Oh yeah—me. I had taken a round in the right side that had broken a couple of ribs going in and punched a hole in the lower part of my lung. Looking back on it, I realize that’s what that fall I took was all about.

Deputy Travis was indeed dead. I had also hit the driver of the fleeing car. It was found by the responding cops less than two blocks away—crashed into a tree, with the driver—Sheriff Anson Zimmer—unconscious at the wheel with a gunshot wound, also in the right lung. In the trunk of the car they had found Junior Causey—alive and kicking—full of information and just itching to tell it all.

At some point, about the time I first showed up at Joree’s, it seems, Junior had decided he wanted out—and that’s when he became a liability to Zimmer. They had held him locked away in a safe house while Travis and Leon had been the ones who had firebombed the auto shop and then killed Joree. Junior was being set up to take the fall.

Seems the plan was to kill me, pop Junior in the head, and make it look like we had both died in the shoot-out. Of course I would have been burned to a crisp. The fact that Parker and Danny Ray had been at the cabin appears to have been a surprise.

Zimmer was singing also. As soon as he regained consciousness and realized the predicament he was in, he began to rat out every dirty cop and politician that he had on the books. According to Junior, it was Zimmer who had killed Big Smoke Wren and taken over the prostitution ring—or to put it exactly—he had induced Leon to do the actual killing.

The GBI was doing double duty, rolling up the net, hitting the safe houses where the girls were held, and questioning cops and county commissioners. One local politician had been apprehended trying to flee the country. And as soon as the word got out, several others had voluntarily come in to try and cut their own deals. Since the whole crime syndicate went across state lines the FBI had waded in, and they, too, were having a field day.

I had a standing invitation from the state and the federal district attorneys for interviews as soon as I was up to it. I imagined I would also be having a word or two with the grand jury.

“Patricia, you think they’ll eventually get to the bottom of it all?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so. A few may slip by, but most of the players are going down,” she answered.

“How high do you think it goes?”