Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (20 page)

“He went out the back door,” she said.
 

“Call nine-one-one,” I said, and I turned back to Jack. Dark, red blood was oozing from Jack’s white shirt near his collarbone. I reached out and gently lifted Jack’s hand, pulled his shirt away from the wound. The hole was small and almost black with red blood oozing from it.
 

“I’m going to raise your shoulder a little,” I said. “I need to look at the back.”

Jack groaned as I lifted his shoulder. I saw nothing, so I lifted his right arm. There was a pink hole the size of a silver dollar. I could hear Charlie’s frantic voice over my shoulder: “There’s been a shooting… Yes... Charleston Story… Joe Dillard’s office…
Calm!
What are you talking about? Get somebody down here! No, no, he’s gone! He walked out the back door! Jack’s been shot! He’s bleeding! Please hurry!”

“It came out under your arm,” I said to Jack as calmly as I could. “We need to get you onto the floor and get your feet up. I don’t want you to go into shock.”

I helped Jack out of the chair and onto his back on the floor.

“Charlie, there’s a first aid kit under the sink in the bathroom. Bring it to me. And grab my jacket. It’s on the chair in front of my desk.”

“Talk to me, Jack,” I said. “Does anything else hurt? Are you hit anywhere else?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, dad, I didn’t… it just happened so—”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” I said. “Just lie still now. You’re going to be fine. Hear the sirens? The EMTs are almost here.”

Charlie brought me the first-aid kit and the jacket. I rolled the jacket up and placed it beneath Jack’s ankles, and I pressed gauze into the wounds, applying pressure to slow the bleeding. Then the door burst open and the placed filled with commotion. Police officers with guns drawn barked at us and at each other while the EMTs took me by the arm and helped me up so they could attend to Jack. Charlie was crying, mumbling something about it being her fault. Mike St. John appeared at my elbow.

“Did you see who it was?” he asked.

“It was him.”
 

“Him? You mean Dalton?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. He tried to kill me.”

“We’ll get him.”

“You better. He shot my son. If you don’t get him, I will.”

“Don’t talk like that, Joe. We’ll take care of it.”

“He shot my son,” I said. “The crazy son of a bitch shot my son.”

Chapter 36

LATER
that evening, after we’d spent the day at the hospital and were sure Jack would be all right, I offered Charlie a ride home. The doctor who worked on Jack said the bullet had bounced off of his collar bone, fracturing it in the process, and had traveled straight down and out beneath his arm. It had done some damage to tissue, but the doctor said Jack should be “as good as new” in a couple of months. I spent the day alternating between beating myself up for leaving the office door unlocked and thinking of the terrible things I wanted to do to Clyde Dalton. I tried to keep the anger bottled up and focus on Jack and the rest of my family, but Caroline had mentioned more than once during the day that she was more worried about me and what I might do than she was about Jack.
 

Leon Bates had come to the hospital late in the afternoon to check on Jack, but he had stayed so long that I suspected he was also there to keep an eye on me. When Charlie accepted my offer of a ride home, Leon had volunteered to follow us in her truck and ride back with me. I was trying to keep the conversation light with Charlie. She, too, had been through a terrifying experience. Two of the bullets Clyde Dalton fired had narrowly missed her and had lodged themselves in the wall behind her desk. I’d heard her tell the police that she had crawled beneath her desk and was waiting for Clyde to walk in and kill her when I walked out of my office and distracted him.
 

“So tell me more about this uncle I’ve heard you talk about,” I said.
 

“He’s different,” Charlie said. “Eccentric is probably a good word.”

“Eccentric how?”

“Do you know anything about Irish wolfhounds?”

“Just that they’re huge.”

“Jasper loves Irish wolfhounds. He’s had four of them that I can remember. They don’t live long, anywhere from five to seven years. He names them all Biscuit. The dog he has rides in his truck with him all the time and hangs his head out the passenger window. It’s a sight to see. He’s also a master taxidermist. He looks at what he does as a kind of post-mortem fountain of youth. He says he preserves beauty. He takes a lot of pride in it.”

“How does he do it?” I asked. “I’ve never been around a taxidermist. I have no idea how they do what they do.”

“Jasper is secretive about it, won’t let anybody set foot in his shop. But from what I’ve heard him say, the most important part is skinning the animal perfectly and preserving the hide perfectly. He tans the hides different ways – salt baths and chemicals he’s developed over the years. He incinerates the bones and the internal organs, and then takes the hides and mounts them on mannequins.”

“Mannequins? They have deer mannequins?”

“Yeah, and bear and squirrel and fish and everything else. They make eyes and jaws and teeth and noses, even tongues. I’ve actually heard him ordering tongues over the telephone. I think he basically skins the animal and then reconstructs it using all these artificial parts. I’ve seen some of his finished work. He’s an artist, really. I heard him threaten to skin a man and mount him on a mannequin not too long ago. I’ll bet he could do it, too, and make whoever he mounted look as good, or even better, than they did when they were alive.”

“That’s a little creepy, Charlie.”

“I’m not saying he would, but he could.”

Joe dropped Charlie off just before dark. The last thing he said before she got out of his truck was not to worry, that the police would have Clyde Dalton in custody before morning. Jasper was walking out of his shop when they pulled in. He walked over to Charlie as she stood next to her truck and watched Dillard drive away.
 

“Who was that, Peanut?”

“My boss.”

“Everything all right? You look a little washed out.”

“Let’s go inside.”

While Charlie heated some leftover lasagna and Jasper made a salad, she told him about the day’s events. He received the bizarre news quietly, asking few questions and making no comments. When they sat down to eat, Charlie said, “Joe told me at the hospital that he thinks maybe I should leave until they catch Clyde Dalton.”

Jasper considered this briefly. He nodded.
 

“Fine idea,” he said. “Get you out of harm’s way until somebody can deal with this crazy man. You reckon he might show up here?”

“I don’t know. After what happened today, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Wouldn’t be healthy for him.”

“Do you really think I should go away? I hate the thought of letting anybody chase me out of my own life.”

“It’ll just be temporary, Peanut. Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

Jasper shook his head. “You know better than that. Besides, who would take care of your horse and Biscuit?”

“We could board them.”

“Thanks, but I reckon I’ll just stay right here. What are you gonna do about the rest of that gold up on the mountain?”

When Charlie told Jasper about the gold, she had drawn the map Roscoe gave her from memory. Jasper had hunted on Roscoe’s land for decades. He said he knew exactly where the hourglass rock was, but he’d never noticed the cave. Charlie had described it to him, the vast chambers, the stream at the bottom, the still. She’d offered to show him, but he declined.
 

“I don’t know, uncle,” she said. “I still have five bars in the barn, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“I been thinking about it a lot. It’s blood money, Peanut. Bad juju.”

“You aren’t the first person to say that.”

Jasper stuffed a fork full of lasagna into his mouth. “Zane Barnes is still looking for it, you can bet on that.”

“Doesn’t matter. He won’t find it.”

“You oughta just let him have it. If it’s cursed, let the curse fall on him.”

“Not going to happen, uncle. Roscoe didn’t want him to have a bit of it.”

“Then hire somebody to blow the mouth of the cave shut. Seal it off and be done with it once and for all.”

Charlie wasn’t really surprised by Jasper’s indifference to the gold. He’d never cared about wealth. He was satisfied with himself and the way he lived.
 

“Do you ever think about leaving here?” Charlie asked.

“Leaving? You mean for good?”

“Yeah, moving away somewhere and starting fresh.”

“Ain’t no such thing as starting fresh,” Jasper said. “You’ve already made your mark in this life. What’s past is past, but that don’t mean it’s gone. You can’t just wipe the board clean.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“Where would you go?” Jasper asked.

“I’m not sure. Someplace where the horizon is bigger. The mountains make me feel cut off sometimes, kind of closed in.”

“I love the mountains. They ain’t for everybody, but I love ‘em.”

“I know you do.”

“Wouldn’t leave ‘em for nothing. Speaking of leaving, where you gonna go on this little vacation of yours?”

“I’m not sure I’m going on vacation.”

“Go, Peanut. Tomorrow morning. Get in your truck or get on a plane or a train and go. Don’t even think about this place for a while.”

Charlie thought for a minute and smiled.

“If you aren’t going anywhere, then neither am I,” she said. “I’m not letting anybody run me off.”

Jasper washed the last bite of his lasagna down with a swig of sweet tea.

“Figured as much,” he said. “Reckon we’ll just stay here and if it comes to it, we’ll make our stand together.”

Chapter 37

JORDAN
Scott heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, a key turning the lock on his cell door. He threw his feet over the side of his bunk and sat up. He didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was late. Supper had been slid through the slot in the door hours ago. There was no good reason for a guard to be entering his cell.
 

Jordan was being held in a segregation unit “for his own protection,” according to the guards. The cell was forty-eight square feet with a stainless steel bunk, toilet and sink. He was not allowed to have a television or a radio. He was not allowed to purchase items from the commissary. Had it not been for his mother going to the newspaper and complaining, he wouldn’t even have the books she sent him. He wasn’t let out for exercise, so he did push-ups and sit-ups and ran in place in his cell. He wasn’t allowed to use the phone. His parents visited once a week for fifteen minutes. He talked to them through Plexiglas. He met with his lawyers when they came to the jail. He was served two meals a day, always cold and tasteless. He showered once a week. He’d lived this way since his arrest.

“Get your clothes on,” the guard said.
 

The hallway was dimly lit and the cell was dark. Jordan didn’t recognize the guard’s voice or his shadowy form.
 

“What’s going on?”

“I said get your clothes on!”

Jordan’s striped jumpsuit was folded on the floor. He stood and put it on slowly.
 

“Turn around. Hands back.”

Jordan felt the cold steel of the handcuffs wrap around his wrists. He’d expected to be killed by a guard or an inmate since the day he was arrested. It looked like the time had come. The guard jerked his elbow, turned him toward the door, and stuck a nightstick into the small of his back.
 

“Walk.”

The cell block was silent except for the usual clinks and bangs in the old building. The regular guard wasn’t sitting behind the desk in the corridor. The man holding Jordan’s arm smelled of tobacco and cheap cologne. He guided Jordan out of the block, through a labyrinth of hallways and down three flights of steps into a dark room. He flipped on a flashlight and Jordan walked past a humming boiler. He climbed a short set of steps and was pushed through another door. Jordan felt the cool night air. The guard unlocked the handcuffs, stepped back.

“They’re planning to kill you,” the guard said. “I can’t let that happen.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Take this.” He held out a small cell phone. “It’s prepaid. Nobody can trace it. It’s already turned on. Get out of here. Hide in the woods back there and call somebody to come pick you up. Don’t let them find you.”

Jordan looked down at the phone, back up at the guard. He couldn’t see him very well in the darkness, but he could tell he was maybe thirty, average size, wearing the black uniform that all the guards wore, a black ball cap pulled down low on his forehead.
 

“No,” Jordan said, “take me back inside.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re planning to kill you before daylight. If you stay in this jail, you’re going to die.”

“How do I know you won’t shoot me if I run?”

“I’m not going to shoot you. How the hell would I explain you being out here in the first place? I’m trying to help you. If you want to live, run.”

The guard turned and walked back through the door, closing it behind him. Jordan reached for the doorknob. It was locked. He looked around frantically. There was no moon, no wind. It was absolutely still. He put his back against the door, felt the coolness of the metal through his jumpsuit. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. He could make out a tree line, black and ominous against the night sky.
 

Hide in the woods back there and call somebody…

He was unshackled, no handcuffs, but he felt as though there was a bulls eye on his back. He ran for the trees, made it, and knelt next to an oak. He punched numbers into the cell phone with trembling fingers. His father’s sleepy voice came on the line.
 

“Pops, it’s me.”

“Jordan?”

“I’m out.”