"The magistrate is Garrett's brother-in-law, Luke," Arthur replied. He took the clean towel from my hand, pressing it against his split temple until he winced, his gray eyes narrowing against the pain. "You take this deed to the courthouse steps this morning, and Hollister will intercept you at the bridge. They'll hold you on reckless endangerment until the quarry dozers push the kitchen into the ditch. By noon, the structure is gone, and the county pays forty cents on the dollar for an empty lot."
Outside, the steady hiss of morning rain slackened, replaced by the deep, rhythmic thrum of heavy diesel engines idling down the highway shoulder. Through the broken front window, past the dangling screen door that Hollister had splintered, headlights cut through the gray mist. Two heavy flatbed trucks carrying bright orange directional barricades pulled onto the gravel apron, followed by a dark county utility cruiser with its amber roof lights rotating slowly against the wet trees.
"They're early," I whispered.
"They aren't early," Arthur said. He picked up his old olive-drab field jacket from the hook beside the back pantry door, sliding his arms into the sleeves with a sharp intake of breath as his bruised ribs caught. "They're on Garrett's schedule. He wants the gravel laid before the morning postal carrier comes through from the north."
He walked to the back kitchen entrance, where the delivery bay looked out onto the narrow access lane between the diner and the swamp cedar line. A low, battered green Dodge pickup sat parked under the corrugated metal overhang, its bed filled with empty five-gallon oil drums and an extra spare tire. Arthur opened the glove compartment, pulled out an old leather-bound ledger, and slipped the Blackwood contract into the inside sleeve alongside his military discharge papers.
"You're not staying here," I said, stepping between him and the truck's rusted running board. "You're bleeding through your collar, Arthur. Your ribs are cracked. If you're behind this wheel when Hollister circles back, he'll say you resisted an officer on condemned property."
"Hollister isn't the problem anymore," Arthur said, resting his weathered palm on the truck's cold door frame. "Hollister is an errand boy who thinks twenty percent of a quarry sub-contract buys him a lifetime on the payroll. The call I made wasn't to the state police."
"Then who did you call?"
Arthur looked toward the highway, where the first orange barricade clattered down onto the asphalt with a heavy, hollow thud. The sound echoed off the metal roof like a gunshot.
"In sixty-seven, Garrett stayed in town while I took a draft ticket to the delta," Arthur said, his voice flat and hard as river stone. "The company commander who pulled me out of an ammo trench outside Da Nang runs the federal district marshals' division out of Charleston now. He told me thirty years ago that if Garrett ever tried to take this highway frontage using county paper, I was supposed to let him put his signature on the work orders first."
Arthur turned the ignition key. The Dodge turned over with a rough, sputtering roar, coughing blue exhaust into the damp morning air.
"Get in the truck, Luke," Arthur commanded, shoving the passenger door open from the inside. "We aren't running. We're going to the depot siding at the rail line. When the federal transport arrives to inspect the Blackwood spur at seven, Garrett's utility truck will already be parked across the right-of-way."
I climbed into the cab, slamming the door shut against the chill. As Arthur pulled the truck out into the lane, behind us the front porch of the diner groaned under the bumper of a county backhoe, the first wooden support beam splintering with a sound like tearing bone. Arthur didn't look in the rearview mirror. He shifted into third, his jaw set against the blood trickling into his gray beard, steering the truck straight into the rain toward the rail crossing where the quarry tracks met the federal line.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED