“Lieutenant Benge,” she called softly. “Rise and shine.”
“What?” He sat up, instantly alert but sleepy eyed. “What did you say?”
“I said wake up,” she repeated, embarrassed that he’d found her standing so close to him.
“You must have seen my photos.” He yawned. “Nobody’s called me ‘Lieutenant’ in years.”
“When were you in the Marines?”
“Right after undergraduate school.”
“Why were you in the Marines? Did they need combat-ready archaeologists?”
“It’s a family thing,” he replied through another yawn. “My dad and my granddad were both Marines.” He chuckled. “I think we’re subconsciously trying to compensate for being the progeny of outlaw Bob. I keep a pistol over the kitchen sink.”
“You’ve got a gun in here?” For some reason, Mary was surprised.
“An old Glock nine.” He yawned again and smiled. “In case I’m ever attacked by murderous archaeologists.”
Making no mention of his wife, he pushed his blanket off and stood up. She wondered, for an instant, if she was going to see him nude, but he’d slept in baggy white boxer shorts. As he walked to the bathroom she watched the muscles in his back flex, then turned hastily away, lest he catch her frank appraisal of his body.
“Want some coffee?” he asked.
“If you’ve got some to make,” she replied.
“That I do,” he answered cheerfully, stepping across the van to the minuscule galley. “Coming right up, ma’am.”
Mary folded up his blanket. As the scent of coffee began to warm the air, she gazed at the lopsided gravestones outside and wondered about the Cherokees who’d been driven through here, so many years ago. They’d stopped to bury someone in this churchyard, according to Gabe. Had it been a child?
She hoped not, longing to rewrite history into something more palatable. She hoped it had been someone old, someone who would have died soon anyway. But the book said most who died on the 1838 march were children. And Lily now faced the same fate…Her cell phone beeped. She grabbed it, her heart beating like a drum.
“Mary?” A familiar voice crackled through the phone. Danika. “Have you found the baby yet?”
“No, Danika, we haven’t. We’re following a trail of sorts, in Tennessee.”
“Well, listen. Virginia Kwan just called. They want to plead.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Kwan says if you’ll drop kidnapping, child endangerment, and lewd acts with a minor, they’ll cop to one count of kiddie porn.”
“Thank God!” Mary wanted to weep with joy. One thing, at least, had worked out. Over the long weekend, little Jasmine’s terror had worked its magic. Virginia Kwan knew the jury was ready to hang everything on Pugh, and had advised him to make a deal.
“Should I take it?” Pressed Danika. “And call Mott in for his slam-dunk?”
Probably, Mary thought. That would certainly make Mott’s day. But why let him have it? Mott had done nothing but whine about how important this case was while she and Danika had put in the long, hard hours—why not let Danika close it? A Bankhead girl bringing justice to people who were usually given the short end of the law. Winning this case would be a nice feather in Danika’s cap. For Mott, it would simply be another photo op.
“If they’ll agree to serve the sentence in state prison, you take it and you close it, Danika,” Mary said firmly. “But it’s twenty years for Pugh. In general population, not some federal pen.”
“Those Bankhead folks will want him drawn and quartered.”
“Talk to them in my office, without any reporters. Explain that Pugh won’t last six months in general pop. Someone will put a shank between his shoulder blades before he gets his jumpsuit zipped.”
“Mott isn’t going to like this,” warned Danika.
“Just tell him you followed my orders,” replied Mary steadily.
“Okay…but,” Danika sounded worried.
“Congratulations, Danika. You’ve just become one of the few who’ve beaten Virginia Kwan.”
“Everything okay?” Gabe asked as she disconnected from the phone call.
Mary took the coffee he offered. “For once. My kiddie pornographer wants to plead.”
“Hey, congratulations.” Gabe grabbed his jacket and retrieved the latest photo they’d received of Lily Walkingstick. “Now let’s go see if they did take this picture here.”
Gulping her coffee, she followed him outside. The morning sky hung wispy-gossamer fingers of mist plucked at the earth. They walked past the neat red brick building of the Shellsford Baptist Church, deserted on a Monday morning, and entered the cemetery behind it. The first rank of headstones consisted of the plain granite markers favored by the twentieth-century dead. Behind those rose the taller, more elaborate Victorian monuments, while beyond those, poking up from a thick carpet of fallen leaves, a dozen stubby, worn-down stones marked the graves of the early pioneers.
They threaded their way toward them. Two centuries of wind and weather had worn the in inscriptions down to runes—almost legible, but not quite. Nonetheless, they searched each ancient headstone, deciphering part of a name here, half a date there. Finally, in the farthest corner of the cemetery, they found what they sought: a tombstone with a carved lamb resting atop the marker. Mary held up the print of the .jpg file. They matched perfectly. Not so very long ago, Lily Walkingstick had lain in the shadow of this stone.
“Two for two,” she murmured, recalling the sad pages she’d read last night. The Trail of Tears indeed. She brushed away a leaf that had fallen on the old marker. “Damn. What does it mean?”
“Beats me.” Gabe had just begun to compare the first print of Lily—the one taken at Nancy Ward’s grave—with the one taken here, when Mary’s cell phone shattered the silence of the cemetery.
She pulled it from her pocket. To her great relief there were no new e-mails, just an old fashioned phone call. Maybe it was Chip Clifford, with news of Logan. She held it to her ear and said, “Hello?”
“Mary? Danika again.”
“Hey, Danika. What did you guys work out?”
“The good news is that we’ve basically got a deal. Kwan insisted that Pugh be given the possibility of parole, and I said the state would recommend it.”
“Okay,” said Mary. “Then the bad news must be that Jasmine’s parents are pissed?”
“No, Mary. It’s a whole lot worse than that.”
Danika sounded as if she might cry.
“What, then?” Mary couldn’t imagine Virginia Kwan putting up a stink, since the offer to settle had come from her side of the table.
“It’s Mott.”
Mary laughed. “Didn’t get his picture in the paper, huh? Don’t worry, he’ll get over it.”
“Mary, he just gathered us all together in his office, then sent out an official memo. As of ten minutes ago, you are no longer associated with the Deckard County Department of Justice. Mary—Mott fired you.”
Twenty-two
STUMP LOGAN’S HEADACHE burst into full bloom on Highway 70, just east of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The baby had pitched such a fit after he’d snapped her last picture that he’d finally given up driving and pulled up at a Waffle House. Sugar and caffeine sometimes helped his head, and the Waffle House served plenty of both. He parked the van, commanded Ruperta to watch the baby, and with Paz in tow, walked in and sat at the counter.
“Coffee?” asked a blonde waitress with a shiner going purple on her left eye.
Logan nodded. “Two. Black.”
She plunked down two cups in front of them, then moved on to another customer. For late Monday morning, the Waffle House was doing a brisk business. Truckers, mostly, and three men in brown uniforms who looked like shift workers hulked over their plates, shoveling food in their mo
uths.
After cooling his coffee with some milk, Logan pulled a bottle of extra-strength Excedrin from his pocket. He shook four tablets out and washed them down with the coffee. Though the combination would make his heart race like a hamster on a wheel, it would be worth it if it dammed up the sick river that raged through his head.
“What can I get for you fellas?” The blonde with the black eye returned, order pad in hand.
“We’ll have scrambled eggs, sausage, and grits,” Stump told her, ordering for Paz. “With another order of the same to go. And add a couple of waffles to mine.”
“You got it.”
She freshened their coffee and yelled out their order to the cook. Trying to keep his head as motionless as he could, Stump sipped his coffee and turned his gaze to the TV anchored above the counter. A news show flickered from the screen. A pretty white girl and a handsome black man were laughing, trying, under the guidance of a trained professional, to carve a Halloween pumpkin. A commercial for an appliance store came on, then the local news. A reporter appeared and the screen cut to images of National Guardsmen throwing tear gas canisters at war painted Indians. Stump leaned closer to listen.
“A political rally turned unexpectedly violent yesterday as National Guard troops were called in to keep order in the mountain town of Tremont, Tennessee,” the newscaster reported.
“Over three thousand people gathered in Tremont over the weekend to protest dangerously high ozone levels in the Smoky Mountains and the construction of condominiums over an ancient Cherokee burial site. Governor Campbell, who has business interests in the site, called up two units of the National Guard after a protester flung a pie in his face and rioting broke out over what Native Americans are calling the illegal incarceration of six of their leaders. Several injuries have been reported, and National Guard troops are trying to maintain order as tourists flee the area, seeking a quieter place to enjoy the fall foliage. Officials are asking everyone to stay clear of this part of the Smoky Mountains…”
Another commercial blared forth, then the football scores, the local announcer gleefully celebrating yesterday’s victory of the Tennessee Titans over the Oakland Raiders. Logan gawked at the screen, unable to believe his luck. Everybody at that campsite had gone nuts! The local sheriff wouldn’t give a shit about one baby after all that! That poor bastard would be working his county like a field marshal, trying to keep the Indians from killing the wetbacks, at the same time kissing the governor’s ass while he wiped pie off his face!
As Blondie clattered his plate down in front of him, Logan started to laugh. It was all too perfect. First finding Clootie Duncan, then Walkingstick’s troubled little family. Now a pie-throwing redskin inciting a riot. For once the universe was expanding in his direction.
With tears of laughter in his eyes, he doused his eggs with ketchup and his waffles with syrup. Now if his headache would just go away, he would be God’s own boy…
He ate greedily, inhaling the sweet maple syrup aroma that rose from his waffle, letting its warm, buttery sweetness fill his head. Paz, he noticed, picked at his food as if it were poison, taking tiny bites of egg and holding his sausage delicately between his fingers. Stump wasn’t worried. His two Mexicans had served their purpose. Paz and his little tamale of a wife were as expendable as that squalling brat back in the van. Any more grief from any of them and he would slit all their throats, Edwina be damned. This was his last chance to cut himself loose. No one was going to stand in his way this time.
After he swiped his plate clean with a crust of waffle, he left the waitress an extra dollar and handed Paz the to-go order. When they reached the van, he was smiling. His headache had eased up, and both Ruperta and the baby were stretched across the backseat, sound asleep.
“Let’s not wake them, okay?” Stump told Paz as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Let’s just roll down the highway in silencio.”
“Okay.” Paz glanced back uncertainly at his wife.
“Good man.”
Logan stepped on the gas and headed toward Murfreesboro. Half an hour later he turned in at a shopping center just off the main drag. He’d been looking for the library, but nestled in a new strip mall, close to a Starbucks coffee shop, he spotted a Kinko’s.
“We stop here?” Paz blinked at the shopping center, puzzled as if they’d just landed on Mars.
“For a minute.” Stump turned into a parking space. “You come with me. We’ll let Ruperta and the kid sleep.”
He pulled his cap down low over his forehead and grabbed Edwina’s camera. Paz looked at him oddly, but followed him without protest.
Except for two groggy-eyed college boys who looked as if they’d just pulled an all-nighter, the computers at Kinko’s were deserted. Logan and Paz walked to the counter, where two young men in light blue shirts were binding some kind of booklet.
“Help you?”
“I need some computer time.”
“Mac or PC?”
“PC.”
“PCs are on the right wall, in the corner.” Four Apple computers lined one side of the wall, while four PCs lined the other. Stump looked at each one. The first two were too old, but the last two had the USB ports he needed. Choosing the one closest to the window, he sat down and stuck his card into the slot.
The machine booted up quickly, ready to do whatever he wanted. Good, he thought, retrieving his camera from his pocket. This would be a piece of cake.
He clicked on the picture icon, then attached the camera to the computer with a cable. Seconds later, four new shots of Lily Walkingstick appeared on the screen. After studying them for a moment, Stump chose the third one. Anyone with any knowledge of Lily would know the child. Anyone with a substantial knowledge of Cherokee history would know the site. Logan was certain Mary Crow knew Lily Walkingstick. How quickly she would figure out the route would depend upon how closely she’d paid attention in history class.
Smiling, he logged onto Hotmail and began to write an e-mail. Addressing it to mcrow@deckardcty.gov, he typed in: Mary, we’re waiting for you. Jonathan. Then he attached Lily’s photo as a .jpg file. He typed “Lily Walkingstick” as the sender and clicked the SEND button. The file up loaded. Seconds later, the YOUR MAIL HAS BEEN SENT screen came on.
“Another clue, Nancy Drew,” he said softly, deleting the photos from the computer’s hard drive and disconnecting the USB cable. “Come and catch me if you can.”
Twenty-three
AS THEY PULLED away from the Shellsford Baptist Church, Mary clicked on Hobson Mott’s e-mail message. It was a blanket memo to every one in the court house—judges, attorneys, police officers, maybe even the janitorial crews, for all she knew.
Please be advised that as of Monday, October 14, Assistant District Attorney Mary Crow is no longer associated with the Deckard County Justice Department. Ms. Craw’s cases will be reassigned immediately.
Hobson T. Mott, AG
The terse message seemed to dance, sneering, before her eyes. She felt as if she were trying to breathe through cotton. For the first time in ten years, she was without the one thing that had saved her—first, when Jonathan left, then later, when Irene Hannah died. For the first time since law school, she was without her job.
She sat there, stunned. She had never lost a case in her career, yet here she was, sacked like some bottom-of-the-class graduate of a third rate law school. Her cheeks flamed with humiliation. How could Hobson do this? How she wished she could spit in his eye!
“Jahyosiha?” Gabe’s halting Cherokee broke the silence that, she now realized, had stretched for miles. He had asked if she was hungry.
“I don’t think so,” she replied, too sad to launch into a language that she couldn’t really speak, anyway. They were driving along a two lane highway, through farmland that had grown more rolling than mountainous. She swallowed hard. “I’ve just been fired.”
> “Fired?” He turned to her so quickly, he nearly ran off the road. “Why? I thought you just won your big case.”
“I did.” Mary felt her throat thicken. “Guess I didn’t win it the way they wanted it won.”
Gabe looked at her, his eyes sympathetic. “There’s a little restaurant up the road that serves a terrific lunch. Sometimes things don’t look quite so bad on a full stomach.”
“That’s fine,” she said absently, slumping back in her seat, not wanting food or comfort or anything except Lily Walkingstick and her old job back.
An hour later they sat in Christiana, Tennessee, at Miller’s Grocery, a restaurant housed in an old-timey grocery store, that now served the Southern cuisine of her grandmother’s day—fried chicken, butter beans, black-eyed peas, and the ubiquitous frozen fruit salad that had been a staple of Southern ladies’ lunches ever since refrigeration had gone electric. She looked across the table at Gabe and wondered if he held her grandmother’s opinion that a warm, crumbly wedge of corn bread could cure most anything. I wish, she thought, eyeing the menu, wondering how much she would have to consume to make all her troubles disappear.
“How come you know this place so well?” she asked as Gabe waved genially to the woman who stood behind the cash register at the back of the converted store.
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 16
