palm.
“What the hell’s that?” Goat’s captor piped up from behind him.
“In Vietnam, the Cong used whistles since their radios were so poor. It got to be when you heard one of these, you knew Charlie was coming.”
“What’s that mean?” Cassidy asked cautiously.
“That means John Lee Pettimore is somewhere close.” Goat heard the man behind him take a breath. Most people knew of crazy Johnny Lee. “If I don’t blow this whistle, he’ll be coming to kill every son of a bitch in here.”
Cassidy looked at Goat for a moment.
The man behind Goat said, “He’s bluffing.”
Cassidy looked past Goat and the man behind him and said, “I don’t think so.” Slowly, he set the revolver on the coffee table. “He’s not bluffing.”
“No, he’s not, son,” Johnny Lee said. Goat glanced over his shoulder. Standing in the open doorway was John Lee Pettimore decked out in camos and black face paint, a large Bren machine gun weighing heavy in his hands.
“The plan was the whistle,” Goat said.
“I don’t like waiting,” Johnny Lee said, grinning.
Goat picked up the Colt from the table, tucked it back into his waistband, and asked Cassidy Lane, “You kill my friends?”
“I had no reason to kill them men. Bad for business to draw attention.”
“What about the old man not paying you to run liquor?”
“Him running shine didn’t hurt me none,” Cassidy replied. “I liked the old man, and he brought me a case of his shine once a month. We respected each other. We had no fight.”
“People said he wasn’t paying your tithe and you were mad.”
Cassidy snorted.
“What?”
“Aaron,” the man said with a sneer. “He tells folks that.”
“Grubbs?” Goat asked. “Why would your man say that?”
“He doesn’t work for me anymore,” Cassidy said. “He’s going legit, running security for a mine.”
“Which mine?” Goat asked, things already clicking into place.
“The Blue Diamond,” Cassidy said. Goat saw his own epiphany reflected in Cassidy Lane’s face. “He’s trying to lay these murders on me. I’m going to kill him.”
“No, you’re not,” Goat said. “I am.”
Chapter 7
The whole apartment on the third floor of the rooming house was lit up. Goat sat at the small kitchen table keeping company with a jelly glass of moonshine from a jar he’d found under the sink. The apartment was silent, but Goat thought echoes of the woman’s crying lingered in the air. Goat and Johnny Lee had left Kayjay Mountain driving like hell for town. Once the pieces came together, Goat saw the whole thing plainly. Just like if you stir up sand and water and then wait long enough, the particles settle and you can see right through. The picture was clear.
The tan of the NVA soldier’s uniform that night.
Luther calling Ralphie’s teacher by her name — Carrie Love.
Luther telling his father he was taking a stand.
The old men at the barbershop talking about Luther delivering moonshine door to door.
Luther being shot in the middle of his forehead.
The six .357 Magnum rounds found on the hill. A cop’s gun.
Bell County miners striking and the worry about northern agitators organizing unions. The mine owners wanting to nip things in the bud.
The North Vietnamese soldier Goat glimpsed on the mountain was actually the tan sheriff’s uniform of Aaron Grubbs.
And the fact that Chief Deputy Aaron Grubbs was working for the Blue Diamond mine — Luther’s mine.
Goat and Johnny Lee found Carrie Love in her apartment, and between sobs, she confirmed his suspicions. In other parts of the country, every time people had come to help the miners, the mine owners had busted them up, shipped them out, or killed them. Carrie was a teacher but she was an activist first. She’d been asked to come down and help organize the miners, but she was told she had to be careful. Only a few knew of Carrie Love’s role. Luther was tasked with carrying messages between Carrie Love and the striking miners. Luther took and delivered messages with the jars of moonshine. Someone had leaked word that Luther was doing more than striking, and Carrie figured the mine owners thought Luther was pulling the strings, that he was the one calling the shots. No one suspected the hippie teacher was the mastermind.
Nip the union organizing in the bud.
Everyone knew Luther was helping his dad make moonshine, so it wouldn’t take much for Aaron Grubbs to find the moonshine still. Then he and some hired thugs slipped up that mountain. Goat had spotted Grubbs’s tan sheriff’s uniform as they were making their way up to kill Luther and anyone else at the still.
The steps outside creaked. Carrie Love’s apartment was on the third floor of the building, and it was the only apartment that was serviced by a rickety staircase running on the outside of the house.
The killers were here.
Goat took a swallow of the moonshine, the whiskey cool on the way down his throat but burning once it hit his stomach.
Before sending Carrie Love away with John Lee Pettimore in the GTO, Goat had had her make a call to Chief Deputy Grubbs. She told him she knew he had killed Luther. She told him she was scared, and she would give him all the paperwork she had on the miners and the organizers. She offered to trade the information for safe passage out of Bell County. Grubbs promised he’d let her leave once he had the papers.
The doorknob turned slightly as a hand tested the lock.
Then the hand knocked.
“Carrie,” Aaron Grubbs said.
Goat glanced at the green square propped against the door. Wires led back to the plastic square in his hand. He pushed back from the table and stood, making sure to be loud. The killers outside would think Carrie Love was coming to answer the door.
Goat stepped behind the refrigerator and pulled the revolver from his waistband. With his other hand, he readied the mine’s trigger.
Goat called out, “Grubbs, I’m going to kill you.” Outside there were confused voices. Goat pushed the mine’s trigger.
The claymore had a warning on it: front toward the enemy. The warning was there for a reason.
The claymore was a shaped charge of C-4 packed with hundreds of steel ball bearings, and they blew out in a scythe-like arc of destruction.
The explosion shook the whole house.
The apartment’s front door was blown out and clouds swirled inside. His ears ringing, Goat moved forward, kicking through the remnants of the front door. Outside, part of the landing was shredded. Below, in the alley, two bodies still clutching shotguns were splayed out on the roof of Aaron Grubbs’s cruiser. Partway down the stairs was a body, the man’s chest pulped by the claymore’s ball bearings. A broken Thompson submachine gun was on the step below the dead man.
The blast had knocked Chief Deputy Aaron Grubbs down the stairs, where he knelt as if praying. His face bloody, his body listing to and fro like a bobbing ship.
Goat cocked the Colt.
Grubbs looked up and saw Goat. Tried to stagger to his feet, but stumbled and fell.
With the comforting weight of the Colt in his hand, Goat McKnight started down the stairs.
