Second Strike

CHAPTER 38

^{NORTHERN GEORGIA,}

^{AUGUST 15, 11:38 P.M. EDT}

Ruth Ponder had persisted. Looking for Amos, she had ramped up her calls to the sheriff’s office from every hour on the hour to every half hour. She’d enlisted Bob Lampley to call his friends at Georgia State Patrol. She’d repeatedly called the local newspaper, local hospital, local news radio station, and investigative reporter for the local TV station.

And because of her persistence, she received the worst news of her life. A deputy sheriff who had gone to elementary school with her kids was so sorry to have to give her the news over the phone instead of in person as would be proper. But she had persisted, so he told her.

Amos’s body was among those that had been recovered in the big massacre that had been in all the news stories. Somehow, she’d already suspected as much. Forty-four years together and it was the first time she couldn’t account for Amos’s whereabouts at the same time a big massacre occurs in an area where the biggest crime story is an outbreak of mailbox vandalism. She knew it wringing her hands at the kitchen table and pacing the kitchen floor. She knew it when she kept calling Bob Lampley—heard it in his voice. He’d known Amos for more than fifty years and when he heard about the slaughter and that Amos was missing, well, in his experience, coincidences had a way of producing bad news.

Despite the distances that separated folks in this rural community, Ruth was soon standing in the kitchen with her three kids and seven grandkids. Bob Lampley and his wife were there, too. About a dozen neighbors were out on the front porch grumbling about how the country had gone to hell and nobody was doing anything about it except spending money on everything and everybody but America and Americans. Another dozen or so folks from church were scattered throughout the house, mainly in the living room, ready to cook, clean, and console as needed. Already, enough food for two or three large Thanksgiving dinners had appeared and was scattered on every available space atop Ruth’s furniture.

A reporter from Atlanta had shown up and was quickly surrounded by a cordon of Ruth’s friends and neighbors determined not to let the muckraker exploit the tragedy just to sell some more advertising space. Besides, it seemed whenever reporters from the big papers or TV stations did any kind of story about folks like Ruth and Amos, they made them look like backward and ignorant hayseeds, usually made fun of them even when the subject was a sad one. And with all the church folk in and around the house, several carrying family Bibles and a few wearing crucifixes, they’d no doubt be portrayed as intolerant ignoramuses and bigots. Nope, this wasn’t an occasion for confirming stereotypes and prejudices for smug big-city folks.

But Ruth wasn’t done. She had continued to make call after call to confirm Amos’s personal effects, to determine whether anything was missing or stolen. And where was their car? That was a really nice LaCrosse. All kinds of features. The grandbaby’s car seat was found in the woods near Amos. Why would they do that? There must have been more than one of them. More than two. They must’ve needed the back seat, said Ruth.

Pretty soon, Bob Lampley and some of Ruth’s friends and neighbors were calling around also. What do you know? What do you hear? And the people on the other end of those calls reached out to their friends, neighbors, and contacts. Decades of friendships and bonds were put to use to get answers. Ruth and Amos deserved it.

Ruth persisted. Between calls she received condolences and served coffee and pie. She smiled and sometimes even chuckled at anecdotes about Amos’s habits and foibles.

But she persisted. And in short order the dominoes falling from all of the calls that came out of the Ponder house produced results. According to Amy Randall from the church choir, whose sister was an insurance adjuster in Kannapolis, North Carolina, police in Albemarle had found a LaCrosse next to an Econoline behind a truck stop along Route 52. No damage. It still had plenty of gas. A patron in the diner adjacent to the truck stop saw about a dozen men get out of the LaCrosse and the van. Most of them were foreign-looking, but then it seemed just about everyone was foreign-looking these days.

But one of the guys stood out. The patron hadn’t provided a very good description other than to say the guy—even from fifty yards away—gave the patron chills. Couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the way the guy walked or how he appeared to interact with the others. But the patron was glad when the guy drove off in a minivan instead of coming into the diner.

The Albemarle police were reviewing the video from the security cameras atop the fuel islands at the truck stop. Because of the distance between the islands and the lot where the LaCrosse was parked, the video was blurry, and the angles were poor. But the FBI was coming down and they would run the feed through their equipment to clarify and enhance it.

Ruth wasn’t done. She had found Amos. She had found the car. But she wanted the man who had killed her husband. And she knew in her bones it was the guy who had given the diner patron chills.

Ruth didn’t know anything about forensics. But she knew one thing for sure. The man who had killed Amos headed north with all those foreign-looking men, probably to a big city where they could blend in. Probably, Ruth thought, to Washington, where it seemed there were hardly any Americans left, including those born here.

So Ruth would persist. So would more than a dozen of her friends and family. Because that’s what friends and family did. You couldn’t depend on the government. You certainly couldn’t wait on them. They had one million other things going on that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with anything important—or even remotely relevant—to you, your family, or your friends. So Ruth and a small army surrounding her would make pests of themselves until that scary man in the video was found. He had destroyed the best thing in Ruth’s life and deprived Catoosa County of one of its best, and she was determined to make him pay.