At the sheriff’s office, a half-dozen exhausted looking men sat at various desks around the open room. Three wore Nikwase County deputy uniforms, the others were National Guardsmen. In the middle stood Dula, coffee cup in hand. Ruth gasped involuntarily at the sheriff’s appearance. His once snappy trousers were splattered with thick orange mud, while his shirt looked stiff with dirt and sweat. Even his badge had lost its glitter. His face looked like a raccoon’s in reverse, dark soot outlining the white skin around where he’d worn his sunglasses. Dula seemed to wobble as he stood there, as if the tiniest breath of air might blow him over. He looked up as they entered the room.
“Hello, ladies.” He nodded without much enthusiasm. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
“We need to talk to you.” Ruth tried to sound as confident and forceful as Mary Crow always did.
“In here.” He beckoned them forward perfunctorily, unimpressed by her tone.
They followed him to an office that overlooked Main Street. He switched on the lights before he took his place behind his desk. “Have a seat,” he told them. “Update me on that baby of yours. Hubby shown up yet?”
Ruth frowned. “Have your deputies not told you anything?”
Dula gave a thin smile. “They said you’d gotten some kind of e-mail.”
Ruth handed him the print of the photo Mary had given her, then went on to explain that Mary had received a second photo, just hours ago.
“I’ve got the address headers right here. Mary says the FBI can trace them.”
“Where’s Mary Crow now?” asked Dula, studying the photo.
“She and Gabe Benge just left Chattanooga, heading to someplace called Shellsford. They think whoever’s got Lily is taking her along the old Trail of Tears.”
Dula sipped his coffee and looked up at her with weary eyes. “Mrs. Walkingstick, I’ve been on this job over twenty years. In that amount of time, you learn how to read signs that other people might not see. To pick up on emotions that aren’t exactly on the surface, you know?”
Ruth nodded, wondering where Dula was going.
“Honey, if anybody had kidnapped your baby, we would have found some trace of it. I called the FBI early this morning, right after the bloodhounds left.”
“So are they working on it?” Her voice swelled with hope.
“No. The Bureau’s opted not to override my jurisdiction. But the FBI’s got it on their desks, and the APBs are still out in Tennessee and Carolina.”
“But—”
“Mrs. Walkingstick, I’m happy to investigate this. That’s your right as a citizen and my duty as an officer of the law. But I firmly believe your baby’s fine. It’s your marriage that’s in serious trouble.”
Ruth felt a tingling in her breasts. Her milk was letting down. Soon her shirt would be drenched. “You still think my husband stole our child?” she asked in anger and disbelief.
“It took me about two seconds to see that your pal Mary has a real case on your husband. You yourself told me that she and your husband were ‘old friends.’ Which, I’ve come to learn, most always means old lovers.” He glanced at Clarinda. “Others confirmed that he was opposed to your coming here, and in fact, you argued quite violently about it.”
“But I’m the one who called Mary up here,” protested Ruth. “And if Jonathan had planned to steal Lily, why didn’t he just do it at home?’’
“Actually, he could have stolen the child anywhere,” Dula pointed out reasonably. “Mary Crow, the same thing—coming up here, pretending to help out.” He put down his coffee and rifled through some papers. “I ran a check on her, too. She’s not the straightest arrow in the quiver.”
“Mary Crow?” Ruth asked, astonished.
Dula found the paper he was looking for. “She got hurt in an explosion over in Carolina about a year ago. Hasn’t been the same since, according to her boss. She was even under the care of a psychiatrist for several months, for post traumatic stress disorder.” He chuckled. “I got the idea some folks down in Atlanta wouldn’t mind a bit if Ms. Crow did run off with your husband.”
“But Gabe was the one who knew where Nancy Ward’s grave was,” Ruth cried. “If Mary and Jonathan had planned this, why would she involve Gabriel Benge?”
“Benge was just a stroke of good luck. Helped them cover their tracks even better. Believe me, honey, I’ve seen this stuff too many times before. People get randy as billy goats over each other, they do things they normally wouldn’t dream of.”
Ruth wanted to stand up and scream Jonathan and Mary would not do this! Never in a million years! But her legs would not move, her mouth couldn’t form the words. All she could do was sit there, humiliated.
The sheriff dug out a tissue from the bottom drawer of his desk and wiped the soot from his face. “Mrs. Walkingstick, this is a case where two and two don’t exactly make four, but they come damn close.”
“So you’re not going to do anything?” She didn’t want to believe this, but Dula spoke with such assurance, and Clarinda was sitting there smug and nodding, as if she’d known it all along. “Honey, I’ve done everything I can. Unless I get further evidence that your husband did not take your child, no, I’m not.”
“So what should I do?”
“If I were you, I’d go home. Wait it out. A love nest with a squalling baby might not turn out to be as cozy as they figured. He and the young’un may come crawling back. At the very least, they’ll know where to get in touch with you, if you go home.”
Ruth gazed around the office, blinking back stinging tears. Her eyes settled on the bronze nameplate on Dula’s desk. She realized then, with a pain that felt like a spike through her heart, that she’d just joined the ranks of the damned—the women who were condemned to wait for their lost children to return home. Al though she’d seen such women countless times on television and always felt genuine sympathy for them, it had always been a faraway, distant compassion. Never had she dreamed she would one day be initiated into their pitiful club.
Fighting despair, she looked at Dula. “Could I stay here a little longer? Maybe pass out some more sketches? Talk to some people?” She could not go back to Little Jump Off and just wait. She’d rather sooner throw herself off some mountain and be done with her life altogether.
Dula gave her a reluctant nod. “Just stay out of the Guard’s way.”
“Thanks. I appreciate all you’ve done.”
“I’m sorry this had to happen, honey, but it ain’t nothing new. Your man might smarten up and come home. If he doesn’t, then you’re better off without him.”
No, I’m not, thought Ruth as she turned and stumbled blindly toward the door, her breasts oozing milk for a child she could not nurse, her heart breaking over a man she could not find.
Miles away, Jonathan was trying to find his number seventeen metric wrench. By the time the parts store in Murphy found the right clutch and he’d hiked all the way back to his truck, it had been too dark to work, so he’d curled up to sleep yet another night in Whirlaway. At first light that morning, he woke up and started the operation. It had not gone smoothly. He’d pushed the truck to the most level bit of ground he could find, then wedged four big creek stones behind the wheels so the thing wouldn’t roll over him and break his neck. Slowly he’d dropped the drive shaft, then removed the bell housing and gearbox,Whirlaway dripping oil on his face and bits of road grit in his eyes. By noon he’d pulled the old clutch assembly; two hours later he was using the special alignment tool the guy at the parts store had talked him into buying. By sunset he had the bell housing, gearbox, and driveshaft back in place. At dusk he finally rolled out from under the truck. His face was smeared with grease and dirt, his fingernails looked as if he’d been digging potatoes with his bare hands. He climbed in the truck and started the engine, pushing the shifter gingerly into first gear. Holding his breath, he eas
ed off the clutch and pressed on the gas. To his amazement,Whirlaway began to move up the hill.
“Damn!” he said aloud, proud of himself. “If the hunting guide business ever dries up, maybe I’ll just start turning wrenches for a living.”
He killed the engine and climbed out of the truck. He wanted to wash the muck off of him before he went back to civilization. Stripping to his waist, he leaned belly-down over the creek and scrubbed off with the free sample of orange degreaser soap he’d picked up at the parts store. Though the icy water stung like nettles on his skin, when he finally grabbed his shirt to dry off, his hands and fingernails were clean to the point of pinkness.
“At least Lily won’t think I’m the monster Ulagu,” he said, laughing.
He put his clothes back on and gathered up his tools. Soon the little truck was chugging up the gravel road. He’d worked off his rage at his no-show boar hunter. Now he was simply glad to have the truck working, more glad to be close to seeing his little girl once again. Unconsciously he began humming “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
Ten miles later he pulled into a store called Red’s Mountain Supplies. He’d eaten the last of his food early that morning, and he wanted to call Little Jump Off, to see if perhaps Ruth had brought Lily home from the rally early.
That would be nice, he thought as he walked up the steps to the store. That would mean the rally would be over, Clarinda would be heading back to Oklahoma, and maybe Ruth would return to her less caustic pre-Lily personality. He pushed open the door and heard the cowbell on the transom above jiggle.
“Evenin’,” a heavyset bearded man in a green plaid shirt called from behind the counter. “Help you with anything?”
“Just something to eat.” Jonathan grabbed a package of Ding-Dongs and a premade tuna sandwich, then he began searching for his gift of atonement for Ruth. “Been up in the woods for a couple of days.”
“You ain’t been over in Tennessee, have you?”
“No.” Jonathan picked up a jar of Smucker’s strawberry preserves, noting that the man had an accent that would have sent Clarinda into hysterics. “Why?”
“That poor state’s goin’ to hell in a handbasket.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Ain’t you heard? Some Indian smacked the governor in the face with a pie. Now everybody’s fightin’ everybody else. They done called out the Guard.”
“Where in Tennessee?” Jonathan stood motionless, the jar of preserves like lead in his hand.
“Lookee here.” The man turned a tiny TV set around, eager to share the catastrophe. “It’s on every channel.”
Jonathan watched as a shot of ragged, weeping Indians filled the little screen. A nervous looking reporter came on, saying something about “Tremont, Tennessee, and the Save Our Bones rally,” then the scene shifted to one of violence, as war-painted men screamed and flung rocks and bottles into a line of National Guardsmen. A crowd pushed over a car, while men grappled with each other on the ground. Above it all rose the wail of sirens and the whoop of police cars.
Jonathan looked up from the TV. “When was this?”
“Started last night,” the man replied. “They’re in a mess of trouble over there.”
Without another word, Jonathan dug in his pocket. He pulled out a ten-dollar bill and dropped it on the counter. Gathering everything he bought up in his arms, he turned and raced for the parking lot.
“Hey, wait,” the shopkeeper protested. “You got some change coming!”
“Keep it,” called Jonathan. “My wife’s over there in Tennessee.”
“Take the long way up from Georgia, then. They’ve closed the roads heading west from here.”
I knew it, thought Jonathan, leaving a spray of gravel as he raced away from the little grocery and pointed Whirlaway south, toward Georgia. His instincts had proved right; this rally hadn’t felt good to him since the first day Ruth started talking about it. That didn’t matter now, though. All that mattered now was getting his wife and child away from harm and back home, where they belonged.
Twenty-one
Monday, October 14
“CHIP? ARE YOU there? I know it’s early, but don’t hang up on me.”
Special Agent Chip Clifford rolled away from the naked brunette who lay sleeping beside him and peered at his alarm clock: 6:11 a.m. Monday, he thought. On or about October 14. He closed his eyes and sighed, recognizing both the caller and the nature of her call.
“Hi, Mary,” he answered, trying hard to sound pleasant. “What can I do for you?”
He stared up at the ceiling as she talked. Although he knew the players in her story well, this time her plot had taken a much wilder turn. Now she thought Stump Logan had stolen a friend of hers’ baby from that Indian riot in Tennessee, in some effort to lure her along the Trail of Tears. She sounded so reasonable that he would have believed her immediately, had he not heard a variation of this crackpot story half a dozen times before. Usually she thought Logan was lurking around Atlanta, waiting to kill her. This was the first time she’d put him out of state, with a third party involved. Chip felt bad, listening to such a beautiful, intelligent woman self destruct like this, but he just let her rattle on. Logan was dead. Mary Crow was being victimized by a ghost of her own making.
“Uh-huh. How do you figure that?” he asked, having this routine down so pat that he knew when to ask just the right questions at just the right places. He hated to chum Mary along like this, but he was stuck. After 9-11, the bureau had sent his best friend Daniel Safer deep into Uzbekistan. Safer had left him with a fierce Russian bear hug and the stern request that he “watch out for Mary Crow.” That he’d done. Hadn’t he called a full alert the first couple of times Mary thought she’d spotted Logan? When all her sightings turned up nothing, everyone at the office had started snickering each time she called. Chip Clifford had gotten the message—if he wanted to keep his career on an upward spiral, he’d best not initiate any more searches for a stiff.
Still, even though no one had heard a word from Safer since November of 2001, Chip intended to keep his promise to his friend as best he could. Daniel Safer was one hell of a guy.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” He fumbled for the pen and pad he kept on his bedside table. He wrote down what Mary told him, or at least he thought he got most of it. Take down some address headers. Locate where a particular e-mail was sent from. He repeated it back to her, with only one correction.
“Okay, Mary. It may take a while, but I’ll see what I can find out. Thanks for calling. Bye.”
He turned off the cell phone, then flopped back down in bed. Thank God he hadn’t told her he’d call her back. For now, he was off the hook. What he couldn’t understand, though, was how the woman could practice law so brilliantly by day and obsess about a dead man in her off hours. It was like Mary Crow put on her sanity every morning when she went to work, and then threw it in the back of her closet when she got home. He was trying to figure that one out when the woman beside him groaned.
“Who was that, honey?” She reached for him without opening her eyes, her voice thick with sleep.
“Just a minor nut case,” he answered, nuzzling into the warmth of her soft hair, knowing she was nowhere near the beauty that Mary Crow was, but feeling himself grow hard, nonetheless. “Nobody we need to be concerned with.”
Mary switched off her phone. She could tell by the tone of Chip Clifford’s voice that he didn’t think much of her latest theory about Logan. Still, he’d promised to look into it, and since he was a friend of Safer’s, she would take him at his word. Sighing, she looked out the window above Gabe’s bed. Low gray clouds stumbled through the sky as a brisk wind stripped dull orange leaves from an old oak. After they’d arrived at the Shellsford cemetery late last night, Gabe had transformed the seats of the dinette into a double bed for her, the passenger seat up front into a single for him. Wired f
rom driving and fighting the feeling of being in such tight quarters, she’d pulled the History of the Trail of Tears from his little book collection after they went to bed, intending to read herself to sleep. But the stories had not been the calmative she’d sought. Between October 1838 and March of 1839, fourteen thousand docile Cherokees had been rousted out of their North Carolina homes and marched a circuitous twelve-hundred-mile route to Oklahoma. Few had been as lucky as Aunt Little Tom’s grandfather. Those who straggled into Oklahoma suffered from malnutrition and exposure; along the way three thousand died, most of them children. Mary finally had to quit reading when she began putting Lily into every page of the book. Lily hungry, Lily cold, Lily being dumped in some unmarked grave as her parents were shoved westward, at the point of a bayonet.
She turned away from the window and looked at the wall next to her bed. Gabe had taped two photographs to it. One showed a teenage Gabe grinning in triumph as he pulled some kind of pot shard from the ground. The other pictured Gabe in full Marine Corps dress, kissing a pretty blond girl in a wedding dress.
Mary felt an unexpected stab of disappointment. Not that he had been a Marine, but that he was married. For some reason she’d assumed that there was no Mrs. Benge. Though they’d looked at each other in the slightly feral way all men and women use to size each other up, she’d felt something more with Benge. A kind of kinship as they began to work together, as if they’d been important to each other in another life.
“Must have been my imagination,” she whispered as she looked at the photograph and wondered why the bride wasn’t here in this camper, sleeping with her husband.
She took her overnight bag into the cleverly designed bathroom, washed, topped her jeans with her favorite blue sweater, then stepped down into the main part of the van. Gabe lay sprawled on the passenger-seat-turned-bed, flat on his back, a yellow thermal blanket covering him from the hips down. Sleeping, he looked almost sculpted, as if he were a cast in a life drawing class. Though he may have ditched the Marine Corps uniform, she could see that he’d kept the Marine Corps physique. His arms were far more muscular than she’d imagined, tapering down to strong hands that rested on his stomach. The morning light made his skin glow like marble. Feeling a sharp jolt of desire, she had to stop herself from reaching down and tracing the curves of his neck and shoulders. It had been a long time since she’d held her body against someone else’s—a long time since she’d even wanted to. Guiltily, she remembered the beaming bride in Gabe’s photograph. She turned to look out the window, where fat robins hopped among the graves, tugging up breakfast worms.
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 15