Death to the Chief (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 2)

by Lance McMillian

  “Or instead of worrying about who sneaked off when and where, maybe the simplest explanation is most likely the right one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Warren Jackson was either dead when Clement Parsons left him or alive when Beverly went in there. The Senator or the wife—the only two people we can definitely place at the murder scene during the critical time.”

  27

  The night belongs to the Corvette, and I spend hours working on the car with Eliza by my side. After applying the finishing touches, I peer down on my creation with the pride of Dr. Frankenstein. The silver blue color gleams under the garage’s lights, and I walk around the work of art before me to take its full measure. After throwing a blanket over the passenger seat, I tell Eliza, “Let’s go for a ride.”

  I turn the key in the ignition. The start of the engine brings forth the magical roar of American muscle, a sound better than Beethoven.

  The deserted backroads are ours alone. The large steering wheel moves easily in my hands. I’ve barely driven a manual transmission since high school, one of those things left behind in adulthood as functionality overtakes fun. No matter. Shifting gears in rhythm with the clutch is as natural as walking to me. Some things you never forget. The Corvette handles the curves with the perfect fit of a right-sized glove. I am happy. Eliza seems content, too.

  The simple pleasure now coursing through me clarifies the decision about going home this weekend. The answer is yes. The highway beckons me, and the ninety minutes from Atlanta to my hometown will provide a relaxing way to stretch the car’s legs. That realization is no small thing. In the aftermath of Amber and Cale’s murders, I dreaded the drive home because it gave me too much time to dwell on what had happened. Now the prospect feels different, especially with Cate next to me in the passenger seat. I also want to show off my new toy to her and my family.

  Before bed, I text her that we are good for tomorrow.

  The response: “That makes me very happy.”

  ***

  I pick Cate up at her place the next evening. She emerges from her condo building and admires the two-seat coupe, her jaw dropping almost to the sidewalk in astonishment. She hops in next to me and stashes a small overnight bag at her feet. The car has no trunk, and the only storage area is a small cargo hold behind the seats. That space, though, is currently inaccessible. Eliza lies on top of it—the small, elevated platform providing her a nice resting spot behind our heads, right under the split windows in the back.

  Cate exclaims, “Are you serious? You’ve exceeded my expectations.”

  “Like it?”

  “Hell yeah. And who is this behind me?”

  “Eliza.”

  She turns around and rubs Eliza’s belly, and Eliza stretches in decadent pleasure at the touch. Cate says, “My cheating bastard ex-husband got our dog in the divorce. That was the hardest part of the whole deal. But I didn’t have a choice. My condo doesn’t allow pets, and Trooper deserved to run free in the country air anyway. I still miss him, though.”

  The drive is comfortable, familiar. Talking more about our upbringing, we discover that we went to rival schools and were once on opposing sides at the same high school football game—me on the field, her on the sidelines as a cheerleader. The game occupies a conflicted place in my memory. I caught the winning touchdown pass in the final minute and received a concussion after a brutal hit for the effort. I left the field on a stretcher—or so I was told.

  Cate exclaims, “That was you? Small world.”

  That was me.

  In my short-lived football career that followed, I never again was the same player. A caution developed—subtle, but enough—that left me on the lookout for the next blindside hit. In the state playoffs that year, I dropped a critical pass on our final drive, reaching out to snag the ball with my fingertips instead of going into that extra gear to catch it in my chest, knowing that chasing down the pass with reckless abandon would get me smashed again. I avoided the hit. We lost the game.

  Perhaps that’s why I became a trial lawyer. The courtroom is combat without the concussions. And cross-examination allowed me to dole out plenty of punishment of my own over the years. Or, more likely, being Jack Meridian’s son destined me to be a lawyer long before I was laid out flat on that football field.

  Cate asks, “What are you thinking about?”

  The question pulls me back from the dive into my memories. Spying her now from the periphery of my vision, I throw out, “Maybe you can put on your cheerleading outfit again for me sometime.”

  She laughs and responds, “We’ll see.”

  ***

  I pull up into her mom’s driveway. Cate kisses me goodbye and says, “You can come over after midnight. I’ll sneak out, and we can go parking together, like we’re back in high school again. If you’re nice, I might dig out that cheerleading uniform.”

  She’s joking, but the thought tantalizes all the same.

  ***

  Mom is sitting in the kitchen when I enter my boyhood home through the back door. After a quick hug, she doesn’t waste any time expressing her amazement.

  “One week after meeting that girl, and you’re staying with me over the weekend to be close to her? It must be serious.”

  “Can’t a man just decide he wants to spend more time with his mother?”

  “Sure, but not you.”

  The only time I’ve slept in this house in the past three years was when Mom wrecked her car and ended up in the hospital. I hope this trip goes better.

  Despite Mom’s sarcasm, my presence brings her great joy. We play dominos until late into the night and talk a lot about nothing in particular—except Cate here and there. Mom nibbles around the edges on the topic, but I can read her like an open book. She is pleased as punch about recent romantic developments.

  Before we head up the stairs to sleep, Mom asks, “What are you going to do with your life once this investigation is over? Minton can set you up for the future, but he is not going to be there forever. The time to act is now. Cate could be a nice asset to you, too. She looks the part.”

  The incredulity on my face must be obvious because Mom snaps, “What?”

  “You like Cate because you think she would make a good political wife?”

  “I like her because she has you acting like a normal human being again.”

  The rebuke stings, but the tenderness behind it makes feeling much offense impossible. More than that, truth is a defense. The murders of Amber and Cale changed me, and I descended so far inside of myself in the aftermath that I became oblivious both to pain and to living, the relationship with my family being one of the casualties. I tend to forget that. Mom hasn’t.

  We climb the steps in silence. The house is large, and I wonder how Mom copes living here all by herself. She won’t move—too many memories. The place was built by my great-grandfather on Daddy’s side and will stay in the family for at least as long as Ben and I are still living. The Meridians have always been attached to the roots of history, and the geography of this sacred ground sits at the center of our story. That anchor keeps Mom attached to the house like a second skin.

  While I dwell on Mom’s possible loneliness, she breaks the silence between us and gets in the last word of the night.

  “And she would make a good political wife.”

  28

  Scott calls me Saturday morning to give me an update on the investigation. Taylor—the team’s administrative assistant freshly arrived from my hometown—can be heard in the background.

  “Taylor’s there on a Saturday?”

  “Yeah, the rest of us are working while you leave town with your girlfriend. You’d make a great police chief.”

  “I love you, too. What’s up?”

  “Gene Davis is getting antsy. Tommy Dalton is not returning his calls or his texts. We have his voicemail messages and detect increasing desperation. Sophie and J.D. are still following him, and he even went over to the Attorney General’s office
near the close of business yesterday. Dalton refused to see him.”

  Divide and conquer appears to be working. Alone in the wilderness, Gene might be starting to feel as though he needs a friend.

  I instruct, “Make sure Sophie and J.D. stay on him. Pull in backup if you have to. The Daltons won’t communicate in any way that leaves a record, but they still may attempt to have some type of in-person contact with him. Forget what I said earlier about Sophie and J.D. drawing back if they see Jerry Dalton. Make the tail more obvious. I want the Daltons to know that we are following Gene. They need to keep viewing him as toxic. And why don’t you call up Gene and do a wellness check? Tell him I want to meet with him again middle of next week.”

  “Think he’ll talk?”

  “To save his own skin, yeah. Gene Davis has the survival skills of a cockroach.”

  ***

  Lunch is at Ben’s house. Billy and Debbie—my nephew and niece—rush out to admire the Corvette while I drag Mom up from the low passenger seat.

  “That thing’s a death trap,” she fumes. “I’m not riding in it again.”

  “You walking home?”

  “Ben will have to take me.”

  My brother emerges from the house to take his turn inspecting my work. He runs his hand along the side of the car in almost a sexual caress—the same longing that men everywhere show for the most desirable specimens on four wheels. He approves, “Not bad. Uncle Ernie would be proud. I would’ve gone with the Riverside Red.”

  “The Silver Blue is classier with more sparkle.”

  “Two weekends in a row now you’re gracing us with your presence—I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s not the quality of your preaching, if that’s what you think.”

  “I have no delusions about what brought you down. Cate is a lovely woman. I hope it works out.”

  The meal is Southern soul food personified. Sally is an excellent cook, and we tend to have our family gatherings over here for that precise reason. The pleasure of being around these people—my people—is one of life’s great joys. I avoided these moments after the murder, too mindful of those no longer here. But time marches on, and seasons change. The sense of loss never truly goes away, but love covers a multitude of past hurts.

  After we eat, Billy insists that I drive him around in the Corvette, and Debbie wants her turn, too. Mom remains firm in her stance that Ben must take her home, meaning I’m on my own once the kids get their joyrides. With the afternoon free, I head to the graveyard.

  ***

  Daddy’s headstone looks as new as when we bought it. Fresh flowers adorn the grave—a reminder of Mom’s weekly visits. Cemeteries are strange things. The living cling to them as a lifeline to a past that can never be recaptured. I’m doing it now. No doubt that Daddy’s memory is more alive in my heart than on this patch of dirt, but geography matters. The dirt retains special significance because it shelters the physical remnants of Jack Meridian. No other place on Earth is like it.

  Mom and Martha might want to throw Susan Benson deep into the pits of hell, but my father now interests me more. During the Bernard Barton business, I tortured myself imagining how disappointed Daddy would’ve been by some of my actions. But now I think he might’ve understood, just as I struggle now to understand him. Not condone. Not excuse. Understand. That somehow our mutual disquiet in the behavior of the other would expose a common humanity capable of bringing us closer together.

  I realize that I am less mad at him for what he did, than for his efforts to shield me—alone—from the unvarnished truth. He stole something from me. As long as my ignorance held, no problem. But now I know the truth and feel incomplete. I ache for that one extra conversation—the lost opportunity to hear the story straight from the horse’s mouth.

  Except life never promises us such a moment, and Jack Meridian isn’t rising out of the Georgia clay to conduct unfinished business with his younger son. I’m on my own this time. Sometimes closure must come from within.

  ***

  I take to the road for some Corvette therapy. I don’t get far. On a straightaway where the kids of my youth used to drag race, the blue lights of a county patrol vehicle arrest my progress. I pull over to the side and brace for the worst. The excuse of pressing Special Attorney General business comes to mind. I have a badge, after all.

  The view from the driver-side mirror reveals ponderous steps approaching me with appropriate caution for a traffic stop on a deserted road. I roll the window down and glance up.

  Cliff Hall.

  He exclaims, “Good lord, the Prodigal Son has returned, and driving like a bat out of hell to boot. Some things never change.”

  “Howdy, Sheriff.”

  Cliff was the quarterback of my high school football team—the one who threw the pass that I dropped in the state playoffs. I get out of the car, and we give each other a heartfelt man-hug.

  He booms, “Why are you driving so fast in my county?”

  I flash the badge and assert, “Super-secret Special Attorney General business. I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.”

  He scoffs and admires the sleek beauty of the car.

  “Did you buy this thing?”

  “Depends on what you mean. Rebuilt her on my own. Paid a lot for parts from all over the country.”

  “I remember you working on them cars growing up. Can I drive her?”

  “That’s like asking if you can sleep with my wife.”

  He laughs in that good-ole-boy way of his and says, “Well, can I?”

  “No. But I might be persuaded to let you ride in the passenger seat.”

  “You should let me drive her just for dropping that pass in the state playoffs.”

  A debate raged in town for the next month whether I should’ve caught the ball or whether Cliff had led me too much on the pass. One-third of the people blamed me, one-third faulted him, and one-third said that the both of us were bums.

  I answer, “You know, that pass was on my mind coming into town last night. The concussion I got a few weeks before the game was the culprit. Made me half a step tentative. That was enough.”

  “I always knew it was your fault, but it’s good to hear you finally admit it. Can’t say I even blame you—one of the nastiest hits I ever saw.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t.”

  We stand there talking about the glory days for some time. During a lull in our remembrances, he turns more serious.

  “The town still isn’t the same since your Dad passed. Even after he retired, he was still a fixture around the courthouse square—eating breakfast, watching a trial, getting a haircut. He was always around, our own local celebrity, the hometown boy made good. I still remember the last time I saw him. The cancer had him pretty eaten up by then. But he was walking around with a cane and stopped to talk to me. You know what he said to me?”

  I shake my head.

  “He knew I was running for sheriff and told me that I was going to win. Then he said not to let the power go to my head, but to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.’ Stopped me in my tracks. That’s from the Bible, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, Micah.”

  “Anyway, that stuck with me. The man’s dying and all, but still found time to implant something deep within me. I try to do right by him. And I tell every new deputy I recruit to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.’”

  Sometimes closure must come from within, and sometimes God uses other people to bring you peace. Tears begin to cloud in my eyes.

  “Thank you for saying that. I just came from the cemetery. Been thinking about him a lot lately.”

  “You’re not a real Southern man if you don’t have a good cry about your Daddy every now and then.”

  My phone buzzes, and I see a text from Cate, wondering if I want to meet up tonight. All the old ladies in the area battle it out on Bingo cards every Saturday evening, including both our mothers. It’s the highlight of th
e social week around these parts.

  I hold up the phone to Cliff and explain, “I gotta go see about a girl.”

  He grins at the movie reference and reminds me, “You remember we were together when we saw Good Will Hunting? Double date with the Hughes twins.”

  I groan. The date was a three-alarm disaster. The sisters wore the same outfit, confusing Cliff and me the entire night as they had great fun at our expense. That’s not even the worst of it. After the movie, they ditched us in the theater lobby and left with other guys. Cliff had set the whole thing up, and I refused to speak to him for a week. I’ve never had good experiences with twins.

  “Hopefully, my date tonight goes better.”

  “Good luck with that, and don’t worry about that ride. I’ll catch you next time around. Even better, you keep driving like you were today, duty will compel me to impound your vehicle and make it my own.”

  Over my dead body. Me and this car are one.

  29

  Cate and I finish dinner at my Mom’s kitchen table. She takes a sip of wine from her glass and closes her eyes in a pose of contentment, as if breathing in the surroundings. Eliza nestles at my feet after getting more than her fair share of table scraps. The tableau is the type of basic domesticity between man and woman that has been absent from my life ever since a gunman took it away from me.

  “I miss being home,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Since the divorce, the thought of coming home for the weekend is too painful. Everyone in town knows what happened, and being the object of pity doesn’t sit well with me. Besides, my ex-husband still lives in the same house. The prospect of running into him and his new family makes me nauseous. That means more time in Atlanta, where the last few years I’ve spent most nights in my condo feeling sorry for myself. How could I be so lonely in the midst of so many people? And then you came along.”

  Her eyes glisten from the bubbling of incipient tears—happy or sad ones, it’s too hard to tell. I reach across the table and grasp her hand. We stare at each other in mutual understanding—survivors of traumas that shattered the Norman Rockwell plans that we had so carefully constructed for our lives. I realize that the murders and her divorce happened around the same time, two parallel tracks of suffering destined to meet at a future point.