Sophocles Rule

Joseph LeValley

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Bookpress Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 0001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781947305502
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE
SOPHOCLES RULE
JOSEPH LEVALLEY
Copyright © 2023 by Joseph LeValley. All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means––electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other––except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without prior written permission of the publisher. Requests to the publisher for permission or information should be submitted via email at [e-mail] .
Any requests or questions for the author should be submitted to him directly at [e-mail] .
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published in Des Moines, Iowa, by:
Bookpress Publishing
P.O. Box 71532
Des Moines, IA 50325
www.BookpressPublishing.com
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: LeValley, Joseph, author.
Title: The Sophocles rule / Joseph LeValley.
Description: Des Moines, IA: BookPress Publishing, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN: 2022914946 | ISBN: 978-1-947305-49-6
Subjects: LCSH Journalists--Fiction. | Bank robberies--Fiction. | Iowa--Fiction. | Murder--Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | BISAC FICTION / Mystery / General
Classification: LCC PS3612.E92311 S67 2022 | DDC 813.6--dc23
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Leona Cling, Don Fish, Ruth Doty, Bill Francois, Hilary Masters, and all who taught us lessons in writing…and living.
“Hide nothing, for time, which sees and hears all, exposes all.”
— Sophocles
Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Prologue

Later, when Tony Harrington looked back on the events of those few hot weeks of autumn, he shook his head in wonder at the thought it all begun with a single quarter. One shiny coin. Twenty-five cents of legal tender. Often called “two bits” during the first half of the twentieth century, when it weighed just over two-tenths of an ounce and was comprised of 90 percent silver.
A simple coin toss, which led to a mystery, which led to the unthinkable.
Chapter 1

Quincy County, Iowa––Saturday, September 9
The 40-caliber Glock sounded like a cannon, echoing off the metal walls of the machine shed and sending a flock of pigeons scrambling out of the eaves. The amplified crack of the weapon scared the hell out of everyone in the farmyard, but no one more than the man who had pulled the trigger. In that moment, Quincy County Deputy Sheriff Tim Jebron realized it was the first time he had ever fired his service weapon outside of the practice range. It didn’t stop him from firing again.
The second shot, following Jebron’s scream, “Freeze!” brought the two fleeing suspects to their knees in the tall grass bordering the corn field, forty yards beyond the shed’s doors.
A dozen more steps and they would have been gone , Jebron thought as he looked at the thick rows of ten-foot-high corn stalks. Jebron lowered the weapon and ran from the concrete pad in front of the shed into the grass where the men were kneeling with their hands in the air.
“You two dirty dogs stay right there!” Jebron barked, trying to sound mean and forceful, like he’d seen in a million cop shows.
The skinny man on the left turned to look at him, displaying an acne-pocked face, a dark goatee, and bad teeth. “What,” the man cackled, grinning, “the hell did you say?”
Jebron gritted his teeth and moved around the men so they could see his weapon was still in his hand, angled down to a spot just in front of them. “I said, stay right there. You’re under arrest.”
“Okay, Barney. Relax,” the man said. “Dirty dogs? Really? Who the hell are you?”
“I don’t like to cuss,” Jebron said, his voice a little shaky as the adrenaline began to recede.
The man’s smile grew wider. He lowered his hands and made a move to stand.
Jebron raised his weapon as well as his voice. He spoke in a steady, measured tone. “I said I don’t like to cuss. I never said I don’t like to shoot people. Stay down and raise your hands.”
The man looked at Jebron for a long moment and apparently decided it wasn’t worth the risk. He resumed his position with his hands in the air.
In seconds, another deputy and an Iowa state trooper joined Jebron, placed the two men in handcuffs, and pulled them to their feet.
The second deputy said, “You like to shoot people, do you, Tim?”
“Who knows?” Jebron said, holstering his weapon. “Might have been fun to find out.”
***
Four Hours Earlier
In a place where discomfort was a way of life, Tony Harrington was experiencing it to its fullest. It wasn’t quite agony, but it was close. Beads of sweat trickled down his back, his face, and into the corners of his eyes. When he tried to clear his vision by wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist, he was rewarded with the scraping of grit across his eyelids, and the sting of salt leaching onto his eyeballs. Compounding the pain was the fact that the bare plank flooring on which he sat cross-legged was rough and unforgiving. His leg muscles nearly cried out as he shifted positions, trying to find some relief for his sore buttocks. Every movement stirred up dust, causing frequent coughing spells.
Put simply, the hayloft of an old barn was no place to spend a hot September Saturday.
“Is police work always this glamorous?” Tony asked, as he pulled up the bottom hem of his Don’t Go Bacon My Heart T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.
Special Agent Rich Davis, of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, took his eyes away from his camera’s telephoto lens long enough to glance at Tony, just behind him on his left.
“Nope,” Davis said. “Sometimes it’s a lot worse. Quit grumbling. We could be doing this in January.”
“Good point,” Tony said, acknowledging with a nod and a scrunch of his facial muscles. “Twenty below zero would be worse… but just barely.”
Davis smiled and returned to the camera mounted on a tripod. “Besides,” he said, speaking with his back to Tony, “think about the great story you’re getting.”
“Yeah, I can see the headline now. ‘ Town Crier reporter dies of boredom while DCI agent photographs chickens.’”
Davis suppressed a laugh. Tony was a friend but was participating in the stakeout as a reporter for Orney’s local daily newspaper. When Tony had asked to accompany Davis on a stakeout for a story, and when the DCI leaders in Des Moines had agreed to let him, Tony had expected something more exciting than what they had experienced so far.
Davis had warned him that stakeouts were the worst part of his job. Today was proving the point. He and Tony had been sitting in the loft of the old barn since 6 a.m. It was now late afternoon and the September sun had driven the temperature nearly to ninety degrees. Davis’s gear included knee pads and a short wooden stool for perching behind the camera. He was three inches taller than Tony’s five-foot, ten-inch frame. He considered the stool an essential piece of equipment for situations like these. Despite the concession, he couldn’t claim to be much more comfortable than his complaining friend.
The two men had grown close over the past seven years as they had continually found themselves working on the same cases and had discovered the mutual benefits of sharing information. While both sported dark hair and eyes and trim physiques, they were different in many ways beyond Davis’s height advantage. Tony was single and not yet thirty. Davis was married and in his mid-forties. Davis loved sports and all activities that could be undertaken outdoors, hunting and fishing being two of his favorites. Tony was more of an intellectual. He worked out and rode his bicycle to stay in shape, but if given a choice, would opt for a soft chair and a good book every time. His mother called him “intellectually curious.” Tony preferred the term over “nerd.” Tony, of course, loved to write, which is why he had chosen journalism as a career. Davis would rather eat glass than write a two-paragraph report.
As with many stakeouts, the unpleasantness of this one was exacerbated by the fact that it was bearing no fruit. The assignment was to photograph every person who came and went from a small two-story house and a metal outbuilding on a neighboring farm about a quarter of a mile away. The barn in which Davis and Tony sat was at the top of a long, gradual rise, so the view of the neighboring farmstead was ideal. The high-definition digital camera with its enormous telephoto lens was able to capture images perfectly, making the agent feel as though he was standing in the yard next to the house.
Unfortunately, so far all he had seen were chickens. Not a single person had arrived or departed from either structure since the two men had begun their task eight hours earlier.
The metal outbuilding was believed to be home to a methamphetamine laboratory. Thanks to a state law restricting access to pseudoephedrine, meth labs were now far less common in Iowa than they had been twenty years ago. A few, however, still managed to produce their poison and generate a profit. The DCI had become aware of this one because the farm’s owner had called to report his suspicions about the young couple who rented the farmstead.
The farmer lived a few miles away, but still used the farmstead’s lane to access one of his large fields. When passing through the farmyard, he made it his habit to note the condition of the bu