Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(90)

He felt rough hands grab his own and then the cold steel of handcuffs rolling over his wrists and locking. Bone turned, expecting to see the prosecutor, but instead looking into the crystal-blue eyes of the Sam Elliott look-alike from Destin Harbor.

“Remember me?” the man said, tightening the cuffs and then jerking the hood off of Bone’s head.

As he blinked his eyes to adjust to the light, Bone heard an ominous chuckling coming from the ground below him. Then the chuckling rose to loud, wild laughter. Bone looked down, and the handcuffed lawyer was gazing up at him with a crazy grin. If the man’s face had been whiter and his lips redder, the grin would give a mind to the Joker from Batman. Bone saw blood oozing from the man’s midsection from where he had been shot, but the maniac didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he gazed up at Bone, laughing hysterically. “Just like . . .” More laughter. Then coughing. Then more laughing. “Scooby Doo.”





81


Bo crawled toward the body of Ray Ray Pickalew, hearing the laughs. The smell of gunpowder was thick in the air, and he coughed as he sucked the scent in. Two sheriff’s deputies were leaning over Ray Ray’s body, and one of them was screaming into his walkie-talkie for an ambulance.

“Scooby f*cking Doo,” Ray Ray wailed, grabbing his bleeding midsection. “Only . . . goddamn thing Doris watches anymore.”

Bo gazed upward from Ray Ray and saw that Powell Conrad and Wade Richey had taken a Klansman into custody. The Klansman’s hood had been taken off, and when Bo saw the man’s face, a memory came rushing back to him. The man who jumped off the bridge last summer . . .

“Bo . . .”

Bo’s eyes immediately shot to Ray Ray as he heard the whimper of a voice. “Bo, I’m sorry. I . . .”

Bo looked at the two bullet holes in Ray Ray’s stomach and knew his time was short. “Ray Ray,” he said. “Please tell me why—”

“I should have spoken sooner. I—”

“Don’t worry about that now. I forgive you.” Bo was surprised to feel tears welling in his eyes. “I forgive you, but please . . .” He leaned as close to Ray Ray as he could and spoke the words directly into the man’s ear. “I have to know why.”

Ray Ray blinked, and his eyes shot upward, as if he were trying to look at the sky.

“Stay with me, dog.” Bo shook Ray Ray by the shoulders. Then he felt his own shoulders being grabbed, and he was being pulled up off his feet. He turned and saw Deputy Hank Springfield.

“The paramedics are here, Bo. Let them do their job.”

“He’s gonna die!” Bo yelled. “And I’ve got to know.”

“We have to get him to the hospital.”

Bo turned and saw Ray Ray being placed on a gurney. He stepped between the EMTs and grabbed Ray Ray by the shirt. “Ray Ray, tell me.”

As the EMTs propelled the stretcher forward, Ray Ray Pickalew reached toward Bo and grabbed his hand, pulling him close with an astounding show of strength. “Your daddy’s . . . hanging . . . was a present,” Ray Ray stuttered.

Bo wrinkled his face in confusion. “What . . . ?”

Ray Ray spat blood out of his mouth and took in a huge breath. Then, turning Bo’s head so that he could look him directly in the eye, Raymond “Ray Ray” Pickalew spoke his last words. “A birthday present.”





82


George Curtis sat alone in the dark den of his home. His right hand and arm were bleeding from where Matilda had bitten and scratched him. He had euthanized the cat fifteen minutes ago, but in one last show of spirit, Matilda had managed to slice flesh before he could inject the needle.

No matter, George thought, chuckling at the idea of poor old Matilda, who’d never shown a bit of spirit in her life, rearing up to fight just before death swept her away.

Ironic, he knew. But irony was one of his favorite things about life.

George lifted the note he’d written just a few minutes before, reading the words carefully and making sure everything was clear. He knew this was the only way, and, truthfully, he was relieved. He could not have what he wanted in this world. Only glimpses and tastes of it, but never . . . all of it.

He had gotten one last taste today, and the thrill of it had already worn off. Just like it always did. He figured his obsession was probably the way a drug addict felt about crack. In fact, he figured the crack addict had it easy compared to his day-in, day-out torture.

George waited until he heard the sirens outside his house, followed by loud footsteps coming up the front walk and the rustling of more movement around the side of the house. When he heard three swift knocks on the door, he grabbed his Remington shotgun, which he’d had propped beside him on the couch, and clicked the safety off.

Then he paused for two seconds to admire the gun, thinking again of the irony of it all. He was holding the same gun used to kill Andy.

As the front and back doors of George Curtis’s home on East Jefferson Street were kicked in, George put the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth. Sorry to disappoint you, boys, he thought.

Then he pulled the trigger.





83


Raymond James Pickalew was pronounced dead upon arrival at Hillside Hospital at 5:05 p.m. Tom watched the nurse place the white sheet over Ray Ray’s head, thinking how ironic it all was. Ray Ray, who had worn the sheet and hood of the Klan, had revealed the truth behind a four-decade-old murder today. He had figuratively pulled down their sheets and hoods to show everyone the awful, naked truth.