Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

No mixer for him; he liked it sweet and strong, just like his daddy did. C.C. was just one step away from the governor’s office and he could feel it down in his bones, unless that warm tingle was just the bourbon, now down to nearly half a flask.

Yes, today he’d take that final step.

He pressed the intercom button on his phone. “Amanda?”

The response was nearly instantaneous. “Yes, Judge?”-silky on the other end.

“Get Eugene’s office on the phone and confirm the tee-off time, will you?”

“Yes, Judge.” C.C. leaned back in his chair, spinning it back toward the plate-glass window.

From here, it seemed, he could see all of Atlanta.

Including the governor’s mansion.

The twenty-four-thousand-square-foot redbrick Greek Revival palace sat on eighteen acres of lawn just a few miles northwest. But C.C.’s eyes never strayed from the prize. It was his legacy.

C.C. made his living in politics just like his daddy and his granddaddy had. Their empire was built on backbreaking slave labor in the southernmost part of the state of Georgia, Dooley County. Dooley historically kept one of the lowest income levels pro rata in the entire region, just a hair above poverty level.

But somehow the Carters, headed by Talmadge Carter, who bought the land in 1817, managed to make money hand over fist. It didn’t take long to position his son, T. Carter Jr., in the mayor’s office of the county seat, Vienna, Georgia.

T. Carter’s grandson, Talmadge Carter III, made it to state senator. That came in awfully handy when interstate I-16 was in the works. With T. Carter’s minor adjustments to the plans submitted by the Georgia Department of Roads and Highways, the interstate-and all its motels, gas stations, 7-Elevens, and roadside fruit stands for the Yankees who didn’t know better than to pay five dollars for a nickel sack of Georgia peaches-had cut a swath directly through the old home place.

To hell with the home place. They were multimillionaires at last, the stars were aligned, and the political power C.C. was meant for was on the cusp.

With “family money” as a springboard, T. Carter’s great-grandson C.C. made one political deal after the next until he got the sweetest appointment of all: a spot on the Georgia Supreme Court. He had jumped from one political appointment to another like a frog jumping rock to rock on the Flint’s muddy brown water.

Now, silk stocking attorneys across the state-even the elite Lange and Parker, a blue-blood law firm that stabled four former U.S. senators and every past mayor of the city of Atlanta-would have to kiss his redneck ass, and he knew it.

But he felt instinctively that a judicial position did not wield sufficient political clout. He wanted more. Needed more. His legacy was more.

It was time to make a move and make his dear, departed daddy proud.

He spun impatiently in his chair and reached for the intercom again, but there was a knock on the door instead.

He hurriedly stashed the flask in his top desk drawer and called out, “Come in.”

Amanda appeared in the doorway. “I just spoke to Mr. Eugene’s assistant, Judge.”

“And?”

He smiled at her, the perfect campaign smile, courtesy of braces as a teenager and thousands of dollars of caps over the years. Never mind that too much Kentucky bourbon had yellowed the caps and gifted him with a bulbous nose, red-veined around the nostrils.

Amanda smiled sweetly. “The tee-off time is set for noon, like you asked.”

No, he didn’t like doing business on another man’s turf one tiny bit. But after weeks of trying every trick in the book to engineer a meeting with Floyd Moye Eugene-and finding that he, a Georgia Supreme Court Justice, couldn’t get even a simple phone conference with the man, much less arrange a meeting-the invitation to play a round of golf came as a surprise. It all fell into place so much more easily than C.C. had ever anticipated. Eugene was playing right into his hands.

The support of one man was about to swing the balance for C.C. and make his political dreams come true. Floyd Moye Eugene happened to be the chairman of the Georgia State Democratic Party.

A man after C.C.’s own heart, Eugene played the party ranks all the way from grass roots in Columbus to the Democratic National Convention. Eugene had been the power behind every man to grace the governor’s mansion on West Paces Ferry since it had been rebuilt in 1968, and the next election would be no different.

C.C. had done his research-or at least commissioned his willing law clerk, Jim Talley, to do it for him.

Eugene had attended UGA just like C.C. Just like him, Eugene was a huge UGA football booster and drank Kentucky bourbon. Also like C.C., nobody knew exactly what Eugene did to make a living.

Pulling the flask from his drawer once again, C.C. imagined they were twins.

C.C. had dispatched his staff operatives to do whatever it took to ferret out Eugene’s weaknesses. But in the end, extensive snooping, including various political snitches in the know and the services of not one but two private investigators, uncovered not a single vice C.C. could use to his own advantage. Nothing. No drugs, no love child, no porn habit, no secret male lover he could slip a few Gs to. Nada.

“ Too bad… ” C.C. thought. “ A mistress. I could have at least worked with that…a mistress. ” There was always hope.

Meanwhile, Eugene worked out of offices in the Capitol, across the street from C.C. in the chambers of the Georgia Supreme Court. If he had a mistress here in Atlanta, she was well-hidden.

Eugene’s single vice seemed to be an insatiable thirst for power. He had been relentless and merciless in his quest for control over his family, the Georgia House, Senate, even the governor himself. C.C. was an amateur when it came to power play, just a distant planet rotating around Eugene.

How Floyd Moye Eugene had attained his power may have been a mystery, but it was now a force to be reckoned with, not bested.

C.C. was about to enter the game with high hopes and an eye on the prize.

Again, he spun his chair to view the city sprawled below-and not far away at all out there, the governor’s mansion, glittering in the morning sun.

St. Simons Island, Georgia

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE A PERSON TO BUY GROCERIES? VIRGINIA Gunn was starting to wonder that as she sat crouched down behind the wheel of her Jeep in the Kroger parking lot.

She herself had spent just twenty minutes inside the store-in and out well over an hour ago with a week’s worth of organic produce, soy milk, and the all natural bread she used to make sandwiches every day for lunch.

It was as she rolled her own full cart through the parking lot looking for her Jeep that she spotted it.

A Volkswagen Beetle, circa 1977, badly beaten up but sporting a brand-new shiny Greenpeace bumper sticker.

Ah. Perfect. Hardcore reconnaissance and quick deductions were in order.

First she loaded her groceries into the back of her Jeep, then drove through the parking lot to the row behind the Beetle. From there, she could keep watch-and she had been, for over an hour.

Damn, it was hot, even with all the windows rolled down. So hot that she was almost tempted to run the engine, just for a few minutes, with the air-conditioning on.

Almost. But Virginia had been an eco-fighter long before Al Gore invented the Internet or starred in An Inconvenient Truth . In fact, she had some news for Al Gore. He could take his private jet and shove it straight… Damn it was hot in here!

She smelled under her arms. Not terrible…yet.

Come on, it’s not like you’re having heat stroke. How can you even consider burning fossil fuel and emitting all that exhaust when you’re just sitting here in a parking lot?