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“Because I’m going to tell him I’m the source. I’m going to make him so angry, he can’t think straight. Angry people don’t calculate, they react. And reactions can be predicted.”
“You’re finished here,”
Whitmore concluded.
Webb’s face remained expressionless, but his hands gripped the chair arms with enough force to make the wood creak. When Witmore finished, the overseer stood slowly.
“Someone gave you that information. Someone snooped where they shouldn’t have. Who was it?”
“It’s very much my concern. I don’t leave loose ends.”
Webb walked toward the door, then paused.
Whitmore said nothing, but his silence was confirmation. Webb smiled, a cold expression holding no humor.
“I’ll be gone by noon tomorrow, but I’m going to have a conversation with your mathematical genius first. One last piece of business.”
Witmore warned.
“I won’t touch him,”
“Just a conversation, man to man.”
“You’re a clever boy,”
Webb said conversationally as he approached. His right hand rested on the pistol at his belt. His left gripped the bone-handled knife.
“Clever enough to find my ledger. Clever enough to copy it. Clever enough to get it to Witmore without revealing your involvement. Very impressive.”
Samson stood motionless, his picking sack half full beside him, his massive hands empty.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Don’t insult me with lies. We both know what you did. I respect it, actually. Takes real intelligence to expose someone like me. But here’s the problem: I can’t let you live. You’re the only witness who can connect me to those graves. Once you’re gone, it’s just Whitmore’s word against mine, and he won’t risk the publicity of a trial.”
“Mr. Whitmore told you to leave,”
Samson said carefully.
“If you kill me, you’ll hang.”
Webb laughed.
“Will I? Who’s going to testify against me? The enslaved workers who saw me visit this field? They can’t testify in court. The law doesn’t allow it. Whitmore, who specifically let me go with a reference letter? He becomes complicit if he admits he knew about murders and did nothing. No, boy, I can kill you right here, bury you in those woods with the others, and be in Mississippi by Sunday. No one will stop me.”
He drew his pistol.
“Turn around. I’ll make it quick. That’s more mercy than you’ve earned, but I don’t enjoy suffering. I’m practical about killing.”
Samson didn’t turn. Instead, he took one step forward.
“You made three mistakes.”
Webb’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“Really? What mistakes?”
“First, you assumed I worked alone. I didn’t. Second, you assumed this field was empty. It’s not. Third, you assumed I was afraid of you. I’m not.”
Thomas Whitmore emerged from the cotton plants 20 feet to Webb’s left, a rifle raised to his shoulder. Sheriff Benjamin Crawford appeared to Webb’s right, also armed. Behind Samson, two deputy sheriffs stepped into view. The overseer was surrounded, and his pistol, still pointed at Samson, became evidence of attempted murder.
“Put the gun down, Webb,”
Sheriff Crawford ordered. Slowly, Webb’s face cycled through emotions: surprise, anger, calculation. He was trapped. But men who had killed 17 people didn’t surrender easily. His pistol swung toward Whitmore instead of Samson.
“If I’m going to hang anyway—”
Samson moved with shocking speed. His massive hand clamped onto Webb’s wrist, squeezing with enough force to shatter bone. The pistol fired, but the shot went wild, burying itself in the cotton plants. Webb screamed and tried to bring his knife around with his left hand, but Samson’s other hand caught that wrist, too.
The giant lifted Webb completely off the ground, holding him suspended like a child.
“Drop the knife,”
Samson said calmly.
Webb’s hand spasmed, and the bone-handled knife fell into the red Alabama dirt. Samson lowered the overseer back to the ground but didn’t release his wrists. Sheriff Crawford and the deputies moved in quickly, applying iron shackles to Webb’s arms and legs. Only then did Samson let go, stepping back to reveal the full extent of the trap that had been sprung.
“How?”
Webb gasped, his face gray with pain from his shattered wrist.
“How did you know I’d come for you?”
“Mathematics,”
Samson replied.
“You’re predictable. You’ve killed 17 people using the same pattern: isolate them, eliminate them, hide them. You couldn’t let me live knowing what I knew. So, I made sure everyone else knew, too. Mr. Witmore, the sheriff, the deputies—they all heard you confess to murders and threatened to kill me. Now, the law can’t ignore it.”
Whitmore lowered his rifle, his expression complicated. He had spent the previous day coordinating with Sheriff Crawford, explaining that his overseer was a murderer who posed a threat to witnesses. The sheriff had been skeptical until Whitmore showed him the copied ledger entries and offered to testify about the graves.
With a white plantation owner willing to testify, the law suddenly had jurisdiction over crimes it would normally ignore. Sheriff Crawford secured Webb in a wagon for transport to the county jail. The trial would be brief. Attempted murder of Thomas Whitmore in front of witnesses was enough to hang him, even without addressing the 17 enslaved people he had killed.
The legal system of 1843 Alabama didn’t recognize those victims as fully human, but it took very seriously any threat to white property owners. As the wagon rolled away, Witmore turned to Samson. The giant stood quietly, his massive frame silhouetted against the cotton field, his expression unreadable. The plantation owner struggled to find words.
“Finally, you saved my life. Webb was about to shoot me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why? I own you. I’ve profited from your labor. You have every reason to let him kill me.”
Samson met Whitmore’s eyes for a long moment.
“Because you’re predictable and predictable people can be calculated. Mr. Webb was chaos. Chaos can’t be predicted or controlled. Between the two of you, you were the better mathematics. And besides,”
He paused, something that might have been a smile crossing his face.
“I need seven more.”
“Seven more what?”
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