The Dummy Line Read online

  “That true?” Johnny Lee asked calmly although Jake could see his eyes getting wilder. “Where is she?”

  The wolves smelled an opportunity and were getting more eager by the second.

  Staring straight in Jake’s direction, Johnny Lee shouted orders. “Check out the camp house.” He motioned to the muscular one, who went through the front door with unbridled enthusiasm. Jake could hear him stomping around, slamming doors and cabinets.

  Jake kept his shotgun trained on Johnny Lee.

  In a few minutes the big guy was back outside and rejoined the group.

  “Ain’t nobody inside.”

  “Check the camper, Reese.” Johnny Lee grinned.

  “You said my name!” the one named Reese said quickly. Not moving yet.

  “It don’t matter anyhow,” Johnny Lee said confidently. “Because I got an idea…a plan.”

  Jake didn’t like the sound of that. His heart was pumping rapidly, and his palms were sweating. He was trying to think of something to say to disarm this situation. An impossibly vivid scenario was unfolding, and to Jake, it was like being in some sort of parallel universe, almost like an out-of-body experience. The movement of one of the guys snapped him back to reality. Reese started toward the camper, and Jake instantly spoke up.

  “No! Stop. Take another step and I’ll shoot you!” Jake tried to keep them from hearing the fear in his voice.

  Johnny Lee yelled, “Bingo! She’s in the camper!” and the whole pack started laughing and catcalling.

  Jake kept quiet. He was thinking. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up. These guys only understood one thing—violence. They weren’t rational. He could pump the gun…that would let them know he did in fact have a gun, but he would lose a shell in the dark, high grass.

  Johnny Lee, sizing up the situation, suddenly looked like he had made his decision.

  “I think we’ll jack this dude’s world upside down. Then we’ll take his woman out on a little date…and we’ll steal his ride,” Johnny Lee said calmly to his pack of jackals. Then alluringly he spoke directly to Jake: “Step out of the darkness, my brother, and let me see you. Can you ‘squeal like a pig’?”

  Everybody but Jake laughed hard.

  “What’s she look like…black chick?” one asked, laughing even harder.

  “It’s all good!” another one added, and they all laughed.

  Jake said, “It’s just me and this twelve-gauge, and I don’t want any trouble. Please just leave.”

  Sweat chuckled and pulled a knife out of his back pocket. He loved forced sex. This was the most excited he had been in years.

  Less than ten yards separated them from Jake, but they could not see him because of the shadows and the floodlights shining directly in their eyes. He couldn’t believe their brazenness.

  Should I shoot the leader in the leg? Shoot up in the air? I’ve only got three shells. I’ve gotta make ‘em count. Looking in Johnny Lee’s eyes, Jake saw pure evil. At that moment, Jake knew he would have to kill him. He glanced over his shoulder and thanked God that he couldn’t see Katy. He prayed she was still asleep.

  Johnny Lee pointed the huge pistol right at Jake’s head. Jake swallowed hard, looking straight down its muzzle. Suddenly, Johnny Lee swung the pistol at the camper and fired. KABOOM!

  Jake jumped with surprise and fear. Oh my God! Katy! He looked at the camper then back at Johnny Lee, who was grinning. The rest of the guys were laughing. In slow motion, Jake saw Johnny Lee thumb-cock the pistol and aim at the camper again.

  Jake screamed, “Nooooooo!” then put the shotgun’s front bead on Johnny Lee’s chest and pulled the trigger. BOOM!

  All hell broke loose as fire shot out of Jake’s gun barrel, blinding everyone for a second. Johnny Lee was knocked off his feet. Reese shot twice in Jake’s direction, then grabbed Johnny Lee by the shoulders and dragged him toward their trucks. The fat one tripped over a barbecue grill. Jake pumped another shell into the chamber and was ready to shoot anyone that moved toward him or the camper. Two more shots rang out, hitting the camp house wall just above Jake’s head. They were hiding behind their trucks, frantically talking to their leader. Johnny Lee was screaming in pain. They quickly loaded him in the back of the black pickup. Gravel flew as they backed out and scratched off down the road; then they stopped at the gate. Jake could hear them arguing. One was extremely emotional.

  Jake stood in a trance, soaking wet with sweat. Slowly breaking out of the haze, he told himself, I had to shoot him. They forced me. I had to protect Katy.

  “Katy! Oh, shit!” Jake screamed, running into the camper.

  “Oh God, Katy! Are you all right? Katy, are you all right?” he screamed again as turned on a light. Her tiny head was peeking from underneath her sleeping bag. He raced to her and hugged her.

  Jake picked her up and ran to his truck. She was about to cry. He put her in the front seat and ran back inside, jumped into a pair of blue jeans, and grabbed a shirt. A thought stopped him before he got to the truck. He ran back inside to grab Katy’s camo gear. Slinging it all into the truck, he could hear the mayhem at the gate.

  They were screaming at him. “You killed him! You killed him! You son of a bitch! We’re gonna make you pay…you…you’re dead!”

  One guy kept yelling over and over, “You’re a dead man walking!”

  There were only two ways for Jake to get out of the camp. The main one was the gravel road the rednecks were blocking. The other was a seldom-used logging road that snaked through the woods for several miles until it hit an old railroad bed called the Dummy Line that ran for several miles, eventually ending on a county road. Jake had never left the camp by way of the Dummy Line.

  Jake caught a glimpse of the gang by the gate as he turned south heading toward the Dummy Line. He was slinging gravel as he slid around the corner.

  “Daddy, what’s going on? What’s happening?” Katy pleaded.

  “Some very bad guys were gonna hurt us, and I had to shoot one of ‘em. Now we gotta get out of here. Please listen to me and do exactly what I say…OK? Please? I need you to help me. OK?”

  With tears in her eyes, she nodded. Jake grabbed his cell phone. One bar of service. He slammed on the brakes, opened his glove compartment, and found his address book. His first instinct was to call the sheriff; he didn’t know the number or really how to tell anybody where he was, but he tried *HP anyway. The call wouldn’t go through. He punched the gas and took off; rounding a couple curves, he took out small trees. As it got muddier, he slowed and shifted into four-wheel drive. Suddenly he thought of his friend Mick Johnson, who lived only fifteen miles away. Mick had introduced him to the members of this club. He slammed on the brakes again. Two bars. This might work. He looked up Mick’s number and dialed.

  “Come on, come on, go through. Katy, why don’t you start getting dressed…there’s your stuff.

  “It’s ringing!” he said excitedly almost out of breath. “And then fasten your seat belt.”

  Mick Johnson had been in bed since nine that night. He turkey-hunted almost every day of the season, and by mid-April he was exhausted. When he heard his phone ringing he immediately turned off his alarm clock and thought how short the night was. His wife jabbed him in the side and told him it was the telephone.

  “Hello,” he answered groggily on the sixth ring.

  Trying not to talk too fast, Jake kept it simple. He didn’t have faith that the signal would hold up. “Mick, this is Jake. I need the sheriff at the huntin’ camp. It’s an emergency. There is a bunch of rednecks trying to kill me…Hello, Mick…can you hear me? Mick?”

  The call dropped. Jake cussed under his breath. He needed some distance between him and those lunatics. He threw the phone down and drove on, certain they were coming after them. Damn it! I’ve got no idea if Mick heard anything.

  “Who was that?” Mick’s wife asked sleepily.

  “I think it was Jake Crosby on a cell phone. It sounded like he said it was an emergency,” M
ick said, pulling himself up on one elbow.

  “Why would he call you?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, lying back down.

  “What kind of emergency?”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Well…what are you gonna do?” she asked as she rolled over.

  “I guess I’m gonna go and check on him. I can’t sleep now.”

  “Be careful. Why don’t you take Beau?”

  “Yeah…I think I will.”

  He slowly got out of bed and got dressed. Beau, the family’s golden retriever, met him at the back door, stretching and yawning, tail wagging.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Just shut the hell up! Everybody just calm down!” Reese yelled as he jumped in the bed of the Ford pickup to check on Johnny Lee.

  Johnny Lee was gurgling blood, and his breathing was extremely labored. It took him several minutes just to say a few words. He was dying and he knew it. Blood ran out of his mouth with his final words: “Get him…get that son of a bitch.”

  Johnny Lee Grover, one of the most vicious, notorious thugs of western Alabama, died at age thirty-six in the arms of his first cousin.

  “Johnny Lee! Johnny…no! Johnny Lee, please! Don’t die!” Reese pleaded. He couldn’t imagine living without him. Johnny Lee had always been the center of his life.

  Tiny didn’t say a word. He was horrified. Sweat stood at attention, awaiting instructions.

  Reese stood, faced the camp, and screamed at the top of his lungs, “You’re dead! You’re a dead man! You killed him! You killed him! You son of a bitch! Do you hear me? You’re a dead man walking!” Then he grabbed anything he could get his hands on, slinging it as far as he could, screaming over and over, “You’re a dead man walking!”

  The Chevy pickup came sliding out of the camp house area and disappeared down a road, away from the gang and into the heart of the property.

  “Man, he’s haulin’ ass!” Tiny said.

  “And he’s gettin’ away!” Sweat added.

  “No, he’s not…he is doin’ just exactly what I want him to do.” Reese chuckled out loud. “OK, boys; the two of you go down this road till you hit the Dummy Line—y’all know where it is. He’s gonna try and get out that way. You’ve got a good ten-mile jump on him. The gate combination is nineteen ninety-two, I think. If it ain’t, just shoot the damn thing off. There’s only two ways out of this bitch, and we will be on both of them. Kill him and anybody he’s got with him. I want that sumbitch to suffer. You hear me?” Reese was spitting as he screamed.

  Looking each of them in the eyes, Reese continued, “I’ll follow him that way.” He pointed the direction Jake had driven. “He can’t make it very far, it’s too muddy. That stupid sumbitch is trapped, and he don’t know it! Go! Now!”

  Sweat and Tiny jumped into their truck. Tiny stomped on the gas with all his might, his mud grips shooting a rooster tail of dirt and rocks thirty feet. Sweat checked his pistol. It only took a few minutes to reach the old abandoned railroad track. Tiny nearly lost control of the truck when he turned the sharp corner. In spite of sliding wildly, Sweat never looked up. Miraculously, Tiny regained control and stood on the gas again. After miles of rough road, they saw headlights piercing the darkness at the gate. Sweat started cussing. Then they both let out a rebel yell at the top of their lungs.

  Reese was trying to figure out what to do with Johnny Lee’s body. He decided to leave him in the back of the truck until they killed that scumbag. Reese covered Johnny Lee’s head and shoulders with a jacket. He then got into the truck, cranked it up, and slowly drove back to the camp house.

  Floodlights illuminated the yard. The camper lights were on. Its door was standing wide open. Reese approached cautiously, pistol drawn, peeking in the windows until he was satisfied that no one was inside. He stepped in and looked around. Camo clothes were everywhere. A heater glowed in the corner. On the top bunk, he saw a lime-green sleeping bag with a pink pillow and lying on the floor beneath was a stuffed toy of some kind. That’s odd, he thought as he stepped on it with a twist. He noticed several kids’ mystery novels. It started making sense. The scumbag’s got a kid with him…probably a girl. Oh, this is gonna be good—really, really good.

  As Reese was leaving the camper, he noticed a hunting magazine lying on the couch. He picked it up and looked at the small white mailing label in the corner. “Bingo!” he said out loud, a demonic grin forming as he meandered back to the truck. He cranked it up and raced the engine while he thought. The loud dual exhausts gave him energy. He was going to kill the man, just like Johnny Lee wanted…and more.

  “I’ll get him, Johnny Lee…I swear I will,” he pledged aloud.

  He picked up Johnny Lee’s cell phone and flipped it open. It was a Southern Link radiophone. He switched it to radio, scrolled through the names until he found the one he wanted, and pressed Send. Beep-beep.

  Twenty seconds later Reese heard beep-beep, and someone responded.

  “Yo, Johnny Lee, what’s up?” Music was in the background.

  Beep-beep. “Moon Pie, this is Reese. I need a favor.”

  Beep-beep. “Yo, dog, you got it.”

  Beep-beep. “How quick can you be in West Point?” Reese got out of the truck to pace.

  Beep-beep. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  Beep-beep. “OK. Listen. This piece of shit dude just shot and killed Johnny Lee.”

  Beep-beep. “Son of a…are you serious…shit…man, are you OK? Why? What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  Beep-beep. “We were gonna rob him and he freaked out…it’s a long story. We’re chasin’ him through the woods right now. I want you to go to his house and see if anybody’s there. I want you to grab ‘em. I don’t care how ugly it gets.”

  Beep-beep. “You think he’s got an old lady?”

  Beep-beep. “Yeah, I’m bettin’ he does…and I wanna make him pay.”

  Beep-beep. “Give me the address.”

  Reese read it to him from the magazine.

  Beep-beep. “I’ll call you back…I’m on it, dog.”

  Reese got back into the truck, and with an evil smirk, he slowly, deliberately dropped the gearshift into drive, and started easing down the logging road, stalking Johnny Lee’s killer.

  Within thirty minutes from the time the call went dead in Mick’s ear, he was at the camp gate. On the way, Mick tried unsuccessfully to reach Jake on his cell phone. He didn’t want to call Jake’s house at this hour. He wasn’t positive what was going on, and he for sure didn’t want to worry Jake’s wife. He had talked with her once before and was not eager to repeat the experience.

  Mick sat in the truck for a minute, taking everything in. He knew the guys who owned this camp wanted the necessities like satellite TV but not a telephone. Inside, the camp house was dark, but all the floodlights were on. Mick noticed that Jake’s camper had all its lights on and its door was standing wide open.

  Mick slowly got out of his truck and told Beau to stay.

  “Jake?” he yelled.

  “Jake?” he called louder.

  He walked slowly to the camper and yelled out again, “Jake, are you here? Hello…is anyone here?”

  Stepping inside the camper, he saw Jake’s hunting clothes. The two beds looked like they had been slept in. Nothing really looked out of place…other than the door being wide open. He then walked toward the camp house. Beau was whining in the back of the truck, wanting out.

  “Stay!” Mick told him.

  Inside the front screened porch, the main door to the camp house was also wide open. Mick stuck his head inside and began looking around.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” he yelled as he slowly stepped inside.

  Mick walked past the pool table. Everything looked like he expected it would. Nothing was seriously out of place. Actually, the place was a mess, but since it was a hunting lodge, no one ever cleaned it up. It always looked like this. He went back outside. This is weird, he thought, as he petted Beau’s head.


  After climbing into his truck, he backed up, looking around one more time. Something was gnawing at him, but he couldn’t place it. He said, “Aw, to hell with it. I’m too freakin’ exhausted for this crap.” He headed home to get some sleep.

  When he arrived, his wife was sitting in the kitchen with a glass of milk and some warm raisin bread from the Mennonite bakery in Livingston, sheepishly grinning with guilty pleasure.

  “I couldn’t go back to sleep,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. The lights were all on, but no one was there. It was kinda strange. I’m a little worried that something’s wrong…but…but I just don’t know what,” he replied.

  “Mick, what’s that all over your pants legs?” she asked, pointing. The bottoms of his blue jeans were covered in something dark and wet.

  Mick reached down, touching it. He rubbed his fingers together. “It’s blood!” he said with a scared look on his ashen face.

  “Oh my God! Mick!”

  “I’ll call the sheriff!” he said, reaching for the phone, worried at what this might mean.

  “Sumter County Sheriff’s office,” a woman with a husky, cigarette-ravaged voice answered.

  “This is Mick Johnson. I need to speak to Sheriff Landrum. It’s important.”

  “Mick, he’s not in…It’s one thirty in the morning. But if it’s important, I’ll get him to call you. Are you at your house?” she asked, blowing smoke up into the air.

  “Yes ma’am, it’s urgent.”

  “I’ll have him call you right back. Do you need a deputy right now?” she replied and snuffed out her cigarette.

  “If you can’t get Ollie, then I’ll need a deputy for sure.”

  “Sure thing, Mick. Give me a minute. I think I can get him for you.”

  Mrs. Martha O’Brien had worked for the sheriff’s office for twenty-three years. Since her husband had died four years earlier, she preferred to work the night shift. She couldn’t sleep anyway. Her favorite activity in the world was waking up the sheriff. She loved to aggravate him. She never hesitated to call at any hour concerning anything. It drove the sheriff crazy. But Martha O’Brien was irreplaceable. She knew where everything was, where everybody lived, and what forms needed to be filled out. The sheriff and his staff constantly asked her for guidance. She relished it. Her celebrity had grown when she slapped a prisoner for making a crude comment about her. The governor had cheerfully vindicated her actions. With true Southern politeness, most everyone called her Miz Martha.