Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 by JM Harvey Page B

me a little story. She said that you took it. That you still have it. Ain’t spent a cent.” Garland blinked once slowly, like a lizard. “Now, why would Abby think that, Mr. Justice?”
    Valentine stared back at Garland in utter confusion. He’d heard many accusations over the last four years: that he was a murderer, a dirty cop who tampered with evidence and lied under oath, that he had intentionally crippled a teenage girl, but he had never been accused of being a thief.
    Garland filled the silence. “It was never found. The money or the gold,” he said again.
    “We assumed that someone was holding it. Someone inside the Confederate Syndicate,” Val replied pointedly. He wasn’t telling Garland anything the old man didn’t already know. Birch had rousted Garland and busted up this very clubhouse in a search for the cash and gold coins.
    “That ain’t likely. Lamar wasn’t one for trusting people,” Jasper interjected. “He’d have kept the money close to hand. And you were in the house with Abby that day.” Smith scooted forward on the desk and started kicking the air with the pointed toe of one boot, his unblinking gaze fixed on Val. “You had already murdered Lamar and Lemuel. It was just you and her and all that money.”
    Val stood abruptly. He had heard enough from this pair of lowlifes. “The money wasn’t there and I wasn’t in any shape to cart it off,” he said. He turned and went to the door, stopped on the threshold and turned back. “I don’t like having the Confederate Syndicate in my rearview,” he said, his flat gaze shifting between the two men. “It scares me. And when I get scared, I do scary things.”
    “Like crippling little girls and gunning down unarmed men?” Jasper asked, tilting his head to the side, smiling lazily. “I kinda wonder how you’d do in a stand up fight.”
    Val held Jasper’s gaze. “There’s only one way to find out, Jasper,” he replied. It was a stupid thing to say. Challenging a psycho like Smith was like skipping rope with a water moccasin, but Val had never been any good at backing away from a fight.
    Jasper seemed to think about that for a moment before he nodded slowly. “I reckon you’re right,” he said as he eased off the edge of the desk, moving with a slow grace. His smile was still fixed in place, but his muddy-green eyes were hard and his oversized hands were knotted into fists; his knuckles the size of walnuts. “You want to take this outside or do it up right here?”
    “Hold it now!” Garland barked as he jumped out of his chair, hurried around the desk and planted himself between the two taller men like a referee in a boxing ring. “Now, y’all just hold it right there,” he said looking back and forth between them. “You’re getting off on the wrong foot here. We’re all white Christians. Let Jesus—”
    “I know exactly what Jasper is,” Val cut Garland off, “and it’s got nothing to do with Jesus.”
    “No, sir,” Garland replied with an emphatic shake of his head, “No, sir. You know what Deaf was.” He turned to Jasper and waved one hand at the big man’s torso. “Show him, Deaf. Show him the stigmata. Make him see.”
    For a moment Jasper didn’t move, then he shrugged stiffly and reached for the hem of his shirt. The tension never left his body as he shucked the shirt over his head in one smooth motion. He lifted his arms and made a slow turn, showing a muscular torso, back and arms that were covered in horrible, gnarled and knotted burns that looked like cattle brands, each one in the crude shape of a crucifix. The positioning of the branded crosses seemed haphazard until Val noticed that bits and pieces of old tattoos showed through the burns. Swastikas, SS lightning bolts and the Stars and Bars had all been blotted out in the most painful fashion possible. Only the Dirty white Boys tattoo, an interlocked DWB on Jasper’s neck remained un-charred.
    “All this,” Garland made a sweeping gesture at