The Professor (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #1)(2)
A few minutes later, the waitress brought their food, and the talk turned to the past, of the ’61 team and whether Tom kept up with any of the boys. The Man ate his breakfast quickly and looked at his watch every so often. He had done what he came to do and now it was on to the next job at hand. When they were finished, the Man picked up the tab, and the two men walked together to Tom’s car.
“Think about what I said, son,” the Man said, squeezing Tom’s shoulder. “I’d love for you to come home.”
“OK, Coach, I…” But the Man was already walking away, passing out of earshot before Tom could get the words out. Through the glare of the sun, the Man’s six-foot-four-inch body cast a shadow over half the parking lot. Tom smiled and opened his car door.
He would talk to Julie. He would speak with George McDuff. He might even write out the costs and benefits of becoming a law professor. But, by the time he was halfway to Birmingham, Tom knew. Just as he had known those many years ago.
The Man had called. And he knew he must answer.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
1
At 10.30am on Tuesday, September 2, 2009, Rose Batson stepped out of the Texaco gas station that she managed for a smoke. None of the four self-serve pumps were in use and Rose spat on the ground after blowing out her first puff.
“Ain’t makin’ no money today,” Rose said to herself, taking a long drag on her Camel unfiltered cigarette. Of course, it made no difference to Rose. She was on salary. But customers helped make the day pass. Yesterday had been crazy, what with all the beachgoers coming home. There hadn’t been a time from 10am to 8pm when at least one of her pumps wasn’t in use. Rose herself had only been to the beach once. Back in the summer of ’67 when she was a teenager. Panama City for a long weekend. Rose smiled to herself, thinking of the long-ago trip that marked the first, second and third times she had ever been laid.
“Old Rosie could throw that leg,” she said out loud, laughing at the memory of her lost virginity.
Rose Batson had run the Texaco station at the intersection of Highway 82 and Limestone Bottom Road for over thirty-five years. Raised by her grandmother after her mother and father perished in a house fire, Rose was hired on by Tom Sloan at Sloan’s Bait and Beer Store in 1972. When Sloan sold the store to Texaco in 1990, Rose stayed on to manage the place. There wasn’t anybody in Henshaw or Henshaw County that Rose Batson didn’t know or at least claim she knew. She had seen a lot of things too. One night, ten years earlier, she had seen Rodney Carver shoot Henry Dawson with a twelve-gauge shotgun right outside her store window. Henry, or Hal the Pal, as folks in Henshaw called him, had been too close a pal to Rodney’s wife and Rodney took offense. Henshaw County style.
Rose stretched her arms over her head and her back creaked loudly. She coughed and some phlegm gathered in her throat, which she violently spat out.
“Fallin’ apart, old woman. You just fallin’ apart,” she growled to herself. Rose tossed the cigarette on the ground and stomped it out with her foot. Looking to her right, she thought she saw an object in the distance. Squinting, she noticed that the object was a car and it was approaching the station. She watched in silence as the car continued its ascent and smiled when its left-turn signal came on.
“Back in bidness,” she said, turning to walk back into the store. As she opened the door, she saw out of the corner of her eye another vehicle approaching in the opposite direction. As it began to hit a slight dip in Highway 82, Rose felt her stomach tighten. It was an eighteen-wheeler, and, judging from the cylinder shape of its trailer, it was hauling some sort of fuel. She took two slow steps back towards the pumps and watched. As the eighteen-wheeler arose out of the dip and came into view, Rose Batson looked back at the light and saw the red Honda Accord beginning its turn. Oh my God, she thought, as her hands instinctively went to her cheeks and she held her breath.
2
Dewey Newton was hung over and running late. Not good, he knew. The goddamn dispatcher had said the rig would be ready by 9, but it hadn’t been. Not my fault. He shook his head. It won’t make a damn. Jack will blame my ass anyway.
Dewey had made the Tuscaloosa to Montgomery run a couple of times before, and it was no big deal. Straight shot on Highway 82 – an hour and a half’s drive by the speed limit, an hour and twenty if you drove a few miles over.
But when you don’t hit the road till 10, and you’ve got to be there by 11...
Dewey squeezed the wheel and began fumbling with the radio, trying to find a station that played country music – not the new hip-hop country that Dewey couldn’t stand, but good old George Jones/Merle Haggard country. Up ahead, he saw a Texaco station and a stoplight. As he passed a faded green “Henshaw City Limits” sign, Dewey glanced down at the clock on the dash.
10.35am.
From experience, Dewey knew that Henshaw was the halfway point of the trip. He had made up some time, but he was still fifteen minutes behind where he needed to be.
Dewey scratched his stubble and wiped sweat from his forehead, thinking about his boss. Seeing the sonofabitch in his mind. Jack Daniel Willistone. Walking the yard, cigarette dangling from his mouth. His face red from exertion, his work shirt damp with sweat. His eyes mean. Unforgiving…
“We work longer, we work faster, and we work smarter.” That was Jack’s mantra, and Dewey knew only too well what it meant. Drivers were expected to drive more than the eleven hours a day allowed by DOT regulations and fix their driver’s logs to show compliance. Drivers were also expected to push the envelope on the road. If a load typically took an hour, Jack wanted it done in fifty minutes.