A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  Deciding quickly, she turned her attention first to her legs. The same kind of gummy tape that bound her mouth and arms also fettered her ankles tight together, making all movement difficult to impossible. Now she rolled herself up in a tight ball and wriggled to a sitting position. Using her bound feet, she pushed herself across the room, until her back rested against the door. She was trying to push herself up to stand when, suddenly, she felt something give a little on the door frame. A tiny movement of something other than her backbone. She twisted around to look. She’d managed to bump up against one of the hinges—two crude plates of rusty iron joined in the middle. The original pin must have broken years ago, and someone had repaired it with a long nail. That was what jostled against her spine. Clumsily she turned, and pushed her wrists against the hinge. She fumbled until she felt the nail jiggle again, then she wiggled her wrists beneath the sharp little point. Though it bit into her skin and made her fingers sticky with blood, she kept experimenting. If she pressed too hard, the nail jerked upward, out of the way; too gently and it wouldn’t score the tape. After a number of attempts, she developed an awkward flicking motion where pressed hard against the nail before it lifted it in its cradle. Then it would, for an instant, bite into the fabric of the tape. If she knocked the nail loose, the game would be over, but as long as she could work it just right, she could conceivably get her arms free.

  With a cold, nervous sweat stinging her eyes, she began to work, at first hearing nothing but her own shallow breathing and the chink of the nail as it lifted in its cradle. Then, after she’d counted 113 flicks of her wrists, her ears pricked as she heard a tiny, infinitesimally small tear in the tape.

  After that she worked in a fury. Ten, twenty, fifty-six more strokes. Soon every flick of her wrists sent a jolt of agony all the way to her shoulder blades, but she persisted. She could wiggle her wrists, now. Just a little longer and she would be able to start working the tape with her thumbs.

  Then she heard something. A single creak beyond her door, then another. It sounded as if someone were trying to walk quietly through fine, crackly gravel. She listened as they crept closer. Had all her thumping and bumping brought those boys back? Hastily she scooted over and flattened herself against the wall, willing her heart to stop its frantic romp as she sat and listened. The creaking came closer. Then it stopped. She watched the doorknob above her head, knowing it would turn at any moment. Her armpits grew clammy when she heard someone breathing on the other side of the door.

  She pressed against the wall, determined to offer the smallest possible view of herself to anyone peeking in the keyhole. But then whoever stood outside retreated. The footsteps whispered away into silence. Flopping over, she pressed her face against the bottom of the door, straining to see who had sniffed at her prison. All she saw was a single fat roach, which waved its antennae at her, before it disappeared into the sooty darkness.

  I’ve got to get out of here, she thought, struggling back upright. Any minute they are going to come back for real.

  Ignoring the warm, sticky blood on her fingers, she flicked her wrists against the nail again, this time keeping a quick, stubborn rhythm. Once she pressed too hard, and for an awful moment she thought she’d knocked the nail out of the hinge, but it settled back into place with a soft chink and she continued.

  After an eternity, she stopped again, fighting an insane urge to laugh, remembering how duct tape had been Jonathan’s first choice for mending everything from leaky pipes to his broken sandals. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and with her thumb felt the tear she’d made with the nail. She was nearly through the binding that held her wrists together. Just a few more strokes, and her hands would be free. Yes!

  She scooted back and began to work harder than ever. The pain in her arms was gone, replaced by a prickly numbness. Still, she did not give up. One stroke, two strokes, three, then three hundred and she lost count; then without warning, her hands fell apart, flopping to the floor like dead fish. She looked at them in wonder, tears flooding her eyes. They were covered in blood, cold and numb from the strangling duct tape, but her fingers still worked. Wiping them on her pajama coat, she twisted around to pry the nail loose from its hinge. Now able to rip with its sharp point, she made quick work of the tape that bound her ankles, then pulled the final strands from her mouth. Though she tore the top layer of skin from her lips when she did so, she didn’t care. For the first time in what seemed like decades, she could work her jaws. She spat up a lump of coagulated blood, then wobbled to her feet. Crossing the room, she stretched up beneath the high window, greedily sucking draughts of chill air deep into her starved lungs. Outside, the pewter sky was tinged with purple. Dusk, she thought with a sigh. It had taken her hours to remove that duct tape from her wrists. What day was it? If she could just get out of here and find Irene, everything might still turn out okay.

  She hobbled across the room to where the old pipe had once joined the furnace. The opening was enormous by modern standards—roughly two feet across, with a corrugated iron pipe leading into a thick, palpable darkness. Though the idea of worming her way into that black void made her sick inside, she knew it was her only way out.

  With a silent prayer to whatever saint might be in charge of those held at Camp Unakawaya, she ducked down into the waist-high opening and pulled herself into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 36

  “Ruth Moon,” Safer said to the mechanical voice that answered his call. “M-o-o-n. Native American female from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, age about thirty. Suspected group is REPIC, acronym for Red People In Congress. Nothing further known.” After the answering two beeps, he started to switch the phone off, then a page of the notepad he’d stuck under the sun visor caught his eye.

  He pulled it out and studied the words he’d scribbled. “Worth,” “Camp U-n-a-k-a- something or other,” Mooney Garvin had told him. He ran his thumb along the thin wire spiral, then thought, What the hell. He’d just put Jonathan Walkingstick and Ruth Moon in the hopper. Why not add the man Mooney regarded as the biggest bastard in six counties? He had absolutely nothing else to go on.

  “Robert Worth,” he said to the same mechanical voice to which he’d just given Ruth Moon’s name. “Male, U.S. Army retired, Hartsville, North Carolina, age unknown.” Now, he thought grimly as he steered the truck out of the Little Jump Off parking lot and back onto the highway, somebody come up with something.

  “Dammit, Mary, where did you go?” he muttered. He’d hoped beyond reason that he would walk inside that little store and find her there, holed up with Walkingstick. He had even pictured the expression on her face when she saw him—those hazel eyes would darken and her mouth would curl in defiance. Although irked to have been discovered, she would have gone with him willingly, and they could have joined forces to find Judge Hannah. But no. Ruth Moon had been the woman he’d found at Little Jump Off.

  As hard little seeds of snow peppered his windshield, Safer sped east along Highway 441 back to Upsy Daisy Farm, turning over in his mind the scant information he’d gathered in the past five days. Tuttle and the guys in Hartsville had turned up every rock between here and Tennessee, and Krebbs hadn’t looked up from his computer in over seventy-two hours. All of them together had only gleaned two names from an old moonshiner, along with Krebbs’s conviction that something was going to happen on New Year’s Eve. But what? wondered Safer. And where?

  Usually the answer is right in front of you, one of his instructors at Quantico used to say. Sometimes it’s too plain to see. Okay, Daniel. What’s so obvious that you’re overlooking it?

  His phone beeped. He grabbed it. A mechanical voice informed him: “No records retrieved on subject Ruth Moon. Access 9746 for other information requested.”

  Okay, Safer thought. Nothing on her, but everything else had made the charts. He pulled over and punched another number in his phone. In a few moments, three messages appeared on the tiny screen.

  The information on REPIC was only five
lines long, listing a duly registered nonprofit political action group headquartered in Spokane, Washington, with another chapter in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. For the past five years REPIC’s membership had held steady at 736 people, with an annual budget of less than ten thousand dollars. Safer shook his head. These Indians were going to need a lot more wampum to crack the hallowed halls of Congress.

  He stored that message and began to read the one about Walkingstick. It was not any more suspect than the one about REPIC—Walkingstick had joined the Army in 1988, served as a medic in the Eighty-second Airborne for six years, then been honorably discharged. Beyond that, he’d done nothing to interest anybody in Washington at all.

  “Okay,” said Safer as he stored that message. “This time the Indians are the good guys. Now let’s see about this Worth.”

  The message about Worth scrolled down far longer than the other two. By the time it ended, Safer learned the Sergeant Robert Erwin Wurth—not Worth—had been drafted into the Army in 1967. After one tour in Vietnam, he’d re-upped and gone through Ranger training, ultimately rising to the rank of master sergeant. Though his jacket listed a glittering array of decorations, halfway through his nineteenth year of service he’d abruptly left the Army. After that, he dropped off the screen as fully as Walkingstick. Since leaving the service, the man had not gotten as much as a parking ticket.

  Safer frowned as he carefully reread the information. Why would a decorated veteran who’d spent his life in the Army ditch his career one year shy of his full twenty? It would have cost Wurth a lot in pensions and benefits, not to mention his pride. Absently taking a bite of the granola bar he’d opened sometime before dawn, Safer dialed a second number. This time he spoke to the very female Susan Davis instead of electronic voice mail.

  “Susan? This is Daniel Safer.”

  “Hi, Dan. How’s it going up in them thar hills? You-all planning some fun for New Year’s?”

  “It’s going okay,” Safer lied, trying hard to remember the last time he’d had anything vaguely resembling fun on New Year’s Eve. “Listen, I need you to pull up everything you can on one Sergeant Robert Erwin Wurth, U.S.A., retired. That’s Wurth, W-U-R-T-H. I need to know why this guy quit the Army.”

  “Maybe he got tired of all those pushups,” Susan quipped.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Safer chuckled. “Susan, I don’t know what’s on your plate right now, but could you get that for me ASAP?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And Susan—”

  “Yeah?”

  “See if you can find anything on a little nonprofit called REPIC.”

  “R-E-P-I-C?”

  “Yeah. Red People In Congress.”

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks, Sue. I owe you.”

  Safer switched off his phone and watched the snow falling. At this elevation it no longer pelted his truck, but floated down softly from the sky, melting the instant it hit the warm metal of his hood. Moments before, he had nothing. Now he had a Ranger whose career had abruptly ended just months away from retirement. Wurth might have good reason to be pissed at the federal government. And a Ranger would certainly have the skills to kidnap and kill anybody he pleased. By the same token, this Wurth could be just another gung-ho vet running a summer camp for kids.

  “I’ll put Tuttle on it,” Safer decided as he started the truck and headed back to Hannah’s farm. He’d have a look at everything they’d come up with one more time, then he was going to have to call Washington and tell them that after five days, the only trace of the judge was a single black bird feather, left on a bathroom floor.

  CHAPTER 37

  As the clock in Irene Hannah’s living room struck three P.M., Daniel Safer had laid his head down on the kitchen table and closed his eyes. Over the past two hours he had reexamined every piece of paper strewn out on the table. Lab reports, evidence files, interviews with the locals—he reviewed everything his men had gathered since Irene Hannah vanished five days earlier. Every trace of a lead had come to nothing. The ultraconservative states’ rights attorney Tuttle questioned had an airtight, corroborated alibi, and the two men they’d picked up in Asheville urinating on the windows of a Planned Parenthood building had blubbered like babies, but had come up clean. With high hopes Safer had dispatched Tuttle to check out this Robert Wurth’s camp, but Mike had come back looking smugly superior, reporting that though the place looked creepy as hell, it was nothing more than a hyperpatriotic camp for kids. As Safer watched the colors dance on the backside of his eyes, he knew that in a few moments he’d have to call Washington and report his failure. After that, if he and his men were very lucky, his boss would make them school-crossing guards somewhere up near the Arctic Circle.

  He sighed. He hadn’t been able to save Judge Hannah. Worse, he’d inveigled a smart and spirited young attorney to come here to help and he’d lost her, too. A school-crossing job in Alaska would be too good for him.

  As he sat thinking of Mary Crow, he felt someone touch his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Krebbs towered over him, grinning, his teeth looking slightly orange from pork-rind dye.

  “I might have something,” he said, his voice surprisingly high for a man so tall. “Take a look at this.”

  This was a printout of a message posted on an Internet bulletin board. Its URL was not one of the usual paramilitary sites the FBI tracked, but a porn site in France that dealt in everything from kiddy sex to snuff films. It had been posted just an hour earlier, from somewhere in the United States. The one-line message was in English. Patriots be watching: Heads will fall in the mountains tonight.

  “Where did this come from?” Safer looked up into Krebbs’s coarse-featured face.

  “We’re tracing it right now.”

  Safer looked at the message again. Shit, if this was for real, it could mean that Irene Hannah was still alive. Heads will fall tonight, just like the ball in Times Square. Fuck, he thought. Krebbs had it right. She’s still alive! “Heads will fall in the mountains tonight.” . . . And she’s here, in the Smokies.

  “You need someone with woodsy eyes.” Mooney Garvin’s advice rang in his head. The old buzzard had called that right, too, he decided as he gazed blearily at all the papers and electronic equipment spread around him. Up in these mountains the best FBI science would never beat the sharp eyes of a native.

  He scooped up his keys and hurried to the door.

  “Tuttle,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m going out. Get everyone locked and loaded and ready to go.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get me some woodsy eyes.”

  * * *

  Forty-two minutes later he pulled up in front of Little Jump Off Store. Smoke curled from the chimney as the little cabin looked buttoned down tight against the cold. He parked his truck and hurried up the steps. Through the glass-paned door, he could see Ruth Moon and a dark-haired man behind the counter, cooing at each other like teenagers while they shared a small, old-fashioned bottle of Coke. Ruth Moon threw back her head and laughed, exposing a long, slender throat. The man laughed with her. His long hair hung in a ponytail, and with his high cheekbones and hooded eyes, he could have been the poster boy for her REPIC group. Safer was no great judge of male beauty, but he knew most women would consider this guy handsome. He opened the door.

  Ruth Moon looked up, startled. “It’s the fisherman! Jonathan, this is the man I was telling you about.”

  “Hi,” said Safer, smiling. He walked over to the counter and extended his hand. “I’m Mark Danielson. I came here earlier about hiring you as a guide.”

  “Jonathan Walkingstick.” The man who once loved Mary Crow reached to shake Safer’s hand. His palm felt warm, his fingers strong. “Ruth told me you’d come by. What are you after?”

  “Trout,” Safer replied, noting the long Bowie knife sheathed just beneath the Cherokee’s left arm.

  Walkingstick nodded. “I know a few places they bite this time of year. When were you wanting to go?” />
  “How about right now?”

  “Now?” Ruth Moon snuggled up against Walkingstick as if she’d taken a sudden chill. “It’s freezing outside. And nearly dark.”

  Safer shrugged. “Where I come from, they bite pretty good at dusk.”

  Walkingstick peered at Safer. “I don’t know. I just got back from fishing a few minutes ago.” He cast a cautious glance at Ruth. “I think I might need to stay home tonight.”

  “I’ll pay twice the going rate.”

  Walkingstick shook his head.

  “I’ll have you back in two hours,” Safer promised and winked at Ruth. “I know you were probably counting on him for New Year’s.”

  Walkingstick looked again at Ruth. She nestled against him, then nodded. “It’s okay,” she told him softly. “Mr. Danielson’s had some bad luck lately. Catching a fish might make him feel better.”

  “Are you sure?” Jonathan frowned.

  “Just get back before the ball drops in Times Square, okay? I love to watch that on TV.”

  “Okay.” He caressed Ruth’s cheek, then turned to Safer. “Let me change my socks.”

  Ruth Moon smiled at Safer as Jonathan thumped up the stairs. “How long did you say your wife has been gone, Mr. Danielson?”

  “Three weeks,” Safer lied, thinking that this woman had a way of asking the damnedest questions.

  “It’s an odd time of year for a woman to walk away from a marriage.” Once again she looked at him as if she could see all the way back to the moment he was born.

  Safer met her gaze evenly. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  “You really think trout fishing on New Year’s Eve is going to help?”

  No, he wanted to answer. But finding Mary Crow or Judge Hannah or even the person who sliced that one woman’s head off sure would. But before he could come up with an acceptable reply, Walkingstick came down the stairs.

  “Your truck or mine?” he asked.

  “Let’s take mine,” Safer replied. “My gear’s already in the back.”