American Justice

by J K Ellem

  "Truck maybe. Double tires." Ryder squatted next to Beth and examined them. "But definitely something heavy."

  Beth gazed into the darkness beyond and switched on her flashlight. The beam of light played off the inner walls just a few feet before being swallowed up by the darkness. She could see a framework of timber bracing along the walls and across the ceiling. "Whatever it was drove right inside," Beth said. The tire tracks ran straight into the gapping mouth.

  "Are you sure about this?" Beth asked, looking at Ryder.

  Ryder nodded. "We'll be careful, just go in a short distance, see what we find. You said those two kids went missing up here?"

  "Yep," Beth replied. "Found their pickup parked just a few feet from here.” Beth didn't fancy going into some dark hole in the side of a mountain but she wanted to help Ryder; she felt she owed her. She had pulled in men and resources to help hunt down Sam Pritchard and try to locate Jessie Rae, resources that could have been used to follow Rasul's trail instead.

  "Let's take a look then. It will be dark soon," Ryder said. They both walked tentatively into the black opening.

  Seconds later they were gone.

  For Jessie, time had stood still. She had no concept if she had been in the cold chamber of rock for hours or days. Everything had melded into one long continuous stretch of confusion and disorientation.

  She sat on a foam mat, her wrists handcuffed. A length of chain ran from the handcuffs to a steel ringlet that was affixed to the rock wall. On the ground next to her sat a fluorescent lantern that cast a pale light around the inside of the small chamber.

  She had hardly slept.

  He had returned a few times to the chamber, dropping a bottle of water on the mat beside her which she drank thirstily. Then he would disappear for long periods. It was like he was working on something. She would hear the clang of metal on metal, beating or hammering echoing along the passageway outside.

  But there was no food. Jessie understood the significance of this.

  He tried to talk to her but she ignored him, turned away defiantly. Her fear was gone, replaced by rage. Rage that he had brought her here. Rage that she was chained like an animal. Rage that he was going to kill her. Who gave him that right? She was going to fight to the very end; she wasn’t going to go quietly, or beg, or whimper for her life.

  No. She was going to claw and fight, bite and chew if given half the chance. She didn’t want to hurt or injure him.

  She wanted to kill him.

  It was just her, alone, by herself. No one was going to save her. Her life was hers to defend, and she intended to.

  The darkness outside the entrance of the chamber faded to a yellow glow. He was returning from wherever he had been.

  Sam Pritchard stepped into the small space and regarded Jessie as she sat defiantly on the mat. “I wish we had more time together, time to get to know each other.”

  For the first time since she arrived in this godforsaken place, Jessie turned and spoke to him. “Fuck you,” she hissed. “Untie me and let’s see what kind of man you are.”

  Pritchard’s eyes narrowed.

  It was a direct challenge, to him, to his dominance. She was certainly not like the others. Most of them, when they realized what was going to happen to them, either begged for mercy for their pathetic lives or just gave up, accepted their fate. But that was back in his shed. She was the first he had brought up here. The massive mine with its labyrinth of tunnels, shafts, passageways, and multiple entrances gave him endless possibilities. And no one ever came up here.

  When he first discovered the mine, he’d spent weeks choosing the right location inside, finally settling on an almost hidden portal entrance, far away from the main entrance. He’d even found a well-hidden spot to hide his pickup truck. He could come and go as he pleased, undetected. No one would know. It was time to move on from the shed. Too risky.

  Jessie continued with her verbal tirade. “So what’s your excuse?” she snarled at Pritchard. “Were you abused by your mother? Your father was a drunk and beat you? Did your mother force you to have sex with her?” Jessie couldn’t believe the filth that was coming out of her mouth, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get under his skin, get him angry, appeal to his ego, his sense of wanting to be in control.

  Pritchard seemed amused for a moment. He took a step forward. “No, I wasn’t an abused child.” He paused and gave a little smile, the tip of his tongue slid across a row of sharp little teeth. “I just like killing people,” he replied. “Started with pets, animals, then I moved on to people.”

  Jessie tried not to show the revulsion she felt for the man. It would be a sign of weakness that he would feed off. “So you have no excuse other than you are a sick demented fuck,” Jessie retorted. She pulled at the chain that held her. “I must be quite a challenge for you if you need to chain me up,” she yelled. “Gutless coward as well as a psychopath.”

  Pritchard placed his lantern on the ground, slid his hand into his pocket, and pulled out the key to the handcuffs. He held it up in front of her. “If I release you, will you promise to be bad?” Pritchard whispered, “I’d hate for you to disappoint me.” He gave a twisted evil smile.

  Jessie stared into his eyes and she felt a tinge of real fear return. There was nothing but evil lurking behind those dead eyes. The man was inhumane, devoid of any shred of emotion. His soul was blacker than black. She had to appeal to that darkness in him; it was the only way she was going to survive.

  “Release me and find out.” Jessie raised her bunched fists toward him.

  Pritchard stepped closer, licking his lips. A vice-like hand grabbed one of Jessie’s wrists and pulled her forward.

  The key was inserted and the handcuffs sprang open.

  Jessie was free and trapped at the same time.

  She used one hand to wipe her nose. In the hidden palm of her other hand lay the sharp slither of stone she had spent the last two hours honing on the rock wall into a fine razor edge.

  She slashed at Pritchard, cutting his face diagonally.

  48

  The chamber was cold and damp. Muddy water sloshed around Shaw’s ankles. His hands were secured behind him, looped around one of the wooden support posts. The water had been slowly rising over the past hour, seeping up through cracks and holes in the rocky ground.

  He still felt groggy from the hypodermic they had given him before they carried him into the chamber.

  A lot of effort just for an extravagant death, Shaw thought to himself as he looked around.

  “You know I met you once,” Tanner said. He stood at the top of a short flight of stone steps that led down into the chamber, a lantern in his hand cast a shimmering glow across the surface of the rising water.

  Shaw watched Tanner as he stood there, behind an invisible lectern, addressing a non-existent crowd of voters at a fictitious political rally. Ego and arrogance seeping from the man’s very pores. “A few years back, at some fundraiser in Washington,” Tanner continued.

  A true politician, Shaw thought, obsessed with the sound of his own voice, always preaching. The man could switch personas in a blink of the eye. One moment he was the concerned politician, stoic and unselfish. The next moment he dripped with arrogance and vanity, as though everyone else was inferior. Shaw guessed the latter persona was the true measure of the man.

  “The vice president was in attendance,” Tanner said. “My niece insisted that I meet you.”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Tanner looked at Shaw as though he’d just been slapped in the face by the young man, his ego all-consuming. “Really?”

  Shaw had lied. He didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction. Let him continue to live in the deluded world he had created for himself.

  Tanner tilted his head in disbelief. Everyone in Washington, even a lowly Secret Service grunt, should know him. “Of course you do,” Tanner smiled. “You never forget a face. That’s your job.”

  Tanner stared down at the water lapping at
Shaw. Soon it would reach his knees, then his chest, and then…

  It gave Tanner no end of satisfaction knowing that this man his niece had taken such a liking to in the past was going to slowly drown in this chamber when it flooded. She would never know. It would be his dark secret. He made a note to remind himself the next time he saw her to ask her what ever happened to that fine young man she used to date, to watch her face while he gloated on the inside, picturing Shaw’s bloated body submersed in this chamber, rotting in cold dark waters hundreds of feet underground. Being a sadist was a privilege. Keeping it to one’s self was an art.

  “I quit a while ago,” Shaw replied. “I no longer work for them.”

  “I know you quit. And I know why. Very honorable of you, too.” Tanner was referring to the incident where Shaw was standing guard outside the hotel room of the vice president while inside the VP was raping a young girl. At his back Shaw could clearly hear the muffled cries of the girl through the door. It was a secret within the VP’s protection detail that the man had certain tastes and indiscretions while on the campaign trail, well away from his wife and four children. He had been allowed to sin with impunity. Agents were expected to turn a blind eye. And those who complained soon found themselves off the protection detail and in the basement of some bank, searching moldy archive boxes, investigating financial fraud. It was the Secret Service equivalent of being sent to Siberia.

  Shaw had gone into the hotel room and punched the vice president in the jaw. It had been an instant dismissal for Shaw. His employment record stated that he had resigned. No further action would be taken if Shaw didn’t reveal what he had actually seen. Shaw was just happy to have knocked the vice president on his naked ass.

  “It’s like politics, Ben,” Tanner said. He had switched to the we’re buddies now persona. “You are never really out, are you? It’s in our blood.” Tanner continued, “We are both alike, you know.”

  “We’re nothing alike,” Shaw spat. “I don’t kill innocent people.”

  “We all kill innocent people; we just do it while hiding behind a desk in Washington or at a computer screen in some underground bunker. We kill without accountability.”

  Tanner walked down the steps, stopping at the last one, water lapping at his shoes. “You want to do what is right. I want to do what is right, just like you.”

  Shaw looked up at Tanner, hatred burning in his eyes, his wrists straining against the bindings. He would kill him in one stroke, if he could get free. But then the guard standing at the entrance of the chamber would shoot him dead. “We couldn’t be any further apart,” Shaw said.

  Tanner smiled. “I love this country, Ben. It’s the best country on the planet. But we’re fighting a war, Ben. Washington is Baghdad without the heat and the sand.”

  “You’re killing more innocent people,” Shaw replied. Blood dribbled down Shaw’s wrists before splashing in thick blobs into the murky water. “You’re a terrorist of the worst kind.”

  “The worst kind?” Tanner asked.

  “You hide amongst us. Live here and call yourself patriotic, call yourself an American, all the time planning to kill Americans.”

  Tanner seemed amused. “Do you think the generals and the politicians win wars?” Tanner asked. “No, it’s corporate America that wins wars; they’re the best at it. Companies have been waging and winning wars since time began.”

  Then it hit Shaw. He knew what this was about. “It’s all about money isn’t it?”

  Tanner smiled. “It’s never been about anything else, Ben. Money and power.”

  Shaw couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out sooner. “You’re in bed with the armaments companies, aren’t you?”

  Tanner said nothing.

  “It’s not about terrorism or a cause or being sympathetic like you said before.”

  “It is,” Tanner nodded. “I don’t agree with what America is doing, but war drives the economy, or it used to. Now it’s terrorism that drives production.”

  “You have secret stockholdings with the military suppliers, don’t you?” Shaw said. “You are colluding with them.”

  “War is good,” Tanner said. “And the war on terror must remain front and center of the American psyche. It must always be in the public consciousness.” Tanner pointed at the ground. “And what better way to do this than for America to feel the shock and awe of terrorism right here on American soil.”

  “We did feel the shock and awe,” Shaw replied. “Thousands died. Don’t you remember?”

  “And look what that did!” Tanner yelled. “America ramped up its military. Billions spent, jobs created, it softened the effect of the GFC.”

  Shaw couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Tanner was insane. He was actually suggesting that 9/11 had a positive outcome. That 9/11 had helped America cushion itself from the effects of the Global Financial Crisis years later. But what actually followed was America fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and Syria.

  Tanner’s expression turned cold. “War is good,” he repeated. “It cleanses. It resets the delicate equilibrium of the planet, of society, of the world’s economies.”

  The man was truly insane, a modern-day Adolf Hitler. "What was Abasi Rasul then?” Shaw argued. “Just one of your minions, so you can continue to hide?”

  "He bought into the whole spiritual struggle," Tanner shrugged. "He was part of the illusion, the stereotype that Americans have come to expect. And it worked. I recruited him for one purpose: to lend a face to the tragedy of capitalism.”

  “And what if there are no wars?” Shaw challenged Tanner. “What happens then?”

  Tanner laughed like the question was absurd.

  Then Shaw felt like he had been punched in the gut. Something too absurd flashed in his mind. It was too incredible to believe. But it suddenly all made complete sense if you thought like a maniac.

  Tanner slowly nodded. The young man had taken a while, but he’d gotten there. “Yes, Ben, you do understand. You’ve seen the light.”

  “So you create your own war,” Shaw muttered in disbelief. “You create your own war on terror.” The water had now reached Shaw’s knees.

  “There were no weapons of mass destruction,” Tanner said. “But it united the nation, grew the economy, and saved a presidency.”

  “You are the terror,” Shaw replied in a low voice.

  “Oh, believe me, the war on terror exists. It wasn’t our making.” Tanner corrected himself, “Well, not directly, anyway.”

  “But you are helping it along,” Shaw said.

  “Correct. Kings and rulers have been manufacturing or nurturing wars since time began. It’s a beast you cannot kill. War is in our nature. We need conflict to survive as a nation.” Tanner walked back up the stone steps, the light receding with him.

  He turned for one last time. “I’m just feeding the beast.” Then Tanner was gone.

  49

  It seemed like they had been walking for ages, deeper into the mine. They had passed several side tunnels but decided to follow the wide main shaft as it sloped gently downward.

  Graffiti was scattered along the walls and across some of the overhead beams, colorful hieroglyphics of misspent youth.

  They’d found some drug paraphernalia, a few piles of trash, and several empty rusted cans of food. Beth had imagined kids and a few drifters using the place to hide or just hang out. All fairly innocent.

  As they progressed deeper into the mine, they saw no evidence of any criminal or malicious activity. Once or twice they had unknowingly disturbed a clutch of bats, furry little bodies hanging upside down from the ceiling. Tiny coal-black eyes regarded Ryder and Beth. The bats chattered and squeaked at the intrusion, then several took flight and fluttered past. Beth ducked, worried one would get entangled in her hair. “I hate bats,” she said as they edged around the nest.

  Another hundred yards farther they arrived at a junction and Ryder held up her hand. In the beam of the flashlight the main tunne
l continued ahead, deeper into the side of the mountain. But on the right, another smaller tunnel curved away in the darkness.

  “So, where to?” Beth asked. She wanted to go back. There was nothing here. There were no traces of whatever vehicle had driven into the mine. The farther they went, the colder it seemed. Beth had on a thick duty jacket; Ryder was dressed in a blazer and pants like she’d been to a Nordstrom sale. But she had the sense to swap out her heels for boots before they drove up here.

  Ryder panned the light around. “We need to get off the main tunnel. No one is going to hide anything in plain sight here.” She nodded at the smaller tunnel. “I say we take a look down there. Give it another twenty minutes, then we’ll head back.”

  Beth felt relieved. They weren’t equipped for a full-scale exploration of the mine. Her mind thought back to the Chandler brothers who had disappeared down here. She didn’t fancy ending up lost in the dark or accidentally falling down a hidden shaft.

  Ryder made a pile of rocks then formed an arrow pointing back the way they had come. “A trail of breadcrumbs,” she said before they set off again along the smaller tunnel.

  Ten minutes later they came to another junction.

  Ryder was about to call it a day when she saw something glinting in the dirt. She knelt down and pushed back the dirt. The object was colorful and had a distinct shape. Ryder lifted it and held it in her palm.

  “What is it?” Beth was at her side.

  It was a dolphin-shaped glass pendent. The blue glass of the dolphin was framed in silver that shone under the light. The tiny ring where a chain would have threaded through was split, broken. Ryder handed it to Beth. “Just a charm, something off a chain. Dropped by someone, just kids down here fooling around.”