A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  Mary stared at him, realizing that he must also have read that the last time she was up here she succeeded in killing one man and tried very hard to kill another. He knows all of that, she thought, her anger shrinking into a cold little knot of discomfort.

  “You got it.” At least he had the decency not to mention everything. “I’m a real whizbang in the forest.”

  “That’s what I understand,” Safer said, for once his voice soft with apology. “And that’s why I’m glad you’re here.”

  She turned back to her drawing. They rode in silence as the road curved up into foothills that were warm brown in the winter.

  “So what about you?” She looked at him.

  “What about me?”

  “What’s your story? You know an awful lot about me. Seems hardly fair for me to be riding up here with a total stranger. How long have you been with the Bureau?”

  “Not that long, actually. Seven years ago I was teaching Russian at the University of Memphis.” Safer smiled as if recalling a pleasant vacation.

  “You speak Russian?”

  He nodded. “I’m a Russian Jew. My great-grandfather emigrated from Kiev just after the First World War.”

  Mary blinked. No wonder the guy had the air of a Cossack. “Okay,” she said. “So why did the Bureau drag you out of your classroom and give you a gun?”

  “Actually, they dragged me out to transcribe some wiretaps. The Russian Mafia was infiltrating businesses along the Mississippi River, and using a dialect from the Ukraine.”

  “The Russian Mafia?” Mary laughed, picturing Josef Stalin knocking back vodka on the Robert E. Lee.

  “They are dangerous men,” Safer replied without smiling. He spat out some word in Russian. “Beasts, all of them.”

  “So did you help the FBI crack the case?”

  “I did. And by the time we’d nailed them, I was hooked. Gave the university my resignation and applied to the Bureau.”

  “Dr. Safer became Agent Safer. What did your family think?”

  “They thought and still think I’m crazy.” He chuckled. “How about you? What does your family think of your being a prosecutor?”

  She remembered her grandmother’s funeral, three months ago. “Actually, I don’t have enough family left to think much of anything.”

  They rode on, passing through green pastureland grown gold, letting the Dodge’s heater warm the sudden coldness that filled the truck. After a time, Safer spoke again.

  “So did you give any thought to these judges last night?”

  Mary tried to sort through her jumbled memories of the day before. Everything seemed chaotic—first she’d been dancing to the Strutters, then she’d raced downtown in a police car, then she’d seen the picture of that poor woman with no head. When she’d finally gotten home, she’d pulled off her silky green gown and fixed her special martini—three fingers of frozen Sapphire gin, not shaken, not stirred, not altered at all except for being sloshed in a glass. After that she remembered packing, then dozing, then waking from a terrifying dream where Irene Hannah was being loaded into a cattle truck and driven away.

  “Some,” she lied, quickly starting her prosecutorial wheels turning. “I wondered if there was any commonality between the victims.”

  Safer raised one eyebrow. “Opinion-wise, they were all middle-of-the-road jurists. Five had been appointed by Democratic presidents, six by Republicans. Most had supported fourth amendment rights and ruled against hate crimes. Klinefelter had just signed an opinion involving interstate banking.”

  “That’s not exactly a hot-button issue.” Mary frowned. “How about personal? Anybody divorced? Gay? Minority?”

  “The Alabama judge was African-American. The guy in Wyoming was Latino. The rest were white. All were married to people of the opposite sex. Six were Protestant, two were Roman Catholic, the other three had no religious affiliation.”

  “No religious axe-grinding there,” Mary said.

  “How about Irene Hannah?” asked Safer.

  “She’s a white Democrat, sixty-two, and widowed,” replied Mary. “I don’t know her judicial record chapter and verse, but politically she’s pro-choice, anti–hate crime, and thinks DUI ought to be a capital offense.”

  “I read that she spent a lot of time in Japan,” said Safer.

  Mary nodded. “After the war. Her father was in the diplomatic corps. She’s fluent in Japanese, speaks good Cherokee, and doesn’t suffer fools lightly.”

  “Well.” Safer gave an ironic smile as he zoomed past a Greyhound bus. “Then I’m doubly glad you’re here.”

  * * *

  They drove on, considering the possible connections between the eleven dead judges. As the highway began to twist through the old familiar territory of the mountains, Mary started sketching again. In the winter, the fiery red and orange leaves of autumn were gone, replaced by skeletal maple and oak branches that waved thin fingers at a stark gray sky. The mountains themselves stood like sheep after a shearing. The great humps of iron-brown earth looked strangely humbled, shrouded with fog at the lower elevations, dusted with snow at their peaks. How different it is this time, she thought, abruptly remembering Jonathan’s hands and mouth and eyes so fiercely that the breath seemed to catch in her throat. How very different from before.

  She looked up from her sketch pad.

  “Would you turn there?” She pointed at a road that veered off into the mountains to the west. “There’s a little store I’d like to visit before we go to Irene’s.”

  Safer frowned. “We don’t have a lot of time—”

  “I won’t be long,” Mary promised. “I just want to stop in and see if an old friend of mine is there. He hunts a lot. He might know if anything weird’s going on up here.”

  “Old boyfriend?” Safer looked at her with a sly smile.

  Mary thought of Jonathan, how they’d reunited after so many years, only to find themselves different, changed. They’d tried to make it work—for six months he’d lived with her in Atlanta. She’d been happy, but he’d always felt edgy in the city, looking beyond the high-rises into a horizon that held something only he could see. Finally she’d come home one night to find him gone, and a note that said, “I love you, Mary, but I can’t live here anymore. Come home when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Not a boyfriend,” Mary shot back. “Just someone I used to know.”

  Safer turned the wheel, and they twisted around the base of a mountain, following the curve of a river that spewed white foam over rocks the size of small cars. When Mary began to feel nauseous from all the twisting turns, the Little Jump Off store came into view. It looked as it always had, an ancient, ramshackle log cabin that sold everything from slop jars to zip drives.

  “Turn here,” Mary said, searching the porch for the long lengths of wood that would indicate the presence of a bowyer. Strangely, they were gone. In their place stood a towering collection of cardboard boxes.

  Safer pulled the truck into the parking lot. “We haven’t got much time, so no tearful reunions, okay?”

  Mary jerked open the door without replying. She had intended to ask Safer inside, but now he could sit in the Dodge and rot, for all she cared. What an asshole this man was. She leaned in the window. “Stay out here and go over your evidence files, Agent Safer. I might be a while.”

  “Five minutes, Ms. Crow,” Safer replied. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. This isn’t old home week.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Up yours, Mary fumed. Though she wanted to storm away from Safer and his stupid truck, she walked calmly up the steps to Little Jump Off. Her years in the courtroom had taught her the value of a poker face; she was not going to allow Agent Safer to know that he’d rattled her. God, what a jerk. How glad she would be when she could hand him over to Irene.

  She paused when she reached the top of the steps. Although an angular pile of computer boxes had replaced Jonathan’s usual stock of hickory, the old porch otherwise looked the sa
me. In the thirteen years since her mother’s death, she had not trod upon it without a shudder. Whoever had murdered her mother had escaped along these old heart-of-pine boards, and the sound of those footsteps still echoed in her heart. Even now it was difficult to think about, and she crossed the planks quickly, with downcast eyes, hurriedly pulling open the door.

  She sensed something different the instant she stepped inside. Although the old stone fireplace was bedecked with blinking lights, and Little Jump Off’s traditional cedar Christmas tree listed in one corner, something beyond the holiday trappings was different. The air smelled charged—tinged with a sweet, dry aroma that reminded her of Alex’s home in Texas.

  “Can I help you?” A soft, female voice floated across the store.

  Startled, Mary turned. Behind the counter stood a woman who looked surprisingly like—her. Dressed in a faded denim shirt and jeans, she had blunt-cut dark hair, high cheekbones, and cinnamon skin. She looked about thirty and wore the trappings of the West—turquoise studs in her ears, a silver ring on her right finger, long agate beads dangling between ample breasts. Her dark eyes sparkled with intelligence and curiosity. For a moment, Mary didn’t know what to say.

  “Uh, does Jonathan Walkingstick still work here?” She felt as if she had blundered into the middle of a play with no idea of her lines.

  The woman studied Mary, then broke into a broad smile. “You’re Mary Crow, aren’t you?”

  Mary nodded, puzzled. “Do we know each other?”

  “No.” The woman shook her head. “I’m Ruth Moon, from Tahlequah, Oklahoma.” She stepped from behind the counter and stuck out her hand. “Jonathan has told me all about you, Mary.”

  “He has?” Mary grasped the woman’s hand. It was strong, like a tough little prairie bird. “Is he here?”

  “He drove over to Cherokee,” Ruth Moon explained. “He volunteered to deliver some computers for me, just in time for Christmas.”

  “Computers?” Mary felt like some idiotic parrot, repeating whatever came out of this Ruth Moon’s mouth.

  Ruth nodded. “Two,” she said proudly. “One for the library, another for the day care center at the Methodist Church.”

  Mary was speechless. When she last saw Jonathan, he’d just carved an inlaid bow of hickory and poplar for a turkey hunter in New Hampshire. Now he was delivering computers to the children of the Quallah Boundary?

  “I guess you two haven’t talked in a while, huh?” Ruth Moon called over her shoulder as she turned and walked back behind the counter.

  “No.” The last night she and Jonathan talked was the last night they’d made love, moving together fluidly as silk, fitting each other like fingers slipping into soft kid gloves.

  “We came back here four months ago, from Oklahoma. We met out there—I’m a Legend Teller and had been planning to come east to collect some more stories, so I asked him if I could tag along.”

  Mary tried to clear the sudden frog in her throat. “And Jonathan said yes?”

  Ruth nodded. “He’s helped me gather half a dozen more stories, I helped him reorganize his bookkeeping. We do the computers together.”

  Immediately Mary caught the we: apparently Jonathan and this Ruth Moon came as a set. Again, all she could do was parrot Ruth Moon’s last phrase. “The computers?”

  “We refurbish old ones. You’d be amazed at how many businesses just throw them in the garbage. I clean them up, put in bigger hard drives, faster modems. Jonathan picks them up and delivers them.”

  “To whom?”

  “Mostly to Cherokee families. Native Americans have been grossly underserved by the computer revolution.” Ruth hopped up on the stool behind the old cash register. For the first time Mary noticed that on the wall, taking the place of Jonathan’s Farmer’s Almanac calendar, hung an enormous poster of the U.S. Capitol made up of white, black, and brown dots. The caption beneath read “When Will Congress See Red?”

  Ruth Moon smiled as Mary tried to decipher the poster. “You haven’t heard of REPIC, have you?”

  Before she could answer, Ruth handed her a brochure. Printed on bright yellow paper, it cited statistics about the demographic makeup of Congress, then asked the blunt question, “Why are WE not represented in Washington?”

  The brochure went on to describe REPIC, a grassroots movement started by several Spokane Indians living in Seattle. REPIC wanted to amend the Constitution, giving each of the identified tribes in the United States a seat in the House of Representatives. According to the pamphlet, the idea had spread like wildfire, consuming Cherokees in Oklahoma, Seminoles in Florida, Iroquois in upstate New York.

  Mary looked up at Ruth Moon, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. Did these Indians not know how the government worked? Rich people sent other rich people to Congress to protect their interests, and everybody else—black, white, yellow or red—could go to hell. She handed the brochure back to Ruth.

  “Is Jonathan working for REPIC?” she asked, unable to imagine her tall ex-lover jousting at this kind of windmill. Acid rain, perhaps, or too much CO2 in the air, but not Indians in Congress. It sounded like something from her mother’s generation, a hopeless cause espoused by hippies unaware of the political realities of life.

  “Not really. He’s just letting me use the store as my home base. The Cherokee REPICs in Oklahoma are hoping I can enroll a lot of our Eastern brothers and sisters.” She picked up a mayonnaise jar. “Would you like to sign a list and make a donation?”

  “I’ll make a donation,” Mary replied. “But I’d prefer not to sign anything.”

  “So what brings you up here on Christmas Eve?” Ruth Moon smiled. Her teeth were so straight, Mary wondered if she’d grown up with braces. “Visiting someone for the holidays?”

  “Actually, I’m visiting a friend.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  Something about this woman confused Mary, kept her off balance. How could Ruth Moon know the same people Mary knew? She’d only lived here four months. How could she get Jonathan to go out and deliver computers? Mary had practically had to wage war to get him to put on a tie. She dug through her wallet, pulling out old grocery receipts and ATM slips. Finally she extracted a ten-dollar bill and stuffed it in the jar.

  “No,” she answered Ruth’s question slowly. “I don’t think you’d know them.” She glanced once at the front corner of the store, where she’d found her mother on the floor, strangled to death.

  “I know about your mother.” Ruth lowered her voice respectfully. “And I’m awfully sorry. It must have been terrible to lose someone like that.”

  “Yes.” Mary’s face grew clammy and hot. Had Jonathan told this woman everything about her? Everything about them? “It was.”

  She dropped her wallet back in her purse. Ruth Moon looked at her from behind the counter, as if waiting to see what she might do next.

  “Well,” Mary said. “If Jonathan’s gone to Cherokee, I guess I’ll be going.”

  Ruth smiled. “I’ll tell him you came by. He’ll be disappointed he missed you, but I’m so glad to have gotten to meet you. He talks about you all the time. Any message you want me to give him?”

  Mary met Ruth Moon’s gaze with a look of her own. “Tell him I said hello.”

  “Are you sure I can’t talk you into joining us?” Ruth again held out her REPIC brochure. “We could use someone like you, someone who really knows the system from the inside.”

  Mary tried to focus on the brochure. From what she’d seen of the federal government, she wanted as little to do with it as possible. “The system I know is judicial, at the local level. What you’re seeking to change is the legislative branch, at the national level. It’s like apples and oranges.”

  “But you’re used to dealing with white people,” Ruth Moon said excitedly. “You know how they think. You’d be such an asset.”

  “I’m used to prosecuting criminals,” Mary replied. “And they think pretty much alike, whatever color their skin.”

  �
�But . . .”

  For a Tsalagi woman, this Ruth Moon was insistent to the point of rudeness.

  “You have a happy holiday.” Mary smiled wistfully at the Christmas tree, strung with popcorn and cranberries, a few brightly wrapped packages peeking from underneath the branches.

  “You, too,” said Ruth, at last giving up on enrolling Mary in REPIC. “If you’re here for a few days, come and have dinner with us some night. I know Jonathan would love to see you again.”

  “Thanks,” said Mary. With a single final glance at the front corner of the store, she walked out the door and back to the truck, hoping with all her heart that Safer was reading his damn evidence files and not seeing the sorrow that was etched across her face.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sergeant Wurth frowned as he twisted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Where ten years ago Richard Dunbar had treated him to his one-and-only first-class ticket, today he was stuffed in between a tiny window and an overweight woman who had dark sweat rings beneath the armpits of her Christmas red blazer. A bald-headed man reclined in front of him while to the rear, a tow-headed brat kicked his seat, whining to his apparently deaf mother about wanting a cherry Coke. Though the plane was crammed with cranky passengers, he had not seen a flight attendant since they left San Francisco.

  Disgusted, he turned to the window. From thirty thousand feet, the mountains and ridges of Nevada looked like ironed-in wrinkles in a buff-colored quilt. Somewhere down there Las Vegas glittered like a jewel in the desert; somewhere else the Hoover Dam provided the power to make her slot machines jingle. Wurth could not see either from up here. All he saw was a crackled, sun-baked expanse of brown rock that might as well have been Mars.

  As he stared out the window with a headache stabbing into his left temple, he considered his fourteen-year association with FaithAmerica. Much to his surprise, Dunbar had made good on his promises. Though he’d easily held up his end of the deal—training the boys they sent him and eliminating the soft, unwary incumbents Dunbar wanted out—what had amazed him was the way FaithAmerica had grown as a political player. Never had the FaithAmericans wobbled in their conviction that Gerald LeClaire was the one man who could lead America back into the ways of the righteous. Touchingly loyal, they toiled like ants building a grassroots organization for LeClaire. At last count, FaithAmerica numbered two governors, eleven congressmen, and one senator among its faithful. Not bad for Dunbar, a man who had once made his living selling twenty-second spots on an all-talk radio station.