Ryker’s Justice (17 page)

As
the noise level increased, Jude leaned over to ask Adam, “Does Junior ever show
up at church?”

“Not in years, no, why?”

“He
paid me a visit last night at the house,” Jude said.

Adam’s
eyes widened. “He did what?”

“Came
over, asked me to have a drink with him to patch up things, sold me a jar of
the finest moonshine, and offered to procure meth if I’d like some,” he
replied.

“Did
you?”

Jude
nodded. “Yeah, reminded me why it’s called rotgut. But I learned several things
I think will move the investigation forward.”

“You
still want to talk to Josh?”

“Yeah,
I do.” He watched the kid make his way toward the door. “I’ll go get him. Nicole,
I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stick with Adam or any of the family, you hear?”

Without
waiting for a response, Jude trailed his nephew into the churchyard. He watched
Josh head around to the rear of the building,
then
followed. “Joshua!”

At
the sound of his full name, Josh stopped. “What is it?”

“I
want to talk to you for a minute. Come over here.” Jude led him to a weathered
bench tucked between two trees. “I couldn’t sit still much when I was little. Mama
used to bring me out here to keep me out of trouble.”

“Did
it work?” Josh asked.

“
Naw
,
not much.
Your
granddaddy used to cut switches off a tree to whack me or the other kids if we
didn’t sit still or if we talked too much.”

“Sounds
kinda
mean.”

“I
thought so, too—then,” Jude told the teen. “But now I can see he wanted to
teach me right from wrong, that’s all. His way might have been harsher than
what I wanted but maybe it’s what I needed.”

Josh
glared at him, eyes bright with some strong emotion. Anger, maybe, or perhaps
embarrassment, Jude wasn’t certain. After a pause of several minutes, he sighed.
“So you’re trying to tell me I’ve done wrong? Are you
goin
’
cut a switch for me?”

Jude
snorted. “If I thought it would help, I might, but no. I want to find out what
you know about the moonshine Junior Wetzel was passing around at the game. Did
your dad or Uncle Adam tell you why I came home?”

“Dad
did. I don’t know a whole lot, though.”

“Just
tell me whatever you can think of because it might help.” He thought about
sharing with the kid what he’d learned but didn’t. Jude wanted to trust his nephew
but they weren’t well acquainted enough to know if he could.

After
another silence, Josh lifted his head. “Am I
gonna
be
in trouble?”

At
the sight of tears in the boy’s eyes, Jude’s heart lurched. He put one arm
around the kid’s shoulders. “No, you’re not. Hell, no. I’m looking for your
help, not trying to make your life difficult. I want justice, that’s all. It’s
what I came here to do but when David got hurt, it became personal.”

He
had meant to comfort but pain flashed across Josh’s face, swift as summer
lightning. “I feel bad about the wreck,” he cried. “If I had known, I would’ve
tried to warn David and Sierra.”

“It’s
not your fault,” Jude said. Damn, but he was out of his league now with an
upset teenager. “You had no way of knowing Junior would be running the roads
drunk and veer into David’s lane.”

“No,
but I should have done something.”

“Kid,
you couldn’t. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Help David get through this, help
me, but don’t shoulder the blame. It’s not yours.”

Josh
leaned forward, face buried in his hands. The sight of his thin back arched
with distress made Jude want to rock the kid the way you did a baby but he knew
better than to try. Young as he was, Josh was a Ryker male. He waited and after
awhile
, Josh lifted his head.

“I’ll
tell you everything I know, Uncle Jude, I promise.”

Relief
washed through Jude, powerful as a cleansing flood. “Good,” he said. “But not
here. Too many people are probably already curious what we’re doing back here.
Wanna
go fishing with me later?”

“Sure.”

“Okay,
Nicole and I are heading to the hospital to see David,
then
I’ll take her out for dinner if she wants, then I’ll come get you.”

“Can
I come with you to see David? You can come back for me there, if it’s okay with
my parents.”

It
wasn’t what Jude envisioned but it would do. “Yeah, let’s go.”

With
any luck at all, something he had never possessed in any quantity, the kid
might have something to add to the investigation. Maybe it would be over soon.

Chapter Sixteen

In
the larger town,
en
route to the hospital, Jude made
a stop at one of the fast-food joints on the outskirts. He bought each of them,
Josh, Nicole, and himself, a cheeseburger. On the way out, he bought two large
chocolate malts, one for each of the teens. David sat in the recliner,
half-dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. When they entered, his focus centered
on the tablet in his lap and the video game he played. Although still connected
to monitors and with an IV attached to his right arm, his color had returned to
normal, an improvement over his earlier ghostly pallor. When he noticed he had
visitors, he grinned.

“Hi,
Uncle Jude, Nicole,” he said. Then he spotted his cousin. “Hey, dude! It’s good
to see you, man.”

“Yeah,
were you playing Minecraft?” Josh asked. “Cool!”

Jude
rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I brought
a malt
if you want it, David.”

“Oh,
wow, thanks.”

The
two teens chattered about video games, school, and sports. Jude managed to
inquire about David’s condition and share a little news. When Elijah arrived
with his family in tow, Jude nudged Josh. “I think we’ll head out,” he
announced. “I promised the kid I’d take him fishing and Nicole’s probably tired
of my company.”

“No
way,” she said with a sweet smile.

Her
answer pleased him. “So you
wanna
come
fishing with us?”

“Not
really,” she said “I’ll stay here awhile and visit with Abigail, if you don’t
mind and she doesn’t.”

Thirty
minutes later, after a stop at the old home place, Jude and his nephew made
their way to the river.
En
route, they didn’t talk
much but once they settled down at the water, Josh spilled. Jude asked few
questions and didn’t need to prompt his nephew.

“A
lot of kids have been drinking the moonshine,” he told Jude as they baited
hooks. “It’s been going on for a couple of years but more and more people do
it. Some of them got sick, a few pretty bad sick, but they never told their
parents why or what happened. Taylor Chase missed two weeks of school after he
got wasted drinking it. I never had, I swear, not until that night at the game.
I just wanted to see what it tasted like, that’s all, but when I saw you, I got
scared and split.”

“Just
as well,” Jude told him. “That stuff will burn a hole in your belly—I know. I
took one drink that night, another when Junior Wetzel showed up at the house. It
like
to killed me both times. It can be damn
dangerous, son, so you’re wise to steer clear.”

Josh
nodded. “Yeah and besides, some of the wilder kids are doing meth too. I’ve
never done drugs and don’t plan to get started on any of them.”

He
talked more about kids who were wild, some who weren’t, and told his uncle who
had parties and where. His account painted a picture of modern twenty-first century
teenage life, different than what Jude experienced in the same location. Without
guile, Josh told about things that curdled Jude’s digestion, but he kept his
expression bland.

“Do
you know of anyone else selling the stuff, the liquor or the meth, besides
Junior?” he asked. “Junior told me about a couple but I need to know who’s
really behind it, not just the runners.”

“There’s
a guy at the feed store,” Josh told him. “I don’t remember his name, and then
Billy, the one who works on cars and has his own garage. He drives a boss
cherry red
GTO
, vintage, and it’s the
shiz
.”

“Yeah,
that’s the two he told me about,” Jude said. He thought they were about done
and the single cheeseburger hadn’t done much to ease his hunger. As he gathered
up the gear to head home, his nephew spoke again.

“One
of the ladies at the donut shop will sell it to you if you ask,” he said. “The
people running the shop, they don’t know. She just works there, Evelyn, but I’m
not sure what her last name is ‘
cause
it’s not on her
name tag. You can get it at the flea market, too, I think, and then Rick sells
it to anyone who comes in and asks for either one.”

Although
the wind had turned sharp, it wasn’t what made Jude go cold. “Rick?” he said.
“Who’s Rick?”

It
was a common enough name, he reasoned, and there had to be many. Josh shot him
a look and crashed his theory. “Rick at the inn,” he said. “You know,
Cockrell’s Country Inn?”

“Yeah,
I know,” Jude said. “I work there part-time, doing repairs. I thought you
knew.”

“Huh-uh,”
the teen said. “Or if I did, I forgot. Yeah, he’ll sell it.”

“Are
you sure?
100 percent?”

“Well,
like yeah, totally.” Josh sounded offended.

Jude
stared at the river’s surface and watched the ripples as it flowed. A hundred
small things flashed through his mind, little bits and pieces which had meant
nothing when he noticed them. Now, they had significance. Images rolled by in
memory, a woman standing in the shadows, beckoning Rick to her with a secretive
air, a man with face hidden by a broad-brimmed Western hat leaving with hands
wrapped tight around a brown paper bag, and two teens, expressions furtive,
carrying something glass because Jude had heard it clink. He believed his
nephew and the truth packed a hard punch. He’d known the
Cockrells
all his life and Mary had been his mother’s friend.

“Son-of-a-bitch!”
he cried. “I’m
gonna
nail that bastard.”

Right under my fucking nose, he’s
been handing moonshine out the door and meth too. I’ve sat at his table, eaten
his food, and considered him a friend. If he had any idea why I came back home,
I’d be in danger.
His
inner rant slammed short when he thought of the person who mattered most—Nicole.
If Rick and his cohorts were to learn Jude’s purpose and goal, she would be the
one in peril.

“You
believe me, right?” Josh said.

“Hell,
yeah, I do. I
gotta
go get my woman,” he told the
kid. “I don’t want Nicole going back there. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“It
would unless they know who you really are,” Josh said.

True,
but Jude preferred not to take the chance. Concern banished his hunger. “Let’s
go,” he said. At the house, he dumped the rods and tackle on the back porch. Jude
dialed Nicole’s cell phone but she didn’t pick up. Cell reception could be
spotty in the hills but he worried anyway. He tried Adam’s phone but got no
answer. All the way out to the main highway and north to the county seat, he
kept trying without success until he rolled into the hospital parking lot.

“Hello.”
Nicole’s voice poured into his ear, more welcome than springtime after a hard
winter.

Relief
came so swiftly, his head whirled in a dizzy moment. “Hey, honey,” he said. Jude
forced his voice to sound ordinary. “I’m in the parking lot. Are you ready to
go?”

“Sure,”
she replied. “How did it go?”

“I
learned a lot.” Jude hoped she wouldn’t pick up on his concern, not yet. He hadn’t
decided whether or not to tell her about Rick.

In
the background, he heard a babble of voices, mostly women. “Good. I’ll be down
in a minute.”

“No,
wait. I’ll come up. I need to talk to Adam if he’s still here.”

“I
don’t think he is.”

“I’ll
find out. See you in a minute, honey.”

Adam,
who worked fifty-hour weeks as his normal schedule, had gone home to rest, so
Jude retrieved Nicole from the waiting room. She flew across the room to meet
him and he wrapped his arms around her, glad to see her, assured of her safety
for now. “I missed you,” she whispered. “Let’s go home.”

“How
about we grab a bite to eat first?” he said.

“Let
me get my purse and jacket.”

Jude
had a few brief words with Noah, spoke to his cousin Sam, and kissed Aunt
Tillie’s cheek. “Where can I get a decent steak?” he asked.

His
brother shook his head. “Good question. You might have to head up to
Joplin
or down into
Arkansas
because I don’t
know of anywhere these days. Asian, Mexican, fast food, or deli sandwiches is
all there is to choose.
There’s
a couple of sit-down
restaurants but I don’t know if they offer steak or how it would be if they
did.”