The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  Have to do it in the barn, though. Couldn’t never get that fat pig through the crack in the rock down into the boxcar. He’d run Theresa’s car off Scott’s Ridge, but he’d sell that fancy Mercedes. A friend of his ran a chop shop on his farm on the other side of the county. That car’d go in whole, and inside twenty-four hours it’d be in more pieces than Isaac Washington.

  The Suit had started talking while Billy Ray was planning it all in his head.

  “…intend to trespass and will be glad to turn around and drive right back out of here.”

  The man glanced at Theresa and Becca on the ground.

  “As soon as we collect our friend,” he finished resolutely.

  Had some backbone, that Suit did. Becca was quiet now, only whimpering. Theresa was rubbing her back and murmuring to her.

  Theresa spoke to him for the first time, and the very sound of her voice raised the hackles on his neck like the hair on a mad dog. “You planning on doin’ murder here this day, ain’t you Billy Ray?” She was looking up at him, squinting a little at the sun. There was no fear in those eyes so black you couldn’t make out the dot in the middle.

  His lip curled into a snarl, but he dialed back his anger. Needed to fool the Suit long enough to get him out of the front yard before Billy Ray shot him.

  “Why Theresa Washington, why would I do a thing like that, you being an old family friend of my daughter and all?”

  She made a humph sound in her throat and went back to tending to Becca.

  “I tell you what, Mr. Suit-and-Tie-Man, you pick up my daughter and carry her around to the backyard where we can lay her in the shade of the sycamore tree out of the sun until she…comes back to herself.”

  He gestured at her with the barrel of the rifle.

  “I didn’t do nothing to her to make her like that. She come here of her own free will and was right as rain until she dropped down into the dirt and had some kind of a fit.”

  Becca was quiet now, breathing the herky-jerky way a little kid breathed after a crying jag.

  “She comes around, and we’ll ask her does she want to stay. If she says no…well, then I guess that’s that. All of you can get in your cars and drive back out of here the same way you drove in. That sound fair to you?”

  “Billy Ray, you’d lie when the truth’d sound better,” Theresa said without even bothering to look up.

  “I ain’t talking to you,” he snapped. Then he turned back to the Suit. “Come on now, pick her up. She’s so skinny, she don’t weight nothing a’tall. We need to get her out of the sun and give her some lemonade—”

  “Lemonade?” Theresa barked out a laugh. “Right, Billy Ray. Like you got lemonade.”

  “And then she can tell us her own self what she wants.” He dropped the conciliatory tone and gestured with his gun barrel. “I said, pick her up. That ain’t a request.”

  The Suit knelt down on one knee—got dirt all over his clean silver trousers—and rolled Becca over onto her back. Her eyes were open, but she was as limp as a rag doll. He got his arms under her neck and knees and with surprising ease lifted her and stood up. Stronger than he looked.

  “Get going,” Billy Ray said and nodded toward the back of the house. He looked pointedly at Theresa, who was still down on one knee on the ground. “Both of you.”

  She struggled to get her fat old body upright and started for the backyard, her walk stiff and pained. The Suit carrying Becca fell in behind her. Billy Ray followed, the rifle pointed square between the man’s shoulders. Soon’s they cleared the house…he’d make it a headshot. Less blood and a sure thing. With his arms full of Becca, the guy was totally helpless.

  Theresa passed around the corner of the house. The Suit was right behind her. Billy Ray raised his rifle and pointed it square at the base of the man’s skull.

  Goodbye, Mr. Suit-and-Tie Man.

  He raked in a bullet and squeezed the trigger.

  ******

  The officer outside the theater door held the struggling, cursing man on the ground with his arm twisted behind his back while he spoke crisply into the microphone clipped on his uniform at the shoulder, broadcasting Bosko’s position and direction of travel.

  Bosko was booking! But they’d catch him. It was hard to run with your hands cuffed behind you, and there were half a dozen police cars less than a minute away.

  Bosko reached the end of the parking lot and never broke stride as he leapt out into the street. The big red garbage truck hit him square, right in the center of the front grill, knocked him into the air and over the hood of the truck.

  Crock had no memory of crossing the whole length of the parking lot to the spot where Bosko’s crushed body lay in the street. He was just there, with his heart hammering a painful hole in his chest and his breath heaving into his lungs in gasps.

  Ignoring the popping of his knees, he knelt down beside the man as the officer who’d been chasing Bosko held back a growing crowd of people gathered around them, talking in hushed tones as they looked at the man sprawled on his back on the asphalt. The whole right side of his face was smashed, unrecognizable. His right arm, wrist still handcuffed to his left, was clearly broken in several places, both legs were skewed at unnatural angles, and the gurgling in his chest with every breath bespoke a man who was drowning in his own blood. He’d be dead before the ambulance got there.

  “Bosko,” Crock gasped, his breath almost as ragged as the man lying beside him, whose every exhalation produced bubbles of blood that ran out the corners of his mouth and down the sides of his face.

  Bosko turned his eyes toward Crock but didn’t move his head, maybe couldn’t.

  “You’re not gonna see another sunrise, Bosko,” Crock said. “You’re dying.” No time to beat around the bush. “You need to come clean before you stand before your maker. You know the man who hired you is…from the other side.”

  Bosko’s eyes widened, then something like recognition settled on his features.

  He struggled to speak. “We made it look like that black woman killed that old couple, the Cohens…but she didn’t.” He coughed and splattered blood on Crock’s pants and shoes. “He did it with an ax. I watched him hack…” The voice came out through a gurgling red puddle rapidly forming in his mouth. “Me and Lily made it…look like that preacher raped her.” He began to cough again, spraying blood on Crock’s shirt and face. “Practiced so the cameras would…Then he told me to kill her…I didn’t want to but—”

  He began to cough, deep ragged coughs that wracked his body like seizures.

  “Who hired you?”

  Bosko continued to cough, the sound growing weaker and weaker.

  “Who was it?” Crock prodded.

  Bosko locked his gaze on Crock, willing himself to stop coughing, to draw a single clean breath. But recognition slowly drained out of his eyes until they were staring sightlessly in Crock’s direction. Another breath, the chest rose for another cough, but then sank back down again and was still.

  Crock sat back on his heels.

  “You heard that?” he asked the officer at his side.

  “I heard.” He held up his phone. “Recorded it.”

  Theresa and Daniel were clear, then, but the only witness against Chapman Whitworth lay dead on the street at Crock’s feet.

  CHAPTER 44

  2011

  Chapman Whitworth looked from one senator to next, starting with Senator LaHayne and moving to the right. Then back down the row and moving to the left. He made eye contact with each man. Locked into his gaze.

  When he had grabbed the absolute attention of every one of them, Whitworth began to speak, his voice honey poured over jagged shards of glass.

  “We live in momentous times. Our land is graced with unimaginable opportunity, and our future is fraught with insidious peril—from enemies both without and within—growing menace that gnaws at the very fabric of our society, threatens our national character as a people and our honor as individual human beings.”

 
He had them.

  “These fifty United States of America are poised on the brink, balanced on the knife blade of history. Something more than chance has brought this particular group of men together in this room, gentlemen, and nothing less than destiny will be fulfilled by what we do here this day.”

  They were spellbound, hanging on his every word. During his week in the national spotlight, Whitworth had captured the imagination of a nation, of ordinary Americans from Bangor to Bakersfield, Portland to Pensacola. Now, he focused all the force of his persuasive powers on the men seated around a semicircular table within rock-throwing distance of the nation’s capitol.

  The crowd was so mesmerized, if Whitworth had laced in a pledge of “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” Daniel doubted anyone would recognize the reference. He didn’t know why he could sit outside and watch the proceedings as an observer, why he was not being hypnotized like all the others by the force of Chapman Whitworth’s personality and the power of his words.

  Could it be that he was behind Whitworth, that the man cast power outward somehow at those before him? That those not looking into his face didn’t fall under his spell?

  Daniel looked around at the people sitting in the gallery around him. Since he was in the front row, he couldn’t get a good look at more than a handful of people, and what he saw was a mixed bag. All seemed captivated and fascinated. A few seemed in a trance. None appeared to be impervious to his power—except Daniel.

  Perhaps it was because Daniel had gone behind the facade, had pulled back the black curtain and found the “wizard.” But the Wizard of Oz had had no real power. Chapman Whitworth had one of the greatest powers in the universe—the power of evil.

  He listened as Whitworth described what everyone in the room already knew in terms that somehow seemed new and fresh. He talked about the cases facing the court, the momentous nature of the decisions that had to be made that would “shape the future of this great country for generations.” He talked about the absolute need for haste, for a swift resolution to the judgeship appointment.

  Whitworth paused, looked pointedly at each senator individually, let the growing silence build until it assaulted Daniel’s ears like the pounding of surf on rocks. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper that rang out louder than a shout.

  “You must fill this position without delay. You must find not just any man, but the one uniquely qualified by expertise, skill and integrity to fulfill the weighty responsibility and wield the might of the power that will be his.”

  Another pause. Another wave of silence crashed into the rocks. Another whisper.

  “I am certain, gentlemen, without a shadow of a doubt that I am that man.”

  Well, there it was. Game over. Whitworth had called their bluff. And when Senator LaHayne was forced to spread his cards out on the table, Whitworth would gloat over the senator’s consummate defeat and his own unqualified victory.

  ******

  Considering the circumstances, the voice in Jeff Kendrick’s head spoke with remarkable calm.

  He’s planning to kill all three of us.

  Something in the hillbilly’s eyes said so.

  Even though Jeff had never in his life seen a look like that, it was somehow unmistakable, universal and primeval, and he recognized it, understood it on a gut level. Any second now, the man would pull the trigger on that rifle and send a bullet tearing into Jeff’s chest.

  His own arrogance had landed him here. The sense of being bulletproof that provided just the right swagger in a courtroom to convince a jury—subliminally—that his was the just cause, that his expensive brown leather briefcase was the repository of all truth. He believed he was indestructible—a belief that sent him free climbing when his fellow rock-climbers were safely roped in, a belief that relished risks of all kinds—from sky-diving to hang-gliding, playing fast and loose with life and relationships, certain he would walk out of whatever circumstance he found himself unscathed.

  Emily had changed all that, of course, the relational part of it anyway, had left him broken and bleeding. But he was still an arrogant fool for all that, and that character flaw was about to get him killed.

  Theresa had told him the story of the kidnapping as they flew south down Interstate 71, and he’d grown cold all over. Emily’s daughter was missing. He’d never met the little girl, but understood without Emily ever saying it that her love for the child knew no bounds. His relationship with Emily had run off the rails the day of the school shooting that had put the little girl in the hospital—a shooting that had occurred while he and Emily had been together. The last time they were together.

  Now that little girl, that part of Emily, was in danger. Emily’s Miranda. Andi. She’d been kidnapped, a hostage to trade for someone named Becca—and nobody had called the police! That was insanity. Trying to find a missing child based on some daydream she’d had was absolutely unconscionable. But in that calm way that Theresa Washington was so certain about all manner of other things, she’d been adamant that her police officer friend Jack would find Andi and keep her from harm.

  Theresa’d told him that Billy Joe, or Billy Dan, or whatever his stereotypical Southern double name was—was dangerous and “mean as a wasp shook up in a Mason jar.” She’d wanted Jeff to drop her off at the end of the driveway. Of course, he’d refused. But he could see now how foolhardy it had been to come driving in here and expect to pick this Becca up like she’d been waiting at a bus stop.

  How could he have been so stupid? He dealt with criminals every day, knew the brutality they were capable of. But he was here, facing a wild man with a gun, feeling responsible in some way for the old woman who knelt in the dirt beside the hysterical girl. Clearly, nobody was going to come along and get them out of this mess.

  Billy Dan instructed him to pick up Becca and carry her to the backyard, and Jeff understood the ruse for what it was. When Jeff heard the racking sound of the rifle—all this time he hadn’t even had a round in the chamber!—he reacted on pure instinct. He dropped Becca, and even as she was rolling out of his arms, he was shifting all his weight to his left leg. He leaned his whole upper body forward, had no time to look, merely kicked backward and up, about chest high, with his right foot, putting all the force he could muster into the blow.

  At the moment Jeff’s foot connected with the rifle, it fired. The bullet whizzed past Jeff’s head so close he could almost feel the air rearranging itself. He heard a grunt. Then Theresa Washington dropped to her knees and pitched face-first into the dirt in front of him.

  ******

  1985

  Mikey, Daniel and Becca rode as fast as they could to Bishop’s house from the furniture store, which wasn’t very fast with Daniel perched like a parrot on the back of Becca’s scooter and Mikey struggling to keep up.

  Bishop’s truck was parked in the driveway, but his car wasn’t. There was a note to someone named Bill taped to the front door.

  “Had to take Theresa to the hospital in Louisville. Her back’s hurt real bad. We’ll have to move that piano some other time.”

  They stepped off Bishop’s porch, and Mikey pointed to the western sky.

  “Look at that smoke!” he said.

  When Daniel and Becca turned to look, Becca gasped and her face turned chalk white.

  “What do you see?” Daniel asked her.

  Mikey looked from Becca to the boiling tower of smoke in the sky and back, confused. Duh, she saw smoke.

  “There’s a…shape in the smoke.” Her voice trembled, and she backed away from it as she spoke. “Red. A red thing. Its face…” She stared, transfixed with horror. “Horns and rows of teeth…” She began to shake her head. Her eyes filled with tears. “And hate. It’s so angry, so—”

  Daniel took her shoulders and turned her to face him, away from the smoke. She was frozen for a moment, like she didn’t see him. Then she relaxed, put her hands over her face and started to cry. He put his arms around her, and she leaned into him, sobbing.<
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  Mikey had no idea what was going on, but something was, something the others understood and he didn’t. And he wanted to know what it was more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. No, he wanted more than that to have his arms around Becca as she cried.

  He looked back at the smoke. “It’s the nursing home,” he said. “Twin Oaks. It’s the only thing out that way big enough to make that much smoke.”

  “The Bad Kids did it,” Becca said, her voice strangled, her face still buried in Daniel’s chest. “The demons set it on fire.”

  Demons? No, she didn’t mean…Then a thought struck Mikey. “So if the…Bad Kids set the nursing home on fire and Jack was following them…where’s Jack?”

  “Jack!” Becca pulled back out of Daniel’s arms, wiping the tears off her face. “We have to find him.” She climbed on her bike, and Mikey saw that she was careful not to look directly at the smoke as she set out toward it.

  By the time the three of them got near the nursing home, Mikey was exhausted. The building sat on the crest of a small hill, and he did not want to ride up that incline with Daniel and Becca. They didn’t have to pedal to continue traveling forward. He did.

  The road leading out of town had been as jammed with traffic as the exit ramp from a rock concert. They’d weaved their bikes in and out among cars with horrified and frantic drivers, honking uselessly at the cars that had stopped in front of them. Helicopters from television stations in Louisville, Cincinnati, and even Bowling Green buzzed overhead like flies around road kill. The closer they got to the nursing home, the more it seemed to Mikey that the smoke darkening the sky cast a shadow, a finger pointing directly at the three of them. But that was crazy, couldn’t possibly be.