A Darker Justice (21 page)

“Sure he could,” said Safer. “He’d be racking up some big-time Sky Miles, but it could be done.”

“It’s
possible,
” Krebbs granted. “But look how much easier a group of just two or three well-trained guys could do it.”

“But nobody’s bragging out there.” Safer nodded at Krebbs’s computer screens. “Conspirators should be crowing like roosters over this!”

Krebbs shook his head. “The biggest bark isn’t always the worst bite, Daniel. The guys who’ll bomb your federal buildings don’t end their names with dot com.”

“So you’re saying it’s a conspiracy that’s going to act when the ball drops in Times Square.”

“That’s the only thing that fits what’s gone on before.” Krebbs crunched down on a pork rind. “We just have to figure out who they are sometime within the next two days.”

“Thanks, Krebbs,” Safer said bitterly. “Next time tell me something I don’t already know.”

CHAPTER 33

Mary was floating. She lay suspended over a dark landscape, detailed and horrific as any Bosch painting, watching the women she loved doing unspeakable things. Her friend Alex laughing as she beat a dog. Irene lying naked on her desk, masturbating with the barrel of a gun. Her own mother looking up from something’s body with a sharp-toothed, malevolent grin. Mary tried to turn her head, tried to close her eyes, but the images remained, mocking, obscene.

Then she sensed movement around her. Something was coming, something that would rip her to pieces. She needed to scream, to scare it away! She opened her mouth to yell, but she felt weighted down, as if tons of earth covered her. She tried to speak but nothing came out. Tightening every muscle, she forced a scream up from her chest and out her mouth, opening jaws that felt welded shut. Suddenly her eyes flickered open; the crushing weight was gone. She awakened.

At first she could only blink at the blazing light that glared down upon her like an enormous eye, then she raised her head cautiously. Her clothes were gone, replaced by thick black pajamas similar to the outfits worn by karate students. Tight leather straps bound her to a metal examination table. Although everything spun before her eyes, she realized she lay in some kind of theater where tiers of empty seats rose around her, only to disappear into the dense shadows beyond the blinding light.

She lowered her head, nauseous, sorry that she’d looked up and started the room spinning. Grasping the solid edges of the table, she tried to anchor herself in time and space. She remembered eating toast at Little Jump Off, then driving somewhere and talking to a man with diamond-sharp eyes.
Christmas is coming,
she thought. No, wait. Christmas had come. She’d spent Christmas at Irene’s, then Irene—! In a rush, it all came back. She’d driven to Camp Unakawaya to look for Irene, and Sergeant Wurth had forced her into that cabin! She’d expected to be shot, or decapitated, but instead all she’d felt was a tiny prick on her neck and the world began to smear and drip around the edges as her knees buckled. The last thing she remembered was looking at her own reflection in the polished toe of a black leather boot.

Past that, she recalled only sensations. Arms carrying her, hands jerking her clothes from her body. It seemed like Irene had been there, but she couldn’t be sure. Where was she now? And where was Irene?

Suddenly she sensed the presence of someone else in the room, someone behind her, just beyond the puddle of bright light.

“Hello?” Her voice rang hollow in the glaring emptiness. “Is somebody there?”

Not a sound broke the silence. She struggled to lift her arms and legs, but the straps held her tightly.

“Please help me!” she called, raising her head, certain somebody was standing just inches away. “Please come and untie these straps.”

Again she heard nothing. She listened for another moment, then she flopped helplessly back on the table. She must have just imagined someone was there. God knew, she’d imagined a lot, lately.

“No,” she told herself aloud. “You haven’t imagined anything. Wurth kidnapped Irene and now Wurth has kidnapped you. You just have to figure out what to do about it.”

She heard another noise behind her. A shuffling of feet. Someone
was
there!

“Hey,” she cried. “Please help me get out of here!” She twisted her head as far as she could, but all she saw were shadows. Still, she was certain she could hear the faint wheeze of someone’s breathing.

“At least tell me where I am,” she pleaded. “Tell me how long I’ve been here!”

She strained to listen with every cell in her body, then, to her enormous relief, a young male voice floated out of the darkness. “It’s D-December 30. You’re on the third floor of Camp Unakawaya.”

“Please help me get loose!” she cried, twisting, desperate to see who stood behind her.

But her bindings made it impossible to see, and suddenly all she heard were soft footsteps, hurrying away.

“Don’t go!” she begged. “Please wait! Please—”

The click of a door closing cut her off before she could utter another word.

“Damn!” she fumed, struggling against the leather straps. She’d gotten it right. She was at Camp Unakawaya and someone had been standing there watching her. If only they would come back. She had to convince them to turn her loose!

As she tried to work free her right arm, she heard a different noise. Nothing discreet about this—it sounded like a lot of people, all walking with a purpose. The sound rumbled closer, then the door opened. All at once the whole room was bathed in light.

“Ms. Crow.” A deep voice called out from behind her. “How wonderful that you’re awake!”

She craned her head toward the voice. Wurth came into view just behind her, leading a pack of young men. His eyes seemed almost transparent as his thin lips stretched in a grin.

“Where’s Judge Hannah?” Mary demanded.

“Both of you are our guests at Camp Unakawaya.” Wurth walked over and put what looked like a doctor’s bag on the table beside her. “And we’re honored to have you. You’re a terrific tracker, Ms. Crow. If the situation were different, I would put you on my staff.”

“If the situation were different?” Mary watched as six young men, all in khaki uniforms identical to Wurth’s, clustered around the table. They watched, happy and wide-eyed as Wurth rummaged in his bag. In a moment he’d unrolled a piece of red silk across her stomach, revealing several different kinds of knives. Some glittered like the elegant instruments of a surgeon; others reminded her of butcher’s tools.

“If you believed as we did,” he told her, “then you could teach my boys here. But since you don’t, I’ll have to use you in a different fashion.”

“Like how?” Mary’s heart was beating so fast, she thought it might fly out of her chest.

“Oh, I’ll think of something.” Smiling, Wurth retrieved another instrument. It consisted of a number of stiff, thin wires sprouting from a single handle, each with a tiny, razor-sharp barb at the end. It glittered with a kind of lethal beauty in the bright light above.

“Upchurch, can you tell Ms. Crow what this is?” Wurth asked a harelipped boy who stood next to Mary’s right knee.

“It’s a
muchi,
sir,” Upchurch replied.

“And what do we use the
muchi
for, Mr. Spooner?”

“External tissues,” recited Spooner. “Where nerve endings are close to the surface.”

“And to what end, Mr. Grice?”

“Uh, when the goal is intimidation?”

“Right, Mr. Grice.” Wurth handed the instrument to the boy. “Since you know what the
muchi
’s used for, would you like to demonstrate how it works?”

“Sure.”

A smug grin spread across Grice’s face. Taking the stiff little whip from Wurth, the boy looked down at her once, then he tightened his grip on the handle and swung it at her face. Instantly she felt as if a dozen yellowjackets had stung her all at once. Before she could make a sound Grice swung the thing again. Tendrils of hot pain lashed through her.

“Since you tried to infiltrate my operation, Ms. Crow,” Wurth said, “I’m going to use you as a teaching example. With your help, these young men are going to learn how to use all the instruments in this bag. I wish I could promise that you won’t feel a thing, but the fact is, Ms. Crow, you will feel quite a lot.”

“And I will remember everything, Mister Wurth.” Mary looked up at him through eyes already stinging with tears and blood, determined that she would never give Wurth and these boys the pleasure of hearing the screaming inside her own head.

*  *  *

“Where are you going in such a hurry, Cabe?” Galloway looked up from the mountain of potatoes he was peeling.

“Out,” called Tommy over his shoulder as he hurried through the kitchen.

“Out where?” Galloway persisted.

“J-just out. Out to sweep. Out to whittle my demerits down. Out to get away from assholes like you.”

“Oooooh!” teased Abbot. “Better watch out. C-C-Cabe’s mad!”

No, Abbot,
Tommy thought as he ignored the laughter of the other Grunts and raced out into the late afternoon sun.
I’m not mad. I’m fucking terrified.

He hustled around one corner of the building, away from the kitchen windows. He didn’t want Abbot or Galloway to see where he was going. After he’d sneaked out of the amphitheater he’d gone straight to his cot in the Grunt dorm, his stomach churning. This place was more fucked up than he had ever imagined. First Willett, then that old lady, now that pretty woman who’d smiled at him the day before yesterday. If he didn’t get out of here now, it would be him next. He hastily stashed what few personal things he had in the pockets of his cargo jeans and put on the warmest jacket he could find. He was busting out of Camp Unakawaya. They would not find him here in the morning, dead or alive.

First, though, he needed to get one last thing. Working his way to the far end of the castle, he glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then he sneaked past the cabins and sprinted up into the woods beyond.

Help me,
he heard the pretty woman’s plea echo in his head.
Please untie these straps.

Sorry, lady. There was nothing I could do,
he told himself as he leaped over a rotting log.

Help me. Please don’t go.

“I have to, lady,” he answered aloud. “If I don’t go now, I’ll be next on that table.”

He ran on, trying to shake her words out of his head. Just a few hundred more feet up this ridge and he would reach Willett’s cave.

With his lungs on fire, he wiggled inside the old gate. He knew the way so well that he no longer kept the flashlight inside the mouth of the cave. He felt his way through the passage keeping one hand on the wall, then, when his fingers touched a tiny trickle of water, he knelt and crawled to the right. Moments later he stood in Willett’s den. He grabbed the flashlight from behind a rock and turned it on. Everything looked the same—the cans of Coke, the lone photo of Tarheel. He glanced at the photograph then plunged his hand inside the little fissure and pulled out Willett’s disk. If he was taking his one chance to get out of here, he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave this disk behind. If he made it to some town, he would give it to the cops. Maybe it would bring Wurth down and maybe it wouldn’t. All he knew was that he had to give it to somebody, for Willett’s sake.

Stashing the disk in his jacket pocket, he scrambled back into the passageway beyond, then stopped abruptly, suddenly feeling more frightened than he ever had in his entire life. What was wrong with him? He should have tried to help that woman. He should have unstrapped her and tried to sneak outside with her before Wurth got there. His grandfather would have done that. Captain Dempsey would have done that. Even Willett would have tried to do that. Why hadn’t he?

“Because you are a coward,” he admitted miserably, his self-condemnation echoing up into the rank darkness. He thought of Tallent, beating him now most every night, of Wurth abusing him with words, of the other Grunts laughing at his stutter. That was the life of a coward. As bad as that was, though, what he felt now was much worse. To ignore someone begging for your help was beyond cowardice. It was something else, entirely.

“Vileness,” he whispered, the word leaving his mouth so softly, it could have been whispered by the cave itself. “Anybody who would not try to help that woman is vile.”

He shivered in the dampness, remembering the way Upchurch and Rogers looked when he’d seen them that night on the third floor. They were vile. And though his grandfather could probably understand cowardice, the old man would never respect someone vile. Tears stung his eyes. As much as it made him shake inside, he would rather die a coward than be vile, than be one of them.

He crawled back into Willett’s Den and returned the disk to the fissure. Willett’s secret weapon would have to wait. Right now he had to go back to Camp Unakawaya. He had fallen into vileness once in the amphitheater. He now had to prove to himself that he would never do it again.

CHAPTER 34

“If I knew anything, I’d tell you, Dan’l. It ain’t right for a man to do a woman like that.” Mooney Garvin sat down on the log beside Daniel Safer. New Year’s Eve was a big “pullin’ off” day for Mooney, and a cardboard box filled with topped-off Mason jars lay at his booted feet. Digging one of the jars out of the box, he unscrewed the lid and passed a pint of the clear liquid to Safer.

Though Safer really didn’t have time to sit and sip corn liquor, he raised the jar to his lips. He didn’t want to offend Mooney by seeming unappreciative, and there was a raw, cold dampness in this little cove that pierced him to the marrow. He knew from experience how quickly the liquor would take care of that.

He took a small sip. Mooney’s ’shine was so highly proofed, it felt like lighter fluid on his tongue. He swallowed slowly, amazed as always at how smoothly the alcohol slid down his throat. One of the pleasures of his mountain assignments had been to make the acquaintance of Mooney Garvin, coon hunter, gossipmonger, and master distiller. Mooney knew most of what went down in these woods, and most everybody responsible for it. And unlike most other mountain folk, if he felt the cause was right, Mooney would spill whatever beans he had.

“Are you sure you haven’t heard of anything going on?” Safer handed Mooney back his whiskey, grateful for the heat that spread from his gut outward, chasing the chill from his bones.

Mooney took a swig, then a second one. “I heard that Royce Lunsford beat up some Mexican for starin’ at his girlfriend’s titties. Beyond that, I ain’t heard nothing but hound dogs and them Piney Mountain Methodists singing Christmas carols.”

Safer drummed on the log as he regarded the still that Mooney had built into a shallow overhang of a mountain. Covered on three sides by thick limestone walls and at the entrance by a growth of scrubby laurel, the still was invisible to prying eyes. Just like most of the shit going on up here, Safer decided. For the past forty-eight hours, Tuttle and his crew had scoured the surrounding counties for Irene Hannah and Mary Crow and had learned nothing. The cockfighters didn’t know. The klansmen were all excited about some rally in South Carolina. Even the local dopers had looked at them blankly when offered mulligans in exchange for information.

Now Mooney Garvin, the king of the moonshiners and the one man who knew everything afoot in western North Carolina, had nothing to say.

“Whatcha gonna do?” Mooney studied Safer, his pale eyes rheumy with age.

“I don’t know.” A flicker drilled a tree somewhere in the woods. Safer thought of Mary Crow. Where had she gone when she left the airport? What the hell had happened to her?

“I know what I’d do if I was you.” Mooney rubbed his chin whiskers—a cluster of stiff white wires protruding from skin that looked like the leather of Irene Hannah’s saddles.

“What?”

“If I thought that judge lady was up here, I’d get me somebody who knows these woods. You Washington boys rely too much on them computers. You need somebody who’s got woodsy eyes.”

Safer gave a rueful smile. He’d had someone like that, but he’d stupidly dropped her off at the airport four days ago. “So you come with me, then,” he said to Mooney.

“I’m too old and down in my back. You need somebody young and strong.” Mooney nudged his moonshine box with the toe of his boot.

“Who?”

“Most of the old boys I know are either moved away or in jail. There’s supposed to be an Injun feller named Walkingstick who’s right good.”

“Where would I find him?”

“I heard he takes people out from a store over on the Little Tennessee River.” Mooney lifted one bony arm and pointed over the ridge. “Five miles or so west of here, on the county road.”

“You think he’d talk to a federal agent?” asked Safer.

“I don’t know.” Mooney chuckled. “Them Cherokees punch a different clock from the likes of us, if you know what I mean.”

Safer sat there, watching the already gray sky lower until it obscured the tops of the mountains. Finally he stood and gave the old man’s thin shoulder a pat. “I guess I’d better get going, then. Thanks for all your help.”

“You want to take a couple a’ these with you?” Ever anxious to make a buck, Mooney nodded at the cardboard box full of jars. “I’ll sell out pretty quick today,” he warned, “everybody goin’ to them parties tonight.”

“Sure.” Safer wished he could hole up with some corn liquor and just drink away Mary Crow and Judge Hannah and the whole fucking disaster of the past four days. “They might come in handy later on.”

“I’m sorry, Dan’l,” Mooney shook his head as he handed Safer two jars of corn liquor in exchange for a twenty-dollar bill. “I wish I could help you out.”

“I know you do, Mooney.” Safer walked to the truck and stashed Mooney’s liquor under the seat. He turned back and held out his hand. “You take care now, buddy. Have you still got your free pass?”

“Right here!” Mooney withdrew a tattered business card from the pocket of his coveralls. On it was printed Safer’s name and phone number. Mooney looked up at him and grinned. “I ain’t seen any of them ATF boys in a while, but I’ll sure use this if I do.”

“Tell them to call me before they start busting anything up. You want a lift back to your cabin?”

Mooney shook his head. “Keep your ass low, Dan’l,” the old man cautioned as Safer climbed in the truck and started the engine. “And your powder dry.”

“Happy New Year, Mooney.”

The old man stuck the card and the twenty dollars back into his coveralls. Safer had started to bump down the old logging road when he heard Mooney’s distinct mountain holler. “Hold on, Dan’l!”

He stopped as the old man got to his feet, moving as if all his joints had been glued together. He hobbled over to the truck and held on to the door handle for support. “I just thought of somebody you might ought to investigate!”

Safer killed the engine. “Who?”

“Feller named Wurth. One of them Vee-et-nam veterans. Meanest sunuvabitch in six counties. Runs a camp over by old Russell Cave.”

“Okay.” Safer pulled a notepad from the visor. He knew from experience that when Mooney spoke, it was always best to take notes. “You know the name of this camp?”

“Unaka something or other. U-N-A-K-A.” Mooney carefully spelled out the first part of the name. “Injun word. I don’t know what it stand for.”

“So what makes this guy such a bastard?”

“He shot my coon dog Harley in the leg, and he killed Porter Hayes’s Plott hound. He keeps orphans over at that camp of his. Somebody told me he sends ’em out at night to kill strays.”

“Why?”

“Pure cussedness. I told him I’d kill him if I ever caught him on my land again.” The old man hitched up his coveralls as his pale eyes sparked with righteous indignation. “You ask me, any man who’d hurt a dog ought to be horsewhipped in the square.”

Safer nodded in agreement as he closed the notepad. “Thanks, Mooney. I’ll check this guy out.”

Safer left Mooney at his still and drove west on the county road. Walkingstick with the woodsy eyes was the man he needed now. With the big Dodge pickup cruising easily up the potholed road, he shut his window tight against the cold mountain air and scanned the trees for Mary Crow, wondering how she could have disappeared as completely as her friend the judge.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the only store he could find along the Little Tennessee River. A beat-up yellow truck sat in the parking lot, computer boxes on the porch. It was the same store he’d driven Mary to when they came up from Atlanta.

“Son of a bitch!” he cried softly as he turned off his ignition. “Walkingstick must be the old boyfriend.”

Shaking his head, he hurried onto the porch. He’d sent Tuttle to check this joint three days ago. Tuttle had reported three fishermen, a woman sacking groceries, and two young men trying to find the Appalachian Trail. “Sorry, Big Dan,” he’d said. “Our little civilian helper wasn’t there.”

Well, maybe she
wasn’t
here,
Safer thought.
But maybe this Walkingstick knows where she is.
Opening the door, he stepped inside. A slender, dark-haired woman stood with her back toward him. His heart leaped. Mary! She’d sneaked back up here! Of course she would come back to her old boyfriend, back to the place she felt at home.

“Hello,” he said tersely, trying to tamp down his elation. “Long time no see.”

“Excuse me?” The woman turned. His soaring heart plummetted. This woman was not Mary Crow. Her eyes were brown where Mary’s were hazel; her skin, cinnamon to Mary’s golden olive. She wore her hair in front in an Indian style, with small beads and a single white feather. Though she was pretty, her smile did not rearrange his insides the way Mary Crow’s smile did.

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, his cheeks growing warm. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Who are you looking for?” The woman’s dark glance intensified, and he felt as if she could see every female in his life crowding behind him—his daughter Leah taking her first steps; his ex-wife smiling at him under their wedding canopy, then beyond that, the girls he’d dated in high school, his mother kissing his scraped knee.

“A guy named Walkingstick,” he replied, careful that the name Mary Crow didn’t accidentally spill from his lips.

“Sorry.” The woman’s mouth curled down. “Jonathan’s not here. He took a group out fishing yesterday.”

“Will he be back any time soon?” Safer stepped forward.

“I’m not sure.” The woman folded her arms under her breasts and looked at him warily.

“I see.” Safer stood there, trying to decide what to do. As the woman hopped up on a stool behind the cash register, he looked around the store. Curved bows hung from the ceiling, while old slop jars were stashed high on one shelf. He strolled to the magazine racks in the front corner of the store. According to all the pages he’d read about Mary Crow, she’d come home from school to find her mother raped and strangled, probably lying very close to where he now stood. What would such a thing do to a girl just eighteen? How would horror that unthinkable twist her young soul? He thought of his Leah, and had to close his eyes. He turned back to the counter. A big poster caught his attention.

“What’s REPIC?”

“Red People In Congress,” the woman explained, not bothering to conceal her pride. “We’re working to amend the Constitution and get all Native American tribes a seat in the House of Representatives.”

REPIC. Mentally he ran through the file of fringe political groups Krebbs had pulled off the computer. He’d never heard of them; but nobody had heard of them all. He looked at this pretty Indian woman more carefully. Could she be involved in the killing of federal judges?

She seemed to sense his quickening interest. “Did you know that the Eastern Band of the Cherokees have served in the Army since 1860 and have paid federal income taxes from their inception, but were only granted the right to vote in 1946?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know that.” He studied her face, noted her quick, curious eyes. “Do you and Walkingstick work for this group?”

“Actually, I’m the REPIC organizer here,” she answered proudly. “I’m Ruth Moon. From Tahlequah, Oklahoma.”

“Mark Danielson,” he told her, covering this lie with a disarming grin. “Did you come east just to drum up support for REPIC?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m a Legend Teller. I came here to collect stories of the Eastern Tribe.”

Safer frowned. The stories of his people would be the same to a Jew in Toledo, Ohio, as they would to a Jew in Toledo, Spain. “I don’t understand. Why are they different?”

“Oral histories change. After we settled out west, our stories altered,” Ruth explained. “We come back east to learn the oldest, purest forms of our legends.”

“I see.” Safer did not take his eyes from her. Curious, he thought. A political activist freely admitting the making up of stories.

Ruth held out a clipboard. “Would you like to sign our REPIC petition and make a donation?”

“Sure.” Safer stepped up to the counter. Up close, as she handed him a blue Bic pen, he noticed she had muscular hands with short-cut nails. A small tattoo of some Indian symbol dotted the inside of her left wrist and he could smell a sage-like aroma on her skin.
MARK DANIELSON,
he printed on the sheet, listing his address as Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Thanks, Mark,” she said, reading his name as he dropped a five-dollar bill into her mayonnaise jar.

“My pleasure.” Smiling, he looked around the store once more. “Well, I guess since Walkingstick isn’t here, I’ll be on my way.”

“You wanted to book him for a fishing trip, didn’t you?” Ruth Moon spoke as if she already knew his answer.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that kind of an odd way to spend New Year’s Eve?”

Safer let his shoulders sag and looked at the floor. In a way he hated to do this, but he had a hunch this Ruth Moon might be useful, somewhere down the line. “My wife left me a couple of weeks ago,” he lied, keeping his voice low, trying to sound sad. “I needed to get out of town.”

“Oh,” Ruth murmured, instantly sympathetic. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you two fish together? Your wife and you, I mean.”

“No.” Safer gave her a pained smile. “Terry liked to shop, I like the outdoors. The more I thought about spending New Year’s alone in Charlotte, the better going fishing sounded. Get away from everything, you know?”

“Right.” Ruth nodded knowingly. “Gosh, I wish I could tell you exactly when Jonathan will be back, but I just don’t know. He said he’d be here for New Year’s, though.”

Safer reached in his pocket and jingled his keys. “Don’t worry about it. I might try my luck at the little river across the road, and stop back later in the afternoon. Maybe I can book him for tomorrow.”

“That sounds good,” she replied warmly. “Start out the New Year with some fun.”

“Right.” He smiled at her, then turned toward the door. “I may see you a little later, then.”

“Okay. We’re open till seven.”

With a final glance at the corner where Martha Crow died, he let himself outside and hurried down the steps to his truck, not bothering to look back, not seeing the wistful shake of Ruth Moon’s head as she thought how sad and hopeless love is, whatever side of it you’re on.