A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  She glanced at the window and thought of running down the block to Sheriff Logan’s office. Safer had tipped him off about their concern for Irene’s safety, but Stump Logan was a slow, deliberate county sheriff more accustomed to lost hikers than abducted federal judges. In the time it would take her to explain everything to Logan, she could have Safer right beside her, barking out orders to a trained staff.

  She looked at the badly frightened dentist. “Dr. Moreland, I’m going to have to return to Irene’s farm. I’ll contact the FBI from there. They’ll need to interview you and Ms. Taylor. I can’t force you to stay here, but it would go a lot faster for everyone if you did.” She turned to Rebecca Taylor, who was still pouting at having to remain at work, off the clock. “Please lock both entrances to this building. And whatever you do, don’t touch anything in the bathroom. That’s where they grabbed her. It’s now an official federal crime scene.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Moreland nodded. “Rebecca and I will wait right here. We won’t touch a thing.”

  “Thank you.” With a single fierce glance at Rebecca Taylor, Mary walked out the door and back into the late December afternoon.

  * * *

  She drove back to Upsy Daisy in a fury, careening around the curves, roaring like a madwoman past a wobbling pickup loaded with firewood. Hunched over the wheel, she kept turning Irene’s disappearance over in her mind. Why had the Black Feathers not just slipped the needle to her and let her go into cardiac arrest in the bathroom? Why take her someplace? Mary answered her own question. To torture her. To do to her what they did to Judge Klinefelter. But where in Hartsville would they take her?

  Home? Mary wondered, her fingers turning to ice as she pulled into Irene’s driveway. Would they have the balls to behead Irene in her own home?

  Instinctively she pulled the truck off the drive, into a coil of laurel. She cut the engine and withdrew the Beretta from her holster. She’d always imagined that the act would make her feel ludicrous, like some overly dramatic TV cop, but the cold, heavy weight of the pistol felt good in her hand.

  Keeping the gun pointed at the ground, she crept toward the house, slinking through the tall trees that lined the driveway. The sun had dropped below the mountains, bathing the farm in an amber light. A thin, gray haze hovered like smoke over the orange fields while the bulbous shape of an owl swooped through the bare, spidery branches above her head.

  She moved forward, her footsteps crunching on the frozen earth. Rounding the final broad curve in the driveway, she waited in the last bit of cover, listening as the shallow creek kept up its low, throaty gurgle.

  Nothing indicated that any strangers had visited Irene’s house. No one had painted swastikas on the front door, no skinhead graffiti decorated the porch. Lucy and the guineas pecked for the day’s last worms in the sparse grass on the far side of the house. Still, Mary sensed something different about the place, as if the air had somehow grown thicker.

  She eyed the bridge, then slipped through the weeds to the creek below. She hated the thought of wading through the freezing water, but if anybody was lurking inside Irene’s house, the wooden bridge would announce her advance like a drum roll.

  Without bothering to remove her shoes or socks, she waded into the stream, gasping as the freezing water foamed up to her knees. She picked her way carefully among the slippery rocks to the cattails that grew on the other side of the bank. Gratefully, numb from the knees down, she left the icy water and began to crawl to the yard’s edge.

  She ran with her knees bent, sneaking onto the porch, garnering minimal notice by the worm-hunting guineas. She tiptoed past the front door and peered through the living room window. Though the interior of the house lay in shadow, she recognized the dark bulk of the grand piano and the Christmas tree. Grasping the doorknob through the pocket of her down jacket, she turned it slowly. The door opened without a sound. That surprised her. Had Irene locked it before they left? She couldn’t remember.

  Keeping to the shadows, Mary slid forward and closed the door behind her. The comforting tick of Irene’s old grandfather clock broke the house’s silence, and the aroma of the bacon they’d fried that morning still lingered in the quiet air.

  Normal, Mary thought, her edginess growing. Everything looks just like it did when we left.

  She tiptoed down the hall, turning lights on first in the living room, next the dining room, then the huge old kitchen. Everything looked normal—dishes drying in the drainer, Hugh’s whiskey on top of the refrigerator where she’d put it herself. Mary moved back down the hall toward the staircase, this time stopping at Irene’s study. If anybody wanted to decapitate the Fourth Circuit judge on her own turf, they would have done it here, right behind this door.

  Again she grasped the doorknob through her jacket. For an instant she paused, longing to close her eyes. She often did that with crime scene photos, hoping in vain that if she didn’t look at the slit throats and savaged vaginas that maybe the women wouldn’t be dead; maybe they would still be alive somewhere, shopping for clothes or drinking coffee with their friends. As much as she wanted it to, it never worked. Once her eyes took them in, they were gone. No more coffee, no more new shoes. In that instant they became dead people; just new victims in the system she served.

  She took a shaky breath, then opened the door. With trembling fingers, she reached for the light. When the bright colors of the room hit her eyes, relief hit her like a blow. Irene’s great haven of law and order looked just as they had left it. Her beloved old desk still stood in the middle of the room, covered with the variously colored pages of the legal profession. The case-law books she’d been studying lay open where she’d marked their pages, a half-drunk cup of tea rested on the table by the phone. Martha Crow’s beautiful tapestry still hung on the wall, the old sarouk carpet still covered the floor. Mary took in all these details, struggling to grasp what it all meant. With a sinking in her chest, she knew it in an instant. Whoever had taken Irene had not brought her back here. Whoever had taken Irene had taken her someplace else.

  Swiftly she backed out of the study and hurried upstairs. Nothing up there had been touched, either. She dug Safer’s cell phone out of her backpack and punched in her mother’s birthday. Moments later, she heard Safer’s crisp greeting.

  “Agent Safer,” she said, her voice sounding as if it were coming from the depths of a barrel. “You need to get over to Upsy Daisy Farm. Someone has kidnapped Irene Hannah.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Seven minutes later the green vans screeched to a halt a yard away from the bridge. Mary watched from the porch as three FBI agents leaped out, led by Daniel Safer. Safer had sounded more alarmed than furious when she’d told him what had happened. He requested only that she remain where she was, if she felt safe. That was not a problem. No one was in danger here at Upsy Daisy.

  “Are you okay?” Safer asked now, his dark eyes intent as his men went past her into the house.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Anything inside?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think anybody’s been here since we left.”

  “Have you touched anything?”

  “Nothing but the doorknobs of the downstairs study and the small bedroom on the second floor. They grabbed her at Dr. Moreland’s dental office in town. That’s where you need to be looking for prints.”

  “Mike Tuttle’s on his way there now. We’ll dust here, anyway. You want to come inside?” he asked softly.

  Mary shook her head. “I’m going down to the stable. I need to check on Lady Jane.”

  “I’ll meet you there as soon as I see what’s gone on up here.”

  Nothing, thought Mary, as Safer disappeared into the house. Nothing has gone on in there at all. Drawing her gun just the same, she hurried around the house and through the backyard. Opening the gate, she ran down to the stable.

  The dying light cast the interior of the stable in a network of dense shadows. She hesitated, wondering if perhaps whoever had taken Ir
ene had brought her here. She curled her fingers tighter around the Beretta and smiled. If Irene’s abductor was hiding in here, so much the better. She would kill him. And she would feel happy while she did it.

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped inside. The only noise she heard was from doves cooing from the hayloft over head, but she gripped her pistol with both hands and held it straight in front of her. Slowly she walked down the center aisle. The first two stalls were empty. Peeking into the crack of the feed-room door, she saw that it contained nothing more than barrels of grain. She inched along, checked the stall on her right, then turned and looked at the foaling area. Empty. Except for her and the doves, nothing alive and breathing was in this barn.

  Suddenly a hand gripped her shoulder. She whirled, her finger tightening around the trigger.

  “Hey!” a voice cried. Someone grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back, then gathered her in an awkward embrace.

  She knew it was Safer before she saw his face; she could smell the laundry soap in his shirt, feel the tautness of the muscles in his chest. Shaking with nervous exhaustion, she leaned against him. The day that had started so happily this morning had, in the last two hours, turned into a nightmare.

  He held her for a moment, then he let her go. “Are you all right?”

  Mary nodded as she stepped back and slid the Beretta in her holster. “I just need to find the horses.”

  “Why did you leave Judge Hannah alone?”

  Safer’s question cut her like a knife. “She ran back inside the dentist’s office, to get some medication. She left me in the truck with the motor running. I guess I thought she would be safe for thirty seconds.”

  “Why didn’t you call me immediately?”

  “We left for town in a hurry, already late. I was so concerned about carrying this,” she touched the handle of her gun, “I forgot the stupid cell phone.”

  He looked like he was going to scold her; his eyes blazed. Instead, he said, “Tell me everything.”

  Mary explained exactly what had happened. She’d gone first to Moreland’s office, then the bathroom. She’d found the black feather lying in front of the sink. “I told the dentist and his assistant not to touch anything.” Mary remembered the thin, sullen line of Rebecca Taylor’s mouth. “I think they understood.”

  Safer studied her for a moment, his dark eyes boring into her. Then he shook his head. “I knew this wasn’t going to work.”

  “Oh, really? Well, where were you? And where was your little surveillance team?” Mary demanded, stunned. “I thought you hotshots had everything covered.”

  “I stayed here with the vans. Mike Tuttle was behind you the whole time in the truck.”

  “Then why didn’t he see Irene go back inside that building?”

  “One of Logan’s deputies tried to ticket him for being double-parked. By the time Tuttle got the deputy straightened out, you’d pulled back into traffic, headed here. Mike figured everything was okay.”

  “Didn’t he see that I was alone in the truck, driving like a fiend?”

  “You had a tinted rear window. And you drove no worse than the judge did on the way to town.” Safer’s tone was grim. “Come on. Let’s go back to the house. I need to get your prints, so we can separate yours from everybody else’s.”

  They crossed the paddock in a furious silence. Every window of the house now blazed. Mary could see the crime scene investigator moving around inside, gathering clues that might lead them to Irene. Suddenly a figure appeared in the floodlights that illuminated the patio—tall, male, khaki-shirted with a white Stetson hat. Mary knew that the man’s eyes would be gray, his mouth thin, and his face creased with deep lines of worry around his mouth and between his brows.

  “Hello, Mary. Agent Safer,” the man called as they came closer.

  “Sheriff.” Mary gave a tense nod.

  Stump Logan turned to Safer. “You want to fill me in on what’s going on out here? Them boys of yours aren’t too cooperative.”

  “Judge Irene Hannah disappeared from her dentist’s office at approximately three o’clock this afternoon, mostly because one of your deputies was trying to cite my second-in-command for a parking violation.” Safer talked as if his jaws were wired together.

  “There was a slight misunderstanding between them. Son, you need to let me know if you’re bringing your investigation to Main Street of my town.”

  Safer did not blink from Stump Logan’s accusing gaze. “I don’t take my investigations anywhere, Sheriff. I go where they take me.”

  “Uh-huh.” Logan cast a sideways glance at Irene’s house. “You guys dusting now?”

  Safer nodded.

  “Mind if I go in and have a look?”

  Though Logan had phrased his request politely, Mary knew the pissing contest had started. This is my county, you candy-ass Yankee boy, is what Logan really said. Just try to keep me out of an ongoing investigation.

  “Please.” Safer pulled a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and tossed them at Logan. “In fact, why don’t we discuss this situation further? Inside.”

  Logan caught the gloves and turned toward the house. Mary sat down on the edge of the patio.

  Safer looked at her. “Aren’t you coming?”

  She shook her head, suddenly weary of cops and G-men and the constant, bitter turf wars of law enforcement. “You and Sheriff Logan can hash it out on your own. I need to go feed the horses.”

  “Whatever.” Safer snapped as he turned and followed the chief crime officer of Pisgah County, North Carolina, into Irene’s home.

  Mary gazed up into the sky. God, how could everything have gone wrong so fast? Why hadn’t she just gone back to Moreland’s office with Irene? Irene would have been irritated, but hell, at least she might still be here.

  Mary got up and walked back to the stable. Where just minutes ago it had been devoid of anything resembling a horse, now Irene’s entire herd of six all stood at the back paddock gate, each looking at her, ears pricked and tails swishing.

  “Okay, guys,” she told them softly, touched by the simple, innocent expectance of their gaze. “Tonight, dinner’s on me.”

  She doled out each one’s ration of grain, then opened the gate to let them into the stable. Each knew exactly where to go. They didn’t fight, they didn’t complain, nobody tried to shove their way into another’s stall.

  “Maybe this is what Irene loves about you so,” she whispered as their quiet, rhythmic crunching filled the stable. “Whatever scrapes happen in the pasture, you guys work it out. As long as you have a bucket of oats and a warm place to sleep at night, everything is okay.

  “Wonder why everybody can’t take a lesson from that?” she murmured as she rubbed Lady Jane’s silky mane and wished that somehow she could just relive the afternoon all over again.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Where’s C-C-C-Cabe? I been looking for him.”

  Tommy Cabe snapped Captain Nigel Dempsey’s diary shut and double-checked the lock on the bathroom stall door. Fear sluiced through him like shit through a goose. The toilet next to his flushed, then fat bare feet scrambled out, fleeing to the far end of the bathroom. Loftin, Tommy thought. Little chickenshit.

  “C-C-C-Cabe?” the voice called again, high and whiny, like a girl’s. “Where are you, boy? I been looking for you all day. I got some news about Wilma!”

  The usual chatter of the Grunts died, leaving the bathroom in a dank silence broken only by the sound of water dripping. Tommy considered pulling his feet up and squatting on the toilet to hide, but it would be pointless. They already knew he was here.

  “C-C-C-Cabe? Are you missing Wilma in there? Or did all that stuff Wurth said about your mother make you sick? Are you having di-di-diarrhea?”

  He heard giggling as other bare feet hurried past his stall. The wide, fleshy ones would be Ledford’s, the narrow ones Galloway; Abbot was the one missing a toe. All were pattering away. Not pattering off to help him, just pattering far enough t
o keep out of harm’s way and still enjoy the show. Bastards! he thought, his throat swelling with tears. Damn bastards!

  He stared at the floor as the sound of heavy, cadenced footsteps echoed off the tile walls. Suddenly not one, but two pairs of feet shod in steel-toed boots came into view. Tommy’s heart sank. Tallent and Grice. The two Troopers who despised him most had come to call.

  “C-C-C-Cabe!” One of them pounded hard on his stall. “What are you doing in there, boy? Shovin’ in a tampon?”

  Nervous laughter echoed as the rest of the Grunts gathered at the far end of the bathroom, listening and laughing. Tommy held the old diary close against his chest, wishing he could turn into Willett or even toothless old Captain Dempsey. They never took any shit off anybody.

  “C-C-C-Cabe!” This time the pounding was thunderous; the second Trooper had joined in.

  He wiped himself and stood up. When Willett was here he ran interference for Cabe, usually managing to befuddle Tallent before too much happened. Tommy’s ally, though, was gone. Now nobody stood between him and his torturers.

  He sighed. He may as well go out and get it over with. The sooner they finished with him, the quicker he could crawl into his cot and figure out where next to search for Willett. As he pulled up his pajama pants and flushed the john, he wished with all his heart that he was six feet tall instead of five feet eight inches; wished he weighed 200 instead of 124. But that was not going to happen, at least not soon enough to help him now. He wondered what it would be tonight—a simple beating or the wienie games? The first, he hoped. Bruises faded over time. That stuff with the wienies stayed with you forever.

  “C-C-C-Cabe!” The pounding began again. Squaring his shoulders, he shoved back the bolt on the stall door. The crack echoed through the tiled room as the door swung open. Just as he’d figured, Tallent and Grice stood there grinning, their eyes fever-bright with malice.