by Glenn Trust
“Nothing, George. Nothing at all.” She tried to force the grin from her face.
“Something wrong with the way I’m dressed? I didn’t ask for this damned assignment anyhow.”
She looked him up and down. An old tan, polyester sport coat covered his broad shoulders. It was decent enough, if out of style for the last twenty years. Under it, he wore his brown uniform pants and a semi-white shirt that probably had not seen bleach in years, if ever. The slight bulge of his Glock in a shoulder holster was detectable, if you knew what to look for. Sharon did, but most people would not, she knew. A clip on tie and suede half boots completed the ensemble. In short, he looked like a cop who didn’t make much money doing his best to dress up, which was what he was.
“You look fine, George. Seriously. Just never seen you dressed up before. That’s all. Here, you might need this.” She pulled a laminated card out of her pocket and handed it to him. “It’s a GBI task force ID Bob had made up for you. Used your driver’s license picture on file with the state. He figured you might need some credentials besides that Pickham County badge. You know something to impress, or annoy Klineman.”
“Good old Bob. Always thinking,” he said with a smile, taking the card and looking at it closely. He had to admit, the GBI got things done quick. Quick and to the point were traits he appreciated. It was probably why he got along with Shaklee and Price. He opened his badge case and put the ID inside behind the county card that was displayed beside the badge.
Sharon watched, giving the deputy a careful look over one more time from head to foot. George felt like he was being inspected by his mother before heading off to Sunday school. Sharon smiled. “You ready?”
“Humph.” He walked by her to the door. “Ready? Reckon I better go meet Rince and get this over with.” He walked out and started down the stairs. Sharon followed, pulling the door to the small apartment closed behind. Hand resting on the doorknob for a moment, she watched the big man’s back recede down the long stairway.
George was in his truck cranking the engine when Sharon came to the bottom of the stairs. She walked to the open driver’s window.
“Check in with us when you get back. I’ll enjoy the amenities of Pickham County on the task force tab, and the governor, of course.” She smiled. “Bob and Andy will want to know how things went in Savannah, and I can bring you up to speed on Porter Wright.”
“Yes, ma’am. Will do,” he nodded with a half-smile. His mind was distracted by thoughts of the tiny airplane waiting for him at the airport. He hoped the flight to Savannah was short, but not unexpectedly so. He turned the pickup in the yard, heading quickly back out to the road.
Sharon walked around the barn to the house and up to the front porch where George and Fel spent so much time. Seating herself in one of the old kitchen chairs on the porch, she leaned back waiting for Ronnie Kupman to show.
The distant buzz of the engine on the lawn mower that Fel Tobin always seemed to be riding grew in intensity. After a minute, it scooted around the side of the house and came to a rocking halt in front of the porch. Fel climbed off, wiped the band of his hat again, and walked slowly up the stairs to the porch.
“Well, Miss GBI lady…”
“Call me Sharon,” she said with a smile at the old man that made him grin like a bashful schoolboy.
“Sharon it is. So, Sharon, can I offer you a beer.”
“Little early for a beer.”
He laughed, reaching his hand into the ice chest on the porch. “You know that’s what my wife used to say.” A quiet look passed across his face as he pulled the tab on the can. “She’s been gone twenty years now, you know. Since then…well, I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. What used to seem too early when she was with me, seems like just the right time now.” He lifted the can and took a sip.
Sharon nodded in understanding. Life often changed your perspective. It had for her on more than one occasion.
They sat for thirty minutes talking, Fel doing most of the talking, and Sharon doing most of the listening. She didn’t mind. Fel talked about George a lot, and the damned cats that roamed the yard, and his old mower that needed a tune up, but mostly he talked about George, and Sharon listened.
46. Always Thinking
“That him?” Bill Quince squinted through the dusty glass of the pickup’s windshield.
“Naw, that ain’t him.” Sim Lee held up the eight by ten photo that Puckett had given them to identify Porter Wright. “Guy we want’s thin and got some hair. That guy’s all bald, Bill. See.” He held the picture up for Quince to look at. “Geez, Bill, not even close. Beginning to worry about your eyesight.”
“Nothing wrong with my eyes. Just this dirty glass, and we been settin’ a while. Man gets forgetful sometimes.”
Forgetful my ass, Lee thought. Forgetful or just plain dumb, although he did not say these words out loud to big Bill Quince. Besides, it wasn’t such a bad thing that Bill wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box. Lee liked being the one who did the thinking for the pair. It made them a good team, to his way of thinking. Bill did the heavy lifting, and Sim did the heavy thinking. It was perfect actually. He looked over at his partner who was concentrating out the front window watching people come and go from the office of the Everett Gazette, owned by Porter Wright.
“I was just funnin’ with you, Bill. Your eyes ain’t bad. We’re both just tired, cooped up in this truck.”
Quince looked over and nodded solemnly, recognizing that Lee was trying to make amends for being such a smartass. Sim was like that a lot, always smarting off and then making up. Shit, sometimes it seemed that they made up more than Quince used to with his ex-wife.
“What we got here?”
Quince turned his head back to the window. A brown county sheriff’s car pulled up in front and parked in one of the diagonal spaces on the street in front of the Gazette offices.
“Looks like the sheriff.”
“Uh huh,” Lee mumbled squinting through the glass.
The driver, a tall thin man in a sheriff’s uniform, and the passenger, a dark haired woman in slacks and a short jacket, got out and walked inside the building.
“Wonder what they here for?” Quince asked.
“Don’t know, Bill. Just keep your eyes open and let’s see what happens.”
Inside, Ronnie Kupman and Sharon Price walked up to the receptionist’s desk.
“Morning, Karen. We need to see Porter.”
“Sorry, Ronnie, he’s not in today.” Karen looked over at Sharon and smiled, expecting to be introduced to the stranger.
Ronnie obliged. “Karen, this is Sharon Price with the GBI. Kind of important that we talk to Porter. Any idea where he might be? Home maybe? He call in sick?”
“Not sure where he is. Said he would be gone for a few days and would check in next week. Said he was going to take some time and do a little fishing, but he seemed mysterious, maybe nervous.”
Ronnie nodded and Sharon handed Karen her card, smiling. “Karen, if you hear from Mr. Wright, would you have him call me at my cell number there on the card? It really is important.”
“Sure, but is Porter…Mr. Wright, in some kind of trouble?”
“Nope, no trouble,” Sharon said with a reassuring smile. “We’re just following up on an investigation up in Atlanta and thought he might have some information that could help us out.”
“Okay, I’ll let him know if I hear from him.” She turned the card over in her hand examining it closely. It wasn’t often that an official GBI card got left at the desk. To Karen’s memory, this was the first, and from a woman agent. That was pretty cool. She’d hang on to this one.
Walking back out to the car, Sharon looked at Kupman. “Where now?”
“Let’s go check his home. Maybe he’s hanging around the house.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Dropping into the passenger seat she added, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Nodding without speaking, Kupman wondered what the hell George
and the GBI had dragged him into.
“Crank up the truck.” Sim leaned forward in the seat trying to get a good look at the deputy and woman leaving in the sheriff’s car. “Follow them, but don’t let them know it.”
Bill Quince complied without questioning. Sim might give him a hard time sometimes, but he always had a plan. He liked that about his partner. He was always thinking. That suited Quince just fine. He steered the big truck in a casual way, well behind the county car, separated by a number of other cars. No one would ever realize that they were following.
Lee watched his partner maneuver the truck. Nope, Bill didn’t have a lot of brainpower, but he did have skills, Lee thought appreciatively.
47. Not at Liberty to Discuss
Banking to the right on his approach into Savannah, Johnny Rincefield gave George a spectacular view of the historic city. The city squares, gardens and waterfront were lost on him. Clamping his hands firmly to his seat, and his eyes shut, he had the sensation that he was hanging from the seat two thousand feet above the ground and that any loosening of his grip on the seat would send him plummeting through space to spatter all over someone’s azaleas.
Rince leveled the plane and now they were only fifteen hundred feet up. After a minute, the wing dipped suddenly, and they made another long banking turn to line up with the runway. The slightly lower elevation only made the sensation of falling worse. George was beginning to think that Rince was fucking with him. He decided that if the wiry little pilot banked the plane one more time, he would beat the shit out of him when…if…they got back on the ground.
In the headset, George could hear Rince chatting pleasantly and professionally with air traffic control, as if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing every time he suddenly dipped the wing and banked. Yeah, he knew, the little shit, and if he did it one more time, he was going to get the ass whipping of his life.
There was a sudden bump. George forced his eyes open. Resigned to his fate, he had to know how far they were going to fall from the sky before they impacted the ground and turned the plane and its occupants into a fiery pile of aluminum rubble.
The asphalt runway rolled smoothly under the wheels. They couldn’t be doing more than seventy miles per hour and decreasing rapidly. In the distance, white birds, egrets maybe, circled over the trees at the edge of the airfield. They were on the ground, rolling along peacefully as if on a Sunday afternoon drive. Amazing, a minute earlier, they were headed to a certain fiery destruction. Looking over at the man who had been assigned to the task force as their pilot, George had a newfound respect for him. He would let him live…today.
Rince now chatted with ground control following instructions to the General Aviation building where he would park the plane and deposit his passenger, a member of the governor’s official task force. George just hoped he could walk when the rolling aircraft came to a halt.
When Rince had turned the plane to the position directed by the ground crew and set the brakes, and the propeller was no longer turning, and the wheels were chocked, he said, “You can exit the aircraft, now.”
“Exit?” George looked at him with a shaky smile. “You mean open the door and get out?”
Rince grinned, “Yeah, that too.”
To his surprise, George was able to stand, and even walk. After advising Rince that he would meet him back here in two or three hours, he went inside the building to pick up the rental car that Bob Shaklee’s secretary had arranged for him from Atlanta. Aviation support, secretaries making travel arrangements…George was thinking he could get used to this ‘task force work’.
Fifteen minutes later, squeezed behind the wheel of the subcompact economy car that sounded like it had a lawn mower engine under the hood, George pulled out the city map the rental agent had given him. Tracing out a route with his finger, he found the way to Savannah Police Headquarters and from there to Martz’s Jewelry, owned by Rubin Martz.
It took him thirty-five minutes to make his way to the PD building. Parking in the public lot, he walked inside to the desk, staffed by a sixtyish man in a Savannah police uniform. George showed him his badge and told him he needed to see the watch commander.
“Uniform or Investigation?” the desk officer asked, looking closely at George’s Pickham County badge and ID.
“Don’t really know,” George answered. “Both probably.”
“Both?” The officer laid the badge case back on the desk for George to retrieve. “Look, Deputy, if this is official, then you need to take it through channels. Have your Sheriff arrange it or show me the warrants or papers you need served. It’s not really necessary to meet with the watch commanders.” He looked up and became aware of the deputy’s stare. “I mean, Savannah’s a big city and…”
“And what?” George’s stare began to make the officer uncomfortable.
“And the watch commander, or anybody else for that matter, doesn’t just drop what they’re doing to take a meeting with a deputy from…” He opened the badge case still sitting on the desk. “From Pickham County. No disrespect intended, Deputy.”
“None taken.” George picked up the badge case and pulled out the GBI task force ID Sharon had given him. “Seems like the message might be more important than the badge I’m carrying, and you might have asked what that message was. Maybe your watch commander would have wanted to meet with me. But since you didn’t…” He dropped the laminated GBI card on the desk, “you should check this out.”
Ten minutes later, George was seated in a conference room across from the uniform and investigations commanders and a uniformed lieutenant. Good old Bob, George thought, always planning ahead.
The uniform patrol commander spoke first. “Deputy, uh, should we call you deputy, or do you hold some other rank on the task force?”
George smiled, “Deputy is fine, or you can call me George.”
The senior uniformed commander nodded. “All right, George. I’m Major Grady Moore, Patrol Commander. This is Major Paul Burnson, Investigations Commander, and Steve Turly, my assistant.” Heads nodded all around “As a matter of full disclosure, we did confirm your credentials with the GBI. It took a few minutes, but Agent Robert Shaklee confirmed you as a member of his task force investigating the murders of a state senator and a superior court judge. He did not want to discuss the case in detail over the phone and stated that he trusted you completely to tell us what we needed to know locally.” He stopped and looked over at Turly. “That about sum it up?”
The lieutenant nodded. “Okay then, we’re listening. What should we know, and what can we do for you in the investigation?”
George had the feeling that the Savannah PD boys were a little out of sorts at being one-upped by a deputy from Pickham County, and not getting their briefing directly from Bob. Oh, well, play nice with me, I’ll play nice with you.
“Well, the short version is, we are investigating the murders you mentioned. We have reason to believe that there may be another here in Savannah.”
“When?” Burnson, the investigations commander leaned forward on his elbows.
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t say, or won’t say, Deputy.” Commander Burnson seemed agitated.
“I can’t say, Major, but if the pattern follows the others, it will be sooner rather than later.”
“Who is the target?” Moore asked, trying to get the briefing back on course.
“Man name of Rubin Martz, owns a jewelry store in town.”
“Yes, he does, George. Rubin Martz is well known in the community,” Moore said with a questioning look.
There was just the slightest of puffs from Burnson, like a small snort intended to clear an unpleasant odor out of his nose. “He’s a well-known trouble maker,” he said, reclining back in his chair looking at the table waiting for the briefing to be concluded.
“Well,” George continued, “whoever he is, and whatever his reputation, he may be the next target.”
Burnson raised his eyes from the table and looked
at George. “Why do you believe that? What information do you have that makes your task force believe that Rubin Martz is going to be killed? You want our help; let us in on the investigation.”
George regarded the investigations commander calmly. The desk officer was right, Savannah was a big city and this was a big police department. What would they do with the information that Andy Barnes had come up with about the hit list? How long would it stay part of a confidential investigation? He made his decision.
“I am not at liberty to discuss that.”
“What?” Burnson leaned forward again. “Not at liberty? Who do you think you are? You come to our city, to our police department, and ask for our assistance in an investigation and…”
George decided it was time to stop the bullshit. “We, the task force, are asking you to protect one of your citizens. You just said he is prominent and well-known, so it might be worth your time to look after him. We are not asking for investigative help at this time. The task force is handling the investigation, and I cannot say more than that about it. Your choice, Major.” George pushed back from the table to leave.
“So, how in the hell does a deputy from Pickham County get pulled into a GBI task force?” Burnson asked with a sneer.
“I am not at liberty to discuss that with you either, Major.” George smiled and turned to go, noting with satisfaction the intense glare in Burnson’s eyes, trying to incinerate George where he stood. He smiled in return. Too bad, Major, I’m fireproof. Yep, it’s great to be on a task force.
Grady Moore and Lieutenant Turly followed George out. “Where you headed, George?”
“Over to Martz’s jewelry store. Figure someone should give him the heads up and warn him to be looking over his shoulder.”
Moore nodded. “Good idea. But I think you’ll find it easier said than done.”
“Why’s that?”
“I know something about Martz. In fact, been knowing him around Savannah for thirty years. We’ve butted heads more than once. He’s also been on our side a few times. Can’t ever figure which side he will come down on.” Moore shrugged. “He has his principles. Sometimes they’re hard to see, but they are there, and he always acts on his principles.”
