Georgia Bound: A Novel

1929

PROLOGUE

It was ten days before Christmas, a wintery day when the wind cut around the corners of the midtown skyscrapers and tore at his face like dry ice. The past three weeks had been grueling, filled with fifteen-hour workdays and tense deadlines. But it had all paid off on this raw and blustery afternoon. Pat Reilly, the bureau chief, burst into the newsroom waving a press release — Jack Monahan’s stories about crime czar John Perilli had won a New York Press Club Journalism Award.

As soon as Monahan learned about his award, he called Janice at the bank where she worked. Let’s go out to dinner tonight, he said. How about that little French place you’ve been wanting to try? The one on Montague.

At 6:30, he left the office and headed for the subway. It was a moonless night, but the lights of Manhattan blazed like planets between the buildings on his street. He started to put the key in the door when he realized it was open.

Janice, he called from the hallway. He prayed he’d see her standing in the shadows cast by the bronze wall sconces, standing there with that surprised and grateful look in her eyes, as if she didn’t quite believe that he was home safe once again. That was how she had greeted him almost every night since they were married on a cool April morning eight months earlier.

But tonight, the apartment was silent. Monahan’s heart drummed with terror. Something was wrong.

Janice, are you there? The silence was suffocating.

He ran into the living room. The vase of fresh roses that had graced the coffee table that morning was tipped over. The magazines that had been stacked so neatly when he left were scattered angrily across the floor along with the pillows from the sofa.

He stumbled into the dining room, the blood banging in his brain when he saw the toppled chairs. He remembered that night two months ago when she hadn’t come home from work, the four frantic hours calling the police and every hospital in the city, thinking terrible thoughts, only to see her walk through the door at ten, looking like she had just walked out of a driving rain. ‘The train stalled right between stations, Jack. It was just awful...so hot and crowded...’ On and on she went, but he didn’t hear a word, just stared at her, watching the familiar way her lips twitched when she got excited. He was just so relieved, so happy she was okay.

Surely, it would be like that tonight...

Janice, where are you? He was shouting now.

He burst into the bedroom, turned on the light and slammed smack into his worst fears. There she was, lying on the polished oak floor, her arms curled around her head like question marks, her eyes wide with disbelief — why are you doing this? — her blood painted in broad strokes across the floor, splashed up onto the walls and the ceiling, a thin stream still oozing from the gaping wound in her throat.

For five eternal seconds he stood in the doorway, unable to move, unable to release the scream that was lodged like a stone in his throat. He stood there looking at the lifeless body of the woman he loved with a love that was sometimes so intense his chest ached. He stood there watching his hopes, his dreams, his happiness trickle through the cracks in the floorboards, vanishing as irretrievably as his reasons for living.

He fell to his knees and a rough blade cut through his heart, ripping it in two. The pain was so terrible he screamed until he couldn’t scream any more.

1

NORTH GEORGIA,

ELEVEN MONTHS LATER

The sun was putting on a show over the western hills. First an orange fireball. Then a golden horsetail, a saffron flower, a copper sea. It was a time of day Vern Hanson loved. Most afternoons he’d be driving slow, counting deer in the pine bottoms, watching the light dance off the hills, watching the hawks circle on the warm updrafts along Crocker’s Ridge. But today he didn’t see any of it.

He eased onto the Interstate, which sliced like a wide white scar deep into the blue North Georgia hills. He drove slowly. Up ahead, the clouds were tossed like dirty linen across the sky. He didn’t see the clouds or the big semis barreling past, heading down toward Atlanta and Macon and Jacksonville. He could only see his boss’s face when he told him what Billy Raiford had found. All the color washed out, as if he’d heard something too terrible to acknowledge.

Hanson wasn’t surprised at that reaction. But he never in his wildest dreams expected what came next.

Fire him, his boss said.

What? Vern Hanson was too shocked to say more.

The man leaped out of his chair, his face the color of beets, the vein in his neck swollen and bruised. His voice rose above the hiss and roar of the yarn spinners.

Goddammit, Hanson, I don't want to see him back here tomorrow.

I can't fire him. He's one of my best workers.

He shouldn’t have stuck his nose where it doesn’t belong. Get rid of him or I get rid of you.

Then you’ll have to get rid of me.

Well then, you just get out of here. Now.

The sun glared in his eyes as he left the plant. His head ached. He felt like he’d been punched hard in the jaw. He’d worked at Ruby Rugs for eight years, but he’d never seen the signs. How could he be so blind?

Tomorrow, he’d call Sheriff Hall, tell him what was going on. And he’d file a complaint with the Labor Relations Board.

As soon as he made that decision, the weight in his gut lifted like the morning fog in the meadow behind his home. There was nothing to fear, no reason to think his family would ever have to worry about going without food. He'd have another job in three days. There weren't many men in North Georgia who could manage a yarn mill the way he could.

The light was fast approaching that neutral point between day and night, when shadows began to obscure the hills on both sides of the road. He was so wrapped in his own thoughts he didn't see the car behind him until he felt the jolt against his left back bumper.

He had been cruising along at 60 miles an hour when it hit, just hard enough to nudge his car sideways. He instinctively turned the wheel into the spin, just as he'd learned to do during those December hunting trips with his boys, up in the Tennessee mountains, where the trees were blanketed in snow, the rooftops and roads silvered with ice, the air so still he could hear a red tail’s cry two miles away.

But this road was dry, not icy, and that instinctive tug at the wheel sent the car into a full spin.

A semi hurtled toward him, brakes screaming. It came so close he could see the scraped steel on its fender. He tugged frantically at the wheel, but his shiny silver Ford was still spinning out of control. Cars and trucks thundered past. Brakes howled. Smoke rose from the roadway. The road blurred.

Vern Hanson heard the side of his car hit the concrete, heard the roar of metal against stone. He saw the windshield shatter. Then time seemed to wind backwards. He saw himself making love to his wife that first wonderful April evening, twenty two years ago, back behind his father's barn, his nostrils ripe with the sweet smell of her skin and fresh cut alfalfa.

He wished he could have it all over again.

Jack Monahan pulled to the side of the road. Just ahead, ribbons of smoke rose like prying fingers from the hood of a car that had smashed head-on into the Elm St. overpass. Through the smoke, he could see the battered head pressed against the driver’s window, the firemen struggling to cut the twisted body out. There were more trucks and an ambulance just beyond, men running from them, all converging on the wreck.

The memories he’d come down here to escape began to resurface. They started with quick snapshots of the roadside wrecks he covered on his first job as a New York reporter — a truck exploding on the Gowanus Parkway; a man screaming, lit up like a torch, tearing across the West Side Highway and hurtling headlong into the Hudson River; the stench of burning rubber and steam and gasoline and human blood.

And then, for the thousandth time, he was reliving the one memory he would have given his life to change — the soul-tearing sight of Janice lying in her own blood. That image glared like the light of a comet, refusing to go away until he shouted No! so loud two firemen turned and stared at him.

He dropped his head against the steering wheel, the leather hot against his forehead. Blood pounded in his temples. He was so tired of this job, tired of the palpable boredom, the endless string of days moving from one auto accident to another. Tired of the nights spent alone, waking in a cold sweat, his dreams filled with the sound of agonized cries, steel slamming against steel.

He’d come here to escape the old memories, not stir them up.

Twenty yards down the interstate, the Greenfield County sheriff stood next to his patrol car. He was writing in his logbook, looking detached and tuned into something far removed from the tragedy that was unfolding beneath the overpass.

Afternoon, sheriff.

Sheriff Truett Hall frowned at the intruder. The blue lights on the top of his patrol car flickered in the pupils of his eyes, eyes that were cradled deep behind thick folds of pink skin. Can’t you see I’m busy?

Monahan held up his press badge. I just have a few questions.

The sheriff stopped writing, looked up from his logbook. Ain’t you the new fella over at The Chronicle?

Yes sir. Jack Monahan.

I thought Gardner Lacey brought you in to do the big stories.

Monahan laughed. I guess he thinks this is the big story. Is this as exciting as it gets?

The sheriff bristled like a threatened hound. That’s the way we like it, son. We ain’t had a murder here in sixteen years. Where you from?

New York City.

The Big Apple. He spit the words out between his teeth like some bothersome seed. I suppose you couldn’t go sixteen minutes without a murder in New York. That right?

That may be true, but nobody dies of boredom there, either.

Truett Hall turned back to his logbook, the corner of his mouth twisted up as if he had stepped in cow dung.

Monahan walked over to the wrecked car, where the firemen were still prying the door open. Someone had draped a white hospital sheet over the dead man. The guy was still pinned behind the steering wheel by the engine, which was pushed halfway through his chest by the impact. Are you sure this was an accident, sheriff?

Poor Vern probably fell asleep, ran off the road.

You know him?

Sure do. Name’s Vern Hanson. Worked over at Ruby Rugs.

How come his fender is busted up?

It’s an old car. The sheriff jotted something in his logbook.

This just happened.

Monahan pointed to a three-foot wide swipe along the left side of the late model Ford. That bare steel never saw the light of day until half an hour ago. And look over here. That’s blue paint. From another car. Somebody hit him. Somebody in a dark blue car or truck, probably an older model.

Older? How’s that? The light seemed to click on in those tired eyes.

That paint’s dull, washed out, from something that’s seen a lot of seasons.

How’s it you know so damn much about accidents?

I saw more of them than I wanted to on my first reporting job. New York cops taught me a lot about accident forensics.

You think them New York police boys know more about chasing down wrecks than we do? The mouth twisted up again.

They just have a lot more practice. You see thirty, forty a week and you begin to know which ones smell like rotten fish and which ones are clean. This one stinks. It could be a hit and run. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident.

The firemen began pulling the body out of the car. The limp arm hung off the stretcher, the blood already drained out, that awful chalky look to the fingertips. Monahan knew he was going to have nightmares tonight.

You think Hanson had enemies?

A man ain’t successful in life unless he got enemies. Vern was plant manager over to the yarn mill. He was a fine fellow, but there could have been a dozen bucks who had some kind of beef with him over there. It ain’t easy managing folks in a carpet mill.

Monahan imagined what it was like. He’d seen the men working in the stifling heat. The yarn spools passing endlessly, squealing like hungry birds as they cranked through the steam rising from the big steel machines. The constant creak and clatter so loud you couldn’t talk to the next guy down the line. The loneliness had to be far more oppressive than the heat.

He watched the paramedics put the body in the ambulance and wondered if the guy had a wife and kids, a six figure insurance policy, a house with a swing on the front porch, a barbecue pit in the back.

A semi sputtered by on the Interstate, stirred up a hot wind in its backwash. Monahan pulled at his collar, the sweat crawling down his neck. He was surprised how hot it could get in these North Georgia foothills, even now, at the beginning of April.

As he walked back to his car, the last burst of sun slipped behind Crocker’s Ridge, then reemerged, its light dancing off something down the highway. He turned, momentarily startled, and saw that it was just sunlight reflecting off an SUV parked on the shoulder. He got into his car just as the last light of day flickered out like a spent candle, unaware that someone was sitting in that SUV, watching every move he made.

2

He had been jogging past the same outsized houses and hedgerows every morning, almost from the day he came here two months ago. The place damn near drove him crazy. It was so different from New York. The lawns were cut like golf course greens, sharp and hard-edged, with a kind of symmetry and dry purpose he seldom saw back home. Sure, in the city, grass only grew in Central Park, but the buildings bore the marks of history, you could hear a dozen languages in one square block and the faces in the crowds told a million distinct stories.

This could have been a well-to-do neighbor-hood in any small American town. For the first time in two months, though, he was excited about being here. For the first time, he paid attention to his surroundings. He watched the sun come over the Eastern hills as clear and sweet as a lemon drop. He heard the dogs bark as he ran past the still-quiet houses. He watched the meadowlarks skitter through the brambles, listened to the crows stirring in the green, heat-laden trees.

As soon as he got to the office, he’d tell Gardner Lacey he might finally have something meaningful to write about. He was certain Vern Hanson’s death was no accident. And he was just as certain the sheriff was hiding something.

He jogged through a small park, around the curve of a small pond. The morning sounds faded. He breathed in the sweet smells of spring. He hadn’t felt this good in months. He stepped up his pace, eager to finish his morning run and head to the office. He loped out onto a residential street again, wide green lawns on either side. He passed two houses when a banshee wail split the silence. It stung like cold metal against his spine, breaking the trance he always got into by the second mile.

He stopped running. There it was again, as shrill as an alley cat’s yowl, coming from the big white Colonial with the green trim. A woman ran from the side of the house and stopped on the front lawn. Her hands held the top of her head, as if it was about to explode. A man’s shirt was draped carelessly over her shoulders.

He started toward her, then stopped, his gut telling him to run the other way. How many times had he stopped to help somebody in distress and paid for it, then swore he’d never do it again.

She saw him and held out her hand, pleading, like the woman in the painting he and Janice once admired in a Pennsylvania museum, as if she could draw him in with an invisible line she had tossed his way.

He turned and ran up the drive toward the Colonial. The wind gusted. The loblollies lining the drive swayed. The air smelled of pine and fresh cut grass. A pair of doves fluttered away from the eave of the house.

In the house. He’s not moving... She grabbed Monahan by the arm and pulled, hard enough that he was surprised by her strength. She headed toward the house, her bare feet lost in the morning mist.

As they moved across the sweeping green lawn, he could see that she had left her twenties behind, but hadn’t bought into the notion that her best days were behind her. She still had a figure that would stop trucks, most likely molded by endless hours in that gym in downtown Pine Hill, where all the mill owners’ wives and mistresses ran on treadmills that went nowhere, staring at their images in the mirrors in front of them, watching, running, waiting for those imperfect images to transform into something irresistible.

Monahan followed her through the French doors at the side of the house. He was three steps into the room when he saw the guy, lying naked in the big bed, his body chalk-white and bloated. He was bathed in sweat, his puffy mouth wide open, a look in his eyes that said, Hey, this isn’t supposed to be happening.

Monahan had seen that look before, surprise in the wide pupils, but no life behind them. He’s dead.

"Damn it, he’s not dead," the woman screamed, her anger crackling like hot lava. The makeup around her eyes was already mottled and wet.

I’m terribly sorry, but he really is dead.

Monahan had seen a lot of stiffs in his life, but it was always like he was seeing them for the first time. The images came at him in fragments, as if he was in the back of a theater, looking up at the screen where this dead guy was lying stone still, belly larded with too much Southern fried chicken, too many Budweisers, too much grits and bacon and ham hocks.

He watched the woman hit the dead guy’s body in frustration. Good Lord, Jed. Mascara-blackened tears angled down her cheeks, falling into the tangle of graying hair on his doughy chest. You can’t die on me.

He remembered the pain and rage he felt the day he found Janice. It didn’t seem so different than this woman’s rage.

The guy was about fifty. She was probably the mistress, the wife back home making sure the kids got through school gracefully. And from the look of the diamond on his index finger, it was a good bet that home for this guy was up on The Ridge, where all the mill execs lived.

I’m sorry. There’s nothing you can do for him now. Monahan took her arm and helped her to her feet. She was so close he could smell jasmine bath soap on her skin and something like cinnamon on her breath. Did he work for one of the mills?

What? A shaft of sunlight danced off the rings on her fingers — four of them, enough diamonds to make the down payment on a castle. "He doesn’t work for a mill. He’s Jed Norton. He owns Ruby Rugs."

In the four months since he’d come here, Monahan had never heard the name Jed Norton, but Ruby Rugs was a name he was getting to know. That was where Vern Hanson worked. The guy who was killed in the car crash.

Are you OK?

The woman’s voice startled Monahan. He realized that he’d been staring at the dead guy. A completely different picture of this strange morning was developing in his head.

Ruby Rug’s plant manager dies on the Interstate on Wednesday. Its owner dies in bed on Friday. He looked at the woman with new eyes, at the Roman nose, skin the color of fresh olives, eyes caked with too much makeup — what were they hiding? If her face had been a little less angular, it would have been beautiful.

She sucked at a cigarette and looked at the body on the bed calmly, as if she had suddenly come to terms with the fact that her lover was dead. Funny, I thought he came over last night to tell me he was leaving me.

Why’s that?

Three nights ago, his wife called and told me she knew about us. We were...uh...

I got the picture. So the wife knew about them. That made things interesting. She threatened you?

Not exactly. But the bitch said I wouldn’t be seeing any more of him.

She pulled the shirt tight across her chest.

You’re shivering. Let me get you a robe.

There’s one in that closet.

A pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Oxycontin were on the dresser next to the closet, nestled in a forest of perfumes and body lotions and a photo of her and the dead guy drinking piña coladas on some blue water beach. A business card lay face up next to the cigarettes. He slipped the card into his pocket and draped the robe around the woman’s shoulders.

The morning sun was barely breaking through the mist outside, but here it glowed against the walls like midday light. For the first time, he noticed the pink walls, the dolls scattered all over, every kind of doll imaginable — nearly life sized dolls dressed in extravagant gowns, dolls that looked like Georgia debutantes, cheerleader dolls, Heidi dolls, dolls that looked like Broadway showgirls and housewives and hookers and country singers.

The dolls smiled at him with their sad glass eyes. A dog barked. He thought he heard a woman’s voice, far off, calling to him, telling him to come home.

I guess I better call the cops, he said.

Maple buds were blowing like rain, the wind ticking the windows, when the doorbell rang. Monahan wasn’t surprised to see Sheriff Hall standing on the front steps, his chest puffed out like a tom turkey in heat, a deputy behind him. Monahan didn’t see the pit bull tugging at the leash wrapped tightly in Hall’s hand until it snarled and tore a two-inch strip out of his sweat pants.

Get that oversized rat away from me, sheriff. Monahan launched a foot at the dog’s neck.

Hall pulled hard on the leash and the animal stumbled backwards, teeth bared. You lucky T-Bone here didn’t turn you into a soprano. He don’t like New Yorkers.

Hall tied the dog’s leash tight around the guardrail on the front steps and pushed past Monahan. He was broad shouldered and long legged, but time and gravity had pulled most of the muscle in his belly down around his belt line, where it hung like a bag of laundry.

What the hell you doing here, boy? Hall regarded Monahan curiously, the bittersweet smell of chewing tobacco on his breath, the faint odor of Vaseline tonic on his graying hair.

I was running in the neighborhood when...

Running? Running from what? You go and rob somebody’s house?

"I wasn’t running from anything. I run here every morning. His eyes shifted to Hall’s belly. But you wouldn’t understand about that."

You got that right. Hall ignored the insult, looked at Monahan as if he had a brain tumor. Running wasn’t something he’d do any time of day, much less at 6:30 in the morning. He remembered the last time he ran, eleven years ago, chasing that Tennessee fellow who robbed the Pine Hill National Bank.

There’s a dead man inside, sheriff. In the bedroom.

Hall wedged himself past Monahan and headed straight for the bedroom. Good God almighty. That’s Jed Norton.

Hot damn, the deputy said. He’s got a hard-on. You sure he’s dead?

Where the hell’s Miss Velma? Hall asked Monahan.

In the bathroom. She’s pretty upset.

I’ll bet she is. I knew Jed was gonna get hisself in trouble messing around with a wild young thing like Velma Simpson. Looks like he finally screwed hisself to death.

Don’t be so sure about that, sheriff. The manager of his yarn mill is killed on Wednesday and he dies today. Don’t you think that’s a hell of a coincidence?

Until I find out otherwise, that’s just what it is — a coincidence.

Monahan turned in disgust toward the bedroom where Jed Norton was lying, watched the deputy pluck a book off the dresser, flip through it, put it back, then move around the room, pull at the bedspread, kick a slipper under the bed. He touched everything in his path, as if he was intentionally trying to contaminate the place.

Monahan knew things would