Chapter 5 - The Ride to the Valley
The parking lot behind the Calhoun County Courthouse was a staging ground of flashing amber, red, and blue strobes that painted the wet asphalt like a carnival in hell.
Two county ambulances were idling near the sally port, their rear doors open, loading Randall Croft and his broken-jawed enforcers onto steel gurneys under the unblinking muzzles of four state trooper carbines. In the center of the bay sat my motorcycle—a 1998 Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail, stripped down to bare steel and black powder-coat, its straight-pipe dual exhausts ticking softly in the autumn drizzle as the engine cooled.
The left side of the fuel tank bore a six-inch dent from the front bumper of Croft’s van; the leather saddlebags were scorched with black soot from the timber fire; but the heavy iron frame was straight, true, and unbroken.
I stood beside the rear tire, peeling the bloody, torn sleeve of my work shirt away from my left shoulder.
Dr. Ronald Evans—the private pediatrician who had examined Ellie yesterday, and who had refused to leave the courthouse until the security perimeter was restored—knelt on the running board of an emergency vehicle beside me, swabbing the deep, furrowed bullet graze with iodine and surgical alcohol.
"Two inches to the right, Hammer, and that slug would have shattered your clavicle," Dr. Evans murmured, his hands surprisingly steady for an old baby doctor who had just survived an armed courthouse assault. He slapped a heavy gauze pressure pad over the wound, wrapping medical tape tightly around my chest. "You’ve got four cracked ribs on the left side from that timber impact, your maxillary bone is still unstable, and you’re running on twenty-four hours of pure adrenaline. You belong in a trauma bed at UAB."
"Trauma beds are for people who are done working, Doc," I said, wincing slightly as the tape pulled against the fresh burn scars along my ribcage.
I reached down, picked up my heavy cowhide cut from the motorcycle seat, and slid my arms through the armholes.
The weight of the leather was an old friend. It smelled of sixty-weight motor oil, woodsmoke, cured steer-hide, and the faint, sweet scent of the cherry-red Revlon wax that still marked my cheek like an iron seal.
Sarah Lin walked across the wet gravel, her tailored suit jacket stained with plaster dust, holding a heavy manila folder sealed with red Department of Justice tape. Behind her walked Lieutenant James Reyes, unbuttoning his tactical vest, his face drawn with the deep, bone-weary exhaustion of a cop who had just watched his entire county’s power structure fall apart in an afternoon.
"The federal magistrate in Birmingham just signed thirty-four warrants, Hammer," Sarah said, stopping beside my front wheel. She held up the manila folder. "David Miller’s titanium drive had the offshore account numbers for the Croft family’s maritime holding company in Panama. Three county commissioners, the former sheriff of Talladega County, and Douglas Croft’s uncle—State Senator Robert Croft—were taken into custody by federal marshals twenty minutes ago."
"And the little girl?" I asked.
Sarah’s face softened, the fierce, prosecutorial mask melting into something warm, human, and fragile.
"Deputy Miller is out of surgery at Regional Medical; the round passed through his hip without severing the femoral artery. He’s going to make a full recovery. And Ellie... Ellie is with her mother at the state police barracks in Jacksonville. She refused to get in the transport van until Lieutenant Reyes promised her that you were still breathing."
Sarah reached into her briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph—the original evidence photo of the primered Ford Econoline van parked at the timber landing.
"There’s something you didn't tell the grand jury, Hammer," Sarah said softly, her dark eyes looking straight into mine. "The audio recording we played today... it started at 4:16 AM. But the state trooper dispatch log shows that your motorcycle was clocked passing through the intersection of Highway 21 and Old Sawmill Road at 3:42 AM. That’s thirty-four minutes of unaccounted time."
I adjusted the chin strap on my weathered three-quarter helmet, looking down at the scarred pavement.
"A shovelhead doesn't run thirty miles on an empty tank, counselor," I said.
"You didn't run out of gas," Sarah replied, stepping closer, tapping the photograph with her fingernail. "We pulled the traffic camera from the commercial weigh station at the county line. At three-forty-eight, Croft’s van blew through the weigh station scales doing eighty-two miles an hour. You were right behind him. You weren't trailing him, Hammer. You were herding him."
I looked at Lieutenant Reyes. The old road cop gave a slow, deliberate nod, looking away toward the pine-covered ridges of the Choccolocco Valley rising into the gray clouds.
"David Miller called me three days before he died," I told her, my gravelly voice dropping so low the rain almost drowned it out. "He knew they were coming for him. He called me from a payphone outside an all-night truck stop on Interstate 20. He told me: 'Hammer, I took their dirty paper for ten years. I built their docks. I looked the other way while they moved the product through the timber landings. But yesterday... Douglas told me he was going to take my little girl to make sure I didn't testify to the grand jury.'"
I pulled my heavy leather riding gloves onto my hands, the brass snaps clicking shut over my bruised wrists.
"David told me that if he didn't check in by midnight on Sunday, his house was already burned. He told me to look for the primer-gray Econoline with the cracked left tail lens. I didn't stumble upon that timber landing, Sarah. I hunted that van across three counties until I forced him off the interstate into the only box canyon in this valley where he couldn't use his rifle at five hundred yards."
Sarah Lin stared at me for five long seconds. A single tear broke over her lower lid, cutting a clean path through the gray dust on her cheek.
She reached out, her small, clean hand resting against the heavy cowhide of my vest, right over the hidden seam where David Miller’s titanium drive had been concealed.
"The jury took fourteen minutes to deliberate, Hammer," Sarah whispered. "They didn't even sit down in the room. They returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all counts. Aggravated kidnapping, attempted capital murder, and conspiracy to commit witness elimination. Judge Harrison scheduled sentencing for Friday morning. Under the state sentencing guidelines... Douglas Croft is receiving life without the possibility of parole at Donaldson Correctional Facility."
"Donaldson," I murmured. "A hard yard."
"A yard full of men who used to work the docks David Miller built," Lieutenant Reyes added with a grim, humorless smile. "He won't find many friends in the cafeteria, Hammer."
I swung my right leg over the saddle of the Softail, my boots finding the wide aluminum floorboards, my weight settling into the worn leather seat.
The old engine rumbled beneath me, the heavy cast-iron cylinders vibrating through my spine, burning away the lingering chill of the courthouse basement.
"Where are you going now, Mr. Dawson?" Sarah asked, stepping back from the exhaust pipes.
I turned the throttle once, listening to the deep, rhythmic bark of the straight pipes echoing off the brick walls of the sally port.
"The shop has forty-two thousand dollars in back taxes due on the first of the month," I told her, a faint, razor-thin smile touching the corner of my mouth beneath my gray beard. "And I have three Panhead transmissions waiting on the bench that aren't going to rebuild themselves."
"Hammer," Sarah called out over the engine roar.
I paused, looking over my shoulder.
She pointed to the left side of my face, where the bright red Revlon heart was still clearly visible against the purplish keloid scars.
"You forgot to wipe off the mark."
I pulled my dark goggles down over my eyes, clicked the transmission down into first gear with a heavy, mechanical CLUNK, and let the clutch out smoothly into the rain.
May you like
"I’m not wiping it off, counselor," I shouted back over the thunder of the exhaust. "That’s the only clean thing that’s touched this face in thirty years."
The big Harley surged forward across the wet asphalt, its rear tire biting into the gravel, throwing up a twin plume of road spray as we cleared the security gates and turned south onto Highway 21, heading into the deep, sweet pine country of the valley below.
