Necessary Evil (32 page)

The lessons we're taught as children must be learned again in hard times.

—Tilok proverb

K
ier and Doyle backtracked Kier's trail toward Jessie. When they reached the edge of the forest next to the pasture, Kier stopped. Using a small light, he examined the tracks in the earth near a puddle. All of the imprints were made by large boots. After proceeding another fifty yards, he once again examined the ground. He found a track—Jessie's boot—and a print immediately behind hers. Kier recognized it as that of the lone stalker on the mountain. A few yards farther Kier could see that Jessie had been scuffing.

The look on Kier's face told Doyle what he needed to know.

"He found her."

Kier nodded, his hatred of Tillman and fear for Jessie displacing everything else.

"What's your name again?" Kier asked, now able to see the man's face clearly for the first time. He was square jawed, with handsome Anglo features dominated by bushy red eyebrows and long, neat sideburns.

"I'm Quartz on the radio. The men know me by Doyle."

"Okay, Doyle, it looks like he's taking her to the house. I'd guess if we wait, we'll hear from him over the radio. If we follow them, we'll walk into a trap."

At that moment, Doyle's radio crackled. "Base to Iron. Do you copy?"

"That's the guy you killed back there. I'd better answer." Kier uncuffed him. "Base, this is Quartz. Iron went to check on some suspicious movement."

"This is base. Why can't he tell us that?"

"Don't know. Last I knew he was on his hands and knees in the bushes."

"It sounds like you better check it out. Find out for sure. Everybody else stay put and keep your eyes glued."

The man from base then completed a roll call. Kier counted twenty responses, which meant that at least that many ringed the house.

As the roll call ended, Kier's radio, set to a different channel, came on. "Dr. Kier, do you copy?"

"Tillman?" Kier asked Doyle.

"The very same."

"I hear you."

"I've got your friend Jessie. I think it's time we talked."

"Tell him yes," Doyle whispered. "We'll go in and see what he has in mind. Before we go, you've got to tell me where the sixth volume is."

Kier's mind whirled.

"Well?" Tillman persisted.

No option seemed good. Gambling everything on Doyle and his scheme didn't seem wise. On the other hand, it was direct, simple. He had no better plan. And stalling while his family, his whole tribe, could be infected with Tillman's virus made no sense. Jessie was in the most immediate danger. This would get him in the house, near her.

"Listen, Dr. Kier, I wasn't kidding. I've got your mother, your sisters, the whole damn tribe. I've got them. Every one of them has viruses inside them. They'll be in a world of hurt within a week or so. I've put a little goody in the Tilok reservoir that raises their susceptibility to this disease like a tinder-dry forest feeds a fire. I've got the only stuff that'll kill the virus. Come and talk to me, or your tribe and your girlfriend here die."

"Okay," Kier finally replied and ended the transmission.

"Where's the volume?" Doyle asked again.

"Not yet."

Claudie's kitchen had been turned into a command center. Maps were spread around, their corners held in place by cups of stale coffee and butcher knives. Judging from the glass filled with cigarette butts and ash, somebody was a heavy smoker. Probably they were nervous. The only sound in the place was the creaking of the hot metal of the stove.

Tillman's arms were folded across his chest, his face a mask of arrogant confidence. Coldness glistened in his dark eyes. The man had a hard angularity that came from a lean, muscled body without an ounce of rounding flab. Four men in addition to Tillman stood by. They all wore taut faces and leveled guns at Kier, mindful of their fallen comrades. At first Kier did not see Jessie, but as he moved into the kitchen, his eye found the corner of the living room where she sat handcuffed and tied to a kitchen chair. He winced at the lines of dried blood on her swollen face.

He took two steps toward Tillman, a low moan escaping his lips. "Hold it!" Tillman shouted, holding up his hand. The guns in four hands quivered with tension.''One more step and you're dead."

Kier stopped, his gaze returning to Jessie. Around her torso were bands of heavy plastic tape confining her belly and upper arms. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. Each calf was fastened to a chair leg. She was totally immobilized, unable to do no more than blink her eyes in frustration.

Only Tillman appeared relaxed, leaning against a countertop with his gun holstered. Kier had surrendered his pistols to Doyle before entering. For appearances, Doyle held a gun fixed on Kier's back. Of course, it was a real gun, it was loaded, and it could just as well be used for killing as for appearances. Kier wondered if he had made the right choice.

"So, Dr. Kier Wintripp, tracker and survivalist extraordinaire, special deputy sheriff on occasion, youth leader, martial arts expert, and country vet—not to mention wine connoisseur—how nice of you to come and see us." Tillman's face broke in a self-satisfied smile. "Tell me, Doyle, could you have gotten him in here with the FBI story if I didn't have little Miss Muffet here?"

Kier reeled at Tillman's words, forcing himself not to turn and stare at Doyle. So it had all been part of the game.

"Frankly, I doubt it. He's a mistrustful bloke. Doesn't have much confidence in the government,'' Doyle replied. Kier could hear him smile.

''Well, we have that in common, Kier and I." Tillman pushed off the counter and moved to Jessie. "So tell me about the missing volume and the footprints." Tillman pulled a thin, black knife from his pocket. "I'm listening."

"Not much to tell. There was one set of tracks leaving the plane, and I found a hole big enough for one missing volume in the metal box."

Tillman unfolded the blade and began scraping the underside of his nails. "Did someone come from the plane?"

"I saw no tracks leading into the area, only a set of tracks leaving."

"You're a tracker. You know a lot more."

It was true. It hit him like a bolt from the blue. Kier
did
know more. Yet until this moment even he had been unable to solve the puzzle.

"It was a man who swaggers, makes a lot of noise. Puts his heel down heavy, a lot of snap, crackle, and pop. Except for once," Kier said. "One time he took a stalker's stride, with straight feet, one almost in front of the other. The two or three steps that followed were an Indian's walk. The rest was all city man. He was small and traveled fast. He couldn't find natural breaks in the forest. He just bulled his way through. Seemed headed in a lost man's circle that would have intersected with the county road. No blood in the track, but he did walk with a slight drag like he was hurt."

"Old man or young?"

"I can't always tell the age of a man by his track, but in this case it was an old man who wanted to make fools of us all. You will never find the book by yourself." Kier said it with the utmost conviction.

"What do you mean?"

"This man who has your book is the only living Spirit Walker of the Tilok tribe. He lives in the mountains. You will not find him unless he wants you to find him."

"And why would this old man be at the crash site minutes after the plane hit the ground?"

"I don't know if I can give you an explanation that would make sense to a white man."

"Try me."

"The old man believes in omens. Think of it as the past and the future meeting at a point in time and space with a silent witness."

Tillman snorted.

Kier looked at the ceiling before he continued. "Yeah, well, if you're small-minded like the rest of us, consider that you left an elephant-size trail in his mountains. I saw your tire tracks going up by the old Murdock place. Don't think he would miss them, or the details of your camp, or your number, or the maps you studied, or the guns you carried, or your whispering in the night, or the food you ate, or the spoor you left. If you camped near Murdock's, then you were within three miles of the crash site. It would only take a tiny bit of intuition, or a single crow's head for clever luck, for him to be at the crash site if he was already on the mountain, watching you. And he surely was. You were like a circus in his living room."

"He must have a place where he goes."

"He goes where the wind blows him. His living room is Iron Mountain on this side; his bedroom in the summer its north shoulder; his kitchen in the summer the north face; his playroom the backside; his backyard the Wintoon wilderness; and his exercise area the Marble Mountains. His church is the sky, where they say he walks if he becomes tired of the earth. So you tell me—where would he go with your horror?"

"Could you track him?"

''You haven't been listening.'' Kier allowed a look of amusement to cross his face. "And why would I want to?"

"Because of the little extras I will do to your woman if you don't. Because I'll kill your tribe."

Kier imagined Tillman's words floating over a road map of unspeakable things, all of them etched in the sickness of his mind. "If he doesn't want to be found, I can't track him. But I'm the best hope you've got."

"Maybe he won't resist being found by you."

"How will he know I'm the one who'll come? I expect he'll assume there's a whole army of rednecks after him."

Tillman unholstered his gun and pointed it at Kier. He had one of his men put handcuffs on him. "Leave us alone," he said to his men, who then began filing out. "You too, Doyle," he added when Doyle hung back.

After they left, Tillman spoke in a whisper. "I'll kill your damned tribe with the RA-4TVM virus. I've already infected dozens."

"How could you have done that?"

Tillman looked like he was thinking, perhaps reconsidering his disclosure.

"Remember the free cholesterol test at the fair?"

Willow had taken the test, Kier recalled distantly.

"Kissing, spitting on the food enough, living in real close proximity, it'll spread. Not well, but it spreads. Then we dosed the water here with a catalyst."

"Were you going to cure it?"

"Oh, sure. I mean, we aim to please. In the beginning you can stop it with the antivirus and a vaccine. Later it takes the addition of a special little protein molecule that clogs up the host cells so the virus can't dock. We also planned to neutralize the catalyst we put in the water. If we wait until the little bastards have taken root, so to speak, we've got to kill most of them with the usual, then the rest of them with a very powerful drug that kills the bone marrow. If we wait long, to save your friends we'd have to do a bone marrow transplant or else increase the natural immunity in each individual. So you don't want to dally. We can fix it, but if we don't, your tribe will die slowly. If we continue the test, and you do as we say, we'll call it the flu at the clinic and treat everybody before it gets serious. But if I don't get the sixth volume, I won't bother stopping the disease. I swear to you, Kier, if you don't find it, a third of your people will die in the near term. And among that third will be your mother and your sisters. It will go down as a fluke of nature."

"The CDC is gonna ask a lot of questions about where the virus came from."

"We've got that covered. It's in the mink at the mink farm owned by the Grove family. It mutated slightly and crossed over to people."

"Look, I can't find the old man if he doesn't want to be found. Especially in a day or two."

"I don't care about your theories or Spirit Walkers or any of that stuff. Your girlfriend stays. You go. If you aren't back in twenty-four hours with Volumes Five and Six— No. Better yet, you radio every hour and give me a report. If I like the report, well, nothing happens. If I don't like it, we start cutting little pieces off little Miss Muffet. First toes, then fingers, then"—he reached and cupped his own ear—"imagine what she'd look like without ears. Then maybe we'll de-lip her." Tillman smiled again. "We'll leave kind of a mewling hole for a mouth—like a newborn. Then we'll take some more interesting things. Maybe we won't do you a favor and kill her. Maybe we'll let you keep what's left."

"I get the books, you'll kill us anyway."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something. Smart Indian like you . . . some way to trade." Tillman paused, placed his hands behind his back, and stared out the kitchen window. "I'm tired of this. Either leave and get me the book or kiss the Tiloks good-bye and I'll start the surgery on your girlfriend."

Kier turned toward the door after one last glance at Jessie. The pain of walking away without her was a great, aching wave inside him. He held up the cuffs to Doyle, who had the key.

"I'd hurry, mate," Doyle said with a smile.

Kier knew at that moment that he would kill him. As he opened the door, he looked Doyle square in the eye. Doyle winked almost imperceptibly.

Only the chill of the air and the gray of dawn tickling the eastern sky were good. Never had he felt so lost. Jessie was in an armed camp with a man who wanted to dismember her. His family and tribe were in the process of dying. Kier growled his desperation. No time to wonder about the cold-steel edges of Tillman's heart or the brutish thing that passed for his mind. He needed his grandfather. Where to begin? Where on the mountain would Grandfather hide? What other mountain might he choose?