I reached over and picked up my business card. She didn’t try to stop me.
“Been working here long?” I asked.
“Fourteen weeks, six days and five hours,” she said. “Give or take.”
“You know Johnny well?”
She shrugged. “Just to say hello in the morning and goodbye in the afternoon,” she said. “He was pretty quiet. Seemed nice.”
“Any idea who it was shot him?”
She shrugged again and picked up the bottle of pink polish. “Somebody who doesn’t like nice, I guess,” she said and started in on the other fingers.
I sat down in the guest chair and passed on the chance to read that month’s copy of The Linesman, which looked like the inhouse newsletter for BellSouth employees. Instead, I folded my hands in my lap and went into a deep meditative state, which others might call a nap with my eyes open.
It wasn’t long before a gentleman came out from the offices behind the reception desk, stuck his hand out and said “Mack Hutchinson. Would you come in?” He was about six feet tall with a pleasant face, slightly graying hair, glasses, pens tucked away in a plastic pocket protector in his dress shirt pocket. Tie, suit pants, well-polished shoes … he was deep into the corporate environment.
I stood up, shook his hand, introduced myself and gave him the business card that the receptionist had ignored. He led me back through the warren of cubicles to his own office, which occupied the back corner of the office suite. He had a nice view of a parking lot. He indicated where he wanted me to sit, which was in his only guest chair. He sat behind his desk, took off his glasses, folded his hands, glanced at my card and said “How can I help you, Mister, er, Hacker?” Hey, at least the guy could read. We were making progress.
“I’m working on some background on the killing of John Judge,” I said.
He stopped me, holding his hand up like a traffic cop.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “But all media inquiries on that tragic situation are being handled by our Atlanta headquarters. I can give you the name of our public affairs officer, and he would be happy to try and answer whatever questions you may have.”
He began to thumb through a Rolodex on his desk.
“Look,” I said. “This is just a background conversation. Everything that’s said here will be off the record. I just have a few quick questions and I really don’t want to have to waltz around with your public relations people. Can’t we just try to talk a bit?” Hutchinson looked at me, then smiled and let the Rolodez flop shut. “Shoot,” he said.
“How long did Judge work here?” I asked.
“Five years,” he said sadly. “John was a fine young man. I had hopes that he would one day be ready to take over my position. I’ll be retiring in another five years.”
“He was in the construction division?”
Hutchinson nodded. “This community is one of the fastest growing in all Georgia,” he said, a hint of pride evident in his voice. “Our division has laid the third highest number of miles of new line in the southeast in the last two years. John handled purchasing, coordination with the contractors and receivables. He did good work. He was dependable, honest, diligent. A fine young man.” He shook his head. “His passing is a tragedy. It really is. He had a bright future. We all will miss him.”
“Any idea who killed him?” I asked.
Hutchinson shook his head sadly. “Do you know how many times I’ve been asked that question in the last week or two?” he said. “I haven’t the slightest idea. It had to have been just a random act of violence. He was such a nice young man. Quiet. Hard-working. In addition to his job here, he did a little freelance accounting work to keep some extra money coming in. He volunteered in his church. And in the community—he was always helping raise money for some worthy cause.”
“Married?”
“No, John was not married,” he said.
“Girlfriend?”
“I really couldn’t tell you,” he said, frowning. “I never met any, um, friends. But we weren’t socially close. He seemed to me to be entirely devoted to his job, his church and his community.”
“That normal around here?” I wondered. Healthy twenty-somethings are usually trying to get themselves laid, with whatever gender floats their boat.
Hutchinson frowned at me, disapprovingly. “I’m sure that many in this community, unlike perhaps in Boston--” he sneered when he said the name—“choose to live their lives along the model that John did. He was not unusual in the least.”
“Except he ended up shot and buried in a bunker at Augusta National,” I pointed out. “That strikes me as unusual. Even for Boston.”
His frown deepened. He said nothing. I thanked him for his time and said I could find my way out. I stopped at the front desk where my friend in the pink hair had moved from painting to applying some sparkly designs to her nails. She glanced up at me.
“Did John Judge have a girlfriend?” I asked.
She smiled an evil smile. “Si, senor,” she said in an exaggerated Spanish accent. “Hola…theees es Maria Sanchez…” she dragged out the syllables. “Eees Johnny there?”
“She called him here a lot?”
“Si, senor.”
“How do you know she wasn’t calling on business?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot.
“You tell the cops this?”
Her you’re-an-idiot expression deepened. I seemed to be getting that a lot in this office. “They never asked,” she said.
“Do you know anything about her?” I asked. “Where she lived? Worked?”
Pinkie shook her head and went back to working her nails. Normally at this point I would have left my card and asked her to call me if she thought of anything. But I had already plumbed the shallow depths of this girl’s brain and knew that what I had just learned was all she knew. So I left. She didn’t say goodbye.
Chapter Ten
In the car, driving back towards Augusta, I put in a call to Conn Thackery.
“Hey,” he said. “I was just about to call you.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Whether you wanted to play some golf on Thursday,” he said. “I managed to get us into the Devereaux Milburn.”
“The who?”
“Devereaux Milburn, my friend,” Conn said. “Where is your knowledge of golf history? It used to as famous as the Crosby Clambake.”
“You mean the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am?” I said.
“No, I mean the goddam Crosby Clambake,” Conn said testily. “Why do they insist on taking everything that’s good about the game of golf and selling it off to the highest bidder? Anyway, the Milburn has been held at the Palmetto Golf Club over in Aiken for years and years now. Used to be a pro-am format and all the boys going to the Masters would come into town the week before to play the Milburn. Hogan used to claim that he could make more money on the Calcutta at the Milburn than he could winning the Masters.”
I zipped around a trailer tractor grinding smokily down the highway with a full load of pine logs.
“Any of the boys coming in this year?” I asked.
“Naw, it’s been pretty much a local event for a long time now,” Conn said. “Still has a good Calcutta, though. But I thought you’d enjoy meeting some of the locals. And I know you’ll like playing Palmetto. Place is older than God. Mackenzie did some work on the course while he was in town doing the National, and Rees Jones recently fixed it up nice. You’ll like it. It’s old-fashioned, like you.”
“Sounds good,” I said. He gave me the details and said he’d come pick me up Thursday morning.
“So,” he said, “How’s the investigation going?”
I told him what I’d learned, or rather, not learned, that day.
“Lotta questions,” he said. “Not many answers.”
“Which reminds me,” I said. “I want to track down this Maria Sanchez, who may or may not have been John Judge’s girlf
riend. Who’s the leader of the Hispanic community around here?”
He laughed. “Hacker,” he said, “I don’t think we have a Hispanic community around here. The blacks would never stand for it!”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought everyone had a Hispanic community. Aren’t they supposed to be taking over the country?”
“Yeah,” Conn said. “I guess you’re right. Actually, now that I think about it, there have been a bunch of new Mexican restaurants cropping up around town. Hey! How cool is that? Augusta has a Hispanic community! Man, we’ve hit the big time!”
I laughed. “So how do you recommend I look for Maria?” I asked.
“I might call Father Jillson down at Holy Trinity,” he said. “It’s right downtown, near the river. I’ll bet most of our so-called Hispanic community worship there. Tell him I sent you. I did a favor for him not too long ago.”
He did a quick Google search while I waited and read me the telephone number for the church office. We rang off.
It was getting late, but I had nothing better to do, so I drove back into Augusta’s downtown and spotted the gray stone steeple of the church. I parked in the side lot and followed a sign directing me to the office. I walked down the basement hallway. It smelled like most churches—a blend of piety and dust, wax polish and hope. I could hear someone practicing an organ piece in the sanctuary above. Whoever was playing had the grand bourdon stop going along with the pedal bass and was making the walls shake a little.
At the end of the hallway, a young woman sat behind the reception desk. She was dark haired, with shiny black eyes, dressed conservatively in a plain blue dress with a grey sweater tossed over her shoulders against the chill of the air-conditioning. I asked to see Father Jillson. Before the woman could say anything, we heard a deep voice call out “Come!” from the office on the right. The young woman smiled at me, her cheeks forming pretty dimples, and she nodded.
I walked in. Father Jillson was standing behind his desk, loading some papers into a tan leather briefcase.
“You just caught me,” he said. “I’m getting ready to go home.”
He was tall, well over six feet, and looked fit and trim. He looked to be in his forties, with neatly trimmed brown hair that was beginning to recede from his temples. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses hung on a halyard around his neck, dangling in the front of his black shirt and white clerical collar. He looked up at me and smiled and held out his hand.
“Roger Jillson,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
I introduced myself and said that Conn Thackerey had suggested I come see him. He smiled at the name.
“Good old Conn,” he said. “He’s not one of the faith, but he’s a damn good lawyer. Handled a tricky estate case for us couple of months ago. With the money he got for us, we’re expanding our inner-city youth programs. Good man. Sit down, sit down.”
I sat. I told him who I was and what I was doing. He nodded.
“I’m trying to find a young Hispanic woman,” I said. “She is supposed to have known the young man who was murdered a couple of weeks ago and buried out at Augusta National.”
Father Jillson crossed himself. “Awful thing,” he said. “I remember reading about it.”
“The people where he worked said this woman might have been his girlfriend,” I continued. “And Conn said you might be able to help me locate her.”
The priest nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. “We do have many from the immigrant community worshipping here,” he said. “More and more all the time, in fact. Our vestry has considered hiring a Hispanic priest and conducting services in Spanish. But there’s the question of cost, as always. The Lord always seems to have needs and never seems to provide the budget to deal with them.”
I murmured something that I hoped sounded sympathetic.
“What is this woman’s name?” he asked.
“Maria Sanchez,” I said.
He began to laugh, a deep, reverberating belly laugh.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said, chuckling to himself.
“Amen,” I said. “So you know her?”
“You do, too, Mr. Hacker,” he chortled, “You do too.”
He rose from his chair, grabbed his bulging briefcase and his suit jacket, made a crooked-finger gesture at me to follow him, and led me back out into the reception area. The young woman behind the desk was also getting ready to leave, shutting down her computer and pushing papers into neat piles.
“Maria Sanchez,” Father Jillson said. “This is Mr. Hacker. He would like to ask you some questions.”
We both saw her eyes widen in fright. One hand reflexively went up to cover her mouth.
“Now, don’t worry, Maria,” the priest said. “He’s a reporter doing some story on the death of that young man a week or so ago. Your name came up and he’d like to ask you a few questions. You can answer them, or not. It’s up to you. Here in America, the press is allowed to ask questions and we are allowed to tell them to go jump in the river.” He looked at her. Color was beginning to return to a face that had gone ghostly white. “Would you like me to stay and, ummm, referee?”
Maria Sanchez looked at Father Jillson and smiled. “No, gracias,” she said. “I will talk with him. I would like to help find the killer of my friend Johnny.” Her voice was soft and lilting, with just a hint of an accent. She finished clearing off the desk, grabbed a large over-the-shoulder bag, and gave the room a final look. “Let us go,” she said.
I shook hands with Father Jillson, thanked him for his time and followed her down the hallway. I was beginning to think maybe I should go back onto the Tour, the way my luck seemed to be running. First was the chance meeting in Blythe with Johnny Judge’s folks and now this with Maria. It was like pull hooking two tee balls deep into the gunch, only to see them hit a rock or a branch and end up sitting pretty in the middle of the fairway. I told myself to remember to go buy a lotto ticket.
Outside, she took a deep breath of the fresh air. “We will go sit in the park,” she said. “We can talk there.”
She led me across the street and into the Riverwalk park. Finally realizing that the waterfront could be an asset, the city fathers had created the park a few years earlier on a bluff overlooking the Savannah River. Where once cotton factories had been piled cheek to jowl, there was now an open space with curving paths, bricked-in performance spaces, and tree-shaded areas with benches and picnic tables. It made for a nice spot for coffee, lunch or just a green space to relax and watch the river slowly drift by on its way to the sea at Tybee Point, many miles away.
We found a bench in a quiet corner with a nice view of the river. The setting sun sparkled on the fast-flowing water. Maria stared at the water for a moment, lost in thought. I studied her face. She was young, but had a worldly countenance. Her features were soft, but there was a toughness in her face.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
She started slightly, then glanced at me and smiled, blushing a bit. She had been far away.
“I am from Colombia,” she said. “From the city of Cartagena. I came to this country with my family seven years ago. My family still lives near Miami, but I came here to Georgia to attend college. I decided to stay. There is much work to do to help others who are coming to the States.”
“Is that what you do?”
She nodded. “Yes. I work at the church part time and help Father Jillson. He is a good padre. Together, we try to help those who come to this city to find work, find a place to live, to find schools for the children.” She sighed. “It is difficult. There are many who come to work in the farms, and they have many needs.”
“How did you meet John Judge?”
She smiled, remembering. “He had volunteered to work with us at the holidays last year,” she said. “We were distributing packages to those without food. He drove his pickup truck and I rode with him out to the fields. He was very nice, very funny. He wanted to help the poor, and asked if he could continue to work w
ith us after that one day.”
Her eyes were wide and glistening. “He was a very nice man,” she said softly, haltingly. “I liked him very much.”
“Was he your boyfriend?” I asked.
She ducked her head and gave a quick shake of the head. But she colored and she stopped looking at my eyes. Either she was embarrassed to discuss it, or she didn’t want this line of questioning to go any further.
“No matter,” I said reassuringly. “When was the last time you spoke to Johnny?”
She looked out at the river again. “It was the day…the day he died,” she said in a soft whisper. “I talked to him at his office in the afternoon. He was going to meet me that night. We had some materials to sort through. Things to prepare. Office work, mostly.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
She didn’t answer for several long moments, but continued to stare out at the dark water flowing past. I let her look. When she finally turned to me, her eyes were filled with tears.
“No,” she said. “I do not know anyone who didn’t like Johnny. But I also cannot forget that afternoon, and something Johnny asked me.”
“Can you tell me?” I asked.
She looked down at her hands, and the tears began to flow down her cheeks. They dripped, one after another, onto her folded hands.
“He asked me if I knew someone, if I knew anything about him,” she said, voice quavering.
“Who?” I tried to keep my voice level and calm. But this was the first solid lead I had come across.
“Enrico de la Paz,” she said.
“And he is…?”
“A very bad man,” she said, looking at me with frightened eyes. “He, too, is from Colombia. He is one of the hibridos who works with the drug cartels. He is well known in Medellin. He is a killer with the blood of many on his hands.”
“Do you know why John asked about him?”
She shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “I asked Johnny ‘Why are you asking me about this bad man?’ He wouldn’t tell me. He told me not to worry. He said it was just a name he had heard someone mention. He wondered who it was. I begged him to tell me more, but he just said he’d see me at the church later. I…I never saw him again.”
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