A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  Irene cleared her throat. Mary watched in amazement as she squared her shoulders and took two steps toward Wurth, falling into the stance of a prosecutor at summation, her face quizzical, but her arms relaxed at her side.

  “Sergeant Wurth, Ms. Crow and I have truly enjoyed your hospitality for the past several days. In consideration of our rather extraordinary experience, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t think so, Judge Hannah,” Wurth growled. “You’ve cost us enough time.”

  “But you’re a decorated veteran. The bravest of the brave. Surely you aren’t afraid of the questions of an old woman?” Irene held out her maimed hands beseechingly. Mary smiled. Her years on the bench hadn’t dulled her prosecutorial skills one iota. What a pleasure to watch the old tigress stalk her prey once again.

  Wurth’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not afraid of any question. I just don’t have the time to answer.”

  “It won’t take more than a minute or two, I promise.”

  Wurth glanced at his watch before replying. “What do you want to know?”

  “Your first name is Robert, isn’t it?”

  Wurth nodded.

  “And you served in Vietnam?”

  “From sixty-seven until the fucking country fell down around our ears.”

  “Did you serve there with Clete Logan?”

  Mary watched as Stump Logan gave a little choking cough. Wurth looked at him and smiled. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Because I believe you must have been there when a man named Jack Bennefield went up for a forward pass and came down on a land mine.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Logan roared.

  “I’m talking about you, Stump. About how you and your chum Bobby here conspired to murder Jack Bennefield.”

  “You don’t know . . .”

  Mary’s head began to whirl. Here she stood, at the very end of her life, with yet another mystery beginning to unfold. She leaned forward, straining to catch every syllable of every word.

  “Let me tell you about Sergeant Wurth and Sheriff Logan, boys.” Irene’s words rang like a silver chime as she turned to the Troopers clustered around them. “These two men went to Vietnam together, along with Jack Bennefield, this young woman’s father. They offered friendship, but in reality Sheriff Logan here was gunning for Bennefield. Logan was too big a coward to confront Bennefield alone, so he cooked up a plan. He got your Sergeant Wurth to clear most, but not all, of the mines from one field, then the two of them asked Bennefield to join them in a game of football. Jack agreed, happy to be asked to play, believing that the field had been cleared.”

  Irene turned and looked at Mary, her eyes sharp, but infinitely sad. “Guess who always had to throw the ball in those games?” She snapped her eyes at Logan. “And guess who told Jack Bennefield to go long for a pass?”

  Logan swallowed as if his tongue had suddenly grown too thick for his mouth.

  “Is that pretty close, Sergeant Wurth? Is that the way you remember it?” Irene asked.

  “Personally, I had nothing against Bennefield,” Wurth replied easily. “Logan just asked me to help him settle a personal score.”

  Personal score? Mary’s brain spun. Between her father and Stump Logan?

  “Years later, Stump, when you found out that an Army investigator was talking to Martha Crow, you got real scared that Martha had figured it out. So you shut her up. Oh, you had a little fun with her first, but you made damn sure she wasn’t going to talk to more Army investigators.”

  With her heart beating madly, Mary realized that the secret that had tormented her for most of her life had been revealed. No drifter had killed her mother that day at Little Jump Off. It had been Logan, all along.

  “You can’t prove that,” Logan said smugly.

  “I don’t have to,” Irene shot back. “It’s oozing from your pores, Stump. You stink with the smell of it!”

  “You shut up!” he snarled, lunging forward. “Crazy old bitch!”

  He moved to strike her, to bury his fist in her face when suddenly Irene pulled a bright red can from inside her pajamas. She smashed it into his nose, striking him again and again.

  The whole cave erupted then, boys yelling, Wurth bellowing orders. Running as fast as she could, Mary leaped over Irene and Logan, heading straight for Upchurch. The boy gaped at her, stunned, his bloody mouth flapping in some approximation of speech. She heard Irene yell, then footsteps, and more shouting.

  She longed to look back, but she kept her eyes focused on the electrical box behind Upchurch. She would only get one shot at this. She had to make it work.

  Furious yells bounced off the stone walls as if fifty men were fighting within the bowels of the cave. Boys cursed. As someone yelled her name, she flung herself against Upchurch. He reeled backward. She crawled up and over him, struggling, stretching her arm to reach the switch on that box. Her fingers brushed it, then Upchurch shifted and they slid off. She aimed a vicious kick somewhere in his direction. When she felt her foot connect with something soft, she reached forward again. This time her fingers curled around the switch. Pull, she told herself. Pull NOW!

  She pulled. The switch creaked into place. For an instant nothing happened, then a brilliant flash of blue stung her eyes as a freight train seemed to roar down upon them. Her eardrums popped against a deafening crash and the sharp smell of ozone crackled through the dark air. Upchurch’s arms flailed at her, but the whole earth lifted up beneath them both. For an instant she left the ground, then rocks and earth started crashing all around her. She tried to open her eyes but she couldn’t; she tried to speak, but her lips would not move. Then she relaxed, knowing that she was dead, hoping that she would soon join her parents and they could explain her whole entire history, from its earliest beginning to her last final gasp of life.

  CHAPTER 51

  Mary groaned. She lay on the ground, covered with a blanket, an awkward splint on her left arm. When she lifted her head she saw a rocky lunar landscape, churning with blue-jacketed men with flashlights. She wondered whether she was lying in heaven or hell, then she saw flesh-and-blood people she recognized. Jonathan, and Tommy Cabe. Safer. Hugh Kavanagh. They huddled together twenty feet away, staring at something on the ground. Slowly, ignoring the pain that throbbed through her body, she got up and walked toward them.

  As she drew closer, she saw that Jonathan was attending someone like the medic he’d once been, holding someone’s wrist to find a pulse. Suddenly she realized that the wrist was a woman’s, and a head of soft silver hair protruded from the blanket.

  “Irene?” she cried, her voice thunderous in the strange silence around her.

  Everyone swung around to stare at her. Mary pushed her way forward and knelt beside her old friend. Although the left side of Irene’s skull looked as if it had been shattered with a sledgehammer, her brown eyes were open.

  “Mary?” Irene’s breath was a whisper. “Did you see our Cushla McCree?”

  Mary looked at the photo in Hugh Kavanagh’s hand. A spindly-legged little foal pondered the camera bright-eyed, with an impish expression exactly like Lady Jane’s. One corner of the picture was a blur of white where Lucy, the goose, had managed to insert herself in the picture.

  “She’s beautiful,” Mary replied, at first not trusting her voice to speak as she cupped Irene’s chill fingers against her cheek.

  “Hugh did a great job.” Irene was breathing as if she’d been running too hard.

  “Yes, he did. You did a wonderful job, too, Irene. You figured it out.”

  “Not bad for an old bench warmer, huh?” The right side of her mouth curled in a smile.

  Mary leaned closer and spoke softly. “How did you know it was Logan?”

  “Something your mother told me,” Irene whispered. She spoke further, but Mary couldn’t catch her words, and her wispy voice faded into nothing. For an instant she pinned Mary with eyes as sharp as they’d ever been, then her focus softened
as she began to stare at something above Mary and Hugh. With some effort, she brought her gaze back to them and spoke one more time. “You two . . . take care of things.”

  “Aye, girl.” Hugh bent down and pressed his lips against her cheek. “That we will.”

  She smiled at Mary, then, as if she were just falling asleep, Irene Hannah closed her eyes. Her rapid gasps eased, and at the end of one labored respiration, her chest did not rise again.

  “Irene?” Mary cried, stroking her friend’s cheek. “Irene! We’ve still got so much to do! There’s Cushla McCree and Lady Jane and Hugh and Lucy. They all need to be taken care of. They all need you!” She stroked her cheek more firmly. “Irene, talk to me! I don’t know enough yet. I don’t know nearly enough!”

  “It’s no good, girl.” Hugh said it softly. “She’s gone.” He reached over and held Mary in his arms.

  The two of them knelt, clinging to one another. “I’m so sorry,” Mary sobbed. “I shouldn’t have let this happen.”

  “Hush, girl.” Hugh kissed the top of her stubbly head. “I know how hard you tried to save her.”

  This is the last one, Mary thought as hot tears streamed down her cheeks. My mother, my grandmother, now Irene—all gone. From now on she would truly be an orphan; the sole measure of herself.

  For a long time she wept against Hugh’s solid warmth, crying for herself, crying for Irene, then she wiped her eyes and leaned close to her old friend and mentor.

  “Dona dago huhi, elisi,” she whispered. “Be at peace.” She picked up a small piece of mica that had exploded from one of the cave rocks and pressed it against Irene’s lips, then she kissed the rock and clutched it in her hand.

  Jonathan covered the judge’s face with the blanket. Tommy Cabe helped Mary to her feet. They stood there for a while, stunned and silent, then others began to arrive. Farmers whose land abutted Camp Unakawaya rattled up in pickups, more Feds roared up in vans. Although the area had been cordoned off with yellow tape, mountain folk continued to gather and gape at the mounds of rubble and scattered boulders. After all, it wasn’t every New Year’s Eve that Russell Cave got blown to bits.

  “Mary?” She heard a voice behind her. She turned. Safer was standing there.

  “I’m so sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her without hesitation, as if it were something they both knew he would do. “I know how much you loved her.”

  She held him tight, battling her tears. She would not cry anymore. She had tried her best to save Irene, and she had failed. Now there was nothing to do but bury the dead and carry on with their memory. “What in the world was this all about?” she asked Safer.

  “Wurth was going to decapitate Judge Hannah at midnight. By the looks of it, he’d planned to broadcast it on the Internet.”

  “But why?”

  “Wurth was an operative for a secret political group connected with the FaithAmerica movement. The plan was to skew the off-year elections this November and elect Gerald LeClaire President two years from now.”

  “LeClaire?” Mary frowned, unbelieving. “The TV preacher?”

  “Wurth had been training political assassins for LeClaire’s man, Richard Dunbar, for years. Dunbar had Wurth offing the federal judges to fulfill a prophecy that was supposed to jolt the faithful into action.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  “According to Krebbs, that kid who showed up at the farm had this amazing computer disk that spelled out everything, chapter and verse.”

  “Willett’s secret weapon,” Mary said softly.

  “Anyway, everybody on that disk should be getting a knock on their door right about now. Some pals of mine are going to see that they celebrate New Year’s in ways they’ve never dreamed of. Gerald LeClaire’s already in custody, though it looks like the poor bastard didn’t have a clue about any of this. He thought God just wanted him to be President.”

  “So you stopped it?”

  “You stopped it, Mary. You and that kid. It’s over.”

  The trees and the rocks and even the hard, bright moon overhead swirled around Mary like a carousel out of control. She would have to sort this out later, sometime when she could be quiet and alone. Her gaze fell on Jonathan, who was wrapping another blanket around Hugh Kavanagh, talking to the old man, who now looked a decade older than when she’d first met him seven days ago.

  “How did Jonathan get here?”

  “I asked him to come with me,” Safer answered. “But he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’s a brave man. He was a big help.”

  Mary smiled at Jonathan. How like him, she thought, trying to save me all over again.

  Safer cleared his throat. “Do you feel up to identifying some of Wurth’s boys?”

  “Tommy Cabe is the one you need to ask about that. He knew everybody at this camp far better than me.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “He’s a DHS boy. We couldn’t have done any of this without him. He’s one terrific kid.”

  They walked over to what had been the mouth of the cave, now just a jumble of rocks and boulders. Mary motioned to Tommy. He left Hugh and Jonathan and hurried toward them.

  “Hi, Tommy.” Safer smiled. “I’m Agent Daniel Safer, FBI. Ms. Crow here says you were a resident at this camp.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Do you think looking at a dead body would bother you?”

  “Not any of these dead bodies,” replied Tommy flatly.

  Mary watched as Safer began lifting up the blankets covering those who had not survived the explosion she’d triggered. Robert Wurth lay stretched out like a dead fish, his neck at an extreme angle to the rest of his body. Tommy’s old nemesis Tallent’s chest was crushed, while Upchurch had had his already misshapen face permanently rearranged by a rock. Grice looked as if he’d died from massive head trauma. The rest of Wurth’s bitter army sat dazed but alive, some with broken arms and legs, some weeping like children. Mary thought of Irene and felt no pity for them at all. She turned away and noticed two other bodies covered by blankets, a little distance away from the others.

  “Who are they?” she asked Safer.

  “One’s my old pal Tuttle,” he replied tersely. “The other’s Logan.”

  “Can I see him?” Mary asked.

  Safer studied her face for a moment. Then he walked over and lifted one corner of the blanket.

  Mary braced herself, waiting to see Stump Logan’s face contorted in his final agony. Instead, when Safer pulled the blanket back, all they found was a jumbled pile of rocks.

  “He’s gone!” Tommy cried.

  Safer looked down at the rocks that had been arranged to look like a body. “What the fuck? I laid him here not fifteen minutes ago. The whole back of his skull was mush.”

  Mary felt suddenly as if she were the only person in the universe who understood what a huge obscene joke life could be.

  “Happy New Year,” she told Safer bitterly, and turned away.

  CHAPTER 52

  By dawn the first search parties came back from the mountain, empty-handed. There was no trace of Logan. As they turned to the cleanup and began to load the corpses into a panel van, the crowd finally dispersed. Despite the fact that it was now New Year’s Day and the FBI was hauling bodies away like firewood, the mountain folk returned to their trucks and drove home. They had cows to milk and fences to mend. All the fun now would be in the endless retelling of what they’d been doing the night Mary Crow blew up Russell Cave. Hunched under a blanket, Mary watched as they sauntered along the old road, still looking over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of the heap of rocks that had once been North Carolina’s premier dance cave. Then she noticed Tommy Cabe. He sat on one of the boulders, his head buried in his arms.

  She hurried over to him. “Tommy? What’s wrong?”

  He raised his head and looked at her, his tears making crooked tracks through the grime on his face. “That Agent Safer’s fixin’ to fly me to my grandpa’s. And I still don’t know for sure
what happened to Willett.”

  She put her arm around him and murmured his name.

  “It’s hard,” she whispered, squeezing his shoulder. “But you have to go on. You have to live your life in the best way you can. Willett would want that for you.”

  “I know, but I can’t leave here not knowing. I just can’t.”

  She of all people knew how hard it was to leave a place where something terrible had happened and not know the why of it. Tonight she had come closer to finding the why of her mother’s death, but she still hadn’t been able to grab it and hold it in her hand.

  Mary saw that the big FBI chopper’s rotor had started to turn. “Did you tell Agent Safer about Willett?”

  “Yes,” Tommy said miserably.

  “Then I’ll make sure they investigate. I promise I’ll find out what happened to Willett.”

  Tommy blinked. “You can do that?”

  “I’m the assistant DA of Deckard County, Georgia.” Mary smiled and wiped the tears from his face with her fingertips. “What I say, goes.”

  “Will you let me know?”

  “Give Agent Safer your grandfather’s phone number. I’ll call you first thing. I’ll call you anyway, just to say hi.” She kissed his cheek. “Now go get on that chopper. The DHS caseworkers will be up here pretty soon. You don’t want to wind up with them again, do you?”

  “No.” He stood and looked down at her awkwardly, as if he couldn’t decide whether to hug her or shake her hand. “Thank you,” he began.

  “Go, Tommy!” She stood and hugged him. “Go tell your grandfather what a brave young man he’s got!”

  He started to say something else, but turned and ran to the helicopter instead. Safer spoke to him a moment, then shook his hand, then Tommy Cabe ducked under the rotor and boarded the aircraft. Moments later the chopper lifted off, flying him north, out of the mountains and into the green hills of Kentucky.