by Mark Gimenez
“Colonel!”
Ben’s eyes snapped open. He was not looking down upon the Viet mother, but upon Misty, Dicky’s buxom girlfriend wearing a tight sweatshirt and a smile and waving at them as the chopper lifted off the ground. The sheriff had been good to his word. They had met him at 0600 and driven to an open field south of town where they found Dicky in mirrored sunglasses and a Caterpillar cap on backward and Misty in her sweatshirt standing next to an old helicopter. Ben’s billionaire son had hired Dicky and his flying machine for the morning.
“Brings back memories, don’t it, Colonel!”
The sheriff turned to Ben from the front seat of the chopper; he had to yell to be heard over the chopper’s engine. Ben nodded from the back seat; John was sitting next to him.
The sheriff laughed. “ ’Cept you ain’t sitting on your pot to keep your dick from being shot off!”
The Viet Cong’s AK-47 rounds had easily pierced a Huey’s aluminum fuselage; they made sport of shooting at U.S. choppers flying by overhead. Thus, the prudent practice during an airmobile assault in Vietnam was to sit on your helmet in the chopper so as to arrive at the landing zone with your private parts intact. Butt armor, they called it.
The sheriff handed a map back to Ben: “Numbered the camps!”
Dicky dipped the chopper’s nose to gain speed. They were soon flying over the magnificent landscape of northern Idaho. Ben looked at John; John looked queasy. He said, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was sick to her stomach.
She had come in early this Saturday morning to run database searches on everyone involved with the Walker prosecution ten years ago—the judge, prosecutors, and FBI agents—only to learn that most were dead. Federal District Court Judge Bernard Epstein, seventy-two, had drowned three years ago while out alone in his fishing boat on a small lake at his retirement home in northern Michigan when the boat capsized.
Senior Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kelly, fifty-seven, the lead prosecutor on the Walker case, had been killed the same year in a hit and run while taking an early morning jog in his L.A. neighborhood. The car was stolen. No suspect was ever arrested.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Raul Garcia, forty-eight, number two on the prosecution team, had been shot and killed two years ago in an apparent carjacking outside Denver. No witnesses. No suspects.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Goldburg, forty, had committed suicide four years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. Gunshot wound to the head. He had just taken a new job with a law firm. His wife was pregnant with their first child.
Former Assistant FBI Director Todd Young, sixty-one, head of the Domestic Terrorism Unit, had died in a skiing accident five years ago. A skilled skier on a familiar slope, Suicide Six Ski Area in Vermont, Young had lost his way down in a heavy snowfall. He was found two days later; his skull was crushed, apparently from impact with a tree.
FBI Special Agent Theodore Ellis, fifty-five, had died three years ago in a hunting accident in Macon, Georgia. He had been in charge of the Walker manhunt.
FBI agents, federal prosecutors, and a judge, six in all—and all were dead. Different locations, different causes of death, only one common thread connecting these people: Major Charles Woodrow Walker. Who himself was dead. Ten years after Walker’s death, every major government player in his case was dead—except FBI Director Laurence McCoy, now President Laurence McCoy, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Austin, now Elizabeth Brice.
His hand eases around from behind her and cups her breast over her nightshirt. Elizabeth’s first thought is, Has it already been two weeks?
Yes, she realizes, it has been two weeks since she last allowed him sex; he must keep the dates on his BlackBerry. She is not interested, but he is a good father to the children and she does not want him seeking sex from some geek-girl at work who might (a) give him something more than a good time, or (b) decide that getting pregnant with a soon-to-be-billionaire’s love-child might be more financially rewarding than the company’s 401(k) plan, or (c) lure him away from the children.
So she tosses the pretrial brief onto the night table, removes her panties, and pushes her bare butt against him. He likes it from behind, pushing against her firm bottom. He will not last long this way; he never does. She closes her eyes, figuring she’ll be back to her brief in five minutes tops, if history was any indication.
But he doesn’t enter her immediately this time. Instead, he slides his other arm under her and his leg between hers. They are entwined between silk sheets. One hand slides down her side, over her hips and along her thighs; his hand is soft like a woman’s. His other hand is gentle on her breast. Usually he twists her nipples like he’s trying to tune the Range Rover’s stereo; tonight he’s caressing her like he knows what he’s doing. Has someone been teaching her puppy dog new tricks on the side?
The hand on her thigh slides around to the inside and moves up, ever so slowly. Her genitals instinctively clench, anticipating his customary all-out assault: rubbing her clitoris like he’s trying to start a fire with two sticks then ramming a finger up her with all the romance of a mechanic checking the car’s oil. She is surprised when a quiet moan escapes her lips. He did not attack her clitoris tonight. Instead, his fingers swept across it like a gentle breeze. They’re circling around now on her lower abdomen and coming in for another pass. When they do, without conscious thought or intent, she pushes herself against his hand. Heat rolls up her body, through her loins, over her abdomen and breasts, up her neck, and into her brain. She licks her lips.
His tongue is light on the back of her neck, not his usual imitation of a Labrador retriever slobbering all over her, but delicate and teasing. She wants to ask him, Who the hell taught you that? But she doesn’t want him to stop. Her hand reaches behind her and cups his buttock, firmer than she remembered. His entire body is firm, a better body than one would imagine; has her little nerd been working out in the company gym?
Her hand slides down his torso and finds him. He is so ready. To her great surprise, she is ready, too. She guides him into her; a deep moan slides between her lips this time. She rolls over on her stomach then brings her legs up under her. He kneels behind her and pushes into her, retracts, then pushes again, his thrusts building up momentum, until he is driving himself into her with all his strength, deep inside her, and she feels the pressure massing within her and the heat building and the nerve endings firing and it’s about to happen, oh, my God, she’s on the brink of falling into the glorious depths of orgasm for the first time since—
And her past returns, chasing off the present, seizing control of her mind, and shutting down her body. It’s over for her. There will be no orgasm tonight, no orgasm ever.
She is possessed by her past.
Elizabeth woke with tears running down her face. She began crying uncontrollably. Grace was gone, and she had blamed John. Now John was gone. John who had loved Grace enough to follow a drunk to Idaho, hoping against all reason that she might still be alive. He had left a billion dollars behind to find his daughter. He had put it all on the line for her. He had done what a man would do. She had never given John Brice enough credit as a man or enough love as her husband.
He deserved more.
They had run into each other ten years ago at the Justice Department. Literally. He had come around the corner with his head down and barreled into her, knocking her to the floor and sending her files flying. She had taken one look at him and assumed he was a gofer, college kids the department hired to run errands. No, he had said, I’m a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, algorithms, Laboratory for Computer Sciences. He was down in D.C. working on a government consulting project, something to do with the department’s computer system. He seemed weird but harmless.
Then he began stalking her. With e-mails. The next day and every day thereafter when she arrived at the office, there had been a new e-mail waiting for her. For some reason, she didn’t demand he cease and desist. For some reason, she even starte
d to look forward to them. There was something in his words.
Then evil came for her.
Afterward, she had been mired in despair and thoughts of suicide and homicide. Her Catholicism—even twenty years dormant—would not allow her either avenue of escape: for a Catholic, the former would lead only to eternity in damnation, the latter to a lifetime of guilt. Just when she thought there was no hope, there he stood in her office door. She took John Brice to dinner, she got him drunk, and she used him. And she was pregnant when she asked him to marry her.
He had loved the child more than life itself.
Elizabeth Brice wiped her face and made a decision: she would love her husband. But she could not love him as long as her past possessed her. She sat up. There is only one place to go when you are possessed by evil.
7:10 A.M.
“Idaho!” the sheriff yelled. “All these crazies coming to Idaho!”
They were now circling over the next camp. The first three camps west of town had been long abandoned. Ben was again using the binoculars, leaning out the open hatch and surveying the camp: a half-dozen cabins; beaten up vehicles and a dilapidated bus jacked up on cement blocks; a woodpile; a ratty sofa out front of one cabin and a recliner out front of another; wisps of smoke lifting from a deer roasting over an open pit; and three men, five women, and four children, all straight out of Deliverance.
But no white SUV.
Ben wanted a closer look, so he retrieved the ART scope he had removed from the rifle and put into the backpack. Through the high-powered optic, he could tell whether a man had shaved with a blade or an electric razor that morning; the men at this camp had shaved with neither. They had beards and scraggly hair, no flattops or blond hair, and wore jeans and flannels, not fatigues. No weapons or military gear of any kind were evident. They were not ex-soldiers, much less ex-Green Berets.
The residents below noticed the chopper. The children pointed skyward, and everyone gathered around and gazed up with gaping mouths as if they were witnessing a solar eclipse. Through the optic, Ben observed dirty children, weary women, and missing teeth. They appeared dirt poor. A Confederate flag flapped lazily on the tall pole rising above the camp. One of the men unbuttoned his jacket then his shirt; his enormous belly was covered with tattoos and on his breastplate where Superman wore his S were three large letters in fancy scrip: KKK. He was probably the grand wizard of this little klan.
Dicky yelled back, “Them people remind me of a joke I heard in town: If a husband and wife move from Alabama to Idaho, are they still legally brother and sister?”
“How long you gonna leave her down there?”
Jacko had found Junior sitting at the table, looking like his dog got run over.
“Long enough to break her.”
“She ain’t no horse.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and shook his head. “The hell you expect, she was gonna love you and live here happily ever after?”
Jacko sighed. The son ain’t near the man the daddy was. Maybe Junior would have turned out different if he had had a mama to raise him; she had died suddenly when Junior was only a boy. Jacko had always felt sort of responsible. On the major’s orders, he had put a bullet in her brain and buried her out back because she had become a security risk. Of course, Jacko’s mama had left them when he was only five because of his daddy always getting drunk and beating her up, and he had turned out okay.
“Look, boy, that’s twenty-five million down in that box. You gonna let her die down there, least get the money!”
Junior just glared back at him. Fuck this, Jacko thought. The money would be nice, but the important thing was that the girl, dead or alive, was going to bring Ben Brice to him. Man Jacko’s age, settling old scores was a hell of a lot more satisfying than money. He grabbed the keys to the Blazer off a nail by the door.
“I’m going up to Creston.”
Jacko went back outside and checked the Blazer to make sure no ordnance was still in the back. Last thing he needed was some Canadian Mountie at the border searching the vehicle and finding a nape canister: Shit, officer, that ain’t my napalm!
He got in and fired up the vehicle and headed down the mountain. Once a month he drove the twenty-four miles into Canada. He had angina; too much booze and red meat and tobacco, the doctor said. Not that he was going to stop any of those habits. So he took nitroglycerin tablets whenever the angina flared up, which was most every day. Hundred bucks a month for his prescription but only half that in Canada. So he bought his nitro over the border. It ain’t like a terrorist group plotting to kill the president had some kind of fucking health plan.
“Dr. Vernon?”
“Yes, Agent Jorgenson, I have the file now.”
There was a connection between Major Charles Woodrow Walker and Elizabeth Brice and Gracie Ann Brice’s abduction, FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was sure of that. But Walker was dead. And only two persons involved with Walker’s case at Justice were still alive: Elizabeth Brice—Jan would talk to her later, face to face—and President McCoy. She didn’t figure on talking to him. So she had called the Idaho hospital where Walker had taken his son ten years ago. Dr. Henry Vernon was still the ER chief and the only other person she knew who had seen Major Charles Woodrow Walker alive.
“That’s not a day I’ll ever forget,” the doctor said, “FBI arresting the most wanted man in America in my ER.”
“Can you describe Walker?”
“Big man, blond hair, blue eyes—I’ll never forget his eyes, the way he looked at me. Sent chills up my spine. Said he’d been out of the country, returned home and found his son like that, rushed him in.”
“His son was dying?”
“Arthropod envenomation. Spider bite. Hobo spider. People always confuse it with the brown recluse because the bite effects are so similar, but recluses are rare up here.” She heard papers being shuffled. “Let’s see, here it is: Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., white male, fourteen, presented as severe headache, high fever, chills, nausea, joint pain, and a necrotic skin lesion consuming one entire finger, eaten down into the bone. Never seen one this advanced. We admitted the boy, put him on an IV, antibiotics, steroids, and dapsone, but the finger had to be amputated to stop the necrosis from spreading. Right index finger. Boy had gone so long untreated, I didn’t think he’d make it. After the FBI took his dad away, I went in to check on him. He was gone. I figured he’d die on a mountain. No record of him being treated here again.”
Major Walker was dead and probably his son, too.
“Doctor, thanks for your help, I … Doctor, what did the boy look like?”
“Big, like his daddy. Same blond hair, same blue eyes.”
7:37 A.M.
Dicky was pointing down and yelling back to his out-of-town passengers over the engine noise: “Elk Mountain Farms. They grow hops for Budweiser!”
Down below Ben could see farmland dotted with patches of snow lying next to a river snaking through the valley. They had flown over all seven of the known camps west of town and were now flying east.
“Best damn fishing in the country!” Dicky yelled. “Cutthroat trout, rainbow, bass, whitefish! Up in the mountains, big game hunting—elk, moose, deer, even bear!”
Minutes later: “Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge! Three thousand acres, couple hundred different species! Summertime, you can see bald eagles!”
The sheriff had been silently shaking his head. Now he turned to Dicky and said, “Dicky, shut up and fly! You sound like the goddamned chamber of commerce! They ain’t tourists come to look at birds! They’re looking for their girl!”
The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
Elizabeth Austin had been the junior AUSA on the Walker prosecution. An up-and-comer at Justice and slated for a top spot in the department, she had abruptly resigned only two weeks after Major Walker had died in Mexico. Two weeks later, she had married John Brice and moved to Dallas. It was as if she had been running away—but from what? Or whom?
An answer w
as brewing in the back of FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson's head, but she couldn’t give it words yet.
She needed to know more about Elizabeth Brice, so Jan had searched through the file for names of co-workers and found the phone number for Margie Robbins in the federal employee database; she was currently employed as a legal secretary at the Department of Agriculture and had been previously employed at the Justice Department. It was Saturday morning, so Jan was trying Robbins’s residence number. After a dozen rings, a soft voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Margie Robbins?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Robbins, my name is Jan Jorgenson, I’m an agent with the FBI. I’m investigating the Gracie Ann Brice abduction.”
“Oh, yes, Elizabeth’s daughter. It’s terrible.”
Bingo. “You know Elizabeth Brice?”
“Her name was Austin when I worked for her. I didn’t even realize it was her child until I saw Elizabeth on TV.”
“You worked for her at Justice?”
“For five years. I was her secretary. Did they find her daughter’s body?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I thought the case was closed.”
“I’m tying up some loose ends. Tell me about Mrs. Brice.”
“Oh, Elizabeth was a wonderful person, a bit serious and a bit sad, actually, like something was missing in her life. She never talked about it, except once she mentioned her father had been murdered when she was only a child, said she had never gone to church again. I remember that. But she was brilliant, and so articulate. We all said she’d be the Attorney General one day. But that was before that case.”
“Major Walker?”
“Yes, the Walker case.”
“Ms. Robbins, are you aware that other than President McCoy and Elizabeth Brice, every member of the Walker prosecution team is dead?” The line was silent. “Ms. Robbins?”
“No, I didn’t know that. I read something about the judge, some kind of boating accident? And Mr. Garcia out in Denver. Who else?”
