A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  “Willett told me about a bridge and an overlook where those trucks pull off the road to let their brakes cool down. I bet at night they’d pick most anybody up, just for the company.”

  “I’m sure they would,” said Mary. “Right now, though, we need to get ourselves hidden inside your cave.”

  “Okay.” Tommy darted over to the tall iron grate that apparently sealed off the cave from the outside world. He worked one of the iron bars enough to budge it slightly, then he said, “Come on. I’ll show you Willett’s Den—the best hiding place ever.”

  Mary helped Irene to her feet. With a final glance at the moon that glowed like a spotlight in the sky, she helped her old friend through the bars of the cave and into the utter darkness beyond.

  CHAPTER 44

  Robert Wurth sat on an old picnic table, rolling a quarter across his knuckles. The moon shone from a brilliant, black-diamond sky, and he’d had his boys set up a makeshift command post just beyond the tennis court. Now he sat trying to control his rage by manipulating the coin with his fingers. It was bad enough that Judge Hannah had gotten loose, but the situation had grown grimmer when Honeycutt reported that Mary Crow had disappeared as well. When Rogers accounted for all the Grunts except Tommy Cabe, he’d put it together. Somehow that little faggot had found both prisoners and turned them loose. He couldn’t imagine how, but he’d done it. Now he must be helping them escape.

  “That little bastard!” Wurth muttered as he scowled into the darkness. Everything was turning to shit. Unless he found Irene Hannah in the next hour, his plan would fail. Once again he was being brought down by women. This time by two of them abetted by a skinny, stuttering boy.

  “Damn!” he cursed. Who would have thought that they would be so clever? And who would have guessed that the Troopers he’d drilled for the past five years would be such dolts? Hell, they’d scoured the entire compound and had come up with nothing. An hour ago, he would have bet his life that they would have had all three hog-tied on the tennis court within fifteen minutes. He’d trained them so well, he thought. He hadn’t forgotten anything.

  His field radio squawked. He dropped the coin back in his pocket and lifted the radio to his ear. Static assailed his eardrum, then Tuttle’s voice came through, sounding distant and tinny.

  “Tuttle here.”

  “I copy.”

  “We’ve reached the end of the creek by the highway. No sign of them.”

  “Did you sweep both sides of the creek? Did you search all level ground?”

  “We checked any place they could hide. They didn’t go in this direction.” More static, then Tuttle said, “Shall we sweep back to the house?”

  “Yes. And if you find Tommy Cabe, shoot to kill.”

  “That stuttering kid?”

  “Right. The two women I want alive. You can use Cabe for target practice.”

  The radio went dead. As Wurth clipped it back on his belt, it bleated again. This time the boys in Badger Company reported from the other end of the creek.

  Wayne Tallent’s voice came over more clearly, but his report was identical to Tuttle’s. Badger’s sweep of the creek had likewise revealed no sign of the three.

  Wurth repeated his orders concerning Tommy Cabe, then told Tallent to sweep back to headquarters. He switched off the radio. Logic told him that two beaten and demoralized women would stay on level ground, close to a creek that would provide them with cover and possibly lead them somewhere. Yet neither Tuttle nor Badger Company had found a trace of them. That left Anaconda, the squad he’d sent back to the castle, in case the trio had been canny enough to double back and try to commandeer some kind of vehicle. That would take more cleverness than most women possessed, plus a lot of luck. With all the cameras and Troopers running around tonight, he didn’t think it possible, but that Crow woman was resourceful. Suddenly he heard someone cough behind him. He jumped and looked over his shoulder.

  The Anacondas had not bothered with the radio. They came slipping through the shadows, their shoulders drooping.

  “Anaconda Company reporting, sir.” Frank Upchurch gave a dispirited salute.

  “And?” Wurth looked past Upchurch and noticed Stump Logan huffing over toward him. Christ, he thought, for once he’s early. He wasn’t supposed to pick him up until one A.M.

  “We didn’t find anybody within the compound.”

  “You searched everywhere? The castle? The cabins? The lake?” He couldn’t believe this. Anaconda was his best squad.

  “Yes, sir.” Upchurch kept his eyes straight ahead. The other members of the patrol stood behind him at attention, grim-faced and mute.

  “Take five, then, Anaconda. Over there and out of my way.” Wurth nodded at the tennis court.

  Upchurch saluted, then Anaconda broke rank.

  “You having some night exercises?” Stump Logan’s voice rumbled over Wurth, who bent to relace his boots without replying. When he looked up again, Logan stood there, his Stetson pulled low, rolling a toothpick around one corner of his mouth like some dime-store cowboy.

  “You might say that,” Wurth replied through gritted teeth, rankled, as always, with Logan’s silly Western affectations. “How come you’re here so early? I’m not supposed to meet McClary at the plane until two.”

  “I thought I’d help you ring in the New Year.” Logan looked over at the bonfire burning next to the tennis court. “What’s going on here, no kidding?”

  Wurth sighed. “Just a little nighttime escapee drill.”

  Logan’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s Mary Crow, isn’t it?”

  “Her and the judge, along with that kid Cabe. My boys have searched the house and grounds. They can’t find them anywhere.”

  “Fuck it, Clipper. Can’t all your boys find one old woman and a beat-up girl?”

  “They haven’t yet,” Wurth snapped. “I’m going to take Tuttle and ten of my best and go up the mountain.” He stared into the darkness a moment, then turned to Logan and smiled. “If you’re so nervous about Mary Crow, why don’t you come with us?”

  Logan flicked the toothpick to the other corner of his mouth and studied the height of the mountain ridge that loomed above them. In the dark it seemed a gargantuan escarpment, thrusting up into a brilliant sky.

  “Come on, Stump.” Wurth’s eyes glittered as he pulled on a black knit cap. “It’ll get your sap running, just like the old days. They aren’t gooks, but two women and a boy can be pretty good fun.” He gave a sour laugh. “Or does going after Mary Crow scare you?”

  “Not particularly,” Logan replied evenly.

  “Then come on, Feather Man. We’ll take a patrol up the mountain, just like we used to. It’ll be fun.”

  “You’re the one who got such a kick out of Vietnam, not me.”

  “Oh, you know you loved it. Remember how alive we felt? Remember what it was like to have all those little yellow monkeys pissing in their pants at the very sight of you?” Wurth stepped forward, stopping inches from the sheriff’s face. “Don’t you miss the feathers?”

  Logan looked at him. “You’re insane.”

  “Why? Just ’cause I’ve got me a little army and a few guns? I’m no worse than you, with that pistol on your hip and your jail in town. We’ve taken different routes, buddy, but we’re still the same bad boys.” He clapped Logan on the back. “How about it? You in? Or have you grown soft in your old age?”

  Logan spat the toothpick out of his mouth and smiled at Wurth in the moonlight. “I might walk a little ways with you, Clipper. I’d like to see you go one-on-one with Mary Crow.”

  “Good boy, Stump. I knew I could depend on you.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Mary’s heart sank. Though the cave was considerably warmer than the outside air, it smelled like a sewer and gave her a slimy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She turned to the thin, myopic boy who had led them there.

  “How do you stand this smell?”

  “You get used to it,” Tommy replied. “Anything’s better than han
ging around the castle, waiting for Tallent to get you.”

  Mary had to agree with that. Though she hated the idea of leaving the comforting little puddle of moonlight they stood in, she knew it was terribly foolish to stand here in the open, with Tallent and the others gathering on the tennis court below. “I guess we’d better go hide, then.”

  “Willett’s Den is down that way. Just follow me.”

  “Will we have to crawl?” asked Irene.

  “Not till the last few feet.”

  Mary turned, listening for any sound of Wurth’s troops coming up the mountain. She heard nothing. “You go first, Irene. I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Irene stepped forward and grabbed onto Tommy’s jacket. “I’ll walk behind you, like this.”

  Tommy smiled down at her. “Keep one hand against the wall. Sometimes the darkness makes you dizzy.”

  Irene looked at Mary. “Are you coming?”

  “I’m right behind you,” Mary promised. She pressed her palm against the cave wall. It felt cool and damp. She squelched an absurd wish for a mine-shaft canary. Though the air stank, it couldn’t be lethal. After all, it hadn’t seemed to hurt Tommy or his friend Willett.

  “Everybody ready?” Tommy called.

  “Go ahead,” said Mary.

  Tommy slid into the darkness, with Irene at his heels. To Mary, it looked as if they had stepped off the world itself, never to return. Ignoring a tight fear that coiled inside her, she followed.

  After three steps, the blackness swallowed her. She tried squinting, then opening her eyes as wide as she could, but soon she gave up. The rods and cones of human vision required light. Light did not exist here.

  Keeping her left hand on the wall, she inched deeper into the passage, feeling nothing but the cool, malodorous breath of the cave. The only thing that riveted her to the earth at all was the slightly clammy stone against her palm and the hard rock floor under her feet.

  “Everybody okay up there?” she called a little too loudly, suddenly needing to hear a fellow human.

  “Honey, we’re doing fine.” Irene’s firm reply rang like a bell.

  Tommy led them on, creeping through the darkness. Somehow it felt wrong to speak, to interrupt the millennia-old dialogue between Mother Earth and the Old Men. Disgagistiyi. Dakwai. Ahaluna. Now I am inside you. Now I will find out why you hate me so. She took a deep breath of the dank air, then suddenly she gasped. Her mother was looking at her, not five feet away! Martha wore a loose white blouse that was buttoned to just above her breasts. Her husband’s Saint Andrew medal dangled from her neck. Her raven hair hung long, and she looked at Mary in silence.

  “Mama?” Mary whispered. In all the years since her death, Martha Crow had entered her daughter’s dreams only twice, in nocturnal dramas where she’d played a walk-on part, then vanished. Never had Mary seen her for this long, in such detail!

  “Mama?” she cried.

  Her mother tossed her long black hair and beckoned her deeper into the cave, but another voice protested, “Wait. I need you!” The second voice was deep and tender. Jonathan, Mary thought. She turned, wondering how he could be here, but what shimmered before her was not Jonathan but a young, sandy-haired man dressed in green Army camouflage. Grinning, he waved at her, then leaped to catch a football. As he bobbled the ball in his arms he turned, and she saw that the lower half of his body—his legs, his spine, everything below his waist—was just trailing ribbons of blood. Then without warning, both specters vanished.

  Mary began to tremble. The darkness was suffocating; it was all she could do not to turn and run headlong out of the cave, shrieking. The world started spinning, and all around she heard the mean, high-pitched laughter of children as they pelted rocks at a dead crow. You no nummah one! You nummah ten thou! She opened her mouth to cry out, and the cave floor disintegrated beneath her feet. She was falling. Falling forever down a bottomless hole, tumbling endlessly into nothing. No one could catch her. No one could save her. . . .

  “Mary!” Irene’s voice sliced through the darkness like a bolt of lightning. “Calm down, honey! You’re hallucinating!”

  Mary felt strong arms wrap around her waist as another, younger voice sailed through the shadows. The sound was green, like a clarinet. “Don’t be scared, Mary. We’re almost there.”

  Tommy. Suddenly she stood upright again, braced against firm ground. She was not falling anywhere. Irene’s arms held her. There was no mother, no disfigured soldier, no monstrous, taunting children. She became aware of the warmth of her own body, of the blood flowing through her veins.

  “Did I just do something weird?” Her voice and legs trembled as if she’d stepped off a roller coaster.

  “Kind of.” Tommy sounded worried. “You kept calling Mama and Jack.”

  Irene squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get to our hiding place.”

  Tommy led them further into the darkness as Mary kept her hand on Irene’s shoulder and her mind on the task at hand. Limestone, she recalled, forcing her brain into the discipline of a geology course she’d taken in college. Water dripping over limestone, over time, will make a cave. The temperature in most caves is a constant 56 degrees. Stalagmites grow up, stalactites hang down. She had just started to repeat what she could remember of the periodic table of the elements when Tommy’s voice rang out.

  “Okay. Hang a right here.”

  “And then what?” Irene asked.

  “Then you need to kneel down and crawl forward about four steps. We’re almost there.”

  Mary turned sharply to the right and dropped to her knees. A few moments later, Tommy stopped and Irene and Mary collided.

  “All right. Everybody sit still and I’ll get the flashlight.”

  “You’ve got a flashlight?” Mary cried. What she would give for just a drop of light! A flashlight would seem like the sun! She waited, listening. She heard something bump against a rock, then a bright white light pierced her vision so sharply, she had to look away. When she could focus again, she saw that they sat in a small enclosure. Dense shadows hid the ceiling from view, but the smooth, topaz-colored walls glistened with moisture. On a ledge about five feet above the floor were two cans of Coca-Cola and an old Polaroid shot of a scruffy little terrier.

  “Welcome to Willett’s Den.” Tommy beamed with pride. “Want some Coke?”

  He popped one can open and handed it to Mary, who passed it first to Irene. She drank as if she were dying of thirst.

  “It tastes as good as champagne,” she said, handing the can to Mary. “It’s been so long since I’ve had anything in my mouth.”

  Mary took several swallows of the Coke. Though it was warm and much too sweet, it felt wonderful sliding down her throat. For a second she was absolutely content, sitting beside the small flashlight, drinking Coca-Cola with Irene and this young stranger who’d helped them escape Sergeant Wurth’s domain.

  “Thanks,” she said to Tommy as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “That tasted awfully good.” She stared at him in the glow of the flashlight, pondering their situation, wondering. How far away had he said that road was?

  Tommy returned her gaze without speaking, the light reflected in the lenses of his glasses. “I bet I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  “That I should try and get to the highway.”

  Mary looked at him. This boy grew odder by the minute. That was precisely what she was thinking. “You know, if you could get over to 441, you could flag down the first thing you see. Semi, pickup, it wouldn’t matter. Just get in and ask the driver to take you to a phone.”

  “But who could I call?” asked Tommy. “Sheriff Logan’s real tight with Sergeant Wurth.”

  Somehow Tommy’s words did not surprise her. Stump Logan had been in the PR photo with Wurth and Gerald LeClaire; he would almost have to be involved in Camp Unakawaya on some level. Wurth couldn’t run an operation this big without the consent of the local law.

  “Tell the dr
iver to take you to Upsy Daisy Farm, on Lick Log Road. The FBI is camped there. Tell them that Robert Wurth is holding Judge Irene Hannah at Camp Unakawaya. When they hear that, they’ll know what to do.”

  Tommy frowned uncertainly. “What will you do while I’m gone?”

  Mary looked around at the darkness that pressed down upon their heads. “We’ll stay here. With any luck at all, you should be back with the Feds in three or four hours.”

  “That’s a pretty heavy load for Tommy,” Irene objected softly. “Do you have a Plan B?”

  Mary shook her head as she fought a sudden, numbing fatigue. “We’ll have to make up Plan B as we go along. What do you say, Tommy? Think you can do it?”

  The boy grinned. “With one hand tied behind my back.” He scrambled to his feet and stuffed the photo of the dog in his pocket, then he stepped over to the wall and reached into the shadows. A moment later he pulled out a small object wrapped in plastic. “This computer disk belonged to Willett. He told me to take it if I ever got the chance to escape,” he explained. “He said it would get Wurth in a shit pot of trouble.”

  “All right,” said Mary. “Then go and give it to the FBI!”

  “And be careful!” added Irene.

  “Okay.” He hesitated. “I guess I’ll see y’all in a couple of hours, then. . . .

  “Hurry, Tommy.” Mary wanted to kiss him, for luck, but she knew it would embarrass him. Instead, she reached out and squeezed his hand. The boy’s fingers felt like ice. “Do you want to take the flashlight?”

  “Y’all keep it. I can find my way without it.”

  “If Wurth comes up here, is there any place else we can hide?” asked Mary as he ducked down to crawl into the outer passage.

  “Crawl out here and turn left. About ten yards away, there’s a room with a bunch of old furniture. You can find lots of places to hide in there.”

  “Okay. Hurry now. And be careful!”

  With a sly smile, Tommy Cabe crawled back into the murky darkness beyond. Mary and Irene listened until the soft shrush of his footsteps faded away, then Mary scooted next to Irene and put her arm around her shoulders. As she turned off the flashlight to save the batteries, it occurred to her that a cave might be the best torture chamber of all. All you had to do was lock somebody in one and let the demons inside their own head gnaw their way out.