Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “That will take a long time,” Lucy said. “Please, start here. If it doesn’t pan out, then go back to your grids.”

  Reedy tilted his head, looking at Lucy, then shrugged. “Why the hell not,” he said, and walked over to Lucy, who bent down and picked something up off the ground.

  It was a white feather. “For good luck,” she said.

  With a half-smile on his face, Reedy began to walk in the direction of the owl’s flight path, which had gone from south to north. The smile disappeared and he shouted, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Jack?”

  “Sure am! You think you got that thing calibrated right?”

  Marlene looked at the computer screen and saw the distinctive shape of a butterfly’s wings with dark red around the edges, gradually moving to a cooler blue in the middle of the “body.”

  Reedy walked some distance away from the area and walked a little more. “I got nothing,” he yelled.

  “Nothing here,” Swanburg agreed.

  The geologist then returned to the first site and slowly began to pace back along the owl’s path. On either end, he bent down and placed pin flags—stiff wires with small plastic squares on the top—along the edge of the perimeter of the “butterfly’s wings.”

  When he finished, he trudged over to the main group and looked at Swanburg’s computer. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Judging by the length of the anomaly, I’d be willing to bet we just found a Cadillac.”

  A cheer went up from the group. But Swanburg cautioned. “It looks good. But let’s remember, this is a gravel pit with lots of old machinery that could be lying about and even buried.”

  “Oh, Jack, you’re such a wet blanket,” Charlotte Gates teased. “This is as good a place to start as any. Let’s get that air track over here and start digging.”

  As they waited for Brown to drive his clanking machine to the site, Lucy walked down and knelt where she’d found the feather. Reedy turned to Marlene. “So you didn’t tell me that your daughter was psychic,” he said with a quizzical smile.

  Marlene smiled back. She was used to Lucy’s insistence that her invisible friend St. Teresa was real, as well as the unsettling effects of her almost supernatural gift for languages and for “knowing things.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “I guess that someday science will have explanations for people who seem hyperintuitive or psychic. Maybe some people just pick up more from the environment—they see, hear, or even feel things differently than ‘normal’ people because their brains are wired differently. I mean, how do idiot savants instantly, and correctly, guess the number of matches that have fallen to the floor, or play a Mozart concerto after hearing it once, or memorize every number in the telephone book after one time through. Yet they can’t function well enough to tie their shoes, and only a couple of centuries ago might have been burned at the stake as witches. All science can do is shrug and say that their brains are wired differently. I’m guessing that if there’s anything to psychic abilities, we’ll learn that there’s a similar explanation. Maybe Lucy felt the electromagnetic field when we walked over the area earlier, just like Tom’s bloodhounds catch a scent none of us even notices. And, well, there’s always God.”

  “Hey, nothing wrong with any of those theories, even God,” Gates said. “As a scientist, I believe that there is a scientific explanation for every phenomenon. But if the explanation for Lucy is that she’s wired differently, who’s to say that God wasn’t the electrician.”

  “Amen,” said Swanburg as Brown and his machine rattled up to the middle of the space between the pin flags.

  Within minutes, the crusty little miner had the air track drill pounding away at the frozen ground. And while it might not have gone quite as smoothly as shit through a goose, the crew was astonished at how quickly it broke up the soil, which he stopped to remove from time to time.

  “How will we know when he gets to the car?” Lucy asked after about an hour, when the air track was still hammering away two feet down.

  “Oh, we’ll know,” Reedy said. “He has the drill set for the consistency of the soil. When the drill meets something else, like the metal of the car, the machine will behave differently than it does pounding through rock or frozen soil.”

  As if to demonstrate what Reedy was talking about, the air track suddenly started to buck like a horse at a rodeo, and a screech of metal striking metal filled the air as Brown rushed to shut down the machine.

  “What do you think, R.P.?” Reedy yelled.

  Brown peered into the hole, then looked up with a grin. “I think a little touching up around the edges to make your job easier, and I’m finished,” he shouted. He looked at Marlene. “Better go get your piggy bank, missy, time to pay up.”

  A half hour later, the group was peering down at the roof of a big car. The walls of the pit had been cleared back to a foot on either side, which Gates now shored up with plastic planks through which she drove stakes to hold them in place.

  Gates hopped out of the hole to let Jesse Adare climb in with what looked like a giant pair of tin snips. “Jaws of life,” he said. “Cops use them to cut accident victims out of smashed-up cars. I had a feeling they’d come in handy, so I ‘borrowed’ them from my employers. Just have to get them back by tomorrow night before anyone notices.”

  It only took five minutes for Adare to peel back the roof of the car and remove it in pieces. There was a space of several inches below where the sand and gravel had not completely filled in or settled, but below that it was packed solid.

  “Okay, my turn again,” Gates said, and climbed back in the hole with a trowel and a bucket. Probing and scraping gently, she began to remove the material filling the area directly above the driver’s seat.

  Inch by meticulous inch she placed the material in the bucket, which from time to time she handed up for the others to pour through a screen, to make sure they didn’t miss any evidence that remained in the car. After an hour, Gates stopped digging with the trowel and started to brush away at something with her hand.

  Perched on the edge of the pit, Marlene glanced up and saw Katarain was standing on the opposite edge, peering in with tears streaming down his dark, suntanned cheeks. His comrade, Esteban, stood next to him with a consoling hand on his shoulder.

  One more brushstroke and Gates exposed a lock of long, dark hair. She paused with her hand on top of the hair. “A moment of silence, please,” she said. “I believe we’ve found Maria Santacristina.”

  As the others bowed their heads, the girl’s father sank to his knees and wept. After a minute, Marlene and Jojola moved to his side and with Esteban, escorted him away from the grave.

  “I want your memories of Maria to be those of a living girl,” Marlene said, looking in his eyes. “That over there is a body we will treat with respect. But she is no longer there.”

  Katarain nodded and reached up to touch Marlene’s cheek. He then turned to Jojola and shook his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I can never repay you for what you have done. Whatever happens from here on out, I want you to know that I am finally at peace.”

  Two hours later, the sun was getting low in the west as Gates prepared to climb out of the hole. She’d worked her way down to where the girl’s chest and hands were exposed. “But I think we’re going to have to call it a day and finish up tomorrow.”

  Although the clothing had mostly rotted into shreds, the anthropologist was surprised at how well the body was preserved with shriveled flesh still on the bones. “I’m guessing the soil is pretty sterile and that there are natural salts present, which have acted as a preservative,” she said.

  Lucy was staring down at the girl’s hands, which were still tied together at the wrists and clenched in front of her. She was recalling the peyote dream when a man had leaned across her to start the car and she’d reached up to strike him and instead pulled something from his neck.

  “Sasikumea!” Lucy shouted. The others looked up, wondering what she was saying. “S
asikumea,” she repeated, and pointed. “Look in her hand.”

  Gates turned to Reedy. “Hand me a clean towel, Jim.” She then placed the towel beneath Maria’s right hand and with a bamboo probe, she gently pried open the fingers. Something dark fell out onto the towel.

  “Good call, Lucy,” Gates said, climbing out of the hole with the towel wrapped around the object. “That could have fallen when we removed the body. Then we might have been able to tie it to the car, but not necessarily to Maria.”

  The anthropologist walked over to the screen table, where she carefully rubbed at the sand and soil around the object. She then held it up for the others to see. It was a medallion in the shape of three interlocking triangles.

  “A Valknut,” Lucy whispered.

  Gates turned the medallion over and rubbed at the back. “There’s some initials,” she said. “R.P.”

  As everybody turned toward him, R. P. Brown backed away with a wild look in his eyes and his fists held in front as if ready to fight. “It ain’t mine!” he shouted.

  “Don’t worry about it, R.P.,” Marlene said. “We know someone else with those initials. His name is Rufus Porter.”

  Brown lowered his fists with a look of relief. “Oh, I know that son of a bitch. He’s always over at that Unified Church place. Piece of shit thinks he’s real tough when he’s hanging around with those assholes.”

  Jojola laughed. “Couldn’t have put it better myself, old friend.”

  Brown grinned. “Thanky kindly.”

  Lucy walked up to Gates and hugged her. “We…she…was pregnant. Please make sure the baby is buried with her mother and grandmother.” She then turned and walked away so that only her mother, who was closest, heard her say, “Me aflijo para usted y su niño…. I grieve for you and your child.”

  “Katarain told me that he found a positive pregnancy indicator strip in Maria’s trash,” Marlene said to Gates, who nodded and turned back to her task. “By the way, where is Katarain?”

  Jojola looked back to the road leading to the compound. He pointed to the figures of Katarain and Esteban, who were joined by the other four Basques, as they continued marching.

  “Marlene, I think you better get to your radio and let Ireland know that trouble’s on the way,” Jojola said. He and Tran then took off for the van, jumped in, and roared off in pursuit of the Basques.

  A few minutes later, Sheriff Steve Ireland winced as he looked up at the approaching van. The wound in his side, which was more than just a grazing and, he figured, was going to require a surgeon, was starting to stiffen up. However, they were almost done.

  Most of the prisoners had been loaded onto the county jail bus and taken to the lockup. The bus had just returned for the last eight, who were the hardcores who’d holed up in the barracks.

  He’d cut their power, which had left them with no communications, as cell phones didn’t work on the property. He’d then given them a liberal dose of flash-bang grenades and tear gas, which had set off the barracks’ sprinkler system.

  Dumb thing to have, he thought as the temperature dropped and the shivering, stunned holdouts gave up and surrendered.

  The eight were still shivering as they waited to board the bus when the van slid to a stop and Katarain and the other Basques stepped out with their rifles.

  Ireland frowned. “I thought our deal was I wouldn’t see you,” he said to Katarain.

  “Deal’s off,” Katarain said grimly. “We found my daughter. Now I’ve come for one of her killers. I think he’s here.” The Basque turned to the prisoners. “Rufus Porter, step forward and meet your justice in the name of Maria Santacristina.”

  Back in the line of prisoners, Rufus Porter blanched. Up to this point, he’d been playing the tough guy, threatening Ireland with all sorts of dire consequences “when my dad hears about this.”

  Ireland had just grinned and replied. “Your daddy’s going to have his hands full trying to keep his baby boy from serving time in prison as some big hairy hillbilly’s girlfriend.”

  Porter had scoffed and looked at his fellow prisoners. “We’ll see who’s bending over and taking it in the ass when this is all over.”

  Now Porter turned to Ireland with a sneer. “I’m your prisoner,” he said. “Tell this spic to get lost.”

  However, before Ireland could do anything, the Basques suddenly pointed their rifles. “Looks like they got the drop on me and my boys,” the sheriff said with his hands in the air.

  Katarain spoke to the man behind him. “Esteban, the rope.” The younger man stepped forward with a rope on which a hangman’s noose had already been fashioned.

  Porter blanched and started to tremble. “Sheriff, do something! I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

  “Sorry, son,” Ireland replied. “But your miserable neck ain’t worth the lives of me or my men.”

  Porter stared bug-eyed at the lynch party. “Okay, okay, I was there. But I was only tagging along. That attorney, Barnhill, he called my dad and said Huttington had a problem he needed taken care of. I just got the boys together. Rick, Skitter, and Jonesy, they’re the ones that did it.”

  Porter pointed to three other men in the group, who scowled and cursed him. “You’re a dead man, Porter,” Skitter spat.

  “We’ll hang them next,” Katarain said as two of his men pulled Porter from the others and he placed the noose over Porter’s head.

  Porter was pulled roughly over to a large cottonwood tree where Katarain threw the end of the rope over a low branch and tied it off to the trunk. A pickup truck was brought over. Katarain climbed in and hauled the screaming man into the bed, where he was forced to stand.

  “Oh God, Sheriff, don’t let ’em lynch me,” Porter cried as a dark spot grew in his underwear.

  “Sorry, boy, nothin’ I can do, and by the way, you pissed on yourself, tough guy,” the sheriff said, and turned away.

  “You buried her alive, sasikumea, you bastard,” Katarain snarled into Porter’s ear. “Quit trying to blame others, Huttington didn’t know what you did to my daughter.”

  “Yes, he did. Yes, he did,” Porter screeched in terror. “We sent him a photograph that Reverend Hamm took. Showed the four of us standing around the car with the girl inside. He’s the one that mailed it to that girl I raped to scare her. And there’s more…Huttington let Hamm and whoever he works for use the university’s computers. I can tell you more, please, just don’t kill me.”

  “Too late,” Katarain said, and pushed Porter off the back of the truck.

  “Nooooo!” Porter screamed, and kept screaming when the knot around the tree gave way and he hit the ground. It took most of a minute for him to realize that he wasn’t swinging by the neck and slowly suffocating.

  The Basques, the sheriff and his men, and even some of the prisoners were laughing. Esteban hauled Porter to his feet and took the noose off his neck, but then stepped back and wrinkled his nose. “I think he shit his pants.”

  Porter looked around, wide-eyed. Then yelled at the sheriff, who was wiping tears from his eyes. “You tricked me, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Ain’t no way what I just said ends up in court.”

  Ireland shrugged. “Fine by me. I think we got plenty to nail you with anyway, ain’t that right, Jojola?”

  “Oh yeah,” Jojola said as he and Tran got out of the van.

  They’d intercepted Katarain halfway back and talked him out of murdering Porter on the spot. “Marlene’s gone through a lot to do this the right way,” he’d argued, and the Basque had finally relented. Then they’d cooked up the “lynch mob” and radioed ahead to Ireland.

  “There’s plenty to put this piece of shit away,” Tran added.

  “Good, then I think you can just rejoin your buddies over there, Rufus,” Ireland said, pointing to where the Aryans were glaring at their former comrade. “Explain to them your little tirade. You can all kiss and make up in the pokey.”

  Porter eyed the other prisoners and swallowed hard. “Hey, gu
ys, you know I was just shining these freaks on. Didn’t mean none of it,” he said, but received only more glares and curses.

  A deputy grabbed him by the arm to lead him to the bus, but Porter pulled his arm away. “Uh, Sheriff, can we talk?” he said.

  “Why, sure, Rufus,” Ireland said. “You can ride back to Sawtooth with me, and if you’d like to give a statement on the way, I’ll see what can be done about getting you your own room in my little hotel with bars.”

  Porter nodded and was led off toward the sheriff’s Hummer as Ireland turned to Katarain, who stood in the midst of his men. He appeared to be saying good-bye to them as he hugged each one.

  When he saw the sheriff approach, Katarain handed his rifle to Esteban and stepped forward with his arms outstretched.

  “I ain’t gonna hug you if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ireland said, pulling out a Mancuso and offering one to Katarain.

  “No, I was offering my wrists to be handcuffed,” the Basque said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “Our agreement,” Katarain replied, a confused look on his face as he accepted the cigar. “I hope you will allow me to attend the funeral for my daughter before I am extradited. Otherwise, I am your prisoner.”

  Ireland lit Katarain’s cigar and stepped back. “Still have no idea what you’re talking about, Santacristina.” He looked back at the compound, where the prisoners were being loaded onto the bus. “Not a bad day’s work,” he said. “Minimal bloodshed, too. In fact, only one casualty. But at least it was one of the bad guys—seems the noted Basque terrorist, Jose Luis Arregi Katarain, resisted arrest and died in a hail of gunfire.”

  A look of understanding passed over Katarain’s face and he smiled, but then shook his head sadly. “No, my friend,” he said. “The Spanish authorities would demand some proof, and then you would be in trouble.”

  “Like hell I would,” Ireland replied. “Did everything by the book. Fingerprinted the bastard, sent them off to Interpol, who identified the dead man as a wanted terrorist. Story over, book closed.”