Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(27)

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem. Even if Walton’s not on the visitor’s log, it’s probably time to make a visit to Springville. With Willistone in jail, JimBone needs someone else to bankroll him.”

Powell put a buffalo wing in his mouth, and his sauce-stained lips curved into a shit-eating grin. Rick knew that grin well. “You’ve got a plan?” he asked, incapable of stopping his own smile.

Powell raised his eyebrows, and his grin widened. “Don’t you think Jack Willistone is getting tired of prison food?”

“A deal,” Rick said, nodding along with Powell. “You really think Jack Willistone might deal?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Powell said, wiping wing sauce off his mouth, but the grin remained. “But when I get through with Arrington . . . I think it’s worth a road trip to the state pen.”





15


When Tom arrived at Bo’s office at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, he had a surprise waiting for him. Leaning against the front stoop and dressed in a rumpled coat and tie was none other than Ray Ray Pickalew.

“Figured you’d get an early start,” Ray Ray said, curling his lips up into his patented Joker face.

“I take it you’re in?” Tom asked, smiling at his old teammate.

“I’m in,” Ray Ray said.

“What made you change your mind?”

Ray Ray shrugged. “Oh, I guess I . . . just had to pray on it.”

“I didn’t realize you were the praying type, Ray Ray.”

“Oh, I talk to God all the time,” Ray Ray said. “He just don’t listen.”

Tom laughed and started to unlock the door, but Ray Ray put his hand up to stop him. “So, I’ve got some information that I think you’ll find helpful.” He sighed and wiped sweat from his forehead. “But first I need some breakfast.”

Now that he was closer to him, Tom smelled the strong odor of whiskey. “Are you hungover?”

“No,” Ray Ray said, beginning to walk across the street. “I’m still drunk.”



A minute later they were sitting at a back table at the Bluebird Café, a favorite local breakfast spoon caddy-corner from Bo’s office and just two blocks from the courthouse square. The smells of bacon grease, coffee, and pancakes fueled the air, and Tom breathed them all in as he sipped from a mug of black coffee.

“The body was moved,” Ray Ray said after the waitress had taken their orders.

“What?” Tom asked, feeling his pulse quicken.

“From the Sundowners Club, a little strip joint on the edge of town that Andy liked to visit. He was shot in the parking lot at the Sundowners with a twelve-gauge, and then his body was moved a quarter mile down 64 to Walton Farm. There is a dirt road entrance there that goes right past a small clearing.” Ray Ray paused and sipped his coffee. “This is the place where Bo’s daddy was lynched by the Klan in 1966. The area is surrounded by trees, and the killer hung Andy from the same tree limb where Bo’s father was hanged.”

“How can someone get in the farm? There’s got to be security, right? A gate or something?” Tom fired off the questions, but something else that Ray Ray had said had begun to nag at the back of his mind. The name of the strip club . . .

Ray Ray nodded. “Yeah, there’s a gate and also a surveillance camera.”

Tom felt his heart beat even harder at the mention of a camera.

“Cops found the camera lens smashed in,” Ray Ray continued, shaking his head. “The last thing on the tape is Bo’s ugly mug swinging a baseball bat at it.”

Tom covered his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly,” Ray Ray said.

Tom turned the information over in his mind, remembering what Bo had said during their meeting at the jail. “Bo said he visited the clearing every year on the anniversary of his father’s death.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Ray Ray said as the waitress set their food down on the table.

When she was gone, Tom grabbed a piece of bacon and pointed it at Ray Ray. “But how could he get in if there was a gate and camera?”

Ray Ray shrugged. “That I don’t know. I suspect he may have had some help from his cousin.”

“Who?”

“Bo’s cousin, Booker T., leases a lot of farmland in Giles and Lawrence Counties, including the Waltons’ property. If Bo wanted to get on Walton Farm without being seen, I bet Booker T. helped him.” He leaned back in his seat as the waitress refilled his coffee cup. Once she was gone, Ray Ray grimaced. “And I bet the General has been on him like stink on shit ever since Bo was arrested.”

“If the body was moved from the strip club, it had to be taken by car, right?” Tom asked.

“Probably,” Ray Ray said, shrugging. “But Bo is a very strong man. It’s conceivable he could have carried Andy a quarter of a mile.”

“But to hang him and burn him?”

“He could’ve set the gas and rope down at the clearing and gone back for Andy. The video of him breaking the camera lens was around eleven thirty. My source says Andy didn’t even leave the Sundowners until closing time, which is around one in the morning. So Bo was definitely at the clearing before the shooting.” Ray Ray put a healthy helping of eggs in his mouth and spoke with his mouth full. “I figure he probably got the code to the gate from Booker T., and after breaking the camera at eleven thirty drove through a couple hours later with Andy’s body in the car.”