***
Catfish, now driving the patrol car, pulled it around to the rear of the house and parked beside Edie’s Lincoln. A cautious frown slid over his face when he saw the kitchen lights in the house wink out and the house went dark. “Was that a signal of some kind?” he wondered.
The hard, cold metal of a gun barrel slipped through the open window of the patrol car and held there against the side of his face. “Get out,” a voice ordered from the business end of the weapon.
He opened the car door and stood, slowly raising his hands in the air. “I wouldn’t do anything stupid. A couple of hours from now there’s gonna be more cops around here than you can shake a donut factory at.”
A small flashlight beam flared in his eyes blinding him in a white glare. The gun lowered away from his head and a voice said “Catfish? What are you doing here in this Sheriff’s car? Where’s everyone else?”
Catfish gulped a deep breath of the cool night air and said, “Chuck? I’m glad to see you. I thought for a second old Anderson done got the drop on me.”
The ugly roar of a rifle shot drowned his words and the blue police light on top of the patrol car shattered, spewing broken glass over them. A bullet ricocheted and whined away into the night then the rifle barked a second time. That one whizzed past Catfish’ ear and thudded into the wall of the house behind him.
Chuck hit the dirt beside the car, pulling Catfish down with him. “Did you see which direction it came from?”
From a half opened window inside the house, Gail whispered, “I saw a flash near the barn on the left side, near the boat.”
Chuck started to move but Catfish stopped him. “Blake and Bill are out there some place and that old trapper, Ed Barton too. Be careful of what you’re shooting at Chuck. Don’t hit them.”
When the name Barton registered, Chuck asked, “Barton? The old trapper who found Matt’s car? What’s he doing here?”
Catfish whispered, “He ain’t talkin’ funny no more and he don’t stink, neither. Claims he’s with the FBI. We seen Anderson’s blue pickup truck parked just down by the mailbox so he’s the one doing the shooting at us right now most likely.”
Chuck whispered back toward the house to Gail. “Turn on the rear yard lights then get down low and out of sight. Keep Edie down too.”
“Okay, “she said.
As they waited, Catfish whispered, “That possum out yonder might try to circle around on us or worse, he might have a few of his buddies with him. Is the front door of the house locked up?”
Before Chuck could answer, two heavy overhead floodlights popped on and the back yard erupted in lights. Another bullet smacked angrily against the rear of the house behind Chuck and Catfish. “Keep down in there, Gail.” Chuck shouted then rose to one knee, took quick aim toward the barn and fired.
A huge chunk of wood spattered from the boards on the wall of the barn. Chuck worked the bolt action of the rifle, never taking his eyes off the barn area. He thought something moved from near the front of the boat back into the deep shadows.
Catfish whispered, “I think I seen him move to the left side and back of the boat.”
Catfish pointed beyond the barn toward the edge of a tree line near the pond. A figure was moving across the open area. He said, “That’s Blake. I’d recognize that duck walk of his any place.”
A voice from around the corner of the house spoke quietly. “It’s me, Blake. You guys okay. I’m coming around.”
Catfish, looking confused, answered, “Yeah, but keep your head down”
Blake, crouching low, stepped around the corner of the house and knelt beside them at the car. “How many you figure are out there?”
Chuck shook his head. “So far as I can tell there's just that one and if you guys hadn’t shown when you did, whew, not fun. The police bubble on the top of the car saved me and Catfish just awhile ago.”
“That was close,” was all Squires could say and then he turned to Catfish and asked, “Duck walk? I’m gonna’ duck walk on your head but it ain’t gonna be like no duck you ever seen I promise you.”
The rifle from the barn barked again but this time it was not firing in the direction of the house. Chuck rose up for a look and Squires hauled him back down. Two separate rolls of pistol fire answered the rifle from further out behind the barn. A stray bullet from one of them struck a tree base near them in the yard. “Crossfire is a wicked thing.” Blake said. “That’s Jacobs and Barton.”
Catfish said, “I done told him about Barton.”
The rifle barked again and two more pistol shots replied, fired so close together that the sound blended into one loud report then more silence. Catfish asked, “You reckon’ they got him? It’s awful quiet out there.”
Squires said, “Give them a little more time.”
Five long minutes passed and then the sound of an engine starting reached the back yard. The squeal of tires against a red clay surface ripped through the air, followed by several overlapping pistol shots. The truck roared away and the silence folded back around them. Even the crickets started chirping again.
Squires looked at Catfish and then Chuck. Slowly, all three men stood. “It sounds like he got away.”
Jacobs’s voice yelled from the front yard area of the house “Blake? Catfish? We’re coming in.”
“It’s about time.” Catfish shouted back. “Did you hit him at all?”
Jacobs and Barton came around the edge of the house and stepped into the well-lit yard. “I don’t think so.” Jacobs said. “It was too dark. A couple of times there, I thought I was shooting at shadows.”
Barton said “Those shadows were shooting back, Jacobs. You handled yourself real well out there.”
Chuck pointed, “Is this the guy you’ve been calling, Barton?”
Jacobs said, “Okay, Barton, I can tell that isn’t the first time somebody’s taken a shot at you so I figure you don’t spend all your time at a desk someplace.”
Barton said, “Let me make that phone call and then we can talk. Anderson will call Max Pary and tell him what’s happened. When he finds out we got away from the Sheriff, this neck of the woods is going to get very, very, hot.”
Gail and Edie met them at the door. “Is anybody hurt?” Gail asked anxiously.
Chuck shook his head. “No, but we need to leave right now. They’ll be back with more company in twenty minutes or so.”
Turning to Squires, he asked, “What are all of you doing together out here? What’s happened?”
Barton spotted the phone, went to it, and dialed a long distance number. Squires quickly explained everything including the incident at the jail where they were planning to hang him and make it look like a suicide.
Edie gasped. “I heard Max talking about a worker at the mill a few weeks ago and something about taking care of a problem with the man.”
Squires said, “That was Clark’s brother, Keg.”
Catfish shook his head in disbelief. “Why would the FBI put a man out in the woods here in West Creek County? Worse thing that ever happens around here is when the beer truck turns over in town.”
Jacobs spoke. “Matt must have called them about his suspicions.”
Chuck said, “I still can’t figure out why Matt would hire a jerk like Thompson.”
Barton finished his call and came over to where they stood. Reaching a hand out to Chuck and shaking it, he said, “Good to see you again, Chuck.”
“Frank? Am I to assume these folks don’t know who you are? They keep calling you Ed Barton.”
“That’s my cover. Would you care to introduce us?”
Chuck looked at the others and said, “This is Frank Meadows. He’s a friend of Matt’s and works for the FBI office out of Savannah.”
Squires asked, “Is that why they wanted to kill you back there at the jail?”
Frank nodded. “I tipped my hand when I told you and Catfish about Matt’s car. They knew you two could not have just stumbled on it down at the creek with it so
deep in that water. I had been watching it for a week hoping to scare them into moving it or something because I honestly thought Matt’s body would be in the trunk. I swam down to the car one time and didn’t see anything inside but I could not get the trunk open while the car was under water.”
Catfish whined. “I did that too and I am still shivering from that cold water. The creek is fed mostly from a couple of deep underground springs or something.”
Blake said, “Speaking of spring, I’m just glad Jacobs and Catfish showed up to spring us out of that jail cell and hanging party.”
Meadows agreed, “Well I knew Jacobs was hiding in the closet but I wasn’t too sure about which side of the fence he was playing. I took a risk and tipped him off about their plans to hang you.”
He pulled up the left leg of his pants revealing an ankle holster with a .38 caliber pistol strapped inside. “But I had an ace up my sleeve just in case the game went sour.”
Jacobs sighed. “What if I hadn’t believed you?”
Brooks shrugged. “I wouldn’t have let them hang Squires. He’s a witness for my case against Brooks and maybe Pary. I think if we nail Brooks then he’ll open up against the rest of them just to save his own hide.”
Blake looked at Jacobs. “But what if you hadn’t come out of that closet when you did and I found out you were hiding in there? I would have locked the door and set fire to the room.”
Catfish said “We best be gettin’ out of here. They’ll be back soon with a lot of help. If we gotta’ fight ‘em let’s do it out in the open.”
Jacobs nodded, and then asked “How much help is your office going to send?”
“Well I was here to watch that airstrip north of the creek that Pary is using to bring in the narcotics. I wasn’t supposed to get involved with much of anything else unless it fell in my lap. I told my boss on the phone a while ago about everything in my lap right now. He said to sit tight and keep our heads low and West Creek County will be crawling in federal agents in a couple of hours. They are on the way right now.”
“But we still haven’t tied in Max Pary yet.” Jacobs said. “We can’t prove who killed Matt or why. It would make a better case against them if we could find a body.”
Chuck spoke quietly. “I think I know where they may have hidden Matt. I should have thought about it earlier. They probably buried him where nobody would ever think to look. My grandfather’s grave.”
Brooks asked, “How do you figure that?”
Chuck pointed at the box of papers on the kitchen table. “It’s all in there.” Matt was killed either at the cemetery or sometime soon after. If they got him while at the cemetery then he’s still there now. For some reason he went there to dig into the grave and somebody probably followed him. They saw what he was doing and simply waited while he dug the hole.”
Gail stepped closer and placed her arm through his. “Chuck, Matt is not dead. I’m sure of it.”
Edie’s eyes lit up. “Matt is still alive? You can feel him? I have been thinking the same thing too. He’s not dead.”
Squires and Catfish raised eyebrows at one another, and then Blake said. “You feel up to a little grave robbing tonight, Catfish boy?”
“Not Chuck,” Gail said. “He’s still too weak. Why don’t we just wait until the FBI gets here?”
Chuck looked at her, “We might not have time. They already know Jacobs called the state boys at least and they’ll start trying to cover their tracks fast and now we are part of their tracks so.”
Meadows finished the sentence. “So they will assume that we know everything except where Matt’s body is hidden. They might try to move it tonight.”
Jacobs shrugged, “I was just thinking the same thing. They might be that desperate knowing their scheme has gone sour and that the game is up.”
Catfish coughed and started to say something. Squires looked over, “Okay, spit it out.”
Catfish looked at the floor and then up to Chuck. “There might not be a body to find. Remember what they did to Clark’s brother? “
Meadows looked confused. Chuck said, “Clark’s brother was pushed into the chipping machine at the mill. There wasn’t much left to bury.”
Edie paled. “Did you say he was pushed? Is that the man Max was talking about they had to deal with?
Chuck nodded. “I think so. He knew something, any idea what that might have been, Frank?”
Meadows shook his head. “No. This is the first I’ve heard that Keg was the one killed. He was an informant on the initial bust we made a month or so ago.”
Bill said, “Keg may have known that they switched out Matt’s safe and buried it in the sawdust pile. Maybe he wanted to be paid to keep quiet and they didn’t take kindly to blackmail.”
Catfish coughed again. Blake, impatient now, said, “All right, Catfish. We don’t have time to play games. Just spit it out.”
He looked at Jacobs. “I picked this up tonight from Clark. Keg may have seen the Sheriff pick up a young girl who was hitchin’ a ride through town. He didn’t take her to the jail so Keg sort of followed them. The Sheriff took her out in the woods, raped and then killed her. Keg didn’t say anything because who would have believed him over the word of the Sheriff?”
Bill paled. “That can’t be right. Brooks did all that?”
Catfish shrugged. “That’s what Clark told me, that maybe Keg was trying to hit up Max Pary for a couple of thousand dollars, you know, money to keep his mouth shut.”
Chuck sighed. “Well, that explains some of it. They killed Keg to protect the Sheriff from something totally unrelated to Matt. If Max Pary has that rape and murder hanging over Brooks’ head then the Sheriff was solid in his back pocket.”
Jacobs nodded. “Then it’s no wonder Walt is so deep and tangled up in this mess.”
“Blake?” Catfish said. “Clark was supposed to make a phone call to the sheriff’s office to spook a few of them out on a fake call. After all this here while ago with Anderson, I’m gettin’ powerful worried.”
Squires said, “Clark can take care of himself. What we need to do now is find Matt’s body. It might tell us what happened and why.”
Catfish shook his head, “I can’t believe this. First I take a bath in an ice-cold creek and now I’m gonna’ go dig up a grave. What next?”
Chuck said, “A lot, if Matt’s body is there.”
Jacobs quietly added, “If his body’s there, we’ll need to back off and call in the state crime lab but how can we do that if Sheriff Brooks has an arrest warrant out for all of us?”
Chuck said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Squires motioned, “Come on, Catfish. There are some tools in Matt’s shed and a couple of sealed beam lights. Want to lend us a hand, Meadows?”
The three men left. Gail tightened her grip on Chuck’s arm and asked, “Why couldn’t we leave town? I’m sure that Matt’s body is not at the cemetery. Let’s just get out of here, go wait for help in Macon or Savannah?”
Chuck shook his head. “I trust your senses Gail and I sure pray you are right about Matt being alive, but if he’s alive then where is he right now? And if you’re wrong then while we are gone they could destroy all the evidence and make us look like the real crooks in the process.”
Gail pointed at her feet and said, “If we’re going tramping through the woods, I’m going to need some shoes besides these tennis shoes.”
Edie said, “I think there’s a pair of my boots in Matt’s closet.”
Chuck stopped, looked at Edie for a second, smiled and then nodded. “There’s a lot about you and Matt that we still don’t know. I never realized you were so in love with my brother.”