Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(8)

It wasn’t there. Damnit, he thought, remembering the familiar scent he had inhaled when he had first opened the truck.

He looked in the rearview mirror again, but the figure was gone. He spun around, blinking his eyes and trying to focus them in the darkness, seeing nothing. “Where—?”

Four loud knocks came from the driver’s-side window.

Andy spun toward the sound, his heart pounding in his chest. Then as his sight adjusted, recognition slowly set in. “Jesus Christ,” he said. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes and clicked the automatic button for the window to lower.

It was halfway down when he saw the shotgun pointed at his head.

Andy chuckled bitterly. “So you’re gonna shoot me, huh?” He started to say more, but then he saw the thumb click the safety of the gun off.

His question had just been answered. Andy looked into the cold eyes. “Well . . . f*ck you then,” Andy said.

Funny thing what a man does when he knows he’s about to die. Andy Walton didn’t try to open the door or fight, and he didn’t duck. Instead, he slowly turned his head and looked out the windshield toward Highway 64.

Into the darkness.

The gun fired, but Andy didn’t hear the sound of the blast before the shot entered his brain and killed him.

He only heard the screams of the boy . . .





4


The 911 call was made at 2:30 a.m.

“Emergency Services,” a monotone female voice answered. “What is your emergency?”

“Yeah, I’m a long-haul trucker and I just passed a brush fire off Highway 64 about a half mile west of the Sundowners Club. Looks like it might be on part of Walton Farm. There’s a lot of smoke. If the fire department doesn’t get out there fast, the whole place is going to be up in flames.”

“Thank you, sir. Can you—?”

The phone went dead on the other end of the line.





5


The fire trucks arrived at 2:54 a.m. Chief Woodrow “Woody” Monroe had been fast asleep when he received the call from dispatch and was still groggy as he walked through the tree-lined dirt path that led to the clearing. Woody had lived in Pulaski all of his life except for the eleven months he had spent in Vietnam in 1967 chasing Charlie. He had seen things during those 337 days in Southeast Asia that still haunted his dreams.

What he saw now as he stepped through the smoke and into the clearing was as bad as anything he’d seen in the Vietnamese jungle. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, involuntarily retching and dropping his hands to his knees.

“Chief, are you all right?” A young sergeant, Bradley Hill, had put his arm around Woody. “Chief . . . ?”

“I’m OK, Brad. It’s just . . .” He pointed, and Brad nodded, his eyes wide with shock and horror.

“I know, sir. What should we do?”

Woody started to respond, but his words were drowned out by the most piercing scream he had ever heard in his life. Woody turned to see a woman in a bathrobe, her hands covering her mouth.

Woody had known Maggie Walton for over fifty years, and he had never seen her outside her home when she wasn’t dressed to the nines, her hair always perfectly coiffed. Now here she was, one of the wealthiest women in all of the state of Tennessee, dressed in a green bathrobe, her white tresses tousled all over her head, tears streaking her eyes.

“No!” she screamed, running toward the fire.

“Oh, shit,” Woody said, stepping toward her, but she was already past him. “Ms. Maggie, you can’t—”

“Andy!” she screamed. “Andy!” She fell to her knees ten feet from the flames.

“Ms. Maggie, you need to back away.” Woody dropped to one knee beside her.

“Don’t tell me what to do, Woody. This is my land. Mine. And that’s . . .” She pointed. “That’s . . . my . . . my . . . Andy!” She rose and tried to step closer to the fire, but Woody grabbed her around the waist and held tight. He felt the woman’s strength as she tried to wiggle free from him. “Ms. Maggie, I’m so sorry.”

Eventually, she stopped trying to break away from him and again fell to her knees. “Andy,” she whimpered. “No.”

“Chief Monroe, we have to—” Brad started, but Woody cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“The fire hasn’t spread past that tree,” Woody said, squinting harshly at the young sergeant. “We’ve probably got five minutes before it does. The sheriff will want photographs. Take at least five from every angle you can get. Then start hosing it down. Tell the other men to hold steady until you’ve taken the pictures. I’ve got to make some calls.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Brad began barking instructions to the other men, Woody took out his cell phone and dialed the home number of Sheriff Ennis Petrie.

On the fifth ring Ennis’s groggy voice answered. “Hello.”

“Ennis, we got a situation out here at Walton Farm.”

“What is it?” the sheriff asked, his voice more alert.

Woody started to talk, and then another bloodcurdling scream came from below him, followed by a low, almost-guttural moan. “Ms. Maggie,” Woody whispered, squatting and patting her back. Maggie Walton gazed with dead eyes toward the fire.