“What about the Mexican?”
“Short, skinny. Wore jeans. Looked a lot cleaner than the old guy.”
“Did he have a mustache?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look at his mouth.”
“Did you see what kind of car they drove away in?”
“I wasn’t paying any attention,” said the shorter boy. “Didn’t even see them leave.”
Mary sighed. After the thousand or so witnesses she’d interviewed, her instinct told her these boys were telling the truth, as best they could remember it. An old white guy in dirty clothes. More likely sending candids of his grandchildren than clues to Lily Walkingstick’s whereabouts. The Mexican could have been a friend, a neighbor, an employee. “Thanks, fellas,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
She gave a nod to Gabe, and they started walking toward the door. Suddenly the tall boy’s voice rang out.
“Yo! Miss Dee-tective!”
“Yeah?” Mary turned.
“One more thing. That old dude with the cap? He had a bad limp. Walked like he had a couple of joints missing.”
The smile froze on Mary’s face. She knew only one person who knew both her and Jonathan, and walked with a noticeable limp. The only problem with him was that he was dead.
“His name is Stump Logan,” Mary explained moments later, feeling as if someone had run an ice cube down her spine. “He knows me and Jonathan, walks with a limp, and he could have a head injury which he might try to conceal with a baseball cap.”
Gabe steered around a pothole. “Did you convict him of something?”
“No, but he’s a known conspirator against the U.S. government and is suspected of at least two murders.”
“So why aren’t we calling Dula or the Feds?”
She remembered FBI Agent Chip Clifford’s polite, but distinctly unenthusiastic, response. “I have. I don’t think they’ll do anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because everybody but me believes he’s dead.”
Gabe looked at her seriously, without the laugh or the smirk that she usually got from everybody else.
“Tell me about it.”
She was silent a moment, knowing that she was once again going down the slippery slope of telling someone the truth and having them think she was crazy. Nonetheless, she gave Gabe the capsule summary, telling him how the FBI had scoured the mountains for Logan after Russell Cave exploded ten months ago, how they had decided that the man must have died of his injuries in some remote mountain hideout. The problem was, she then started seeing him in Atlanta. She’d called the cops and the Feds, but no one else had seen any sign of him. When the FBI started shunting her calls to a receptionist, she’d sought psychiatric treatment. Though the sightings stopped shortly thereafter, somehow she knew that Logan was still alive.
“Okay,” said Gabe without missing a beat, when she’d finished. “Let’s assume Logan’s not dead. Why do you think he wants to kill you?”
“I’d love to ask him that myself,” said Mary.
They pulled up at the last place Lily had her picture taken, a state historical marker that stood, literally, at a wide spot in the road. Parking the van, they looked around, but found nothing but the bits of trash people had tossed from their cars—cigarette butts, a flattened can of diet soda. That did not surprise Mary. If, indeed, this limping computer user was Sheriff Stump Logan, he would leave only the clues he chose to leave.
Gabe stood beside the marker and gazed down the empty two-lane highway. “He probably drove along the old Trail of Tears route, pulled off to take the picture here, then went to Murfreesboro, to send it from there.”
“And the Trail goes to Nashville next?”
“Nashville, then Hopkinsville, Kentucky. After that Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma.”
Mary glanced at the sun, just beginning to slide toward the western hills. Somehow, she didn’t think Logan would go west. A mountain boy, he’d be way out of his element in the flat lands of Arkansas, the oil-derricked plains of Oklahoma.
“What do you want to do?” Gabe asked her.
“First, I need to call Ruth. Then I’ll try the Feds again.”
Overnight parking was forbidden at the Waverly historical marker, so while Gabe drove back to Christiana, Mary called Ruth, trying to talk over a sputtering connection that allowed her to hear only about every third word Ruth uttered. She had better luck with Chip Clifford. Though he did not answer his phone, she left a voicemail on his machine. “I’m not imagining this, Chip,” she added to her message. “This time I’m absolutely certain it’s Logan.”
She switched off her phone as Gabe pulled up and parked beside the railroad track. With Miller’s grocery closed for the day, the three-building town looked like a movie set, minus cast and crew. As she gazed at the deserted post office, she wondered who else she could bring in on this.
“Mary?”
She jumped. Gabe stood at the dinette, the little table set with a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers.
“I’m afraid I don’t know the Cherokee word for wine,” he said apologetically. “But I thought you might like some.”
The glass he offered was a full-bodied Shiraz, fragrant and heady. They sipped their wine and watched as the sun turned the sky a brilliant, glittering pink. He finally broke the silence that had sprung up between them. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
She gave a weary smile. “You can ask. I may not answer.” For her, personal questions usually carried a lot of pain.
“Earlier you said that this Logan character was the only link between you and Jonathan Walkingstick. What does that mean?”
She held up her wine. It glowed ruby in the fading sun, and as she gazed into the deep red liquid, she felt as if her entire history floated somewhere in its depths. She hadn’t told this story in years, had never told it to a stranger. Softly she began to speak.
“One afternoon in the spring of my senior year, I came home from school, to the little country store where my mother worked.” Her throat tightened. “I called her name, but she didn’t answer. I found her on the floor, lying by the window, dead. She’d been raped and strangled.
“Stump Logan was our sheriff. He conducted an intensive search for her killer, which turned up nothing. Last year I found some old letters of my mother’s in Judge Irene Hannah’s files. When I mentioned them to Irene, we began to piece together a puzzle.”
“And?” Gabe didn’t take his eyes from her face.
“My father served with Logan in Vietnam. Years after his death, my mother had written to the Army, asking that they investigate Logan. She believed he’d killed my father.” Mary swirled the wine in her glass. “And I think he may have killed my mother, too.”
Gabe gave a low whistle. “But why would Logan murder your dad? And where does Walkingstick come in?”
Mary took a shaky breath. Here came the hardest part. “I would give anything to know why Logan killed my father. What I do know is that at the moment my mother was murdered, I was lying in a little grove of dogwood trees, making love for the first time. With Jonathan Walkingstick.”
She avoided Gabe’s eyes as she continued. “Because Jonathan would not say what we’d been doing, Sheriff Logan made him murder suspect number one. He started rumors that Jonathan and my mother had quarreled, that my mother disapproved of him. Where were you when Martha Crow was killed? Let’s hear your alibi, Cherokee boy!”
“And what did Jonathan say?”
“Nothing. Jonathan would have cut out his tongue before he’d have revealed anything about us. Logan knew that. That’s what made Jonathan the perfect fall guy.”
“So what happened?”
“After my mother’s funeral, my grandmother Bennefield brought me to live with her in Atlanta. Logan put so much pressure on Jonathan that he turned down a scholars
hip to college and joined the Army. To this day, no one knows who murdered my mother.” Mary raised her head, not bothering to hide her tears. “Now kids up there scare each other with the ghost of Martha Crow.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Do you know what it feels like to have your mother turned into slumber party entertainment?”
Gabe rose and sat down beside her, and took her in his arms. He tilted her face toward his, then kissed her. First like a friend, then more passionately. The desire she’d felt when she’d seen him asleep crackled to life again, and she pulled him close, hungry for the feel of his lips on hers, the smell of him in her head. And then the image of Lily flashed through her mind, and her desire flickered, like a small kindled flame overcome by too much air. She pulled away, shaking her head. “I can’t do this now.”
“I understand,” he replied, leaning back but still holding her in his arms. “Later.”
They sat like that for a long time, listening as a another train whistled its approach and wondering what weird, fluke of the universe, had left them here, together, in Christiana, Tennessee.
Twenty-Six
JONATHAN FELT ENCLOSED in a kind of bubble. Though he stood outside the police station in a throng of police and Guardsmen, he saw only Ruth, heard only her voice and the urgent thudding of his own heart.
Somebody took Lily. Saturday afternoon. The syllables rang in his head, but the words didn’t form any stream of logic he could comprehend. Now Ruth was talking on a cell phone, almost screaming into the tiny receiver. He watched her mouth moving, noticed the redness of her eyes, the small fever blister beginning to swell on her upper lip. Somebody took Lily. Saturday afternoon. While he’d been at the parts store, buying a new clutch.
She closed the phone. “That was Mary. She got another picture of Lily. In Christiana, Tennessee.”
“What?” he said, the bubble bursting, all the noise suddenly crashing around them like breaking glass. Men were shouting to each other, jeeps roared by on the street, choppers flew overhead. “Who?”
“Come on.” Ruth grabbed his arm. “We’re going to see Dula, whether he wants us to or not.”
She dragged him into a building, into a large duty room where men in various uniforms milled about. Standing beside an open door, talking to an EMT, was a man with gold braid on his shirt. Ruth pushed her way through the crowd, pulling Jonathan after her.
“Sheriff Dula!”
The short man glanced at Ruth wearily, then straightened when he saw Jonathan behind her. “Sheriff, this is my husband.” Ruth shoved Jonathan forward. “He does not have our baby. And Mary Crow just got another e-mail!”
Dula sent the EMT on his way, then beckoned them into his office. “Come in. Have a seat.”
Jonathan felt as if he’d driven into some kind of bizarre movie. Although the characters looked familiar, their lines were all wrong, the plot racing somewhere he couldn’t comprehend. First Ruth had jabbered a tale about Lily, now this sheriff was whining about this being the worst three days of his career. Where was his baby? What had happened to his child?
“Where’s Lily?” he demanded of both Ruth and Dula, as if they were conspiring against him.
“That’s what I’d like to ask you, Mr. Walkingstick,” Dula replied evenly. “What have you been doing these past three days?”
“You tell me what happened to my child.” Jonathan’s voice came out like a growl.
“Since I wear this,” Dula tapped the badge on his chest, “you go first.”
Jonathan felt his temper flare, but played it Dula’s way. He knew all too well the power of small-town sheriffs. Lily’s survival could depend upon having this man on their side.
“Friday morning I drove down to Cherokee County, North Carolina, to meet a man named Clootie Duncan, who’d hired me as a hunting guide. I drove to the Dick’s Creek trailhead, but Duncan never showed up. I waited till dark on Friday, then decided to drive here and meet my wife. I didn’t make it out of the trailhead.” He shot an accusing glance at Ruth. “The clutch on her truck gave out. Saturday I hiked fifteen miles to Murphy, North Carolina, where I persuaded a guy to keep his store open long enough to sell me a new clutch. Then I hiked back. Spent all day Sunday replacing it. I drove out late last night, went to get some food at a place called Red’s Market. There I heard about the rioting and that they’d closed off the interstate. I took a wrong turn on the detour and wound up down in Georgia. It took me a while, but I drove straight here.”
“Anybody see you do any of this?”
“I’ve got a receipt from Blue Ridge Auto Parts in Murphy,” said Jonathan, remembering how the clerk had been eager to close so he could head off to Disney World with his kids. “And the clerk at Red’s Market saw me last night.”
“Nobody else?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“You a full-time guide?”
“During hunting season.”
“Are your parties often no-shows?”
“First time. Usually I ask for a pretty big deposit. This guy called Wednesday, at the last minute, so I told him I’d need my whole fee up front.”
“You get his name and address?”
Jonathan pulled a scrap of paper from his wallet and tossed it on the man’s desk. “That’s his number.’’
While Dula paused to reload more questions, Jonathan took his turn. “Tell me what happened to Lily.”
“At two-seventeen Saturday afternoon, a call came in to this office that a Native American female, three months old, had gone missing. Officers Finch and Green took the call and did a search of the immediate vicinity. When the baby did not turn up, I took over. I arrived on the scene at four-oh-five p.m. I interviewed your wife, Clarinda Wachacha, Gabriel Benge, Bobby Puckett, and fourteen other members of the Save Our Bones organizing committee. Then I—”
“Wait,” Jonathan interrupted. “You’re telling me what you did. You’re not telling me what happened.’’
“NBC news was interviewing me, Jonathan,” Ruth explained. “I left Lily with Clarinda, in the camper. She was talking with Bobby Puckett when a man named Joe Little Bear appeared. He was wearing a rally badge and he told Clarinda that I had sent him to get Lily, to be on television with me.”
“Who’s Bobby Puckett?”
“Someone Clarinda met.”
“And Clarinda and this Bobby just handed Lily over?” Jonathan could just imagine the conversation Clarinda had been having. Puckett probably had his pants to his knees and his dick shoved down her throat when Joe Little Bear showed up. Small wonder she’d handed Lily over.
“This Joe Little Bear said he was a friend of yours,” Ruth went on. “Said he’d served with you in the Gulf.”
“I didn’t serve with any Indians over there.”
“Well, that’s what he told Clarinda. So she figured it was okay. It wasn’t until I finished my interview and came back to nurse Lily that we realized something terrible had happened.”
Jonathan felt a hot, helpless rage begin to seethe inside him. To keep from yelling at Ruth, he turned back to Dula. “So have you searched all the campers? Called the FBI?”
“We searched the entire campground. Puckett voluntarily took and passed a polygraph. I called the FBI Sunday morning, filling them in on the situation. They opted not to get involved.”
“Why the hell not?” Jonathan wanted to thrash Dula, Ruth, Clarinda, that fucker Bobby Puckett, and everybody in this miserable county.
“Because they weren’t convinced we had a case. To be frank, neither was I. You and your wife had quite a little spat before you came over here. Your ex-girlfriend is already knee-deep in this case, and other than a receipt from a parts store, you can’t really account for any part of your weekend.”
“My ex-girlfriend? What the hell are you talking about?”
Ruth put her hand on his arm. “I couldn’t think of anything
else to do, Jonathan. When I couldn’t reach you, I called Mary Crow. She drove up right away.” Ruth swallowed as if her next words were painful. “Sheriff Dula thinks you two planned this all along.”
“That’s bullshit. Where’s Mary now?”
“I just told you. She and Gabe Benge have tracked Lily to Tennessee. Mary started getting these on her office e-mail, right after Lily disappeared.” Ruth pulled a sheet of paper from her purse.
The image made him sick inside. His Lily, lying on the ground, naked and screaming. Some son of a bitch had stolen his baby and this pissant sheriff thought he and Mary Crow had planned it. He strode around the desk, and jerked Dula up by the front of his shirt. Holding him by the collar, he snapped the images of Lily in front of his face, ignoring Ruth’s shriek of protest. “What’s the matter with you, you sawed-off little jackass? You honestly think I would steal my own child, then send pictures like this?”
‘’Jenkins!” Dula gurgled. “Green!”
Two big Nikwase County deputies burst through the doorway. Jonathan dropped Dula, but too late. The second after he let him go, deputy number one pinioned his arms behind his back, turned Jonathan around as if he was a feather pillow, and kicked his legs apart. Jonathan saw it coming, but there was nothing he could do to protect himself. His breath snagged as the end of a nightstick slammed into his stomach, once, then once more, then once again. Distantly, he heard Ruth screaming, then his knees crumpled as Dula bellowed about how nobody can tell him how to run an investigation, and his own voice crying the only name that really mattered—Lily.
Twenty-seven
FOUR HOURS LATER, Jonathan sat on the floor of Nikwase County’s single jail cell, in between a dreadlocked black man named Happy Lavalais and a tattered old white man who lay sleeping off what smelled like a mixture of baked beans and Thunderbird wine. The air seemed to shimmer around the old guy’s threadbare body, and every minute or so he would fart, and fill the cell with the stench of decomposing alcohol and poorly digested food.
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 18