by Ken Oder
The deputy stared at Ray with bleary, bloodshot eyes and Ray noted the gallon jug between his feet. His scanner had intercepted Ballard’s call to dispatch that morning claiming he was too sick to come to work. Drunk sick, apparently.
A face-to-face confrontation hadn’t been Ray’s preference. He had intended for Thurman Bowie to take Walt out, but blowing Bowie’s brains out had left Ray no alternative but to kill him himself. A long-range shot still would have been preferable, but Ray’s unsuccessful attack on Cole discouraged him from trying that gambit again. Besides, with the element of surprise on his side, the risk of a close-in kill shot was negligible.
That assessment changed when Ray started to get out of his truck and a huge brindle pit bull with cropped ears and a head as broad as a frying pan scrambled out from under the porch, barking furiously. Foam flew from his chops and his thick body quivered as his powerful jaws snapped.
Ray pulled his legs back inside the truck and shut the door. He considered aborting the effort, but he thought better of it. He couldn’t drive off now that Ballard had gotten a good a look at him and his truck.
He eyed the space from the truck to the stoop: about fifty feet. From that distance, Ray would miss his target with a handgun one time out of two, and Ballard was known to be a reasonably good shot. He looked drunk, but Bowie claimed to be a crack shot when he was plastered. Ballard might be, too. Ray had to get closer. He rolled down his window. “Call off your dog.”
“Buck! Down!” Ballard pointed to a spot in the dirt beside the stoop. Buck lay down on his belly and lowered his head, a low rumble coming from his throat, his yellow eyes trained on Ray from under his furrowed brow. “Shut up!” The rumble shut down, but the eyes didn’t soften.
Ray saw a chain coiled up beside a stake a few feet from the stoop. “Can you chain him up? He don’t look too friendly.”
“What’s your business here, mister?”
“Reba sent me.”
This had the effect Ray had hoped for. Ballard’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
“Reuben Emley, Reba’s uncle, her father’s younger brother.”
“She never mentioned no uncle to me.”
“I moved to California a long time ago. Lost touch with Hazel and the girls. I hoped to come back here and reconnect in my old age, but looks like I showed up in the midst of tragedy. Hazel dead, Betty Lou murdered. Reba’s all I got left.” Ray donned a sad, wistful smile. “I was able to join up with her yesterday. Hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl.”
Ballard looked skeptical. “You say she sent you here?”
“That’s right. She told me all about you. Asked me to come out here and have a sit-down with you.”
A spark of hope flashed in Ballard’s eyes. The rumors were true, Ray thought. Ballard was still a sap for his ex-wife.
“A sit-down? About what?”
“Chain up your dog and I’ll come inside the house and explain.”
“He don’t need to be chained up. He does what I tell him.”
Ray forced a smile. “I don’t know. He looks like he thinks I’m a piece a red meat. I’d feel a helluva sight better if you restrained him.”
Ballard flicked his cigarette into the dust, stepped off the stoop, and snapped the chain onto Buck’s spiked collar. “All right, but he don’t need it. He minds me good.”
Ray picked up the Colt Python and jammed it into his belt at the small of his back. He opened the door and got out slowly, watching Buck.
A crisp wind blew across the clearing, ruffling Ray’s thinning silver hair. From where he stood beside the truck, he couldn’t determine the length of Buck’s chain. He put his hands in his pockets and grinned, trying to look casual and friendly as he walked toward the porch. “I’m countin on that chain, by God. It don’t hold him back, he’ll chew my ass off.”
“The chain’ll hold, but he’s a good dog. He won’t come at you unless I tell him to.”
Ray broadened his grin. “I sure-to-God hope so.”
Buck glared at Ray and whined.
“Shut up, Buck!”
Ray had hoped Ballard would help close the distance between them, but the deputy stayed rooted to a spot between the stoop and Buck.
Ray stepped forward cautiously, his eyes darting back and forth from Ballard to Buck. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ray felt the barrel of the gun pressing against the base of his spine. Sweat trickled down his back. At fifteen feet, Buck jumped up and snarled. Ray froze.
“Down!”
Buck got down on his belly and whined.
“Stay!” Ballard smiled at Ray. “You don’t need to worry now, mister. He won’t go nowhere till I release him.”
Ray looked from Buck to Ballard to the .357 Magnum in Ballard’s hip holster. His eyes fell on the jug sitting on the steps. “What you drinkin?”
“Mule Kick. Cecil Garrison’s brew. You want a taste?”
Ray smiled. “I wouldn’t turn down a swallow or two.”
Ballard leaned over to pick up the jug. Ray pulled the Python free of his belt. As Ballard straightened up, Ray aimed at the center of his chest. Buck jumped to his feet and snarled, causing him to flinch. Boom-Crack! The bullet hit the house, wide to the left of Ballard, who dropped the jug and reached for his gun.
Buck emitted a deep-throated cry that rattled Ray just as he fired his second shot. The bullet hit the house wide to the right.
Ballard’s gun cleared its holster. Ray steadied his hand and fired a third shot. Ballard screamed, staggered to his right, and fell on the stoop, blood spurting from his right shoulder.
Ray glanced at Buck, who was barking furiously, but staying put.
Ballard tried to point his gun at Ray. Ray fired again, hitting him in the thigh. Ballard dropped his gun and grabbed his leg. Gritting his teeth, he choked out, “Sic him.”
Buck bounded to Ray in two big strides. Ray’s bullet creased the top of the dog’s head just as Buck’s front paws pounded into Ray’s chest like twin hammer blows. Ray hit the ground, dropping his gun as Buck’s jaws clamped down on his forearm like a pair of bolt cutters. The dog swung his big head back and forth furiously, jerking Ray’s arm to and fro like the limb of a rag doll, threatening to rip it out of the socket. Ray scrambled backward, flailing at the dog’s rock-hard bloody head with his fist. He fought his way up to his knees, fell, got up on his knees again, and scuffled backward, trying to pull his arm free. Buck’s hot breath smelled like rancid meat; his yellow eyes were wild; his muzzle was frothed with foam and blood.
At great cost in blood and pain, Ray made a torturous retreat to his truck with his arm in Buck’s jaws. The chain finally stretched taut. Buck’s eyes and the veins in his neck bulged. Ray managed to get to his feet, summon all his remaining strength, and make one great thrust backwards. His shirtsleeve and what felt like most of the flesh between his elbow and wrist tore away as he pulled free of Buck’s jaws and fell on his back out of reach of Buck’s chain. Ray lay on the ground, screaming, holding his arm against his chest.
Buck ran back toward the house, turned, and charged full tilt at Ray. The chain and collar whiplashed him, his body flying into the air and then slapping down hard in the dirt five feet short of Ray. No sooner had the dog hit the ground than he jumped up, ran back toward the house, turned, and charged again. And again.
The son of a bitch won’t quit, Ray thought. He’s either going to break the chain, pull up the stake, or break his own neck.
Ray staggered to the truck, and climbed in the cab. Cradling his bloody arm against his belly, he slammed the door and rolled up the window. He leaned forward on the steering wheel, its rim cool against his forehead, and took his breath in short bursts. His arm was on fire. Blood soaked his lap and pooled on the seat beneath him.
He took off his shirt, pinned the body of it under his thigh, and tore off the right sleeve. He wrapped it around his left arm above the elbow, put one end in his mouth, and tied a knot with his right hand as tight as he could. Then he wrapped the r
est of the shirt around his forearm.
He fell against the driver’s door and pressed his face against the cool glass, looking at Ballard, unconscious on the stoop in a lake of blood. Buck stood beside him, licking his face. He would likely bleed out and die. In normal circumstances, Ray would put a bullet in his brain to make certain, but he sure as hell couldn’t venture close enough for a kill shot.
Ray gazed at Ballard’s .357 Magnum lying on the stoop beside him. It brought to mind some sort of problem, gnawing at the edge of Ray’s brain, a risk, a danger lurking in the fog of his pain. He squinted at Ballard’s gun, trying to concentrate his wits. Ballard’s .357 Magnum. A Colt Python, like Ray’s weapon. It came to him slowly out of the miasma of confusion.
He had dropped his gun.
The steel barrel glinted in the sun, lying in the dirt fifteen feet from the stoop. Well within the length of Buck’s chain.
Buck nudged Ballard’s head with his nose and whined.
Ray struggled to formulate clear thoughts about the Python. He had purchased it at a gun show outside Charlotte, North Carolina, five years before, using an alias. He had filed down the serial numbers, so they couldn’t trace it.
He looked down at his bloody right hand. It was bare. A wave of panic washed over him. As he had told Boss, he had a history in Selk County. His fingerprints were on file in the sheriff’s office archives.
Ray looked at Ballard again. Blood ran across the stoop and streamed down the steps to pool in the dust. He wouldn’t survive to point the finger at Ray.
It didn’t matter, though. Ray’s cursed fingerprints would do him in. He stared ruefully at his gun, lying in the dust. Ironic, he thought. He had outsmarted investigators and lawmen through scores of hits over three decades only to be brought down by a crazed attack dog.
He looked down at his mangled arm. The tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but he had lost a lot of blood before it staunched the flow. He felt faint and nauseous. He had to get away from there before he passed out. He started the truck and shifted into gear. As it lurched forward, the top of the steering wheel rose up to strike his face, and a thick black veil fell across his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
The Mentor
March 3, 1967, Friday night
After Cole Grundy left Kelly McNiel’s office Friday afternoon, she couldn’t concentrate on her bookkeeper’s February report. Her thoughts kept drifting to Cole, his pale, drawn face, his sad eyes. He seemed so lost and lonely.
She knew how he felt. Her spirit was just as broken after Charley left her, but Kelly didn’t have the opportunity to dwell on her grief. Her nine-year-old daughter’s survival depended on her resilience. “Daddy’s gone,” she told Rachel back then, “but I love you and I’ll never leave you. I promise we’ll be happy forever after, like in all the fairy tales.” At the time, she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to keep her promise, but her determination to make a good life for Rachel steeled her through her fear and she overcame every obstacle she encountered.
In the process, she instilled in her daughter the traits that sustained Kelly in every crisis: courage, hard work, and an unrelenting will to win. Rachel was valedictorian of her high school class, ripped through Mary Washington in three years, and finished second in her class at Jefferson State Law School.
And when the best law firms in the country tried hard to hire her, Rachel turned them down because she wanted to emulate her mother and be her own boss. Kelly loaned her the money to open her own law firm and helped her convert a nineteenth-century Queen Anne Victorian into the offices of Rachel McNiel and Associates.
Even with all Kelly’s help, the enterprise still almost failed at the outset for lack of a mentor. “There’s a big difference between acing law school exams and practicing law,” Rachel told her mother. “I need an experienced attorney to teach me how to be a lawyer, but no one in town will give up his practice to sign on with me.”
Kelly came up with a solution that surprised Rachel and most everyone in the legal community: “Let’s talk to Burton Jaffee.”
Burton Jaffee was a drunk who closed down his own firm because he couldn’t stay sober past ten o’clock in the morning. Rachel said as much to her mother.
“He’s a drunk now,” Kelly replied, “but he was a good lawyer in his day and he can teach you a lot. And it’s not like we have a better alternative. He’s the only lawyer who’ll take the job.”
“Why would he? He’s been plastered since I was in high school. He couldn’t care less about the law.”
“He sits at my bar every night, crying over his scotch and soda about how his life has no meaning. We’ll dry him out and put him behind a desk in the Queen Anne. Give him a chance to make a mark before he dies of liver cirrhosis. Besides, he can’t turn me down. I’m carrying a hell of a bar tab on him.”
Kelly’s idea worked out better than she hoped. Burton Jaffee accepted Rachel’s offer of a partnership and sobered up, off and on. Before he died of liver cirrhosis, he taught Rachel everything he knew about being a lawyer, which turned out to be considerably more than Kelly or Rachel anticipated. Now, eight years later, Rachel was one of the most successful lawyers in southwestern Virginia.
Kelly smiled, recalling Burton’s assessment of Rachel after their first month together: “Smart, tough, ambitious, courageous, and a major pain in the ass. Like mother, like daughter.”
Kelly’s meeting with Cole earlier that day had left her unsettled and depressed, but thinking about Rachel had cheered her up. She turned and looked up at Polly Thayer’s self-portrait. When Cole had said the portrait looked like Kelly, she told him about Rachel’s remark when she gave the painting to her: “She reminds me of you, Mom, because she looks like she doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks.”
Kelly kept to herself Rachel’s more personal comments, the ones that had touched her heart. “You can see it in her eyes,” Rachel had said. “Nothing and no one can beat her down. She’s got that look you had, Mom, when it was you and me all alone against the world.”
Kelly’s vision blurred. She turned back to her desk and wiped her eyes with a tissue. The hell with the bookkeeper’s report. She needed a lift. She picked up the phone and dialed Rachel’s office.
* * *
That night, Kelly and Rachel sat in a window booth sipping wine before their supper was served. Outside Kelly’s Place, street lamps cast a yellow hue over maple trees that lined the sidewalk on Pendleton Street, and ivory moonlight gleamed on the gently rippling surface of a duck pond in Beauregard Park.
Kelly watched Rachel as she stared at her glass, twisting its stem, lost in thought.
“You okay?” Kelly asked.
Rachel forced a tight smile. “Long day at the salt mine.”
“Something’s wrong. What happened?”
“Nothing I can talk about. Attorney-client privilege.” Rachel took a swallow of wine and looked up at Kelly with shining eyes. “Suffice it to say I saw the face of evil today.”
“You’ve handled ugly cases before. What’s different about this one?”
“A child molester.”
Kelly sat back. “I see.”
They were quiet for a while. Then Rachel said, “My client doesn’t want to go after him.”
Kelly searched Rachel’s face. “But you do.”
“I want him to pay for what he did. But it’s not my call.”
Kelly nodded. “What would Burton do if he were alive?” She was relieved to see Rachel smile.
“He’d convince the client to go after the molester. He’d hunt him down to the gates of hell. In those rare moments when he was sober, of course.”
Kelly returned the smile. “Maybe that’s what you should do.”
Rachel’s smile gradually gave way to a look of intense concentration and she stared off into the distance.
Over supper, they talked about Kelly’s business and Rachel’s cases. When the table was cleared they ordered another glass of wine.
Kell
y caught Rachel’s pensive stare. “Something on your mind?”
Rachel shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Come on. What are you thinking?”
Rachel looked out the window for a moment. “Are you lonely, Mom?”
A cold spot pooled in Kelly’s stomach. “Of course not. I’m surrounded by people, business associates, employees, friends.”
Rachel looked down at her glass. “Was there ever a man in your life? I mean after Daddy left us.”
Kelly shifted in her seat. “Not a romantic interest, if that’s what you mean.”
Rachel looked out the window again. Kelly followed her gaze to a young woman walking a German shepherd under the street lamps.
“The business,” Rachel said. “Is it enough? Does it make you happy?”
Kelly’s throat tightened. “Of course I’m happy. I love my work.” She paused. “And I’ve got you.”
Rachel’s eyes glistened. She reached across the table and touched her mom’s hand. Kelly grasped it, her own eyes full. Then Rachel said, “Sorry. This is more about me than you.”
Kelly flinched.
Rachel slid out of the booth. “Gotta go. Early court appearance tomorrow. Thanks for supper.” She bussed Kelly on the cheek and hurried out of the restaurant.
“Like mother, like daughter,” Kelly thought. She wiped her tears away and got up to mix herself a martini.
Chapter Seventeen
The Colt Python
March 3, 1967, Friday night
Ray Middleditch awoke in the dark, slumped over the steering wheel of his pickup truck, his right arm draped over the gear-shift stick, his left limp at his side. He was bare-chested and cold. When he straightened up and picked up his coat with his right hand, a hot bolt of pain shot through his left arm and he cried out. He gritted his teeth and lifted his throbbing arm into his lap. His forearm was swollen to twice its size and white-hot to the touch. It felt as though he’d cooked it over a wood fire.