Appalachian Intrigue

by Archie Meyers

  “Marie, Snake’s brothers are lying to the police. They know where he’s hiding, and I’m going to find a way to get them to give him up. They are as mean and dishonest as he is, but they’re a lot smarter.”

  “But if they’re as mean—” Dex’s stare stopped her again.

  “None of the Wilson brothers have ever had a job, and they sure didn’t inherit any money. They have to be doing something illegal. I’m going to find out what it is and threaten to expose them if they don’t tell me how to find Snake. Everything I’ve learned about them suggests they would sacrifice their mother if it would save their butts. They are probably also embarrassed by Snake’s stupidity.”

  Marie was overcome with a sense of dread because she knew that Dex had already made up his mind, but she wasn’t ready to give up if there was any chance to talk him out of what she thought of as a suicide pact with the devil.

  “Okay, Dex, are you through now?” He nodded and she continued. “First of all, I love you for being concerned about me, but if you are really concerned about me, you should think about what I would do if something happened to you. I’m against the whole idea of you playing cop, but I doubt that it makes any difference. You seem to have already made up your mind.”

  “Marie I don’t have a death wish, and I’m not going to take any more chances than I have to. I just can’t go on any longer looking over my shoulder and worrying about you day and night.”

  Marie sat at her desk the remainder of the day but couldn’t concentrate on the paperwork. All she could think about was the danger to which Dex was exposing himself. Snake was completely without a conscience and would lash out at anyone who crossed him. No one could predict how that idiot would react to anything. His reactions were animalistic, except most animals were far less aggressive and more predictable.

  Chapter 48

  It was dark, and Dex had been sitting in his car a block away from Rufus’s mobile home since early in the afternoon. When he checked earlier, Rufus’s pickup truck was parked in front of the mobile home on a dead-end road. From his vantage point, Dex could see the truck if it passed by, and so far it had not come up the road where he was parked.

  Dex was about ready to give up for the night when he saw approaching headlights. He identified the truck as it passed and waited for it to get several hundred yards away before pulling out with his headlights off. He drove without lights for several blocks until Rufus turned onto a main highway headed away from River City. Dex switched on his lights and merged into traffic, keeping several cars between him and Wilson. On the outskirts of the city, Wilson pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and another man got out of a parked car and into his truck. Dex had never seen the other Wilson brother, but he said to himself, “I bet that’s brother Elroy.”

  Rufus left the parking lot and continued straight ahead for a couple of miles and then veered right onto a secondary highway. There was less traffic on this road, but fortunately another car turned off the main highway between him and Wilson. He continued following the pickup truck for another few miles until Wilson slowed and made a sharp left turn onto a dirt road leading up the mountain. When Dex purposely drove past the dirt road, he could see the taillights of the pickup truck disappearing up the mountain.

  He waited for a few minutes before doubling back to the spot where Wilson had turned onto the old logging road. He and Hoagie had hiked to the top of this mountain when they were in high school, and he knew that it was uninhabited. He assumed that whatever the Wilson brothers were involved in was probably taking place somewhere on this remote mountain, but only a fool would go up there after them at night.

  Dex parked about four hundred yards up the highway in an area that would allow him to see the truck if it came back down the mountain. He had been sitting there for less than an hour when he saw a red Ford Explorer also turn onto the logging road. He ran through the possibilities in his mind. Mountain men often staged disgusting chicken or dog fights to wager on the winners. But those events drew large crowds of rednecks, and he had only seen two vehicles go up the mountain. And he didn’t think they were making moonshine. They wouldn’t risk having a new Explorer and a relatively new pickup truck confiscated by federal agents. Bootleggers preferred older cars that could be abandoned without much loss.

  Dex waited for another hour, but there was no further traffic on the logging road. He figured that even if the two vehicles came back down the mountain, there was nothing he could do, so he decided to leave for the night. If he had waited another hour, he would have seen only Rufus’s pickup come down with not two but three men in the cab. The bed was filled with bright red parts from the Ford Explorer.

  Dex figured that whatever the Wilson brothers were doing on the mountain, they weren’t doing it until after dark. He got up at sunrise the next morning and headed for the mountain. He didn’t notice anything unusual in his trip up the old logging road until he reached the summit.

  He parked his car and walked around the cleared area. There had been a recent heavy rain, and he was initially confused by the proliferation of tire tracks. Then he walked over to the precipice and looked down several hundred feet to the base of the cliff. It was obliterated with the rusted hulls of automobiles piled on top of each other. The riddle was solved. Dex had heard about chop shop operations, but this was the first time he had ever seen where the work was actually done.

  So this was what Rufus and Elroy were doing to support themselves. He now had the leverage he needed to get them to talk, but the tricky and dangerous part was how to use it without getting killed in the process. Although he was going to have to be very careful, Dex was fairly certain he could make them realize it was in their best interest to cooperate. But if he let one of them get the drop on him, he was a dead man.

  Chapter 49

  Two hours after he discovered the chop shop, Dex was again parked where he could see the dead-end road where Rufus’s mobile home was located. He anticipated a long wait before Rufus emerged, but he got lucky. He had only been there about thirty minutes when he saw him pass by in his pickup.

  He let the pickup get several hundred yards down the road before pulling out to follow it. Rufus drove straight to a Wal-Mart store and parked near the entrance. Dex parked and followed him into the store. He panicked when he momentarily lost him in the crowd but soon spotted him standing in front of a car battery display. There were probably ten or twelve people in a position to see the display.

  Dex thought to himself, It’s now or never, and walked up and stood within two feet of the oldest Wilson brother.

  “Rufus, you don’t know me, but I’m Dex Martin and I’ve got a message for you.”

  “You be that football guy.”

  “That’s right, and you are Snake’s brother. Your brother tried to kill me, and he did kill my best friend. I need to find him, and you’re going to help me.”

  “Git outen my face fore ye git hurt.”

  “You better listen to me if you don’t want to spend a long time in the state prison. I know about your chop shop on the mountain, and I’ve got pictures to prove it. They are being held in a sealed envelope with instructions to turn the envelope over to the police if anything happens to me or anyone connected to me.”

  “I’s ain’t know what you’se talkin’ at.”

  “Yeah, you do, and you better pay attention. I know you lied to the cops about not knowing how to contact Snake, and if you stick by that story, the envelope will be delivered to the cops within an hour.”

  Rufus thought for a few moments before saying, “I ain’t know whar he be.”

  “This is your last chance before I walk away and tell the one holding that envelope to deliver it. I don’t give a damn about your auto theft business, so I’m not going to report it to the police unless you refuse to tell me how to find Snake.”

  Rufus stared at Dex with a murderou
s scowl, moved up beside him, and whispered in his ear, “Boy, ifen you tell the cops, you ain’t gonna live long nuf to see me hind bars.”

  From no more than six inches away, Dex stared directly into Rufus’s face and said in a controlled voice, “If the situation was reversed, what do you think Snake would do? Are you going to tell me or not?”

  Rufus knew the answer to that question, but he wasn’t going to give Dex the satisfaction of an answer. “I’s gotta talk to Elroy. Weuns git back and talk atter dat.”

  Dex replied, “No, this is a onetime offer. I’m going to find him with or without your help, but if you walk out the door of this store without telling me where he is, I’m calling the police from the store phone.”

  Rufus couldn’t control the angry contortions of his face. He was flushed and breathing heavily because he knew he was trapped. He didn’t doubt that Dex would follow through on his threat, and he knew that a jury would find him guilty and send him away for a long time. He glared at Dex for several minutes, and Dex glared back at the lifetime criminal.

  Finally Rufus said, “I ain’t know whar he’s at. I ain’t talked at him in two weeks.”

  “That’s not good enough. You’re lying and I know it.”

  “I ain’t lying. I ain’t got no notion whar he’s at. Atter he left outa Mama’s house, ain’t nary a one of us knows whar he’s been staying.”

  “You just said you had talked to him, so you must know how to contact him.”

  “I has a cell phone numer, but that be all I know. It’s writ down on paper in my pocket.”

  Now thoroughly frustrated, Rufus fumbled with his wallet and pulled out a folded piece of worn paper with a number scrawled on it.

  Dex took the number and said, “This better be on the level, or you haven’t heard the last of me. Don’t warn Snake, and if I were you I wouldn’t even tell Elroy about our little conversation. I’ve told you I’m not going to tell the police anything, and I won’t tell Snake how I found him unless you try to warn him. Also, remember the sealed letter that will go to the police if anything happens to me or anyone close to me.”

  Rufus nodded and Dex walked away leaving him looking helpless and still standing in front of the battery display. From his car in the parking lot, Dex called his friend Lundy.

  “Lundy, I got Snake’s cell phone number from Rufus without getting killed. Now I’ve got to figure out how to use it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later, but do you have any way to trace a cell phone number?”

  “Dex, it would be easy to find out who the phone is registered to, but that’s not going to do you any good because I’ll bet you it will be either stolen or registered under a phony name. I’ve still got some friends on the police force, so let me see what I can find out. Give me the number.”

  Several hours later Dex got a call from Lundy. “Dex, forget I told you how I got this information because it’s illegal, but it may help you. We had a woman place a call to the cell phone number, and when it was answered by a male voice, she simply apologized and said she had a wrong number. Using technology I don’t understand, and you don’t want to know about, we identified approximately where the cell phone was located when it was answered. I’ve got a map with a quarter-mile-wide circle drawn on it. The phone was somewhere inside that circle when it was answered. Interestingly, most of the circle is on the side of the mountain where there are no houses.”

  Dex picked up the map at Lundy’s office.

  “Have you got access to a pistol?” Lundy asked when he saw Dex. “You need some kind of protection before you confront him.”

  “I’ve got a shotgun that I use for dove and rabbit hunting.”

  Lundy laughed and said, “You can’t walk around carrying a shotgun. You need a pistol that you can carry in a holster or in your belt.”

  “There’s a pistol at my grandmother’s that belonged to my dad, but I’ve never shot it. I’ll have to slip it out of the house or Gigi will go crazy.”

  As he was talking Dex remembered that this was the day Gigi met with her mission group at the church. He went by the house and took the pistol out of the closet and stopped by a store and bought a box of shells. Then he drove to the circled area and parked while he studied the map. It was an upscale neighborhood with expensive homes sitting on large, manicured lots.

  From the back of these lots the mountain rose steeply to a height of several thousand feet. The homes didn’t look like the type of places where Snake would be welcome, so Dex was fairly certain he was hiding somewhere on the mountain portion of the circle. He also reasoned that Snake would have to have some kind of shelter from the weather and would not be brazen enough to set up a tent where it could be easily discovered.

  From those facts it didn’t take Dex long to surmise that Snake was probably hiding in a cave. He was not very familiar with this section of the mountain, but he knew the entire mountain was honeycombed with caves of various sizes. Some had large openings and were well charted and regularly explored by spelunkers, but others were obscure and had never been mapped or even discovered. These were the types of caves that he and Hoagie had sought in their boyhood adventures.

  Dex knew that even if he found the cave in which Snake was hiding, it would be suicide to go in after him. He would have the advantage of being familiar with the cave and could wait for an intruder to come to him. It would be more logical to catch Snake coming out of the woods.

  The road ended a block beyond the houses, but in the other direction the area was well developed. There was a large shopping center only two blocks away. Snake had to have an automobile, and the closest place to park it without drawing attention was probably at the shopping center.

  After surveying the terrain, Dex decided that it would be too risky for Snake to move around in this neighborhood in the daytime. He apparently stayed holed up until after dark and then walked out to wherever he had his car parked. Dex made the decision to go back late that afternoon and position himself somewhere between the mountain and the shopping center. Dex hoped to catch Snake walking toward his car.

  Chapter 50

  At twilight Dex was in place, partially concealed behind a row of hedges. The .38-caliber pistol was stuck in his belt at the small of his back. He purposely left his shirt hanging over his belt so it would conceal the pistol.

  He was excited because it was finally time to take action. He was nervous, not from fright but from anticipation. It reminded him of a college teammate who had habitually wet his pants just before kickoff in every game. The emotion that caused his teammate to embarrass himself now gripped Dex. He hadn’t lost control of his bladder, but adrenalin was coursing through his body with the rush of a springtime flood. He was ready to put an end to this nightmare.

  He was finally in position to execute the plan that everyone had told him he was crazy to undertake. Lundy, the only professional he had consulted, had strongly advised him not to attempt to catch Snake by himself. Marie was still furious with him. Actually, she was probably wavering between anger and fear for his safety.

  He understood they had his best interest at heart, but he rationalized that sometimes common sense has to take a backseat when one is faced with a crisis. How else could one explain a fireman rushing into a burning building, or a father diving into a torrent of rushing water to save a drowning child? If he didn’t do this, no one else was going to and there might never be a better opportunity. Tonight was the night, and he was going for it.

  As it began to get dark, Dex was concerned about whether or not the ambient light in the area would be enough to allow him to identify Snake if he walked by or crossed the street toward the shopping center. He also wondered what he would do if he caught Snake. He had borrowed a set of handcuffs from Lundy and had a small roll of duct tape in his pocket, but his plan hadn’t gone beyond the act
ual capture. He hated Snake so much that if he did catch him, he questioned whether he would be able to pull back before he killed him.

  Dex had never before thought he was capable of taking the life of another human, but then he didn’t think of Snake in human terms. He was afraid that if he was ever face to face with the one who killed Hoagie and chained, Marie he might actually kill him with his bare hands. He didn’t doubt that he had the physical ability to kill Snake. The question with which he was struggling was whether or not he had the self-control not to kill him. Until the opportunity arose, he would never know the answer.

  While he was thinking through all these things, Dex saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw someone emerge from between two houses on the mountain side of the street. The individual turned toward the shopping center but stayed on the side of the street across from the hedges where Dex was hiding.

  He could tell that it was a man, but he was still seventy-five to one hundred yards away. As he got closer, Dex thought he recognized the ungainly gait he remembered from high school, but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t think the light was going to be bright enough to let him positively identify the man unless he could get closer.

  When the man was directly across the street, Dex stepped out from behind the hedges and started walking toward him. When the man saw him, he immediately stopped in his tracks. Dex took several more steps forward, and although he still couldn’t clearly see his face, he said, “Snake, I want to talk to you.”

  Snake pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and pointed it in Dex’s direction. Dex dove back behind the hedges just as the shot was fired. When it wasn’t followed immediately by a second shot, he peeked over the top of the hedges and saw Snake running back in the direction from which he had appeared.

  Dex pulled the pistol from his waist and immediately started chasing him. Snake was a hundred yards ahead of Dex when he turned and fired another shot toward him. This time Dex returned fire. He knew he couldn’t hit him at that distance, but he wanted Snake to know that he was also armed. He really didn’t want to shoot him. He would prefer for Snake to either rot in jail for the rest of his life or be executed by the state.