A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  “Anybody strange enough to kidnap a federal judge?”

  “I don’t think so, although everybody gets pretty surly around April fifteenth.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ruth Moon frowned at Jonathan. “Remember those files I cleaned off that hard drive a few weeks ago?”

  Jonathan took a sip of sassafras tea. “The Hot-N-Ready Honey file from the insurance agency?”

  “No, these were from Sergeant Wurth’s computer. I told you about it—America something or other.” Ruth looked at Mary. “Jonathan picked up some computers from this ex-Army guy who’s running a camp in the middle of what used to be Tsalagi land, and he’s spouting all this flag-waving patriot stuff.”

  Jonathan snorted. “Sergeant Wurth’s okay, Ruth. Hell, he gave you three computers.”

  “Who’s Sergeant Wurth?” Mary leaned forward. A lot of roads seemed to be leading her back to the Army today.

  “This Vietnam vet. He turned the old Frieden Sanitarium into a summer camp called Unakawaya,” explained Jonathan. “He keeps about a dozen foster-care boys there all year. Stump Logan takes all his high-risk juvies up to Wurth to be remolded into upstanding young men.”

  “Upstanding young white men,” muttered Ruth Moon. “Wurth doesn’t take any boys of color.”

  “Ruth, the only other boys of color around here are Cherokee boys, and we take care of our own. Give the guy a break.”

  “But I thought that old place was about to fall down.” Mary had never seen the Frieden Sanitarium, but she remembered when some kids in her high school broke into it one night, wanting to test their courage in a haunted house.

  “Wurth’s dumped a lot of time and money into it. I’ve heard he works those DHS kids pretty hard.”

  “Could this Wurth have a grudge against the judiciary?” Mary asked.

  “The one time I saw him he was teaching a bunch of kids how to put in a Japanese garden. That sounds like a pretty mellow kind of guy to me.”

  “But didn’t he tell you he was some kind of black belt in something?” insisted Ruth Moon.

  “He said he was an ex-Ranger.”

  “See?” Ruth pressed her point. “That’s something.”

  “Yeah, but what white supremacist worth his salt would waste his time showing boys how to prune bonsai trees? Anybody who would kidnap a federal judge would have kids going at each other with pugil sticks and making bombs in the basement.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Mary, the scent of a trail evaporating as quickly as it had materialized. “There’s nobody else around here that you can think of?”

  He closed his eyes. After a few moments, he looked at her and shook his head. “I know most of the territory within a fifty-mile radius of Upsy Daisy Farm. If anything that big was going on, I’d have heard something.”

  They finished their pie and talked for a little while longer. When Ruth Moon rose to clear the table, Mary knew the time had come to leave. Using her rusty Cherokee, she thanked Ruth for her hospitality, then she started down the stairs into the darkened store.

  “Where are you going tonight?” Jonathan asked, following her.

  “I don’t know.” Mary shrugged. “Maybe over to Cherokee. Some of their motels are probably open.”

  “Why don’t you stay here? I’ll make up the cot in front of the fire.”

  She looked up at him, feeling awkward. A year ago they would have been curled up together, in his bed upstairs. Now he wanted to prepare a cot for her, thinking that just the fire could keep her warm.

  “I don’t think that would be such a good idea,” Mary said.

  “I can hide you so this Safer character could never find you.” Jonathan touched her arm awkwardly. “It’ll be okay, Mary. It’s late and it’s cold. Stay here with us tonight.”

  Us, she thought. No longer him. But us. She looked at his eyes, his mouth. How she would love to say yes and allow him to hide her in his room where he kept his bed shoved beneath the window so he could look at the stars. How she would love to take off her clothes and wrap herself in his warmth. But she could not do that. He had another woman in his bed now. He had made a life for himself without her.

  She smiled. “Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate the offer, but . . .”

  “Then sit down. It would be wrong for you to leave. I’ll be right back.” He was already bounding up the stairs.

  She sighed, realizing he had invoked the tradition of hospitality that all Tsalagi honored. Now it would be insulting for her to refuse. She sat down in one of the rockers by the hearth. Although the little fireplace was probably one-twentieth the size of the ones at the Grove Park Inn, Jonathan always burned wild cherry wood at Christmastime, so the whole store smelled like budding flowers. As she looked into the flames she grew drowsy, then suddenly both Jonathan and Ruth Moon reappeared, Jonathan with the cot, Ruth Moon carrying an armful of sheets and blankets.

  “I really didn’t mean for you to do this—” Mary jumped up from the rocker.

  “It’s okay,” Ruth assured her as Jonathan unfolded the cot. “We’re happy to have you.”

  All three of them worked on the cot, finally arranging it in front of the fire with sheets and two wool blankets.

  “I guess you remember where the bathroom is,” said Jonathan, shifting on his feet.

  “Right next to the ice-cream freezer,” Mary replied, equally ill at ease.

  “Help yourself to anything you need down here. Toothbrush, toothpaste, Ding-Dongs.”

  “Thanks, Jonathan.” Mary had to laugh. “If I get hungry I’ll hit the Ding-Dongs first.”

  “Come on, Jonathan.” Smiling, Ruth Moon grabbed his hand. “Let’s go to bed and leave Mary alone. I’m sure she must be exhausted.”

  “Right.” Jonathan looked at Mary as Ruth dragged him toward the stairs. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled. “Good night.”

  With a helpless shrug he turned, and Ruth pulled him up to their bedroom. Mary stood and watched as they disappeared upstairs, then she sat down on the little cot and started to take off her clothes, getting ready to sleep alone.

  CHAPTER 29

  Tommy Cabe switched off his flashlight and peeked out from the blanket that covered his head. He’d been reading Captain Dempsey’s diary, and if everything Captain Dempsey had written was true, then Willett had been right about the third floor. It had been a place of pain, where some German doctor named Boehr had tried to make fake body parts for the maimed soldiers who’d lived here. No wonder those rooms looked so creepy, Cabe thought, shivering as he slipped the diary under his mattress for the night.

  He sat up in the dark room, his ears keen to the noises around him. Galloway had finally stopped tossing on his mattress, and the rhythmic squeaking of Abbot’s cot as he jerked off had long since died away. Now Cabe heard only the soft snoring of ten Grunts on ten cots, escaping Camp Unakawaya the only way they could. He sighed. He’d searched every inch of this camp for Willett—even sneaking into the Trooper quarters, in case they were holding him hostage—and had come up with nothing. Now there was only one place left to search. The third floor. If he didn’t find him up there, then he could only guess that Galloway must have been right.

  He rose from his bed, trying to keep his weight off his exquisitely tender buttocks. Since his encounter with Tallent and Grice in the bathroom, every movement made him hurt, and he dreamed constantly of when he would make those two kneel and bare their asses before him.

  Bastards, he thought, fighting back a boiling anger. He needed to be cool now, not hot. Clever instead of angry. “Act smart,” he reminded himself in a whisper. “Act like Willett.”

  He pulled on a pair of socks and tiptoed to the door. The old linoleum floor crackled as he walked, but none of the other Grunts stirred. The outside hall was laced with shadows, illuminated by a stark winter moonlight that poured in the dormer windows.

  He and Willett had explored much of the third floor. They’d seen dusty, leather-toppe
d tables with straps to hold people down, and dentist chairs with electrical wires attached. Those rooms had scared Willett, who claimed that anybody who got strapped to that stuff would get up with a whole new definition for the word “pain.”

  Keeping to the shadows, he turned left. At the end of the hall was the scene of his humiliation, the bathroom. What Cabe knew that most didn’t was that in the narrow locked closet where Wurth kept cleaning supplies was a small window that opened onto an ancient fire escape.

  He tiptoed into the bathroom and opened the door of every stall to make sure nobody had their feet up, hiding. After he was satisfied the room was empty, he crept over to the closet. From a string around his neck he pulled a small tool he’d fashioned from a ten-penny nail. When Wurth had confiscated his little Barlow knife the day he’d arrived, Willett had showed him how to make this instrument, calling it a “Carolina church key.” Frowning with concentration Tommy worked the slender piece of metal into the lock. This little pick had served him far better than his Barlow, and he’d made it mostly all by himself.

  When the lock slid open, he slipped into the closet. Moonlight glowed dimly through the white-washed windowpanes. He unlatched the old hasp and quietly lifted the window. Frigid air raised instant goose bumps on his arms, and his breath made little puffs of smoke. Below him, the back acres of the camp rolled like a carpet into the blackness of the forest. Far away he heard an owl; then, all at once, a car engine growled. Curious, he thrust one leg through the window and wiggled out onto the fire escape. Craning his neck as far as he could, he saw the broad, low taillights of a big sedan—first bright red, then white as the car backed up once, then took off down the driveway.

  “Shit,” he whispered. “That’s Logan’s cruiser!” Had the sheriff just dropped off another poor kid to be raised by Sergeant Wurth? In a way Tommy wouldn’t mind if he had. A new kid would mean fresh meat for Tallent and Grice. A new kid would take the heat off him.

  But he could do nothing about any new kid now. Right now he just wanted to find out if Willett was still alive. Shivering with the cold, Tommy held the rusty railing with both hands and began to ascend the steps, the whole skeletal structure wobbling as he climbed. When he’d scaled two flights of ten steps each, he raised a window on the third floor, one he and Willett had discovered was never locked.

  He stepped into another bathroom, this one so humid that the air felt almost too thick to breathe. He tiptoed across the sticky tile floor and peeked out into the hall beyond. Usually it was dark and silent as a tomb. Tonight, though, he heard voices murmuring from the far end. Damn, he thought, his heart starting to pound. Why didn’t I look up here first?

  Hastily, he left the sanctuary of the bathroom, slithering through the dense shadows along the wall, his breath coming fast and hard. He’d made it halfway down the hall when a sudden loud shriek ripped through the silence.

  It startled him so he jumped into a doorway, banging his head against the old door. By the time he’d figured out where the first sound had come from, two more screams split the air, the last followed by the low rumble of nervous laughter.

  His heart was beating like crazy now. He hadn’t heard shrieks like that since the day he’d watched his grandfather castrate hogs.

  Pressing himself into the doorway, he listened. Over the rumble of voices he heard Wurth’s deep, crisp tones of command. “This knife cuts like this,” Tommy heard him say. “If you use it this way, the blood will never obscure your vision.”

  Tommy heard another scream, this one so awful that he clapped his hands over his ears. He wanted to run, to hide. As much as he despised Tallent and Grice, he’d never feared for his life with them. Right now it sounded like someone was torturing Willett to death.

  The door opened. Cabe shriveled back against the wall. Upchurch burst out of the room. He was followed by another Trooper named Rogers, a sallow young man with a shaven head.

  “Can you believe what he’s doing in there?” Upchurch closed the door before he spoke, looking as if he might vomit.

  Rogers’s voice held the faintest tremor. “This Feather shit is pretty bad.”

  “You ought to see what he’s going to do next,” Tommy heard Upchurch say. “Come on. We’d better go get his bag.”

  “Let’s take our time.” Rogers gave a skittish laugh. “I kinda need some air.”

  Tommy watched as Upchurch and Rogers sauntered down the hall, their footsteps languid as the sound of sobbing came from behind the closed door. All at once he felt hot and strange, like the time he’d accidentally interrupted his mother and one of her boyfriends.

  Then the sobbing abated, leaving the corridor in an ominous silence. For a moment he wondered if Upchurch and Rogers hadn’t bugged out entirely, then he heard their footsteps approaching. Now was his only chance to see what they were doing to Willett.

  He darted up to the next doorway. If Upchurch and Rogers opened the door wide enough, he might be able to see inside. As the pair came into view, he saw that Rogers now carried a small case. It looked like an old doctor’s bag. Cabe fought back a shudder as they glanced once at each other, then opened the door.

  He pressed forward as they went inside. Most of the Troopers were gathered around what looked like an examination table. Wurth had some kind of white apron strapped on, while Tallent and Grice and the others gaped at a lump beneath a blood-speckled sheet. Cabe leaned from the doorway to get a better look. As the door swung open to its widest point, he caught a glimpse of a head of silvery gray hair. He blinked in amazement. It wasn’t Willett they were torturing! It was some old woman!

  He stood like a statue until the door closed, then he turned and fled. He knew he should move with caution, but he didn’t care. Everything inside him felt on fire. What was going on? What had they done with Willett? Who was the old lady? Was Sheriff Logan now delivering old women for Wurth to cut to pieces?

  Fighting hot tears, Tommy jerked open the bathroom door. This place has been fucked from the start, he thought. If he didn’t get out of here soon all Wurth’s vileness would become his. He would not grow up to be a good man like his grandfather, but someone like Wurth, who sliced up boys with his tongue and old women with knives.

  Hurrying to the window, he scrambled out onto the fire escape and breathed in the frosty night air. As his head cleared he looked up to see a single star shooting across the black sky. He realized then without tears, that he would never see Willett again. His only friend had become, in that moment, one of Unakawaya’s ghosts. The stones of this castle would forever keep Willett’s fate a secret. All Tommy could do now was try to escape this awful place and take the memory of Willett with him. He only hoped he could do that and still remain alive.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Does she always sleep like that?” Ruth Moon backed away from Mary Crow, who during the night had switched from the cot in front of the fire to the rocking chair, where she now slept upright, her Beretta clutched in her hands.

  Jonathan leaned over Mary and gently took the pistol away. “Her mother got killed about ten feet away. I imagine that would make anybody a little skittish.”

  Mary’s jaw hung slack; a small drop of saliva had collected in the corner of her mouth. With a single, tender gesture, Jonathan reached under her chin and closed her mouth, his strong hand cupping her jaw. “I should have stayed down here last night. There are too many ghosts for her in this room.”

  Ruth didn’t say anything else. She turned and walked back up the stairs, unwilling to stand there and watch her lover stew over Mary Crow. She sat down at the kitchen table and poured herself a cup of coffee. In a few moments Jonathan padded back up the stairs, carrying a package of chocolate Ding-Dongs.

  “Is she still asleep?”

  He nodded, opening the cellophane and cramming half a Ding-Dong in his mouth. “I wonder what made her draw that gun.”

  “Probably some weird mountain noise.” Ruth remembered her first weeks at Little Jump Off. She’d grown up in the flat plains o
f Oklahoma, where sound radiated out into the air. In the mountains, noise seemed to have a life of its own, careening from one spot to the next, amplified by moisture and altitude. Up here, a simple bullfrog could sound demonic; a prowling tomcat like the devil himself.

  “Yeah. I guess.” Jonathan finished one Ding-Dong and started another.

  “Are you still going up to Asheville, to get those computers?”

  “If you want me to.” He grabbed his mug from the dish drainer and poured himself some coffee.

  “They need us to get them before the end of the year. They want to write them off their income tax.”

  “Then I’d better go today,” said Jonathan. “I’m taking three guys out fishing tomorrow.”

  “How long will you be gone?” Ruth hated to be left alone at Little Jump Off. Though she would never admit it to Jonathan, she understood perfectly why Mary Crow had slept with a gun in her lap. Ghosts hovered around Little Jump Off like smoke around a fire.

  “I’ll be home on New Year’s Eve. They want to get back to Greenville to party.”

  Jonathan finished his Ding-Dongs, then put on his socks and boots. Rising, he grabbed his jacket and scooped his car keys off the table. “Okay, then.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I’ll see you around noon.”

  “What about Mary?” She looked up at him.

  “Just let her sleep,” he replied, then added, “but keep an eye out for that G-man. Wake her up if somebody strange comes by.”

  He smiled at her, then he was down the steps and out the door, off to pick up the year’s last computers.

  * * *

  Ruth busied herself in the kitchen, washing dishes with great gusto, hoping the clatter might wake Mary up. She had to open the store at nine, and it would be difficult to conduct business with someone snoring in a rocking chair. She had just turned to put the dishes back in the cabinet when Mary appeared at the top of the stairs, her clothes rumpled, her hair uncombed.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice grainy and soft.

  “Good morning.” Ruth smiled. The famous Atlanta prosecutor seemed lost and bewildered. “Did you sleep okay?”