“Thank God for air conditioning,” J.D. muttered as he looked out the window.
Brownwood was announced by a few billboards, advertising motels, service stations, a McDonalds and a couple of churches.
As they approached the town, J.D. said, “There it is.” He pointed to a feed store to the right of the highway. Jack parked, and they got out of the pickup. “Must be a hundred and ten in the shade.”
J.D. pointed to a thermometer on the building as they climbed the steps. “You should have been a weatherman. The thermometer registers one hundred and nine.”
The sign over the door read “Johnny and Don’s.” Little more than an oversized shack, the store smelled of hay and horse feed, the two main products sold by Johnny and Don. The walls were covered with saddles, bridles, reins, cowboy hats and an assortment of gimmie caps. What little light that filtered in came from the front door and a back bay where customers could load their pickups.
A man, wearing overalls with no shirt came from a side room, pushing a dolly loaded with dog food. “Just a minute, gentlemen. I’ll be right with you.”
He pushed the dolly over to a wall where there was other dog and cat food and left it. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’m Johnny. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Name’s Jackson Bryant. This is my son, J.D. We’re from Fort Worth and are following up on a series of violent deaths in connection with some attempted murders in Fort Worth. Victor Henry worked here a while back, didn’t he?”
“Yep, he sure did. Was a good hand. Me and Don hated to lose him. Hold on a minute. I need to grab a bottle of cold water. You two want one, just fifty cents apiece?”
Jack nodded his agreement. Johnny stepped to a refrigerator behind the counter and withdrew three bottles, handing one each to Jack and J.D. Jack handed him a dollar.
“Boy, I tell you what,” Johnny continued, “This here is about the hottest summer I’ve ever been through. What do you want to know about Victor?”
“Start from the beginning,” Jack said.
“Well, he showed up here one day on his Harley. Said he had been a counterman at a Ford dealership in Abilene. He got to work one day and found it was closed. He’d been riding all over this part of the country looking for work. I can tell you gentlemen that jobs are hard to find these days. We’d just put up a sign looking for a hand. Only paid minimum wage, but he took it.”
“What can you tell us about his death?”
“Not much more than what was in the paper. Well, one of our deputies is a customer of mine so he filled in a few details. See, Victor was a church-going man. He went to Wednesday night prayer meeting at the Baptist church just down the road here. He usually stopped for a bite at the Dairy Queen before church and then he’d ride home afterward. One Thursday morning he didn’t show up for work. Not like Victor. I drove out to his house. He didn’t have a phone. His Harley was parked in the driveway. I went in the back door. He always left it open, you see. He was a neat man, always washed his dishes and made his bed before he went to work. His garden tools were lined up just so on the back porch. I looked around. No sign of him. I called the sheriff and went back to work. Two, three hours later they found his body in the shallow end of the lake, almost under the bridge.”
Jack took a long sip from his water and the other two men did the same. “Any guesses as to what happened?”
“Oh, yeah. My friend told me that he had marks on his neck like someone strangled him. They never caught nobody, though.”
“Anyone ever figure out why his Harley was back at his house?”
“Nope. That’s part of the puzzle.”
“You know the name of the Ford dealer where he worked before?”
“Hang on a minute.” Johnny walked to a table behind the counter. “I’m not much on filing,” he said as he rummaged through some piles of paper on the table. “There it is.” He held up a manila folder with two sheets of paper in it. “His file folder says he was last employed with Cowhand Ford in Abilene. I got a note here, saying I tried to call to get a reference, but the message said they were closed. Now unless you gentlemen want to buy a few bales of hay, I best get back to work.”
Jack thanked him for his time and they headed back to Fort Worth.
“What do you make of the fact that two of the victims were former employees of car dealerships?”
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, you can add Willie and Colby to those two. They worked for a car dealership, too.
61
J.D. got up in response to a knock at the RV door. He found Willie, Jr. at the bottom of the steps, a basket full of beans, peas, potatoes, onions, corn, squash and okra at his feet. “Morning, Mr. J.D.”
“Wait, wait, Willie. I’m younger than you. If you want to call my dad ‘Mr. Jack,’ that’s between you and him. You call me J.D. and I’ll call you Willie, okay?”
Willie looked down at the ground and kinda shuffled one foot around. “I was brought up to treat white folks with respect, that’s all.”
“Willie, times have changed. This isn’t the Old South. You’re my equal, understand?”
Willie nodded. “I brought you that stuff from my mom. It’s in the truck. And these vegetables are for your dad.”
J.D. stepped down to pick up the basket. “You tell your mama we appreciate her kindness. Now, go get that box and then come in for a cup of coffee or some water.”
J.D. sat the vegetables on the kitchen counter.
“Looks like we’ll have some good eating for a few days,” Jack said. “Bet you could shuck that corn and it would be so sweet you could eat it raw.”
Willie returned to the top of the steps with a box of papers and documents. “Mama says this is the stuff you were asking about.”
Jack got up to face Willie. “Thanks, now how about joining us for a cup of coffee?”
Willie looked down at the floor. “Mighty kind of you sir, but I can’t stay. Got work to do.” He turned and left the trailer.
“He didn’t really have that much work, did he, Dad? He just wouldn’t have felt comfortable making small talk with us.”
“You’re right, Son. Old habits die hard. Now, let’s see what’s in this box.”
Jack started picking things out, then decided just to dump the contents on the table. “That’s more than I expected. We’re going to have to go through every piece of paper, looking for anything that might look like Willie’s writing. We have plenty of examples of June’s; so we should be able to eliminate hers pretty easily. Might as well get started.”
Father and son sat at the table and started what Jack called a once-over-lightly, just to get an idea about the scope of the documents. After half an hour, Jack paused. “Son, you start two-a-days next week, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I’m raring to go.”
“I’ve been thinking. Let’s shut down the RV and head for the house. I have an idea that will get Colby involved on these documents. I want to put you on a different project that maybe you can finish before summer camp starts.”
J.D. looked puzzled. “You care to enlighten me?”
“Save it for the house,” Jack said. “That way I won’t have to say it twice.”
62
Colby was sitting in the back yard, clad in white shorts and a yellow halter top when the two men came around the corner and parked Lucille. A pitcher of ice tea was on the table beside her cell phone. She got up to greet them. “I’m giving you fair warning. I’m liking being a kept woman. This lifestyle can be addictive. My cell hasn’t rung once this morning. I did go over to the nursing home to check on Rob. The ulcer is nearly gone, thank God. I think my tantrum got their attention.”
J.D. opened the back door of the quad cab and hauled out the box and set it on the patio table.
“See that,” Jack said. “We’re about to put you to work.”
“Well, before I decide if I’m going to accept whatever this project is, let me go inside and get t
wo more tea glasses.”
When they were settled around the table, Jack said. “Here’s the deal. I told you last night that Leyton had subpoenaed any document that might have Willie’s signature on it. Willie, Jr. dropped this box by the RV. Supposedly it has at least twenty-five years of cancelled checks, maybe some tax returns and a bunch of wall calendars. We’re going to have to produce all of this stuff, but I want to know what the problem documents are before we do so. I’ve got an expert waiting to examine anything that appears to be Willie’s writing. I want to send him the originals first and once we get the lay of the land, we’ll make copies and send them to Leyton.”
Colby took a sip of her tea. “And what is it you want me to do?”
“I’m going to leave the bank records with you. Then after lunch, I’ll take the rest of the stuff back down to the RV. I’ll review my part there. I’ve got a little bit of a guilty conscience since I haven’t been around enough lately for my pro bono clients.”
Colby nodded her agreement. “Got it. Only what does that leave for our big, smart football player to do?”
“I was just about to get to that. As you know, J.D. and I have been on road trips, looking for connections to some violent deaths and the attempts on your life. We could get on the phone, but I figured that we’re going to get more information with boots on the ground than we would by talking to someone on the phone. People, particularly law enforcement officers, are more likely to open up if they are face to face with us. Problem is that we still have fifty-five to go and they’re scattered over North Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. It could take us two months to hit all of those towns. I’ve come up with a better idea.”
“Go on,” Colby said. “I’m all ears.”
“J.D.’s a computer major. He’s told me that except for his combat tours, he had a lot of free time and used it to learn as much about computers as he could. Now he’s added a year of computer science to what he already knew. I want him to hole up in his room this week and start using the internet to look for any connections that might give us a clue about these murders.”
“That means I’ve got about five days before I report,” J.D. said. “I better get upstairs and get to work. Where do you want me to start?”
“We’ve got names, social security numbers and driver’s license numbers on these other victims. You can take that information and dive into their backgrounds, spouses, kids, addresses, employers. I’ll bet on most of them you can create a biography that takes them back to the womb. Once you put it all together, we can look for connections or patterns. Hell, we might be dealing with a really smart serial killer who is randomly selecting his victims.”
“Wait a minute,” Colby interrupted. “I’ve read some about serial killers. Don’t they usually choose similar victims usually in the same geographic area and kill the same way with each victim? You know, like on Criminal Minds where the killer chooses young blondes and hangs them in his basement?”
“That’s why I said a really smart serial killer, one who knows he has to vary his victims and how they die. Maybe even spread them out over three states, and in small towns to boot. We may be barking up the wrong tree, but we won’t know until J.D. finishes the project.”
“Here’s a thumb drive with all we know about the victims, Son. Colby and I will work on document production…right after Colby fixes us some sandwiches, right, Colby?”
“Just a woman for all seasons. Give me ten minutes in the kitchen.”
That evening Jack returned home and, after pouring a drink, sat across from Colby at the kitchen table to compare notes.
“My job was pretty easy. She did have about twenty-five years of bank records, but they only wrote a few checks a month, utilities, twice a month trips to the grocery and the occasional check to cash at the bank to get some pocket money. Oh, and once a month a check for their tithe to the church.”
“And I know that they never wrote one to the IRS. When Willie was working, they always got a couple of hundred bucks refund. What about signatures besides June’s?
“I found three checks that were signed by someone besides June.” Colby passed the three checks across the table. “As you can see from the dates, these are in the last few years. The signatures are really nothing more than a scrawl. By the way, I didn’t have a copy of that agreement to compare them to.”
Jack shook his head as he reached for his briefcase. “I must be getting senile. I meant to leave this with you.” He extracted a copy of the agreement along with a magnifying glass. They studied the three checks and compared the signature with the one on the agreement.
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about here,” Colby said as she put down the magnifying glass. “I know from personal experience with my dad before he died that his signature as an old man was nothing similar to what it was when he was younger. You find anything?”
“Yeah, we may have a problem with a couple of the tax returns. Take a look.”
Jack showed her the signatures. Colby studied them and compared them to the agreement, then picked up the magnifying glass.
“I can see a few differences, but it’s a close call.”
Jack nodded. “That’s what I have my man in Palestine for. I think he’ll come through for us, and remember when the case is a widow against a big company, the tie goes to the widow. You heard anything from J.D.?”
“I went up to his room about an hour ago and found him hunched over his computer. He said he’s making slow progress. He asked for two club sandwiches and two Cokes. I took them to him and he started munching on one before I left, never taking his eyes off the screen.”
“Then, I’ll leave him alone. Would you accept an invitation to dinner with a hungry man?”
“Give me two minutes to check my make-up and grab my purse.”
On the way to the RV the next morning Jack dropped a package off at a Fed Ex office for overnight delivery to Jerry Buchanan. The rest of his day was spent with pro bono clients. He followed the same routine for the next two days. When he was driving to the RV on the third day, he got a call.
“Jackson Douglas Bryant?”
“Jerry, what do you have for me?”
“I can tell you that you don’t have any problem with those checks. Signature could have been made by a monkey. The tax returns are problematical. I’ll support your position, but you must know that if the other side had hired me, I could make an equally compelling argument that the signature on the agreement is that of William Davis.”
“That’s kinda what I figured,” Jack said as he stopped beside a police car at a red light. Jack glanced over to see the police officer watching him talk on the phone. Fortunately, “driving and talking” was not against the law yet in Texas, except in school zones. So, Jack merely smiled and waved to the officer as the light changed.
“Jerry, Fed Ex that stuff back to me. As you know, those are the originals and I want to lock them up for safe keeping.”
63
J.D. bounded down the stairs with four days growth of beard, still wearing the same clothes he had on when Jack last saw him. “Dad, Dad, where are you?” he yelled.
“Colby and I are in the cave, just finished watching Red with Bruce Willis and a bunch of other great actors.”
J.D. burst through the door with a stack of papers. “I think I’m on to something. We need a table to work on. Let’s go into the dining room.”
There was just enough daylight coming through the windows that Jack could make out J.D. spreading his bounty on the table. Jack paused to flick on the chandelier.
“You two take a seat and I’ll walk you through this,” J.D. said, excitement erupting in his voice. “I have bunch of Excel spread sheets for each of you. I’ve also got the backup in this stack and on my computer. Skip all the stuff about where these people were born, where they lived, that kind of stuff. Go to the last column on the right where I’ve listed all of their employers from their first job up until the time they died.”
�
��I’m there,” Jack said.
“Go to the second page and look at the yellow highlight on the jobs on victim number 3. See, he worked for a car dealer. Then look at the following numbers.”
Jack and Colby studied the spread sheets, page by page until they got to the end.
“Okay,” Jack said. “We have more dead people who worked for car dealers. This is starting to get interesting.”
“Seventeen, to be exact,” J.D. replied. “Here’s the important part. Every one of those people worked for a dealership owned by Allison Southwest. When you add in Colby and Willie, that makes nineteen.”
“Wait a minute,” Colby objected. “I don’t like being lumped in with a bunch of dead people.” She pinched herself. “Yep, I’m still alive.”
“I get it, J.D. Fantastic job,” Jack said.
“Sorry, but I’m a little slow here,” Colby replied.
“It’s not complicated, Colby, now that J.D. has figured it out. Dwayne Allison puts on a good public façade, but like most car dealers, he must have been struggling financially. We know he had a dead peasant policy on Willie. I’ll bet he’s got them on a bunch of employees and former employees, including you. He’s managing to stay afloat by collecting on some of those policies, using the proceeds to keep some of his creditors away from the door, like my good friend, Beauregard Quillen.”
“Wait just a damn minute,” Colby almost shouted. “Are you saying that Dwayne Allison has been trying to have me killed? I don’t believe that for one minute. I worked for him for eight years. He couldn’t have been a better boss. He promoted me every year. I was making a damn good living and so was my husband. Dwayne Allison is liked by practically everybody in this town. He’s even being talked about for mayor. Hell, every time I run across him, he tries to talk me into coming back to work. No way are you going to convince me he’s a killer.”
Dead Peasants Page 18