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Chiefs

Stuart Woods

STUART WOODS

"An author who can tell a story as skillfully as Herschel Walker can

carry a football."

Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Woods knows the downside (and backside) of the New South better than

anyone else writing today, and he rivets readers to their chairs."

Anne Rivers Siddons

"A consummate storyteller."

Library Journal

"Mr. Woods keeps the pages turning briskly."

Dallas Morning News

CHIEFS

"Stunning ... A gripping saga of race, politics and chilling mystery in

small-town America."

Larry L. King, author of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Other Avon Books by Stuart Woods

GRASS Roots

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CHIEFI

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All names, characters, and events in this book are fictional; any

seeming resemblance to real persons is therefore purely coincidental.

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First Avon Books Printing: April 1987

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REGISTRADA. HECHO EN U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

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If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that

this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This book is for Judy Tabb

Prologue o Will Henry Lee

two * Sonny Butts

msz Tucker Watts Author's Note Acknowledgments

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

IrHE BOY ran for his life.

He poured forth an effort born of fear and a wild sense of freedom

regained. At first he ran entirely unconscious of his injuries, then

tearing recklessly through the dark woods, he struck a tree and went

down. He lay stunned for a time he could not account for, and when he

was finally able to struggle to his feet, the full force of the pain

and the winter air swept over him and made him stagger.

He heard the dog and the man crasking through the brush, and he ran

again, wildly, blindly, the underg, owth tearing at his naked body.

Abruptly, he broke through onto a road, hesitated, decided against it,

and threw himself across the open area into the brush on the other

side. He was momentarily in thick, thorny blackberry bushes, then

found hinelf on a narrow path.

He was Falling now sucking in air with a loud, rasping noise, his

muscles aching, legs wobbling. He heard the man fighting through the

blackberry bushes, cursing, and he flung himself forward with his

remaining strength. He knew he would rather run until he died than go

back to that house. He willed his heart to brrst, God to take him, but

his exhausted body still carried him unsteadily forward.

The path turned sharply to the right, but he lunged ahead into thick

brush again, hoping for safety. Then he saw stars ahead through the

bushes and thought he might break through into a field, while his

tormentor followed the path. He gathered his last strength and

plunged forward and down, hoping to lie on the ground undetected.

There was no ground; the earth fell away beneath him. He believed

himself to be falling into a ditch, but his ditch had no bottom. He

fell, twisting in the air, trying desperately to get his feet under

him, while the hard earth waited far below him.

BOOK ONE

Will Henry Lee

Book ONe: Will Henry Lee 23

HUGH HOLMES, president of the Bank of Delano and chairman of the Delano

City Council, was a man who, more than most, thought about the present

in terms of the future. It Was one of his great strengths, both as a

banker and as a politician, but on a cold morning in December of 19x9,

this faculty failed him. It would be many years before he would have

some grasp of how that morning changed his future, changed

everything.

Holmes prided himself on bing able to look at a man as he entered the

bank and predict what the man would want. On this morning he watched

through the sliding window in the wall between his office and the main

room of the bank as Will Henry Lee entered, and Holmes indulged himself

in a bit of his usual prognostication. Will Henry Lee was a cotton

farmer; his standing mortgage was due the first of the year, and he

would want it renewed. It took Holmes only seconds to review the

circumstances: Will Henry's debt amounted to about thirty-five percent

of the value of his farm, in reasonably goed times. That was a lower

level of debt than was borne by most farmers, and Will Henry had paid

his interest on time and made two payments against princilYal. But

Holmes knew, the boll weevil situation being what it was, that Will

Henry might fail with his next crop. Still, he respected the man,

liked him, even; he decided to renew. He

leaned forward at his desk and pretended to read a letter, confident

that he had anticipated the content of their approaching discussion and

had worked out an appropriate response. Will Henry knocked at the open

door, sat down, exchanged pleasantries, nd asked Holmes for the job of

chief of police.

Holmes was stupefied, partly by the completely unexpected request,-and

partly by the total collapse of his early-warning system. His mind was

not accustomed to such surprises, and it lurched about through a long

moment of silence as it struggled to assimilate this outrageous input

and get it into an orderly framework of thought. The effort was a

failure. To give himself more time, he clambered onto familiar ground.

"Well, now, Will Henry, you're not overextended on your farm. We could

probably see you through another crop, even with things the way they

are with cotton." To his credit, Holmes maintained his banker's face

throughout the exchange.

"Hugh, if I extended I'd have to have more capital, which means getting

deeperin debt to the bank. If I did that for another crop things

wouldn't get any better; they'd just get worse. Better farm em than me

are going under. I think you'd be doing the best thing for the bank if

you took the farm now and sold it. I might get something after the

note was paid. To tell you the truth, Hoss pence offered me nearly

about exactly what I owe for the place just last week, but I think I'd

rather let the bank take it than let a man buy me out for a third of

what the place is worth. Hoss's peaches and cattle are going to be on

a lot of land where cotton used to grow, and I'd just as soon my land

didn't get included in that." He stopped talking, looked at Holmes,

and waited.

Holmes's brain was beginning to thrash through the gears now. Item

one: Will Henry was right about the bank's position; taking the farm

now would give a better chance of coming through the transaction

profitably; things could truly be a whole lot worse next year. Item

two: Delano had long been big enough for a chief, but the town wasn't

big enough to attract an experienced officer from another force.

Holmes, as chairman of the city council, had been looking hard for

months for a suitable man. The chief at La Grange had put it to him

bluntly. "Mr. Holmes, I'll tell you the truth; right now Delano

couldn't even attract a decent patrolman from a larger town, let alone

a sergeant. My advice to you would be to find a local man that people

respect, and give him the job. In a town like Delano he can do about

ninety-nine percent of what he's got to do with just plain old

respect." Holmes looked across the desk at Will Henry. He respected

the man, and he was a harsher judge than most. Will Henry was well

known in the community, even though he and his father before him had

been country men. Maybe his always having lived in the country would

mix a little distance with familiarity and give respect as harper edge.

Holmes resisted an urge to pump Will Henry's hand and pin a badge on

him right on the spot. He had to preserve a reputation for caution,

and, anyway, he couldn't make the decision entirely on his own. "Well,

I'll have to bring this up at the next council meeting." He paused.

"Have you talked to Carrie about this, Will Henry?" "No, I wanted to

talk to you first. Carrie's all ready to worry us through another

crop, but I think it'd be a kind of relief to her to have done with the

farm. We'd have to find a house in town, and I think she'd like fixing

that up. She's really always been a town girl at heart, I think.

What's your opinion of my chances for this job, HUgh?" Holmes cleared

his throat. "Well, I guess you could say it's within the realm of

possibility. I'll see that the council gives the proposal serious

consideration." The two men rose and shook hands. "I might be able to

help you with finding a house in town, too." He already had something

in mind. The banker's brain was in high gear now. But Holmes's

morning was just Ieginning. When he opened his office door to show"

out Will Hj. my, he found someone else waiting to see him. Francis

Funderburke, better known in Delano and Meriwether County as Foxy,

because of an uncommon resemblance to that animal, stood waiting at a

not-too-loose parade rest. The stubby, wiry little man, dressed in

stiffly starched and tightly tailored khaki, with trousers tucked into

lumberjack boot tops and a flat-brimmed, pointy-peaked army campaign

hat raked at a regimental angle over his bright, dose-set eyes, looked

for all the world like a demented forest ranger or an ancient Boy

Scout. "Foxy, how you doing?" asked Will Henry. Foxy directed a

narrow glance at the farmer. "Lee." He turned back to the banker.

"Holmes, like to speak to you." Foxy addressed all men by their

unadorned surnames and usually in the manner of a high-ranking officer

speaking to a recruit. To females he offered a grudging "Miz" before

the name, regardless of age

CHxE

or marital status. At meetings with Foxy, Holmes always felt as if he

had been summoned rather than sought out, and for some infraction of an

unnamed set of rules. He invited Funderburke into his office, with the

distinct premonition that his morning was again about to come unglued.

He was not wrong.

Before either man had reached a chair, Foxy said, "Holmes, I want that

job."

"What job is that, Foxy?" Holmes asked, with a sickly foreknowledge of

exactly what job Foxy meant.

"Chief of police, of course," said Foxy, his tone implying that Holmes

had been attempting to withhold information from him. "I know you've

been looking hard for an experienced man, and you can't find one. Well,

that means you're going to have to hire a civilian. With my military

experience and knowledge of firearms I'm the man for the job." Foxy had

served briefly in France as a second lieutenant in the supply corps.

He had been sent home when a wagon had overturned, landing on his foot.

The injury had got him a medical discharge. In Foxy's mind, and in

his telling, the iniury was a combat wound.

Holmes began to marshal his faculties once more. "I don't see the

connection."

"I've been trained. I know how to lead men."

"Well, now, Foxy, a Delano chief of police isn't going to have any men

to lead. He's going to be a one-man department."

"It'll grow. Besides, this town is going to need discipline."

"Discipline," Holmes repeated tonelessly. "People have got to respect

the chief."

There was that word again: respect. Holmes admitted to himself that

Foxy did command respect of a kind in the community. His father had

left him a small block of early Coca-Cola stock that Holmes estimated

must be worth a considerable sum, judging from the size of the dividend

checks Foxy deposited in his bank account. Wealth brought a kind of

respect. Foxy had served his country in a war, and people respected

him for that, although they were hazy about the details. And Foxy was

a super-American. In a burst of patriotic fervor he had built a log

cabin with his own hands, and he lived in it. True, the improvements

added by a series of builders had since made it arguably the most

expensive log cabin in American history, but Foxy could still, with

some justification, say he had built it with his own hands.

So people respected Foxy. But they also thought he was crazy.

Booc of: Will Henry Lee

Foxy was certainly an eccentric, but there was considerable tolerance

for eccentricity among the people of small towns like Delano, Georgia.

Discipline? Foxy was congenitally incapable of requesting anything.

Holmes had a brief vision of people driving their automobiles on the

sidewalks and shooting each other just to spite Foxy. "You know, Foxy,

I'm not authorized to hire anybody. I've only been conducting a search

on behalf of the council. I'd suggest you make application in writing

to the council, and I'll see that it get the council's full attention."

Holmes would certainly do that. This dearly seemed an orderly and

efficient procedure to Foxy. "You'll have my application today,

Holmes," he barked, and with a curt farewell Foxy Funderburke marched

out of the office and the bank. Holmes took off his glasses and

massaged the bridge of his nose. And people wondered why he was almost

entirely gray at forty-five. One of the tellers stuck his head in and

said, "A man wants to open an account." At the thought of a familiar

...

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