“Let’s not talk about me,” I said. “We’re all here to talk about you. This is Luanne Tipton here to my right. She’s a lovely lady, but I’m sure you’ve never met her and wouldn’t give a damn if you had. James Tipton was her grandson. You remember James, don’t you? He was the guy you used to frame me for a murder you coerced him into committing. I’m sure I don’t have to go into all of it. You know what you did. You do know that James blew his brains out with a hand cannon, right? Did you hear about that? I’ll bet you did, and I’ll bet you smiled.
“The problem we’re all having—oh, and these two gentlemen are Eugene and Ronnie, James’s brothers, and this big guy here is Michael, but everybody calls him Big Pappy. He’s a close friend of mine and is going to enjoy watching you hang. Like I was saying, the problem we’re all having is that you were supposed to do the right thing. You were supposedly one of the good guys. A career prosecutor. But you might be the biggest hypocrite and the worst criminal I’ve ever known. As a matter of fact, I’ve decided you’re a damned psychopath. And your precious judicial system has been letting you get away with lying and cheating and killing for years and years and years. How many innocent people did you send to death row, Ben? You don’t have to give me an exact number, just a ballpark figure will do. Five? Ten? You don’t want to say? That’s all right. Let’s be conservative and say seven. That makes you a serial killer, as far as all of us are concerned. You do know that’s why you’re here, right? We had a trial before we came and picked you up. We were the prosecutors and the jury and the judge. We decided not to allow you to have a defense. Sound familiar? You’re being awfully quiet. Anyway, we convicted you of being a miserable son of a bitch who deserves to die, and we sentenced you to getting what you deserve. And now we’re going to hang you. Do you hear those pigs snorting over there? After we hang you, we’re going to feed you to them. Do you have anything to say before we carry out your sentence, Ben?”
I was hoping he’d cry and beg for his life, but I knew he was too proud. He wasn’t getting out of this, and he knew it. He looked at each one of us through those beady gray eyes and said, “You’re all just pimples on my ass. You’ll be burning in hell while I’m walking with the Father.”
“We had a choice when we were planning this out, you know,” I said. “We could’ve dropped you in a humanitarian way. There are tables for body weight and the length of the rope. We could have measured it all out and dropped you so that your neck would break and you wouldn’t feel much at all, if anything. But since you’ve never had an ounce of humanity in you, we decided to short-drop you. You’re going to strangle slowly. It could take as long as five or six minutes for you to die. I hope you suffer, but sadly, I think you’ll probably pass out in about twenty or thirty seconds.”
I turned and looked at Eugene, Ronnie, and Pappy.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I think it’s time for Mr. Clancy to go meet this maker he’s talked about for so long.”
All four of us grabbed him at the same time. I dragged him up the ladder by the collar of his coat while the others pushed from the bottom. Big Pappy and Eugene each used one of their hands to steady the ladder while Granny held it with both hands from the back side. Clancy tried to kick and squirm at first, but he knew it was hopeless, and after a few seconds accepted his fate. I slipped the noose around his neck and tightened it snugly around his throat while Ronnie held his feet on one of the rungs. I jumped off the ladder and backed away a couple of steps. Pappy, Eugene, and Ronnie stood with me. Granny stayed behind Clancy.
“We’re waiting,” I said.
Clancy looked down at me. His eyes had taken on a far-off look. “For what?” he mumbled.
“For you to be a man and step off on your own.”
His legs were shaking as he stood, awkwardly balanced, on the third rung of the ladder.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck all of you. Enjoy hell.”
He stood there defiantly for another ten seconds. Suddenly, the ladder was jerked backward. It clattered to the floor while he began to writhe as the rope tightened and he slowly strangled. We watched the same way a crowd would have watched back in the days when the government was hanging people in the town square—with prurient fascination. His eyes bugged, his face contorted and turned pink, then purple, then it began to fade to a pale white. He passed out within a couple of minutes, and I took a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that he knew I was largely responsible for ending his life. I felt no sorrow, no remorse at all. It was very much like the feeling I’d experienced after shooting Frazier and Beane. I felt empowered.
Granny walked into a stall and came back with a bottle of Tipton’s Mountain Moonshine, a brand the family was now producing legally. She said, “To killing a son of a bitch that needed killing,” and took a long swig from the bottle. “None of us will ever speak of this to anyone.”
We passed it around while Clancy dangled from the end of the rope. Twenty minutes later, we cut him down and dragged him to the pigpen. Granny hadn’t fed them in three days, and they tore into him. I turned away, not really wanting to watch that particular brand of gore, and walked to the van.
“It’s done. Time to move on,” I said to Pappy, and we walked outside, climbed in the van, and drove away.
CHAPTER 29
There was a large gun show in Knoxville the day after we took care of Ben Clancy. I don’t know exactly why I felt the need to buy a gun, but I did. I think I just wanted something I could use without having to get Big Pappy involved. Tennessee has virtually no gun laws on the books, so I knew I could go to a show and find something in the parking lot. I could just buy from an individual, and there would be no paper trail.
I told Grace I was going to go fishing for a little while at Volunteer Landing Park and headed out. My first stop, after the usual doubling back and pulling into and out of parking lots to make sure I wasn’t being followed, was at the same costume shop in the Old City where I’d bought the disguise before I went to West Virginia. I bought a beard, some glasses, and some adhesive and put the disguise on in the parking garage a couple of blocks from the store. Next, I went to an ATM and withdrew $500 in cash.