by Glenn Trust
Wrapping her arm more tightly around Lyn’s, she pulled the girl as close to her as she could. There was no response, but the warmth of the contact with her daughter brought her some small comfort.
Lyn’s eyes focused intently on the tops of the swaying pine trees in the courtyard. They pulled her in, and she felt herself leaving the hospital room again, even as her mother struggled to hold her close. It was to no avail. Lyn drifted to a faraway place where her mother could not go.
*******
Gerald Parsons sat quietly on the porch of his small house nestled among the trees at the base of one of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The southern end of the Appalachian Trail was only a few miles from that spot. From there you could hike all the way to Maine if you had a mind to, and good, strong set of legs. He and Grover had hiked parts of it all through north Georgia when Grover was still a boy.
“Good night, Gerald.” Sheriff Bill Siler had been coming by to visit Grover’s father as much as possible since the young deputy’s murder. They rarely spoke. There wasn’t anything to say.
Mostly, Siler just sat on the porch with him hoping in some way that his company might dull the knifing pain in the father’s heart. It seemed to have no effect, but he would not abandon the man whose boy did not abandon his duty.
Parsons pulled his empty gaze away from the darkness that surrounded the small house and nodded his good night back to the sheriff. An instant later, he was lost again in the darkness. There was no other world for him, only the dark loss of the boy that had been his life
Things moved in the dark, in the trees. Mostly harmless, some not. Gerald Parsons ignored them all and listened, straining to hear. But the husky, happy voice of his son was gone. So many things were gone.
*******
Some small creature moved in the high grass in the ditch alongside the dirt road. Tom Ridley took no notice. He stood quietly at the edge of his property looking down the dirt road. The place where he had found the young girl’s body was visible. The grass and weeds had been trampled down by the deputies and GBI people. Remnants of yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze. It was still dark, but in the dim, misty light of the oncoming day, he could just make out the silhouette of a vehicle.
Behind him in the little frame house, he could hear his wife busying herself with breakfast. It was a comforting sound. One he took pleasure in most mornings as he stood for a few minutes in the yard looking at the sky, watching the stars fade. After a few minutes, he would smell coffee and sometimes bacon frying. But this morning, he paid no attention to the homey sounds and smells. Turning, he walked briskly into the house.
“Breakfast be ready in a few minutes, Tom,” Margaret said from the kitchen.
Reaching up over the front door, he took the shotgun from the two pegs that served as a gun rack and then reached into a box on a shelf under the pegs, pulling out four .00 buckshot shells.
“Tom?” Margaret said from the doorway. “What are you doing?”
Without looking he said, “Nothing. Just gonna go check something.”
“Tom! What is it? You stop right there and tell me what’s going on.”
He turned and looked at her. “Nothing…probably nothing. Looks like a car or truck down the road. Down there where…”
Margaret Ridley nodded her head. “All right then. Be careful.”
Tom nodded, turned, and walked out the door. As he crossed the little dirt yard, he heard the screen door open behind him. He knew that Margaret would be watching from the driveway.
Holding the shotgun in both hands, the barrel pointing to the side but at the ready, he walked quickly and quietly down the road. His boots made no sound in the dirt.
As he got within fifty feet of the vehicle, the door opened and the interior light came on. Tom relaxed and let the barrel of the shotgun lower, resting it under one arm.
George Mackey stepped out of the truck.
“Morning, Tom.”
“Mornin’, George.” Ridley came closer until they could see each other clearly in the dim light from the truck’s interior.
“You’re not going to shoot me with that are you?”
“Naw, George, not gonna shoot you. Didn’t know who it was down here. Just checking.”
“Yea. I know. Me too.”
The two men stood there, looking into the weeds and grass on the side of the road. The yellow crime scene tape was still there, wrapped around trees and brush, marking off the area where the girl’s body had been found.
Tom reached into his shirt pocket, pulled a cigarette from a beat up pack, and lit up. He looked at George and held the pack out. George just shook his head. The two men leaned against the sheriff’s truck not saying anything for a few minutes.
Finally, Tom broke the silence.
“I thought it was you.”
“What?”
“That morning. I was standing in the yard and heard the car tires moving. I thought it was you. Figured you’d been napping.”
“I know. You told me. I wish to God it had been me, Tom.”
“Yea, me too. I reckon that fella would have had a surprise when he pulled down my road if you’d been there.”
“Yea, Tom. I reckon…who knows…maybe I’d have had the surprise.”
“Oh, you’d have got him, George. You’re a good deputy.”
George felt the guilt well up inside him. He looked over at Tom.
“Not that good, Tom. Not very good at all.”
Tom let the words fade away for a moment before speaking. “George, you didn’t kill that girl. She was already dead.” They were almost the same words George had spoken to him the day Tom found the girl’s body.
George looked down at the dust around his feet. “You know, I was napping that night. Just not on your road, Tom.”
Tom said nothing. Taking a long drag on his cigarette, the glow of the butt cast an orange hue over his face.
George went on, “I saw the car go by…I didn’t stop it. I didn’t do anything. Just went back to napping. I could have, but I didn’t.” His words faded off.
Tom thought this over, considering what George had said and weighing what it meant. Then he spoke.
“No, George. You’re a good deputy. Everyone does things they wish they didn’t do. That don’t make them bad. That’s just mistakes. The fella that did what he did to that little girl was just bad. Bad as I’ve ever seen. But he did it, not you. Maybe you could have caught him that night if you weren’t napping. That would have been a good thing. Maybe you wouldn’t have caught him. Maybe he would have killed you too. That’s a lot of maybe’s. No way to know. But you did get him, George. Remember that. You got him.”
George made no response, and the silence grew up around them again.
After a few more minutes, Tom said, “Well, I gotta go get to work. I’ll be seeing you, George.”
“Yeah,” George replied, as Tom turned and walked back up the dirt road, shotgun under his arm. The sky was slowly changing from deep black to charcoal gray. The day was coming on now, and George could make out the form of a woman up the road by the Ridley’s drive. It was Margaret, watching and waiting for Tom to return.
George knew that Tom would be shoveling chicken shit out of the barns most of the day. Even so, life for the Ridleys in the little frame house was good enough. Maybe not special. It didn’t have to be anything special. Just life was good enough. He wasn’t sure that it would ever be good enough for him again.
Deputy George Mackey’s head turned at the sound of a breeze rustling through the weeds on the side of the road where the girl’s body had lain. Climbing into the pickup, he drove slowly down Ridley Road. His eyes avoided the rearview mirror.
End
Sanctioned Murder
Glenn Trust
The Hunters Series
Book 2
Dedication
For The Founders who provided us with the tool to deliver ourselves from tyranny and the aristocracy of power.
Day One
*****
Munny –“It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.”
Kid – “Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.”
Munny – “We all got it coming, kid.”
*****
Dialogue between Will Munny and the Schofield Kid
The Motion Picture – “Unforgiven”
1. The Speed of Light
The pump whirred to a stop, the digital LED display showing $53.79. The slightly balding, older man gave a “humph” in disgust and replaced the gasoline nozzle. He stood patiently while the little printer clicked and spit out the receipt, and then squinted at the printed amount and gallons indicated, comparing them to the numbers displayed on the pump. With another disgusted shake of his head, he moved to the door of the black BMW.
It was not a common car, but in this affluent Atlanta neighborhood near the Buckhead district, uncommon cars and homes and jewelry and the other trappings of the upwardly mobile and successful were more common than usual. Those who could, mostly white at first and then the black, had escaped to the surrounding towns and cities that made up the large metropolitan Atlanta region. They had been doing so for forty years. But neighborhoods still existed in the city. They were enclaves really; islands of prosperity floating in the midst of tawdry businesses, downtown high-rise offices, and the desperate poverty of those forced to remain behind in the housing projects and low-rent districts.
The two Atlantas could not have been more disparate. Old money and the nouveau riche lived lives of elegance and extravagance mere blocks, sometimes feet, from enslaving poverty and ignorance. A dark shadow of underworld crime and gang violence hung heavily over the poorer sections of the city and crowded the edges of the upscale neighborhoods. The gas station was at the line of demarcation between the city and one of the neighborhoods.
“Don’t make a sound motherfucker.” The voice was thick and deep, coming from behind. The words were emphasized by a sharp forearm to the back of the older man’s head causing his chin to impact painfully on the car’s door.
“What do you want?” the man said, wiping gingerly at the trickle of blood that had started down his chin.
“Keys, motherfucker, and I said don’t make a sound.” The man behind leaned hard against him, pinning the older man to the side of the car. The hard object pressed into his back reinforced the demand for the keys. He had no trouble recognizing it for what it was, the barrel of a handgun.
“Here,” he extended his arm backward for the man to take the keys from his hand. “Take the keys, and go.”
The gunman jerked the keys from the outstretched hand, pressing the remote button and unlocking all of the doors. Yanking the driver’s door open, he pushed hard, forcing the older man into the car.
“Just take the car. Go. You don’t need me.”
“Get in.” With those words, he gave a shove hard enough to push the old man across the driver’s seat to the passenger side, his legs still dangling out the driver’s door.
“Pull your legs in or I’ll shoot your stupid ass now.”
The older man awkwardly complied. Sitting up straight in the passenger seat, he became aware of a second male sitting in the rear seat directly behind him. He also was armed with a handgun. For the first time, the old man could see his assailants. They wore ski masks their faces not visible to him or the video cameras that the gas station had recording activity in the lot, standard practice in this part of town.
The man in front pulled the car from the pumps and out onto the street slowly, sliding the ski mask up so that it sat high on the top of his head in a style familiar to the area. Sounds from the back let the old man know that the man in the rear had done likewise. They appeared calm and cool. Without the ski masks, they could have been taken for two young men taking their uncle for a Sunday afternoon drive.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge, Clayton Marswell, filled the tank of his black BMW every Sunday afternoon at the same gas station. The station was at the edge of the upscale neighborhood where Clayton had resided with his wife, May, for nearly thirty years. They had chosen their residence deliberately. The area offered the more refined lifestyle and ambiance that they desired, but was very near the hard streets of their roots.
Others had urged them to move “further out”, the term for escaping the desperate conditions of the poorer sections of the city. For a time they had considered such a temptation. Having reached a level of prosperity uncommon for the area, the Marswells could have relocated to any district or city they chose. Deep ties to the area, and the civil rights movement that had been largely driven by a pastor at a church not far from their childhood home, kept them close. It was a matter of principle to them. They would not allow education and success to separate them from their past and the struggles they and others had endured.
Clayton Marswell had grown up poor in a shabby house on Atlanta’s south side. May had lived on the corner of the same street in a slightly larger house befitting a deacon in the Allatoona Park Baptist Church, a position her father held for nearly twenty years.
They had become sweethearts at an early age. When Clayton went off to Morehouse College, May followed a year later. When he graduated and worked his way through law school, she taught school and waited for him.
On his graduation from law school, they married. Their first home was within a block of the street where they had lived as children. Clayton worked long hours, taking every case that came his way, mostly young black men in trouble with the law.
A natural leader, Clayton was a fearless spokesman for the people. Professionally, he soon gained a reputation among the white courts and white lawyers as that upstart ‘niggra’ lawyer. He did not win every case, but his elegant and eloquent arguments caused the white judges, prosecutors, and juries of the day to go through a good deal of mental and legal gymnastics to justify their verdicts. His voice was one that had pricked consciences and kept the movement alive. Twenty years later, he had been elected to the bench, where his service took a different, but not less important, turn.
“You the judge, right?”
Marswell looked at the young black man driving the car. The handgun lay between his legs on the seat. Clayton would have no chance in trying to reach for it.
“You the judge?” the driver repeated.
“Answer the man!” A hard thump from the barrel of the gun accompanied the barked order of the man in the back seat.
“Yes, I’m Judge Marswell,” he said rubbing the swelling that began to rise on the back of his head. “You know me? Have I ever heard one of your cases in court?”
Grinning briefly, the driver looked at him and replied, “Naw, man. You ain’t never heard none of our cases.”
The man in back gave a short laugh. “Nope. You sure haven’t heard our case in court.”
Marswell sat quietly after this exchange, pondering his situation. They hadn’t killed him, yet. They seemed to have a purpose beyond just jacking his car. They were calm, professional, and not to be trifled with. Their air of criminal professionalism was somewhat reassuring. They were not about random murders and robbery. He went back to the thought that they seemed to have a purpose, and that gave the Judge some slight comfort.
Clayton Marswell was unaware of the white, nondescript delivery truck that had pulled from a parking lot and started following them a block from the gas station. It was a truck like a thousand others roaming the streets of the city, making deliveries and picking up shipments. The fact that a white man was driving was not remarkable. Whites drove many of the trucks, but they went somewhere else to sleep at night. This was not their territory. The truck kept pace a few car lengths behind the BMW as it wound its way through dingy streets into an industrial area full of empty warehouses with weeds springing up wherever the asphalt was cracked.
The young man driving made a sudden right turn pulling to the rear of a lar
ge concrete block building. Loading docks that appeared to have been deserted for years lined the back of the building. A chain link fence surrounded the lot, separating it from an identical warehouse building on the other side. A scrawny, hide-worn yellow and white tabby ran from the building and scurried under the fence as the car rocked to a sudden stop.
The driver immediately exited the car and moved to the rear. The muzzle of the handgun thumped Marswell in the back of the head as the man in the back seat said, “Stay put.”
Clayton Marswell heard the rear door slam shut and sat motionless for a minute. The noises from the back caused him to turn his head.
The white truck parked directly behind the car surprised Marswell. A large white man sat behind the wheel. The clanking of steel on concrete caught his attention. The two young men rolled a hydraulic jack from the rear of the truck to the car. It took only a few seconds for the jack to raise the rear of the car and within a few minutes, the rear tires and wheels were gone, rolled to the rear of the truck. The front tires were removed by one of the carjackers while the other searched under the hood apparently looking for parts that would be of value.
Unconsciously, Marswell relaxed a bit. This was a carjacking, a professional one for sure, but still, a basic carjacking. Feeling that his chances for survival had improved somewhat, he allowed himself to think about May. She would have the Sunday ham about ready, waiting for his return. The two girls, their husbands, and the grandchildren would be over for Sunday supper soon. A slight smile crossed his face as he thought of the story he would have to tell them this evening. Supper would be undoubtedly delayed as the police report and interview with the detectives would take a bit of time, especially in light of his prominence as a Superior Court judge and well-known public figure. But this would be a story worth telling tonight and at innumerable official dinners and gatherings in the future. The smile on his face broadened.
