The Devil's Right Hand by J.D. Rhoades Read Free Book Online

without even a trial.”
Keller looked out the front window. “Jeff Hager went home, kicked
in the front door and broke both her legs with a baseball bat so
she couldn’t run. Then he set the house on fire.”
    “ Damn,” Jones whispered. “He do any
time for it?”
    “ No,” Keller said. “But only because he
shot himself in front of her.”
     “ How’d she get out?”
    “ Dragged herself out of the house on
her elbows.”
      Jones gave a low whistle. “That
is one tough lady.”
     “ Yeah,” Keller said. They were
pulling up to the chain-link fence that surrounded the impound lot.
As Keller moved to get out, Jones took off her sunglasses and
turned to him.
     “ Mister Keller,” she said. “When
this comes to court, I’ll tell what happened. All of
it.”
    “ That’s not going to help your career
much,” Keller said.
    “ I know,” she said.
    Keller looked at her. She obviously meant it.
Her jaw was set and she stared at him defiantly, as if daring him
to question her resolve. He noticed that her eyes were blue, the
sharp, hard blue of the sky on a clear winter day. Finally, he
shrugged.
    “ It’ll be a moot point anyway,” he
said. “The D.A.’ll make a lot of noise about jail time, then when
it gets close to trial, they’ll offer to dismiss everything in
exchange for me agreeing in writing not to sue the department for
excessive force.”
    “ And you’ll agree.” Her voice was
flat.
    He looked away. After the idealism she showed
in her offer to testify, he hated what he was about to say. “It’s
not like I’m giving up much. With your help, I may win the
resisting, but they’re scared shitless of the publicity that they’d
get from a civil suit. So they’ll make damn sure I go down on
something. Even if they have to make something up.”
    “ Pretty cynical,” she said.
    He shrugged. “Yeah, it is,” he said, “But
I’ve seen it happen. If it happens to me, I lose my bondsman’s
license. I weigh that against the possibility of winning a civil
suit against the Fayetteville police. Even if I take it to a jury,
who do you think they’ll believe?” He thought for a moment about
the judge’s description of him as a violent man. “I’ve got better
things to do with my time than take on lost causes. Even my own.”
He closed the car door. He was walking towards the small guardhouse
at the entrance to the impound lot when he heard her voice. “Mister
Keller.”
    He turned. Her hand was out the window,
holding a small piece of paper. He walked back and took it. It was
a business card, the type cops gave to victims and witnesses who
might need to contact them. The police switchboard number was
scratched out and another number written in blue ink.
    “ That’s my cell phone number,” she
said. “In case you change your mind. Or, you know, if you want to,
like, talk about anything else.”
    He smiled at her. “That’s not going to do a
lot to help your career, either.”
    She didn’t smile back. “Yeah. Well.” She
didn’t go on. She’d replaced the mirror shades, so it was
impossible to read what was in her eyes.
    “ Okay,” Keller said. “I’ll keep it in
mind. And my name is Jack.”
    “ I’m Marie,” she said. She looked like
she was about to say something else, but she stopped. She put the
car in gear and backed out of the gravel driveway. Keller put the
card in his shirt pocket as he watched her go.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    “ What about the neighbors, what they
gonna say, hey little sister got carried awayyyy,” DeWayne sang in
a loud, slurred voice. He reached over to crank up the volume on
the cassette deck.
      DeWayne’s buzz had been veering
back and forth all day from catatonic stupor to manic lunacy. It
was the fifth or sixth time that he had played the song, stopping
it at the end to rewind and play it again so he could sing along
and play air guitar on the solos. It had been getting on Leonard’s
nerves since the second run through.
    “ Damn it,