shoot into it! I get my car door open and call for backup. But dang it! You know how hit and miss the coverage is. The signal just won’t go through. So I do the only thing I can do. I get the sheriff into my cruiser, hunker down low behind the wheel and I drive away to get help.” He sighed. “But, unfortunately, Sonny doesn’t make it.”
Bubba took up the story then, his face alive and animated. “But when Detective Hayes does what he has to do to save the life of the poor, injured sheriff, he leaves Jimmy Dan behind in the warehouse with his two hostages.”
Hayes smiled. “And as I’m driving down the hill, I hear gunfire from inside Flying Ebony. Don’t know what’s happening. Maybe Seth’s trying to get the shotgun. Maybe he and Sarabeth are making a run for it. Or maybe Jimmy Dan’s just executing his hostages. No way to tell—”
“Because all that shooting with the sheriff’s shotgun … ” Bubba leaned over toward Seth and watched his face when he whispered the words. “ … starts a fire!”
Bubba relished the wave of horror that washed over Seth’s face.
“And the fire burns so hot there’s not a trace left of Jimmy Dan Puckett, Seth McAllister or Sarabeth Bingham. Or of another body that’ll just vanish.” Bubba caught Hayes’ eye and winked. “Why, people’ll probably wonder out loud about it for years. ‘Ain’t it odd,’ they’ll say, ‘that Billy Joe Reynolds disappeared and was never heard from or seen again on the very same day …’” he paused, and hissed out the rest in a rush of triumph “‘… the historic Double Springs Distillery burned all the way down to the ground.’”
Chapter 26
Hayes and Bubba herded the hostages out of Seth’s office at gunpoint, with Seth carrying Billy Joe.
Sarabeth expected that they’d all be marched down the road to the huge barrel warehouse for the mythical gunfight with the equally mythical kidnapper. Where was Jimmy Dan Puckett, anyway? How had Hayes gotten his gun?
But they weren’t taken to the warehouse. Bubba motioned with his gun for Seth to dump Billy Joe’s unconscious body into the back of the beat-up Chevy pickup parked next to Sarabeth’s car. Then he told Seth and Sonny to climb up into the back of the pickup with Billy Joe. Seth had to help Sonny balance because his hands were cuffed behind him.
Bubba turned to Sarabeth and gestured toward the driver’s side door. “Get in. You’re driving.” The wind whipped her hair into her face and even that slight tickling on her cheek was excruciating. She pushed her curls back behind her ears and wordlessly climbed in.
The seat had been adjusted for Bubba’s girth and legs. Sarabeth’s feet didn’t touch the accelerator or the brake.
Bubba stomped over to her, leaned in, pushed the lever and shoved the seat forward.
“Put on your seatbelt, Sweetheart,” he purred in her ear. “Safety first.”
Then he turned to Seth and Sonny in the back of the truck.
“You boys remember that I’m gonna have this gun trained on your little red-headed friend. Make the slightest move and I will blow her brains all over the cab.”
Then he went around to the other side of the truck and got in on the passenger side.
“Follow Darrell,” he said. She turned the key in the ignition and when the cruiser pulled out and started back down the road leading toward the highway, she pulled in after him.
“Where are you taking us?” She didn’t mean for her voice to tremble, but it did and she couldn’t stop it.
“You’ll see.”
Hayes drove slowly down the road leading to the covered bridge spanning the Rolling Fork River, but didn’t cross it. Instead, he turned off on the side road that lead to the Quart House and parked in the gravel lot beside it.
Sitting at the bottom of the hill below the Family Five, the Quart House was just inside the 6-foot-tall rock fence that ran alongside the Rolling Fork River and encircled the distillery property. A museum and gift shop, Seth had told Sarabeth about it the day she’d come to interview him for the story about Double Springs.
Tears sprang to her eyes that had nothing to do with the roaring pain in her face. She’d thought Seth was a doper that day, believed he was subsidizing his business with marijuana money. She’d been so certain, had held that certainty against him in the months since; used it to build a wall between them. And she’d been so wrong! If only she could tell him she was sorry, tell him that maybe things would have been different if …
But there was no time for that now. It was too late for everything, now.
Seth watched the big man in the front seat wave the gun around at Sarabeth and clenched his hands into fists. The image of Bubba slapping her up against a wall was still playing on a movie screen in his mind.
Seth had spent a good portion of his life wondering if he could be brave. His father certainly hadn’t thought so. Joe McAllister believed all the bravery in the McAllister clan had died when Seth’s brother had thrown himself on a live grenade in a steamy jungle on a June night in 1969.
Seth had been 16 at the time.
“Your brother’s gone,” his father had said. Just like that. No preamble. Seth had been brushing his dog, trying to get the briars out of the beautiful golden retriever’s coat, when his father walked out onto the porch and announced that life as he had always known it would never be the same again. “Caleb’s dead.”
Seth had been stunned by the look on the old man’s face, a look he would see there every day for the rest of his father’s life. Absolute defeat had been etched on his features. Defeat and despair. Everything in his father that was good and courageous, strong, vibrant and full of life had vanished. In its place stood the empty husk of a man who merely kept on living because his heart was beating.
Billy Joe groaned. Seth looked down at his destroyed hands. What kind of man could do a thing like that? The man sitting in the pickup cab with a gun trained on the woman he loved.
It just popped out. The woman he loved. Time to admit the truth. And the big ugly man who’d slapped her intended to do far worse than hit her. He intended to kill her. And all the rest of them, too.
Could Seth stop him? He didn’t know. But he did know he intended to die trying.
Sonny was preparing himself to die. He probably had a more accurate view of their chance of survival than the other captives. And he knew they didn’t have one. He’d already weighed every possible option, tried to formulate some plan. But he and Seth were no match for the heavily armed Bubba and Hayes. And handcuffed, he’d be no help at all.
He knew that as soon as a police officer lost his weapon, he was doomed. A man takes a cop’s gun, he’s more or less obligated to shoot him with it. He’d given up his gun in Seth’s office when Bubba stepped up behind him and placed the barrel of a .38 caliber pistol at the base of his skull.
And
he’d never suspected a thing. Looking back, he could see now that Billy Joe had sounded a little strained on the phone. But he had been convincing. Sonny had bought it, and had come running out here to Seth’s office right into a trap.
He glanced over at Billy Joe, at his destroyed hands, and decided that he’d probably have said whatever Bubba told him to say if Bubba had done that to him, too. He didn’t blame Billy Joe; he pitied him. What he felt mostly now was an overwhelming sadness. He didn’t want to die! He didn’t want to leave his daughter. Gracie’d already lost her mother, how could she possibly survive losing him, too? Mary’s mother would be there for her, sure—but she was so little, so innocent and fragile.
And he wasn’t the only person who was going to die here today. Sarabeth! He’d been running from his feelings for her for more than a year now, but there was nowhere to run anymore. And no time. Oh, it was obvious she and Seth had something going, but it wasn’t a done deal, the fat lady hadn’t sung yet. He still had a chance. Or he would have if any of them were going to live more than another fifteen minutes.
He closed his eyes.
Lord, I’ve said since I was 9 years old that I believed in you, based my life and who I am on your promises. Guess I’m about to find out if they’re true.
He took a deep breath and let it slowly back out.
And if this is the way it’s supposed to end, if this is what you want, then I’m Ok with it. But please, just a couple of things. Please, Lord, don’t let Sarabeth die, too. I’m not asking for my life, but I am asking for hers. I’m begging for hers! Take me, but don’t take her. Please. All I ask for me is—get it over with quick. Don’t let it go on and on. And help me die like … I just want you to be proud of the way I step out of this world and into the next.
When Sarabeth pulled to a stop in the Quart House parking lot, Hayes was standing beside his car with the back, passenger-side door open. He had Jimmy Dan Puckett’s gun drawn.
“Get out,” Bubba told Sarabeth, and she opened the door and stepped down onto the ground beside Hayes.
