Surest Poison, The (28 page)

“We could be here an hour, or maybe
several hours,” Jaz said as the pilot turned to face them. “Do you want to
stay here, go with us, or would you rather head back and let us call when
we’re finished?”

Agee shrugged. “I don’t have anything
better to do. I’ll stay with the chopper. I may check in at the hospital,
see what kind of coffee they have.”

“I’ll call you on the cell phone as soon
as we see how it’s going,” Jaz said.

They found Deputy Ross waiting beside one
of the patrol cars. A heavyset man with bushy black hair and an infectious
smile, he shook hands with everybody and agreed with the pilot’s plan to
stay at the hospital.

“They got good coffee,” he said,
grinning. “I may stop by a little later myself.”

With Sid and Jaz in the back seat, he
drove through the darkened streets to a three-bedroom frame house on a
wooded, corner lot. He parked in front and they got out.

“One of our guys is inside, in case the
people who started the fire should come back,” Ross said.

“Where was the fire set?” Sid asked.

“In the back.
Lucky for us, they used kerosene instead of gasoline. I guess they wanted
something they could light up close without burning themselves to a crisp.”

“Kerosene would burn slower, for sure.”

“They started it on the back porch,
figuring it would soon move inside, where they’d poured a lot more on he
floor. But it gave our guys time to put the damper on before the flames got
to the main part.
Messed the porch up pretty good.”

Ross knocked at the front door. It was
opened by another uniformed deputy. A strong odor of kerosene greeted them
as they stepped inside. Ross introduced Sid and Jaz and explained what they
would be doing.

“How’re you managing this stink?” Ross
asked the deputy.

A thin young man who wore his hat pushed
back like a World War II fighter pilot, he pulled out a handkerchief and
blew his nose. “Not too bad,” he said. “With this cold,
I’m not smelling
a whole lot of anything.”

Ross accompanied them to the basement.
The lights had been left off upstairs, but down here a couple of 100-watt
bulbs provided plenty of illumination for searching the files.

Ross stared at the stacks of cardboard
boxes and shook his head. “That pilot’s gonna have coffee running out his
ears by the time you get through this stuff. The deputy upstairs will call
me when you’re ready to leave. Good luck.”

Jaz walked over to one of the stacks as
he headed up the stairs. She studied the top carton and turned to Sid. “Our
man may have saved us a lot of time. The end of the box has a list of files.
Should be what’s inside.”

Sid opened the box. It was stuffed to
capacity with regular manila folders and larger ones with accordion pleats.
Rubber bands helped contain their bulging contents. When Sid pulled one out
to check it, the rotted bands popped off like flying red worms. He read the
name on the folder and compared it to the list on the box.

“You’re right. Now we need to look for
First Patriots.”

Each took a stack of boxes and began
going down the file lists. Some of the writing was faded, and Percy
Pickslay’s penmanship often mimicked the style doctors used for writing
prescriptions. As Judge Thackston had advised, the lists were filled with
“Firsts.” Sid thought he had found what they were searching for until he
pulled the box out of the stack and opened it. He fished around until he
came across the folder and discovered the actual name on the file was “First
Patriarchs.”

After encountering a similar
disheartening experience, Jaz let out a shout:

“Found it!”

“Where?”

He turned and saw her down on her knees.

“On the bottom of this stack, where
else?” she said.

He helped her move boxes out of the way
until they reached the one that rested on the concrete floor. Dampness had
rotted a hole in the bottom, and the box fell apart when Jaz tried to lift
it. They sorted through the folders until she picked up one with First
Patriots scrawled on the front.

“Take it over there under the light,” Sid
said.

She set the expandable file on a rickety
table and pulled out its contents. She began to sift through the papers.

“Here are letters from the lawyer in
Anguilla,” she said.

Sid watched over her shoulder as she
moved to the back of the file. He spotted the names at about the same time
Jaz did. “Remember what your contact said about aliases?” he asked.

“Benjamin Franklin
and Helen Keller.”

The letter from Pickslay with the
stockholders’ names showed “Bronson Fradkin and Henry Keglar.”

44

Hank Keglar’s
voice echoed his anger. “They left Pickslay’s place carrying a big fat
package. A sheriff’s car drove them to the hospital, where they took off in
a chopper.”

“For where?”

“Nashville.”

“Are you sure they had that file?”
Fradkin asked.

“What else would it be? Didn’t that bitch
tell you they knew about First Patriots?”

“Yes. And the folks in Nashville were
sure Chance had made a deal with Pickslay to get the file.”

Keglar snorted. “Well, we’re certain
Percy didn’t follow through with his end of that deal. But my contact in the
Hickman County Sheriff’s Office says his brother gave Chance permission to
look through Pickslay’s files.”

“If your people had just followed through
with burning—”

“Don’t blame my people. They didn’t screw
up. A damned sheriff’s car came by just as they got the fire started.
Excuses don’t cut it in my book, but I’ll see if our business partners
around Nashville can take care
of  Chance
. I
don’t want to hear about any more interference from that sorry shit.”

“You’re calling—?”

“Yeah.
Both of them have a lot to lose besides money.”

“Like getting charged with arson?”

“And murder.”

Agee brought
the
chopper in for a graceful
landing at John Tune Airport shortly after midnight. Sid followed Jaz down
to the ramp, carrying the First Patriots file wrapped in a brown paper
grocery bag. He had showed the file to Deputy Ross in Centerville and called
Arnie Bailey with the news. The lawyer had been ecstatic.

“Bring in Tony Decker now and we’ll have
it complete,” he said.

“I’m going after his brother in the
morning,” Sid said. “If Tony is still alive, I’ll get him.”

He and Jaz walked at a brisk pace through
the chilled night air to his truck in the airport parking area.

“Are you taking that file home?” she
asked.

“I think I’ll drop it by the office and
lock it in the safe.”

He held the truck door open for her.

“Not a bad idea,” she said, “considering
everything that’s happened.”

On the way to her house, they talked
about what to do in the morning. Sid’s first priority was to take the First
Patriots file to Bailey, Riddle and Smith by eight o’clock. Jaz would call
him as soon as she heard from Bobby. If there was time, he intended to head
over to Dixie Seals before meeting with Fire Investigator Cran Quincy.

Back at the LeMieux spread, Sid stopped
in front of the spotlighted house.

“You don’t need to get out,” Jaz said,
reaching for the door handle. “Go get some rest before we start this rat
race all over again.”

“Thanks for all your help,” he said. “The
helicopter ride was great. I owe you for that one.”

She waved a hand. “With what you’ve done
for Bobby, I’d say we’re even.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Sid drove back to Madison thinking about
his pending confrontation with Trent Decker. The man was a smooth liar, but
he had tangled with plenty of those in the past. He would copy a few of the
papers from Percy Pickslay’s First Patriot’s file to use as leverage.
Preoccupied with his thoughts as he pulled into the parking lot at his
building, he failed to notice the light out over the entrance until he
switched off his headlights. He stepped out of the truck and looked around
as he tucked the thick folder under his arm. Except for the darkness around
the door, everything looked normal. A slight sparkle caught his eye.
Something lay on the concrete walkway. He bent over and saw shards of broken
glass. It looked like the globe that covered a light above the building’s
doorway. He saw a large rock on the concrete nearby. As he swung his head
around to check the parking lot, a soft scuffle sounded behind him where
large shrubs stood beside the entrance. Too late he realized it was the
sound of sneakers.

He started to turn in that direction,
reaching for the Sig.

He caught a glimpse of a billy club and
threw up his arm. The action deflected the nightstick no more than an inch.
It struck him a sharp blow on the side of the head. He crumpled to the
pavement.

45

Sid felt
something
slip
from under his arm. He tried to move but his arms wouldn’t cooperate. He
forced his eyes open, though they refused to focus. Slowly, he reached his
hands behind him, pushed into a sitting position. He rubbed his head as his
vision returned to normal. Hearing a noise, he looked around but saw no one.
As he began to gather his wits, he realized what he had heard was a vehicle
driving off.

His head ached. Moving his fingers
gingerly, he touched a tender lump above his right ear. Slowly, the pieces
started falling into place.
Where he was.
What he
had been doing.

He looked around, the confusion fading
away.

His heart nearly stopped.

The First Patriots folder was gone.

He stumbled back to his truck. Climbing
into the seat, he pulled out his cell phone. For a moment, he sat staring at
it. He knew he should call someone, but
who
? Jaz
. . . Arnie
Bailey .
  .  .  Sgt.
Wick Stanley?

He punched in Jaz’s number and waited.

“Hello,” she answered after a few rings,
sounding about as groggy as he felt.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said, “but I’m a
bit addled.”

He told her what had happened.

“Oh, God.
What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I need to go home and get
my thoughts together.”

“Shouldn’t you go by the Emergency Room
and let them check you out?”

“Take two aspirin and call me in the
morning,” he said. “I never lost consciousness. All I’m suffering from is a
dandy headache and a sore spot. I just felt I needed to tell someone what
happened, and you were elected.”

“Thanks for thinking of me first.”

He wasn’t sure how to take that. “Go on
back to sleep, Jaz. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Are you going to call Metro?”

“I doubt it would help. There was nobody
around to see anything. I can’t imagine finding any clues to
who
did it. And I don’t feel like sitting around
for another hour or so answering questions from some cop high on caffeine.”

“But you could have been killed.”

“Since I wasn’t, I suppose all he wanted
was the file. Let’s just hope we can get something out of Bobby in the
morning.”

Before leaving, he looked around the
parking area to be sure his assailant had left nothing behind. Drawing a
blank, he drove home, swallowed a couple of painkillers, and fell into bed.
He knew it wasn’t what the medical folks recommended, but at the moment he
couldn’t care less.

46

Thursday
dawned
as gloomy as Sid felt when
he rolled over to silence the alarm. The headache no longer felt like a bass
drum pounding, only a small snare. When he touched the lump on his head,
however, it hurt worse than a stubbed toe. He thought about skipping his run
and napping another thirty minutes. That would amount to letting whoever
whacked him win the round, he decided. He struggled out of bed, pulled on
his sweats, and lumbered out the door.

Despite his best intentions, he ended up
cutting it short. He persuaded himself that he needed to call Arnie and be
ready for Jaz’s summons. After a hot shower and breakfast, his perseverance
quotient jumped several notches. He read the newspaper account of Percy
Pickslay’s fatal accident and discovered that it took place in Cheatham
County, just outside Metropolitan Nashville.