by Glenn Trust
Andy’s description had been detailed. It could only match one deputy. It was the deputy Andy had seen and remembered at Ronnie Kupman’s funeral, after the GBI taskforce case. Even though he had been a favorite of the former sheriff, Richard Klineman, he had shouted the loudest for Sandy Davies to run for sheriff. He had been the first to clap him on the back and shake his hand. He was a fraud.
“George.” Sharon looked at him with concern. She knew George Mackey, what he was, what he expected of himself, what he expected of those who put on the uniform. Betraying George Mackey would be a dangerous proposition. Betraying everything he believed in and stood for…everything he was…could be deadly. She knew the look on his face now, had seen it before. She would not want to be Boswell Stimes.
“George,” she repeated. “Take a breath. Calm yourself.”
“I am calm.” He turned his head towards her, speaking softly, eyes blazing. “I am completely calm.
“George.” Sandy’s voice resonated over the speaker. He knew very well what was happening in the car. “George, I want this done right…correctly.”
“I know.”
“The people of Pickham County get their justice. The girls and their families get their justice. That means Stimes comes to trial. He is prosecuted. He pays the penalty for his crimes, publicly. Everyone gets to see it. We owe it to them. We owe it to those girls and their families.” Sandy paused before offering his final thought. “We owe it to ourselves, George.”
“I know.” George nodded calmly, but his face betrayed the emotions raging inside.
Sharon reached a hand out and rested it gently on George’s arm as Sandy ended the call. The Chief Deputy of Pickham County had his orders. He would follow them.
“We have to find the women,” she said. “Find them and we find Stimes and Budroe.”
“I know.” Looking out the window, George clenched the notepad with the names on it, crumpling it as if he would throw it out as trash.
Prying the pad from his hand, Sharon held it up for him. “Here, put this in your pocket. We’re going to need it.”
54. She’s Worth Somethin’
It rolled slowly off the asphalt onto the gravel lot of Banks’ Store, gears grinding. The rusted old pickup squeaked to a stop. Through the dusty, bug-spattered windshield, a ragged man with a dirty gray stubble covering his dirty gray face squinted across the lot and called through the open passenger window.
“Hey, you, boy. C’mere.”
Looking up from the bucket of windshield cleaner he was filling by the gas pump, Andy squinted into the afternoon sun at the truck and stood up straight.
“Boy, I said come over here.” The man’s voice rose as he called out the window, leaning across a young woman in the passenger seat. She shrank out of the way trying to avoid being touched by him.
Turning to Jerome Banks with a bemused smile on his face, he asked, “Did he just call me, boy…twice?”
“I believe he did.” Banks was taking a reading from the pump and noting numbers on a clipboard. He stared across the lot at the rusted old truck. “Ignore him. He ain’t a local, and he ain’t got no business here.”
“No, I think I’m gonna see what he’s got to say.” Smiling, he set the bucket of windshield cleaner between the pumps, placed the squeegee in it and ambled in the direction of the old pickup.
“What’s up?” Andy leaned over looking through the passenger window at the man behind the wheel. A sour, stale odor hovered around the truck’s window, a mixture of sweat, body odor and alcohol. It reminded Andy of the smell around a garbage dump, things decaying.
“Took you long enough to get your ass over here.”
Andy smiled, repeating the question. “What’s up?”
The girl on the passenger side tried to dissolve back into the seat. Wearing old canvass shoes, torn blue jeans and a frayed yellow blouse she was a scarecrow, hollow-eyed, all skin and bones. Whoever she was and whatever her relationship to the man, life was not easy. The look of silent resignation said that, for her, life was just something to endure.
“You’re kinda uppity ain’t ya?”
The smile left Andy’s face. “Say what’s on your mind, or get out of here. Your choice.”
Hesitating, about to say more, the man thought better of it and asked his question. “Lookin’ for a place. I here it’s called Nicks Cove.”
Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Why you looking for Nicks Cove?”
“Don’t reckon that’s none of your business,” the man said glaring at Andy. Turning his head, he spit out the driver’s window, emphasizing that he didn’t have to answer questions from some boy cleaning up at a country store.
Andy looked at the girl. Trembling like a frightened puppy, she wanted to make herself invisible, disappear, and vanish as if she had never existed.
A dirty, claw-like hand reached out and grabbed the girl’s head turning it towards Andy. “She’s pretty, ain’t she? You’d have her, wouldn’t you boy?” The man’s voice lowered. “I hear they take girls at Nicks Cove. Work ‘em. Figure I could leave her there. Have them show her how to do things, work her like them other girls. She’ll be sending the money she gets back home. They’s things we need. She’s gonna help us get ‘em.” Jerking her head around he looked in her face and smiled, lips spread wide revealing yellow teeth. “Yeah, she’s pretty. I’m gonna miss her too.” He winked at Andy. “You’d want her too. I know you would, boy.”
Andy’s face was stone. Fighting back the urge to drag the man from the truck and beat the shit out of him, he said, “There’s no Nicks Cove around here.”
“Fuck there ain’t!” The man’s voice rose. “It’s around here, someplace close. I been told by some of the customers. It’s here. You just don’t want to tell.” Letting go of the girl’s head, he pointed the claw at Andy. “Boy, you best start talkin’. Now.”
Andy nodded and walked around to the driver’s side of the truck. The stench from the pickup rose by a factor of ten as he leaned in towards the man behind the wheel. “You call me that again, and I’ll drag your ass out and pound it into the gravel. You understand?”
Shock and outrage flitted across the man’s face but were quickly replaced by something else. The black man leaning in at him meant what he said. What the hell was the world coming to?
Reading the thought that glimmered in the man’s wide eyes, Andy said, “Don’t know where you been all your life, but things aren’t like they used to be. You best learn it and remember it before you run across someone not as patient as I am.”
The man nodded, swallowing tobacco juice rather than spitting out the window. He might have been ignorant, but there was no way he was going to spit in the direction of the hard-eyed black man leaning towards him.
Resisting the urge to take the man into custody now, and blowing his cover in the process, Andy was forced to consider the other lives at stake. “Turn this truck around and head back home. There ain’t no Nicks Cove, as far as you’re concerned.”
The man nodded, wide eyed. “Didn’t mean no harm. Things is tough is all. She needs to help.” He looked over at her. “She’s pretty. That’s worth somethin’, ain’t it?”
“Get out of here, now.” Spitting the words through clenched teeth, Andy looked the man hard in the eyes. “I find you anywhere around here with that girl and you’re gonna wish you had never crawled out of whatever shithole you came from.”
Gears grinding, the man turned from the gravel onto the road, heading in the direction he had come from. Eyes staring straight ahead, he said nothing more. Taking Andy at his word, he only wanted to be away from there and from the hard-eyed man who didn’t seem to understand his place.
“I need you to do something.” Andy spoke into the cell phone he had pulled from his pocket as the pickup disappeared around a bend.
“You got it. What Andy?” Sheriff Jake Beery was seated beside Rince in the Cessna, happy to have something to do besides stare at the green canopy below.
And
y gave him the tag number of the rusted old pickup and description of the occupants, and detailed the man’s questions about Nicks Cove and his attempt to pimp the girl.
“He was last headed west from here.”
“I’ll have dispatch run 10-28 and 10-29 on the vehicle, see where he lives and if he’s wanted. State Patrol might be able to pick him up before he gets too far. If not we’ll get the GBI to hit him at his home, wherever the hell that is.”
“Thanks, let me know. They make the case, and I’ll testify.”
“Right,” Jake said and added, “Be careful Andy.” The call disconnected.
Turning, Andy saw Jerome Banks standing near.
“You’re some kind of law, ain’t you?”
“Some kind.” Andy shrugged. There was no point in lying. Jerome had heard the conversation with Jake.
“You’re not just a friend of Jake Beery’s are you? You’re workin’ on something, with him.”
Andy looked at Jerome Banks, considering. Banks and his mother had taken him in and treated him like a friend without knowing him or knowing why he was there, except that he was a friend of Jake Beery’s. They were at risk. They deserved an explanation.
Turing to the store, Andy said, “Let’s talk inside.”
55. Agreed
“Where are you?” Bob Shaklee sat in his car in a parking garage near the governor’s office.
“Cruising the back roads of Meacham County. Very scenic.” Sharon spoke. George made notes on the map when he wasn’t staring out the window considering what he might do to Boss Stimes if given the opportunity, and how he might do it.
“I need to talk to George.”
“He’s here. He can hear you on the speaker.”
“This involves you too, Sharon. You should pull over.”
“Hang on.” Scanning, she spotted a gravel road to the right, about a quarter mile ahead. Wheeling the SUV onto it in a cloud of dust, she pulled up a hundred yards or so off the main road and cut the engine. “What’s up, Bob? Why the mystery?”
“I just met with the governor.”
“Okay.” Bob was always meeting with the governor or some other person in high places. He was good at it. Sharon was not. “So why is that news?”
George looked at Sharon, both waiting to hear what Bob’s big news was. When he called like this, it was either really good, or really bad. He had their attention.
Several seconds passed as Shaklee tried to come up with the best way to start the conversation. Several seconds were enough for Sharon to lose patience. She was about to speak when Shaklee beat her to it.
“We are being investigated,” Bob said, deciding to take the direct approach.
Okay, so it was really bad, George thought. “Say it, Bob. What’s going on?”
Reviewing his conversation with the governor, Shaklee told them of Attorney General Colton Swain’s impending review and investigation of Bob and George and the shooting of the killer in the north Georgia mountains. They listened without comment.
“Why now?” George asked when Bob’s briefing concluded.
“It seems that he had a meeting with a friend of ours,” Shaklee said, the distaste in the words he spoke evident in his voice. “Former Sheriff Richard Klineman went to see him.”
“That son of a bitch!” Sharon’s anger was immediate.
George stared out through the windshield. “I thought it would come to this, some day.” A breeze rustled the trees blowing a buzzing grasshopper by the truck. White-faced and gray, a possum emerged from the woods, looking curiously at the SUV, watching George through the window and testing the air with his nose alert to a scent, a threat. After a few seconds, it put its tail on the ground and scurried across the road. “I just didn’t think it would be now.”
“It’s political,” Bob said.
“Yeah, not too hard to figure that out.” Sharon’s voice was calmer, the anger buried just below the surface. “Swain wants to go up against Bell in the next election. Klineman wants his job back in Pickham County. They ruin Bell’s credibility because his appointed Director of OSI allegedly covered up a bad shooting and at the same time prosecute the chief deputy of Pickham County for the shooting. They kill two birds with one stone.”
“Well,” Bob interjected, “It’s not a done deal. There is plenty of justification for what happened. The public will be on George’s side. They may try to make political hay out of it, but the outcome for them…and for us…is uncertain. It is not a slam dunk either way.”
“Stop.” George’s voice was calm. His face showed that he was far away, in the mountains in the woods, facing the killer again. “I know what I did. I accept it. I do not regret it.” He spoke quietly, a man whose past had come back to haunt him, ready to follow the path into the future where it led.
Sharon turned to him. “There was an investigation, George. You were exonerated. There was no evidence to the contrary.”
George looked her in the eyes. The usual look of determination and strength was replaced by tenderness. “I know, Sharon.” He nodded his eyes never leaving hers. “And I know what happened in those woods. I’m the only one who truly does know.” He took her hand tenderly in his. “What happens, happens. I won’t run from it. I won’t have it haunt us the rest of our lives.”
“It may not come to that,” Bob said, knowing it was time to put some perspective on things.
Clinging to George’s big hand, Sharon looked at the phone on the console between them. “What do you mean?”
“We…you…George, all of us are working on something important. It is the kind of case that can change things…many things. It can make people forget past events, or at least put them in perspective so that the good outweighs the bad.”
George interrupted abruptly. “I won’t use this investigation to save my ass.”
“Not asking you to, George. Solve the case. That’s all.” Bob let that sink in and added, “The rest will take care of itself.”
Silence filled the car as they considered Bob’s words. Finally, George spoke. “I don’t want Andy to know.” Sharon looked at him, questions in her eyes. “About the investigation, Swain, Klineman, solving the case. He can’t know any of it.”
“Why, George?” Bob asked. “Andy is part of the team. Seems like he should know.”
“Andy will try to push things, do something he shouldn’t. Take a risk he shouldn’t. He is exposed and alone. Budroe is dangerous.”
“I see your point. Not sure I agree, but I understand the concern for Andy.”
There’s something else, Bob. Something you need to know.”
“What’s that?” Shaklee was wondering if there was going to be any good news this day.
“There’s a Pickham County deputy involved with Budroe, doing the strong-arm stuff. Name is Boswell Stimes, goes by Boss. He’s dangerous.”
Nope, no good news. “Sheriff Davies knows?”
“He knows. He wants Stimes brought in, charged and tried.”
“He’s right about that.” Bob was quiet for a moment, putting it all together. “Klineman goes to Swain, a Pickham County deputy working with Budroe. Lots of coincidences piling up here.”
“We let Andy keep doing what he is doing,” George said. “He gathers information and puts the case together until we are ready to move in on Budroe and Stimes.” George looked at Sharon. She nodded her understanding. “We tell him nothing that will make him take more risks than he already is. If you do, then I am out of here and headed back to Pickham County.”
“I understand.” Bob’s voice was quiet, respectful. George Mackey was an easy man to respect and easy to understand, once you realized that there was nothing to understand. He had no hidden agendas. Bob added one word as a promise between them. “Agreed.”
56. The World
“So where are we in locating the missing girls?” Bob Shaklee’s voice sounded tired. The phone lay on the hood of Sharon’s SUV.
Standing in the little clearing on the sandy dirt
road the rest of the team was tired too. Working undercover was a strain on everyone’s nerves. Remarkably, Andy seemed to be the least fatigued or troubled by it. Hopped up on adrenalin, deep in the thick of things, he was the most exposed and that made him the most alert.
“We got our grid laid out,” said Sharon, spreading the map over the hood of the SUV beside the phone. “Figure that the girls are somewhere within a few miles of Nicks Cove, where Budroe is muscling in.”
“Muscling?” Jake Beery looked at Sharon. “By muscling, you mean he murdered Jobie and Elma Nicks, burned them alive?” He frowned, not happy with Sharon’s choice of words. “Yeah, the Nicks ran a prostitution ring, local, no big deal. No one in the county cared much. They minded their own business. But whatever they did, they didn’t deserve to go like that.”
“Right.” Sharon nodded apologetically. “Sorry Jake, bad choice of words. I have a way of doing that sometimes.”
Grinning full of energy, Andy chimed in, “She’s right, Jake. She does have a knack for putting things in the most offensive way possible.” He turned towards Sharon, eyes glittering at his own humor. “That’s why we like her so much. Sharon’s our reality check.”
Knowing that Andy was trying to lighten the moment, Jake nodded. “Sorry Sharon, everyone. Just feeling a little tense. I’m not used to this.”
“Understandable,” Sharon said. “We’ll get through this, Jake. We’re going to bring these assholes down.”
“I know. Just feel like I’m in a little over my head.”
“You’re doing fine.” Sharon turned the map for everyone to see and turned the battery lantern up to its brightest setting. “Okay, so the roads and trails highlighted in red are all within ten miles of Nicks Cove or Banks’ Store. We included the store since Andy had his visit from Stimes. If they are using the store for supplies, it must be close to their operation.”