Red River Mystery

Lyndon B. Johnson is president, Beatlemania is in overdrive, and gasoline costs thirty cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multistate killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire. As the weeks pass, Ned's grandchildren, ten-year-old Top and his tomboy cousin Pepper, struggle with personal issues resulting from their traumatic experiences at the Rock Hole only months before. They now find themselves in the middle of a nightmare for which no one can be prepared. Cody and Deputy John Washington, the law south of the tracks, follow a lead from their small community to the long-abandoned Cotton Exchange warehouse in Chisum, which they are stunned to find packed full of the town's cast-off garbage and riddled with booby-trapped passageways and dark burrows. Despite Ned's warnings, Cody enters the building and finds himself relying on his recent military experiences to save both himself and Big John. Unfortunately, the trail doesn't end there, and the killing spree continues.

In 1965 Constable Cody Parker's frightening dreams of gathering storm clouds for the tight-knit Parker family from Center Springs, Texas, proved accurate. Cody is ambushed and nearly killed on a lonely country road during an unusually heavy snowfall. With that attack, the locals fear that a disturbed murderer "the Skinner" has returned to their community. While his nephew recovers, Constable Ned Parker struggles to connect a seemingly unrelated series of murders. As the summer of 1966 approaches, rock and roll evolves to reflect the increasing unrest in the country, and the people of northeast Texas wonder why their once peaceful community has suddenly become a dangerous place to live. Ned's preteen grandchildren, Top and Pepper, are underfoot at every turn. The two lawmen, along with the Deputy John Washington, cross paths with many colorful citizens, including cranky old Judge O. C. Rains, the jittery farmer Isaac Reader, and the Wilson boys, Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx. And then there's the arrival in their small community of a mysterious old man named Tom Bell. Now recovered, Cody decides to follow his main suspect across the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Ned understands that to save his nephew, he will have to cross more than a river-he will have to cross over to the right side of wrong. Humor, suspense, horror, precognition, and life in the tumultuous 1960s all play a part in the solving of this mystery.

In October of 1967, the Summer of Love is history, rock and roll is dark and revolutionary, and people in the small east Texas community of Center Springs simply want to live their lives as quietly as possible. But a handsome darkness in the form of Las Vegas gangster Anthony Agrioli has left the business to hide out in their tiny backwater settlement with his blond bombshell girlfriend. Two years earlier, Agrioli met newlyweds Cody and Norma Faye Parker in a Vegas casino and heard their enthusiastic descriptions of the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. At least it was perfect, before their peaceful world found itself in the crosshairs of a coming confrontation. Back in Center Springs, thirteen-year-old Top Parker has what his grandmother, Miss Becky, calls a poisoned gift: his dreams, though random and disconnected, always seem to come true. This time Top dreams he's a wagon hub with spokes converging from all directions. To him, the spokes symbolize that something is coming. He doesn't know their quiet community will soon be a combat zone when the gangsters arrive. But they're after something else, not Agrioli … yet. A sheriff crooked as a dog's hind leg, an unsolved murder in the river bottoms, counterfeit money, and a bank robbery all wrapped in a country Shakespearean comedy once again bring together Constables Ned and Cody Parker, Deputy John Washington, Judge O. C. Rains, and the rest of Wortham's real and sometimes wacky cast of characters.

At the tail end of 1967, the Parker family once again finds it impossible to hide from a world spinning out of control. Fourteen-year-old Top still can't fit in with their Center Springs, Texas, community, and his near-twin cousin Pepper does the only thing she can conceive to escape her own demons: she joins the Flower Children flocking to California-just as three businessmen are murdered in the Red River bottoms on the same night as a deadly hit and run. Constable Ned Parker wonders if these crimes are connected, but when Pepper disappears, he follows, leaving the investigation in the hands of Sheriff Cody Parker, who hires Deputy Anna Sloan, an investigator with an eye for detail. Following her instincts, she trails killers through a world nearly forgotten, the hunt's backdrop one of continuous rain, gloomy skies, and floods. When an ambush nearly kills her, the investigation accelerates into gunfire, chases, and hair-raising suspense, while out on Route 66 to California, a man named Crow isn't what he seems.Lies, deception, and a band of outlaw motorcyclists prove to the Parkers that no matter where you turn, no matter what you do, the world is full of such darkness that even grandmothers are capable of unspeakable deeds.

The small, rural northeast Texas community of Center Springs has seen its share of troubles during the 1960s, everything from kidnapping, murder, and bank robbery. By 1968, the residents think life has finally quieted down, but they find their peaceful way of life is quickly spinning out of control as a decades-long family feud between the Clays and Mayfields once again flares to life. Fourteen-year-old Top Parker, who lives with his grandparents, Constable Ned Parker and Miss Becky in a little farmhouse near the Red River, is caught up in another adult situation sparked by a mysterious fatal car accident involving the white mayor of Chisum and his black female assistant. Questions and accusations arise about their relationship as the families wreak vengeance on each other. But what is the significance of a man calling himself the Wraith, who moves through the region at will, invading homes and watching the Parkers? What is Maggie Clay's secret-that she is half-white and married to a black man with a criminal past? And was Mayor Frank Clay, the supposed only bright spot in a dark and cruel family, really what everyone thought he was? It's a busy time for Sheriff Cody Parker, who finds himself a possible suspect in the murder of several residents. He takes the advice from his Deputy John Washington and removes himself from the investigation, giving free reign to both John and Deputy Anna Sloan as they try to unravel the answers by following different paths. The ending will leave you staggering as the families clash on a small battlefield and the killer is finally revealed in a most unexpected way. These aren't the 1960s that most Baby Boomers remember.