by Ninie Hammon
It stops here, now.
On Monday, Circuit Judge Earl Compton dissolved the county’s jury pool and ordered the clerk’s office to compile another one, to randomly pick another 300 names. From that list, a new grand jury will be selected and it will convene August 25. Those 12 people—you, your friends, your neighbors—will determine who owns this county, the dopers or its citizens.
But be forewarned. If this jury pool rolls over and plays dead for the marijuana growers just like the last one did—game over. The law enforcement officers who have sworn to protect this county will declare judicial martial law. They’ll turn their cases over to federal marshals and the U.S. District Court in Louisville will prosecute.
If federal charges, a federal grand jury and federal trials are what it takes to clean up this county, to protect all the other innocent Maggie Mae Davises who live here, then that’s the way it’s going to go down.
It’s up to you, Callison County. Don’t let it come to that.
Around midnight, somebody threw a brick though the picture window of the newspaper office. Chief Cochran called Sarabeth and told her about it. She went to the office, duct-taped cardboard over the hole and swept up the mess. When she went back out to get into her car, all four tires had been slashed. So had the tires on the Trib’s delivery van. She walked the three blocks back to her house and fell into the bed exhausted. Shortly before dawn, after the third prank call, Sarabeth rolled over, took the receiver off the hook, stuck it into the top drawer of the nightstand and closed the drawer.
Sonny had invited Ben and Sarabeth to go to church with him Sunday morning. They’d planned to go but decided instead to stay home and clean off the obscenities somebody had spray-painted on the sidewalk in front of their house.
All of that paled, however, in comparison to what happened in the second floor, corner cell in the Callison County Jail sometime Sunday night.
Ben had just come out of the darkroom Monday morning when Jonas burst in the front door of the newspaper office.
“Your police scanner workin’?”
Sarabeth glanced at the black box that lived on top of the filing cabinet. All the lights were dark. She’d forgotten to turn it on when she got into the office that morning.
“You need to get your butt over to the jail,” Jonas said. “I just passed by there and something’s going on.”
She grabbed her camera and ran the two blocks to the jail with Ben on her heels. Somehow she knew, even before she got there, she knew. After she shoved her way through the crowd, an officer waved her past the police perimeter. Detective Hayes had just stepped aside to let an ambulance crew and two rescue squad members pass by when he saw her.
“What happened?”
“Doodlebug’s dead. Hanged himself in his cell last night.”
“Hanged himself? How?”
“Used his belt.”
“He had a belt? A depressed guy who’s been telling anybody who’d listen that he wants to die had a belt?”
“Jailer swore Doodlebug wasn’t wearing one.” Hayes’ voice was tight and controlled. “Said he’d have confiscated it if he’d had one.” The tall, thin detective squinted into the morning sun and laughed mirthlessly. “But the jailer didn’t actually watch Doodlebug change into the clean clothes his uncle brought him when he first got busted. Now, he’s saying Doodlebug’s belly hung down over the top of his pants so far he couldn’t tell if he had on a belt or not.”
The jailer saw Sarabeth talking to the detective and marched over indignantly.
“You tell that nosey newspaper lady the way it really was? Don’t you make it sound like this was my fault! You was in here last night talking to him; did you see a belt?”
Hayes didn’t answer, just reached up and brushed his flaxen hair off his brow. But the jailer hammered away. “Did you? Come on now, could you see a belt on that man?”
Finally, the detective shook his head sadly. “No, I didn’t see a belt on Doodlebug. I couldn’t see the top of his pants at all.”
“See!” The jailer fairly squealed in triumph. “See, I told you!” He sneered at Sarbeth, then turned to trumpet his vindication to the rest of the crowd. “I can’t help it if a guy’s so fat I can’t tell if he’s wearing a belt or not.”
Sarabeth tuned out the rest of the jailer’s rant and walked toward the first floor holding area. When she noticed that it was momentarily empty, she stepped inside, turned to Ben and put her finger to her lips. If she asked permission to be there, the jailer would most assuredly say no and she had no right of access without his approval. So she didn’t ask. She just walked confidently up the steps to the second floor and around the back to Doodlebug’s cell. It was the only functioning one on the second floor of the ancient, three-story facility. The barred doors of the other four cells had been piled against the wall so the cells could be upgraded to bring them into compliance with the ever-changing codes of the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
Doodlebug hung right in front of the cell door. The deputy jailer, two EMTs and two rescue squad members were so intent on figuring out how to get the big man down that they didn’t notice Sarabeth standing quietly off to the side.
She slowly lifted her camera, wishing she had one of the newer “silent shutter” models that wouldn’t announce her presence with an annoying “click-click.” She’d just have to hope they were so far away they couldn’t hear it.
Through the view finder of her wide-angle lens, she saw Doodlebug dangling above the floor beside an overturned chair. His face was black, his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth. His belt was wrapped around his neck and then looped around a 6-inch metal pipe that ran crossways across the ceiling of his cell.
The belt was barely long enough to reach over the pipe and around the big man’s neck. Unless he snapped his neck when he stepped off the chair, and it didn’t look like he fell far enough to do that, Doodlebug must have strangled to death.
Three men took hold of Doodlebug’s body and grunted as they lifted it up a few inches to take the weight off the belt so the EMT could unfasten it from around the pipe. Sarabeth fired frame after frame. Most of what she shot was too gruesome to use, but she was on autopilot: shoot it all and figure out later what you can actually publish.
One of the EMTs had dragged the cell’s other chair over to the dangling body, and was standing on it on his tiptoes to reach up above the pipe where the belt was buckled. There was only a couple of inches of clearance between the ceiling and the pipe, and he struggled to fit his fingers into the small space to unfasten the clasp.
His grunting and complaining kept everyone’s attention focused away from Sarabeth. She quietly slipped the 30 mm wide-angle off the camera and replaced it with a 120mm close-up lens. But she only fired a couple of frames, got the EMT and the grimace of effort on his face—that was a shot she could use—when the deputy jailer spotted her standing there. He gave her a hostile look and cocked his thumb toward the door in a get-out gesture.
As she walked down the street with Ben, she rewound the film and handed him the cassette.
“Process this as soon as we get back to the office. I know the shot I want you to print. The rest are … ”
She didn’t say, “Doodlebug, dead.” She also didn’t say, “As dead as the indictment against Bubba Jamison.”
• • • • •
Bubba held The Callison County Tribune out a little further from his face to get the print into focus; the big man wasn’t about to admit he needed glasses.
Those 300 Callison County residents will determine who owns this county—the dopers or its citizens.
He read the words again, the editorial written by that meddling newspaper editor who was turning out to be even more troublesome than her father. What she’d written made Bubba so angry he wanted to tear the newspaper page into little pieces. But he didn’t do that. He wanted to tear Sarabeth Bingham into little pieces, too, and he didn’t do that either. He couldn’t.
If the nosey ed
itor turned up dead, all hell would break loose in Callison County, and the last thing he needed was a martyr for the cause, somebody the bleeding hearts could point to and scare the county into believing that dope-growing really was dangerous, that maybe they better do something about it.
He didn’t need Sarabeth dead. What he needed was Sarabeth distracted. He needed her discredited. He needed to make sure folks didn’t start listening to her. And he needed to teach her a lesson.
He put the newspaper down on the table, picked up the pistol and hollered for Jake.
When Jake heard his father call his name, his skin crawled.
He quickly slid the pamphlets he was reading under the mattress of his bed, pasted a smile on his face and went downstairs. His father was seated at the big kitchen table made of rough-hewn wood to match the hand-made cabinets. He had a gun in his hand. Bubba loved guns, any kind, had dozens of them around the house, in drawers or in gun cases. But this one was different. It was a small revolver with a broken handle. A pile of used duct tape that Bubba’d obviously just removed from the handle lay on the table and he was struggling to fit the broken pieces together and wind black electrician’s tape around them.
Bubba gestured for Jake to sit down, then placed the gun in the boy’s hands. “Hold this right here and push them two pieces together.”
Jake lined up the edges of the broken handle pieces.
“Yeah, like that, don’t let it slip, now.”
Jake held firm; Bubba ripped off a piece of tape and began to wrap it slowly around the handle.
“Saw Coach Morgan in the bank this morning, said the team sure wasn’t gonna be the same this fall ’thout you and Ben out there makin’ plays—hold it still, dang it! I’m trying to tape it!”
Jake concentrated on holding the two pieces of broken handle tight together. Were his hands shaking?
“Said he sure was gonna miss you two.” Bubba paused, then continued in the same casual tone. “You didn’t tell me you’d decided not to play football at UK this fall. Didn’t even mention it. Now, why is that?”
Jake was profoundly grateful he had something to focus on so he didn’t have to look his father in the eye.
“I didn’t think you cared one way or the other about football, Daddy. I wasn’t keeping nothing from you, just didn’t think it mattered, that’s all.”
Bubba’s voice was as smooth and cold as the barrel of the gun in Jake’s hand.
“Everything you do matters to me, son. You understand that? Everything. Now you tell me what happened, and don’t leave out nothing.”
Jake swallowed hard.
“There’s not a whole lot to tell, Daddy. I just decided I was tired of it. Football was fun in high school. Ben and me … it was like he could read my mind, knew just when to break, so he’d be a step ahead of the defense when I threw. But going off and playing somewhere else, with a bunch of strangers … ”
“Where’s he going again?”
“University of Southern California. Full-ride academic scholarship. He couldn’t afford to go to school without a scholarship. Even though his father was a coach there, he’s not going out for the team either, not his freshman year ’cause—”
“You’re not plannin’ on goin’ off to California with him, now are you? ’Cause you can think again if you are.”
“No, no, Daddy. I don’t want to go way off somewhere. UK’s just right up the road. That’s good enough for me. I just don’t want to play ball there, that’s all.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Bubba because he shifted gears. He took the gun out of Jake’s hand and continued to wind tape carefully around the hand grip.
“I’m gonna need you and Ben tomorrow. I’m short-handed, so I’m paying time-and-a-half.”
Jake and Ben had worked as farm hands for Bubba all summer—setting tobacco in the spring, weeding it, taking care of his livestock, cutting hay and most recently housing tobacco. Jake only did it because Ben needed the money. Legitimate work for fair wages; Bubba’d never let Jake near his marijuana business.
“Time-and-a-half? Sure! Ben can use the extra money and he doesn’t have much time left to work. We’ll both be gone in a couple of weeks.” Jake hoped his voice didn’t betray the absolute delight those words kindled in his heart. “You need us to finish up that field off Landry Road?”
“Nope. It’s a smaller field, barn’s kinda hard to get to. You can ride out there with the rest of the crew. Go by and get Ben and meet Skeeter Rogers at Squire Boone’s Tavern at noon.”
“At noon? Why so late? By noon, it’ll be hotter than a firecracker lit at both ends.”
Jake never even saw it coming. One minute he was sitting in the chair, the next minute he was on his back on the floor, the whole left side of his face an explosion of pain.
“Don’t you question me, boy,” Bubba said with quiet menace. He’d slammed his fist into his son’s face without even getting out of his chair. When Bubba got angry, his thick brows knit together in a deep crease at the bridge of his nose and unfathomable depths of cruelty glowed like twin red coals in eyes as black as midnight. Bubba Jamison mad was a thundering menace no man had ever faced down. “Don’t you ever question me, hear. You think you’re all grown up. Think you know mor’n your Daddy knows. Well, you’re wrong, son. Way wrong.”
Jake got slowly to his feet, his cheek throbbing, his eye swelling like a little kid with a wad of gum blowing a bubble.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it, Daddy.” The movement of speech made his face hurt worse. “I’m sorry. Squire Boone’s at noon. I got it.”
Bubba merely nodded, so Jake turned and started out the door.
“You need to know I been thinkin’ about you goin’ off to college.” Jake stopped, frozen, his back to his father. “I ain’t made up my mind ’bout that yet. Just so you know.”
Then Bubba returned his attention to the gun. Even with his back turned, Jake felt the connection break and somehow managed to walk out of the room in spite of the gigantic hole that had opened up in his midsection, a void so vast he could actually feel a chill wind whistle in one side and out the other.
• • • • •
Kelsey Reynolds stood in the doorway of the loft bedroom, slowly, mechanically buttoning her blouse as she looked down on the back-to-school party below. The music was loud. Billy Ocean wailed “Get out of my dreams, get into my car,” and the rhythm beat in time with the hammering of her headache.
She watched the two dozen teenagers talking and dancing, smoking weed, drinking beer and sniffing coke. It was like looking at colorful tropical fish swimming in a tank, in a world totally separate from hers, a place so alien she couldn’t survive there, a universe where she couldn’t breathe.
Raucous laughter drifted up to her from first one group of kids and then another and she wondered enviously what was so funny.
Kelsey wasn’t altogether certain whose fishing cabin this was. Robbie’s maybe, or Jason’s. She may have known at one time, but she couldn’t remember anymore.
She remembered leaving her house that night, though, running out the door with her father’s voice in her ears, shouting at her to come back, that he wanted to talk to her.
Yeah, right, Daddy. Let’s talk.
She’d been getting ready, piling her spiral-curled hair high on her head and fitting her shoulder-length earrings in her ears when he’d come into her bedroom to question where she was going, who she was going with. Then he’d launched into his favorite sermonette about having the “right kind of friends” and not “growing up too fast.”
“I’m in a hurry, Daddy. Could we just cut to the chase? Is this the you-tell-me-how-to-live-my-life part or the I-pretend-I’m-listening part?”
He had looked so hurt that for a moment, she’d wanted him to smile and put his arms around her and make her giggle with silly noises and funny faces. But the little girl who knew how to laugh didn’t exist anymore.
When Kelsey was 13, she had become achingly, painfully shy. Ov
ernight, the outgoing child had turned into a scared, insecure adolescent.
The teenagers around her seemed to have it all together and they’d cut a path around suddenly-shy Kelsey wide enough to drive a sperm whale through. And then she’d figured out the secret and everything changed. Everyone liked her. Everyone wanted to be her friend. Everyone invited her to their parties and their raft trips and their ski weekends.
Oh, but Kelsey—bring drugs! If you don’t bring drugs, don’t come.
Oh, and Kelsey—put out. Take your clothes off and let the boys put their hands all over you and hurt you in ways and places no one ever told you about.
That’s when she began to seek the savage embrace of sharp razor blades. Their sweet release was the only way she could cope with the pressure.
She didn’t even know on a conscious level how furious she was that when she so desperately needed her father, Daddy had been cruising along in his Dope Mobile, throwing money on all the bumps in the road like those thin little bills could actually soften the blows when you slammed down into ruts and bounced up over jagged rocks. He had let money so blind him he couldn’t see his own daughter, and Mama had let drugs so blind her she couldn’t see anything at all. Kelsey didn’t know that repressed rage was the mother of depression. But she did know that at age 15 she didn’t care anymore whether she lived or died.
“You don’t need to bother buttoning that up,” whispered the boy standing behind her. He was tucking in his shirt as he came out of the bedroom, the tangle of sheets on the bed behind him still damp from their sweat. He cocked his head toward the bottom of the stairs. Another boy was standing there grinning, starting to come up.
Kelsey stopped buttoning her blouse. The other boy blew by her and into the bedroom and was sitting on the bed taking his shoes off when she turned around. So she merely unbuttoned the buttons she’d already fastened, stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
Chapter 18
Billy Ocean wailed from the stereo and dancing teenagers gyrated around her. Jennifer Jamison wasn’t dancing. She sat on the couch, looking up at the loft, watching Kelsey Reynolds walk into the bedroom where Jason was waiting for her.