Silent Approach Read online

  The impact caved in Sadie’s Tahoe like it was made of thin aluminum. Logs hurled into the cab of the truck and into the street like matches spilling from a dropped box.

  The fire captain immediately radioed in the accident, and his men were off the truck almost instantaneously, attempting to rescue any vehicle occupants.

  The impact of the accident was later reported in the newspaper to have been more violent than anything anybody had ever witnessed. With no other reference point available to them, witness after witness had compared the horror to a scene from a Hollywood movie.

  John Allen Harper had witnessed it all.

  Chapter 3

  John Allen went back to work sooner than he probably should have, but he didn’t see any alternative. Even though he hated his job more than ever, it got him out of bed each day and took his mind off the accident for short stretches of time.

  Lawyers chased him mercilessly, trying to get him to sue the logging company for negligence and wrongful death. When they learned that the ambulance had been delayed, they swarmed around him again. He emphatically said no. He didn’t blame the log truck or the ambulance, and he never blamed the fire department. John Allen blamed himself. He should have been there for Sadie. He should have left work in time to pick her up at home. Now he wanted no part in profiting from his family’s death.

  Two months after John Allen buried his wife, he sold their house along with most of their furniture and possessions. The house had become a constant source of pain. Everywhere he looked, he saw his wife or heard her voice. There was the den they’d repainted together and the nursery she’d worked so hard to make perfect. He just couldn’t stay there any longer—everything reminded him of Sadie. Even the daylilies outside made his heart ache each time one bloomed. She’d loved her daylilies.

  With the money from the sale of everything, he purchased forty acres just outside of Columbus, Mississippi. The property included an old barn that John Allen had a contractor buddy convert into modern living quarters. From the road it looked like a dilapidated outbuilding, but inside his man cave he had everything he needed.

  He loved the anonymity of the place. He knew it would rarely earn a second look from someone driving by.

  Behind the barn was a five-acre pond that John Allen hoped one day to enjoy properly. Before the accident, his main hobby had been bass fishing, and he hoped he would eventually get back into it. Being out on the water had always calmed his nerves, but each time he looked at his old boat and fishing rods he thought of how Sadie had enjoyed going with him, reading books while he’d fished or listening to stories of his childhood that had made her laugh. He’d loved hearing her laugh. When he did hook a decent-size largemouth, she’d been quick to assist and net the fish. John Allen had called her his “net girl,” and they’d spent many Saturday afternoons in his little aluminum fishing boat, enjoying the peacefulness of the water and the Mississippi sunshine.

  A month shy of the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death, John Allen mentioned to someone at the accounting firm that he was considering resigning from his position. The corporate office got wind of it and talked him into taking a few months off instead, getting a fresh perspective, then coming back to work. They wanted him to stay, since he was one of their most talented branch managers. Their key clients trusted him, and trust was a highly prized trait in accountants.

  The first few weeks, John Allen stayed locked in his barn, nearly going crazy. The Sunday-school class fed him for about ten days. Then when the ladies noticed he was barely eating, they stopped feeding him but continued to pray for him. For the next two weeks he rarely went home—just visited the grave during the day and stayed at a local hotel at night. He was lost and searching for answers he couldn’t find.

  The next month John Allen loaded up his Jeep and started driving. Sadie had always wanted to visit Savannah, Georgia, and John Allen decided he would do it. He narrated the whole experience to her just like she was there. It pained him that he’d never taken time off work and indulged his wife in a short vacation to this or any of the other cities she’d wanted to see. Sadie would have loved Savannah, the charm of its houses, and the food.

  John Allen had so many regrets. They were eating him alive.

  He was standing on a bridge in Savannah when he received the phone call that took him down a new career path. It was a member of the Mississippi Choctaw Nation, calling to offer him a job that he hadn’t even known existed.

  For years he’d worked with the Choctaws, managing the books for their lucrative casino and other ventures. He was familiar with them, and they were certainly comfortable with him. It had taken years to earn their trust, but now, out of the blue they were offering John Allen a job as a cultural liaison whose main function was to gather, purchase, and reclaim artifacts that had originally belonged to them.

  The Choctaws considered all the artifacts, especially bones, to hold immense spiritual value, and with the success of their casino they had the financial means to purchase the artifacts back from the collectors who’d stolen them, come by them in some other shady fashion, or simply picked them up in their grandparents’ gardens.

  John Allen was interested in the job mainly because it was something different and would get him out of the office routine. But he’d always been fascinated with artifacts and knew there were many collections scattered all over the South. Because the job entailed occasionally carrying large sums of cash in a briefcase, its holder required the complete trust of higher-ups in the Choctaw Nation. They understood there was a slimy underworld of artifact diggers and traders who were in it only for the money. Cash was the easiest way to gain acceptance in this subculture and get what the tribe wanted. By virtue of his years of service to them, John Allen had unknowingly put himself forward as a candidate for the position. They knew he could be trusted with the money and could handle himself in negotiations. In a strange way, the tragic loss of his wife had sealed the deal for them, his widower status somehow burnishing his already unimpeachable qualifications. They’d decided he was the man who could be trusted to discreetly retrieve their sacred artifacts—and had decided to wait until he had his feet under him to tell him that the last agent the Choctaw Nation had hired had been missing for a little bit more than two years.

  Standing on a Savannah bridge watching the boat traffic, John Allen realized his life meant little, and that while auditing the books of millionaires paid well, the work could never be fulfilling to him. He didn’t care whether he ever looked at another spreadsheet or explained another tax loophole to another rich asshole trying to beat the system.

  John Allen needed more.

  It was then and there that he decided to become an agent for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and see where the adventure would take him. For the first time since the accident, John Allen Harper felt a sense of purpose.

  Chapter 4

  The sun glistened off the frosted leaves of the waist-high foxtail grass as the dog worked the cover ahead for the glorious scent of bobwhite quail. It was thirty-two degrees in Mississippi, though the blue sky was a sure promise it would warm up fast.

  Jim Hudson walked with a twenty-gauge shotgun tucked into the crook of his left arm, carefully pointed away from his hunting companion and their guide in a fruitless attempt to set a good example for his boss, whose gun barrel was all over the place. Maybe the guide would say something to him.

  Other than that, it was a beautiful winter morning, full of the anticipation that only hunters know. It sure beats a day in the office, Jim thought. He had no idea he was going to die today.

  His boss, Winston Walker, loved to hunt quail because he thought that’s what wealthy men did. It was part of a never-ending act he put on to fit in with the local elite. On rare occasions, he invited Jim along on his weekly trips. The hunting lodge had provided a guide and a dog, and the two men had planned a morning hunt that would also give them a chance to talk business. Afterward they would enjoy a lunch of smothered quail, ch
eese grits, and black-eyed peas, along with cathead biscuits. The lunch was Jim’s favorite part.

  They had already bagged a few birds, and the smell of gunpowder clung to Jim’s hunting vest and jacket. As expected, Winston was already bragging about his shooting skills. Winston Walker was a pompous ass who took a great deal of patience to be around. Only those who wanted something from him could tolerate him for very long. He had to be the best at everything, he always had to be in charge, and everything had to go his way. Winston had money, but not the kind of money he acted as if he possessed. Jim suspected that Winston was mortgaged up to his eyeballs, and probably with several different banks. Jim was a good Christian whose goal was to save his boss’s soul. It hadn’t taken long for him to realize what a long-term plan this would have to be.

  As the dog worked the wild plum thickets, Jim tried repeatedly to discuss their failing magazine-publishing business and how they could save it, but Winston either flat out ignored him or barely answered, acting as if nothing was wrong that he couldn’t fix. A master of sleight-of-hand business deals, he could pitch naive advertisers and sign them up for six issues before they even realized they’d committed. He planned to make use of the magazine’s inevitable downtime to fleece unsuspecting advertisers until the magazine’s ship was righted. Jim didn’t like the plan, and as a result, they’d endured many relationship-stressing arguments.

  “We gotta point,” Winston said with excitement as he drew Jim’s attention to the motionless dog up ahead.

  While the guide encouraged his dog to remain steady, Winston directed Jim to cover their left while he took any birds that flushed to their right.

  As they moved into position in anticipation of the flush, Jim noted that the guide was keeping a careful eye on their alignment. Jim was glad to have him around to encourage safety. He told himself to watch out for the dog. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally shoot her as she chased a low-flying bird. He glanced at Winston and wondered whether he was even thinking about the dog. He knew Winston was a threat to shoot at anything.

  During the covey flush, Winston knocked down a pair of birds, and Jim managed to kill a single. As the dog happily retrieved the birds, Winston made sounds of frustration as he looked through the pockets of his vest.

  “I’m running out of shells!” he called out, holding up his last two. “I must have dropped some somewhere.”

  “You can have some of mine,” Jim called back.

  “You’re shooting a twenty. I’m shooting a twelve-gauge,” Winston explained in a tone that made Jim feel like a dumbass.

  The guide took the last bird from his dog’s mouth and offered a solution. “I’ll cut through the pines there, grab a box of shells from the Jeep, and meet you at that big oak tree down there,” he said, pointing ahead. “Y’all take Willow and keep hunting. There should be a few singles between here and there. You got enough shells for that?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Jim watched the guide hustle off in the direction of the Jeep, then turned to follow the dog. If he couldn’t get Winston to talk business, at least he would enjoy the morning’s sights, sounds, and smells. He glanced at his watch in spite of himself. His wife would be driving their kids to school about now, and she would be stressed until they exited the car in a screaming, mad rush. Somebody would inevitably forget something.

  With the guide gone, Jim remembered a promise he’d made to the other ad salesmen.

  “Winston,” he said, “we need to pay the sales guys their commissions soon, or they’re all going to jump ship.” Ads were the lifeblood of a magazine business, but keeping the guys who sold them happy was an ongoing battle. Winston treated them all like shit, and Jim spent way too much time calming everyone down.

  Ignoring Jim’s comment, Winston dropped two shells into his over-and-under and snapped it shut. “There should be some birds in the cover up ahead. Let’s get ’em.”

  Jim fell in behind Winston with a sigh while the dog quickly worked the open area ahead of them and moved on to more promising cover.

  They’d walked about seventy-five yards in silence when Winston pointed at the dog, who’d locked up with her nose in the direction of a knot of brush. As they watched, she picked her left paw up slowly and formed a tripod position—a classic point.

  “The birds are going to want to fly to the right, so get into position,” Winston told Jim.

  Jim approached the right side of the dog, expecting Winston to approach on the left. Noticing Willow wanting to ease forward, Jim coaxed her just like the guide always did. “Steady, girl. Steady now.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Winston barked from behind. “You’re always worried about the wrong things. You just concentrate on the birds.”

  Jim slowed down and searched the ground ahead for hiding quail. Nothing could blend into its surroundings better than a hen quail. Just as he stepped into some thick knee-high grass, two birds exploded and rocketed away. Jim shouldered his gun, but before he could pull the trigger on the flushing quail, a shot rang out.

  Jim Hudson, thirty-four years of age, married with two children, collapsed lifelessly to the ground.

  Winston Walker, standing only ten feet behind him, clicked his shotgun open and sent one spent shell leaping out.

  He knew no one was watching, but still he looked around him. The only witness was a bird dog and a giant water oak tree. Neither would talk.

  “Problem solved,” he muttered to himself.

  Chapter 5

  The investigation of the accident went just as Winston Walker had expected it would. A local sheriff and his crew, along with the county game warden, tried to piece together what had happened. There were lots of questions and forms that needed to be filled out. Winston sat in the small hunting lodge, sipped coffee, and tried to act as if he were upset.

  It wouldn’t surprise anyone that Winston Walker’s ex-wife was suing him for back alimony and claimed he had undervalued the business at the time of the split. Some even suspected he was actually letting it run into the ground so he wouldn’t have to pay her any more.

  They had met after high school and had dated for three years. She was a bartender at a local tavern and got Winston his drinks for free. Once they were married, he’d conned her mother into giving him the start-up cash—that he’d never paid back—to fund his first enterprise. She’d taken the money from her deceased husband’s 401(k) based on Winston’s promise to double it before returning it to her. Greedy herself, she’d wanted to believe it could happen. It took his ex a few years to figure out what Winston was up to and to get out of the relationship. Fortunately there had been no kids involved.

  Winston was kicked out of high school in the tenth grade. The only class he’d been passing at the time was one on the history of Mississippi. He’d excelled in the precolonization time period because of his interest in Native American cultures. The only break he’d received in life had been when an uncle who was serving in the military had agreed to pay for his continuing education at the Marion Military Institute in Southwest Alabama. Winston had lasted only one year, and it was rumored that his attendance played a role in the institute’s decision to drop its high school program to concentrate only on college-level courses. Winston went on to earn his GED from a detention program near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

  His parents were never able to control Winston. He sold anything they had of value, and he stole whatever was in their wallets. He ran with a rough crowd but always admired the lifestyle of the wealthy and tried to emulate it, determined to fit in. He wanted the rewards of hard work but just lacked the ability to do it the right way. Winston was all about taking shortcuts and didn’t care whom he hurt along the way.

  At a time when most people his age were graduating from college and heading off into the world to start a career, Winston was perfecting the art of dialing back the odometers on used cars that he sold on craigslist. He later sold aluminum siding on television infomercials in southern Mississippi until he
stopped paying the TV stations and they cut him off. He then ran a telemarketing scam that sold fake I SUPPORT THE STATE TROOPERS window decals for fifty-dollar donations. After that peaked and fizzled, he went to work for a gardening magazine selling ads. He hated gardening. But he excelled at selling ads and quickly learned how to talk people into spending money. He had a pitch that promised to change their lives.

  Within three years the aging magazine owner became sick. With no one in his family to take over the business, he made a deal to sell it to Winston based on future earnings. When the old man mysteriously fell down his back steps, hitting his head and dying, Winston took the magazine and its future earnings as well.

  Within two years he’d launched two more magazine titles—one about living off the grid, the other about NASCAR. But he didn’t care about the subject matter, only the advertising base. Winston recruited a derelict team of six guys and two females to sell ads employing various high-pressure techniques. The office was a telemarketing boiler-room operation that spawned far more bad ideas than good, but Winston was making more money than he’d ever seen.

  While the advertising boom was happening, Winston made a presentation to an executive of a major national garden-fertilizer brand. The meeting did not go well. Three days later the man died of a massive stroke, and Winston forged his signature on contracts and held the brand hostage to honor them. After several rounds of legal haggling, both parties agreed to honor half the contracts, and Winston netted $300,000 for his company. He became a legend around the office; the sales team saw the way he made money and strove to emulate his tactics.

  But lately, with the birth of digital magazines, the publishing industry was changing faster than Winston could foresee, and even on his best day he wasn’t capable of anticipating what he needed to do. Their sales had been tanking for two years, and they hadn’t made money in the last twelve months. Winston had been scamming everyone, including the banks, to keep the doors open.