by Rose Beecham
“Yes, you have.”
“It’s not enough. I’m Elspeth’s everything.”
Jude’s mouth was as dry as dirt. She forced out a poorly formed, “Congratulations.”
She wanted Mercy to be happy and maybe she would be, married to an actress who, Jude suspected, had never met a mirror she didn’t like. Perhaps they understood one another well enough to make the compromises a long-term relationship demanded, the ones Mercy didn’t think Jude was capable of.
“I know you won’t want to come to the wedding,” Mercy said in a strained voice. “But I hope you’ll visit with us for dinner after we’re back and the reporters have lost interest.”
Jude would rather poke a stick in her eye, but she forced nonchalance. “Sure. I hope you’ll be happy.”
“Thank you.” Mercy’s soft breathing made Jude feel weak. And sad. “I care for you, Jude. You know that, don’t you?”
Was this supposed to soften the blow? “I know. Take care of yourself, Mercy.”
“I won’t say good-bye. We’ll still be working together.”
Jude could hardly wait. “Sure. It’s not good-bye. It’s just see ya.”
“Good luck with the search.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to have a body for you before you leave.”
Jude closed her cell phone and stared out at the knee-shaking view of Paradox Valley. The Dolores River slithered like a silver-green ribbon along the canyon floor, cutting a path through a pristine postblizzard canvas. Clumps of snow fell from the branches of the few firs along the ridge. The vast sky was Colorado blue again, a deep intense lapis that made the snow so white it burned Jude’s eyes. Copper ridges layered the valley in every shade from claret to rose gold, spilling in folds baked solid over millennia.
The sight purged Jude of her self-pity, supplanting it with a strange yearning to melt into the earth, to inherit its memories and lose her own. She felt hollow and directionless, stranded in a no-man’s-land between hope and resignation, between living life or letting it slip by. She had no idea if everyone felt this way, or if it was some kind of existential angst she ignored most of the time, maybe even a pining for the certainty of a belief system. She’d never been religious. It was hard to accept that there was a loving God ordering events when you dwelled by necessity on the evil men do.
In Mercy, she’d taken sanctuary from thoughts like these. Now she was alone with them, and with all the doubts that galloped in their wake. She would henceforth be deprived of the transient solace of skin and flesh unless she found a stranger to sleep with. She’d never had a problem with that, yet the idea made her queasy right now. It was only natural, she supposed; she’d just broken up.
Jude draped her arms over the steering wheel and lowered her head to rest. In a few weeks, she’d take a drive to Denver and hook up with some eye candy for the weekend. She forced herself to imagine an unknown head on the pillow next to hers, a new body to explore. What was so bad about that?
She sat up straight and started the truck. The windshield blurred in front of her and she lifted her hands to her eyes, appalled to find tears. Worse still, she realized something. She didn’t want to sleep with strangers anymore. Mercy was wrong. She didn’t want someone, just anyone. She wanted her person. The one who would be her everything.
*
“That body has to be in the reservoir,” Jude told Orwell Pratt. “And we can’t nail him without it.”
The FBI agents attending the briefing agreed. One of them said, “The goat’s head is the problem. We can make the case that he moved it, but it’ll be a mental patient’s word against his in the courtroom. We need more.”
“That elf hat Matt Roache says was in the driveway. We found it inside the house in Corban’s room,” Jude said. “Either Miller or Perkins put it back in there. It seems odd they would have noticed it on the driveway when they returned from Ms. Foley’s party.”
Pratt coughed for a few seconds and mopped his forehead. “Who knows what goes on in the minds of pond scum? We’ve got the clothing and the wet cash. And we’ve got him lying every time he opens his mouth.”
“But the amount of blood on the clothing indicates we don’t have a murder scene,” Jude pointed out. “All we have is the scene of an abduction and an act of vandalism. The two may or may not be related. We need to know where Corban was killed. And we need to search the homes of all the people closest to Miller in case he hid evidence elsewhere.”
A Cortez PD detective observed, “The small amount of blood on Miller’s clothing is inconsistent with the quantity on the baby’s clothing.”
“Correct,” Jude said. “So if Miller is our guy he must have changed out of the clothing he was wearing, washed himself, and disposed of the garments. If we can find those, he’s ours.”
The FBI agents conferred for a moment, then one of them said, “We’ll stay focused on the background check. We’re running down everyone he’s known since elementary school. If there’s any dirt on him, we’ll find it.”
“What about motive?” Pete Koertig said. “If he just lost his temper with the kid, the DA might plead him down to manslaughter.”
“Well, we now find out that Perkins is pregnant, and it seems as if he suspected she was.” Jude responded. “Perhaps that factored into a rejection of Corban.”
“Like a baby bird pushing another one out of the nest,” Pratt remarked before sneezing into a tissue.
“More like rats,” Jude said. “An adult male sometimes kills another male’s young so he can sire a litter of his own. It happens in quite a few species actually. Maybe the urge exists in human beings, too.”
In the midst of the general revulsion, Pete Koertig poked his head in the door and said, “Devine, you have visitors out in the waiting area.”
“Who?” Jude asked.
Koertig shrugged. “The sergeant just asked me to pass it on. Want me to get rid of them?”
Jude shook her head and said dryly, “Maybe it’s our lucky day. Five bucks says it’s an eyewitness who saw Miller carry the body to his truck. Anyone?”
“Yeah, while we’re placing bets, twenty says I’m running for President in 2008.” Pratt checked his mustache for shreds of Kleenex.
“Let’s reinterview every neighbor,” Jude said as she got up. “Someone has to have seen something. Gums Thompson talked about a neighbor turning on lights. We need to find the guy.”
She stalked down a labyrinth of hallways to the main entrance of the station house and caught her breath as she reached the final glass security door. Through it she could see the backs of two heads, one ash blond, the other burnished copper. As she entered the area the copper head turned and a small, perfectly formed oval face reacted to the sight of her with such naked joy, Jude felt shy.
Chastity Young seemed happy to see her.
“Hey, Detective Devine.” Adeline leapt to her feet and bounded around the modular seating.
Jude gave her a hug. “If you get any taller, I’m going to feel inadequate.” Looking past her to Chastity, she said, “This is a surprise.”
“I should have called, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“We saw you on the news,” Adeline said. “Have you guys found the baby yet?”
“Unfortunately not.” Jude found herself remembering the feel of Chastity, her unexpected tenderness. She’d almost lost that moment in the daze that followed the Rapture shootout.
Adeline looked back toward her aunt. “See, I told you we’d get here in time.”
“Adeline wanted to help with the search,” Chastity explained. She looked a little embarrassed, hanging back, her expression hard to read. “I told her you’d probably stopped accepting volunteers by now.”
“No,” Jude said. “We’ll take all the help we can get. Where are you staying?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to recommend something. I didn’t have time to organize accommodations before we set off.”
“I have a spare bedroom,” Jude offered. “It
’s not the Holiday Inn, but you’re very welcome. In fact, I insist on it.”
“We won’t be in the way?” Chastity began. “I mean, I’m sure you’re just flat-out with—”
“I have an idea.” Jude put an end to the protestations. “I’m starving and I bet you are after that drive. Let’s go get dinner, then I’ll take you back to my place. If you’re joining the search you’ll need to be at the command center before seven tomorrow morning, so we should all get an early night.”
“No sweat.” Adeline gazed around the room. With an air of disappointment, she said, “I thought there’d be wanted posters all over the walls.”
“It’s not the Wild West,” Chastity said.
“As a matter of fact, we do have wanted posters. I’ll show you.” Jude walked Adeline over to the bulletin board and singled out the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. “Recognize anyone?”
“No way!” Adeline stabbed a finger into Warren Jeff’s weasel face. “Aunt Chastity, look. It’s the prophet.”
Chastity picked up the down jacket beside her seat and strolled over, which gave Jude an excuse to appreciate her slender athleticism. She looked good in a dark green cardigan sweater and bone-colored chinos.
Staring at the mug shot, she said with prim disdain, “Not the kind of immortalization that asshole had in mind, I’m sure.”
Adeline instantly burst into smothered laughter. “Straight to hell,” she chortled, explaining to Jude, “We don’t say asshole in our house.”
Jude nodded sagely. “Well, we say it plenty in this place. So, when in Rome—”
“Oh please,” Chastity protested. “Don’t encourage her.”
“Asshole. Asshole. Asshole,” Adeline chanted maturely, then whipped out her cell phone and announced, “Daniel’s texting me. Hang on.”
As she moved away, Chastity lifted her unforgettable dark eyes to Jude and said, “It’s good to see you.”
Surprised to find her pulse accelerating, Jude said, “I’m really happy you came.”
“How are you?” The way Chastity asked, it wasn’t just a meaningless conversation starter. She looked at Jude like she really cared, like she could see past the face she showed the world. She’d done exactly the same thing in Rapture.
Disconcerted, Jude answered honestly. “I’ve had better weeks.”
“I thought so.” She searched Jude’s eyes with such piercing intensity, Jude wasn’t sure how to hide the feelings she wanted no one to glimpse. But Chastity didn’t pry. Touching Jude’s arm, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lonewolf stared with satisfaction at the white blocks of C-4 plastic explosive arranged along her workbench. The quality was better than she’d hoped for. She picked a block up and squeezed it. The waxy, rubbery texture always amazed her. C-4 was happy to stick to any surface, it didn’t care about temperature, it didn’t explode in your face while you were trying to stuff it into a canister, it had a long shelf life, and it was fairly inexpensive. In fact, it was the perfect weapons-grade explosive in so many ways she wondered why people bothered with less stable alternatives.
She’d lucked out on the deal for this initial quantity. For the past year, since her lover Madeline’s suicide, she’d been hanging around survivalist groups on the Internet until she struck pay dirt. A militia member in Texas who had a connection with William Krar was taking some heat and had decided to unload his arsenal. His son knew a methamphetamine dealer and had made an arrangement for his father that would conceal the money trail.
This suited Lone fine. If her Texan connection was picked up by the authorities, she didn’t want anyone noticing a cash withdrawal from her bank account for the same amount received by the militia man and connecting the dots. She’d purchased the meth he wanted from a couple of lowlifes near the Mexican border and paid peanuts, which meant she was ahead of her financial target. The next few hundred pounds would be harder to come by, but she was patient and C-4 was easy to store.
She’d been accumulating cash by withdrawing small increments over time and hiding the money under a loose floorboard in her cabin. Within a couple more months she would be ready to buy again, and the operation would enter the next phase.
Lone glanced up at the wall above her workbench, where she had an official picture of Madeline’s only son, Private First Class Brandon Ewart. Next to this was a wooden plaque Lone had lettered herself with the quotation “Surrender is not in my creed.” A Marine, Brandon had been deployed to Iraq straight out of training and was killed in Baghdad four months later. The usual story. Inadequate armor on the Humvee. Standard-issue helmet instead of the padded kind the army had switched to.
After their vehicle was blown up, Brandon, seriously injured, was captured by insurgents watching the explosion from a nearby building. They cut his throat later that day and left his mutilated body on the banks of the Tigris.
Madeline had always been high-strung and had been treated for depression in the past. Brandon’s death put her in a tailspin, understandably, but Lone finished her tour of duty shortly after and took the honorable discharge she’d earned, so she could be at home to take care of family for a change. She had busted her ass and spent a pile of her savings to get Madeline the help she needed, to take her on vacations to Europe, to get her mind moving in new directions.
Just when she thought things were improving, Madeline pinned a note on the fridge one day, locked herself in the garage, and left the car engine running. Carbon monoxide killed her.
Her note said:
Lone,
I can’t go on. What did my son die for? They say freedom, but I don’t believe that.
Thank you for loving me. I wish I could feel something for you but I’m dead inside and I don’t want to be here anymore.
Madeline
Lone made a solemn promise the day she watched them put Madeline in the ground. She was going to find out exactly what Brandon had really died for, and she was going to avenge him if she found he’d been sent into harm’s way for any reason but the defense of his country.
What she’d discovered over the past year was that Brandon died a horrible death, and Madeline took her own life, because an evil alliance of men in government and industry had renamed their despicable ethos patriotism and marketed their indefensible acts to a gullible public as a noble fight against terrorism. It served their political and economic interests to keep Osama Bin Laden at large, so they made sure not to capture him. It was good news for them that the Middle East was unstable—it kept oil prices way up there and made them all a pile of money. Money that dripped with the blood of the fallen, the real heroes who made the real sacrifices.
Lately, Lone had begun to wonder if the evil alliance actually knew 9/11 was going to happen and chose to allow it. The loss of thousands of lives meant nothing to them. 9/11 had given them the ultimate propaganda tool, and they had profited from it every day since.
There was a time when contemplating ideas like these would have been unthinkable for her. She would have presented herself at the combat stress unit and obtained appropriate counseling from a division psychiatrist. She would have seen her refusal to accept official explanations as bordering on treason, conduct unbecoming. That was how successfully they’d brainwashed her.
Not anymore. She had joined the ranks of those who took the time to discover the facts, study the data, and draw intelligent conclusions. As a consequence, she knew what she had to do; she owed nothing less to her brothers and sisters in arms. Her mission was the elimination of the sniveling chicken hawks responsible for sending Brandon and thousands just like him to their deaths.
For starters, she was going to eliminate the Vice-President.
*
“She’s finally run out of juice,” Chastity said.
They stood in the doorway of the spare room, looking in on the teenager asleep in one of the twin beds. Jude thought about the trauma of Adeline’s experiences in Rapture. It was a relief to see her so lively and outg
oing.
“How is she doing?” she asked on a serious note.
“Amazingly well. I found a good therapist for her. In fact, we’ve both been seeing the same woman.” Chastity smiled. “Different issues, of course.”
Jude couldn’t imagine why a woman as together as Chastity seemed would need to spend time on a shrink’s couch, but she supposed it couldn’t have been easy helping Adeline come to terms with what had happened to her and her sister.
“I think one of the hardest things for Adeline was that she couldn’t help Summer,” Chastity reflected. “She blamed herself for not making Summer leave with her and Daniel when they escaped.”
“Summer would never have gone,” Jude said. “I met her before it went down. She was completely brainwashed.”
“I know. They specialize in crushing the spirit.” Chastity’s tone flooded with bitterness. “My sister is a case in point. She used to be a person and now she’s a robot. It hurts…I only understood recently—I’ve lost her. It’s like I don’t have a sister anymore.” She flushed and broke off. “Forgive me. I forgot you’re not Dr. Phil.”
“Don’t apologize. You can talk to me.” Jude gestured toward the living room. “Can I get you a drink?”
Chastity walked with her and took the corner of the leather sofa nearest the gas fire. “I think I’d like that.”
“Wine? Liqueur?”
“Surprise me.”
Belatedly, Jude remembered Mormons didn’t drink alcohol or anything with caffeine in it. Trying for host-of-the-year after the fact, she said, “I can make hot chocolate, if you’d prefer.”
Chastity shook her head, sending a riot of copper curls bouncing around her shoulders. Her eyes gleamed warmly at Jude. On a teasing note, she said, “I’d rather be corrupted.”
Jude dropped her gaze from the broad, full bow of Chastity’s mouth directly to her breasts then looked away, about ready to kick herself. This was a straight woman sitting on her couch. A guest. A Mormon who had been brought up in Salt Lake City and had probably never heard of homosexuality, let alone contemplated experimenting with it.
