Drumming her fingers on the counter, she waited. A blurred image finally appeared on the screen. As she realized what it was, she felt as if she’d been flash-frozen from the inside out.
A picture of Lily Walkingstick swam into focus on the larger screen. But not the happy, healthy Lily she’d held in her arms six weeks ago. This Lily looked as if she’d been left out for wolves. She lay naked on her back, crying, tears rolling from tightly closed eyes. Her little hands were balled into fists and her feet looked blurred, as if she were trying to kick her kidnapper away even as the photo was snapped. She lay behind some kind of iron fence at the base of a pile of rocks. What Mary’s eyes could not get past were the words that blazed across the bottom of the picture. Mary, we need you. Jonathan.
“Holy shit!” Gabe Benge leaned so close, she could feel his breath on the top of her head. “That’s Nancy Ward’s grave!”
“Nancy who?”
“Nancy Ward. You know, Chief Attakullakulla’s niece. The ghighau.”
Ghighau. Most Honored Woman, Mary translated, her Cherokee coming back with painful slowness as she tried to recall her history. Nancy Ward had been a Cherokee woman who’d counseled peace with the whites, way back in the eighteenth century, when North Carolina still belonged to George III. But what had that to do with Lily? And who had sent this picture to her?
“Where is this grave?” she asked Benge urgently.
“North of Chattanooga. I take my undergraduate classes to dig along the river there. It’s mostly dug out, but it’s a great place to learn technique.”
Suddenly he wheeled her chair around, his eyes snapping with a dark fire. “Look, if the sheriff guessed right about you and Walkingstick, then you need to come clean right now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She met his hard look with one of her own.
“I watched you last night. You defended Jonathan Walkingstick like someone who was much more than a friend.”
“At one time we were more than friends, Mr. Benge. That is no longer the case.”
“Then why is this e-mail addressed to you?”
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that Jonathan Walkingstick would not kidnap his own child. Nor would I be involved with any man who could.”
For an eternity Benge’s eyes bored into hers, then he nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m printing two copies of this.” She turned back to the computer. “One for Ruth and one for Dula. The Feds can track these address lines and figure out where this was sent from.”
Gabe gave the boy five more bucks for two prints of the photo, then they left the café, only to find that in the course of a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, the Tennessee National Guard had invaded the town. Soldiers in combat gear patrolled the streets, while hulking troop carriers squatted next to the curbs. As they picked their way through the tangled traffic, Mary felt as if she’d been dropped by mistake into someone else’s nightmare. She was certain Jonathan would never kidnap Lily, however furious he might be with Ruth. But who else could have sent her that message with his name at the bottom? Who else could both link her with Lily and Jonathan and access her through the Deckard County server?
And then, as she and Gabe Benge crossed Main Street, she realized exactly who could. Stump Logan. Logan knew her, he knew Jonathan, and as a former sheriff, he knew how to reach her through the back door, so to speak. Logan could have found out about Lily easily. No doubt he still had pals in Pisgah County who told him everything that was going on.
Stop it, she scolded herself. Logan is dead. The Atlanta cops say so, the FBI says so, Dr. Bittner says so. It can’t be Stump Logan. It must be Dwayne Pugh.
“I think I know who might have done this,” she said, as if giving voice to the words might increase their veracity.
Gabe Benge scrambled to avoid a guardsman lugging a huge bottle of water. “Who?”
“Dwayne Pugh. A man I’m currently prosecuting for child pornography.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s been locked up in the Deckard County jail for months. We’re in the middle of trial right now.”
Benge frowned. “If Pugh’s locked up in an Atlanta jail, how could he have stolen Ruth’s baby?”
“He’s got brains and money and friends. The kiddie pornographers are like a brotherhood of roaches.’’
“Okay. Say this Pugh did this. What do we do?”
“Here.” Mary handed one of the prints to him. “Take this over to Dula. Tell him he needs to get the Feds tracing this. I’ll give this one to Ruth. As hard as this is to look at, at least she can see that Lily’s still alive.”
They pushed through the crowded sidewalk. When they reached the sheriff’s parking lot, Gabe headed into his office while Mary hurried to the van. She looked in the door to find Clarinda sitting cross-legged on the sofa, filing her nails, a fashion magazine open on her lap.
Mary asked her, “Have you gotten in touch with Jonathan yet?”
“Nope.”
“Where’s Ruth?”
“Putting up posters.” Clarinda looked up from her nails as if Mary had interrupted something vital to her existence. “Did you find out anything?”
“A little,” Mary replied. “I really need to talk to Ruth.”
“Here I am,” came a voice over her shoulder. Mary turned. Ruth hurried toward her, clutching her last copy of Puckett’s drawing and a roll of masking tape. “I’ve been putting these up all over town. Has something happened?”
“Kind of. Someone sent me this through my office e-mail.”
“Oh, my God!” Ruth cried. “It’s Lily!” She covered her face with the picture, as if needing to inhale the image, then drew back and studied it intently. “But where is she?” she asked, just be ginning to fully comprehend the horror of the image. “And why did they take off all her clothes?”
“And what does ‘Mary, we need you, Jonathan’ mean?” Clarinda’s query dripped with suspicion.
Mary put a hand on Ruth’s arm. “Honey, I’m in the middle of prosecuting a child pornographer named Pugh. He’s wealthy and clever and mean.” She winced as she saw the new hope in Ruth’s face begin to flicker and die. “I think Pugh could have had Lily kidnapped and some how have put me together with Jonathan.”
“Oh, God. My poor little girl!”
“Ruth, as awful as this is, try to see the positive side of it.”
“Like what?” huffed Clarinda. “That her kid’s been snatched by some perv who takes pictures of her naked? That doesn’t sound so positive to me.”
“Lily’s alive.” Mary ignored Clarinda and tried to connect with Ruth’s stricken eyes. “She’s not lying dead somewhere. I’ve got some leverage here, now. Because of this, I can get the Atlanta cops on board.”
Gabe Benge walked up. Reading his tight lipped frown, she asked, “You couldn’t find Dula, could you?”
“The National Guard has commandeered his office. I left a message with one of his deputies to tell him to come see Mrs. Walkingstick immediately.” He brushed past the three women and stepped into the van. A few moments later he came back out, a thick red book in his hand. He handed it to Mary. “Doesn’t this photo look a lot like where the baby is lying?”
The women clustered around him. The grave in the e-mailed photo did look startlingly similar to the one on the printed page. A pyramid of rounded stones, surrounded by an iron picket fence. In the middle of the stones in Gabe’s photo was a plaque erected by the DAR, memorializing the site of Nancy Ward’s grave.
Ruth looked at Gabe. “Is this the Nancy Ward grave?”
He nodded. “It’s just north of Chattanooga.”
“Then let’s go!” she cried. “Chattanooga isn’t far—”
“Hang on Ruth, I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do.”
“Why not? If Lily’s there…”
“Ruth, we don’t know when this picture was taken. Lily’s probably not there anymore. And if you leave Dula’s jurisdiction now, he’ll be even more certain this kidnapping is some kind of domestic squabble between you and Jonathan and he’ll drop the search like yesterday’s news. As long as you stay in his county, he’s got an open case on the books. He’ll have to work it.”
“So we just have to sit here?” Clarinda stuck out her lower lip.
“No,” said Mary. “Go park yourselves in the Sheriff’s office. Convince Dula that Jonathan had nothing to do with this. If you don’t get to talk to him within the next hour, call the FBI yourself.”
“I can do that?” asked Ruth.
“Yes, you can. The Feds may opt not to get involved at this time, but at least you will have lodged a formal complaint.”
“What are you going to do?” demanded Clarinda suspiciously.
“First I’m going to call Atlanta, then I’m going to go pay my respects to Nancy Ward, the Most Honored Woman of the Cherokees.”
Eighteen
WHILE GABE AND Clarinda helped Ruth set up the camper, Mary walked beneath the bright yellow trees. She still could not imagine how Dwayne Pugh could have put her, Lily, and Jonathan together, but he had to have done it. There was simply no one else. No one alive and walking the earth, anyway. She needed to have Pugh questioned, and questioned hard. She could call Sanford and Maestra, the two vice detectives who’d worked the case, but that would go in the official log books. If it got back to Virginia Kwan that Mary was having her client interrogated about a kidnapping that occurred two hundred miles away in Tennessee, Kwan would have one of her famed fire-breathing dragon fits. Mott would find out and probably declare Mary mentally unfit to prosecute anybody. Until she could tie Pugh’s threats to the missing Lily, she needed to proceed quietly. Inadvertently she shivered. She knew exactly who could help her.
She pressed one of the preprogrammed numbers on her cell phone. The phone rang twice, then a man answered.
“Justice Center gym.”
“Mike Czarnowski, please.”
“Hang on.”
She waited, listening to the muffled shouts of what sounded like a fairly rowdy basketball game. Then a male voice came on the line.
“Czarnowski.’’
‘’Mike? This is Mary Crow.’’
“Hey, Killer.” The gruff voice softened instantly. “You coming down this afternoon?”
“Not today, Mike.”
“So what’s up?”
“Mike, I need a favor.”
“You name it.”
“Remember Dwayne Pugh?”
“That asswipe you’re prosecuting?”
“Exactly. Look, Mike, I’ve got a situation here. I’m up in Tennessee. Someone abducted the baby of some friends of mine.”
Czarnowski gave a low whistle. “Stole a baby? Jeez, Mary.”
“Listen, I know this sounds paranoid as hell, but I’m wondering if Pugh set this up somehow.”
“From jail?” She could hear the same incredulity in Mike’s voice that she’d heard earlier in Benge’s.
“He could do it.”
“You want me to find out?”
Mary hesitated. Never had she thought she would ask for such a thing, yet never had she dreamed anyone would steal little Lily Walkingstick. It was time to take the gloves off and play outside the rules. “Yes, Mike. I do.”
“Give me some particulars.”
“The victim’s a three-month-old Cherokee female. Black hair, brown eyes, light tan complexion.” My godchild, she thought. The closest thing to family I’ve got left. “Her name is Lily Walkingstick. She was abducted from the Hillbilly Heaven campsite in Tremont, Tennessee, sometime Saturday afternoon. Sheriff’s got an APB out in Tennessee and Carolina.”
“Feds involved?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Mary replied. “Hopefully, they soon will be.”
“Okay, Killer. Don’t worry. I’ll find out something.”
Mary switched off the phone. She knew cops beat confessions out of people every day, but she’d never dreamed she’d call and order one up like a take-out pizza. Cracked ribs and bruised kidneys, please, but for God’s sake, no black eyes!
But there was nothing she could do about that now. She rejoined Gabe Benge back at his van, and minutes later they were edging into the line of traffic heading west.
“So how far away is Nancy Ward’s grave?” she asked him.
“A couple of hours,” he replied. “Take a nap, if you want. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay.” She didn’t want to nap; a short sleep would only make the great mound of fatigue inside her heavier to bear. Still, as the bright autumn landscape flashed by, Gabe’s invitation began working like a subliminal suggestion, and she found her eyelids drooping. Sitting up straighter in the seat, she turned her attention to him.
“So how come you know so much about Cherokee history?”
He shrugged. “My dad got me interested when I was a kid.”
“Really? Is your father into Indian lore, too?”
He glanced at her. “You don’t know the villainous name of Benge?”
She shook her head.
“I’m a descendant of Bob Benge. He was a Cherokee outlaw who terrorized the pioneers in southwest Virginia.”
“Wow. FBI criminal, huh?”
“FBI?”
“Full-blood Indian.”
He chuckled. “He was. I’m not. Benge’s descendants intermarried with the Scotch-Irish Virginians pretty fast. I’m a half-breed, at best.”
“Join the club.”
“You’re not full-blood?”
“My mom grew up in Snowbird, my dad was from Atlanta.”
“Zalagish hewonishgi?” he asked eagerly.
Hearing the soft, musical speech of her childhood, Mary smiled “Some. Gado dejado? Hadlu hinel?”
“I can’t believe I’ve finally found somebody to speak Kituwah with!” He grinned, then remembered to answer her question. “Gabriel Fergus Benge. University of Tennessee, most years.”
“Most years?”“
“This year I’m on sabbatical. I had planned to go dig up mummies in Peru.”
“And now?”
His smile faded. “I don’t know Ruth Moon well, but I’m the one who persuaded her to get involved in this rally. I’m not leaving until her daughter’s been found.”
Mary studied him, impressed with the way he shouldered that responsibility. Though she’d never seen or heard of Gabriel Benge until last night, something about him felt comfortably familiar, as if they were old friends resuming a long-interrupted conversation without a beat of hesitation. Pondering that, she leaned back and turned her gaze out the window. A herd of Black Angus cows dotted a green hillside like black ink drops spilled from a pen. Me, Lily, and Jonathan, she wondered. How could Pugh have tied us together?
“Mary?“
She jumped. “What?” she croaked, for an instant unable to place herself. Time and distance seemed to have passed without her notice.
“We’re here.”
She looked out the window. The van had stopped in a paved parking lot at the base of a hill. A Tennessee state historical marker rose directly in front of them. Slowly it all came back to her. Gabe Benge was driving her to Nancy Ward’s grave, to look for Lily. Somewhere between the Black Angus cattle and here, she’d fallen asleep.
“Okay,” she said, willing the muzziness out of her brain. “Let’s go look around.”
They climbed out of the truck. On one side of the lot, a dirt path led to a canoe launch on the Ocoee River. On the other side, a paved, landscaped pathway curved around a small hill. They walked up the hill, looking for anything that might indicat
e Lily had been there. Yellow chrysanthemums bloomed tightly on either side of the trail, the grass grew to a sedate half inch, and someone had swept the walk free of dead leaves. It was the cleanest public park Mary had ever visited, but there was no sign of Lily. As they neared the hilltop, she saw a mound of stones surrounded by a tall iron fence. Gabe pulled the photograph from his jacket.
“This looks like the place. The kidnapper must have jumped that fence, set the baby down at the base of the grave, and snapped the photo. Judging by the shadows, I’d say they did it early this morning.”
Mary eyed the fence. It stood well above her head, the iron spikes sharp and pointed. “There must be at least two kidnappers, then. Nobody could jump that fence with a baby in their arms.”
Gabe nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”
They walked clockwise around the fence, which was studded with various items people had left to honor Nancy Ward. Bedraggled eagle feathers dangled in the breeze, mixed in with faded dream-catchers and scraps of bright red yarn. As they circled the enclosure they found a mud-encrusted Lookout Valley High School ring from the class of ’99, an empty champagne bottle, an upturned horseshoe spray-painted gold. Nothing, though, remotely to do with either Lily or her. If Pugh had left some clue here to taunt her, she and Gabe were both missing it.
A hundred yards away, across the highway, stood the beginnings of a new subdivision. The main road looked like a deep orange scar in the earth, and three houses rose in various stages of completion. Tomorrow, construction workers would return and resume their work on the site.
Today, Sunday, the subdivision looked as deserted as this grave.
“Nobody would have been working over there this morning,” she told Gabe Benge. “Nobody would have seen anything going on up here.” Suddenly she felt the frustration of cops. By the time she got cases, most of the loose ends had been tied up. Out here, in the world beyond the Deckard County Courthouse, trails went cold fast.
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 13
