The Man In the Shadows

By Joe McCormick

Hot fire leapt unbidden to Stone’s eyes…
He leveled a piercing gaze straight into Highpockets’ magnified eyes.”You claim to know something about the murder of my father. All I've got is your word of that. I didn't just get off the banana boat yesterday, Mr. Cobb. You wouldn't be coming to me at this late date out of the goodness of your heart, not unless there’s something in it for you.” He was tired of beating around the bush.
“What’s in it for you, Mr. Cobb? What do you want from me?”
Highpockets lost his composure. “I want you to KILL ‘IM,” he yelled…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781329049246

Book preview

The Man In the Shadows

The Man In the Shadows

The Man In the Shadows

Joe McCormick

Copyright © 2014 by Joe McCormick

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Electronic Release: 2014

Big Springs Press

Pinson, Tennessee 38366

www.joemccormickcountry.com

Foreword

Brick Church Crossing?  You can't get there from here.  Not so, responds Joe McCormick with a novel that connects this small West Tennessee community to points north, south, east, and west. And northeast!  Yes, not four roads, but five.  These roads, which bring the world to the old brick church, are conduits for the influences of the outside world that threaten to disrupt this peaceful community in the center of the Bible Belt's buckle.  But the elements of vengeance are home grown.  And, as Joe says, vengeance never grows cold.

Set in the twentieth century, Joe introduces us to the various characters who play unique roles in this typical rural community.  These people come from various backgrounds and hold a variety of world views.  Many have a sincere desire to contribute to the happiness and success of the community, some are seeking every opportunity to prosper in unscrupulous ways, while others are just trying to survive.

Adding outside influences to the mix creates a story that is anything but typical.  Solving a cold case murder is only the tip of the iceberg. Elements of revenge emerge not only from across the county line, but also from the other side of the world.

Joe is unashamed in showing how the influence of dedicated Christians can make an impact on situations that are leading to disaster.  These Christians are not anonymous by-standers.  Even when circumstances are extraordinary, they continue to pray, study the Bible, witness to the lost, and help those in need.  In this story, just as in real life, it makes all the difference.

The Man in the Shadows is an exciting and inspiring story for men and women alike.  Although this is Joe's first published novel, the reader will feel as if it were written by a seasoned literary author.  Joe successfully integrates life experience into his fiction creating a thrilling yet believable narrative.  For anyone who enjoys mystery, adventure, international intrigue, crime stories, love stories, or just good stories, The Man in the Shadows is a must read. 

Now, find out what happens when political intrigue, the drug trade, money laundering, human trafficking, child abuse, and murder meets forgiveness, truth, and the Grace of God at Brick Church Crossing.

John McKenzie

October 2014

CHAPTER ONE

The man in the shadow of the great oak tree shivered in the cold December night and waited.  He shifted the double-barreled shotgun he held in trembling hands and hated it.  He hated himself.  He hated what he was getting ready to do.  He had never killed a man before.

He shrugged thin shoulders to settle the turned up collar of his worn denim jumper more closely around his aching ears and let his hate warm him.  For the hundredth time he craned his neck and checked the area around his shadowed covert.  A brilliant full moon blazed down on the frozen land out of a deep sable sky, making the snow covered fields as bright as day.  Ice-encased sassafras branches sparkled like delicate strings of jewelry in the moonlight.  A thin layer of snow lay along the gravel road which led away like a pale ribbon to the crossroads.

The man wiped the stiff leather back of a gloved hand across his red nose.  He cupped the hand over his face to try to thaw his numb lips and to warm the brittle air enough that it wouldn’t hurt his lungs.  He fought the urge to step out of the shadows, as if some warmth might be found in the deceptive shine of the moon.  No, he mused bitterly, huddling deeper into the shadow of the old tree, there’s no warmth there.  He shifted uncomfortably.  His gun barrel brushed the dry stalk of a tall weed, dislodging a load of snow that had collected on the shriveled leaf cluster at the top.  He watched the fine powder drift to the ground, like glittering stardust.  Was there warmth anywhere in the world anymore?  Would he ever be warm again?

Sudden tears burned his eyes.  He turned to look at the house on the knoll.  It was an enormous old two-story farmhouse with many angles and gables.  Until now he had avoided looking, afraid he might lose his resolve.  Inside, he knew, there waited a wife and baby beside a crackling fireplace.  It was the family of the man he waited to kill. He heard a door open and close, and knew she had probably come out to get firewood off the porch.

The weather-beaten farmhouse loomed darkly at the top of the rise, so close he could have hit it with a thrown rock.  In ghostly silence it brooded, an angular silhouette darker than the sky.  There, in that dreary expanse of unpainted walls, glowed a small rectangle of yellow light.  There was warmth.  The man blinked his smarting eyes and the glowing window blurred.  The leaden pain in his breast reminded him that he had once known the warmth of home.  There had been a time when a light had burned in a window for him.

That was before.  Before he came.  Sternly the man turned away and hefted the shotgun in one clenched fist.  Now there was only this.  Tears gone, he trembled with the sudden rage that shook him.  The cold fire in his eyes caressed the blue steel of the twin barrels.  He had put meat on the table with that gun, using it as efficiently as he used any other tool.  Now he had a job that needed doing, and needed doing badly.  It was a job he had put off too long, and the shotgun was the only tool for the job.  As a surgeon used a scalpel to remove cancerous tissue, he would rid the world of a malignancy.  But he knew nothing of scalpels.  The twelve-gauge would have to do. 

Suddenly he jerked to attention, listening.  The twin barrels dropped into his left glove and tracked toward the road.  For a moment there was only the sifting rustle of gently swaying snow-laden weeds along the ditch bank.  Ice covered branches scraped and tinkled lightly overhead.  He kept his breathing shallow. Canting his head to one side, he opened his mouth to hear better.  He could hear faint, regular crunching sounds foreign to the night, and identified them as footsteps approaching on frozen gravel. 

The footsteps drew closer.  The sound of Jingle Bells, inexpertly whistled, drove a bitter arrow into the watcher’s heart.  Holding to the shadows, he slowly straightened cramped knees and peered carefully over the fence row brush.  He wanted to be absolutely sure. Then his jaw clenched in recognition, and he knew he had his man.

Adrenaline pumped through his taut frame.  The cold was forgotten.  With a gloved thumb he nervously slid the shotgun’s safety button off.  Before bringing the weapon to bear on his target, he took one more look around.  He could not afford to make any mistakes.  From his position only the lights of two houses could be seen.  Brick Church Crossing was a farm community.  The sound of a gunshot from the fields would hardly be noted, even if heard.  At any given time during fall and winter, hunters might be abroad in the night after coon or possum.  He wasn’t worried about the noise but, for God’s sake, he didn’t want to be seen.

The walking man had just left the old two-story brick store, two hundred yards away, at the Crossing.  His destination, the man in the shadows knew, was the house at the crest of the knoll.  He would never make it. 

As the walking man approached, whistling gaily, his features could easily be seen by the light of the moon.  He was a handsome man, young, with a rakish pencil thin Clark Gable mustache and a wide brimmed felt hat tilted jauntily to one side.  He wore a leather jacket with the top of a small paper bag showing in one pocket.  Still whistling cheerfully, he passed through the shadow of the old oak tree.  Oblivious to everything around him but the sight of home, he didn’t see the movement under the tree or the twin gun barrels following him.  All he saw was the little rectangle of warmth - the lights of home.

The man in the shadows stood and took steady aim through the tears that blurred his vision.  Moonlight ran along the gun barrels like silver fire.  He blinked his eyes hard.  Strangely, now that the time had come, he found himself unexpectedly calm.  The hate that had sustained him had burned away, leaving only a great sadness and a cold commitment to the task.  It was a job that needed doing.  Never again must that handsome and carefree man be allowed to work his evil. For a brief moment a plaguing doubt troubled the predator in the shadows. An eye for an eye, he whispered bitterly through clenched teeth, his warm breath turning to frost on the cold breach of the weapon. Thou shalt not kill echoed like an accusing voice in his skull. With an effort he hardened his resolve.  Oh, God, forgive me! he sobbed under his breath.  It was time for the destroyer to meet his own destruction.

Slowly, two gloved fingers took up the slack on both triggers.

CHAPTER TWO

Julian Percy Cobb tossed two biscuits over the top of the dog pen and hunkered down in the darkness behind the woodpile to wait.  It only took a moment for the mellow barking of the prize bluetick coonhound inside the wire mesh enclosure to cease.  Snuffling, slurping sounds told the boy that the biscuits had disappeared, but still he waited to be sure no one had been aroused by the barking.  He wasn’t really worried because he knew that, unless it was one of his coon hunting nights, Simmons always went to bed early.  Tonight was Christmas Eve.  Mrs. Simmons would not be letting her husband out to hunt on this night.  True to custom, the light in the Simmons’ bedroom window went out at eight. 

After a reasonable length of time had passed without a light coming on in the house, the gangly boy eased out of the deep shadows and crept across the ground, setting his feet down carefully, so as not to make crunching sounds in the light crust of snow.  He spoke softly to the dog as he approached the pen.  He took another of his homemade biscuits from the pocket of the oversized and filthy suit coat he wore.  Hey there, Mose, he whispered, You know me boy, don’t you? He extended his hand through the mesh of the fence.  Attaboy, c’mere and git this biscuit!  The hound sniffed the boy’s hand, tail wagging.  Delicately he took the morsel and swallowed it with one gulp.  In the starlight the kid could see the hound’s eyes shining, begging for more.

Glancing at the house, he quickly slipped the pin out of the latch on the dog pen door and opened it far enough to reach in and grab the dog’s collar.  Making kissing sounds with stiff lips he coaxed the bluetick outside.  Kneeling, he slipped a coil of rope off his shoulder and with rapid movements tied one end of it through the ring on the dog collar.  Mose sniffed the boy’s pockets for more biscuits, and the kid gave him the last one as he led the dog away toward the woods. 

As they drew further away from his familiar environs, the bluetick began to lag behind, perhaps sensing that something was amiss and wishing to be back in the comfort of his pen.  When he hesitated, the impatient youth jerked angrily on the rope, bringing a startled yip from the hound.  Shhh! the boy hissed, dropping to his knees on the frozen ground and grabbing the dog by the throat.  You better shut up, dog!  You make noise and git me caught and I’ll kill you, I don’t care how much you’re worth!  The chastened bluetick cringed and licked the boy’s hand.  The narrow-faced kid shot a furtive look around and decided he was far enough away from the house that he needn’t worry anymore about noise.  He pulled the earflaps of his soiled cap down and tied them snugly under his chin, then hurried on, yanking the rope to make the hound keep up.

The young dog thief lived across the line in Chester County, and he needed to be sure he arrived at his ramshackle home in the woods before daylight.  No one was likely to be out on this cold Christmas Eve to see him, but to be safe he kept off the roads as much as possible, avoiding houses by circling around through fields and woods.  It slowed him down, but it was early yet.  He had the whole night ahead of him.  He could sleep until noon tomorrow if he wanted to, then leave the dog in the shed while he went to see Steed about taking the stolen property off his hands.  Steed ran a small country store on Bull Gap road that had been established in the days when people traveled in buggies and wagons.  The store was in a remote area, but had prospered for the simple reason that it was located at the top of a very long and steep hill – exactly the spot where local farmers would want to stop to let their teams blow.  The store no longer made any money from grocery trade, but Steed himself prospered through his shady dealing. This wouldn’t be the first coonhound Steed had bought off the shifty-eyed youngster, no questions asked.  The fat and jolly storekeeper had a shed behind his barn in which he usually kept four or five coonhounds of questionable ownership. Once a month he loaded them in a box built on to the back of his pickup truck and hauled them to a big sale somewhere down in Mississippi.  Steed also had some kind of agreement with the county sheriff - one having to do with moonshine whiskey. 

Shivering slightly inside his thin coat, young Cobb thought about Steed and the easy way he made his money.  He had paid attention in his secretive way and noticed that the storekeeper didn’t make it on brains.  He was just an uneducated fat man, too lazy to work, who was shrewd enough to use his contacts to his advantage.  The boy decided he was going to study Steed until he developed the same ability.  He had been born trash, and would always be trash, and he didn’t care.  As long as he could be rich trash.

Never given to introspection, the kid had never even thought to ask himself if the course he had pursued in his short fourteen years was the right one.  For that matter, the concept of right and wrong was totally foreign to him.  What he wanted to do, he did, having no parents to answer to, and whatever he did was the right thing to do as far as he was concerned.  There had never been anyone to teach him otherwise.

Not that it would have mattered in his case.  Julian Percy Cobb had been born with a mean streak in him, and nothing in his life had happened to soften it.  Even as a breast fed baby he would bite so hard with his toothless gums that his mother quickly put him on a bottle, which, due to his mother’s careless ways, was more times than not filled with spoiled milk.  In the first grade he had been the butt of jokes from the other children, who promptly nicknamed him Highpockets because of his funny build.  His spindly legs were disproportionately long compared to his short torso.  He actually preferred the insulting nickname to his real name, which caused even more hilarity among the other children whenever the schoolteacher called his name.  Highpockets stuck, and the boy now rarely even remembered his real name.

His father had died before the kid could remember from a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by the effects of too much moonshine whiskey.  He and his mother continued to live in squalor on the skimpy earnings she made at a local beer joint.  He knew that all the money she made wasn’t from waiting on tables.  For that reason he paid little attention when she took to riding around with the Jehovah’s witnesses and telling him that he was going to hell if he didn’t start going to her church.  She was seldom at home and he was usually left to his own devices.  Finally she abandoned him altogether.  She just got in a big green Buick one day with an insurance salesman from somewhere up north and drove off with him.  Highpockets never saw her again.  Neither did he miss her.  He loved being alone.  He could do whatever he wanted to do without having to listen to her drunken screeching.  When he heard through one of her cronies from the beer joint that his mother had been killed in an apartment fire in Pittsburgh, he showed no more emotion than if someone had told him the time of day.  Since that time he had kept to himself, doing as he liked but never drawing enough attention to himself to attract the authorities.  He dropped out of school and his teachers were relieved, assuming he had gone north with his mother.  At fourteen he was a consummate sneak thief who cared for nobody or nothing except indulging himself in his few fleshly appetites.

Highpockets shifted his thoughts to how he was going to spend the money he would get for the hound.  At his young age he had already developed a taste for liquor, and he anticipated the luxury of being able to buy a whole gallon of white lightening from that old tightwad, Weems.  Maybe he could talk Weems’ crosseyed daughter into getting drunk with him, help him celebrate Christmas.  The thought brought a lurid grin to his face.  He wiped his mouth with the ragged sleeve of his coat.

So engrossed in fantasy was he that the skulking youth failed to pay attention to his surroundings.  He didn’t hear the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps until it was too late to hide.  He had been holding to cover following a frozen sand ditch at the edge of a field.  The crunch of boots impacting the hard ground penetrated his consciousness only an instant before the dark figure of a man running full tilt burst around a corner of the gully and almost collided with the boy.  Startled, the man skidded to a halt so suddenly that he lost his balance and stumbled, catching himself with an outflung hand against the sandy bank.  Sheer terror rooted the young thief to the spot.  His first guilty thought was that he had been caught with the goods, and there was nothing he could do.  He waited for the shadowy figure to say something, to accuse him, or to raise the shotgun that hung from his right hand.  But the man only stood there, trembling, breathing hard, staring at the boy as if with unbelief.  His face was hidden in the shadow of his hunting cap and the collar of his denim jacket was turned up around his chin, so that even in the bright moonlight he was effectively masked.  A chill went down the boy’s spine.  He frantically wracked his brain for a plausible explanation for his presence out here in the dead of night with another man’s coon dog on a leash.  His skinny legs began to tremble as fear of getting shot began to wash over him. 

But this man wasn’t Simmons.  Simmons was much stockier of build.  The boy began to recover a bit from the shock, especially as he noticed that the man had not lifted the gun to point it at him.  He steadied himself enough to find his voice, though his words came out rather squeaky. 

Who…who are you?

The man made no reply, but remained bent over as if in pain, breathing heavily.  His breath rose in clouds of steam around his head. The moon was almost bright enough to read by and, though he kept his face hidden in shadow, there seemed to be something vaguely familiar about him. 

Do I know you, mister? Highpockets asked.  The question seemed to hit the man like a jolt of electricity.  With a sudden burst of energy, he vaulted to the top of the ditch bank and bounded away into the night.  Startled, the boy could only stand openmouthed and watch the dark figure in a denim jacket stumble away across the hard snow-dusted field until the darkness swallowed him up. 

"What was that all about?" Highpockets asked no one in particular.  He tightened his grip on the rope and jerked the dog along as he resumed his march, hurrying now, eager to be far from that area.   He had no idea what the man with the shotgun was running from, but he certainly didn’t want to get tangled up in it.  The young thief was well acquainted with guilt and knew the signs.  That man was guilty of something.  There was some reason he had not wanted to show his face or say anything to give himself away.  Hastening homeward through the frostbitten night, hauling behind him a stolen coonhound, Highpockets reckoned that, by grab, he just might know that feller.  No wonder he had seemed familiar.  He was a friend of Simmons. 

Dang!  He started to trot, angling further away from the road, expecting at any moment to see headlights rounding the bend from the direction of the Simmons place.  When none appeared after enough time had passed, the boy slowed to a walk.  His foxlike brain began to reason.  He just needed to stay calm and think this thing through.  That man had not been after a dog thief.  This had nothing to do with the business Highpockets had been engaged in this night.  That man had been running like the devil himself was after him.  He’d been up to something he didn’t want anybody to know about.  Highpockets laughed nervously, out loud.  He sure as blazes wasn’t going to say anything to anyone about seeing a man with a shotgun running around in the middle of the night.  He was just glad he hadn’t gotten shot.  And somethin’ tells me, Highpockets muttered to himself, that peckerwood ain’t about to be tellin’ nobody he seen me with this dog.  He chuckled under his breath and gave another cruel yank on the bluetick’s rope.  By the time he reached the weather-beaten shack in the moonlit clearing, the boy had thought it through enough to be confident he had nothing to fear.

He slept like a baby for the remainder of the night, and the next day when he went to make a deal on the dog, he heard about the murder of Harley Mack Stone.  For months to come, he avoided the vicinity of his former night’s prowling like the plague.  He said nothing to anyone during the brief investigation, and there was no reason for anyone to question him.  But he filed his secret knowledge away to fester in his simple brain until such time as he would think of some way to make it work to his evil benefit. 

CHAPTER THREE

On a hill above Brick Church Crossing, a forest green Ford Explorer with D.C. plates eased over onto the graveled shoulder of the road and stopped.  The driver sat for a moment, regarding the intermittent sweep of the windshield wipers as they cleared the mist from the glass.  Every few seconds another sweep cleared the scene for a brief interval, then once again all was blurred by collecting water droplets.  A pretty fair representation of his life, he mused.  At times it all seemed clear, but mostly – mostly the answers were blurred. 

He switched off the ignition and got out of the vehicle, feeling the cool drizzle on his face.  He turned the fleece-lined collar of his suede leather coat up and leaned against the hood of the Explorer.  He let his gaze wander across the valley below, picking out familiar landmarks.  From his vantage point on the hill, he could see the entire layout of the tiny settlement.  He scrubbed his right hand through short cropped dark brown hair, flicking away the beaded droplets.  Hunching his shoulders inside his coat, he eased his left arm which was supported by a blue medical sling tied around his neck. The late November air was bracing.  The dreary late afternoon overcast sky promised more raw weather to come. 

Aside from a few mobile homes that had popped up here and there, nothing much seemed changed.  For a fleeting moment he felt time fall away, and it was as if he had never left home.  He was a boy again, climbing Copperhead Hill to still-hunt squirrels in the hickory grove.  His wide mouth twisted in a wry grimace and he quickly shrugged off the momentary illusion.  He’d never be a boy again.  And he doubted very much that Brick Church would ever again seem like home. 

The old brick store itself, which had originally been a church, still commanded attention first among the scattering of buildings at the crossing.  Its top story rose above the surrounding trees, metal roof gleaming wetly under the leaden sky.  He was surprised to see that the old cotton gin had survived pretty much intact.  Cotton was handled these days by a few modernized super gins, leaving quaint old monsters like the gin at Brick Church and hundreds of other back-country gins standing as relics of a bygone horse-and-wagon era. 

On a little rise across the road from the store was the two-story Gaines house, with its wide, columned porch.  He had always thought of that house as a mansion, though it really was not all that pretentious… not after one had seen the White House and some of the other palatial manors he had visited in pursuance of his duties.  Still, it lent a quality of genteel southern affluence to remote Brick Church Crossing.  He wondered if the basketball hoop would still be attached to the old wagon shed in back, where he and his friends had once clamored summer afternoons away.  A direct descendant of old Arbuckle Gaines, who had built the house before the Civil War, lived in the house then.  The popular oldest son of the family made their home a central meeting place for all the local boys.  He chuckled under his breath.  It had been natural then to meet at the Gaines house.  Doss had all the stuff.  Nobody else had a basketball. 

Doss’ family had also been the first to get a TV.  Progress had come late to the Crossing.  But now satellite dishes sprouted from almost every home and trailer.  Even the store had one.  The old place looks prosperous, he sighed, and turned to ease his six-foot-plus frame back into the Explorer.  He had studiously avoided letting his eyes follow the road past the store and gin to the empty field where once had stood an old weathered farmhouse, close beside a giant red oak tree.                                       

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