A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  “Aye, boy,” he finally murmured. “I’m sure she does.”

  “Then stay the hell away from that hill,” Scab muttered as he grabbed Hugh’s binoculars and hung them around his own neck. “This is a classified government investigation.”

  “Aye.” Hugh rolled up his sleeves. “That I’ll bloody well not forget.” He watched as Scab stomped out of the stable, then he knelt beside Lady Jane, ready to attend the heaving mare with the practiced hands of a County Wexford man.

  * * *

  “Where the hell have you been?” Daniel Safer demanded as Mike Tuttle walked through the kitchen door, a pair of German binoculars hanging around his neck.

  Tuttle laughed. “Just hassling that old Irish fart. Got to get your kicks where you can, up here in the boonies.”

  “Take those binoculars off. They’re private property.”

  “They’re Zeiss binocs,” Tuttle protested. “That old asshole’s spying on us with them.”

  “I said take them off, Tuttle.” Safer’s tone sharpened.

  Krebbs raised his eyes from his computer screen, watching the exchange between the two men. Tuttle glared at Safer, then, with a shrug of his shoulders, removed the binoculars. “I wasn’t going to keep them,” he muttered.

  “You lay off that old guy,” Safer told him. “If it wasn’t for him, you’d be the one out there shoveling horse shit.”

  Tuttle opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He yanked out a chair and sat down, his body stiff with anger. “Okay, big Dan. What’s our schedule for the day?”

  Safer glanced at his watch. It was 6:27 A.M. Friday, December 29. In the past sixty-three hours since he’d gotten the first call from Mary Crow, he had found nothing. The roadblocks Logan and the North Carolina State Police put up had yielded only drunk drivers; their door-to-door search of Hartsville had only embarrassed a few errant spouses who were dallying where they weren’t supposed to dally. When the operations manager for Delta Airlines had called and confessed that Mary Crow had somehow given them the slip, Safer had to go take a walk to cool off. This was Eric Rudolph, volume two, only worse. The mountains were doing it to him once again. He knew as well as everybody that with each passing minute, their chances of finding Judge Irene Hannah faded.

  He looked down at the huge map of western North Carolina spread out before him. “Tuttle, I want you to meet up with the rest of the guys in Hartsville and divide into two-man teams. Rice has the list of everybody we’ve done business with up here. Assign each team to one of the surrounding counties—Cherokee, Clay, Macon. I want you to lean on everybody—blockaders, dopers, klansmen, cockfighters. Ask them if they know anything about Judge Irene Hannah or Mary Crow. If they do, offer them anything they want in exchange.”

  “Are we now listing our civilian helper as officially missing?” asked Tuttle.

  “Mary Crow’s an officer of the court and a part of this investigation. She hasn’t been seen in forty-eight hours. That’s considered missing in anybody’s jurisdiction.” Safer glared at Tuttle. “Now get going and let me know what you find out.”

  Tuttle stood and put one hand on the binoculars. “Can I take these with me?”

  “No,” Safer snapped. “Leave them here.”

  With an angry glare, Tuttle stomped out, slamming the door behind him.

  “Thanks, Daniel,” said Krebbs, rattling his bag of pork rinds. “He was beginning to get on my nerves.”

  “Everything’s beginning to get on all our nerves.” Safer frowned over at Krebbs. “Have you gotten anything off those computers?”

  “Nothing beyond bureau updates every fifteen minutes,” replied Krebbs. “The good news is that all the other federal judges are safe and accounted for. No action in any of the other twelve districts.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The bad news is that there’s no other news. Our scanning program Carnivore hasn’t intercepted any kind of weird E-mail correspondence.”

  “What about websites?”

  “Same old neo-Nazi, white-supremacist, anti-satanic government shit. No new buzz from the hate mongers.”

  “Then it must be one guy.” Safer chewed the end of his pen. “One extremely lucky, amazingly well-organized killer with some kind of monster grudge.”

  “The profilers say no,” said Krebbs. “No consistent pattern either in the MO or the victims.”

  “Then who the fuck is it?” Safer tossed his pen down on the table.

  “I still like a group, on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “The killings have been on or near American holidays, which implies a political statement. They’ve been virtually indistinguishable from accidents or random crime, which implies intimate knowledge of the victims. Plus, they’ve zigzagged all over the country. Judge January drowns in California, Judge February has a coronary in Maine. An individual couldn’t leave California, get that familiar with the guy in Maine, then move on to kill the judge in Alabama in March.”

  “Sure he could,” said Safer. “He’d be racking up some big-time Sky Miles, but it could be done.”

  “It’s possible,” Krebbs granted. “But look how much easier a group of just two or three well-trained guys could do it.”

  “But nobody’s bragging out there.” Safer nodded at Krebbs’s computer screens. “Conspirators should be crowing like roosters over this!”

  Krebbs shook his head. “The biggest bark isn’t always the worst bite, Daniel. The guys who’ll bomb your federal buildings don’t end their names with dot com.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a conspiracy that’s going to act when the ball drops in Times Square.”

  “That’s the only thing that fits what’s gone on before.” Krebbs crunched down on a pork rind. “We just have to figure out who they are sometime within the next two days.”

  “Thanks, Krebbs,” Safer said bitterly. “Next time tell me something I don’t already know.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Mary was floating. She lay suspended over a dark landscape, detailed and horrific as any Bosch painting, watching the women she loved doing unspeakable things. Her friend Alex laughing as she beat a dog. Irene lying naked on her desk, masturbating with the barrel of a gun. Her own mother looking up from something’s body with a sharp-toothed, malevolent grin. Mary tried to turn her head, tried to close her eyes, but the images remained, mocking, obscene.

  Then she sensed movement around her. Something was coming, something that would rip her to pieces. She needed to scream, to scare it away! She opened her mouth to yell, but she felt weighted down, as if tons of earth covered her. She tried to speak but nothing came out. Tightening every muscle, she forced a scream up from her chest and out her mouth, opening jaws that felt welded shut. Suddenly her eyes flickered open; the crushing weight was gone. She awakened.

  At first she could only blink at the blazing light that glared down upon her like an enormous eye, then she raised her head cautiously. Her clothes were gone, replaced by thick black pajamas similar to the outfits worn by karate students. Tight leather straps bound her to a metal examination table. Although everything spun before her eyes, she realized she lay in some kind of theater where tiers of empty seats rose around her, only to disappear into the dense shadows beyond the blinding light.

  She lowered her head, nauseous, sorry that she’d looked up and started the room spinning. Grasping the solid edges of the table, she tried to anchor herself in time and space. She remembered eating toast at Little Jump Off, then driving somewhere and talking to a man with diamond-sharp eyes. Christmas is coming, she thought. No, wait. Christmas had come. She’d spent Christmas at Irene’s, then Irene—! In a rush, it all came back. She’d driven to Camp Unakawaya to look for Irene, and Sergeant Wurth had forced her into that cabin! She’d expected to be shot, or decapitated, but instead all she’d felt was a tiny prick on her neck and the world began to smear and drip around the edges as her knees buckled. The last thing she remembered was looking at
her own reflection in the polished toe of a black leather boot.

  Past that, she recalled only sensations. Arms carrying her, hands jerking her clothes from her body. It seemed like Irene had been there, but she couldn’t be sure. Where was she now? And where was Irene?

  Suddenly she sensed the presence of someone else in the room, someone behind her, just beyond the puddle of bright light.

  “Hello?” Her voice rang hollow in the glaring emptiness. “Is somebody there?”

  Not a sound broke the silence. She struggled to lift her arms and legs, but the straps held her tightly.

  “Please help me!” she called, raising her head, certain somebody was standing just inches away. “Please come and untie these straps.”

  Again she heard nothing. She listened for another moment, then she flopped helplessly back on the table. She must have just imagined someone was there. God knew, she’d imagined a lot, lately.

  “No,” she told herself aloud. “You haven’t imagined anything. Wurth kidnapped Irene and now Wurth has kidnapped you. You just have to figure out what to do about it.”

  She heard another noise behind her. A shuffling of feet. Someone was there!

  “Hey,” she cried. “Please help me get out of here!” She twisted her head as far as she could, but all she saw were shadows. Still, she was certain she could hear the faint wheeze of someone’s breathing.

  “At least tell me where I am,” she pleaded. “Tell me how long I’ve been here!”

  She strained to listen with every cell in her body, then, to her enormous relief, a young male voice floated out of the darkness. “It’s D-December 30. You’re on the third floor of Camp Unakawaya.”

  “Please help me get loose!” she cried, twisting, desperate to see who stood behind her.

  But her bindings made it impossible to see, and suddenly all she heard were soft footsteps, hurrying away.

  “Don’t go!” she begged. “Please wait! Please—”

  The click of a door closing cut her off before she could utter another word.

  “Damn!” she fumed, struggling against the leather straps. She’d gotten it right. She was at Camp Unakawaya and someone had been standing there watching her. If only they would come back. She had to convince them to turn her loose!

  As she tried to work free her right arm, she heard a different noise. Nothing discreet about this—it sounded like a lot of people, all walking with a purpose. The sound rumbled closer, then the door opened. All at once the whole room was bathed in light.

  “Ms. Crow.” A deep voice called out from behind her. “How wonderful that you’re awake!”

  She craned her head toward the voice. Wurth came into view just behind her, leading a pack of young men. His eyes seemed almost transparent as his thin lips stretched in a grin.

  “Where’s Judge Hannah?” Mary demanded.

  “Both of you are our guests at Camp Unakawaya.” Wurth walked over and put what looked like a doctor’s bag on the table beside her. “And we’re honored to have you. You’re a terrific tracker, Ms. Crow. If the situation were different, I would put you on my staff.”

  “If the situation were different?” Mary watched as six young men, all in khaki uniforms identical to Wurth’s, clustered around the table. They watched, happy and wide-eyed as Wurth rummaged in his bag. In a moment he’d unrolled a piece of red silk across her stomach, revealing several different kinds of knives. Some glittered like the elegant instruments of a surgeon; others reminded her of butcher’s tools.

  “If you believed as we did,” he told her, “then you could teach my boys here. But since you don’t, I’ll have to use you in a different fashion.”

  “Like how?” Mary’s heart was beating so fast, she thought it might fly out of her chest.

  “Oh, I’ll think of something.” Smiling, Wurth retrieved another instrument. It consisted of a number of stiff, thin wires sprouting from a single handle, each with a tiny, razor-sharp barb at the end. It glittered with a kind of lethal beauty in the bright light above.

  “Upchurch, can you tell Ms. Crow what this is?” Wurth asked a harelipped boy who stood next to Mary’s right knee.

  “It’s a muchi, sir,” Upchurch replied.

  “And what do we use the muchi for, Mr. Spooner?”

  “External tissues,” recited Spooner. “Where nerve endings are close to the surface.”

  “And to what end, Mr. Grice?”

  “Uh, when the goal is intimidation?”

  “Right, Mr. Grice.” Wurth handed the instrument to the boy. “Since you know what the muchi’s used for, would you like to demonstrate how it works?”

  “Sure.”

  A smug grin spread across Grice’s face. Taking the stiff little whip from Wurth, the boy looked down at her once, then he tightened his grip on the handle and swung it at her face. Instantly she felt as if a dozen yellowjackets had stung her all at once. Before she could make a sound Grice swung the thing again. Tendrils of hot pain lashed through her.

  “Since you tried to infiltrate my operation, Ms. Crow,” Wurth said, “I’m going to use you as a teaching example. With your help, these young men are going to learn how to use all the instruments in this bag. I wish I could promise that you won’t feel a thing, but the fact is, Ms. Crow, you will feel quite a lot.”

  “And I will remember everything, Mister Wurth.” Mary looked up at him through eyes already stinging with tears and blood, determined that she would never give Wurth and these boys the pleasure of hearing the screaming inside her own head.

  * * *

  “Where are you going in such a hurry, Cabe?” Galloway looked up from the mountain of potatoes he was peeling.

  “Out,” called Tommy over his shoulder as he hurried through the kitchen.

  “Out where?” Galloway persisted.

  “J-just out. Out to sweep. Out to whittle my demerits down. Out to get away from assholes like you.”

  “Oooooh!” teased Abbot. “Better watch out. C-C-Cabe’s mad!”

  No, Abbot, Tommy thought as he ignored the laughter of the other Grunts and raced out into the late afternoon sun. I’m not mad. I’m fucking terrified.

  He hustled around one corner of the building, away from the kitchen windows. He didn’t want Abbot or Galloway to see where he was going. After he’d sneaked out of the amphitheater he’d gone straight to his cot in the Grunt dorm, his stomach churning. This place was more fucked up than he had ever imagined. First Willett, then that old lady, now that pretty woman who’d smiled at him the day before yesterday. If he didn’t get out of here now, it would be him next. He hastily stashed what few personal things he had in the pockets of his cargo jeans and put on the warmest jacket he could find. He was busting out of Camp Unakawaya. They would not find him here in the morning, dead or alive.

  First, though, he needed to get one last thing. Working his way to the far end of the castle, he glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then he sneaked past the cabins and sprinted up into the woods beyond.

  Help me, he heard the pretty woman’s plea echo in his head. Please untie these straps.

  Sorry, lady. There was nothing I could do, he told himself as he leaped over a rotting log.

  Help me. Please don’t go.

  “I have to, lady,” he answered aloud. “If I don’t go now, I’ll be next on that table.”

  He ran on, trying to shake her words out of his head. Just a few hundred more feet up this ridge and he would reach Willett’s cave.

  With his lungs on fire, he wiggled inside the old gate. He knew the way so well that he no longer kept the flashlight inside the mouth of the cave. He felt his way through the passage keeping one hand on the wall, then, when his fingers touched a tiny trickle of water, he knelt and crawled to the right. Moments later he stood in Willett’s den. He grabbed the flashlight from behind a rock and turned it on. Everything looked the same—the cans of Coke, the lone photo of Tarheel. He glanced at the photograph then plunged his hand inside the l
ittle fissure and pulled out Willett’s disk. If he was taking his one chance to get out of here, he sure as hell wasn’t going to leave this disk behind. If he made it to some town, he would give it to the cops. Maybe it would bring Wurth down and maybe it wouldn’t. All he knew was that he had to give it to somebody, for Willett’s sake.

  Stashing the disk in his jacket pocket, he scrambled back into the passageway beyond, then stopped abruptly, suddenly feeling more frightened than he ever had in his entire life. What was wrong with him? He should have tried to help that woman. He should have unstrapped her and tried to sneak outside with her before Wurth got there. His grandfather would have done that. Captain Dempsey would have done that. Even Willett would have tried to do that. Why hadn’t he?

  “Because you are a coward,” he admitted miserably, his self-condemnation echoing up into the rank darkness. He thought of Tallent, beating him now most every night, of Wurth abusing him with words, of the other Grunts laughing at his stutter. That was the life of a coward. As bad as that was, though, what he felt now was much worse. To ignore someone begging for your help was beyond cowardice. It was something else, entirely.

  “Vileness,” he whispered, the word leaving his mouth so softly, it could have been whispered by the cave itself. “Anybody who would not try to help that woman is vile.”

  He shivered in the dampness, remembering the way Upchurch and Rogers looked when he’d seen them that night on the third floor. They were vile. And though his grandfather could probably understand cowardice, the old man would never respect someone vile. Tears stung his eyes. As much as it made him shake inside, he would rather die a coward than be vile, than be one of them.

  He crawled back into Willett’s Den and returned the disk to the fissure. Willett’s secret weapon would have to wait. Right now he had to go back to Camp Unakawaya. He had fallen into vileness once in the amphitheater. He now had to prove to himself that he would never do it again.