Mountain Justice

by Phillip W Price

  I started to get up. “This place has great hamburger steaks. You ought to have supper here,” Willie said.

  “I have a dinner date.”

  “Who have you met since you’ve been in town?” He seemed to ponder on the question. Then his face brightened. “Rose from the DA’s Office?”

  My face must have reddened. “Bingo,” Willie said.

  “It’s just dinner.”

  “I think the term is assignation.” Willie was smiling broadly.

  “All of a sudden you know big words,” I said.

  Willie laughed so hard I thought he might be choking on a french fry. When he managed to get his breath, I decided to see what he might know about the other matter I came here to look into. “You ever heard of Justin Harris?”

  Willie paused, obviously trying to remember where he had heard the name. After a moment, he asked, “Local guy? Maybe a meth head?”

  I nodded. “That would fit what I’ve heard.”

  Willie continued. “Used to live in a trailer up in Hell’s Holler. In and out of trouble, but I never dealt with him. His family was from Copperhill, Tennessee, I think.”

  I continued to be noncommittal. “Uh-huh.”

  “You need me to find him?” Willie offered.

  I shook my head. “He’s in a cemetery. I was wondering if you ever heard anything about him going missing. Any connections to our friends in Gilmer County?”

  Willie worked on his hamburger steak as he thought. “I heard a little talk about an old boy getting crossed up with that crowd. Word was the boy was talking to the GBI. But I’m guessing you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  Willie looked me in the eye and waited to see what I said. I shrugged. “Harris worked for us. He went off the radar, and then several months later, he turned up dead in Tennessee. But nothing really to tie him back to the Gilmer crowd, except a strong hunch.”

  Willie shrugged. “I’ll keep my ears open.”

  I left Willie to finish his dinner. By the time I left, it was time to head back to the motel. I made my obligatory call to the Radio Room and then put on a fresh shirt for my dinner with Rose. I wasn’t sure what to expect from her, since we had barely had a chance to talk.

  I met Rose in the parking lot outside my motel room. She had parked her car, and we got into my G-ride. Rose looked amazing in a tight dress with a low back. I was mildly surprised she was able to climb up into my truck without help since her skirt was so tight.

  “Are you going to be the regular Agent for our area now?” Rose asked.

  I thought about the question. “I’m not sure. I guess I will be.”

  “Are you going to live up here?”

  “My boss told me to look for a place to live in Canton.”

  Rose smiled. “That’s not too far. And looks like you’ll be hanging around here for a while.” It seemed as much a question as a statement.

  “Rose,” I said. “If things don’t change, the GBI is going to pull me out of here any day now.”

  Rose laughed. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who pulls out.”

  I laughed, too. “Well, thanks for that vote of confidence. I think. But I’d hate to go when we’re just getting to know each other.”

  She looked at me with her head tilted down slightly. I wasn’t sure for a second what she was going to say. Then eventually she said, “You guys think women don’t have needs like you do. We’re not that different, even if our plumbing is. Give me credit for making my own way in the world. I’m not looking for a man to live with right now. I just got rid of one of those.” Then she gave me a wicked smile. “Besides, I didn’t wear this dress for you to not get to know me.”

  Rose was a great looking woman, with a quick wit and a good sense of humor, but I was still concerned about whether I could trust her. It had been a couple of months since I had been able to go on a real date, and I knew that was one reason I seemed to be drawn to her. I must have shrugged as I was thinking this, because Rose gave me a puzzled look.

  I shook my head and smiled at her. “Sorry, I drifted off for a second.”

  Her lips pouted. “You don’t want to be with me?”

  I had made up my mind. I was attracted to Rose enough to take the chance. “Nothing like that at all. Just weighing options for dinner.”

  We had dinner at a chain steakhouse and went through the motions of ordering and eating. But we mostly picked at our food. Rose was a talker, and I let her do her thing.

  “My worthless soon-to-be-ex is such a pain in the ass. He doesn’t want to support his kids, but he is always buying toys. He just bought a new Camaro with big tires. And he says he’s taking that whore of his to Gatlinburg and Dollywood for a week. He never took me anywhere but to the grocery store.”

  I nodded. “Has his income gone up lately, or has the Sheriff’s Office given him a raise?”

  Rose shook her head. “Ha! That moron will only get a promotion for blowing that asshole Chief Deputy. He is stupid, and I was more stupid to marry him to begin with.”

  I shrugged. She started up again. “When he went to work for the SO, he was making about average pay. But after a few months, he said he was doing extra jobs for the Sheriff and the Judge. He started being able to buy toys and trinkets for his whores. He’s probably doing dirty shit for that old fart of a Sheriff. That old man looks at me like I’m a piece of meat.”

  She didn’t cut anyone any slack. I was afraid to hear what she would have to say about me.

  “Does he do things like off-duty security for them?” I asked.

  “He’s the Sheriff’s do-boy. Go do this, and go do that. Whatever the Sheriff needs done, the lunk-head is down for it.”

  “But is any of the stuff he does illegal? I keep hearing that the Sheriff is up to dirty business, but nobody can tell me any more than that.”

  She sat quietly for a couple of seconds while our waitress brought our food. As soon as the server was out of earshot, Rose started back up. “He won’t tell me any details, but right after he went to work there, he said they were testing him. He came home looking sick as a dog. Said he had to do some bad stuff so the Sheriff and the Judge would trust him.”

  “Y’all were still together then?”

  She nodded and leaned in, lowering her voice. “He hadn’t been hired long. He came home looking like he was going to throw up any minute. His uniform was ruined. It looked like he had mud all over him. But honestly, it didn’t really look like mud, or even smell like mud. When I was throwing it in the wash, I realized it had a more metallic smell. It reminded me of how my daddy would smell after cutting up a deer during hunting season. But I can tell you this, ole Cliff never wanted to get up early enough to hunt deer.”

  I nodded and took a bite of my steak. “You think he beat a prisoner or something?”

  She shook her head. “He’s too lazy to beat anybody. He might have beat somebody they had already handcuffed or something. But he ain’t much of a fighter.”

  I nodded and gave her a wry smile. “Yeah. I twisted his finger a little bit this morning. He didn’t respond very much. Sort of went to his knees and squirmed.”

  Rose laughed a hearty laugh. “I wish I could have seen that.”

  We finished our food, and the conversation drifted to Rose’s kids and about her life growing up in Pickens County.

  I paid the bill and we went to my car. In just a couple of minutes, we were back at my motel.

  I pulled up next to her car. When I switched the engine off, we sat there for an awkward minute. At last, I said, “I enjoyed dinner. Thanks for arranging to come out.”

  She ducked her head down slightly and looked at me sideways. “Not interested in dessert?” She was smiling. Her eyes kept looking past me toward my room.

  I still had nagging doubts about her, and the conversation about her husband and the blood had only made it worse. “Rose, you are gorgeous, but I am in the middle of an investigation.” I didn’t say that she was slowly becoming a witness in
that case.

  She turned to me. “No strings.”

  I smiled at her. “How about dinner tomorrow, and then we see how things go.”

  She laughed that hearty laugh she had. It came from deep in her chest and made me smile. “Playing hard to get? I understand if you don’t go to bed with someone on the first date. I’ll just have to be persistent. But not tomorrow night, I’ve got plans with the kids and in-laws then.”

  I went around and helped her out of the truck. She leaned in and kissed me quickly on the lips. Then she gave me a quizzical look. “You’re not seeing Linda Pelfrey, are you?”

  I looked puzzled. “No, why?”

  “I heard what she said to you. And I’ve seen her at work. She’s a man-eater.”

  I laughed. “I can see why you would say that. She comes on pretty hard. Is she that bold in a courtroom?”

  Rose nodded. “She’s bold everywhere is what I hear.”

  I wondered how long she had been dabbling with meth. It can be hard to guess the age of a meth user. “How old is she, do you know?”

  “She’s thirty-three. She went to high school with one of my cousins. My soon-to-be ex is rumored to be spending time with her, but I hope she has better taste in men.”

  “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “I’d like to have her money and her boobs, which aren’t real by the way, but that’s it.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and, looking in her eyes, said, “You have so many things going for you that she doesn’t. And money doesn’t buy happiness.”

  “But it will buy all the things that will make you happy,” she retorted. Then she leaned in and kissed me again, this time deep and long. It took my breath away.

  She stepped back, winked, and then got in her car and drove off.

  I watched her pull out of the parking lot, then I headed to my room. When I got inside, I tossed my gun on the bed and looked around. The emptiness seemed to weigh on me. Being a drug agent had been a lonely assignment. Empty rooms in lonely places. It seemed the very loneliness that had pushed me out of drug enforcement had followed me here. I was a long way from home and in some deep waters. I still had a hard time believing that this crowd had enough backbone to try anything against a GBI Agent, but evidence to the contrary kept popping in my head. When Carver had told me I would be on my own, I didn’t have any idea about the isolation I would be facing. But I also knew that, deep down inside, I wouldn’t quit this assignment.

  I got to work on my computer and wrote out a synopsis of what had happened today and sent that email. Then I stretched out on the bed and dictated the lengthier version of events into investigative summaries.

  I finished up and turned on the TV around midnight. The only channels seemed to be filled with boring talk shows. I finally found the tail end of an old western movie with John Wayne. While I watched the Duke moving toward a show-down with Richard Boone, I decided to mix a drink. I unwrapped a glass and grabbed a handful of ice. The drink was about half ice and half vodka, with a splash of water.

  It had been a long, interesting day. I thought about what I had heard today and about the little hints Rose had dropped. I sat down in the hard-backed chair and put my heels up on the bed. I took a minute to run the cool glass across my forehead. The ice in the glass didn’t cool my thoughts. There were so many aspects to this case that I just wasn’t sure about.

  I wondered if Rose had been bait for a trap. I thought about the urban legend of Big Jim Folsom. The story was that his political opponents, when he was Governor of Alabama, had lured him to a motel room in Montgomery to meet a famous exotic dancer. His enemies broke in and took pictures of him with the dancer in bed. The next day, he went to the press and said, “You bait a trap for me with a good-looking woman and a bottle of liquor, and you’ll catch me every time.” The story went that he got reelected. I didn’t know if the story was true, but I knew I needed to be careful about who I let close to me.

  I had started sipping my drink, then, after a couple of sips, I gulped it down. One more would cap the evening. As I poured it, John Wayne killed Richard Boone and rescued his grandson. Once I finished the drink, I stripped and climbed into an empty bed in an empty room.

  I tossed and turned for a while, wondering if I had screwed things up. Self-confidence hadn’t been a problem in the drug world, but as an investigator, I felt like I was out of my depth.

  CHAPTER 10

  AN AROUSING DEVELOPMENT

  The alarm jarred me out of bed and soon I was dressed. The in-room coffee pot produced something similar to coffee, and I poured it into a Styrofoam cup and took a sip. It tasted just like what it was. I knew I had things to do today that would involve logging hours at the wheel. Driving would give me some time to think things over.

  After locking my room, I got in the truck and headed out. There was a small gas station advertising homemade biscuits, and I stopped quickly to buy one. The sausage and cheese biscuit was good as I pointed my truck toward Gainesville. That ride was usually over an hour through apple country, but I made it to the City of Gainesville in just less than an hour. The street where the offices of Oakwood Street Commercial Plumbing were located was easy to find. I was surprised that such a big operation was run out of what looked like a single room office space.

  I parked out front and took a moment to look things over. The building looked like it had once been a laundromat. The front was all plate glass, and the inside seemed to be entirely open. I got out and walked inside. The door was unlocked, and I didn’t see anyone at first.

  A man came out of what must have been a restroom. He was wiping off his hands. He seemed surprised to see me. He looked to be in his late fifties, with a hairline quickly surrendering to time. It was easy to tell he worked most of his days outside. He was dressed in khaki pants and a cotton shirt. He threw the paper towel into the trash and stuck out his hand to shake. “What can I do for you, young feller?”

  “Is this still Oakwood Street Commercial Plumbing? I’m looking for some information.”

  He nodded. “Sure is. How can I help you?”

  I showed him my credentials. “I have a request from the District Attorney for copies of the work you’ve done for Gilmer County.”

  “Son, you didn’t have to go to all that trouble. I’ll be happy to give you whatever you need. All work done for the government is subject to open records.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “I don’t have to give it up. For me, it’s a business record. Subject to a subpoena duces tecum.”

  “Are you a Lawyer?”

  He smiled. “Did I call you a bad name?” I didn’t know what to say. He laughed. “I retired as a Major with the Hall County Sheriff’s Office. This is my second career.”

  “Well, you must do pretty good with this business. I see you do a lot of work for the Gilmer County government.”

  He nodded. “We do okay. Gilmer County has us do a lot of work for them. We bill out about fourteen or fifteen hundred to them. And we do work for the other counties around as well. Let me pull out the records you’re needing.”

  “Where do you keep all your big equipment?” I asked.

  He seemed puzzled. “The equipment we have is either in the field with my son, or on the back of my truck.”

  He turned to a filing cabinet and dug around for a minute. After a long wait, he pulled out a manila folder about an inch thick. Papers were held in by a clip, and he examined the top ones. “I think this is what you must be looking for,” he said.

  He handed me the folder. “Do you mind if I sit down here at a desk and take a look? And are you talking about fourteen or fifteen hundred a day?”

  He shook his head and didn’t respond.

  I opened the folder, and the first invoice covered the repair of a toilet in the county library. I flipped to the next one. It was the same thing but in another county building. After looking at several more pages of similar repairs, I dropped the file
on the desk. “This isn’t what I’m looking for. I need the file for the Water Authority.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t remember any work we have done for them, but if we did, it should be in that file.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m talking about the water line you have laid for the county.”

  “What kind of water line?”

  “One-foot-thick PVC pipe for the county water system.”

  He laughed. “Friend, you have the wrong company. The biggest thing I have is a ditch witch. Good for pipe less than three inches around. I couldn’t begin to lay that kind of pipe and make any money. You need a big company to do that.”

  “Is there a company like that close by?” That was a stupid question, because the name and address matched what Shelia Haney gave me.

  He shook his head. “Not even on this side of town.”

  I thought about the records I had seen. His company had billed lots of invoices to the county. “Did you bill the county direct?”

  He thought about that for a minute. “You know, that is such an odd question. But now that you mention it, I sent my bills to the county, but the checks were cut by a holding company, LPC.”

  I thought about that. “What address did you send the bills to?”

  He responded with the address of the Pelfrey Law Group.

  “I hate to have to ask a former officer this question, but has anyone from the Gilmer County Water and Sewage Authority asked you to submit any kind of bills that weren’t accurate?”

  “Don’t apologize for doing your job, son. And the answer is no. I haven’t been approached by that bunch of snakes.” He saw my expression. “Yep, they are a bunch of crooks over there. I have known that from my time with the Sheriff’s Office. And I hope my reputation is such that they wouldn’t ever ask me to do something crooked.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Major. I appreciate your candor. And you’re not the first one to express that opinion about Gilmer County.”

  I crawled back into the Expedition and looked at my state-highway map. My next stop was Dalton Paving. I got my notes from Shelia Haney and started trying to figure out the fastest route to Dalton. Then I realized that Dalton Paving wasn’t named after the city it was located in, it was named for the owner. Coleman Dalton ran Dalton Paving out of an address in Dawsonville. I crossed Lake Lanier and made my way there.