A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  Safer held his notebook in front of her. “Read my notes. I’ve been on the phone with Washington most of the night.”

  Mary scanned the chicken scratching that passed for Safer’s handwriting. She struggled to decipher the six pages of code names and doodles, but only three words and a circled number looked at all familiar.

  She frowned. “Why did you write New Year’s Eve? Is that significant?”

  “If Judge Hannah isn’t already dead, we’re thinking maybe someone or some group could have kidnapped her to make a statement. What better time to grandstand than New Year’s?”

  Mary turned her gaze back to the paper, not knowing how to reply. That Irene might not be dead was wonderful; that Irene might be a political prisoner facing some kind of end-of-the-year execution made her ill inside. She looked at the number 4413, which Safer had circled three times. “What does Delta four-four-one-three mean?”

  “Your flight from Asheville to Atlanta. It leaves this afternoon.”

  “Dream on, Safer. I’m not leaving here until one of us finds Irene.”

  “Ms. Crow, I—”

  “You brought me into this. You can’t make me go.” She glared at him.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “How? I know the law, Safer. I’m a private citizen.”

  “A private citizen smack in the middle of an ongoing felony investigation, Ms. Crow. I’ll get four federal marshals to come and escort you, with weapons drawn if need be, to the airport and onto your plane.” He scowled at her. “We’ve got a few judges in our back pockets, too.”

  “Safer, you seem to have forgotten your ongoing felony investigation is centered on a horse farm. Irene’s got stock that need to be fed twice a day, and a mare that’s about to foal—”

  “And you’re a highly successful criminal prosecutor who’s lived the last dozen years in an Atlanta condo without so much as a pet goldfish,” he reminded her coldly. “We don’t need you to take on the role of ranch hand now.”

  “I could help you guys out on this. The FBI could use something in the win column right now.”

  “This isn’t my decision, Ms. Crow,” said Safer.

  “So you’re just crating me back to Atlanta?”

  “Like I told you, I didn’t make this call.” His eyes reminded her of dark rain clouds that crackled with electricity.

  She turned and rinsed her coffee cup in the sink, watching the pale brown water swirl down the drain. She had just begun to think that Safer might be different from the other Feds she’d known, but she was wrong. He was no kinder than the rest; he would have her carried onto the plane if he had to.

  “So when do I go?”

  “The plane leaves from Asheville at three-fifteen.”

  “Good. At least I’ll have time to feed the horses.”

  “Feed what you like,” replied Safer. “Just be packed up and ready by noon.”

  “Not a problem,” Mary snarled as she turned her back on him. “Not a problem at all.”

  * * *

  She strode angrily to the barn, her footsteps crunching through the frosty grass. Hugh had already fed the horses, but in his anger had neglected to clean out their stalls. With Lucy honking beside her, Mary speared up the soiled straw and manure with a pitchfork. Though the physical labor should have made her feel better, it mostly just chilled her molten anger into a hard lump of resolve. If Safer thought he was putting her on a plane to Atlanta, he was in for a surprise. As she dumped the last wheelbarrow full of horse droppings into the muck pile, she froze.

  Good lord, she thought. The letters. In the midst of everything else, she’d forgotten all about them. Swiftly, she rolled the wheelbarrow back into the stable and climbed the hayloft stairs. Sitting down on the bed she’d fashioned the night before, she pulled them from the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Okay, Mom,” she whispered. “Why did these mean so much to you?”

  Setting aside the two personal letters, she opened the official communication from the Department of the Army. It was dated 12 November 1987, on letterhead from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate’s Office.

  Dear Mrs. Bennefield:

  I regret to inform you that after careful and deliberate investigation, we have found no substantive evidence to warrant any further action concerning the death of Jackson W. Bennefield, your late husband, while on active duty in the Republic of Vietnam. Though Sergeant James F. Green’s suspicions have merit, given the circumstances and the passage of time, we find them to be unprovable. Enclosed are the two letters which you graciously allowed our Legal Department to analyze.

  Sincerely,

  Major Richard R. Rhodes, U.S.A.

  Mary read the letter twice. What were they talking about, Sergeant Green’s charges? Her father died in 1971, when he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. She opened the first of the personal letters. It was written on two pages torn from a spiral notebook, thick reddish dust still lining the creases.

  17 July 1970

  To My Sweet Dream Baby

  Boy, I used to think Atlanta was hot, but it’s nothing compared to this. We’ve been humping through the bush for the past five days and have just made it back to an artillery camp near Song Be. Got a hot shower and a beer, plus a couple new pairs of socks, which made me feel almost human. Somebody said we’ll get to stay here for a whole week. Clete’s eye has recovered from our fistfight. We shook hands and everything’s okay. He and Bobby found a field they’d cleared of mines and the three of us started tossing a football around. Clete always has to play quarterback, his old position in high school. The Gooks all watch us like we’re nuts. How’s Mary? Saying any more words yet? She’ll probably be jabbering like a magpie by the time I get home!

  If you get a chance, could you send some more Lifebuoy soap? And make me a tape of some good music! Doors and the Stones, if they’ve got anything new out. Can’t stand this Army radio shit.

  Well, now that I’ve asked for the moon, I’ll sign off. All my love forever and ever. Bookoo kisses for our little Mary.

  Your nummah one husband,

  Jack

  Ps. Clete says to tell you hi!

  Her eyes blurred with tears as she read the lines her father had written some thirty years before. She felt as if a vibrant young stranger had leaped from the paper and stuck out his hand, saying, “Hi, Mary. I’m your old man!”

  She opened the last envelope. The letter was dated just two days later than the first, but read much the same—her father complaining about the rain and a terrible batch of C rations that contained nothing but tapioca pudding, a dish he apparently despised. He inquired about some weaving of Martha’s and asked if Mary could say “Daddy” yet. He was anxious to come home, counting down the 106 days he had left. Then:

  I guess Clete is still pissed about us. Sometimes he drills the football into me pretty hard. But he and Bobby scope out the safe fields and they always ask me to play, so I guess you and me being married doesn’t bother him all that much. He’s changed a lot since we’ve been over here. I guess we all have, but both Clete and Bobby have turned into real bad-ass dudes. Sometimes I think they enjoy the things we have to do. I’d much rather smoke a little dope and cross off the days on the calendar.

  The letter ended as the other had—love to little Mary, and to Martha. In this one he’d even instructed Martha to give his dog, Jeb Stuart, a bone.

  “What the hell does all this mean?” Mary murmured, her thoughts spinning as she spread all three letters out across the blanket. The first letter, postmarked six months before her mother’s murder, indicated that a Sergeant Jim Green had thought her father’s death something beyond a simple KIA. The second two, which her mother had forwarded to the Judge Advocate’s Office, spoke of Bobby and another person named Clete, who apparently knew her mother, too. But who were they? It sounded like this Clete had a problem with their marriage. Her mother had told her the story of their courtship a thousand times—that Jack had come up to hunt one October when he was on leave from Fort
Bragg. He’d gone into Little Jump Off to buy shotgun shells, and three days later he still sat there in front of the fireplace, his shells unbought, squirrel or bear or whatever he’d planned on hunting completely forgotten. Jack always sang “Sweet Dream Baby” to me, her mother used to say with a laugh. But he was my dream, too. By the end of his leave Martha had accepted his proposal; at Christmas, they’d married. In all the times her mother had recounted that story, not once had she mentioned any rival for her affections named Clete or Bobby. Her grandmother would probably know all about this, but Eugenia was dead. There was no one left to ask anymore.

  Mary stared at the letters, wondering if Irene might know what this meant. Even if she wasn’t familiar with the JAG inquiry, she might know who this Clete was. After all, she’d been her mother’s attorney, as well as her close friend. Her mother might have confided in Irene about something this important. Suddenly she heard a noise outside, a roaring from the sky. She looked out the window. A small blue-and-white helicopter was landing in the front field. Safer and Tuttle walked toward it, their jackets whipping in the stiff rotor-wind.

  “I bet they’ve come to fly me to the airport,” Mary said aloud as she stood up and stuffed the letters in the back pocket of her jeans. “Well, you can forget about that, Safer. This girl’s got other plans.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Of all the rooms in his castle, Wurth liked this one the best. Spacious, with a twelve-foot ceiling, it took up one entire suite on the second floor and served as his private dojo. LeClaire’s famous poster of the new Jerusalem did not hang here, nor did any of Dunbar’s silly charts describing the superior size and weight of male Caucasian brains. Wurth’s studio was devoid of anything other than the flag he’d earned in Japan, years ago. Huge and red, it covered one entire wall of the room, and consisted of the word kyoushu—assassin—written in black kanji on a circle of white. Along the right side of the flag hung a long knotted cord of black silk. Each twist in the rope meant that someone’s life had ended by Wurth’s hand; he’d lost count of their number back in ’79.

  Under the flag stood a black credenza that bore an array of mementos. A folded Stars and Stripes, the flag he’d given the best years of his life to; a framed collection of the ribbons that once bedecked his chest. An old photograph of four young men grinning in combat greens stood among several newer pictures of himself and his Troopers, young men exuberant with the same esprit de corps that had gleamed from his own eyes, so many years ago.

  He picked up a photo of a grinning David Forrester, taken on the day he’d become a Feather Man. Wurth traced around the boy’s image with his little finger and smiled. Only 2 percent of all the troops in the Army could ever hope to become Feather Men. Only that few could bring themselves to kill in that soundless, seamless way, where the act of murder bound two people as intimately as the act of love. The lunkish boys Dunbar sent him could kill, but only with a rifle or a small array of organized crime tricks. David Forrester had been the lone one capable of creeping up and slipping a knife into someone’s kidney or a needle into their heart. Then, when he’d earned his black feather, Dunbar had him beaten to death like a dog.

  “Someday you’ll pay for that, Dunbar,” Wurth whispered as he replaced the picture, blowing away a small speck of dirt from the glass. “Someday you’re going to learn a whole new meaning for the word reliable.”

  Striding to the door, he turned on a panel of huge lights that stretched down from the high ceiling, illuminating a tall mannequin in the center of the room. Built of bamboo and painted black, it was six feet tall and poseable, much like the small models that art students use to study anatomy. Its arms and legs could be extended, and the bulbous black head could be totally removed. Wurth gave a wistful smile. David had mastered Iaido with astonishing speed, he had the awesome natural talent of a true kenjutshushi. Wurth wondered if his old arms could still do as well.

  Though he, himself, had probably eliminated a hundred people in the last ten years, he had not taken a head since the mid-1980s. Back then he’d been good; better than any other American. He was invisible, undetectable. He could leave lots of blood when he wanted to, almost none when he didn’t. But that had been almost fifteen years ago. Though he’d kept his body exquisitely toned, time took its toll. Reflexes slowed, strength ebbed away. Today, he would consider himself lucky if he could do half as good a job as David Forrester.

  He crossed the room and pulled over a large cardboard box he’d left beside the door. Inside were eight pumpkins, each roughly the size of a human skull. He removed the mannequin’s head and replaced it with one of the pumpkins, then stepped back. The thing looked ridiculous, a bony black scarecrow with a fat orange head. David had found that funny, the first time. Then, when Wurth explained that until you could slice a pumpkin all the way through with one blow, you could never slice through a human neck, the boy had ceased laughing. David’s first boxes of pumpkins had been horrible—hacked into pieces as if they’d been the victims of Halloween carvers gone mad. Then, midway through the fourth box, he began to catch on. He mastered the technique, then added his natural speed to cut through first the spine, then the soft tissues of the throat.

  “Why cut from the back?” David asked one afternoon, when his sweat gave the muscles of his chest the sheen of satin.

  “You want to cut the hardest part at the beginning of your stroke,” he’d replied. “Also, it’s kinder. We are assassins, not monsters.”

  No, he thought as he stared at the pumpkin head. They weren’t. David had not been a monster, and neither was he. The monsters out there sat in the Apostle room, underground in California. He looked up at the orange-headed mannequin and smiled. “You want to see how reliable I am, Dunbar? You just watch.”

  He walked back to the credenza, pushed one of the sliding drawers open, and withdrew a long, heavy bundle wrapped in red silk. Untying the golden cord that bound it, he spread it out carefully.

  They were all there, their blades glistening silver in the bright light. Two Honshu razors that were good for vocal cords and veins, a crotchet for the soft tissues of the mouth. An old French bodkin was his secret for any script to be written across their bellies; a heavy-handed Bowie for the joints of thumb and finger. A Japanese ryoba, for ears and the tough ligaments of the jaw. He had more, of course, others from around the world, still others he’d forged for his own purposes, but these before him were the ones he loved the most. These he came back to over and over again. As the few basic colors on a painter’s palette could render most of the colors in nature, these knives, along with his syringe, could accomplish the tasks of a Feather Man.

  Carefully he withdrew his favorite, an ancient hira zukuri and refolded the silk, putting it back in the credenza. He hated to expose his pets to light and air unless he had to. They stayed much happier wrapped in their dark silk cocoon. Much sharper, too.

  He walked toward the mannequin, swinging the zukuri in a wide arc in front of him, loosening up. When his muscles felt limber he pulled the sword from its scabbard. The edge of the dark steel blade glowed blue in the light. He wrapped his right hand around the handle, close to the hilt, then positioned his left hand just beneath it. Extending his arms, he lifted the heavy sword out in front of him. When the tip of the blade hung motionless as a raindrop, he smiled. Good, he thought. He still had the muscle. Still could maintain the control.

  He then turned his gaze to the pumpkin-head, seeing not the simple topography of a giant squash, but Richard Dunbar’s overly styled hair and jittery black eyes. Richard Dunbar, puppet master. If the next few days worked out the way he’d planned, Dunbar was going to find out what it felt like to have a Feather Man jerk his strings.

  “Yeeaaahhhhh!” He leaped forward so swiftly the zukuri was just a blur of light. He felt the faint resistance of the blade as it entered the thick skin of the pumpkin, pushed through the slimy middle, then sliced through the other side. As he ended his stroke, with the tip of his sword high, there seemed to be the smallest s
igh from the pumpkin itself, as the top part re-settled down on its lower half. Wurth looked at it and nodded with satisfaction. He’d cleaved the thing in two and yet had not even jostled it from the neck of the dummy.

  “Get ready, Dunbar,” he murmured as he rubbed the blade carefully with a silk cloth. “Soon we’re really going to have some fun.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “So who’s taking care of Irene’s animals?” Mary asked Safer as they hurried down the airport concourse, her backpack in hand.

  “Kavanagh said he would be there this evening.”

  “Is he still at the top of your suspect list?”

  “No,” Safer replied in the muffled tone cops use when they’re embarrassed. “He checked out okay.”

  Mary hid her grin of satisfaction. She could be right about a lot more things, if Safer would only give her the chance. But the Feds didn’t want to do that. Washington had said no.

  “Look, Safer, before I go back to Atlanta, at least tell me where things stand.”

  “No print matches in the building, no saliva or blood on the feather, no reports of a headless body anywhere in the Carolinas, Georgia, or Tennessee.” He lowered his voice as they walked. “Tuttle thinks someone killed her and dumped her in the woods. Krebbs, my computer junkie, likes the conspiracy theories. He thinks they’re keeping her alive until New Year’s.”

  Mary looked at him. “What do you think?”

  “I’m inclined to agree with Krebbs.” He gave a grim smile. “But then, I’ve always been an optimist.”

  “Gosh, I forgot to take off my gun,” she cried as Safer handed her backpack to a handsome gray-haired man in a Delta uniform.

  “I’ve explained the situation to them,” Safer said quietly. “Mr. Simmons will take care of it. He’ll see that you get through here and at Hartsfield without setting off all the bells and whistles.”

  “You think of everything, don’t you?” Mary watched Mr. Simmons lumber off with her pack.