Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (i can read books TXT) 📕

their living hitting corner stores. Do what the cops won’t do. But taking it to people like Jerry and that nurse, who had jobs and kids and were just trying to get by like the rest of us—that felt wrong. It was like my mother’s voice was deep in my head telling me it was wrong.”

“So you contacted Grant.”

“What did it was a column he wrote after one of the church shootings.”

“The one that announced he was going to be doing a series on hate groups?”

Cropper nods. “He said it was crazy to hurt people you could ignore and avoid if you hated them so much. He said, why not let God sort it out?”

You remember liking that column, praising Grant for it, making love with him that night. Now your gut twists even more.

“I got a cheap burner phone I hid under my spare tire. I called the paper and asked to speak to him. I didn’t dare use my own cell or email, in case somebody got hold of my Samsung. When they put me through, I told him I had information about a group in Maryland that wanted to get guns from out of state and might be planning to do something to a colored church or synagogue. He agreed to meet me. That’s how it all began.”

“Were you the one who tipped off police about the guns from Georgia?”

“No, ma’am. Your husband did that after I gave him the details, a few weeks after we started talking.”

A reporter to the end, Grant never shared the specifics of his interviews with sources and never made any story about himself. He abhorred self-important journalism. But you are not surprised he stepped into the story long enough to alert Maryland authorities to a load of guns being brought into the state. As Dr. Clay might explain it, he had a duty to warn. Now you imagine your husband on the telephone, refusing to identify himself or his newspaper but insisting that his information was solid. He must have been persuasive—well, that was his nature—because the car was seized and the driver arrested. Before you can suppress the thought, you think of the irony: by taking those guns out of the equation, he made his own death more painful—and your survival possible.

“Your husband helped me see a lot of things different,” Cropper says.

“Like what?” you say, a lump in your throat.

“Once I said the Civil War wasn’t about slavery but states’ rights.” Cropper shrugs. “That’s what I was always taught. But he made me rethink it by asking questions. A state’s right to do what? When I said determine its own destiny, he asked what destiny that might be. To keep traditions. He said, what traditions? Their way of life. He said, what way of life? I finally had to admit everything depended on slavery.”

You say nothing.

“We used to meet in out-of-the-way coffee shops in DC. We’d sit on counter stools so we could see the door. It was rare that guys in my circle came into DC, but we had a signal worked out in case it happened.” He bites his lip and lowers his head. Then he raises his eyes to yours, squinting as if embarrassed. “If I saw somebody who knew I was Liberty Storm, I was supposed to jump up and say, ‘Don’t touch me, nigger! Law says you can sit by me. Don’t mean you can touch me.’ Then he would say, ‘Sorry, man, it was an accident,’ or something like that. I would leave like I was steamed and call him later from my burner.” He shakes his head. “Half-assed spy shit.”

“Did you ever have to use any half-assed spy shit?”

“Yeah. One Saturday afternoon when we were both off, Brick showed up with this girl he liked. Surprised the hell out of me. He said later she dragged him into the city to see some boring museum. I jumped up on cue. I thought I convinced him. I mean, it was Brick, right? But I was wrong.”

“You were his friend. Do you think he turned on you?”

“Must have. Wally Ray left me a phone message that left no doubt he knew all about me and your husband. That’s why I made myself scarce while I made plans to go north.” Burger gone, he pops his last onion ring into his mouth. Then from his inside jacket pocket he withdraws a business envelope and a CD in a plastic sheath and lays them on the table. “This is all I know about Liberty Storm, most of what I planned to give your husband.”

You open the envelope and pull out several sheets of paper stapled together. You unfold the papers, and a red flash drive slides onto the table. You scan the top sheet, which is single-spaced with abundant typos and only two-paragraph indentations. The second page begins with a list that confuses you. “Bird? Mars? Copperhead? Duke? Stony? Pirate?”

“We all had codenames, thanks to Wally Ray. He had all the meetings at his place, ten to fifteen guys each time, but there’s almost fifty names there. Nobody knew everybody except him. I haven’t figured out his system yet but his codename is War Tee.”

“Warty?”

Cropper taps the paper to show you. “War Tee…War for Wally Ray, Tee for Tucker. That one I figured out.” He taps the page again. “Brick was Buckshot, for his initials, BB. Andy Carey has a snake tattoo on his arm. He could be Copperhead. For some reason I was Dusty.” He taps a third time. “Pirate I learned after he got busted for bringing the guns into Maryland.”

“Lester Pegg,” you say. “Pirate? Maybe from Peg Leg?”

“Could be.”

Dusty—maybe from crop duster, but you do not share the thought.

“I wrote down the real names of the few people I knew,” Cropper says, pulling your attention back to him. “Mars, Duke, Bird, Ace, and the rest I still don’t know. Sorry.” He points to the papers still in your hand. “I put some meeting