Southern Justice, Part 74
I’m Fixin’ to present the final, last, and ending part 74 of Southern Justice:
GBI Agent Douglas Motes had a well deserved nickname within the bureau. It was BH, which stood for Bloodhound, since once he got on a trail he never rested until he ran down his quarry.
Thus when Shanna departed the Gentlemen’s Club at about 10:15 that night, he was across the street sitting in his car patiently waiting. He followed her southward through the downtown connector.
South of the city, when the red Corvette veered onto I-85 South, his heart quickened as he realized his hunch had been correct—she had been informed and was making a run for it. The information had to have been given to her inside the Gentlemen’s Club, because she had gone to work as usual, and then suddenly left.
Agent Motes felt a slight sense of panic when he saw the Corvette’s brake lights come on as it passed underneath the sign indicating the airport exit was just ahead. He knew then she was on her way to catch a plane. Either he had to trump up some kind of charge to arrest her, or get on the plane with her.
At that instant the Corvette exploded. It suddenly turned into a bright orange ball of hellfire and disintegrated before his eyes. Agent Motes attempted to duck as a burning hunk of metal ricocheted off the hood of his car and crashed through the windshield. Fortunately for him it came through on the passenger’s side.
He could feel the extreme heat and smell the distinctive odder of burning metal as he stood on his brake and turned hard toward the right shoulder of the freeway in order to avoid crashing into the flaming mass in front of him. His car went into a skid slightly to the right. hen when the car behind him rear-ended his, the impact put his car into a spin. The last thing he remembered was the thunderous sound of his car slamming into the concrete abutment of the bridge above him.
It was Monday morning, the last day of July, and Chris Adams had a slight headache from a weekend of celebrating. He fumbled around in the center drawer of his desk where he finally found two Advils just before Jones stuck his head through his office door and said, “Hey, buddy. How you feeling?”
“Not too great,” Chris replied.
Just before closing the door Jones said, “You’ll feel better at ten o’clock.
See you in about 15 minutes.”
Chris washed down the pills with a large swallow of ice cold Diet Coke and began to spread he morning newspaper out on his desk. He was anxious to get to the paper.
He had been closely following the stories concerning the Gentlemen’s Club. The charges had escalated beyond the original ones. They now included bribery, blackmail and murder. Also, several policemen, lawyers, and even a judge had been implicated and would be facing criminal charges. And his new friend, Agent Motes, even though he had suffered a broken arm and a bad concussion, was intricately involved in the investigations.
Chris was sorry about Shanna. The relationship had developed because of him, not her. Because of his work, he had had no woman in his life and had ended up at the Gentlemen”s Club looking for love in the wrong place. After Agent Motes had related all the details leading up to Shanna’s demise, he had anonymously paid for all her final arrangements.
Chris folded the front section of the paper and was searching for the sports section when his phone rang. It was Patty. “Hey, everything’s ready. I’ll see you in the conference room. All I need are the signatures.”
Patty had been working very hard to see that Rick Junior received his rightful inheritance. And today, she had completed the paperwork that would make Pic-Ric Products a three-way partnership between Chris, Jones and Rick Junior.
Chris stood up, stretched, and surveyed his desktop, which was strewn with reports and forms, all of which needed his attention.
“I’ll take care of all this later,” he thought to himself. Right now it was time to go become a billionaire.
THE END
Note from the author: Writing Rich Revenge, The Second Doublewide on the Right and Playing Dead, has been a labor of love. I hope my readers enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing them. But now I have to say goodbye to Jasper County, Monticello and Lake Jackson, to begin a new phase of my life. My eternal gratitude is extended to The Monticello News, to my friend and editor Kathy Mudd, for publishing my scribbling, and to Jenny and Susan for putting up with my bad jokes. So long to all my friends and neighbors of the last 25 years. But who knows, one day I might just show up at the Sac-O-Suds!
(tmdunagan@aol.com)