Givens pulled away from the scene. Willie hit the unmarked Gilmer car with his fist, but in a blink, we were U-turning and headed to Ellijay. Any chance of the cavalry coming were now a long way down the road, literally and figuratively.
“Did this man hurt you any, Rose?” Givens asked when we got moving.
Rose was indignant. “That man back there has never hurt me! Cliff asked me to come up here with him. Said he wanted to come clean about everything and that I could help make an introduction. I should have known y’all were up to no good. Cliff is going to pay for this! This thing you’re doing right now is the same as kidnapping. You all are in deep shit.” She seemed to be building a head of steam.
I didn’t want Givens to think Rose would be a problem. At this point, all I cared about was buying time. Givens had to have some sense that things were unfolding faster than he could control. I knew that people whose world was getting out of control would strike out at others to vent their frustration. If Givens decided to slap or punch Rose, which I expected any minute, things could get ugly.
“Chief,” I said, “there is no way this is going to work out for you. I don’t care what the Sheriff and the Judge have told you.”
“My Deputies caught you raping this girl. They saw it with their own eyes. We’re going to try you and send you to prison. No jury in this county would acquit you for that kind of charge.”
Rose cut in. “He didn’t rape me. What the hell do you think you’re talking about?”
Givens cut his eyes over at Rose. “You’ll be out of a job if you don’t go along. You side with him and I’ll guarantee we’ll have Family and Children Services take your kids, too. You were either being raped, or you were whoring around. You pick.”
“You’re full of shit! I came up here with your two clowns, but I never made it in the room!” Rose yelled.
Givens lit another cigarette. “You better get with the program, missy.”
I leaned forward. “Whatever was happening was happening in Fannin County. Not Gilmer. Besides, that’s not the story you told those Fannin County Deputies. And if you think charging me with a crime will work, then have at it. None of this will stand, and you’ll be in handcuffs by daylight in the morning.” I hoped against hope he would be reasonable.
Givens shook his head. “We have ways of dealing with that. I ain’t worried about technicalities. You boys come up here from out of Atlanta and think you can show us country boys how things are done in the big city. Well, we ain’t impressed. Up here, we take care of folks like you and don’t get too bothered by a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo.”
“You shoot ’em with a shotgun? Take them out beside Linda Pelfrey’s office to do it?” I instantly regretted saying that.
I felt the car slow for just a second. I had struck a nerve. Then Givens gave his car an extra punch of gas. Suddenly, we were in a hurry.
I sat back in the seat. This wasn’t going anywhere. Givens wasn’t the big cheese, just one of the rats. I hoped he would have to get approval from the Judge or the Sheriff for the next move. I would just have to play it out.
Meanwhile, the weather was getting worse. Even if help were to come, things would be slower until this mass of thunderstorms moved out. And by the time it did, it might not matter to me anymore. I didn’t know how I wanted to die, but I knew this wasn’t one of my top choices.
The sound of the tires in the rain and the occasional traffic on the police radio were the only sounds in the car. While we rolled south, I fished out my extra keys in my left front pocket. I carried a spare key to my car in case I locked myself out. I had a handcuff key on that same key ring. In the dark, I fished it out and worked my way around so I could get the key up near the keyhole. It took some effort to twist my right hand up and work on the left hinge. I almost lost the key once in a sharp curve, but I held on and opened the first hinge. I checked on Givens, but he was in deep thought. I opened the second hinge and quietly dropped the cuffs into my jacket pocket. I had seen cuffs used as weapons many times.
When we came into the city limits, the inside of the car was illuminated by the streetlights. I could see that Givens was driving with his left hand and had his right hand wrapped around the grips of his .357 revolver.
In a few more minutes, we pulled up to the courthouse. Instead of pulling around back to the Sheriff’s Office, we pulled into the front, near the front steps of the courthouse. From my position half laying on the back seat, I could make out the Sheriff and the Judge standing on the front porch. There were others with them, but I could not make out who the rest were.
The Judge had on a black raincoat and an old-school fedora. The Sheriff was wearing a yellow department-issued rain slicker and a campaign hat with a plastic cover. Rain was pouring off both the hats, but the pair didn’t seem to notice.
I tucked my hands into my belt behind my back. I wanted to maintain the illusion that I was still handcuffed. Givens got out and opened the back door. He grabbed my left elbow, dragging me across the seat and out of the car. I stood up and let him lead me up the stairs.
Judge Pelfrey met me at the top of the steps. He looked at the blood on my face. “Did you have to rough him up?”
Givens held me steady. “He ran from our boys. Wrecked his car and crashed one of our patrol cars. This is going to be hard to cover up, Judge. Lots of outside people were out there when I took these two.”
“Two?” the Judge asked.
“The woman. Cliff Mitchell’s wife. Cliff thought it would be a good idea to use her as bait.” Givens nodded toward the car where Rose still sat.
The Judge’s eyes narrowed. “You stay here with him. And make sure that woman doesn’t try to interfere with us.”
Givens nodded. He went back to his car and got Rose out. Givens motioned for a Deputy I hadn’t seen before to take Rose around to the Sheriff’s Office. She wasn’t happy, but she complied. I heard her call the Deputy a “shithead,” but most everything else was drowned out by the worsening weather.
They didn’t seem to care if I tried to run, and I knew there really wasn’t anywhere for me to run to. So, I stood, getting wetter and wetter, at the top of the courthouse steps. I dropped my hands to my side, giving up any pretense of being handcuffed. When Givens got to the top of the steps, I saw him look at my hands for a moment. I expected a reaction from Givens, but he seemed to realize they all had bigger problems. He spat out his stub of a cigarette and crushed it with the toe of his boot. He wanted me to know he wasn’t scared of me. And I didn’t feel scary at that moment.
The Sheriff, the Judge, and the other people I had seen went into the front lobby of the courthouse, leaving Givens to watch me. Givens was stoic, standing with the rain running off his hat.
“How’d you get my cuffs off?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Old trick. I’ll show you how to do it sometime.”
Givens leaned away from the rain to light a fresh cigarette, but he spent most of the time trying to see what was going on inside. They must be conducting the meeting Givens had mentioned earlier. It seemed like a long time, but it was probably less than ten minutes when the Judge and his cohorts broke up their meeting. Toward the end, voices were raised, and people were raising their hands. I stood in the rain, considering what my options were. And, worried I might have cost Rose and Shelia Haney their jobs—or worse.
The Judge led the procession out to me. Once everyone was assembled, they were standing on the front porch, and I could make out the faces. The porch roof was so tall that it was providing little shelter from the rain. Right behind the Judge and the Sheriff were Commissioner Turner Mayfield and the Judge’s daughter, trying to keep dry under a too-small umbrella. Behind them was a face I didn’t recognize.
“Who is that? I don’t know him,” I queried.
The Judge looked over his shoulder. He shrugged. “That is the fellow who toils quietly in the background to help keep everything legitimate. Nobody here ever pays any attention to him, and yet he is one of the
richest men in this community. He is Ira Freely.” He said it with such a disinterested manner that I began to think they planned to kill me.
The little man looked uncomfortable. I nodded to him. Ira Freely was the next one on my list of people I had wanted to interview.
The Sheriff grumbled, “You planning on givin’ him a written confession, too?”
The Judge stopped and gave the Sheriff a long stare. “You know as well as I do that my trip to Atlanta was to build a wall against this investigation. The people in power are starting to see us as a liability. We need to keep a lid on this matter, but we are running out of options. Whatever anyone says tonight probably won’t change how this night will have to end.
“Now,” the Judge continued. He was standing at attention, rain pouring off the brim of his hat. “Let’s bring our friend from the GBI into the courtroom.”
Givens grabbed me under my right arm and shoved me through the lobby and into the courtroom. The courtroom was old and had stained glass windows on two sides, a reminder that the building had been built as a hotel at the turn of the twentieth century. The only view of the outside world was through the double doors at the rear.
The Judge climbed the steps and took the bench. Givens pushed me in front of the Judge, inside the bar. Everyone else huddled around on either side of me, talking to each other quietly.
The Judge looked down at me and began. “I want some information from you. Please tell us the details of your investigation. It’s obvious there are gaps in what you know, or you would have already ferreted out Mr. Freely.”
I shook my head. “Now, Judge, it’s not proper for me to discuss an active case with a sitting Judge. And I would have interviewed Freely eventually—you can’t hide all of this forever.”
Givens interrupted. “Judge, he knows about Harris. Knows where he was killed and how.”
The Judge looked around at the others. Linda looked like she might be on the verge of crying. After a couple of seconds, the Judge turned back to me. Freely suddenly looked like he might throw up.
The Judge smiled a politician’s smile, full of false promise. “Let’s just call this discovery. If you were to be lucky enough to get this matter into a court of law, you would have to provide this information to us. So, we’re just trying to hurry justice along.”
His bravado was not misplaced. State charges must be made in the county where the offense occurred, and the Sheriff and the Judge were elected officials who were (apparently) well liked in this area. I had seen elected folks get off in front of a jury, even when plainly guilty as sin. People don’t like to have the State come in and prosecute their hometown folks.
At this point, I was just trying to keep everyone talking. The time for my check-in call to the Radio Room had passed, and I hoped Willie had time to call the cavalry. Either way, it would take time to get people mobilized. I was guessing that just over an hour had elapsed since the crash in Blue Ridge. My goal, for the moment, was to survive the evening.
For a minute, the rain tapered off outside. “Well, I’ll just present things to you like I plan to present them in court,” I said. I sounded bolder than I felt. I added as an afterthought, “And I should point out, I have been sending in daily reports to Atlanta. Been doing that since I got here.”
The Sheriff seemed irritated, but the Judge still smiled his benevolent smile. “Just tell us what we want to know. As you know, the business we have engaged in is just a way of life up here. Who knows, maybe you know enough about us to get this matter before a Judge.” Another smile and a nod at his companions. “I assume if you have any kind of case, you will be hoping for another Judge to hear the case, though.”
I couldn’t tell if the Judge thought I was bluffing, or if he truly didn’t care what I had reported to Atlanta. I wondered if his political connections could cover up the murder of a GBI Agent.
“Daddy, why don’t we just lock him up? He’s done nothing but cause trouble since he got here,” Linda Pelfrey asked.
The Judge turned to her. “My dear, under normal circumstances, that would be the way to go. But the GBI will not sit still for that. We may chalk up a win for this evening, but this problem isn’t going away. We could expect a visit from the Attorney General and all sorts of other State Officials. No, this young man has done us a lot of damage. I want to make sure we can minimize that damage.” He seemed to be in deep thought. “Yes, we’ll think of this as damage control. But we have to assess the damage done before we can control it.”
She wasn’t happy. “Daddy, we have been in charge here for as long as I can remember. I’m not ready to give that up.”
The Judge frowned at her. “There is not any easy way to fix this, my dear Linda. We are in a hole, and I fear that what has happened tonight will only make that hole deeper. But you need to let me handle this, and keep your mouth shut.”
She shrieked. “You old bastards are all alike. ‘Keep your mouth shut, little miss. Let us men fix everything.’ Well, this is my life, too, and I’m not going down without a fight. I’ve invested my whole life in this town.”
She pulled a Smith and Wesson five-shot revolver from her purse and gripped it with both hands. She pointed it in my direction. I took a step back and automatically reached for my hip for the gun that wasn’t there.
The Sheriff grabbed the gun out of her hands and tossed it to Chief Givens. He motioned to slap Linda in the face, but the Judge shouted, “Enough!”
The Judge shook his head. “My darling daughter can’t seem to keep her drug use in check. Chief, hold that gun for her, if you please.”
I looked around the room. Not a friend in sight. I wondered how many of these faces were the last ones Harris saw. I had a flash of helplessness, and then I made up my mind that I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
The Judge returned his attention to me. “Now, Mr. Byrd. If you would take the stand, I’ll try to maintain some order in this somewhat unconventional court.”
I didn’t know where the witness stand was, so I stood where I was. At that moment, the idea of sitting down was pretty attractive. I kept wiping the steady trickle of blood from the cut on my forehead. My left knee was throbbing, and I was trying to keep my weight off it.
I figured my best bet was to go big or go home. “Judge, I have enough documentary evidence to prove how you and your buddy the Commissioner were buying supplies and equipment for the Water Authority with federal grant money and then selling off the materials. It won’t take much digging to find the money trail where everything went back into the hot little hands of this particular bunch.” I paused to think. I intended to leave out any mention of Willie Nelson, since he would be the only one who could tell most of the details if I didn’t survive tonight.
“Judge, you and your buddies here have been ripping off the citizens of this county for several years. The sad thing is, you could have taken just a slice of the pie and still made a boat load of money. Instead, you tried to have it all. And your gluttony turned out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Your plan must have been half formed when you started. I guess that’s what caused you to bring Freely in to try and cover your tracks. You ended up pissing away money just because you didn’t have anyone who could make the dots connect.”
The Judge shrugged. “Sad to say, we hired Mr. Feely a little too late. He has experience in the diversion of government money into the pockets of the decision-makers. That is his job, to syphon funds off and make all the dots connect, as you say. We got into this as an opportunity presented by generous federal grants that had almost no oversight. We saw a chance to grow our own fortunes but had no idea how much money Washington was willing to throw at us. We came up with the dodge of a Water Authority and thought it was genius. But they kept throwing money at us faster than we could figure out how to convert it to our accounts.”
“So, you financed politicians in Atlanta and Washington? Lined the pockets of your handpicked candidates so you could keep people like me at bay?” I asked
. “I guess you financed your own elections and your hand-picked boys like the Commissioner here, too.”
He seemed to be somewhere else and stopped talking for a few minutes. I assumed he was weighing his options. “Just out of curiosity, what gave it all away?”
“Judge, you can’t run over people forever and expect to get away with it.” I tried to sound resolute. After I said it, the words seemed hollow. I knew my survival would probably depend on being able to seem confident.
The Judge shook his head. “You’re wrong, son. We have been leading the people up here. Keeping them satisfied, or maybe pacified. Either way, the people up here have been damn lucky to have us in the positions we hold. We have kept the wolves off the door of these people.”
I shrugged. “But you also kept prosperity away. You offered the crumbs to the people who paid the taxes. Y’all took the lion’s share of the benefit. Characterize it any way you want, but you’re nothing but a common thief.”
The Judge jerked back in his chair, as though I had hit him. He stood up, and when he spoke, his words were like the thunder outside. “You’re a young man, a child in this world. I did what I had to do to succeed. I dare say you have or will do things to succeed in your world. None of us is without sin. The people that you and your agency look down on are people trying to succeed. Nothing more and, certainly, nothing less.”
“Killing someone who got in your way is just trying to succeed in the world?” I shouted back.
The Judge’s face reddened, and his eyes narrowed. “Do you have children?”
I shook my head. The Judge continued. “When you do, you’ll understand the primal need to protect them. Even if it’s from themselves. You try to help them along, and sometimes your attempts go awry. Sometimes, people who respect you and are willing to do the things you need done overstep and do something you may never have dreamed.” His voice trailed off.
Mountain Justice Page 18
