A Cry in the Dark (Carly Moore #1) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,102
don’t trust me now?” I finished.
He smiled. “The hell I don’t. You had my back and I had yours, which is why I declared you kin.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you have an agreement with Bingham?”
“Because I used to run the drug business in these parts,” he said. “Until I sold it all to Bingham.”
My mouth dropped open and I stared at him in shock. I was living with and caring for a man who had poisoned countless people.
“The look on your face right now tells me all I need to know about your supposed involvement in this Georgia drug scheme.” He suddenly looked eighty years old, although I suspected he was in his late sixties.
“You said used to. What made you stop?”
“A lot of reasons. It was a different world back then. My main competition was Bart Drummond and his moonshine. I didn’t handle any of the bad stuff, usually just pot and uppers and downers. A bit of cocaine, but most people around these parts couldn’t afford it. I didn’t have the stomach or a cook for meth, and oxy was too hard to acquire. Then my Mary got sick and she begged me to give it up. I’d tried to hide it from her and Barb.” He shook his head. “So I sold it all to Bingham. We agreed that I’d burn my weed farm, and he’d leave me and my kin alone. No sellin’ ’em drugs. No contactin’ ’em for any reason in regards to drugs. When Barb started usin’, I went to Bingham and damn near shot his head off his shoulders, but he insisted he hadn’t been part of it. Her boyfriend was bringin’ in drugs from Georgia.”
“And you believed him?”
“He was just as pissed as I was, but he let George be as long as he wasn’t dealin’ in Drum. And then George started dealin’. So Bingham had him dealt with.”
“You told me that a deputy shot him after he started smashing things in town.”
A cockeyed grin twisted Hank’s mouth. “That’s what the report says, but it seems mighty convenient to me. Mind you, it’s just a hunch.”
But it was probably a good one. “So someone else is tryin’ to sell drugs here now?”
“So it seems,” he said, his voice weary. “And Bingham is determined to stop them. He denies it, but I know he encouraged Seth to go after that drop.”
“The person who was coming in from Atlanta?”
“Yep.”
I opened my mouth to ask him more questions, but he spoke before I could. “Wyatt’s on an emergency call and I suspect he’ll be comin’ back soon. We need to have all of this cleaned up before he gets here. We can’t be tellin’ him what happened here until we know for certain he has our backs.”
Emergency call my ear. Someone had wanted him out of the way. I only hope he didn’t end up down a ravine this time. In the meantime, we had no way of getting in touch with him.
“I hope Wyatt’s all right,” I said.
Hank just shrugged. “Seems mighty convenient he got called out just before that boy showed up.”
“We both know it was probably a setup,” I said.
“Perhaps,” he said, scratching his chin, “but it’s like I said, blood runs deep. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bart still has his claws in him.”
“Sometimes a last name is just a name,” I responded.
“He never cottoned to his father much,” Hank admitted. “Always rebellin’. His daddy gave him that bar to let ’im think he was makin’ his own way, but a few years later, something happened, and Wyatt disowned the lot of ’em. Just a few weeks later, he was arrested for DUI and robbery. Half the town thought it was a setup, the other didn’t care.”
That wasn’t the way I’d heard it. Ruth had told me that he’d been disowned after his arrest.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “That he disowned them before his arrest?”
“Damn sure.”
That put everything about his situation in a whole new light. “His own father sent him to prison?”
“Who’s to say? Although I suspect Bart wouldn’t want the family name tarnished, no matter how he feels about the boy. I suspect he’s the one who got the robbery charges dropped to B & E—and that the judge gave Wyatt such a stiff sentence in retaliation. People say Bart gave Wyatt the money to buy that service station as some sort of amends, but no one knows for certain. All I know is Wyatt went to prison