The Last Mile (Amos Decker 2)

night?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly, her frail shoulders quivering.

Jamison reached out and put a comforting hand on the old woman’s arm. “Mrs. Ryan, it’s okay. I think that your husband was trying to do the right thing.”

Ryan sniffled, reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “He was a good man. But he didn’t work with such good people.”

“Did you know he posted bail, for five hundred dollars, for a man named Charles Montgomery?”

She rubbed her nose with the tissue. “He told me about that. Money sure didn’t come from him. We didn’t have that sort of cash to throw around. Certainly not for posting bail for someone we didn’t even know.”

“So he was told to do it? And given the money with which to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know by whom?”

“He was assistant mayor. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”

“So Thurman Huey?”

“Maybe his daddy gave him the money. I don’t know. Travis was a Dixiecrat,” added Ryan. “And he found good company in Washington. He almost derailed Thurgood Marshall being a Supreme Court justice, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Decker.

“I didn’t follow things like that, but my husband did. He didn’t think much of the Hueys. But he lived in Mississippi and he kept his mouth shut. He went into politics to try to do good. But it was hard to do good in Mississippi back then if it meant doing good for black folks.”

“That stance probably didn’t make him popular,” said Bogart.

“If you wanted a career in Mississippi back then you toed the line. He had a family to support, but that doesn’t mean he believed what those others did. Because he didn’t.”

“I’m sure,” said Jamison.

“But he did things, little things to help folks. He did it under the radar, so to speak.” She looked at Mars. “He helped folks like you, to the extent he could.”

“Sounds like a man ahead of his time,” replied Mars.

She nodded. “Old LBJ lost the South when he got the Civil Rights Act passed. Southern Democrats turned their backs on him. Travis Huey sure as hell did. He was furious, Nathan told me.”

Decker said, “You said that Travis Huey wouldn’t get his hands dirty by being involved in the bombing and you said you didn’t know if his son would, but do you think Thurman Huey might have been involved in the bombing?”

Ryan looked over at her Bible, reached for it, and opened it to where she had been reading. For a few moments Decker thought she was not going to answer.

“I will tell you that the apple doesn’t fall from the tree, certainly not with the Hueys.”

Decker looked at the others. “So you do think Thurman Huey was involved?”

“I don’t know, but I can tell you that Thurman had two very good friends. The Three Musketeers, folks called ’em back then. They were right famous in town.”

“Why was that?” asked Bogart.

“What else? High school football.”

And despite Decker’s asking several other questions, those were the last words the woman spoke.

CHAPTER

58

THEY ALL SAT in the car in front of Smithers’s house staring out the windows.

Bogart spoke first. “The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and possibly the next Speaker of the House. I have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming.”

Jamison said, “He was one of the Musketeers. I wonder who the other two were.”

Decker said, “Easy enough to find out.”

“Where?” asked Jamison.

It was Mars who answered. “High school football stars? Why don’t we start there?”

Decker looked at him. “We’ll make a detective out of you yet, Melvin.”

* * *

Cain High School was smack in the center of town. They found the school office, made their request, and were quickly shuttled off to the library. There a young woman in slacks and a sweater greeted them.

“The Three Musketeers?” she said in response to their question. “I have heard that. It has to do with—”

“Football,” answered Mars. “Back in the sixties. Thurman Huey?”

“Right, okay. I just started here a few years ago, but I can show you where all the yearbooks are.”

They were led to a shelf on which were kept all the yearbooks for the school, dating back to the 1920s. They had already determined Thurman Huey’s exact age, so they knew when he probably graduated from high school. Jamison found the right volume, and they gathered around looking over her shoulder as she slowly turned the pages.

Mars saw it first, probably because it was on the pages dedicated to the football team.

“The Three Musketeers,” he said.

It was a photo of three young men in football uniforms. The caption below the photo read, “Thurman Huey, Danny Eastland, and Roger McClellan, the Three Musketeers.”

Mars took the book and pointed to the three figures. “See how they’re lined up? Huey’s the QB, and the other two are the halfbacks. They’re running a version of the veer offense. Off that they can run the triple option. We used to do a variation of that at UT sometimes.”

“And that formation came into being during the 1960s, when they were in high school,” added Decker.

Bogart studied the pictures of the young men. “So, Danny Eastland and Roger McClellan? Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Already Googling,” said Jamison.

She hit the keys on her phone, waited, and then studied the results. “Let me make sure this is the same Danny Eastland.” She hit a few more keys and the results came up. She read quickly.

“Damn!”

“What?” said Decker.

“Danny Eastland has done well for himself. He’s the founder and CEO of a government defense contractor. It says here they used to build weaponry, but about five years ago moved more to intelligence gathering, which turned out to be a smart move. Last year it had revenues of more than five billion dollars, most of it with the DOD. It’s based in Georgia, but there’s an office in Jackson, Mississippi, too, among many others. This article says he has a net worth of over a billion dollars and his primary home is in Atlanta.”

“How about the other Musketeer?” asked Bogart.

Jamison did a search for Roger McClellan. “Holy shit!” she said when the results came up.

The three men looked at her.

“Well?” said Bogart.

She looked up at him. “Roger McClellan is the current police chief of Cain, Mississippi.”

Decker said, “Ironic, if he was part of a terrorist act against a church in the very same town.”

Bogart said, “Okay, we need to start marching very lightly here. Folks here already know we’re making inquiries about the Hueys. And I bet Pierce from the police station has already reported our meeting to McClellan.”

“And he’s probably already contacted Huey and Eastland,” said Jamison.

“I’m sure he has,” agreed Bogart. “So we have to be very careful. The last thing we need is to get pulled off the case because the FBI director gets a call from a pissed-off Huey.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” Decker pointed out.

“Granted, but in D.C., Thurman Huey is an eight-hundred-pound gorilla.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jamison. “Do you think they’re the ones who kidnapped Davenport? That would make it a very recent crime.”