Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (26 page)

“You and I don’t know each other, Mr. Story,” Joe said. “But I want to be clear about something. I’m not your lawyer, so the things you say to me are not protected by the attorney-client privilege. I don’t intend to repeat anything that’s said here this morning, but in case something comes up in the future, you should be careful what you say.”

“I didn’t say anything I’d take back,” Jasper said. “I heard the man is gone, and I believe the person who told me. He didn’t set no fire last night.”

“Charlie, you asked me to come up here and talk. What is it you want to talk about?”

Charlie got up from the table and disappeared. When she returned, she was carrying something that was wrapped in a blanket. She plopped it down on the table, then disappeared again. She made four more trips.

“I want you to take these,” she said. “I brought them in from the barn and have been keeping them under my bed. I don’t want them in the house anymore.”

“Is that what I think it is?”

Charlie pulled back the blankets, revealing five gleaming bars of gold.

“These bars represent more than two-and-a-half million dollars,” she said. “Please take them.”

 
Joe leaned back and drew a deep breath. “You know I’d like to help you, Charlie, but what would I do with it?”

“Put your grandchildren through college. Give it to charity. I don’t care what you do with it. The sight of it sickens me now.”

“Put it back, Charlie. However you got it out of the cave, just do the opposite. Put it back and leave it there. Give yourself some time to sort everything out.”

Charlie sat down heavily in one of the chairs and covered her face with her hands.

“It isn’t over,” she said. “Whoever killed my father, whoever burned the barn wants the gold and they’ll be back. Even if I take the gold to the cave, they’ll be back. They think I’m the only person who knows where the gold is, and they’ll come for me. I’m going to wind up like Zane Barnes. It’s just a question of when.”

“I think you and your uncle should invest in some security measures, some motion detectors, some alarms, whatever,” Joe said. “Work out some kind of communication plan that allows you to check on each other regularly. Keep Jasper’s dog close by. Maybe you should get yourself a pistol, Charlie. Do you know how to use a gun?”

“I’m a country girl. Of course I know how to use a gun.”

“Do you have one?”

“I have two, but I’m not going to start carrying them around with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a killer. I’m a stupid, greedy young woman who became obsessed with the idea of being rich and I put my own selfish interests ahead of everything else. And now I’m paying the price. The best thing for everyone right now would be for me to take one of those guns you just mentioned and blow my brains out with it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Joe said. “Listen, I’ve been where you are right now. I’ve blamed myself when bad things have happened, and there have been times I’ve wanted to just throw in the towel and quit. As a matter of fact, I
have
quit a couple of times. I’ve withdrawn, isolated myself in a little cocoon of self-pity and self-loathing. But I’ve learned to forgive myself when I make mistakes, and that’s something you should try to do. So maybe you became a little pre-occupied with this gold. Who wouldn’t? It’s a fortune and it was handed to you with what you thought were no strings attached. You couldn’t have foreseen the uproar it would cause. You couldn’t—”

“You warned me,” Charlie said. “You were the first person to use the phrase ‘blood money.’ You said bad things could happen, that people could get hurt. I should have listened to you.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Joe said.

“But what about now? What do I do now?”

“You keep your head on a swivel. You stay in close touch with me, with your uncle, with Jack. And you keep on going. That’s all you can really do, Charlie. You just have to keep on going.”

Chapter 48

JORDAN
Scott’s trial was scheduled to begin in October, and despite everything that had happened, Joe had let it be known that he was still counting on Charlie to do a closing argument so compelling that the jury would find Jordan not guilty. Joe had been emailing her themes and phrases that he wanted her to use, but she’d been distracted and found it hard to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.
 

Joe left mid-morning to go to the cancer center in Johnson City where his wife was getting treatment. He went twice a week, every week, and sat with Caroline while she received the intravenous drugs that were keeping her alive. Jack had gone over to his aunt’s diner to grab an early lunch before he went out and did an interview with a potential witness. Charlie was trying to concentrate on outlining her argument and looking over statements when she heard someone knocking on the front door of the office. It had remained locked since Clyde Dalton had shot up the place. Charlie got up and walked into the lobby. Standing outside the glass door were two unusual-looking young men.
 

“Can I help you?” Charlie yelled through the glass.

One of them was perhaps the largest human being Charlie had ever seen. He had black hair and eyes and muscles that rippled through the light jacket he was wearing. His hands were massive. The other one was smaller and also had dark features. He, too, was muscular, though nowhere near as muscular as the big one.
 

“We need a lawyer,” the smaller one said. “Got a little trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Charlie said.
 

“It’s a little embarrassing yelling through the door like this,” he said. “Mind opening up?”

Charlie was reluctant, but it was a potential client, so she unlocked the door. The small one introduced himself as Johnny and the big one said his name was Carlo. Charlie led them into Joe’s office because there were extra chairs in there. She took a seat behind Joe’s desk.

“What kind of trouble did you get into?” she said.

“I said it was a little trouble,” the one who called himself Johnny said. “But that isn’t really true. We got big trouble.”

“Do you have a warrant? Any paperwork?”

“No.”

“Okay… why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

“Somebody has something that belongs to us. We want it back.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you—”

“Did I tell you my last name? It’s Russo. That mean anything to you?”

A wave of fear, cold and remorseless, swept over Charlie. Her mouth went dry. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d tried. Her legs were suddenly trembling. She looked at both of them, alternately, and realized she was looking directly into the face of death.

“How’s your horse, anyway?” His eyes bored into her. The big man got up, walked over and closed and locked the office door.
 

“This is how it’s gonna be,” Johnny Russo said. “You’re gonna tell us where the gold is. If you don’t, we’re gonna rain fire down on you like you ain’t never dreamed of. We’re gonna kill everything and everybody you know, starting with that lawyer who left a little while ago. That other guy that left just a minute ago? He a friend of yours? Dead. Your uncle? Bye, bye. We’ll crush his head in a vise the same way we did your old buddy Barnes, and we’ll make you watch. If that don’t do it, we’ll start cutting you up, piece by piece. Carlo here likes to inflict pain. The first thing he’ll do is cut your nipples off. After that, he’ll cut off one little piece at a time until you either tell us or you bleed to death.”

“I… I can’t.” Charlie’s voice was raspy. She could feel perspiration beneath her arms.

“You
can
and you
will
. Right now.”

“I can’t tell you where it is. It’s in a cave in the mountains. You’d never find it. I’d have to show you. I’d have to take you there.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

“How do I know you won’t just kill me after I show you?”

“You don’t.”

“Then I’m not going anywhere.”

Russo turned his head to Carlo, who was standing near the door.

“Go over to that diner and wait for the pretty boy to come out. Shoot him in the head as soon as he clears the door.”

“No,” Charlie said. “Don’t. Don’t hurt him. I’ll go with you. I’ll show you where it is.”

Chapter 49

"TWO
things,” Charlie said as she pulled her pick-up onto the street. “We need a flashlight, and I have to text my uncle.”

Her fear had subsided slowly. She felt it morphing into anger as she realized she was probably looking at her father’s killer.
 

“Why do we need a flashlight?”

“Because it’s in a cave. I told you that.”

“No way on the uncle,” Johnny said from the passenger side. Carlo was in a car behind them.
 

“I text him every thirty minutes. All it says is, ‘ok.’ If he doesn’t get a text from me, he’s going to call. If he calls and I don’t answer, he’ll get ahold of the police and they’ll be all over the mountain by the time we get there.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Here, look at my outgoing text messages.” She offered her phone to Russo.
 

“I don’t want to look at your phone. And you ain’t texting nobody.”

“He’ll call.”

“So he calls. You tell him you forgot. You tell him everything’s fine. Why do you text him every thirty minutes, anyway?”

“Somebody killed my father. Somebody burned our barn and Jasper’s shop. But you wouldn’t know anything about that. My horse is fine, by the way. We got her out.”

“Too bad,” Johnny said. “I hate horses.”

“So you killed my father.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you did.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Then that animal behind us killed him.”

“Carlo ain’t no animal.”

“But he killed him.”

“Shut your mouth. You talk too much.”

Charlie’s cell phone rang.
 

“I told you,” she said. “It’s my uncle.”

Johnny produced a gun from beneath his jacket and pointed it at her stomach.

“You tell him what I said. One wrong word and I’ll shoot you in the gut.”
 

Charlie pushed the button on the phone. “Sorry, Jasper,” she said. “I forgot. No, no, everything’s fine. Everything’s perfect. No, I’m in the car. Just running a couple of errands. Yes. How about you? Biscuit? Good. All right. Half-an-hour.”

“Biscuit? What was that? Some kind of code?”

“Biscuit is his dog’s name. Listen, I’m not kidding about the flashlight. We have to have it.”

“Stop at a store and I’ll send Carlo in. I swear to God if you’re jerking me around you’ll suffer for it.”

Charlie stopped at a Wal-Mart in Elizabethton and she and Johnny waited while Carlo went inside.

“How are you planning on getting up there?” Charlie asked.

“Where?”

“To the cave. I had to hide my horse so you wouldn’t kill it, so we can’t take her, and I can’t walk up the mountain in these shoes.”

“It’s somewhere on Barnes’ old place, right?”

Charlie nodded.

“There’s a four-wheeler there. We take it.”

Charlie shook her head.

“What?”
 

 
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s two thousand pounds of gold up there. The terrain is rugged. The cave is huge.”

“You just get us there. Let me worry about the rest.”

Chapter 50

JASPER'S
lungs were burning as he jogged up the mountain. Peanut was in trouble. That was certain. She hadn’t texted him when she was supposed to, and when he got her on the phone, she called him “Jasper.” She called him “uncle,” never “Jasper.” And the word was supposed to be “okay.” Everything is “okay.” She said “fine” and “perfect.” They’d talked things over for two hours after Joe suggested they work out some kind of emergency plan. Peanut’s biggest fear was that whoever had been terrorizing her would grab her up and torture her until she told them where the gold was. Jasper wondered how they got to her.
 

She said she was in the car, which, he hoped, meant she was leading them to the cave. They’d also talked about the best way to handle it if whoever was behind all this got her into the cave. The plan was risky and imperfect. All Jasper had to go by was the memory of the map Peanut had drawn for him and the description she’d given him of the cave. He knew he could find it, but he didn’t know if he could find the stream at the bottom. He hoped Peanut could keep her head. He hoped she was coming to the cave. He hoped he got there first. He hoped he’d done the right thing by leaving the dog locked up in the house. And he hoped he could shoot straight with the unfamiliar compound bow that was hanging across his back. His old re-curve, the one he’d used to kill Clyde Dalton, was destroyed in the fire.
       

 
It was only a little over a mile as the crow flies to the cave, but crows didn’t fly along the surface of the mountain. Jasper jogged through draws and scrambled up steep slopes. He waded across the creek and climbed another slope. He cleared a ridge and the hourglass rock came into view, right where he thought it would be. He stopped and tried to catch his breath, tried to listen to the sounds of the mountain. There was no one in sight. He hurried down through the rocks and crossed the creek again. The rock loomed above him like a broad-shouldered sentry. He climbed the last few feet and saw it. The mouth of the cave, nearly hidden by vines. He stood in the opening and peered into the darkness, straining to hear some human sound.

There was none.

He flipped the switch on Peanut’s high-powered spotlight and walked into the black.

Chapter 51

CHARLIE
was sandwiched between Johnny and Carlo on the four-wheeler. Johnny was driving with Charlie pointing the way, while Carlo was sitting on a metal rack, facing backward. The thought struck her that the morning was very much like the one on which Roscoe Barnes died. The sky was a deep blue and clear. It was warm with a soft breeze blowing. She wondered whether she was experiencing the majesty of the mountains for the last time. She wondered whether Jasper had figured out she was in trouble, whether he’d have time to get there before they killed her.