A Shred of Truth (27 page)

The door’s mail slot beckoned. It was just wide enough to insert defrosting rib-eye steaks laced with acepromazine.

“You got the stuff, Freddy?”

“You do it.” His hands shook as he relinquished the bags. “It better work.”

My own pulse was galloping at double speed.
Stay calm. Read instructions
.

This medication was supposed to aid in the sedation of frightened or aggressive animals. However, treated canines had been known to temporarily overcome its effects when startled. Erring on the side of caution, I estimated each dog’s weight at a hundred pounds and then added a generous gram of the compound to each steak. The tranquilizer would block dopamine nerve receptors in the brain, quieting the beasts for hours.

In laymen’s terms, these puppies were going to be very sleepy after a few mouthfuls from Black’s traveling smorgasbord.

“What’re we doing up here?”

“A way in,” Freddy told me. “Through this vent.”

We were on the backside of the garage roof. Parked below us, out of sight of any surprise visitors, my car had done its part in boosting us to our spread-eagle positions. Before moving, I’d checked through the cabin door’s glass to make sure the watchdogs were immobile mounds of placid fur. I even knocked once—a little test. Nothing but heaving sighs from inside.

“Why’d we drug the animals if we’re not going into the cabin?” I asked.

“We are.”

“Are what?”

“There’s a way through. A cave.”

“Under the garage?”

“Keep following.”

Freddy pried at the vent’s frame with a pocketknife. When the latch snapped, he lifted and locked the humpbacked fixture on its hinged arm. He pulled himself up, squeezed his legs into the opening, then fell through and landed.

I ducked my head inside. “You okay?” The garage was in relative darkness, but he stood in a square of light on a wooden loft just below me.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Saw this vent the one time he brought me out here.”

“Chigger, you mean.”

“The axman.”

“Way to be observant.”

I dropped beside my companion, sending a hollow thud through the
garage. Together, we descended a wood ladder to the floor. With the guidance of the vent light, I scooted along the wall until my fingers reached a set of switches.

First flick: a distant electrical whir.

Second flick: nothing.

Third: fluorescent lights winked on above a trio of classic automobiles.

“Wow.”

Freddy shuffled forward. “This middle one—you recognize it?”

“Pontiac GTO. A ’69, I think.” The car sat on fat Firestones, ready to tear up the road and shove the driver back in the seat. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It was there.”

“Saturday night,” I realized, “as we took that curve on Oak Street.”

My mind scrambled for clues again.

Chigger. Out late. St. Cloud Hill, above the graves of City Cemetery. What if he had driven that old Dodge van, holding my mother hostage and circling back toward the hill’s Fort Negley area where he switched vehicles? In my run-in with the GTO, had I nearly sideswiped the very car that bore my mom away?

I looked at the other two cars.

Closest to me, the whitewall tires of a ’54 Chevy Bel Air poked from beneath a fitted cloth. On the far end of the garage, the red and white Corvette convertible looked familiar. Was this the one that’d sped by two days ago on Elliston Place while Detective Meade and I met over coffee?

What would Meade think if he found us tiptoeing through this garage? After yesterday’s lunch at Belle Meade, had he decided to just leave me alone? Or was he more curious than ever, surreptitiously logging my activities? Could he have planted a GPS tracker under my bumper?

No way. Not his style.

But he was a cop. Keeping an eye on me was part of his job.

“Okay, Freddy. Let’s not hang around here any longer than we need to.” I scanned the garage. “Where’s this cave you talked about?”

“Behind you.”

At my back a door opened into a tool room. A table vise was anchored to a workbench, gripping a chunk of maple. Lathes, saws, axes, and chisels hung from the walls. On the workbench razor knives rested beside a box of spare blades.

Mom, please be here. And please be all right
.

Beneath the workbench, apparently released by the first switch I’d thrown, a dummy panel opened into a tunnel. The pitted stone looked naturally hewn, but light bulbs extended beyond view in the direction of Chigger’s mammoth cabin.

“Is that where we’re going?”

Freddy nodded.

Middle Tennessee is known for its subterranean honeycombs, places where water and the elements once carved and sluiced through rock. To ward off Indian attacks in the late 1700s, one of Nashville’s founders even dwelled in a cliff cave overlooking the Cumberland River. Demonbreun Street, where Johnny had been roped up to the statue, was named after the man.

“Chigger showed you this?” I looked at Freddy. “Weren’t you a little freaked?”

“We all came here.”

“Who’s we?”

“Men off the streets.” Filling his lungs, he ducked beneath the bench and edged forward until he could stand inside the tunnel. His breathing was fast and shallow.

I turned off the fluorescent lights in the triple garage, propped a
hydraulic jack in the gap between the dummy panel and the wall—I didn’t wanna get trapped in here, that was for sure—then followed my partner in crime into the cave’s intestines.

Heading toward the cabin.

The natural chambers had been bolstered with heavy beams and wire netting. What unlawful activities had flushed through these earthen tunnels? No doubt Chigger’s ancestors had utilized this space, perhaps for Prohibition bootlegging.

The limestone cave’s only warmth emanated from forty-watt bulbs in ribbed metal covers. These craggy, cold innards of earth bore whiffs of rotting flesh, and my mind conjured images of ancient ravenous creatures roaming through here.

Or, more recently, those two mastiffs.

“This place is starting to mess with me, Freddy.”

“Just ahead.”

“We’ve gone too far. The house has to be back there.”

My bearded guide stomped onward, the embodiment of an old-time adventurer. His shoulders were heaving with each breath. My wider frame grazed against the rough walls. We passed tunnel openings that wormed away into darkness, and I called out Mom’s name. Hoping. Praying.

Nothing but echoes.

Could Chigger be behind the past few days’ activities? Had he overhead Johnny talking in some alcohol-weakened moment about the discovered gold? Could the good ol’ boy guitarist have a personal vendetta reaching back somehow to my mother?

I knew firsthand that the man had some strong feelings toward my brother. According to Freddy, he was also tangled up with the animosity of the Kraftsmen who molded the King James Bible to fit their views. This
morning he’d flashed his ax tattoo as though flaunting his identity. As though daring me to catch him.

Left step, right step. Breathe.

I had to keep going, stay focused.

By now, Chigger was in Atlanta, on the tour bus with my brother. They wouldn’t be back in town for a couple of days. Meanwhile, my mother could be here. Held captive in that cabin.

Each step I took might be bringing us closer to each other.

H
ere,” my companion said, his chest still heaving. “This is it.”

We emerged into a domed cavern large enough to accommodate fifteen to twenty people. Three bulbs protruded at shoulder height from the walls, casting shadows across the ground like crossed swords. Equidistant between the lights, manacles hung from bolted chains.

“What is this place, Freddy?”

“They brought us here. The Kraftsmen.”

“The homeless guys? Why’d you follow them down here?”

He stepped back. “You must believe. They picked us up in a van.”

“A Dodge? Was it old and dingy?”

“Maybe. No. A Ford, I think.”

“Did it have any markings?”

He shook his head. “But they told us they were with a mission. Quoted verses about the poor.”

“Weren’t you suspicious?”

“We were cold and wet. They fed us.”

“So they gathered you up and brought you here. Did they tell you why? Didn’t you think it was a little fishy?”

His toe scuffed at the dirt. He rammed his hands into threadbare coat pockets.

“C’mon, Freddy. You talked me into coming here. Are you gonna tell me what happened, or do I have to drag it out of you?”

“I’m … I’m afraid.”

Couldn’t blame the guy for that. This place was spooky. Far off, the earth’s bowels rumbled, while the pitted tunnels breathed in an irregular pattern that belched cold air over my skin.

“Just say it. I’m on your side, you know that.”

His watery eyes wobbled. A slight nod.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked.

“Not me. No. Not the other white men.”

“How many were there?”

“Five. Or six. And the Kraftsmen. But there was a black man, just one. Older, real quiet. Sorta … slow, you know.”

I waited. My eyes shifted to the manacles.

“We should have jobs, the Kraftsmen told us. Should have our wives back. Our money. Houses.” Freddy C was rocking on his legs, head down. “Said it was the foreign mongrels who stole from us. And these sons of Ham, the Negroids—they corrupted our schools. Their rap music. The heathen drums.”

The cavern’s chill seeped into my bones. Was that blood on the iron?

“What’d they do, Freddy?”

He lurched toward the wall. I waited for him to reply, but he seemed frozen, mesmerized by the light bulbs’ apathetic glare. I’d seen his sense of justice in action before, and I knew how tenuous his hold on reality was. Something had shaken him. If he didn’t face it, it could permanently destabilize him.

“Don’t stop now,” I urged. “This is why you left me the pamphlet, right? Why you brought me down into this hellhole. You said I needed to tell the police.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

I paused. “Mean to what?”

“I didn’t know.” His forehead touched the stone between the bolts. “This spot. They chained him here. I didn’t know.”

“The black man?”

“Can’t remember his name. Can’t do it.”

“But you seem to know most of the homeless around here.”

“Just passing through. Never seen him before.”

“What’d they do to him?” I coaxed.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” A flutter of relief. “But you said—”

“
They
didn’t do anything. They made
us
. Made us do it.”

My body calcified with the horror of where this was leading. “Do what?”

“
He
made us.”

“Chigger, you mean.”

Freddy’s head moved up and down, scraping against the sedimentary rock. “He gave us a whip. He … If we didn’t, we would stay down here. Left to die. And nobody would know.” His skull thudded into the wall. “Just like that woman. She drowned, but no one did a thing.”

A homeless lady. I knew the story. Young punks shoved her into the Cumberland at the downtown river front, and her body caught beneath a moored barge only yards from the spot of the attack. She’d been left there for days.

“Listen,” I told him. “I would’ve come looking for you.”

My friend nodded, but his finger was poking at the cavern wall. “He had a gun.” Jab, jab. “Put it to the man’s head. Said he’d kill him if we didn’t … if we didn’t …”

“Use the whip?”

His finger kept jabbing. He needed to put his shame into words before it burrowed down.

“Did you do it?”

He froze.

“Freddy. Did you whip him?”

Jab, jab,
jab
.

I waited, watched his chest swell.

In a sob, the answer erupted from his throat and reverberated against the walls. “Only once. I … did it only once.” He pushed his palms against his eyes, but tears squeezed down his dusty cheeks. “Only once.”

I set my hand on his shoulder, felt my own ribs tighten. Felicia’s life spilling onto the sidewalk. Her lips, frothy in death. Was there anything I could’ve done?

Freddy shook himself. Pushed away from the wall.

“Let’s get outta here,” I said.

In the pale light, determination filled his eyes. “They let him go,” he said.

“Was he badly hurt?”

“Dropped him at the train tracks. At the Gulch.”

“What about you and the others?”

“Took us to Fort Negley, past the stone arches. That’s where the Kraftsmen meet. We could be part of their plan, they said. Heroes.”

“What plan?”

“The South will rise again.”

“Okay. So you went last night.”

“But I left.” His sandy eyebrows furrowed. “And then you saw me, out on the street. I hid that pamphlet. Gave it to you. You can tell the police.”

“Tell them what? They need something to go on.”

“Won’t believe me. Nobody believes.”

“Chigger’s a terrorist. He used fear to manipulate you. We need some evidence. We could go to the Gulch, try to find this guy to be a witness. Show his wounds.”

Freddy flinched.

“What?”

His gaze flickered between me and the wall bolts. “He’s dead.”