by David Archer
CHANCE REDDICK BOX SET #1: BOOKS 1-4
Copyright © 2019 by David Archer
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BOOK 1 – INNOCENT INJUSTICE
BOOK 2 – ANGEL OF JUSTICE
BOOK 3 – HIGH STAKES HUNTING
BOOK 4 – PERSONAL ASSET
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BOOK 1
INNOCENT INJUSTICE
ONE
There is something to be said for growing up in a small town in the South. In some such communities, there is an atmosphere that reminds one of the wholesomeness and beauty of the little towns that grace so many old television shows. Everyone knows everyone, and it’s not uncommon to see children running all over town throughout the day and even into the evening. Kids ride their bicycles right down the side of the street with no fear of heavy traffic, and parents seldom worry when the kids aren’t home in time for dinner.
That’s the way it was in Silver Bell, Kentucky, and there’s still a remnant of the Mayberry-like feeling there today. Over the past forty years, there have been a few notable crimes, the most famous of which was the murder of young Julie Holloway thirty years earlier. Julie was only eleven years old when she disappeared, and the whole town went out to search for her. Her body was found on the fourth day, and it was obvious from the first glimpse that she was dead. Her clothing was torn, and her head was turned unnaturally backward.
They never found out who did it, but Julie’s death left a mark on the little community, particularly when the man who had found her body ended up hanging himself only a few days later. Her family had moved away shortly afterward, but there were still whispers that Julie’s killer was probably still living in Silver Bell.
There were other crimes from time to time, with car theft—almost always committed by joyriding teenagers—heading the list. The only signs of violence in recent years had come from one of the three bars that served customers in the little town of only twenty-five hundred people, when a few of them had consumed one too many of something and suddenly began to feel invincible.
An assortment of police officers, usually only one of them at a time, had been keeping the peace in Silver Bell since the 1950s, and most of them had been pretty good at it. In those inevitable outbursts at the bars, it was generally just a matter of twisting the arm of the aggressor hard enough to get an apology, after which everybody went home. Sometimes they went home in the back of the aging squad car, but they went home.
The local schools catered not only to the children of Silver Bell, but also to those of the surrounding countryside and at least three other tiny villages in the county. That was the only reason the Silver Bell High School was allowed into the basketball conference that was normally for bigger communities, but the Silver Bell Rangers had been making a pretty good showing in their games for several years. They’d even gone to the state championship game a few times, but they had yet to win.
Still, the performance of the team members was enough to get the attention of the college recruiters. A couple of years earlier, Kentucky State University had gone all out to recruit the team’s MVP, a senior who went by the name of Chance Reddick.
“Chance,” said the recruiter, “you had a really good run at the high school, you are the star of the team. Now, we don’t necessarily expect you to be the star of the team for us, but you put on a good enough showing for us to believe that you can be quite a player. For that reason, I’m authorized to offer you a full ride if you will choose KSU. I’m talking all of your tuition, housing, books and fees, and will even put you to work at a part-time job that will pay you pretty well, so all your living expenses will be covered.”
“What kind of job?” Chance asked. “I mean, what would I be doing?”
“Well, you said you plan to study mechanical engineering, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we have a maintenance shop there at the school, and we thought we’d put you to work there. You work four hours a day after school during the week, and then half the day on Saturday, as well, and it’ll pay you fifteen dollars an hour. That’ll give you about three hundred a week, and that ought to cover your grocery bill pretty well, don’t you think?”
Chance grinned. “It’ll buy a lot of pizza.”
The recruiter burst out laughing. “I just about lived on that stuff when I was in college,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll buy all you want, and leave enough left over to spend on the girls.”
“I’m not a bit afraid of work. I grew up here on the farm, raising crops, chickens and horses, and after Grandpa’s stroke a few years back, I pretty much took over doing most of the work. Work don’t scare me a bit.”
“Well, I bet it doesn’t. This looks like a fair sized farm, that was probably an awful lot of work that got dropped onto a young man like yourself.”
“I didn’t mind. Grandma and Grandpa took me and my little sister in after our parents died in a car accident. Helping around the farm just seemed like something I could do to try to pay them back for all they did for us.”
“You sound like a fine young fellow, Chance. So, can we count on you, boy? I’d love to be able to go back and tell the coach you’re coming.”
Chance hesitated. “Sir, it’s not that I don’t appreciate this,” he said slowly, “but this isn’t a very easy decision. I mean, if I go off to college, that’s going to leave Grandma and Grandpa and Robin to do all the work. I’m really just not sure I can do that, not right now.”
Chance’s grandmother had been sitting at the table, knitting as she listened in on the conversation.
“Boy,” she said, “this is probably the best opportunity you are ever going to get. You can’t afford to pass this up, Chance. Of course you’re going to go, that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
“But, Grandma…”
“No buts, Chance,” Grandma said. “This isn’t up for debate. You’re going to college, and you’re going to make something out of yourself.”
“But, Grandma, the farm work. Grandpa can’t do it, and it’s too much for you and Robin.”
“Oh, is that all that’s worrying you? Well, let me take care of that, right now.” She reached around behind her and grabbed the telephone that hung on the wall, dialed a number without even looking at the buttons and held the phone up to her ear. “Brother George? This is Luella Reddick. We got us a situ
ation, and you always said that when we have a situation, we should call on the church, so I’m a-calling. My grandson, Chance, there’s a feller here right now who wants Chance to go to his college up in Louisville. Chance’s afraid to go, on account of not being here to do the farm work. What do you reckon could be done about that?”
She listened for a couple of moments, then broke out into a big smile. She thanked Brother George, the pastor at the local First Baptist Church, and hung up the phone.
“All settled,” she said. “Brother George is going to talk to the men of the church and get us some help out here, so you can go out on to college come the fall, just like you need to.”
Chance tried to argue, but it was to no avail. He finally relented when, an hour later, sixteen men from the congregation arrived to begin setting up the schedule that would allow them to spend one day every other week helping out the older Reddicks.
This, along with a few other little things that happened, convinced Chance to accept the scholarship. He left for school that fall, driving the battered old Chevy pickup that he’d found tucked away inside the barn and painstakingly repaired and fixed and patched until it was at least safe to be on the road. It had been Grandpa’s old truck for many years, and then went to Chance’s father when he was in high school and got his license. Somehow, it seemed fitting that Chance would be driving it.
College life was better than high school, but not by much. To Chance, the biggest difference seemed to be the willingness of some of the girls to give in to his down-home country charms. He always tried to treat the girls with some respect, which led to a reputation as being one of the better guys to date on campus, but all of the girls agreed that while he was a lot of fun to go out with, he just wasn’t really the sort they wanted for the long term. He had lots of friends, many with some pretty incredible benefits, but there was no flash of romance.
That suited him fine, because he still had a lot of life to live. He wasn’t ready to settle down, at least not yet. There was too much to do, too much to see, too much to learn.
Chance had decided to attend college because he wanted to accomplish something with his life. He wanted to do something to make the world a bit of a better place for everyone else, but particularly for his family. This meant taking on a field of study and an eventual career that would make a lot of money, because Grandma and Grandpa had struggled to see to it that he and Robin had everything they needed. Chance wanted to be able to give back to them, which was why he had decided on a career in engineering.
Mechanical engineering seemed daunting at first, until it hit him that he’d been preparing for it for most of his life. Working around the farm, he often had to repair the equipment, figure out ways to accomplish things that didn’t require spending a lot of money on something new, and he had on more than one occasion completely redesigned some bit of farm equipment. It wasn’t because he was particularly inventive, it was simply that he needed each piece of equipment to be able to do more than one job. With Grandpa, who might not have the use of his arms but still had a brain that didn’t know when to quit, sitting beside him, Chance learned the basic skills of blacksmithing, welding, metal cutting and a dozen other ways to reengineer one item in to another. By the time he began rebuilding the old pickup truck around his fourteenth birthday, he already had a clear understanding of the mechanical components and their relationships to each other.
His first year was incredible. Chance ended up near the top of his class, and was often sought out by other students to help them figure out some of the problems in their courses of study. He seemed to have a natural grasp of the way machines work, the way their components cooperated with each other, and his instructors considered him one of their brightest pupils.
By his first summer, Chance was fairly comfortable at school. He lived in a dorm with two other men close to his age, and he had experimented with all of the foolishness that most college students discover. He had smoked his first few joints, gotten rip-roaring drunk and even spent a night in the local jail. Fortunately, the judge he appeared before the next morning didn’t believe in harsh punishments for first time offenders. A slap on the wrist, a bit of an ass chewing, and the case was relegated to local court supervision, which meant it would never appear on his record.
“You got lucky,” Billy Morton said. “If you’d’ve gotten Judge Levi, you’d probably be doing weekends in jail for the next six months.”
“I know it,” Chance said. “I’m just glad that lady judge was on the bench. I think maybe she might have a boy around my age, maybe that’s why she went easy on me.”
Whatever the reason, Chance resolved not to end up in jail again. More than one or two such offenses could cost him his scholarship, and he wasn’t about to risk that.
And then it was time for the summer break, and Chance was delighted when he finally had everything loaded into the back of the old pickup and was pointed back toward Silver Bell. Granted, the college girls wouldn’t be there, but there were a few girls he knew in high school that were still around, and would still be happy to see him. He didn’t think it was going to be that big a sacrifice to go home to the farm for a few months.
TWO
“Chance,” whined his sister Robin, “get up! Come on, get up out of bed. Grandma’s got breakfast just about ready, you don’t want to miss out on that, do you?”
Chance rolled over and grinned up at her. Robin was five years younger than his nineteen, and the last year had seen her grow at a rate that absolutely startled him. While he was gone to college, somebody stole the freckled, pigtailed tomboy who had always been his sister and replaced her with a girl who was suddenly the object of desire for almost every boy within 30 miles. Chance had gotten one look at her the evening before and decided that it was time to break out the shotgun.
“Is there bacon?” Chance asked.
“There’s bacon, there’s eggs, there’s biscuits and gravy and grits and potatoes and probably anything else Grandma could think of to put on the table. The coffee is ready and the orange juice is icy cold, so get out of bed and come on down.”
Chance and Robin had always been pretty close, ever since that awful night ten years earlier, the night their parents got hit head on by a drunk driver. Chance and his little sister were at home, waiting for their parents to get back with dinner. Chance couldn’t quite remember what it was they were celebrating, but some special event had prompted them to make a drive in to Frankfort to pick up dinner at the KFC. It was about a twenty minute drive, and Chance was beginning to wonder what was taking so long when they heard a car pull up.
A moment later, there was a knock on the door. Chance peeked out the window that allowed him to see the front door and a chill went down his spine when he saw a police officer standing there, with a deputy sheriff beside him. He had hurried around to open the door, just as Robin came down the stairs from her room.
“Son, is there anybody else here with you?” The big policeman tried to smile down at him, but Chance could tell there was something wrong, just from watching his demeanor.
“Just me and my sister,” he said, letting Robin push him to the side so that she could see what was going on. “My mom and dad went to pick up dinner, they should be back any minute now.”
“Well, is there any other adults around? Any other relatives?”
The chill struck again, and Chance looked the officer in the eye. “My grandparents live outside of town,” he said. “Why are you asking?”
The deputy, who happened to be a woman, got down on one knee and looked him in the eye.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she said softly. “I think we need to call your grandparents. Do you know their phone number?”
Chance had turned around and walked to the telephone, then dialed the number for his grandparents. “Grandma? Grandma, there’s a couple of cops here and they say they need to talk to you.”
And then the tears broke free. Chance turned around and found Robin standi
ng right behind him, her own tears already flowing down her cheeks even though she wasn’t sure why she was crying, and he wrapped his arms around her. Behind him, he could hear the first officer speaking to his grandmother.
“Ma’am, this is Officer Jackson. I’m afraid that the children’s parents have been involved in an accident. Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it’s pretty serious. No, ma’am, I’m afraid not.”
Chance was old enough to read between the lines. He held Robin tight as he let it soak in that his parents were dead.
The next couple of hours were something of a blur in his memory, because he couldn’t keep track of what was happening. The deputy had put him and Robin into her car and driven them out to their grandparents, his father’s parents. His mom’s folks had passed away some years earlier, in what turned out to be a similar accident. Other than their Aunt Jeannie, their father’s sister who lived in California and was married to some famous preacher, Grandma and Grandpa were all the family that Chance and Robin had left.
The first few weeks were kind of rough, with Robin refusing to leave Chance’s side. The accident had happened in summer, so it didn’t affect school for them, but it was getting close to the start of the next school year by the time Robin was willing to sleep in her own room. She would be turning five soon, so some of the excitement of starting kindergarten helped her to put the accident behind her to some degree.
Chance wasn’t so lucky. It was many months before he was able to sleep without a nightmare, and just the sight of a police officer was enough to bring all the grief and pain back to the surface.
Time truly does heal all wounds, however, and even Chance was pretty well-adjusted to their new life by Christmas time. Grandma and Grandpa had gone all out to get them some great presents, including a nice new bedroom set for Robin. Chance was sleeping in his father’s old bed, and he was very happy to have it.
Living on the farm helped, as well. There were always chores to do, and Chance threw himself into them. He fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, watered the horses and did many of the necessary chores that were appropriate for someone of his size. He enjoyed the fact that it gave him so much time to spend with Grandpa, who was always telling him stories about when his father was a child. In some ways, he felt he was getting to know his dad better than he had ever known him before.