I was extremely careful about cops. I was careful to the point of paranoia. I read everything I could get my hands on about modern surveillance and countersurveillance techniques. What I learned was fairly simple. They couldn’t track me electronically if I left my phone at home, and they couldn’t track me physically if I did plenty of walking, used public transportation, and went to as many crowded places as I could and melted in among the people. Then I’d simply slip out a door, grab a cab or a bus, and move to the next destination. I knew that even though I was a suspect in two murders, those crimes had been committed in West Virginia. The Knoxville guys might be bird-dogging me some, but it wasn’t really their case and the department wasn’t going to commit a huge amount of resources. I hadn’t heard from anyone in West Virginia, and unless they were getting really close, I probably wouldn’t. I’d crossed state lines to commit two murders, which meant the feds could have gotten involved, but I hadn’t heard from them and hadn’t noticed anyone that even resembled a fed anywhere near me. And finally, I’d killed two merciless scumbags who had deserved killing. Most cops don’t like vigilantes, but they like cowards who bomb the homes of defenseless women even less.
The plan was for Pappy to stay in a small hotel near Maryville on the second night and then meet me three blocks from Grace’s apartment at five on the third morning. Grace usually slept until 6:30 a.m., had to be at the office at eight, and got home between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. She and I hadn’t been talking much, and my libido had cooled considerably since that first night after I’d killed Frazier and Beane. Still, I tried to keep up the impression that I was trying, both at home and at work. I hired a middle-aged secretary named Brenda Brown, who was experienced and smart. I left in the mornings and went to the office. I worked my cases. I went to court.
I also told Grace I was continuing to see a grief counselor, and I would occasionally make up things we had discussed. She believed me, but I could tell she was growing a bit impatient, maybe even distant.
On the day I planned to kill Ben Clancy, I told Grace I had an early meeting with a client so I would be leaving at 4:30 a.m. I also told her I wanted to go to the gym, which I’d been doing occasionally, and that I would shower and dress there after I worked out. I walked out the door as though I was going jogging before my workout, and that’s exactly what I did, making sure there were no cops around. I got in my car, drove to the gym, and parked in a corner of the lot. Pappy pulled up in a brown van with tinted windows right on time. I got in and we pulled out. Clancy’s house was thirty minutes away, so we went to a Waffle House about fifteen minutes from Grace’s apartment and ate breakfast. Both of us were wearing fake beards and hats. I’d glued my beard on during the drive to the Waffle House, and Pappy was already wearing his when he showed up.
We lingered over the breakfast and coffee until six and then headed toward Clancy’s. At 6:50 a.m., we turned onto Charlie’s Cove and went to the cul-de-sac at the end. I drove. We’d decided that Pappy would grab Clancy because Pappy was just so damned big and strong. I put the van in park, and Pappy climbed into the back. The van had a sliding side door, and very soon, he would be jumping out.
At precisely 7:10 a.m., I saw Clancy top a slight ridge about a hundred yards from the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Here we go,” I said, and Pappy put his hand on the door handle. I put the van in drive and started out slowly, but as I moved toward Clancy, I stomped on the gas and the van leaped forward. I skidded to a stop next to Clancy. He was wearing a long, gray overcoat and a goofy-looking fur cap that covered his ears. I saw his gray eyes widen as Pappy slid the door open and leaped out of the van. Clancy tried to raise his walking stick, but Pappy grabbed the old man in a bear hug and flung him into the van like a sack of flour. Clancy tried to yell, but Pappy had him on his stomach and thrust his knee into his back so hard Clancy couldn’t even breathe. He stuffed a bandana he’d brought into his mouth and covered it with duct tape. Then he bound Clancy’s hands and feet with plastic restraints. He picked Clancy’s walking stick up off the floor and handed it to me.
“Souvenir,” he said. “I’m keeping it.”
I’d started moving as soon as Pappy had thrown Clancy in the van and shut the door. By the time Clancy was gagged and fully restrained, we had passed his car and were on our way to Granny Tipton’s mountain home.
CHAPTER 28
Granny, Eugene, and Ronnie were all waiting for us when we pulled up. The barn door opened, and Eugene waved us in. I drove the van inside and the door closed behind us. It was just after eight in the morning. I’d driven up the mountain and spoken to Granny a couple of times since James’s funeral, just to make sure she was still all right with what I was going to do. The last time I’d visited was the day before. She seemed more eager than ever to gain some revenge for what Clancy had done to James.
One of the things we had talked about during our first discussion was how Clancy should die. Granny was the one who’d mentioned hanging him. Her barn, like many barns on small farms in the South, was set up for multiple uses. People kept livestock in stalls, stored hay and straw and feed, parked their tractors out of the weather, et cetera. Many of them also used their barns for curing tobacco in the fall, and Granny’s barn was set up for that. The Tiptons, like many small farmers in Tennessee, hadn’t grown tobacco in many years, but the posts that crisscrossed the barn starting about ten feet off the ground and continuing to the top of the gabled roof were still in place. Granny had had Eugene and Ronnie cut two fresh posts from large oak branches they’d found on the property, each about twelve feet long, and those had been bolted together and then lashed to two thick support beams in the center of the barn.
I waited for Ronnie and Eugene to help Pappy pull Clancy out of the van, and then I backed it out of the building. Ronnie and Eugene closed the large door, and I walked back in through the small door a few feet to the right of the large one, carrying the fifteen-foot length of hemp rope Pappy had brought. I looked around before I walked back in. I knew Eugene and Ronnie’s children were in school, and I was certain their wives had learned long ago to look the other way and never ask questions. When I got inside, Clancy was lying on the ground on his side in the middle of the barn floor. I looked at him and didn’t feel the slightest pang of mercy or regret.
“Put him in a chair and take that gag out of his mouth,” Granny said to Ronnie and Eugene as I started fashioning the waxed end of the rope into a hangman’s noose. It was a fairly simple knot that one of my friends had shown me when I was a kid. I never thought I’d use it for the real thing.
Once Clancy was seated, Eugene walked over by the wall and picked up a stepladder. He set it down directly behind Clancy. I handed him the rope and he climbed up to the two oak posts and started wrapping and tying until the other end of the rope was secured around the posts. When he climbed back down, the noose hung about seven feet off the ground.
I don’t think what was about to really happen dawned on Clancy until I took my fake beard, my glasses, and my hat off. I walked over and pulled the fur hat from his head. His red hair had thinned and faded to gray, and he’d lost some weight in jail. His gray eyes looked at me with utter contempt.
“You,” he said. “I should have killed you years ago.”