She was as chipper as she could be that early in the morning. “Yes, you are. You’re a sorry jerk of an idiot. But I already knew that. Thanks for showing up though.” She gave him a huge smile and patted his arm before walking away, leaving him standing there with the coffee. She called back over her shoulder, “and I don’t drink coffee!”
Finally she made it to the edge of the basketball court, where Adam was standing with an ice-cold diet soda and a granola bar. She took both from him and stretched up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Bless you, sweet man. You could be my soul mate.”
Devin was very pleased with how the first class had gone. They ended up with fifty-two participants ranging in age from twelve to sixty-eight, so she had gotten a few stares from ladies that had known her aunt, but they adjusted. Shane had insisted on sparring with her to demonstrate her qualifications to the class. Devin had been unnecessarily rough in the demonstration, but he was working through his guilt, after all. By the end of the class, she had met a lot of really nice ladies and had a good time to boot. Maybe she could survive a summer of community service.
Later in the afternoon on Saturday, Devin decided she deserved some good old-fashioned rest and relaxation. This was supposed to be a vacation, right? I can do something vacationey. She rummaged thru her dresser until she found her two-piece bathing suit. She bought the aqua string bikini with Marcy last summer when they were renting a house at Smith Mountain Lake with a group of friends. But thinking about that trip made her think of Greg flipping burgers on the deck and getting sunburned beyond belief… and being alive. She slammed the dresser drawer shut so hard the floor trembled with the force, as if closing the drawer could close the memory.
Just put on your bathing suit and go lie in the sun like a normal person.
Gathering up the celebrity gossip magazines she had bought a week ago and her mp3 player, Devin headed out back to spread a blanket in the middle of the lawn. She knew it was irresponsible not to use sunscreen, but in her line of work, skin cancer was probably not her biggest threat, and the warmth of the sun felt so good against her skin. In fact it felt so good that she closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sky. The magazines would have to wait another week.
She had been soaking up the music and sunshine for about a half an hour when she heard the growl of a diesel truck pull into her drive.
I’m not moving.
Even through her ear buds, she could hear the impatient knocking on the front door.
Still not moving, go away.
Then the back gate unlatched and, the grass started to swish towards her. Devin still didn’t move or open her eyes—she was trying to reach a gelatin-like state.
“What do you want, Shane?”
The grass stopped moving. “How did you know it was me?”
Devin moved just enough to pull her earpieces out, but her eyes remained closed. “I only know two people in town with diesel trucks, and Adam would never come into my backyard uninvited.”
A shadow fell over her, and she opened her eyes to see Shane standing over her, waving a manila folder. “Oh, trust me. Once you see this I’ll be welcome here.”
Gelatin forgotten, Devin bolted upright. “Why what is it?”
“Only a very interesting arrest record for one Hank James Maddox.”
“Henry has a record?” Devin grabbed Shane’s arm and pulled him down on the blanket to sit beside her.
“Oh, I think you’ll be more interested in what’s not in the record.” He paused as she pulled a t-shirt on over her bathing suit. “Thank you, now I can concentrate.” Shane pretended not to notice her eye rolling. “As I was saying, his record starts off in his teens where they were constantly busting him for loitering, petty theft, reckless driving, speeding, public drunkenness, you name it. He couldn’t throw a cigarette butt on the ground without getting arrested for littering.” She could tell he was getting to the good part, because he was picking up speed as he spoke. “Then suddenly, eight months before Laney’s death, in October of 1963, everything stops. He doesn’t get so much as a speeding ticket until he’s charged with her murder, and, of course, those charges are later dropped.” Devin scanned over the print-outs, looking for an error.
No one is that sneaky in a small town.
“Now in December of ’64, he gets a drunk in public, disorderly conduct and resisting arresting all in one night. After that there are some sporadic tickets—nothing of consequence. He seems to be an upstanding member of society.”
Devin dropped the papers into her lap. “But what happened during that silent year?”
“What, indeed?” Shane glanced up at the gathering clouds. Devin’s sun had disappeared. “I think its going to rain on our little investigative picnic. Do you to want move this inside and order take-out? My treat.”
Devin studied him for a minute with an appraising gaze and finally made her ruling. “You’re manipulative.”
He grinned the sparkly smile she liked best, but would never tell him so.
“And you’re making me work very hard.”
She started to laugh, but they ended up having to make a run for it to the house because the rain storm had begun.
Over fried rice and kung pao chicken, they tossed around theories about what they had dubbed the “silent year”.
“Maybe he was paying off some dirty cops to leave him alone.” Shane was very proud of his Hollywood story line.
Devin was quick to burst his bubble. “That seems like a lot of trouble to go through for such petty charges.”
“Well, maybe he was into something bigger and they were blackmailing him.”
“Maybe.” But she still wasn’t convinced.
Think it through, Dev, if I stopped arresting one of my regular petty criminals, what would be the benefit? What would I get out of it?
She slowly put down her chopsticks. “He was an informant.”
“Informing on what?”
“I don’t know, but it makes perfect sense. They couldn’t have him in jail for any amount of time, because they needed him out where he was useful gathering information.” The take-out now forgotten, Devin jumped up and started digging out her laptop. “Do you remember hearing about any major cases from that time period?”
Shane leaned on the table racking his brain for some piece of information while her computer warmed up. “The murder case took precedence over anything else that was going on here, but still I’d think I would have heard something over the years. You may be looking for a federal case that had a connection to Fenton.”
Devin’s fingers were flying over the keys as she logged into various programs. “Maybe an organized crime group out of D.C. was running stolen cars through here to be chopped.”
Shane leaned over her shoulder to get a better look at the screen. “That’s a real good possibility.” He hesitated for a moment. “It was the sixties. There could have been some drug trafficking, but I really don’t think that could have gotten to Fenton yet. Shoot, it’s barely here now.” He laid his arm across the back of her chair ever so casually.
“You’re going to need to move that arm if you want to keep it.” She shot him a sideways look and a smirk.
He slid his arm away and mumbled. “Work, work, work.”
She grinned. “Feel the burn!”
Devin turned back to the keyboard. “So drugs are out?”
“Yeah, I just don’t think that was likely in that time period.” He squatted down next to her so he was eye level with the computer screen, and waited to see if this was allowed. Apparently it was. “So basically our biggest import/export at the time would’ve been hot car parts. Bring them in from the city, chop them up here, and ship them across the state and into North Carolina and West Virginia.”
Devin began entering the information into the search engine, but something Shane said was pulling at her memory. She looked down at him and motioned for him to rewind. “Say that again, about bringing the cars from the city yaddy, yaddy, y
addy.” Though he looked baffled, he repeated it back for her, and when he got to the part about shipping across the state, it clicked.
Devin remembered the conversation she’d had with Adam and the charges he’d explained to her. She thought about the supped up muscle cars and all of the speeding violations in Henry’s record. No longer interested in the laptop, Devin grabbed her keys and headed for the door. She stood up so abruptly that Shane fell on his backside from his squatted position.
“Devin, what are you doing?!”
“You’re wrong. The biggest illegal export wasn’t hot cars. It was moonshine.”
Devin and Shane were rolling across the shadows of the setting sun in her mustang, headed for the hospital.
“You do realize that visiting hours ended a half an hour ago?”
“I have a badge, and you have a badge. Wave those suckers around and people will let you go all kinds of places.” Her window was down, so when she looked over to smile at him dark tendrils swirled to frame her face and the post-storm sunset cast a golden pink halo in her curls.
She was right, of course. They didn’t even have to slow down as they charged through the hospital corridors. If anyone looked like they might even think of saying something to stop them, a badge was flipped out, and the path was cleared. When they reached Henry’s room, he was sitting up in bed, enjoying the evening snack of tapioca pudding and watching the news. Devin shut the door and turned off the television.
“So Henry, what do you want to talk about first? Beth Christianson or informing on the moonshine business?”
Henry went as white as his pudding, and his heart rate monitor beeped precariously. After a few steadying breaths, he was able to speak. “Girl, are you trying to kill me?”
“Relax, I’ve got an eye on the monitors. You’re fine.” In truth, she was keeping a very close eye on the monitors and staying close to the nurse call button.
Henry passed a hand over his eyes. “You were here less than twenty-four hours ago and didn’t know anything. How could you have possibly discovered all of this in one day when no one has put it together in thirty-five years?”
Devin leaned in on the railings of his bed. “Henry, I’m not some novice detective trying out sleuthing as a hobby. I solve unsolvable cases. I’m the best at what I do.” She motioned over her shoulder towards Shane. “I have professionals helping me, and we have technology on our side.” She paused for a moment and wove her fingers together. “That…and we guessed. You just confirmed all our theories.” She grinned at his horrified expression. “Ohh, don’t worry about it. We were 99% sure already. We just didn’t have the proof yet.” She plopped down in the same chair she had been in the night before. “So, take me back to that night again, but with all the details this time.”
May 16, 1964
Henry walked over to the soda counter with Beth pressed against his side. He tucked her head under his chin while he took a long pull off his beer. What was this his third or fourth of the night? He frowned as she took a delicate sip of her soda. That’s not going to help. “Hey kid, I’ve got something in the car that will improve that soda and take the edge off. C’mon.” He took her by the hand and they headed into the dark lot.
They reached Henry’s car at the far side of the lot where he pulled out a flask, and splashed a few tablespoons of what smelled like kerosene, into her soda.
“Go ahead. You’ll enjoy the warmth.”
Beth tried a sip, and flinched. She took a deeper gulp the second time, and he laughed at the horrible face she made.
“You should spend more time away from Laney. Let people really see you as your own person and not an extension of her.” He stepped in very close to her. She had to lift her face just inches from his to look him in the eye. “You know, you really are very beautiful.”
Maybe it was their need to be wanted or maybe just the need for human contact, but once their lips touched the kiss became desperate, more important than air to breathe. They stayed there, wrapped in each other’s embrace for quite some time, until headlights swept into the parking lot. Fearing her reputation could be ruined just by being seen out here with him, Henry opened the car door and slid into the back seat with her. It was something he would regret all the days of his life.
Afterwards Henry whispered into her ear, “You can’t be seen coming out of the parking lot with me like this. It could ruin you.” He paused for only a second, and as if reading her mind continued, “Laney can get away with a lot of things that other decent girls can’t.”
Beth looked up at him with longing in her huge puppy dog hazel eyes and started to ask him something, but he cut her off, his voice harsh. “Do you think Peter Christianson is going to want to take you to the country club soirees if he thinks you’ve been fooling around with me? Do you?” He grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look at him and was shaking her. As soon as he realized it, he loosened his grip and started rubbing her arms instead. He softened his voice to almost a whisper. “If this got out the only guys that would want to take you out would be guys like me, and they would just want to take you to the back seat of their car. You deserve so much more than that Beth, you deserve a Peter Christianson.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. “Any girl would be lucky to have you, Henry Maddox, and you are not like all those other guys who are just out to get a girl in the backseat—you’re different!”
He grinned into her hair. “Really? Have you been paying attention for the last half hour or so?” He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Go, head to the bottom of the parking lot, and then circle around to the lake side of the pavilion. If anyone asks, you were taking pictures of the lake in the moonlight.” Then he pushed her away from him propelling her into a happier future.
Henry took several steps backward until he was against his car and then reached thru the open window for his flask. In his mind he was begging her not to look back, but he watched to see if she would. When Beth got about thirty yards away and had almost cleared the last line of parked cars, she turned back to Henry and touched her fingertips to her lips and then held her palm out to him in a silent wave good-bye. Then she was gone. Henry took a long pull off his flask, and as the flames burned thru him, he wondered if the flames of hell would feel the same, for surely that’s where he would spend his eternity. While Beth had given him a tender good-bye, all he had been able to think about was how much she looked like Laney in the dark.
Henry stayed in the parking lot another ten minutes and then went in to the pavilion just long enough to catch the eye of all the boys and let them know it was time to get rolling. They circled up at the back of his car, six of them in total. At twenty-three, he was the oldest by almost two years.
“Alright boys, this is by far the biggest load we’ve had to deliver. That’s why we had to take on an extra driver tonight and why we’re runnin’ all at once.”
One of the drivers, a lanky farm boy from out in the county with worn and patched overalls, spit a stream of tobacco juice on the ground. “Henry, seems to me a whole line of cars racin’ thru the backwoods is liable to attract some attention. Don’t you think?”
Henry lit the cigarette that had been tucked behind his ear and blew a wreath of smoke into the air. “Naw, boys, that’s the beauty of it. We’re gonna split into three runs. You two,” he motioned to the lanky famer and the stocky teenager beside him, “will run down the ridge until you can cross over in Giles County. Now Stretch and my city slicker,” Henry pointed at the shortest boy in the group and one that lived in the big town of Fenton, “y’all are gonna run the holler down all the way, stayin’ on the east side of the ridge. Now listen to me. That part’s important. Stay on the east side of the ridge. If you cross over anywhere near Bristol, they’ll be on you like a duck on a June bug. That place is crawlin’ with Revenuers.”
Henry paused to pull out a pocket watch and check the time, right on schedule. “I’ll take the new kid for a swim at Smith Mou
ntain Lake and slip through south of Axton.” There was a collective snicker from the group. Something unique always seemed to happen on your first run with Henry. It was kind of rite of passage. “They can’t guard every back road and pig path in the state.” With that, Henry tossed his cigarette in the gravel, and they headed for their cars.
There was a small road that wound around the lake at the Summit. It could be used to get down to the flats on the south end of the lake where the drag racing was done, or if a couple wanted a little more privacy you could take the road around a little farther to go parking. But what very few people knew was that if you followed the road far enough it was joined by an old logging road. Now the logging road was overgrown with brush and brambles and covered with fallen logs. However, if you had the right vehicle, it was possible to get through in order to load contraband moonshine into very fast hot-rod cars.
Henry sighed and fiddled with his TV remote. “So that’s it. We loaded up the moonshine, and they all went off on their assigned routes and were arrested, as were the purchasers on the other end, those that had delivered to us and the distillers. It was the largest hooch supply line sting they had conducted at that time.”
Devin jerked up out of her chair. “What do you mean ‘that’s it’? That is not it! You avoided telling us a single name of one of the drivers! And not once in the investigation files does it mention looking into the possibility that the killer came in on a different road. That’s probably because they didn’t even know it was there, Henry. One branch of law enforcement does not talk to the other.” She threw her hands up in frustration, stalking over to the window to stare out into the darkness. When she was irritated her hair got in her way, so she twisted it all up on the top of her head and held it there. After a few minutes she dropped her hair and turned around with her hands on her hips. Her voice was very calm and even.
“Do you realize how many criminals were there that night? In all likelihood, Laney was killed by someone delivering the moonshine, maybe someone who figured you for a rat and was delivering a message. How could you have not thought this was relevant information?”
Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) Page 14