A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  “Okay by me.” Walkingstick turned to Ruth. “We’ll be back in an hour or so. They feed late in those warm shallows on Pantherflat Creek.”

  “You be careful, Jonathan.” Ruth Moon’s words seemed to carry the weight of the ages as she looked up at him with anxious eyes.

  “We’re just going fishing.” He bent forward and kissed her. “You act like we’re out to hunt bear.”

  “Just be careful,” Ruth repeated softly, holding him until he pulled away. Safer lowered his eyes, remembering how it felt when his ex-wife had clung to him like that. Ruth Moon and Mary Crow. Jonathan Walkingstick was indeed a fortunate man.

  Ruth walked them to the door, then stood watching as they stowed Jonathan’s gear in Safer’s truck. When they opened the doors to get inside, she called out something in a language Safer couldn’t identify.

  “I will,” Walkingstick replied. “Don’t worry.”

  “What did she say?” Safer asked as he started the engine.

  Jonathan cast a sideways glance at him. “She told me to watch out for wolves.”

  Good advice, Safer thought as they rolled out of the Little Jump Off parking lot, watching Ruth Moon’s pretty face disappear in his rearview mirror.

  * * *

  At first Safer drove in the direction Walkingstick pointed him, then a half a mile down the road he steered to a clearing edged with tall pine trees and killed the engine. Without a word, he pulled his IDs from behind the visor.

  “Okay.” He flashed the leather wallet at Walkingstick. “This is who I really am. And this is what I really do.”

  “I was wondering why you were going fishing with a sidearm.” Jonathan’s eyes were on Safer, flinty and hard. “Then I figured you must be the FBI agent who’s chasing Mary Crow.”

  For an instant Safer was caught off guard. He’d underestimated Walkingstick; he hadn’t figured on his being that observant. “When did you last see Ms. Crow?”

  “Four nights ago. After she gave you the slip.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “I haven’t seen her since early Friday morning. I figured she joined back up with you.”

  Safer shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since I left her at the airport.”

  “Then where the fuck did she go?” Jonathan’s voice grew alarmed.

  “I’ve got an idea she might be wherever Judge Hannah is.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Jonathan cried. “First you drop her in the middle of all this shit, now you think she’s with a woman who’s been kidnapped? What the hell kind of G-man are you?”

  Safer started to reply, but his cell phone bleated. Keeping one eye on Walkingstick, he pulled the thing from his pocket.

  “Safer here.”

  “Dan, this is Susan. I’m about to make you a very happy man.” Her voice bubbled with excitement.

  “What have you got?”

  “First off, forget REPIC. They’re such nonplayers, everybody laughs at them. But Wurth might be your boy.”

  “How? He wasn’t anywhere on our charts.”

  “Our charts don’t access Army records. There, Wurth’s got a trail of coincidences that look like bread crumbs through the forest.”

  Safer smiled. Every time Susan found something he’d asked for, her voice took on the teasing quality of female spies on the TV shows he’d loved as a kid. “Okay,” he told her. “Shoot.”

  “In sixty-seven he did his first tour in Vietnam, showed a lot of talent for language and viciousness, so the Army turned him into a special kind of assassin the VC called a ‘Feather Man.’ Everything was peachy between him and the brass until seventy-two, when he caused a flap between the U.S. government and the Republic of South Vietnam. Seems that Wurth tortured and killed a woman who turned out to be a double agent, and an extremely well connected double agent, at that. Some ambassador’s niece.”

  “And?”

  “And South Vietnam wanted his hide, but the Army had held him up as such a wonderful example of American can-do, the Vietnamese couldn’t get him court-martialed. They finally accepted a deal where Wurth got sent to Japan, with a promise that we would never return such a man to their shores, regardless of who overran their northern borders.”

  “Jeez, they preferred Ho Chi Minh to Sergeant Wurth?”

  “Looks like it.” Susan rattled some pages. “Then Wurth spent several years in Japan. At one time he went on a very deep assignment in Indonesia.”

  “I didn’t know we had a presence in Indonesia,” said Safer.

  “We don’t. Like I said, this was deep. He was also in Borneo, where they have some amazing ways of killing people.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Anyway, Wurth finally returned stateside to serve honorably at Fort Benning until 1980, when he was brought up on charges not only of sexual harassment, but of putting one particular female recruit under such pressure that she opened both her veins in the shower.”

  “She died?”

  “She survived to testify against him, saying that he threatened to cut off her breasts if she brought his platoon down any further.”

  “Well, that could have been DI bullshit.” Safer glanced at Walkingstick, who was staring out the window.

  “Wait, there’s more. That girl got reassigned to another platoon, but the next year her boyfriend found her dead in the shower, her throat slit. And get this: there was a feather on the bathroom floor.”

  “A black feather? Did they pin her murder on Wurth?”

  “Nope. A pizza delivery guy took that rap. A Vietnamese guy. And yes, the feather was black.”

  More pages rattled, then Susan continued. “The capper is that a female lieutenant ended Wurth’s career—years later by bringing him up on charges of harassment and brutality. This time the Army’d had enough. They offered Wurth choice of early retirement or a court-martial. He opted for early retirement, but the lieutenant who instigated the charges wound up—”

  “Dead,” Safer interrupted grimly. “Her throat cut and a feather on the floor.”

  “That would have been nice. No, this girl got the upgrade. Her partner found her dead in her bed, decapitated. No feathers, but her head was neatly severed by a single blow.”

  “Holy shit,” said Safer. “Any links to Wurth?”

  “Not enough,” Susan replied. “They couldn’t pin a thing on anybody. It’s still an open case.”

  Safer gave a low whistle.

  “That enough?” said Susan, her tone triumphant.

  “More than enough, sweetheart. When I get back to D.C., I’m taking you dancing.”

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Safer switched off his phone and turned to his passenger. “Okay, Walkingstick. Tell me everything that happened that night with Mary.”

  Jonathan frowned. “She drove down here in a rental car from Asheville. She told us about you and asked if I knew of anybody who might want to kill Judge Hannah. I didn’t, but Ruth remembered some files she’d pulled off a computer that this guy had donated to REPIC.”

  “What guy was that?”

  Jonathan looked at him. “The guy you were just talking about—Sergeant Robert Wurth.”

  Safer could barely breathe. Wurth’s name had come up three times this afternoon. “And?”

  “I had to drive to Asheville to pick up some computers. By the time I got back, Mary was gone. Ruth said she took a shower and ate some toast and said she’d be back in touch. We haven’t heard from her since.”

  “Can you get me to Wurth’s camp? Do you know the way?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, Walkingstick,” Safer said as he shoved the truck into gear. “Tonight you get to be my woodsy eyes.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Mary crawled for what seemed like hours, trying to be quiet, trying not to scream in the suffocating darkness. No light reached the pipe; even when she held her hands in front of her nose, all she saw was blackness. With the ductwork only an inch wider
than her shoulders, turning back was impossible.

  This must be what death is like, she thought, stopping to quell a hot, trembling panic inside her. This must be a sneak preview of hell.

  She kept moving forward. In the darkness she had to feel her way with her fingers, groping in front of her like a blind person. Though she’d wiped the blood from her hands, wisps of cobwebs and fine soot stuck in between her fingers.

  The air inside the pipe carried a dank mélange of smells—sour mildew, the sharp aroma of alcohol, a sickly-sweet odor that reminded her of rotting meat. Along one section, the ridges in the pipe grew rusty and cut into her palms; at another, she felt a pile of smooth, raisin-sized lumps. Rat turds, she thought, revulsion backing her up so fast she hit her head. She had to stop then, and breathe in huge gulps of air. As she drew the coal dust into her lungs, she could have sworn she heard a woman speaking, somewhere just a foot above her head.

  “Irene?” Mary turned her face upward. “Irene, is that you?”

  The woman’s voice came again, but muffled and so soft that Mary couldn’t make out her words.

  “What?” she asked, straining to hear. “What did you say?”

  “To hiju?” The Cherokee floated through the pipe in a singsong whisper.

  Mary stared, openmouthed, at the pipe above her, then suddenly the words melted into all the other noises that were roaring inside her head. She realized then that she had imagined it. Irene wasn’t here, talking to her in Cherokee. What she’d heard was her own internal library of sounds, mentally played at random. She shuddered, as a chill frosted her down to the marrow of her bones.

  So she crawled on, knowing that it would not be long before Wurth’s Troopers would be chasing her. In the darkness she could gauge neither time nor distance, though she thought she must be nearing the center of the huge old house. She kept feeling for other ducts to branch off the main one, but so far her fingers had not brushed against any openings that led in other directions. Finally, as her shins and forearms began to throb, she sensed something different ahead. Although she still couldn’t see anything, the brilliant blackness seemed to lighten to a chalky gray.

  Here the air felt slightly warmer, and carried scents that made her mouth water. Roast beef. Potatoes frying. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. An array of sounds filtered down from above—something metal clattered overhead through the thudding, primal beat of rock music. Somewhere a toilet flushed; somewhere else a young male voice cried “No!”

  Dinnertime, Mary decided, putting the sounds and the smells together. They were either about to eat or were in the process of cleaning up after their evening meal.

  She groped forward. All of a sudden two other pipes joined the main one at right angles. She’d reached the main junction. From here, the furnace had diverted all its warm air to the various rooms overhead. She remembered a long-ago case Irene had presided over in Asheville, a drug dealer who’d murdered his wife, but who’d also kept a sizable portion of his stash in the ductwork of his central air. The DA had presented a chart of the system, showing pipes branching off wide, then narrowing to tiny vents. In that old house the return—the place where cooled air was drawn back into the furnace—had been big enough to crawl out of. If this one was similar, she might be in luck.

  She stuck her head in the pipe that joined from the right. The air here looked no lighter, but smelled slightly fresher. Then, as she gazed at the black nothingness around her, she caught a whiff of a new odor. It came from the pipe on the left. Rank and foul, it smelled like nothing she’d ever known before. The hairs lifted on the back of her neck. She knew that direction was the last place she wanted to go.

  Wiggling her shoulders into the right-facing pipe, she crawled on.

  Although the second pipe was just as dark as the first, her instinct told her that she was creeping deeper into the core of the house. Pipes too small to crawl through branched off of this one at regular intervals. Bedrooms, Mary decided. Two stories above them, Wurth and his Troopers must dream about muchis every night. Could Irene be lying in some room up there, too?

  She continued on, her shoulders cramping in pain. Almost imperceptibly, the tunnel grew lighter. As she looked down to see the shadow of her own hand against the ridges of the pipe, the rock music abruptly stopped, replaced by what sounded like a herd of animals thundering overhead. She crouched, pressing herself against the corrugated surface as the footsteps echoed inches above her. For an instant she worried that the floor was going to collapse, then, like the passage of a great wave, the torrent of noise faded into silence.

  She kept still and listened, wondering why all those boys had started to run. Where had they been going? Had the alarm gone out that she had escaped?

  Come on, she scolded herself. You’ve got to get out of here. You don’t have much time.

  Another series of smaller pipes branched off the main one, then she saw a dim square of light in the distance. Okay, she thought as she slithered forward. Here goes nothing.

  Slowly the dim square resolved into a large oblong grate, crisscrossed with metal strips. She crawled until she could press her face against the gridwork. The grate seemed to open into a long, narrow room. A back hall, she thought. The logical place for a furnace return. Now if she could just open the grate. . . . She started to jiggle the thing, then froze. Were all those boys who had just thundered by now lined up along the hall, waiting for her to stick her head out of this thing?

  Without moving a muscle, she tuned her ears to the outside and listened. Nothing. Not a sniffle or a creak or the squeak of someone’s weight shifting on the floor. Still, they could very well be out there, waiting.

  She lay motionless, trying to think of what to do. She couldn’t stay here, but neither could she go back and crawl through that maze again. If they hadn’t yet discovered her gone, they soon would, and God only knew what they would do then. As much as she hated it, her best chance of escaping was right here, right now.

  Holding her breath, she listened for one final moment, then she shoved the old gridwork. Nothing moved. She tried again. Oh, no, she thought, despair nibbling at her with icy teeth. It can’t be screwed in. Mustering all her strength, she grabbed the grate with both hands and pushed as hard as she could. The thing gave a loud crack, as if she’d broken a seal of ancient paint, then it creaked forward. With her heart beating like a drum, she held the grate open and peered out into the room beyond. The hall stood empty. The only eyes upon her were from the portraits on the wall; the only noise that reached her ears was from the old house itself, its sad breath soughing through the dusty corridor like a sigh.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Do you know any alternate routes to Camp Unakawaya?” Daniel Safer took the twisting mountain roads fast, his back tires squealing around the curves. A full moon rose, huge and yellow, casting the woods in an amber light.

  “Not to the old castle,” replied Jonathan. “But I know a pretty good place to reconnoiter from.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A service road leads in about a quarter mile before the main entrance. It’s blocked off most of the year, but I noticed it was open last week.”

  “Who uses it?”

  “Beats me. Anybody making deliveries up here, I guess.”

  Safer followed Jonathan’s directions. He called Tuttle, ordering him to get a warrant for the building and grounds of Camp Unakawaya.

  “That’s just a camp for kids, Big Dan. I checked it out already.” Tuttle’s voice was patchy, through the mountain static.

  “I called in this Wurth character to the Bureau. He fits the profile of someone who might do this. And he’s also got the property to cover his tracks.”

  “Safer, I’m telling you there’s nothing up there but a bunch of underaged kids. You’re gonna order up another Waco.”

  “Just get the warrant, Tuttle.” Safer scowled. If Wurth was planning to drop Irene Hannah’s head for New Year’s Eve, they were going to stop him. Somehow
they would have to work around the kids. “Sit tight until you hear from me.”

  Safer switched off his cell phone and turned where Jonathan directed, up a bumpy, overgrown trail where a startled possum shuffled quickly into the weeds. The road ended halfway up a mountain in a large grassy turnaround with “No Hunting” and “No Trespassing” signs posted around it.

  Safer parked the truck, then pulled a new .40-caliber Glock from under the driver’s seat. “You fire a pistol?” he asked Walkingstick.

  “I can.”

  “Then take this.” Safer handed him the gun and its holster.

  Reluctantly Jonathan took off his jacket and strapped on the pistol. “I know why you’re so concerned about the judge. But what is it with you and Mary Crow?”

  “Like you said before, if it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have come up here. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “And that’s it?” In the dim light Safer felt Walkingstick’s eyes boring into him.

  “For the most part.”

  A long, silent look passed between the two men, then Jonathan nodded. “Come on. We’ll have to go this way.”

  Safer allowed Walkingstick to lead. The Eric Rudolph case had taught him that the mountain folk, be they white or Cherokee, had their own quaint ways. If you respected them, they might help you. If you didn’t, you might as well try to squeeze water from a rock.

  They fought their way through waist-high brambles that thrust up through a crusty layer of frozen snow, then left the thick scrub and entered a growth of evergreens. Pine needles pricked against Safer’s forehead, and an icy breeze blew from the valley below, carrying a soft popping noise that sounded like distant hammers pounding. Unconsciously he touched the grip of his gun.

  “How far are we from the castle?” he asked, his breath frosty.

  “About a quarter mile that way.” Jonathan pointed straight ahead.

  “Do you know exactly what’s on this property?”

  “When I picked up those computers, I saw a pretty typical camp—cabins, a lake, a baseball diamond. An old cave resort abuts the west edge of the property, but it’s been boarded up for years.”