Chiefs

Chiefs

Number I of
Will Lee

Stuart Woods

W. W. Norton & Co. (2006)

Rating: ★★★★☆

Tags: Police chiefs, Police Procedural, Georgia, Police, Mystery & Detective, Teenage boys - Crimes against, Crime, Teenage boys, Crimes against, General, African-American men, Suspense, Thrillers, Mystery fiction, African American, Fiction, Police - Georgia, African American men

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Product Description

The compelling thriller that launched the career of best-selling novelist Stuart Woods in an anniversary hardcover edition.
In the bitter winter of 1920, the first body is found in Delano, Georgia; the naked corpse of an unidentified teenager. There is no direct evidence of murder, but the body bears marks of what seems to be a ritual beating. The investigation falls to Will Henry Lee, a failed cotton farmer newly appointed as Delano's first chief of police. Lee's obsession with the crime begins a story that weaves through the decades, following the life of a small southern town and the role of three police chiefs in unraveling the crime.
Chiefs
is the best kind of thriller, where the investigation plays out against the drama beneath the surface of a seemingly placid community, seething with the pressures of race, love, hate, and; always; political power, extending from the town fathers all the way to Washington, DC. With a new foreword by the author, this volume will be a collector's treasure for all fans of Stuart Woods.

About the Author

Stuart Woods
is the author of thirty-three novels. He lives in Key West, on Mt. Desert Island in Maine, and in New York City. Readers may learn more about him and his work, read an interview, and correspond with him on his Web site at www.stuartwoods.com.

Chiefs

Stuart Woods

Book Cover:

In The Bitter Winter Of 1920, The First Body Is Found In Delano, Georgia—the naked corpse of an unidentified teenager. There is no direct evidence of murder, but the body bears marks of what seems to be a ritual beating. The investigation falls to Will Henry Lee, a failed cotton farmer newly appointed as Delano’s first chief of police.

Lee’s intelligent, obsessive hunt for the boy’s tormentor begins a story that weaves through decades of deceit, hatred, perversion, and political drama, enveloping the lives of two other chiefs—one himself a murderer, the other hiding a secret that, if revealed, might destroy not only himself but also the promising career of a rising political figure.

Chiefs
is the best kind of thriller, where the investigation plays out against the drama beneath the surface of a seemingly placid community, seething with the pressures of race, love, hate, and—always—political power, extending from the town fathers all the way to Washington, DC.

FOREWORD

W
hen I was nine or ten years old I was rummaging in a closet in my grandmother’s house, and I came across an old shoebox full of family memorabilia—some old photographs, mainly. Among these things I was surprised to find a large, brass policeman’s shield which read, “chief of police, Manchester, Georgia.” The badge was half shot away with buckshot, and there was what looked like dried blood on it.

I took it to the only adult in the house at the time, my great aunt Ruby, my grandmother’s sister, and asked her what it meant. She blanched, then sat me down and told me that it had belonged to my maternal grandfather, William Henry Callaway. He had been a cotton farmer in Meriwether County during the 1910s and, like many others, had lost his farm to the boll weevil. This was about 1920. Then he had moved his family into Manchester, which had only been founded in 1909, and through the good offices of James S. Peters, who was the chairman of the city council, got a job as the new town’s first police chief.

He held the job until 1927 or ‘28, then he was killed with a shotgun by a man who was in a malarial delirium and mistook him for someone else. He died at the doctor’s office, in my grandmother’s arms.

This story stayed with me, and later, other events occurred in my hometown that stayed with me, too, and eventually, I began to shape these events into an idea for a novel. Finally, in 1973, when I was thirty-five, I left an advertising job in London to go to Ireland, where some friends had found me a flat in the stable yard of a castle in County Galway, and where it was my intention to write the novel that had been in my mind for so many years.

It took me eight years to finish it, and it was finally published in March 1981. I called it
Chiefs.
The novel established me as a writer, and now, thirty novels later, it remains my favorite, because it is so caught up in my family and hometown history, and because it was my first. It may be my best work, but that is for others to decide; I’m still too close to it to know. Only twenty thousand hardback copies were printed, so it has become rare.

This replica edition is being published for the novel’s twenty-fifth anniversary. I hope it may satisfy the demands of many readers for a hardback edition, and that it may introduce those familiar with my later work to my beginnings as a novelist.

—Stuart Woods

PROLOGUE:

T
HE BOY ran for his life.

He poured forth an effort born of fear and a wild sense of freedom regained. At first he ran entirely unconscious of his injuries, then, tearing recklessly through the dark woods, he struck a tree and went down. He lay stunned for a time he could not account for, and when he was finally able to struggle to his feet, the full force of the pain and the winter air swept over him and made him stagger.

He heard the dog and the man crashing through the brush, and he ran again, wildly, blindly, the undergrowth tearing at his naked body. Abruptly, he broke through onto a road, hesitated, decided against it, and threw himself across the open area into the brush on the other side. He was momentarily in thick, thorny blackberry bushes, then found himself on a narrow path.

He was failing now, sucking in air with a loud, rasping noise, his muscles aching, legs wobbling. He heard the man fighting through the blackberry bushes, cursing, and he flung himself forward with his remaining strength. He knew he would rather run until he died than go back to that house. He willed his heart to burst, God to take him, but his exhausted body still carried him unsteadily forward.

The path turned sharply to the right, but he lunged ahead into thick brush again, hoping for safety. Then he saw stars ahead through the bushes and thought he might break through into a field, while his tormentor followed the path. He gathered his last strength and plunged forward and down, hoping to lie on the ground undetected.

There was no ground; the earth fell away beneath him. He believed himself to be falling into a ditch, but his ditch had no bottom. He fell, twisting in the air, trying desperately to get his feet under him, while the hard earth waited far below him.

BOOK ONE

Henry Lee

Chapter 1.

HUGH HOLMES, president of the Bank of Delano and chairman of the Delano City Council, was a man who, more than most, thought about the present in terms of the future. It was one of his great strengths, both as a banker and as a politician, but on a cold morning in December of 1919, this faculty failed him. It would be many years before he would have some grasp of how that morning changed his future, changed everything.

Holmes prided himself on being able to look at a man as he entered the bank and predict what the man would want. On this morning he watched through the sliding window in the wall between his office and the main room of the bank as Will Henry Lee entered, and Holmes indulged himself in a bit of his usual prognostication. Will Henry Lee was a cotton farmer; his standing mortgage was due the first of the year, and he would want it renewed. It took Holmes only seconds to review the circumstances: Will Henry’s debt amounted to about thirty-five percent of the value of his farm, in reasonably good times. That was a lower level of debt than was bome by most farmers, and Will Henry had paid his interest on time and made two payments against principal. But Holmes knew, the boll weevil situation being what it was, that Will Henry might fail with his next crop. Still, he respected the man, liked him, even; he decided to renew. He leaned forward at his desk and pretended to read a letter, confident that he had anticipated the content of their approaching discussion and had worked out an appropriate response. Will Henry knocked at the open door, sat down, exchanged pleasantries, and asked Holmes for the job of chief of police.

Holmes was stupefied, partly by the completely unexpected request, and partly by the total collapse of his early-warning system. His mind was not accustomed to such surprises, and it lurched about through a long moment of silence as it struggled to assimilate this outrageous input and get it into an orderly framework of thought. The effort was a failure. To give himself more time, he clambered onto familiar ground. “Well, now, Will Henry, you’re not overextended on your farm. We could probably see you through another crop, even with things the way they are with cotton.” To his credit, Holmes maintained his banker’s face throughout the exchange.

“Hugh, if I extended I’d have to have more capital, which means getting deeper in debt to the bank. If I did that for another crop things wouldn’t get any better; they’d just get worse. Better farmers than me are going under. I think you’d be doing the best thing for the bank if you took the farm now and sold it. I might get something after the note was paid. To tell you the truth, Hoss Spence offered me nearly about exactly what I owe for the place just last week, but I think I’d rather let the bank take it than let a man buy me out for a third of what the place is worth. Hoss’s peaches and cattle are going to be on a lot of land where cotton used to grow, and I’d just as soon my land didn’t get included in that.” He stopped talking, looked at Holmes, and waited.

Holmes’s brain was beginning to thrash through the gears now. Item one: Will Henry was right about the bank’s position; taking the farm now would give a better chance of coming through the transaction profitably; things could truly be a whole lot worse next year. Item two: Delano had long been big enough for a chief, but the town wasn’t big enough to attract an experienced officer from another force. Holmes, as chairman of the city council, had been looking hard for months for a suitable man. The chief at La Grange had put it to him bluntly. “Mr. Holmes, I’ll tell you the truth; right now Delano couldn’t even attract a decent patrolman from a larger town, let alone a sergeant. My advice to you would be to find a local man that people respect, and give him the job. In a town like Delano he can do about ninety-nine percent of what he’s got to do with just plain old respect.”

Holmes looked across the desk at Will Henry. He respected the man, and he was a harsher judge than most. Will Henry was well known in the community, even though he and his father before him had been country men. Maybe his always having lived in the country would mix a little distance with familiarity and give respect a sharper edge. Holmes resisted an urge to pump Will Henry’s hand and pin a badge on him right on the spot. He had to preserve a reputation for caution, and, anyway, he couldn’t make the decision entirely on his own.

“Well, I’ll have to bring this up at the next council meeting.” He paused. “Have you talked to Carrie about this, Will Henry?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you first. Carrie’s all ready to worry us through another crop, but I think it’d be a kind of relief to her to have done with the farm. We’d have to find a house in town, and I think she’d like fixing that up. She’s really always been a town girl at heart, I think. What’s your opinion of my chances for this job, Hugh?”

Holmes cleared his throat. “Well, I guess you could say it’s within the realm of possibility. I’ll see that the council gives the proposal serious consideration.” The two men rose and shook hands. “I might be able to help you with finding a house in town, too.” He already had something in mind. The banker’s brain was in high gear now.