First Kill All the Lawyers (21 page)

“
Mrs. Sloan.
Now, that was right insulting, you know, thinking you could fool us country boys with a phony name. It’s not like we just crawled out of the slime yesterday.”

Sam was trying to remember the psychological strategies she had once learned in a self-defense class in California. The class had been taught by a cop—just like her captor. Should she go along with him? Should she smile and be nice? Or should she be tough?

She tried nice first. “I didn’t mean to insult you. You know, reporters just use whatever they think will get them by.”

“Well, that’s all right.” He reached over and patted her knee. Then he rested his huge hand there and squeezed, kneading her flesh. He shifted his hand just a little higher, and turned and winked at her.

Uh-oh. Was this to be a
real
abduction—with a full complement of horrors?

“Naw,” he said as if he were talking to himself. He lifted his hand and twirled his cigar. Sam stared at him, trying to second-guess his next move. The rolling of the fat stogie in his wet mouth was an obscenity. He felt her looking and grinned.

“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then ask me.”

Sam was silent. What kind of game was he playing? And how should she respond? Should she join in and play along? Or should she stay outside, strong?

In the self-defense class, the officer had said that the best thing you could do was escape. Well, she didn’t see how she could do that. If you couldn’t, you had to play it by ear, moment by moment.

“I said, ‘Ask me,’” he insisted, his voice growing rougher.

“Where are we going?”

‘“Where are we going,
please
?’”
His right hand grasped the back of her neck. His powerful fingers reached almost all the way around. Jesus. He could choke her to death with one hand while still driving.

“Where are we going,
please
?”

“
Pretty
please.”

“Pretty please.”

“I’m taking you home.” He shook her as if she were a kitten, and then released her. “Home to Monroeville.”

He didn’t talk for a long while after that. They turned east onto the perimeter highway, then north on Route 400. He drove swiftly and surely, the heavy car whooshing up the black road. Of course nobody was going to give
him
a ticket. He fiddled with the radio a moment; then a country and western station clicked in on a clear signal. Kenny Rogers was singing one of Sam’s old favorites about a philandering woman named Lucille.

Suddenly, on a dark stretch of road, Dodd wheeled over to the shoulder and flipped on his whirling blue light.

He was going to kill her right here. Sam froze. He was going to kill her right here on the side of the road in plain view of the cars rushing past, without her ever even knowing the whole story. She was never going to know what had really happened at Apalachee Falls—or why.

You are a trooper, Adams. And something else—a fool. Fighting for that story to the very last. Well, look where it got you this time, Ms. Smartypants, in a world of trouble that you know nothing about. It’s not as if they didn’t warn you: George, Hoke, Peaches and Horace, the DEA agent. And Beau. Beau. She was never going to know what that was all about, either. What it
could
have been. What the hell Beau really wanted.

Dodd reached over and unlocked her right cuff. Before she had time to massage her wrist, he grasped her arm and twisted it up sharply behind her back. She cried out. He drew her against his chest, forced his mouth down on hers. She struggled against him, tasting the cigar and stale whiskey. Then she heard a click.

She froze.

He’s pulled a switchblade.

He’s cocked a pistol.

I’m dead, she thought.

Then he released her.

He’d crossed her wrists and fastened them behind
her back. He pulled the seat belt across her chest, brushing her breasts with his fingers, and fastened it. Click.

“I should have done that in the first place,” he said, grinning.

Then from the glove compartment he pulled a brown envelope, poured out some powder on a small mirror, drew two lines, and snorted.

“Whoo-ee!” he shouted, the sound bouncing around in the car. “White line fever! You want some?”

She shook her head.

“Might as well,” he said. “No need to worry now about getting addicted.”

“No, thank you.”

“Want to keep your wits about you, huh?”

Yes. That was it exactly.

“Might as well enjoy yourself, honey.” He switched on the ignition, and the powerful engine roared in response. The car jumped forward. “Won’t make a damn bit of difference.”

The cocaine made him talkative. The words rushed out in gobs like blood from a wound that couldn’t be stanched.

“Lots more where this comes from,” he bragged. “Straight from the La Guajira Peninsula.”

“Colombia?”

“Smart girl. You bet.”

“So you have your own personal supplier?”

He tipped his head back and laughed. “Supplier? Sweet thing, I’m part of the conduit. Those old boys, daredevils, fly that stuff straight in. That’s what you wanted to know when you were asking about airstrips in Millie’s, wuddn’t it?”

Sam blushed in the dark. Of course, he knew every word that was ever spoken in Monroeville. Especially the words of a stranger. How stupid she’d been. What the hell did she think she was doing? She’d never been so sloppy before. What had she been thinking about? Maybe it
was
time she quit this business. She was going to think about doing that very thing, if she got the chance.

“What made you think there was drugs?” he demanded.

“Everybody knows they’re coming in up here. And the more I looked, the more there seemed to be too much money.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“You and Edison Kay—and Saunders. Laundering too much money, I thought, for it just to be land deals.”

“That bastard!” he growled.

“Kay?”

“Nawh. Though he’s prob’ly one too. They all are. City sharps, think they putting it to us old boys. Always working a slicker angle. Nawh.” He shook his head. “Saunders. Greedy bastard. Always whining about his share. Hell, he didn’t do half the work I did. Grunt work, standing out there in the middle of the night with flashlights, those little suckers swooping in like kamikazes, miss and they take your head off. Two minutes on the ground. Hustling for those duffels they tossed. Sweating like a nigger, reeling ’em in before anybody comes, sacks weighing two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds a bag,” he repeated, “of pure snow. And all Saunders did was make a few contacts. Didn’t ever see him hustling
his
butt.”

“But he was fifty-fifty on the land deals?”

“Oh, yeah, he did his share on that. But that was all the deal behind the deals, don’t you see? The land is one thing. And it ain’t chicken feed. But the blow’s where the real bucks are.” He sniffed, rubbing the back of his hand across his nose.

“You mean the land deals were just a cover-up for the drugs?”

“Not a cover-up, not exactly. But they’re a way for funneling the money, and they turn a healthy profit themselves.”

“This was Saunders’s idea?” Sam pressed.

“Hell, no. Saunders ain’t got those kind of brains. It was Kay. Kay’s the sharpy. Kay’s the one. Course”—and he puffed up—“he couldn’t do none of it without me. I’m the…facilitator.”

Sam wondered where he’d gotten that word—from watching detectives on TV? Or did Chuck Norris use fancy words in the movies these days before he blasted people’s faces off with tommy guns?

“I’ve got to have a little talk with Saunders,” Dodd continued as if he were alone. “Got to set him straight on a few things, like snitching to the GBI.”

Sam held her breath.

“Wasn’t no need to call anyone about Ridley. Didn’t need the fucking M.E. up here messing around in our bidness.” He was talking about Beau.

“Well, he didn’t see much, did he?” Sam said.

They had turned off on Route 19 some time ago. Only here and there showed a light in a mobile home, the blue glow of a television screen, people inside clustered around a little picture of people being abducted, tortured, raped, killed—just like in real life.

In real life it didn’t happen as often, Sam thought. But it only had to happen to you once.

“He only saw Ridley’s body in my office,” Dodd said. “That didn’t tell him nothing, ’cept the man was dead. And we already knew that.” He relighted his cigar, which had gone out. “That’s okay. Hell, I like to watch those monkeys work. All that tromping around the crime scene, looking for little bits of blood and hair, teeth and spit. They’re like catfish. Bottom feeders. Sucking up the shit everybody else has left behind. Hell, we don’t
ever
need to bother with those bastards. What else do we pay a vet good money for?” He laughed.

Sam doubted that Beau would appreciate that description of his profession. Nor would Boggs. She smiled a little at the thought of that kind-faced man. There was steel behind that sweet exterior. Was Boggs a Clark Kent? Would he quick-change into Superman, like the father who wanted to save his daughter B.J. from marriage in the shaggy dog story? If Boggs knew what was going on right now, would he swoop right down and save her?

She didn’t think of Beau as her rescuer, even though he had the Superman looks. But then, she couldn’t trust Beau. When it came to the clutch, he might excuse himself with some more important responsibility, some more pressing engagement, just might remember he wanted to go off and marry someone else.

No, when she thought about him, she thought other things, private things, warm things, lustful things. Jesus. She was still a sucker for his pretty face. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts loose. The two of them were naked, their bodies intertwined, his mouth slowly working its way lower and lower down her back. He was planting soft little kisses down her spine. The tingling raced up and down, but mostly down. He had wrapped a leg around her. Then his knee slid up between her legs. She ran her hands over him, touching whatever came within reach. She was playing his ribs, musical ribs. They sang to her. He slipped a hand between her legs now, and she started to sing, too.

“You know Doc Talbot?”

Sam jumped. “Yes.”

“Handsome fellow, ain’t he?”

She nodded.

“Say what?”

“Yes!”

“Yes, what?”

Uh-oh, here we go again. “Yes, he’s handsome.”

“Better-looking than me?”

“No. He’s not better-looking than you.”

“Then,” he drawled, “if you think he’s handsome, you must think I’m Robert Redford, right?”

She paused. Any idiot could see where this was leading.

“I think you’re a very handsome man, Sheriff Dodd.” And actually, that was the truth. He was also mean as a rattlesnake. And just as sidewinding. You could never tell exactly where he was going to strike.

“Then I guess that means you want to fuck me.” He reached over and grasped her face with one hand, twisting it toward him. “Right?”

“Wrong.”

“Well.” He laughed and released her. “You’ll be begging for it before it’s over.”

And then he dropped that topic as if it were a toy he’d grown bored with.

“Thought he was slick, asking me all those questions about Ridley,” Dodd grumbled. “Asking me about that hole in his chest. Any jackass could see that it was a gunshot. But I told him Ridley’s body must have hit a rock. And he had to buy it, no matter what he knew, ’cause I wasn’t letting nobody autopsy the body. It was an accidental death. Because
I
said so. That’s what counts in Watkin County.”

They were banking around Long Pond Bend. In a minute or two, they’d be in town.

“Just like when Ridley came busting up here, like he was somebody, Mr. Big Shot, in his six-hundred-dollar suit, comes in my office and tells me and Kay he knows what’s going on and we got to stop. Hell, he didn’t know crap about what was going on! A little bit about the money flowing through his precious office, a little bit about Kay’s wife and the girl’s names on deeds. Hell, he didn’t know nothing.”

Dodd rolled down the window and spat out onto the highway.

“But he was trouble. If he kept squawking his mouth around, other people who could see beyond their noses would figure it out. So when I said to Kay, ‘Let’s kill him,’ it was
my
decision that counted.
My
word. You understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” Sam said softly.

Dodd grew more animated. They were driving right through the hamlet of Monroeville, around the old courthouse, past Millie’s. The lights were out. Sam wondered for a moment what Millie did for amusement in a town like this. Dodd killed people. Saunders made money. But what did a red-haired midget waitress who was thirsting for excitement do? Did she
take truck drivers home with her? Did she run into Atlanta to party? Or drive north, with other women’s husbands, up toward Apalachee Falls?