“You bastard,” Gwendolyn spat. “You all spent the money Manning paid us for my work. And besides, the strategy was Jade’s. You go after the weakest parts of the opposition first, and then use their failure to bring down the rest.”
“That’s not a license to slander,” Jade said. “You still need to act within an ethical framework based on respect for the other side’s point of view.”
“We were just doing a job for our clients,” Savage said. “That’s how our adversarial legal system works.”
“I understand,” the red-haired man said. “And I don’t hold you responsible for the decision. I just want to engage your services for the next round of negotiations.”
“Then use the phone like everyone else,” Gwendolyn said. “But I can save you the dime. We can’t take your side in the appeal because we’ve already represented your opponent. If you thought it through for one second, you’d realize that, you moron.”
“What my colleague means to say,” Balowsky said quickly, “is that the firm of Rushton, Morelock, while not able to directly aid you in your appeal, will do its utmost to find you the best counsel possible. And if your organization is in financial straits, we would be willing to handle your legal bills, as well.”
“Yeah, those death penalty cases can be expensive,” Mathis said. “And since there’s no chance you’d ever win, no lawyer is going to take your case without payment up front.”
“Will you shut up?” Savage whispered furiously. “We’re trying to negotiate a deal here.”
“I don’t deal with terrorists,” Mathis said.
“That’s really inspiring,” Balowsky said, “until you remember that corpses don’t deal with anyone.”
“Why are you doing this to us?” Jade wailed. “We haven’t done anything to you.”
“As I said, you are merely the vehicle through which I am seeking redress,” the red-haired man said.
“It’s about time you’re seeking to get redressed,” Shawn said. “Because that outfit does absolutely nothing for you. And if one more thread snaps on those shorts, we’re all going to wish you had killed us back at the camp.”
Gus stared at Shawn, who was smiling up at the red-haired man as if he were free and his captor was the one tied to the tree.
“What are you doing?” Gus whispered furiously.
“Testing a theory,” Shawn said.
“What theory?” Gus said. “That no matter how many rotten things you’ve done, you’ll still end up in heaven?”
Shawn ignored him. “Tell me, Tubby,” he said, “what’s the next part of your brilliant plan? Because right now all I see is a fat guy playing dress-up and dancing around a campfire.”
“Shawn, stop,” Gus said, fully expecting at least a small percentage of the inevitable hail of bullets to penetrate his own flesh.
But if the red-haired man was offended by Shawn, he didn’t show it. If anything, he seemed amused.
“My plan is done,” he said. “I’ve sent out my demands, I’ve explained what will happen to all of you if I don’t get what I want. All I have to do is wait.”
“Demands?” Savage said. “We’ll give you whatever you want.”
“I already told you,” Mathis snapped. “We do not negotiate with terrorists.”
“I’m not negotiating,” Savage said. “I’m giving him whatever he wants.”
“I’m afraid my demands have to be settled at a higher level than this, although I do appreciate your generosity,” the red-haired man said.
“What is it you want?” Jade said.
“Not much. Just the immediate and permanent end to all logging, hunting, and fishing on all federal and state lands in the country,” the red-haired man said.
“You’re insane,” Gwendolyn shouted. “That’s never going to happen.”
“I really hope you’re wrong,” the red-haired man said.
“There must be something else you want,” Balowsky begged. “We’ve got money. We can buy you your own forest, and then you can keep everyone from logging there.”
“The immediate and permanent end to all logging, hunting, and fishing on all federal and state lands in the country,” the red-haired man said, “or you are all going to die.”
Chapter Forty-One
The sun was hidden by the tops of the trees, but the air near the forest floor was hot and thick, choked with dust and decaying pine needles.
Gus crawled along the ground, sweat cascading off him. He scraped away a foot of dry needles, then clawed out a small handful of dirt and dropped an acorn into the hole. He swept the dirt and pine needles back in place and crawled forward another foot.
All around him in the forest he could hear the sounds of the lawyers performing the same ridiculous, repetitive task. He was sure their fingers were blistering just like his, that their bare knees were aching and their heads pounding from the heat.
Even their armed guards looked like they were beginning to fade under the high temperatures. Their camouflage shirts were rolled up to their elbows, and their pants, unequipped with zip-off legs, were pulled up to their knees. They’d even rolled their balaclavas up over the backs of their heads to let their scalps breathe. It would have made more sense to take them off altogether, but Gus was glad they hadn’t. The fact that they were concerned about being identified suggested they intended on letting their hostages go at some point.
Now that they were partially uncovered, Gus realized that he’d been wrong about one thing. These weren’t four men. Judging by the thin wrists and ankles and delicate neck, one of the guards was a woman. In normal circumstances Gus would have tried to figure a way to get her alone, in hopes of overpowering the weakest member of the team and getting away. But normal circumstances meant the weakest member wasn’t carrying an automatic rifle, and that wasn’t the case here.
And so he continued to crawl along the ground, dropping acorns into dry holes. This was the red-haired man’s order. Manning Timber’s clear-cutting campaign had cost the state hundreds of thousands of trees. Until he got his way, the hostages were going to repair that damage. They’d plant one tree for every one that had been cut.
Gus didn’t know much about arboriculture, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t a particularly well thought-out plan. There were already a lot of trees in this part of the forest. There didn’t seem to be a huge amount of room for more to grow. And even if the older trees made room for the new sprouts, Gus suspected that before an acorn could turn into a sapling, it needed some amount of water. This ground was dry and powdery. If anything, they were probably just laying out a progressive dinner party for the local squirrels.
But the red-haired man did not seem interested in debating the logic of his plan. When Gwendolyn tried to object, he aimed his gun in the air and let out a stream of bullets. Then he turned it on the lawyer and asked if she still had any problems with her assignment.
That’s when one of the gunmen brought out the sack of acorns and they all got down on their hands and knees. Ever since then, Gus had caught the occasional glimpse of one of the lawyers through the trees, but aside from that, and the armed guards who patrolled the area, he was completely alone.
Gus reached out his sore, blistered hand to scrape away another pile of pine needles, but his fingers closed on rubber. Startled, he looked up to see he was clutching the toe of a hiking shoe.
Shawn’s hiking shoe.
Shawn was sitting against a tree, his legs splayed out in front of him, eyes closed as if he were taking a brief nap. When Gus squeezed his shoe, Shawn’s eyes flashed open and his face brightened into a bright smile.
“Lovely day to be outside, isn’t it?” he said cheerfully.
“We’re supposed to be planting acorns,” Gus whispered, checking over his shoulder to see if one of the guards was about to stumble across them.
“Actually, we’re supposed to be catching whoever killed the mime,” Shawn said. “And we’re not doing that, either.”
“Then what are yo
u doing?”
“I’m thinking about a pillow,” Shawn said.
“You look comfortable enough already,” Gus said.
“Actually, I’m thinking about a lot of pillows,” Shawn said. “To start with, I’m thinking about how many pillows we had on those feather beds back at the campsite.”
“There were plenty of them,” Gus said, thinking back to the way he’d sunk into the soft down as he laid his head down in the tent. If only he’d known then how much worse his life was about to get, maybe he would have tried a little harder to enjoy the night.
“Yes, there were,” Shawn said. “Certainly more than enough.”
“I’m glad we agree on that,” Gus said. “Maybe now we could start thinking about how we’re going to get away from these maniacs.”
“I’m also thinking about ketchup,” Shawn said.
It must be the heat, Gus thought. It was melting Shawn’s brain. If a guard did show up, Gus would beg him for mercy, and for water for Shawn. “Are you?”
“Have you ever noticed it’s spelled two different ways?” Shawn continued. “There’s k-e-t-c-h-u-p and then there’s c-a-t-s-u-p, but neither spelling matches the way the word is pronounced. You have to take the first two letters of the second spelling and put them with the last five letters of the first to approximate the word we actually use.”
“Uh-huh.” This was worse than Gus had feared. Shawn seemed to be in the grip of full-on delirium. If this were happening in an old movie, a couple of quick slaps across the face would snap Shawn out of it. But Gus didn’t feel comfortable slapping Shawn, especially when there seemed to be so many people around who’d enjoy the opportunity to join in.
“And then there’s the whole question of whether it’s a condiment or an entrée,” Shawn said. “I tend to come down on the condiment side of the argument myself, as I have generally used it as a complement to flavor food, rather than as a main source of nutrition. And I have to think that a chef talented enough to have whipped up that tasty dinner would see it the same way.”
The mention of the chef brought the image of his death back into Gus’ mind with full force. How could Shawn be prattling on like this when the man he was talking about was rotting on the ground?
“We need to get away from here,” Gus said as forcefully as he could without raising his voice above a whisper.
Shawn didn’t seem to hear. “So why would he bring four five-gallon cans of the stuff to our campground?”
“Maybe he was worried something would go wrong with one of them,” Gus said. “Who cares?”
“That might explain bringing one extra, but four?” Shawn said. “Even if we all doused our breakfasts in the stuff, there’s no way four lawyers, two detectives and one grumpy FBI agent could make it through a single gallon of ketchup, let alone twenty. And since everything they used had to be brought up by helicopter or pack mule, weight would have been a major issue.”
“I promise we’ll solve that mystery,” Gus said desperately. “Right after we figure out how to get out of this road show version of The Hills Have Eyes.”
“And that brings me right back to the question of pillows,” Shawn said. “There were far more on every bed than we needed. So why were there stacks of extras in that supply tent?”
The whole slapping thing was beginning to look a lot more attractive to Gus. There didn’t seem to be any other way to bring Shawn back to reality. First ketchup, now pillows. Gus couldn’t even imagine what sort of fevered fantasy was running through his friend’s brain that would lead him to connect the two.
“Shawn, you’ve got to focus,” Gus said. “We’re here in the woods; we’re being held captive by murderers. You’ve got to stop thinking about pillows and ketchup.”
“But they’re the key,” Shawn said.
“They’re a headrest and a foodstuff,” Gus said. “There’s no way you can put them together to make a key.”
“A pillow isn’t just for resting your head,” Shawn said. “You know that as well as anyone else.”
It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. Actually, it took more than a moment. It took his accepting the idea that his friend was not raving the incoherent babblings of the hopelessly schizophrenic, but was actually making a point. Once he accepted that, there was still a brief period when he had to piece together what that point could be.
And even then, he could barely bring himself to believe it.
“That can’t be,” Gus said. “That’s just crazy.”
“Crazier than holding a bunch of lawyers hostage to force the government to stop all logging?”
“It’s a hard call, but just about,” Gus said.
“I might have thought so, too,” Shawn said. “Until I started thinking about something the fat guy said. And then I saw something that convinced me.”
“What’s that?”
For a moment, Shawn didn’t say anything. Gus was going to ask again, but Shawn held up his hand for quiet. They waited in silence until they heard pine needles crunching in the woods to their right.
It was one of the guards. He was patrolling carefully, his gun extended, ready to mow down anyone who thought about running or fighting.
“What are we going to do now?” Gus whispered.
“Get proof.” Shawn scrabbled around in the needles at the base of the tree and came up with a small, tight pinecone. “Okay, now this may be fast, so you’re going to have to watch carefully.”
“What for what?”
“You’ll know.”
Shawn lobbed the pinecone towards the guard. It flew just behind his head and thumped into a tree. The guard whirled around, leveling his gun at the source of the sound.
And Gus saw.
And Gus knew.
Chapter Forty-Two
Gus ran.
That was the plan, anyway. Gus was supposed to run through the forest making as much noise as possible and luring all four of the guards to chase him.
But several hours on his knees in the stifling air had sapped most of his energy, and the best he could manage was a brisk shuffle through the pine needles. That might have been a problem, because it could let one of the guards catch him before he’d attracted the attention of the rest of the hostages. Fortunately, while the guards might have been revolutionaries for the cause of the wilderness, they didn’t seem to have any more experience than Gus in working outside in the blazing heat. As Gus shuffled, they shuffled along behind them.
Of course they couldn’t afford to leave their captives alone as they gave chase. So by the time Gus found himself back in the clearing with four automatic rifles aimed at him, the lawyers were all in the circle, too. After a moment the red-haired leader puffed his way to join them.
“I warned you what would happen if one of you attempted to escape,” the leader said between gasps for breath. “What happens next is not our fault. It is his.”
“Actually, that’s not precisely true,” Balowsky said. “Not in a legal sense, anyway. California has what’s called a felony murder statute, which says that if anyone is killed during the commission of a crime, no matter who is directly responsible, fault attaches to the perpetrators of the original crime.”
“Another law written to protect the powerful,” the leader said. “Here I am the lawgiver, and my law says whatever happens next is his fault.”
“As long as you know it isn’t mine, we’re cool,” Gwendolyn said.
The leader raised his gun. As Gus saw its bottomless black barrel pointing at him, he started to wonder how he had let Shawn talk him into this. Yes, everything Shawn had explained seemed perfectly rational at the time, but there could be a vast gulf between perfectly rational and actually true, and if Shawn had been wrong, that gulf was about to be crossed by a bullet.
“I am the lawgiver,” the leader repeated as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Before the leader’s gun started spitting out lead, there was a rustling from outside the clearing, and Shawn pushed his way b
etween two of the gunmen.
“If you’re the lawgiver, then tell me, is it ‘ape shall never kill ape,’ or ‘ape shall never kill Abe’?” Shawn said. “Because I never trusted that little suck-up chimpanzee.”
“What are you talking about?” the leader shouted.
“If you were truly the lawgiver, you’d understand,” Shawn said. “In the beginning God created beast and Man, so that both might live in friendship and share dominion over a world at peace. But man waged bloody wars against the Apes, whom they reduced to slavery. Then God in his wrath sent the world a savior, miraculously born of two Apes who had descended on Earth from Earth’s own future. And he rose up an army of Apes and gave them speech, and won freedom from their oppressors.”
The leader stared at him, stunned. So did the guards. And the lawyers. Up in the trees, Gus was pretty sure, so did the squirrels.
Finally the leader seemed to shake off his surprise. He thrust his gun in Shawn’s face and screamed at him, “You get down on the ground right now!”
“Did you know your stomach jiggles when you get mad?” Shawn said.
“Get down or I will shoot you!”
“I think we’re done here,” Shawn said. He turned to the lawyers. “You kids coming?”
Shawn turned and started towards the edge of the clearing. Gus followed him. This was the moment. Either Shawn was right or—well, if Shawn wasn’t right, Gus would never find out.
“I am ordering you to stop,” the leader said.
“And I’m ordering you to get down on your knees and do Moritz’ monologue from Spring Awakening,” Shawn said. “And no cheating by using the song from the musical. I want the original Wedekind. Oh, and Archie Kane sent me.”
Gus sneaked a look at the lawyers. Most of them were too caught up in the impending execution to register what Shawn had just said. Most of them had looks of horror on their faces, although Gwendolyn’s half-smile suggested that she wouldn’t be too sorry to witness what was going to happen next.
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