Forging Iron

By Bowen Greenwood

In a town plagued by organized crime, a politician buys an election he's too broke to afford. Reporter Sherman Iron smells trouble. With the murder of a fellow journalist the mystery turns dangerous. But the path to solving it leads through a dark secret from Iron's own past, one he's kept buried for years. A man's life hangs in the balance as Iron must confront the truth about his family and his own father. If he fails, a good man may wind up dead, and nameless thugs destroy his town and home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bowen Greenwood
• Release date: Aug 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215609897

Bowen Greenwood

Bowen Greenwood is an Amazon charts bestselling author of thrillers and science fiction. His experience as a police beat reporter and as a court clerk inform his thrillers. His lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy led to the Exile War series.

Book preview

CHAPTER

ONE

The County Clerk and Recorder had a service dog, and it was a real struggle for me not to pet it. He was a golden retriever with a sleek, freshly brushed coat, giving every impression of being asleep right next to me. If I could just scratch between those ears and whisper Who’s a good boy? everything would be right with the world. I could feel it all the way to my bones.

Alas, it’s kind of a faux pas to distract a blind person’s guide animal, so I used my hands for taking notes instead. It was, after all, my job.

I’m Sherman Iron; I’m a reporter for the Hunter Post.

Tall, skinny, brown-eyed, and entirely-too-light-haired for my own liking, I wore my jeans and hiking boots almost everywhere, including to the County Commission’s public hearing on zoning issues that evening. However, halfway through my twenties I was finally conquering my old addiction to T-shirts; I wore an oversized red and black flannel shirt, untucked, hanging loose and far past my belt.

The reason for that was riding in an inside-the-waistband holster on my right hip. The loose plaid lumberjack shirt concealed a revolver.

I covered the crime beat. Murders, burglaries, casino robberies—these were my stock in trade. With the tide of illegal drugs rising higher every day, the job got more dangerous all the time. Not that long ago, I’d had to use an ancient over-under hunting shotgun as my only weapon against thugs carrying 9mm submachine guns, and I had vowed to change that. Thus, a new acquisition nestled secure and invisible under my big wool shirt.

The gun wasn’t my only concession to the violent realities of my job. I’d started paying a self-defense instructor for private lessons. I didn’t particularly enjoy fighting or carrying a weapon, but I did enjoy my profession, and these adjustments were becoming increasingly necessary to it.

I liked my job. I liked cops. I particularly liked the prosecuting attorney. I liked writing about crime.

Politics? That I did not like. Unfortunately, tonight I had no choice. My colleague, whose job it was, had called in sick.

The Hunter Post had a guy who wrote government and election stories. He covered the Congressman and the Senators every time they came through town. He wrote up local races. He had all the big deal connections in both parties and could get his call answered if he dialed the Governor’s cellphone.

He also had pneumonia. Consequently, my new city editor told me it was now my job, at least for the next week. My ill colleague dropped into my lap a brand-new story about money in politics, a tip about the first question to ask, and a wish for good luck before he exhausted his energy and fell back asleep.

The County Commission met twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tonight was the final public hearing on some new zoning plan before the final vote on Thursday. It wasn’t something that mattered much to me. I was a renter; any property my family might once have owned went on the auction block when my father self-destructed, so I didn’t have anything to be zoned.

Apparently, the plan was to have some areas east of town by the railroad tracks be zoned industrial only. In terms of property values, it was logical. In Hunter, the mountains were to the west. To the northeast was only an empty expanse of dry prairie. People would pay a lot more for houses with a mountain view, so it made some sense to make the east industrial and the west residential.

Again, not really my problem. I had once raided a warehouse out east where criminals were making meth in order to save a friend, but that was all I really knew about the area. What I did know was I had an assignment to ask one of the Commissioners a question.

Thus, cell phone in hand, voice recording app launched, I left behind Rhonda Comings the Clerk and Recorder and her eminently huggable golden and made my way to the front of the room as soon as the meeting ended.

With Halloween coming up and an election not long after, autumn had seized firm control of the local weather. The forced air heating of the county courthouse dried things out so thoroughly I was afraid if I blinked, my eyelids would stick to my eyes. Outside, yellow leaves reflected the streetlights back into the fourth-floor windows.

A gently curved head table dominated the front of the room. Rows of cheap audience seats stretched from it to the back wall. A podium and microphone stand poked up in the middle of the table’s arch, like a baby tree in the middle of a freshly mown lawn. Members of the public and county employees who came to report to the Commissioners were supposed to speak from there.

An unassuming, stain resistant Berber carpet impressed no one but didn’t distract. Behind that curved table were three brown leather executive chairs that looked like each of them cost more than everything I owned, including that brand new handgun, which was not cheap. It seemed to me like someone spent the entire facilities budget on their chairs and forgot about the people who’d have to attend meetings.

One of those chair-lovers scurried for the back door as I approached, but I caught him before he could get away. The classic monk’s fringe of silvery hair made a kind of halo of seniority around his head, while deep furrows crisscrossed his face like the famous canals of Mars. Spectacles slid down almost to the edge of his nose and distorted the sides of his eyes through their Coke-bottle lenses. A smartwatch poked out from under the sleeve of his jacket; the sport coat and khaki slacks came from Walmart; I knew because I had passed by the same choices when I went to buy my new flannel button-downs.

My disease-ridden colleague had told me what question to ask first, so I popped it out right up front.

Commissioner, is it true you spent a hundred thousand dollars of your own money on your re-election campaign?

His eyes widened a bit, and he eased backward, crossing his arms over his chest as he did, making the cheap jacket bunch up a bit. The corners of his mouth settled down like the foundation of a cheap house.

That’s entirely legal under the campaign finance laws.

Ole the political reporter had been right. Springing that on him out of nowhere caught him off guard.

I know, Commissioner, it’s just a lot of dead presidents. I’m curious why.

Commissioner Ambrose Pryor had recovered his verbal balance. When I asked him about the money, I apparently caught him off guard, and his defensive response about campaign finance rules reflected it. Now, he threw me some spin to try to recover.

You can’t put a value on serving the people of Hunter County. I’ve invited Montanans to invest in my campaign, and they have. It wouldn’t be right for me to ask others to chip in if I wasn’t willing to bear as much of the burden as possible myself.

I dutifully made a note of his answer, then asked, What are you planning to do with the money?

I’m running for re-election because I have a vision for our community. Communicating that vision to the people is the heart of running for office.

So, TV ads then?

Our campaign plan calls for a diverse spectrum of markets.

I nodded, noted it down, and thought, TV, in other words. My sometime-semi-friend Gil Farshaw’s job was safe at least. He had been promoted from weather guy with occasional news duties to a full-time real reporter. A hundred thousand bucks to his station ought to keep him paid for at least a little while. Heck, with what they paid local reporters these days, Commissioner Pryor’s hundred grand might just be paying Gil’s salary for years.

That could have been enough for a story. This wasn’t my beat; I was just filling in for a colleague. And I didn’t care about politics, except for my girlfriend’s re-election campaign.

But something was bothering me.

Commissioner Pryor bought his clothes at the big box discount store same as me. As one of three elected Commissioners for Hunter County, he drew an annual salary of $65,000 per year. Not bad … way better than a reporter makes. But how could he afford to part with more than a year’s salary?

Investment-wise, it penciled out. Six years as County Commissioner multiplied by $65K was almost 400 grand. For him to spend one hundred thousand to win four hundred thousand definitely worked in terms of profit and loss.

But did he really have it to spare? And if he did, why was he buying George brand made-in-China sports coats?

Curious, I made a small wager with myself. I left the Commission’s public hearing on zoning behind, rode the elevator down to the first floor, resisted the temptation to stop in at the County Attorney’s office, and walked through the lobby on my way to the door.

The motor vehicle division has a counter there for people to renew license plates — closed at this hour of night, of course. The County Election Administrator had an office on the other side of the lobby — also closed. There was a fire-exit door and also a staircase door. Hunter legend had it that the basement of the county courthouse led to a network of secret tunnels under the town. Despite various dares in junior high, I never quite found out whether it was true.

The county courthouse had a parking garage right next door. I knew the place all too well; my father’s construction company had the contract to build it, back before the rest of the town figured out he was a drug addict. I was willing to bet that the Commissioners had reserved spots there. The open cement half-walls offered almost no protection from the wind. Cold I may have been, but I also won my bet. The first spaces in the garage, labeled 1A through 10A, were all marked reserved, and the third one in particular bore a sign that said, Commissioner Ambrose Pryor.

Parked in it was a no-longer-white 1999 Ford pickup, rust all over the bumper, front fender painted in gray body primer rather than the same color as the rest of the vehicle. I looked through the window. Striped fabric seat covers failed to hide massive rips in the seat. Fast food wrappers littered the floor.

A faded, green, hardbound book with no title that looked a bit like an accountant’s ledger occupied the passenger seat. While there was no title, someone had scratched a word on the front cover with a knife. I couldn’t read it through the glass in the dimly lit garage, though.

But I didn’t need to know about his reading material to answer my own question: Pryor wore cheap clothes and drove a broken-down ancient clunker. If he had a hundred thousand bucks to spend, why not spend some of it fixing this junkheap up?

That’s when the thug punched me from behind.

I grunted in pain as my face mashed up against the window of Pryor’s truck, and then cried out even louder when my assailant bent my right arm behind my back and twisted it.

Since he already had me immobilized, holding his pistol to the back of my neck seemed unnecessary. He did it anyway. It seemed like overkill to me, until I heard the sound of the weapon’s hammer being cocked back.

The boss says butt out, Iron. Permanently.

When he cocked that hammer back, he released my arm.

Sometimes, a person holds a gun on another person just to intimidate. In those situations, you might easily get out of it just by giving the attacker what he wants. But cocking the pistol? That makes it life and death.

CHAPTER

TWO

There’s only one more step after pulling the hammer back. That new self-defense instructor I mentioned taught me pulling the trigger is not instantaneous. It takes a measurable amount of time. Less than a second, true. But that’s not the same as no time at all. The trick to saving oneself when a trigger might be pulled is to move faster than the trigger. A secondary tactic is to increase the amount of time a trigger puller is going to need.

I threw myself leftward to the ground as hard as I could.

The gun went off behind me, so loud my ears were given over entirely to ringing.

I took the fall on my shoulder, hit the concrete, and rolled to face my attacker. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t get much of a look at him, but boots and a hoodie sweatshirt flashed through my field of vision.

I was a lot more focused on the barrel of his gun, though. He was bringing it around in my direction. Before it quite got to me, I kicked out with my hiking-boot clad feet and connected with his shin.

The thug cried out in pain and instinctively reached down to grab for it, so I swung my other foot up and connected with his face. Hot blood spewed out of his nose onto the leg of my jeans.

I reached to my waistband to go for my own gun, but his blind kick connected with my hand. I howled and clutched my hurt fingers. Apparently, my howl did the trick. From somewhere in the echoing concrete garage, I heard, Send someone fast; someone shot a gun! It sounds like they’re really hurting each other!

A bystander had heard the commotion and called 911. Thank God.

The hood attacking me sprinted away at once. I fumbled around with my injured hand until I got hold of my weapon, then aimed it at his back, but I didn’t pull the trigger. Partially that was because my fingers still hurt too bad.

But there was more. I had ended life with a gun before — more than once now. The first time, alone in an alley on a frigid winter night, still haunted my dreams. In my nightmares, I entertained the horror that the man I had killed might never have intended to hurt me. It wasn’t realistic. He’d been holding a gun on me and telling his boss he got me. But still, what if …

So I didn’t