A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  CHAPTER 34

  “If I knew anything, I’d tell you, Dan’l. It ain’t right for a man to do a woman like that.” Mooney Garvin sat down on the log beside Daniel Safer. New Year’s Eve was a big “pullin’ off” day for Mooney, and a cardboard box filled with topped-off Mason jars lay at his booted feet. Digging one of the jars out of the box, he unscrewed the lid and passed a pint of the clear liquid to Safer.

  Though Safer really didn’t have time to sit and sip corn liquor, he raised the jar to his lips. He didn’t want to offend Mooney by seeming unappreciative, and there was a raw, cold dampness in this little cove that pierced him to the marrow. He knew from experience how quickly the liquor would take care of that.

  He took a small sip. Mooney’s ’shine was so highly proofed, it felt like lighter fluid on his tongue. He swallowed slowly, amazed as always at how smoothly the alcohol slid down his throat. One of the pleasures of his mountain assignments had been to make the acquaintance of Mooney Garvin, coon hunter, gossipmonger, and master distiller. Mooney knew most of what went down in these woods, and most everybody responsible for it. And unlike most other mountain folk, if he felt the cause was right, Mooney would spill whatever beans he had.

  “Are you sure you haven’t heard of anything going on?” Safer handed Mooney back his whiskey, grateful for the heat that spread from his gut outward, chasing the chill from his bones.

  Mooney took a swig, then a second one. “I heard that Royce Lunsford beat up some Mexican for starin’ at his girlfriend’s titties. Beyond that, I ain’t heard nothing but hound dogs and them Piney Mountain Methodists singing Christmas carols.”

  Safer drummed on the log as he regarded the still that Mooney had built into a shallow overhang of a mountain. Covered on three sides by thick limestone walls and at the entrance by a growth of scrubby laurel, the still was invisible to prying eyes. Just like most of the shit going on up here, Safer decided. For the past forty-eight hours, Tuttle and his crew had scoured the surrounding counties for Irene Hannah and Mary Crow and had learned nothing. The cockfighters didn’t know. The klansmen were all excited about some rally in South Carolina. Even the local dopers had looked at them blankly when offered mulligans in exchange for information.

  Now Mooney Garvin, the king of the moonshiners and the one man who knew everything afoot in western North Carolina, had nothing to say.

  “Whatcha gonna do?” Mooney studied Safer, his pale eyes rheumy with age.

  “I don’t know.” A flicker drilled a tree somewhere in the woods. Safer thought of Mary Crow. Where had she gone when she left the airport? What the hell had happened to her?

  “I know what I’d do if I was you.” Mooney rubbed his chin whiskers—a cluster of stiff white wires protruding from skin that looked like the leather of Irene Hannah’s saddles.

  “What?”

  “If I thought that judge lady was up here, I’d get me somebody who knows these woods. You Washington boys rely too much on them computers. You need somebody who’s got woodsy eyes.”

  Safer gave a rueful smile. He’d had someone like that, but he’d stupidly dropped her off at the airport four days ago. “So you come with me, then,” he said to Mooney.

  “I’m too old and down in my back. You need somebody young and strong.” Mooney nudged his moonshine box with the toe of his boot.

  “Who?”

  “Most of the old boys I know are either moved away or in jail. There’s supposed to be an Injun feller named Walkingstick who’s right good.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “I heard he takes people out from a store over on the Little Tennessee River.” Mooney lifted one bony arm and pointed over the ridge. “Five miles or so west of here, on the county road.”

  “You think he’d talk to a federal agent?” asked Safer.

  “I don’t know.” Mooney chuckled. “Them Cherokees punch a different clock from the likes of us, if you know what I mean.”

  Safer sat there, watching the already gray sky lower until it obscured the tops of the mountains. Finally he stood and gave the old man’s thin shoulder a pat. “I guess I’d better get going, then. Thanks for all your help.”

  “You want to take a couple a’ these with you?” Ever anxious to make a buck, Mooney nodded at the cardboard box full of jars. “I’ll sell out pretty quick today,” he warned, “everybody goin’ to them parties tonight.”

  “Sure.” Safer wished he could hole up with some corn liquor and just drink away Mary Crow and Judge Hannah and the whole fucking disaster of the past four days. “They might come in handy later on.”

  “I’m sorry, Dan’l,” Mooney shook his head as he handed Safer two jars of corn liquor in exchange for a twenty-dollar bill. “I wish I could help you out.”

  “I know you do, Mooney.” Safer walked to the truck and stashed Mooney’s liquor under the seat. He turned back and held out his hand. “You take care now, buddy. Have you still got your free pass?”

  “Right here!” Mooney withdrew a tattered business card from the pocket of his coveralls. On it was printed Safer’s name and phone number. Mooney looked up at him and grinned. “I ain’t seen any of them ATF boys in a while, but I’ll sure use this if I do.”

  “Tell them to call me before they start busting anything up. You want a lift back to your cabin?”

  Mooney shook his head. “Keep your ass low, Dan’l,” the old man cautioned as Safer climbed in the truck and started the engine. “And your powder dry.”

  “Happy New Year, Mooney.”

  The old man stuck the card and the twenty dollars back into his coveralls. Safer had started to bump down the old logging road when he heard Mooney’s distinct mountain holler. “Hold on, Dan’l!”

  He stopped as the old man got to his feet, moving as if all his joints had been glued together. He hobbled over to the truck and held on to the door handle for support. “I just thought of somebody you might ought to investigate!”

  Safer killed the engine. “Who?”

  “Feller named Wurth. One of them Vee-et-nam veterans. Meanest sunuvabitch in six counties. Runs a camp over by old Russell Cave.”

  “Okay.” Safer pulled a notepad from the visor. He knew from experience that when Mooney spoke, it was always best to take notes. “You know the name of this camp?”

  “Unaka something or other. U-N-A-K-A.” Mooney carefully spelled out the first part of the name. “Injun word. I don’t know what it stand for.”

  “So what makes this guy such a bastard?”

  “He shot my coon dog Harley in the leg, and he killed Porter Hayes’s Plott hound. He keeps orphans over at that camp of his. Somebody told me he sends ’em out at night to kill strays.”

  “Why?”

  “Pure cussedness. I told him I’d kill him if I ever caught him on my land again.” The old man hitched up his coveralls as his pale eyes sparked with righteous indignation. “You ask me, any man who’d hurt a dog ought to be horsewhipped in the square.”

  Safer nodded in agreement as he closed the notepad. “Thanks, Mooney. I’ll check this guy out.”

  Safer left Mooney at his still and drove west on the county road. Walkingstick with the woodsy eyes was the man he needed now. With the big Dodge pickup cruising easily up the potholed road, he shut his window tight against the cold mountain air and scanned the trees for Mary Crow, wondering how she could have disappeared as completely as her friend the judge.

  Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the only store he could find along the Little Tennessee River. A beat-up yellow truck sat in the parking lot, computer boxes on the porch. It was the same store he’d driven Mary to when they came up from Atlanta.

  “Son of a bitch!” he cried softly as he turned off his ignition. “Walkingstick must be the old boyfriend.”

  Shaking his head, he hurried onto the porch. He’d sent Tuttle to check this joint three days ago. Tuttle had reported three fishermen, a woman sacking groceries, and two young men trying to find the Appalachian Trail. “Sorr
y, Big Dan,” he’d said. “Our little civilian helper wasn’t there.”

  Well, maybe she wasn’t here, Safer thought. But maybe this Walkingstick knows where she is. Opening the door, he stepped inside. A slender, dark-haired woman stood with her back toward him. His heart leaped. Mary! She’d sneaked back up here! Of course she would come back to her old boyfriend, back to the place she felt at home.

  “Hello,” he said tersely, trying to tamp down his elation. “Long time no see.”

  “Excuse me?” The woman turned. His soaring heart plummetted. This woman was not Mary Crow. Her eyes were brown where Mary’s were hazel; her skin, cinnamon to Mary’s golden olive. She wore her hair in front in an Indian style, with small beads and a single white feather. Though she was pretty, her smile did not rearrange his insides the way Mary Crow’s smile did.

  “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, his cheeks growing warm. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Who are you looking for?” The woman’s dark glance intensified, and he felt as if she could see every female in his life crowding behind him—his daughter Leah taking her first steps; his ex-wife smiling at him under their wedding canopy, then beyond that, the girls he’d dated in high school, his mother kissing his scraped knee.

  “A guy named Walkingstick,” he replied, careful that the name Mary Crow didn’t accidentally spill from his lips.

  “Sorry.” The woman’s mouth curled down. “Jonathan’s not here. He took a group out fishing yesterday.”

  “Will he be back any time soon?” Safer stepped forward.

  “I’m not sure.” The woman folded her arms under her breasts and looked at him warily.

  “I see.” Safer stood there, trying to decide what to do. As the woman hopped up on a stool behind the cash register, he looked around the store. Curved bows hung from the ceiling, while old slop jars were stashed high on one shelf. He strolled to the magazine racks in the front corner of the store. According to all the pages he’d read about Mary Crow, she’d come home from school to find her mother raped and strangled, probably lying very close to where he now stood. What would such a thing do to a girl just eighteen? How would horror that unthinkable twist her young soul? He thought of his Leah, and had to close his eyes. He turned back to the counter. A big poster caught his attention.

  “What’s REPIC?”

  “Red People In Congress,” the woman explained, not bothering to conceal her pride. “We’re working to amend the Constitution and get all Native American tribes a seat in the House of Representatives.”

  REPIC. Mentally he ran through the file of fringe political groups Krebbs had pulled off the computer. He’d never heard of them; but nobody had heard of them all. He looked at this pretty Indian woman more carefully. Could she be involved in the killing of federal judges?

  She seemed to sense his quickening interest. “Did you know that the Eastern Band of the Cherokees have served in the Army since 1860 and have paid federal income taxes from their inception, but were only granted the right to vote in 1946?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that.” He studied her face, noted her quick, curious eyes. “Do you and Walkingstick work for this group?”

  “Actually, I’m the REPIC organizer here,” she answered proudly. “I’m Ruth Moon. From Tahlequah, Oklahoma.”

  “Mark Danielson,” he told her, covering this lie with a disarming grin. “Did you come east just to drum up support for REPIC?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m a Legend Teller. I came here to collect stories of the Eastern Tribe.”

  Safer frowned. The stories of his people would be the same to a Jew in Toledo, Ohio, as they would to a Jew in Toledo, Spain. “I don’t understand. Why are they different?”

  “Oral histories change. After we settled out west, our stories altered,” Ruth explained. “We come back east to learn the oldest, purest forms of our legends.”

  “I see.” Safer did not take his eyes from her. Curious, he thought. A political activist freely admitting the making up of stories.

  Ruth held out a clipboard. “Would you like to sign our REPIC petition and make a donation?”

  “Sure.” Safer stepped up to the counter. Up close, as she handed him a blue Bic pen, he noticed she had muscular hands with short-cut nails. A small tattoo of some Indian symbol dotted the inside of her left wrist and he could smell a sage-like aroma on her skin. MARK DANIELSON, he printed on the sheet, listing his address as Charlotte, North Carolina.

  “Thanks, Mark,” she said, reading his name as he dropped a five-dollar bill into her mayonnaise jar.

  “My pleasure.” Smiling, he looked around the store once more. “Well, I guess since Walkingstick isn’t here, I’ll be on my way.”

  “You wanted to book him for a fishing trip, didn’t you?” Ruth Moon spoke as if she already knew his answer.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that kind of an odd way to spend New Year’s Eve?”

  Safer let his shoulders sag and looked at the floor. In a way he hated to do this, but he had a hunch this Ruth Moon might be useful, somewhere down the line. “My wife left me a couple of weeks ago,” he lied, keeping his voice low, trying to sound sad. “I needed to get out of town.”

  “Oh,” Ruth murmured, instantly sympathetic. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you two fish together? Your wife and you, I mean.”

  “No.” Safer gave her a pained smile. “Terry liked to shop, I like the outdoors. The more I thought about spending New Year’s alone in Charlotte, the better going fishing sounded. Get away from everything, you know?”

  “Right.” Ruth nodded knowingly. “Gosh, I wish I could tell you exactly when Jonathan will be back, but I just don’t know. He said he’d be here for New Year’s, though.”

  Safer reached in his pocket and jingled his keys. “Don’t worry about it. I might try my luck at the little river across the road, and stop back later in the afternoon. Maybe I can book him for tomorrow.”

  “That sounds good,” she replied warmly. “Start out the New Year with some fun.”

  “Right.” He smiled at her, then turned toward the door. “I may see you a little later, then.”

  “Okay. We’re open till seven.”

  With a final glance at the corner where Martha Crow died, he let himself outside and hurried down the steps to his truck, not bothering to look back, not seeing the wistful shake of Ruth Moon’s head as she thought how sad and hopeless love is, whatever side of it you’re on.

  CHAPTER 35

  At that same moment, love was the farthest thing from Mary Crow’s mind. Several hours earlier, Sergeant Wurth had ordered her freed in the amphitheater. A number of boys had then tied her arms behind her back and held her head still while a husky blond youth had come at her with a scalpel. At first he’d waved the sharp little blade at her eyes, then her left breast. Finally he’d settled for her hair. Though she’d screamed and tried to squirm away, in very short order her long black locks lay scattered on the floor.

  “There, Pocahontas,” he’d said, raking his knuckles along her raw, tender scalp. “We take topknots, too.”

  She spit at him then, aiming for his eye but having to settle for a near miss on his upper lip. He jumped backward, then aimed his fist at her so fast she didn’t see it coming. He hit her jaw hard, and for an instant she was sure he’d broken her neck. He hit her once more, for good measure, then as her eyes watched the overhead light spin with a thousand blurred colors, he strapped her ankles together with tape. As an afterthought, he also wrapped the tape around her head, ruthlessly covering her mouth. When he was satisfied, he nodded.

  “Take her down to that last room in AR and give her another shot,” he’d ordered. “She won’t be able to go anywhere and we won’t have to check on her every ten minutes.”

  “That wasn’t what Sarge wanted,” protested another boy.

  “Sarge is busy with other things. For now, I’m in charge of this.”

  With that, one massive-shouldered
boy lifted her like a sack of meal and carried her down flight after flight of creaky stairs, finally dumping her on a cold, gritty floor. Woozy from her beating, she heard his key turn in the lock, then his footsteps fading away. After that she heard nothing other than her own pulse throbbing in her jaw, beaming quasar-like waves of pain through her skull.

  For a time she slept. When she woke up she was still bound hand and foot and clad in the cotton pajamas they’d dressed her in. She raised her head to look around. She lay in a square, dank room with beadboard walls. A rectangle of pale light, from high up on one wall, shone down on her. If she flopped over on her left side, she could see a tiny patch of sky. This is better, she thought, trying to take comfort in something. At least here she could sense the time of day.

  As she lay gazing up at the distant sliver of sky, she felt something hard digging into her side. She wriggled back up and examined it. Hard, but with smoothed edges, the small object looked like several black rocks fused together. A clinker, she thought, recalling when she’d picked one up years ago behind Comer’s Drugstore, convinced it was a meteorite from outer space. Finally her mother had explained that clinkers were pieces of coal that had melted together. She realized then that she lay in what had once been a coal bin, no doubt attached to a coal-burning furnace. She shook her head at the incongruity of it. In the middle of a whole forest of cheap timber, the old German aristocrat had chosen to heat his castle with costly coal.

  She studied her prison more closely. The ancient furnace had long since been removed, but a huge hole gaped in the wall where the main vent pipe had joined it. Mary wondered if the ductwork had been removed. If not, might she be able to squeeze in that pipe and worm her way out? Of course, she would have to free her arms and legs first, and then manage to crawl in there before Wurth’s boys returned. But anything was better than waiting for another session in the amphitheater.