Deep as the Marrow

by F. Paul Wilson

  “So we just give up?”

  “You know damn well we’re not giving up. We—” He capped his anger; the guy was half crazy worrying about his kid. “While we’re questioning all the Mulliners we can find, a pair of helicopters from Lakehurst Naval Air Station will be flying a grid pattern over the area looking for that red panel truck.” Bob wished he could set up a full-scale search—bring in state cops, the county sheriff, the National Guard—but he still had a mandate to keep a low profile. “But we need light. When that sun comes up, you’ll see plenty of action. We’re going to run a finetooth comb through these woods tomorrow. We’ll find her.”

  “If she’s here,” Vanduyne said.

  “Oh, she’s here,” Canney said. “We would have caught her if she tried running north or south. She knows these woods, and she knows she can hide here. But not for long.”

  “So get some sleep,” Bob told Vanduyne. “We’re up and moving at the crack of dawn.”

  Vanduyne hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, then shrugged and headed for his room.

  “Finally,” Canney said. “And I thought my little Martha was tough to get to bed.”

  “Let’s get back in the car,” Bob said. “I heard from Jim Lewis.”

  Canney’s expression brightened. “He got to the remailer?”

  Bob nodded but didn’t speak until they were safely cocooned in the car.

  “I don’t know how he did it and I didn’t ask, but I suspect he had somebody sneak in and copy the database from the remailer’s server. Whatever, they found a ‘Snake’ account with an IDT return address. IDT was very cooperative. Turns out ‘Snake’ is the handle of an ‘Eric Garter’ who pays for his Internet services with his Visa card. The Visa bills go to a mail drop. The house address in the Visa computer is a fake. ‘Eric Garter’ doesn’t exist.”

  “ ‘Garter?’” Canney said. “As in ‘Snake?’ Shit.” He rubbed his face. “My news isn’t so good either. I had a long talk with Trevor. He says the only one who trailed Vanduyne to Atlantic City was his ex.”

  “He’s got to be wrong.”

  “That’s what I said, but he told me there were times when he and Vanduyne and the ex were the only cars on the road. No way anybody else followed. He was pretty adamant about that. And Trevor’s damn good.”

  A worm wriggled through Bob’s gut. “You know what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah. Someone’s rotten.”

  “But only three of us knew.”

  “All right. Let’s look at that. Let me ask you a question: Is the Secret Service going to be hurt by decriminalization?”

  “Hell, no. We’ll probably have to beef up to provide extra security.”

  “Right. And as far as the Bureau is concerned, drugs are mostly a sideline. So our appropriations won’t be much affected.”

  “Stop,” Bob said. “I know where you’re going and—?”

  “Who in federal law enforcement gets hurt the most, Bob?”

  “You’re talking about Dan Keane—”

  “All right, I’ll answer my own questions: DEA gets gutted by decriminalization.”

  Bob felt his anger rising. This was groundless, unfair.

  “I’ve known Dan for a dozen years. Nobody hates the drug trade more. Nobody has fought harder against the traffickers.”

  “Right. And maybe he hates them so much that he doesn’t want to stop fighting them.” The simple logic of the conclusion struck Bob dumb for a moment. But logic wasn’t always the truth. He’d spoken to Dan not thirty minutes ago. It was unthinkable…

  “It just can’t be. I won’t buy it.”

  “All right,” Canney said. “You know the guy. I’ll go with your judgment.”

  “There’s another explanation,” Bob said. “We just haven’t thought of it yet.” Another explanation… had to be… But what? Who?

  20

  “I’ve looked all over town and can’t find her,” Snake told Salinas.

  He’d used the phone in his motel’s parking lot for the call. Not the best section of A.C., but his appearance attracted less attention here.

  “That is because she is not in town,” Salinas said. “She has fled into the big woods in the center of the state.” Snake winced as another stab of pain shot through his head and eye. The pills had eased the agony since this afternoon, but these stabs were still frequent enough and severe enough to keep him on edge.

  Poppy pain… all because of that bitch. What the hell was the matter with her? The damn kid belonged to someone else, yet she’d attacked him like a mother lion protecting one of her own cubs… hadn’t even sounded human, screeching like that.

  Crazy bitch.

  “ ‘Big’ woods? This is Jersey. There’s nothing big here.”

  “The others who are looking for her disagree. They are launching a wide search for her tomorrow. And they expect to find her and the package. Tomorrow.” Salinas left the words hanging, and the emphasis was not lost on Snake.

  Tomorrow…

  Snake closed his good eye and tried to organize his thoughts. If they found Poppy, they’d find the tape.

  Maybe she hadn’t had the tape with her this afternoon, but after the big scene he’d made about it, he was willing to bet the rest of his life that she’d gone back and got it and listened to it, and knew what a bargaining chip she had.

  The tape would land him in a federal prison and force Salinas to close up shop and leave the country. Salinas would be gone, but he wouldn’t forget. No matter what the prison, no matter what the security, Salinas would see to it that somebody got to him.

  And even if Poppy had lost the tape, she could still finger him as the guy who set up the kidnapping. And then, as the only guy who could link Salinas to the plot, how long would he last?

  Either way, betting the rest of his life didn’t seem a particularly heavy risk. So tomorrow it was do or die—literally.

  But he was Snake. He could do it.

  And not just to save his skin. Poppy had hurt him twice now—twice. Both times she’d taken him by surprise. No third time. No messing around with threats. He’d pop her as soon as he saw her and search her body and the truck. And if he didn’t find the tape, then so be it. But no games this time: Poppy was dead.

  “I think you’d better come in,” Salinas said. “We need to make contingency plans should this tape be found.” Snake knew what that meant. Fat chance.

  “I’ve still got tomorrow. Plenty of time.”

  “You are one man. They are many, with helicopters. You cannot hope—”

  “If I can get a little goddamn support, I can get to her first, dammit!” He wanted to scream at Salinas. Didn’t he know who he was dealing with?

  This is Snake talking here. I can turn the tables on the feds and stupid greaseballs like you any day. I can take this big-ass search and turn it to my advantage.

  “What sort of support do you need?”

  “Mostly information. You’ve got a pipeline. Here’s what I need.” Snake began reeling off his list.

  21

  “That was you?” Katie said, pointing to the photo in the scrapbook.

  Poppy sat on the sofa in Uncle Luke’s front room and stared at her seventeen-year-old self, dressed in her old number 23 basketball uniform, hair pulled back into a ponytail that trailed halfway down her back, long legs bare, knobby knees bent, poised at the foul line to make a free throw.

  Only ten years ago… yet it totally seemed like some one else, like a photo from another century.

  She looked at that fresh face, those clear eyes that had a whole different future planned out… no idea at all what the next ten years would hold.

  “Yeah, that was me.” The other me.

  She glanced at her Uncle Luke. “I can’t believe you like saved all this stuff.”

  “What else was I going to do? After your father died, I couldn’t just throw it out. And besides…” He turned his head away.

  “Besides what?”

  “He asked me to keep
your scrapbooks and trophies. He said he… he knew you’d come back some day.” Poppy closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She didn’t want to cry again.

  All the pain she’d caused in her life. What was wrong with her? She’d been around for like a quarter century… Jesus, you’d think I’d be able to get something right by now.

  “Uncle Luke.” An urgent-sounding knock on the door interrupted her. In a surge of panic, she wrapped her arms around Katie.

  “Wait!” she said in a fierce whisper. “Don’t answer that!” But then a voice called from the other side.

  “Luke! It’s me—Matt!” Poppy relaxed, but only a little. Uncle Matt. That was okay—she hoped.

  Uncle Luke gave her a strange look, then opened the door. Uncle Matt, a thinner, bearded version of Uncle Luke, stepped in, all excited and talking a blue streak.

  “Luke, there’s been men in town asking about—” His voice cut off as he spotted Poppy and Katie.

  “Hi, Uncle Matt.”

  His eyes widened. “Is that you. Poppy?” She nodded.

  He gulped. “Then it’s true. People are looking for you. They say they’re from the government and that you—”

  “Don’t believe them,” she said, quickly overcoming her shock. How could anyone—Mac, the feds, anyone— know to look for her here?

  “Not even about being from the government.” She gave them a slightly cleaned-up version of events, something to the effect that she and Katie had witnessed a crime and the bad guys were trying to shut them up. She was trying to get Katie back home to her dad but her plans kept getting messed up.

  “So those guys who’ve saying they’re feds might not be the real thing?” Uncle Luke said.

  Poppy nodded and hid a smile. Announcing you were from the federal government—or any government, for that matter—was one sure way to get people in these parts to clam up.

  “You always were trouble. Poppy,” Uncle Matt said. “You went and broke your father’s heart. You know that, don’t you.”

  “Easy, Matt,” Uncle Luke said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We been through all that. What we got to do now is put her someplace where no one’ll find her till we straighten out who’s who.”

  “That’s easy enough,” Uncle Matt said. “Hide her with the Appletons.” Poppy would have leaped off the sofa if Katie hadn’t been on her lap.

  “Oh, no! Not them!”

  “Where else you gonna stay, girl?” Uncle Matt said.

  “They’ll be checking every Mulliner in the pines. But nobody’ll be checking the Appletons, even if they could find them.”

  Oh, Jesus, she thought. Not the Appletons.

  “He’s right. Poppy,” Uncle Luke said. “I’ll lead you out there come first light. Soon as I can see the road. Don’t worry. They won’t turn you away. You’re kin.” She knew. And the thought made her queasy. She’d almost rather face Mac again than move in with the Appletons.

  22

  Bob Decker lay in his creaky motel bed and glanced again at the glowing numerals on the clock radio.

  Almost midnight. He needed sleep, dammit. They’d all be up and moving in five hours or so.

  But Gerry Canney’s suspicions about Dan Keane kept echoing off the inner walls of his skull.

  And maybe he hates them so much that he doesn’t want to stop fighting them…

  What was the one thing all his years in the Secret Service had taught him? Never take anything for granted.

  Which meant he couldn’t take Dan Keane for granted.

  As much as he doubted—loathed—the possibility, he’d worked out a plan to check out Keane. But he couldn’t do it alone.

  He reached for the phone and dialed Canney’s room.

  Tuesday

  1

  “Where are we?” Katie said, staring out the panel truck’s side window.

  “We’re in the woods, honey bunch. Like deep in the woods.” Poppy squinted through the windshield into the dim predawn light as she followed her uncle’s pickup along a narrow, winding back road. Weeds growing in the mound between the sandy ruts scraped along the undercarriage.

  The forty-foot scrub pines crowded close to the road, leaning over it, seeming to open ahead as she approached, and close in behind as she passed.

  She’d been out here a number of times as a girl with her dad when he’d make a run to bring the Appletons some Christmas pies or stock up on their applejack, but she’d never learned the way. Never wanted to. She’d been a passenger those times and had never noticed how one stretch of road looked pretty much like every other, almost as if they were driving in circles.

  She wished she could like turn on her headlights or something, but Uncle Luke had said it was safest to keep them off—otherwise he would have brought her out here last night.

  Thank God for little favors. Appletons by day were bad enough, but Appletons by night…

  She shuddered.

  “It makes me feel lonely out here,” Katie said.

  “It is lonely. But some folks don’t get lonely like us. And some folks don’t like to have much to do with other folks, so they like it out here.” And some folk shouldn’t be seen by the rest of us.

  At least no one would find Katie and her out here— not in a million years. But that cut both ways. She was just as lost out here as anyone else—safe but trapped.

  Uncle Luke finally made a sharp right turn and pulled to a stop in a small clearing. Four other pickups in various stages of rust rot were parked any which way in the sand. Poppy’s truck brought the total to six.

  “All right now,” Uncle Luke said as he helped her and Katie from the truck. In his free hand he held a gallon jug and the sleeping bag he was lending them. “Stick close to me until they know who we are.”

  “They don’t know we’re coming?” Poppy’s stomach was cinched into a double granny knot as she looked around. Trees. Nothing but trees and sand and scrub brush… and a path leading away through the brush.

  “How was I supposed to let them know?”

  “You didn’t—?” She stopped herself. She’d been about to say something about calling them, but remembered there were like no phone lines out here. No electricity, no running water, either. “Never mind.”

  She carried Katie along the path, keeping close behind her uncle. At least the light was better now. The cloudless sky was turning a pale blue as the path moved onto an upslope. Going to be another beautiful sunny day.

  “Are these more uncles we’re visiting?” Katie said.

  “Oh, no,” Poppy told her. “I’m not related to—”

  “ ‘Course you are,” Uncle Luke said.

  “Well, sure,” she said, wishing her uncle would shut up. “Everybody in the pines is related one way or another. I meant—”

  “No, these are real kin. My great-grandfather Samuel— your great-great-grandfather—married off his sister Anna to Jacob Appleton way back when. These folk are your cousins.” Poppy wanted to kick her uncle in the butt. Damn! Why’d he have to go and say that sort of stuff in front of Katie? She didn’t want the little thing to know she shared blood with the Appletons.

  Suddenly Uncle Luke stopped and Poppy bumped into his back.

  “Hello to the house!” he called.

  Poppy jumped as a voice shouted from no more than ten feet to their left. “Who the hell’s out here so goddamn early in the mornin‘?”

  “It’s me—Luke Mulliner. I got my niece Poppy with me, and she’s got a little one with her.” A grizzled-looking guy who could have been sixty or could have been eighty, skinny as the scrub pine he’d been hiding behind, stepped into the open. He held his shotgun ready while he gave them the once over.

  And Poppy gave him her own once-over. His overalls were worn through in spots—so fashionable in Soho, but this was the real thing. He wore worn sneakers with no socks, and his ankles were filthy. His hands weren’t much better. His left eye seemed to be stuck looking at his nose while his gray hair shot from his scalp in tufts. His back
was bent and twisted, which made him lean forward and to the right.

  She remembered this Appleton from when she was a little girl, even though almost everything about him had changed. Everything except his tongue. He kept licking his lips. Every two or three seconds his beefy red tongue would zip out and run along his lips, then disappear. Poppy remembered that tongue.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “You look like a Mulliner.”

  “And you’re Lester, aren’t you?” Uncle Luke said. “I haven’t been out here for a while.”

  “That’s right,” Lester said, lowering the shotgun. He didn’t offer to shake. “C’mon. I’ll take you up the house.” He eyed the jug dangling from Uncle Luke’s finger.

  “Here for some jack?”

  “Yep. Been a while since I had some and I miss it.”

  “It’s awfully good, ain’t it.”

  “That it is.”

  Poppy remembered stealing some of her dad’s stock of applejack when she was a teenager. Powerful stuff— Jersey lightning. And no one made better applejack than the Appletons. Matter of fact, she’d been high on Appleton applejack when she and Charlie did it and conceived Glory.