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  PRAISE FOR ROBERT BAILEY

  “The Professor is that rare combination of thrills, chills, and heart. Gripping from the first page to the last.”

  —Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

  “Legal thrillers shouldn’t be this much fun and a new writer shouldn’t be this good at crafting a great twisty story. If you enjoy Grisham as much as I do, you’re going to love Bob Bailey.”

  —Brian Haig, author of The Night Crew and the Sean Drummond series

  “Robert Bailey is a thriller writer to reckon with. His debut novel has a tight and twisty plot, vivid characters, and a pleasantly down-home sensibility that will remind some readers of adventures in Grisham-land. Luckily, Robert Bailey is an original, and his skill as a writer makes the Alabama setting all his own. The Professor marks the beginning of a very promising career.”

  —Mark Childress, author of Georgia Bottoms and Crazy in Alabama

  “Taut, page turning, and smart, The Professor is a legal thriller that will keep readers up late as the twists and turns keep coming. Set in Alabama, it also includes that state’s greatest icon, one Coach Bear Bryant. In fact, the Bear gets things going with the energy of an Alabama kickoff to Auburn. Robert Bailey knows his state and he knows his law. He also knows how to write characters that are real, sympathetic, and surprising. If he keeps writing novels this good, he’s got quite a literary career before him.”

  —Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys/October Sky, a New York Times number one bestseller

  “Robert Bailey is a Southern writer in the great Southern tradition, with a vivid sense of his environment, and characters that pop and crackle on the page. This book kept me hooked all the way through.”

  —William Bernhardt, author of the Ben Kincaid series

  ALSO BY ROBERT BAILEY

  McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers

  The Professor

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Robert Bailey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503953079

  ISBN-10: 1503953076

  Cover design by Brian Zimmerman

  For my mom and dad, Beth and Randy Bailey

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  PART TWO

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  PART THREE

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  PART FOUR

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Pulaski, Tennessee, August 18, 1966

  The boy sat on the floor in the den of the two-bedroom shack, listening to the Cardinals game on the radio and practicing his only vice—chewing a big wad of bubble gum. His mother was still at the Big House, cleaning up after the party, but his father had just gotten home, his job done for the night. The boy lay on his back, blowing bubbles and throwing a baseball up in the air and catching it with his mitt.

  The gunshots startled him.

  They came from outside the house. Two blasts from a twelve-gauge. The boy was only five years old, but he knew what a shotgun sounded like. His father had taken him hunting several times, and he had fired one himself the last time they went. The boy scrambled to his feet and looked out the window.

  He saw a wooden cross. Like the cross behind where the preacher spoke at church. It was on fire. Behind the burning cross were men dressed in costumes. Long white robes covered their bodies, and white hoods masked their faces. Holes had been cut out of the hoods for their eyes. All of them held shotguns across their body. One of the men stood a couple feet in front of the others and wore a darker hood than the rest. In the glow from the burning cross and the half moon above, this man’s hood appeared to be red.

  With one arm the man with the red hood raised his shotgun and fired twice more in the air. The boy jumped back, then knelt to the floor and crawled closer to the window, peeking over the edge of the sill. As he did, Red Hood spoke.

  “Roosevelt Haynes, get your ass out here!”

  The voice, rough and deep, sounded familiar to the boy, and he felt the hair on his arms begin to rise.

  “Roosevelt, I know you’re in there!” Red Hood continued, taking a step forward. “Don’t make us tear down that door!” The voice was louder. Closer. And the boy definitely recognized it.

  “Daddy?” the boy called out, his heartbeat thudding in his chest. “Daddy, what is Mr. Walton—?”

  A large hand clasped around the boy’s mouth, drowning out his words. The boy started to scream but then relaxed as he heard his father speaking softly in his ear. “Easy now, Bo, let me see.”

  Then, slowly removing his hand from the boy’s mouth, Franklin Roosevelt Haynes peered out the window.

  “Damn.”

  It was only a whisper, but the boy, who was kneeling just inches away from his father, heard it. “Daddy?” the boy whimpered.

  Roosevelt ducked down and brought his index finger to his lips, shaking his head at the boy. Then he peered over the sill again. This time he said nothing, but his shoulders slumped, and a noise escaped his lungs that sounded like the moan of a wounded animal. Barefoot and shirtless, crouching below the window in the red pajama bottoms he wore every night at bedtime, Roosevelt covered his face with his hands and mumbled something that the boy couldn’t understand.

  For the first time in the boy’s life, his father—a stocky, barrel-chested man who could handle cows and other livestock like they were rag dolls—looked small. Fear slithered up the boy’s chest and took hold of his heart like a boa constrictor. “Daddy?”<
br />
  Finally, Roosevelt removed his hands from his face and turned his eyes toward the boy. With their heads almost touching, Roosevelt spoke into the boy’s ear. “Bo, I need you to promise me a few things.”

  The boy started to cry and turned his head away from his father.

  “Damnit, Bo, look at me.” Roosevelt grabbed the boy’s shoulders and shook them, and the boy did as he was told. “Bo, this is goin’ be hard on your momma. Promise me that you’ll take care of her.”

  Roosevelt stole a glance out the window, and the boy heard Red Hood’s voice again.

  “Roosevelt, you got twenty seconds! Then we set fire to the house.”

  The other men began to chant something in a low hum, but the boy couldn’t make out what they were saying. His father faced him again, still holding tight to his shoulders.

  “Promise me, son.”

  The boy’s teeth chattered. It was ninety-five degrees outside. Deep in the dog days of August. There was no air conditioning in the shack, but the boy was freezing. His tears had dried.

  “I promise, Daddy.”

  “Promise me that you’ll make something of yourself, son, you hear me? Make something of yourself.” His father shook him, and the boy nodded.

  “All right, nigger!” The voice was even louder. Closer to the house. “Ten seconds!”

  His father didn’t budge, his eyes focused on the boy. “Bo, you probably goin’ hear things about this. About why they done this. Don’t believe ’em. Not a word. You promise?”

  “Ten! . . . nine! . . .” Red Hood began the countdown, but Roosevelt still did not move, waiting for Bo to answer.

  “I promise, Daddy.”

  “One day your momma . . . she’ll tell you everything, you understand?”

  Bo nodded, and his father hugged him hard—so hard it hurt a little—and kissed the boy on the cheek.

  “Six! . . . Five! . . .”

  Roosevelt stood and took two steps toward the front door.

  Fighting back fresh tears, the boy lunged for his father, grabbing him around the ankles and squeezing as tight as he could. “Don’t go, Daddy. Please don’t go.”

  Roosevelt knelt and gently removed the boy’s hands, holding them in his own. “Bo . . .”

  The boy looked up into his father’s eyes.

  “I love you, son.”

  “Three! . . . Two! . . .”

  “I . . . I love you too, Daddy.” The boy choked the words out as snot began to run out of his nose and his eyes clouded over with tears. “Please . . . don’t . . .”

  His father grabbed the doorknob and turned it. “All right now, I’m coming out!” Before he shut the door behind him, Roosevelt Haynes looked at the boy one last time.

  “Don’t watch this, Bocephus. Whatever you do, don’t watch this.”

  If only the boy had listened . . .

  PART ONE

  1

  Pulaski, Tennessee, August 18, 2011

  By 10:30 p.m. the front parlor of Kathy’s Tavern was almost deserted. The four tables were empty, and there were only two men sitting on opposite ends of the long rectangular bar.

  One of the men was Clete Sartain, who had just finished his evening shift as a salesclerk at the Johnson’s Foodtown grocery store. At seventy-four years old, Clete had a snow-white beard and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Every year for the past two decades he’d played Santa Claus during the Christmas festival downtown. When he wasn’t sacking groceries or playing Kris Kringle, Clete liked to down a few Natural Lights and listen to country music, both of which were readily available at Kathy’s on Thursday nights.

  In the back, a 1980s country cover band was playing “I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbitt, and Clete tapped his foot to the music and took a long swallow of beer. The back room at Kathy’s had several tables and a stage in the rear, and based on the squeals and Bo Duke–style yee-haws from the crowd, the song choice was a popular one. Live music always drew a good turnout at Kathy’s, and from Clete’s perch at the end of the bar closest to the back he counted at least fifteen, maybe twenty folks.

  Taking another sip of beer, Clete let his eyes drift toward the man seated at the other end of the bar.

  With dark-brown skin and a smoothly shaven head, Bocephus Aurulius Haynes had always reminded Clete of that boxer from the ’80s, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler. Of course, Hagler had been a middleweight, and Bocephus Haynes stood six feet four inches tall and weighed well over two hundred pounds—a heavyweight if there ever was one. And though he’d blown his knee out playing football for Bear Bryant at Alabama, Bo still carried the athletic frame of a middle linebacker. Even now, pushing fifty years old and wearing khaki suit pants with a blue shirt, tie undone, and smoking a cigar, Bo was an intimidating sight.

  Seeming to sense that someone was staring at him, Bo shifted in his stool and glared toward the other end of the bar.

  “Something on your mind, dog?”

  Clete held up his hands and smiled, though his entire body had tensed. “Naw, Bo. Just got tired of looking at my ugly reflection in the mirror. You doing all right? How’s the law practice? Did you sue anyone today?” Clete smiled, but his heart had begun to thump harder in his chest under the heat of Bo’s gaze.

  For a couple seconds Bo said nothing, ignoring the questions and just staring at Clete. Then: “You know what day today is, Clete?”

  Clete blinked. “Uh, it’s Thursday I think.” When Bo didn’t answer him, Clete shot a glance at the bartender, a cute brunette named Cassie Dugan. “Right, Cassie?”

  Cassie was washing a pint glass with a rag. She met Clete’s gaze and gave him a concerned look, shaking her head.

  “It’s not Thursday?” Clete asked, now confused. How many beers had he drunk?

  “It is Thursday,” Bo said, his voice reeking with bitterness. “Thursday, August the eighteenth.” Bo paused, turning in his stool so he could face Clete. “You know what happened forty-five years ago on this very day?”

  Clete’s eyes narrowed and his stomach tightened. Sweat beads began to break out on his forehead. He got it now.

  “You were there, weren’t you, Clete?” Bo said, sliding off the stool and walking the fifteen feet down the bar. “You were in the Klan then, weren’t you? One of Andy Walton’s boys?”

  Bo leaned close to Clete and blew a cloud of cigar smoke into his face. “Answer me.”

  Clete pushed back his stool and threw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change, Cassie.”

  When he tried to leave, Bo stepped in front of him.

  “Bo, I . . . didn’t . . . mean to cause no trouble,” Clete said, his voice shaking.

  “Did you see my daddy’s neck stretch, Clete?” Bo leaned in close, and Clete smelled the strong scent of bourbon and cigar on his breath. “Could you hear him gasping for breath?”

  “That’s enough, Bo,” Cassie said from behind the bar. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t stop.”

  “I could, Clete,” Bo said, speaking through clenched teeth. “I was five years old and I saw it all . . . and I heard it all.”

  Clete lowered his eyes, unable to stand the intensity of Bo’s glare anymore. “Bo, I just want to—”

  “What’s going on up here?” The voice, rough and gravel-like, came from the back, and Clete had to blink his eyes to see who it was. The music had stopped, and a man was walking toward him. When he saw who it was, his bladder almost gave.

  Andrew Davis Walton stepped into the front parlor flanked by his wife, Maggie, and his brother-in-law, Dr. George Curtis. Andy was a tall, angular man, much thinner now than he had been in the old days.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” Bo said, firmly shoving Clete to the side. “You must have entered through the back,” Bo said, lowering his head so that he was almost nose to nose with Andy. “Ain’t no way you would walk in here on this night with me sitting at the bar.”

  Andy’s voice and gaze never wavered. He looked directly at Bo as Maggi
e and George shot nervous glances at each other behind them. Clete wanted to just sneak on out the door, but he found that he couldn’t move his feet.

  “We’ve been here a while, Bo. Today is Maggie’s birthday, and we came here to celebrate.” He paused. “She likes this kind of music.”

  Bo’s eyes moved past Andy to the woman standing behind him. Maggie Curtis Walton, called “Ms. Maggie” by everyone in Pulaski, was a petite woman with an elegant sheen of white hair that fell just above her shoulders. She had crystal-blue eyes, which were focused on Bo now with what looked like pity.

  “Today is kind of a special day for me too,” Bo said, turning his gaze back to Andy. “Remember why?”

  Andy said nothing, continuing to look at Bo. He moved his right foot back a step and clenched his fists, assuming a fighter’s stance.

  Bo laughed, dropped his cigar to the floor, and stomped on it so hard that Maggie Walton jumped back. “I’d like to see you try it, old man.”

  “We’re gonna leave now, Bo,” Andy said. “If you don’t get out of the way, I’m going to have Cassie call the police.” He glanced at the bartender, but Bo kept his eyes fixed on Andy.

  “I’ll do it too, Bo,” Cassie said, her voice high and panicky. “I ought to do it anyway. You’re scaring everyone off.”

  The remaining patrons in the back were beginning to walk around them and heading for the front door, but Clete Sartain’s feet remained glued to the floor. If Bo attacked Andy, Clete figured it would take him and George both to get him off.

  Ignoring Cassie, Bo leaned forward and spoke directly into Andy’s ear. “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” Bo paused, adding, “Exodus chapter twenty-one, verses twenty-one through twenty-three.” Bo turned to Clete, who had heard every word and was chilled to the bone. “You know your Old Testament, Clete?”

  Clete said nothing, and Bo returned his gaze to Andy. “How about you, dog? Do you understand the message?”

  Andy also remained quiet, and the bar was stone silent.

  “Then let me break it down for you, twenty-first-century style,” Bo said, pausing and sticking his index finger hard into Andy’s chest. “You’re gonna bleed, motherfucker. If it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I’m going to make you pay for your sins—eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”