Page 11 of The Devil's Advocate

His father had been a man consumed with thoughts of the family name, who had built a fortune on the stock market, and handed most of it to Korn in his will. But Korn wasn’t interested in his father’s money. Nor anyone else’s. There had always been plenty of cash around, and so it held no fascination for him. With thirty million in his bank account now, it still didn’t concern him. What Korn had taken to heart was his father’s talk of family legacy. That was more important.

It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got when you die, son. A man is not measured by the stack of dollars in his vault. It’s the corpses of broken enemies that you leave in your wake. That’s how you measure your life. When you’re still standing at the end, and you’ve put all your competitors down. That’s when you know who is best.

Korn drew strength from the faces of the dead and those he had condemned to die. Darius Robinson was the last to give him that personal pleasure. Andy Dubois would be the next face on the wall.

He picked up the phone, called the Sheriff’s Department and asked for Sheriff Lomax. After a small delay, his call was transferred.

‘Good morning to ya,’ said Lomax, in a low, country drawl.

‘I wanted to check if there’s been any progress on our missing attorney?’

‘Nothing, I’m sorry to say. We’ll keep looking, keep making calls. I’ve got some of my best officers working this one hard.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. So, how was the fishing this weekend?’

‘Pretty good. Got me a catfish that damn near broke the rod.’

‘Keep on Cody Warren, I want to know the instant he’s found. I’m praying for his safe return.’

‘We all are, Randal.’

‘Have yourself a fine day, Sheriff,’ said Korn, and hung up.

Ten minutes later Korn was working the wheel of his Jaguar around the tight corners of the country roads on the outskirts of Buckstown. He made a series of turns along narrower and narrower roads, until he was on a dirt road that didn’t look like it went anywhere. Another ten minutes on this road and the thick trees on either side parted, just briefly, as the road curled toward the Luxahatchee River. Buckstown stood in the center of Sunville County. To the north was the bottom of the Talladega Forest – half a million acres of pinewood. To the south, swampland from the overflow of the Luxahatchee. East of Buckstown lay rich farmland, and to the west lay the industrial side of the county occupied by a steel mill and a large chemical processing plant that was ever on the verge of closure.

Korn stopped the car, got out and made his way through the thinning tree line. The trees were very old and draped in Spanish moss. The Luxahatchee narrowed here, before reaching full flow a few miles further south. Its banks were brimming with brown, fast-moving water. Korn had grown up in an apartment in Lower Manhattan with a view of the East River. He would often watch the dark water from his bedroom window, a curious teenager, wondering what secrets lay at the bottom of that river. He wondered how the river grew so muddy and black. And how many men his father had sent tumbling into those freezing depths from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The bubble and rumble of flowing water brought his thoughts back to the present and provided the baseline to the crickets and cicadas that were still singing in the early morning sun. Another sound joined the orchestra. A V8, gurgling to a slow crawl. The engine died, a car door squeaked open and slammed closed. Footsteps rustled through the brush.

CHAPTER FOUR

LOMAX

Sheriff Colt Lomax could smell something foul as he approached the riverbank. He’d parked the department cruiser on the dirt road and was making his way to the meeting point. During the phone call with Korn, he’d been asked about fishing – a code that meant they had to meet here. If he’d been asked how his bowling arm felt, they would meet in the bowling alley parking lot. Similar meeting points had been arranged for the diner parking lot, the boathouse on the lake and the old mill. Fishing meant the river, so that’s where he had come.

Korn was a cautious man.

The vegetation rotting in the heat and humidity did not account for the odor that grew stronger as Lomax came through the brush. The sweet decay that comes from the moss and the river is quite pleasant. This was different. He sometimes thought he caught the scent from Korn, as if the man was rotting from the inside out. When that happened, he told himself it was just his imagination – no one could smell that bad, not unless they’d been lying in the river for a few days, dead and filling with gas.

He came into a small clearing at the bank and caught sight of Korn’s tall frame, sheltering from the sun beneath the branches of a pine tree.

‘It’s hotter than all hell,’ said Korn.

The accent was muddled. Sometimes he was pure Sunville County, born and bred, but at odd times some of his Manhattan accent would peep through in a word, just enough to remind Lomax that Korn was not from around here. Lomax wondered whether Korn spent his life affecting the Sunville accent – that it was a permanent role he was playing for an unseeing crowd, and at times, just for a second, the veil dropped to reveal the real Korn.

The DA was pale and sweating. He was not overweight, far from it. Korn looked thin and ill, all the time. A fine veneer of sweat seemed to permanently coat his bone-china skin. Korn liked to stay out of the sun. He took a handkerchief from his top pocket, wiped his neck and forehead.

‘You should be used to the heat by now,’ said Lomax.

‘I hate it. Always have, always will.’

‘What’s the problem? I already told you Cody Warren is on ice. No one is going to find him.’

‘This isn’t about Warren. Well, not all of it.’

There it was again, that smell, hitting Lomax like a brick wall falling on his head.

‘No, this is about his replacement. I hear there’s some hotshot from New York coming down here to kick our asses in the Dubois case.’