Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(80)
Tom nodded and turned his eyes back to the witness stand. He stifled the urge to smile. How could I have ever doubted Ray Ray?
For the first time since being retained as Bo’s lawyer, Tom allowed himself to think of victory.
If Ray Ray Pickalew had indeed found a witness who could place Dr. George Curtis and Larry Tucker at the scene of Roosevelt Haynes’s lynching in 1966, then Andy Walton’s intention to confess would be a powerful motive for murder. And with motive . . .
Again, Tom fought the urge to smile as his heart raced in his chest.
. . . we might just win this thing.
66
By the time the Lawrenceburg First Church of God bus arrived on the Giles County Courthouse square, the time was 9:15 a.m. Bocephus Haynes and his legal team would have long since arrived and gone inside the courthouse.
JimBone Wheeler followed the brigade of Klansmen off the bus, knowing that he would likely only have one shot to complete his mission. But that was OK. One shot was better than no shot—especially after spending all of yesterday in the safe room at the Sleepy Head—and he was pleased with the plan he had developed in just a matter of seconds last night.
He knew the prosecutor who’d stayed the night at the Sleepy Head and the detective who’d camped out at the Huddle House had followed the bus into Pulaski. From his seat in the back row, he’d caught sight of an unmarked black police car tailing the bus about a mile outside of Lawrenceburg.
Bone knew that had to be them, and the knowledge had made him smile under his white hood. Gotcha, he had thought.
Now, standing on the square surrounded by hundreds of other white-hooded and white-robed men, Bone waited for part two of his plan to unfold.
In the trunk of the orange Dodge Charger, Cappy Limbaugh knew they’d waited long enough. He turned the lever in the back of the trunk down and leaned into the carpeted wall, and the wall folded down into the backseat of the car. Moving as quickly as his stiff limbs would carry him, he crawled through the opening, with Martha Booher right behind him. He shut the opening and then slowly raised his head to look around. The parking lot of the church was full of cars, but he saw no people and no sets of eyes. “Let’s go,” he whispered. Grabbing the keys that Bone had left on the floorboard of the passenger-side backseat, Cappy cracked open the door just a hair and stepped outside, motioning for Booher to do the same. Then he shut the door, clicked the keyless entry lock button—he had modernized the car just a bit—and tried to walk as nonchalantly as possible across the parking lot full of cars to the Chevy Silverado parked near the rear of the church, where Pastor Leo Jacobs’s house was located.
As he climbed in the front seat of the unlocked truck and grabbed the keys from under the mat on the floorboard, Cappy saw Pastor Leo staring at him through the blinds of the large picture window at the front of the house. The reverend nodded, and Cappy returned the gesture, turning the key as Martha Booher climbed into the passenger side of the truck.
Pastor Leopold Jacobs, minister of the First Church of God, was for all intents and purposes as fine a man as Cappy had ever known. A great preacher in the pulpit and unafraid to handle a rattlesnake if it meant the collection plate would rise. Church attendance had doubled since Pastor Leo had taken over as minister in 2002.
But Pastor Leo was a bachelor—his wife lost her battle with breast cancer in 2006—and he had certain primal needs that his occupation hamstrung him from fulfilling.
So every Thursday night for the past three years, Pastor Leo had met Ann Reynolds, whose husband was a trucker and was rarely at home, in Room 106 of the Sleepy Head Inn. Cappy understood and embraced the hypocrisy of it all. To Cappy Limbaugh, it made perfect sense that a minister who preached the gospel on Sunday would commit adultery with one of his married parishioners every Thursday. To Cappy’s mind, the sooner a person embraced the hypocrisy of life, the sooner he might find real happiness.
Regardless, Pastor Leo was indebted to Cappy, a situation that had paid great dividends when Bone said he needed a place to hide his truck. Raising his right hand in salute, Cappy put the Chevy Silverado in gear and pulled out of the driveway.
Behind him Pastor Leo closed the blinds in the picture window.
“What do you make of this?” Wade asked.
They had followed the bus all the way to Pulaski and were now parked in front of Reeves Drug Store on the east side of the square.
Powell grunted and continued to stare out the windshield. Finally, he sighed. “I’m sorry, partner. I guess I’ve led us on a wild-goose chase. I . . .” He stopped, shaking his head. He grabbed the door handle and then took his hand off of it. “I swear, though. Something about all this has my antennas up. It stinks. Why the hell is Cappy Limbaugh marching in this damn parade of clowns?” He surveyed the square, where there were now hundreds of Klansmen marching.
Wade pointed at the door to Reeves. “Come on, partner, let’s grab some more coffee. A shot of caffeine may open our eyes.”
Powell followed Wade out on to the sidewalk and then did a sweep of the entire square with his eyes. “Wade, just for shits and giggles, could you call one of those Lawrenceburg deputies and see if that orange General Lee look-alike is still parked out in front of that church?”
“Sure thing. Whatcha thinking?”
Powell grunted. Then: “I was just thinking that if I wanted to kill someone on this square, I’d be dressed in a white hood and robe. Unless you had a bird’s-eye view, how could you tell who was doing the shooting?”