Chapter 13

Jarrod took Matt Cooper back to the sheriff, then went off to see the lawyer Cooper asked him to get. Jeff Soper was another young attorney, fairly new in town. Jarrod didn't know him well but he was willing to go over to talk to Cooper and the sheriff. Jarrod let him go and was planning to get away from the whole mess now, returning to his office, securing Korby's file because the clue to the existence and location of the book was in it. Now it was evidence all by itself. Now Jarrod was ready to be done with it all.

He ran into Nick and Heath on the street before he got there. Heath had a bandage around his head now. "Skin split," Heath said. "It didn't want to stop bleeding, but it's all right now."

"Did you get Matt Cooper over to the sheriff?" Nick asked.

"Yeah," Jarrod said. "I got the lawyer for him he wanted and sent him over there, and Asa Harmon is there too. I want to leave the whole thing to them. I don't want to have anything more to do with any of it, at least not today."

"Are you going back to the office?" Nick asked.

Jarrod nodded. "I need to get the confidential stuff out of Korby's file and turn the folder itself over to Fred. Korby's note on the inside is evidence. Once I get that over there, I just want to go home."

"I'm for that," Heath said.

"Can you ride?" Jarrod asked.

"I think so," Heath said, "as long as I don't run around town too much."

"We won't," Jarrod said.

They went to his office and in a matter of minutes, Jarrod had Korby's file examined and emptied into another folder. They took the original folder, with Korby's note, to the sheriff. From there, they fetched their horses, delayed only by a few moments with George Allison who stopped them on the street.

"Talk to the sheriff," Jarrod said. "We need to get Heath home."

"That was a handy crack in the head," Heath said as they mounted up and started for home.

"Don't go doing it too often," Jarrod advised.

Before long, they were home, explaining to Victoria and Audra over lunch what had happened, who had been arrested, how Heath came to the bandage around his head, everything they could explain. And how they were done with it for now.

"Are you sure you're safe?" Victoria asked.

"We should be careful for another few days, until they can get Mrs. Ashby and Mrs. Rivers checked out in Sacramento," Jarrod said, "but I expect people are going to start talking now."

"At least it looks like the killings have stopped," Nick said.

"The problem, of course, is that Col. Ashby's operation may be blown apart completely now, but someone else will replace it," Jarrod said. "The narcotics trade is too lucrative. We'll be fighting this battle forever."

Audra shook her head. "I can't believe Mrs. Ashby would have been involved in anything like this."

"Maybe she was actively involved, maybe she just knew what was going on," Jarrod said. "Or maybe we're all wrong and she didn't know a thing, but I doubt that, Audra."

"It makes me glad we don't have that property from her for the orphanage," Audra said. "I don't think I could have stomached this if we had gone ahead with that project with her, knowing it came from drug money."

"Well, that part's over with," Victoria said. "We'll find other property."

"We'll get the project going again, Audra, I promise," Jarrod said. "I'll do all I can to get it through quickly."

Victoria eyed Jarrod. "I'm sure you're completely taken aback at Matt Cooper's involvement."

"It kind of explains why he was so anxious to see Korby convicted as a murderer," Jarrod said. "He wanted to keep him shut up, or at least not believed if he started talking. Cooper wanted to sabotage his whole defense."

"You don't know that for sure yet," Heath said.

"No," Jarrod said. "Everyone on that list is going to have to be checked out carefully. Just because they are on the list, it doesn't mean they are automatically guilty of being involved in the Colonel's trade."

"But you're not going to be involved in the investigation or anyone's defense, are you?" Victoria asked.

"No," Jarrod said. "Considering my involvement so far, me taking over anyone's defense is improper, and the law doesn't need me to investigate any further. At least if they do, neither Fred nor Mr. Harmon has asked me to yet."

Nick said, "I think the best thing we can do is just forget it for now, stay out of town for a few days, let things start settling down wherever it is they're going to settle."

"I'll need to go into the office on Monday," Jarrod said. "I still have other clients to pay attention to. But I don't think I'll need to drag you boys along with me. I don't think anybody's going to try to get to me to find out what Korby told me anymore."

"I think I'll go with you for one more day," Nick said.

Jarrod started to object.

"No, I'm going with you," Nick said. "If you make it through Monday and I'm as bored as I usually am when I'm with you and nothing happens, I'll let you go on Tuesday."

"All right," Jarrod said, "but not you, Heath. You need to rest that head of yours."

"Fine with me," Heath said.

"How long do you think it will take to straighten all this out?" Audra asked.

"I don't know," Jarrod said. "There were a lot of names on that list. Fred and the District Attorney and Mr. Harmon and the federal men – they have a lot of work to do."

As it turned out, people on the list were being arrested and questioned for the next week. Two men fled town and had to be tracked down in San Francisco. Matt Cooper started talking, explaining that he had gotten involved in the drug trade when he was reading law with a firm in San Francisco and that his involvement with Col. Ashby was as a liaison with people in Stockton who were a little higher on the social ladder than Korby and his contacts were. He confessed everything and was set to plead guilty even before other people started talking.

The man who had attacked Heath was identified as another gun for hire, sent by Mrs. Rivers, not by the man Hobart who was fighting with her for control of the cartel. A search of Mrs. Ashby's home in Stockton and residence in Sacramento didn't turn up much. It seemed she did know everything her husband had been up to over the years but never took an active part in it. Mrs. Rivers and Hobart were arrested in Sacramento.

Asa Harmon continued his work and within a month had the Ashby operation shut down completely. Everyone who needed to be arrested was. Many pled guilty. Some didn't and were set to go to trial.

Everything that was happening on the legal front was happening without Jarrod's input, except for the need for him to appear as a witness, along with his brothers, at a couple trials in Stockton. Those trials were over within six weeks. It was all over within six weeks.

"But you're still worried," Victoria said to her oldest as he stood on the verandah smoking a cigar, after the last trial was finished.

"Someone will replace them all," Jarrod said. "It might take a while, but it will happen. There's too much money in it. I'll have to stay in touch with Mike Chang. I'm about the only white man in the law the Chinese trust around here."

"You didn't tie any of the Chinese in with Col. Ashby's operation," Victoria said.

"There weren't any involved directly with Col. Ashby to tie in. He was supply. The Chinese – the Tong and others – they were distribution. And they will still be distribution."

"And you're helping them to do that."

Jarrod's eyes grew wider. "Helping them?"

"That's what you're doing, by not going after them too. They're just as responsible for the drug trade as the suppliers are."

Jarrod sighed. "That's true, and the time may come when we have an opening to go after them. But it's more like allowing them to continue than helping them. If I don't keep some kind of contact with them, we may never see that opening appear."

"But you're on the fence," Victoria said. "You don't like allowing them stay in business. It's a dangerous place to be, with the law on one side and the Tong on the other."

Jarrod didn't quite know what to say now, or even how to feel about it. His mother was right. He was enabling the distributors to stay in business, but he was also right that the law didn't have what it needed to go after them yet, and by staying on the good side of the Chinese – the honest people like Mike Chang and the dishonest ones – he kept the opportunity open to stop the distributors too.

But he'd already said enough about that. "It's like the intelligence work I did in the war, Mother. Sometimes I got my hands dirty."

"Just be careful, Jarrod," Victoria said. "Be very careful."

"I will," he promised. "And I'll keep praying for and working for the day we can clean all of this up, for good."

The End