Walk In the Fire

by Steph Post

  “Okay, and?”

  Clive pushed his cup away and took out his notebook. He started flipping through pages, looking for the names he had written down.

  “I’m telling you, Lopez, it just wasn’t making any sense. Pieces of land that had been in the same family for seventy years were being sold off to two different LLCs. Horizon Star Enterprises and Three Pillars Ministries. And by sold, I mean at a cost of twenty-five cents an acre. Then there were all of the land gifts and donations to a non-profit organization called Life Spring.”

  He could hear cabinets opening and closing and then the unmistakable sound of pouring cereal.

  “Get to the point, Grant.”

  “I am, just listen. So, I did a lot more digging and it turns out that they’re all dummy corporations. Horizon Star, Three Pillars, Life Spring. They don’t exist, except on paper. The CEO of all of them is a woman named Rowena Morehead.”

  “Wait, let me guess. She also isn’t real.”

  Clive picked up his coffee.

  “Oh, she’s real. Or was, anyway. It took me long enough, but I finally found a birth certificate listing Rowena Morehead as the mother of one Felton Halbert Morehead.”

  He could hear her crunching.

  “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  Clive set his coffee cup back down, harder than he meant to. Hot coffee sloshed all over his hand.

  “Felton! Brother Felton! He’s Tulah’s nephew. He uses Atwell, Tulah’s last name, but he’s actually a Morehead. So was Tulah. Rowena Morehead was her unmarried sister.”

  “Was?”

  “She died over thirty years ago. But Tulah has been using her name and identity to front her companies, so that she herself is untraceable.”

  “So?”

  Clive reached for the napkin dispenser.

  “So, I also got out a map and started piecing together all of the property that was sold or donated to those three companies. The parcels all connect. If I’m right about this, it looks like Tulah has amassed a huge area of land out in west Bradford County.”

  “She’s building a megachurch?”

  He yanked out a poof of napkins and dabbed at the spilled coffee.

  “I’m talking over seven thousand acres. That’s pretty damn big for a church. She’s still preaching in what’s left of the building that burned and it’s about the size of a studio apartment in Inman Park. These people, in this church, they’re backwoods Christians. They drink poison.”

  “Poison?”

  “There can’t be too many of them, is what I’m getting at.”

  There was another pause. Finally, her voice suggested that she was beginning to take him seriously.

  “You’re wondering what all the land is for, then.”

  Clive nodded as he wadded up the wet napkins and shoved the soppy pile to the edge of the table.

  “Exactly. I don’t have a complete picture yet, but something is going on down here with this preacher. It’s odd enough that an outlaw biker gang and the patriarch of a notorious criminal family have a shootout in Sister Tulah’s church. But then the fire and police reports don’t seem right, or at least complete, and everyone seems afraid to talk about her. And then this land business. Folks selling their family homesteads for pennies. I think…”

  Clive took a deep breath.

  “…I think she’s got some kind of hold on this town. And everything that I’ve found so far, it’s got to be just the tip of the iceberg. I need some time to dig deeper.”

  She seemed to be thinking it over. Clive heard a slurp of milk and then the clanging of a spoon inside an empty bowl. When she finally spoke, she sounded only half convinced.

  “Okay, I see where you’re going. But this isn’t really our jurisdiction. If it’s anything, it’s white collar. FBI. And the last thing Krenshaw would want is you handing them anything.”

  He’d come this far. Might as well tell her the whole plan.

  “I’m thinking maybe of using the RICO angle.”

  Lopez burst out laughing. Clive grit his teeth; he’d expected it.

  “You want to build a RICO case against this Sister Tulah? She’s a preacher, not a mob boss. Maybe there’s some kickbacks going on, some tax evasion with the land acquisition, who knows. But you want to link her up with organized crime? Are you out of your mind?”

  Clive thought maybe he was. If he was wrong about Tulah, he’d be the laughing stock of the ATF. Again. Back to the records room, his career forever buried under an avalanche of humiliation. But if he was right. Well, if he was right, he’d make headlines.

  “Lopez, please. Just a few more days. You’ve got to admit, I’m on to something here. It’s been years since Atlanta ATF worked a real RICO case. If I’m right, and eventually the FBI picks it up, just imagine how you and I would look then? Give me a few more days. Let me see what else I can find.”

  “All right. Fine. I’ll make an excuse, put Krenshaw off. But you’ve only got until Monday. Either call me Monday with something big, really big, like, RICO big, or you come on home.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Clive set his phone down on the table and drained the last of his coffee. Four more days. He could find something, he could do it. The waitress came out from around the corner to shake the sleeping truck driver awake. Clive made eye contact with her, but she wasn’t returning his smile as she slowly walked over. Clive held up his cup.

  “More coffee?”

  There was a strange look on her face. She regarded him for a moment, almost warily, and then reached into her apron.

  “I’d better just give you the check.”

  Clive wasn’t sure what had happened with the waitress, but he was too excited to care. Maybe she’d thought he was flirting with her and it had gone too far. Regardless, he needed to get out of there anyway. Now that he’d come clean to Lopez and had bought some time, Clive thought he might actually be able to get some sleep. He took out his wallet and laid a ten on top of the check.

  “Keep it.”

  The waitress reached for it, almost cautiously, and then furtively stuffed the check and the bill into her apron. She started to go, but then quickly turned back to him. Her voice was hushed.

  “I were you, mister, I’d be careful.”

  Clive leaned forward so he could hear her better.

  “Careful? Of what?”

  The waitress pursed her lips. Clive watched her twist her wedding band around on her finger. Finally, she cast her eyes down and whispered again.

  “You know. Her.”

  RAMEY DIDN’T look up as the front door opened and banged shut behind her. She raised the beer bottle over her head and her fingers touched Judah’s as he took it from her.

  “I’d get you a whiskey, but something happened to the bottle.”

  Judah sat down next to her on the front porch steps. Ramey watched him take a sip and then rub the sweating bottle back and forth across his forehead.

  “I tell you. I could’ve done without today.”

  Ramey looked away. The moon was bright and fully overhead now, and she could see the leaves of the two live oaks in the yard twinkling as a low breeze rustled them. A whippoorwill called out, lonely and searching. Judah tapped her elbow with the bottle, but she shook her head wearily.

  “You and me both.”

  Judah drained the beer and dangled it from his fingers between his knees. Ramey watched the moonlight glinting off the curve of the bottle’s neck before picking up her pack of cigarettes. One left. It seemed a fitting way to end the day. She lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply and passed it to Judah. He seemed distracted as he smoked.

  “An ATF agent at the door. A dead man in the shed.”

  Ramey nodded slowly.

  “And Weaver.”

  She folded her arms on her knees and rested her chin on her right wrist. It was hard to look at Judah. He had only briefly recounted his meeting with Weaver, filling her in on the basics. That Weaver couldn’t get give two shits about Nash
. That it had seemed like Nash was lying in the first place about Weaver wanting the Cannons’ business. Judah had been evasive, though, when she asked about whether or not he thought Weaver was a danger to them. His eyes had shifted. Ramey had known he was exhausted, riding home on the burn-out fumes of an adrenaline rush, but it was more than that. Something had happened in that bar between him and Weaver. Something he probably couldn’t have explained to her, even if he had wanted to. But she knew it was there. Ramey knew that the man sitting next to her now was not the same man she had watched drive away that morning.

  Judah passed the cigarette back to her and kicked his feet out onto the steps.

  “You think Benji killed Nash to prove something to me?”

  Ramey glanced over at Judah and realized that their thoughts were going in two completely different directions. She took a drag on the cigarette and raised her face to blow the smoke up into the night.

  “Honestly? I got no idea. I don’t know why any of this is happening.”

  Judah nudged her shoulder.

  “Hey now. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She glared at him.

  “It means, we’re in shit up to our elbows.”

  Judah shook his head more emphatically than he needed to. Ramey ground her teeth. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was Judah attempting to placate her. It was insulting as hell. Judah’s voice was gentle, but firm. Like he was talking to a child.

  “No. No, that’s not true. Nothing’s changed.”

  Ramey rolled her eyes and looked away from him.

  “You really gonna keep trying that line with me?”

  “Ramey…”

  She bit her bottom lip before spitting out the words.

  “You just had to go and kick that hornet’s nest. You just had to.”

  Ramey felt his hand on her shoulder. She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “Are you talking about Weaver? Ramey, I had to know what was what with him. I had to know what we were dealing with.”

  “Sure.”

  “Ramey.”

  Judah gripped her arm and she turned to him sharply. His voice was low, strained, and he didn’t let go of her.

  “Everything I’m doing here, I’m doing for us. For our future. So we can step out of Sherwood’s shadow and leave all that bullshit behind. So we can start new. Have a different life. An honest life. In a world where the Cannons are an honest family. You need to believe that.”

  Ramey looked down at his hand on her. She could feel the tension coursing through it.

  “Oh, I do. All except that last part.”

  Judah let go of her and stood up. He stepped to the dewy ground and then turned to look at her. His shoulders were curving inward, his hands shoved deep down into his pockets. Almost as if he were protecting himself from her.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Ramey slowly shook her head.

  “Judah, I don’t know where you’re taking us. But I know it’s not to the place we talked about before. You keep thinking you’re digging us out, but really you’re just making the hole deeper. So deep, we can’t even look up and see daylight.”

  Judah’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  “Sometimes you gotta do things you don’t want to do, to get to where you want to be. You, of all people, should know that.”

  Ramey jerked her head up.

  “Yeah, but, Judah, I look in your eyes and I don’t see a man balking at doing what needs to be done. Or even a man wrestling with it, confused about what he wants. Not anymore, at least. I think you know exactly what you want. And it ain’t getting out of this life. It’s going all in. Something happened tonight, with Weaver, and all the chips got pushed to the center of the table.”

  Judah scowled at her, but quickly looked away.

  “It’s not like that.”

  Ramey stood up. Her cigarette had gone out and she flung it over the porch railing.

  “Listen. You want to keep lying to yourself, you go right on ahead. But don’t you dare lie to me. Don’t you dare. You’re giving up on everything, everything we had a shot at, you and me. Just you and me. So at least be straight with me about what you’re doing. About what you want.”

  Beneath her, Judah flung his arms out to the side.

  “And just what is it that I want, huh? What do you think I want?”

  Ramey looked down at him coolly. Her voice didn’t waver for a moment.

  “You want to be king of the mountain. You want to walk in the fire and not be burned.”

  It didn’t take Clive long to discover why Sister Tulah wanted all that land. He’d spent more time trying to convince the prune-faced librarian behind the desk of the Bradford County Public Library to let him use a computer. First there was the skeptical, you’re-not-from-around-here-are-you look that he’d already gotten used to, and then a flare of hostility, which he’d also come to expect. The woman, picking at her front teeth with the edge of a plastic bookmark all the while, had then gone to the trouble of hauling out the library’s policy handbook and reading him the entire section on issuing cards, just to make it clear why she wouldn’t give him one. No residency, no card. No card, no computer time. The woman had folded her sinewy arms and shaken her head adamantly. Clive had been forced to use the one means of communication that he knew worked with these people. He had taken out his badge. The librarian had begrudgingly allowed him a computer.

  Sitting in a blue plastic chair designed for kindergarteners and fielding suspicious looks from the library’s only other patron, a man in a battered fishing hat with a stack of Reader’s Digests on his lap, Clive had begun to fit the pieces together. The swath of land Tulah had amassed in western Bradford County appeared blank on the map, but was brimming with riches fifteen feet beneath the soil. Phosphate.

  He’d had to look outside of Bradford County to find out about it, though. There was no mention of a potential phosphate mine anywhere in the Bradford County Telegraph. A tiny write-up at the bottom of page four in the Lake Region Monitor had given him his first clue, and then he’d started sifting through the archives of the Florida Times Union. The Jacksonville-based newspaper, reporting on more than the Restaurant of the Week and Senior Shout Outs, had given him the first solid evidence he’d yet encountered:

  PRB Industries Considers Mine Operation in West Bradford County

  The article was dated from 2006, about six months after Tulah had snapped up the first parcel of land in the area. There was an opinion piece on the controversy over phosphate mining in Florida, dated a year later, and then two more articles, specifically relevant to the mine proposal in Bradford County.

  Despite Previous Opposition, Bradford County Board of County Commissioners Unanimously Approves Mine

  Bradford Mine Permits Denied by State, PRB Industries Moves On

  Clive clicked his pen and slumped against the back of the springy, plastic chair. It made sense. If the mine had been established, Sister Tulah would have been set to make a fortune by leasing the mineral rights to Peace River Basin Industries. He marveled at Tulah’s ingenuity for a moment, but then the voice of Lopez crept into his brain. So what? Why did it matter? Where was the crime? Clive drummed his fingers on the edge of the table as he looked over his notes. The man in the fishing hat coughed loudly from across the library. He had discarded the Reader’s Digests and was now flapping open a week old copy of The Bradford County Telegraph. He eyed Clive over the top of the newspaper and cleared his phlegmy throat again. Clive stilled his hand, but seeing a physical copy of the paper sparked something for him. If the mining deal had gone through, it would have the biggest thing to ever happen in Bradford County. Yet, there wasn’t a single mention of it in the county’s only daily newspaper. He searched the Telegraph’s website archives again for mining, phosphate, PRB, but still there was nothing. He tossed his pen down in frustration, trying to think.

  There was another issue needling him, too. He could understand why Tulah’s
followers at the Last Steps Church were willing to sell their land to her at ten dollars a parcel, but what about the others? Clive groaned as he flipped back through his notebook for the long list of names he’d put together. He would have to do some serious digging. He looked up at the laminated sign posted above the row of three computers. 1 Hour Time Limit. This is the RULE! Clive glanced across the room to the librarian who was viciously jabbing pencils into a plastic cup on the counter. If only his laptop internet hotspot would work; if only there was one single place within a twenty-mile radius that had Wi-Fi. Clive turned back to the computer, its struggling hard drive buzzing and sputtering away. Once, Clive had been in the position to pull out his badge and intimidate street thugs and drug lords. Now, he was using it to bully the local librarian. Clive sighed and slipped his wallet out of his jacket pocket. He opened it and propped his badge up next to the keyboard, where the librarian, or anyone else who wanted to bother him, could see it. He loosened his tie, clicked all the way back to 2006 and got down to business.

  Slowly and painstakingly, with the newspaper headlines speaking for themselves, Clive pieced the puzzle together:

  Daughter of County Manager, Presumed Kidnapped, Found Unharmed at Revival

  Car Dealership Blaze Ruled Accident by Fire Marshal

  Church Gifts Hospital New Equipment

  Sheriff Admits Falling Asleep at Wheel, Driving Into Santa Fe River

  Board of Commissioners Vote on Zoning Results in Turn-Around Decision

  Kentsville Prayers Answered, Night Assaults at Pine Landing Cease

  At first, Clive couldn’t believe it. But the deeper he went, the more complete the picture became. He had been right; Sister Tulah didn’t just intimidate the residents of Bradford County, she owned them. There was a pattern of extortion, sometimes violent, sometimes only menacing, that dated back at least fifteen years. Of course, Clive couldn’t prove anything, but there were too many accidents, too many decisions changed, too many outcomes that just didn’t add up for strings not to be pulled, for coercion and manipulation not to exist. If he was right, then Sister Tulah had the most important men of the county either in her pocket or at her mercy. It was no wonder everyone had sold their land to Tulah. No wonder they were all terrified of her. Clive reached for his cellphone. It was a textbook RICO case: a sprawling web of blackmail, bribery and racketeering, even if it was run by a grandma preacher in a flowered dress. Lopez was going to shit herself.