A Darker Justice (11 page)

I’ll go down to AR right now,
he decided as he hurried back down the hall, away from Wurth’s office.
I’m sure as hell not going to let Willett spend Christmas down there all alone.

CHAPTER 15

“What time have you got?” Wurth asked.

Wayne Tallent looked at the clock on the truck’s dashboard. “Eleven forty-four.”

“Twenty-three forty-four, Tallent,” Wurth corrected. Would this boy ever learn the proper way to convey time? “Pick me up here at zero hours forty-five.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know how long that will be, Tallent?”

“An hour, sir?”

“Okay. Get out of here.”

Wurth thumped the side of the truck as Tallent pulled away, leaving him alone on the mountain road. He watched the red taillights blink and disappear around a curve, then he slipped into a thick green bank of rhododendrons.

He walked carefully, aware that the Feds were patrolling the farm. He would have some hard questions to answer if they caught him sneaking up on Judge Hannah’s house camouflaged, his face sooted as if he were part of a minstrel show. Not that the Feds would be paying much attention to her upper pastures and the slender trail her horses had worn to the barn. The Feds stayed in their two snug vans over the hill, keeping watch on the one long driveway that led to her house.

Still, he slipped through the trees, silent as a shadow. Getting caught would be the worst possible thing that could happen. Getting caught would only prove Dunbar right.

As always, moving through darkness invigorated him. The cold air tingled the back of his neck and amplified the tiniest sounds to thunder in his ears.

He thought of Irene Hannah, sleeping as he grew closer, unaware that she was now drawing the last breaths she would ever draw. How many targets has it been, he wondered as he neared the edge of the tree line that overlooked the pasture. At least a hundred in the past ten years. And how many boys have I instructed in my ways? Two for every state, at least. And Dunbar was worried that they had no control. Shit, David Forrester had simply gotten excited.
And he paid for it, too.
Wurth thought of the boy lying dead, his legs twisted like a doll’s. Someday Dunbar was going to pay for that.

Cheered by that prospect, he looked down at the pasture below. The trail that ran along the tree line led all the way to the barn. Though the remnants of last week’s snow had melted in the day’s bright sun, he would have to be careful. Even the Feds could follow tracks in soggy mud.

Irene Hannah’s house sat above the hollow in which the barn nestled. Neat and compact, it bore the look of a household snuggled down against winter—windows shut tight, no lights shining from within. A patio spread out along the back. Wurth nodded.
Perfect,
he thought.
I’ve got cover and a household sound asleep. I can get this done fast and be waiting when that moron Tallent shows up.

Feeling suddenly buoyed upward by the chill breeze, Wurth slipped from behind the tree and onto the path the horses had carved, keeping to the shadows of the overhanging bushes as he crept toward the barn. The air was heavy with moisture, and once or twice his footsteps crunched when he stepped in a slushy puddle. Reaching the back side of the barn, he forced himself to slow down. Since Judge Hannah worked a farm, she might also sleep like a farmer—oblivious to storms, but keenly alert to any sound from her livestock. He did not need a barnful of neighing horses right now.

He kept low, easing beneath the stall windows, then turned the corner and looked up at the house. It remained a dark little cottage on the hill.

Thrusting his mind and body into a mode that had, over the years, become second nature to him, he padded forward, his noiseless strides more lupine than human. He reached the gate, slipped through it, then on up the hill, his passing marked only by a shadow on the ground. All the snow had melted up here. In one heartbeat he reached the edge of the patio; in the next he stood at the back door.

To her credit, the judge had installed two dead-bolt locks, but dead bolts did not trouble him. He had tools for dead bolts. He had tools for everything. He withdrew a slender steel instrument from his pocket, and in less than thirty seconds he’d turned them both. He smiled thinly as he eased the door open.

A warm breath of hickory-scented air caressed his face. Embers glowed orange from a fireplace, illuminating a bottle of Irish whiskey that stood on the table. Dishes—more dishes than one person could possibly use—were drying in a drainer by the sink. The judge had feasted mightily this holiday, Wurth decided. God had not let this merry gentlewoman be dismayed in the least.

Without a sound he made a swift tour of the downstairs, rifling through the papers on her desk, the Cherokee egg basket that held her outgoing mail, the pages of her appointment calendar. After deciding that she must spend most of her time working here, he headed up the broad, uncarpeted stairs, shifting his weight effortlessly to the balls of his feet as he climbed up to the second story, careful never to linger on one board too long. When he reached the top step he paused. The upper floor consisted of just two rooms, divided by a hall. A bathroom door stood ajar at one end. Judge Hannah would be sleeping in one of these rooms. Who, he wondered, might be sleeping in the other?

He slid his knife from his belt and crept down the hall until he stood between the two closed doors. One seemed no better than the other, so he turned left, remembering one of his teacher’s old maxims
—Go in the way other men do not. At worst, you will only be mistaken.
Turning the doorknob, he cracked the door open by millimeters, lest a sudden rush of cool air wake the sleeper.

When his eyes accustomed to the light, he saw a single figure sleeping under a quilt. As he moved closer, his eyes settled on a 9mm Beretta dangling from the bedpost, holstered in the kind of brace women wore under their clothes. A bodyguard, he thought, smiling with surprise. Private? Or sent by Uncle Sam? He moved closer to the sleeper and gently lifted the covers with the point of his knife. The moonlight fell on a young female face. Her lustrous dark hair was tousled against the pillow; firm young breasts lifted the sheets. A jolt of desire shot through him. What a Christmas surprise this was! Did he dare?

No, a sterner voice cautioned him. Do the judge first. Save this one for later.

With an inaudible sigh he left the girl to her dreams. She lifted one hand to brush something from her eyes, then tugged her covers closer and turned away from him, burying her cheek deeper into her pillow. He watched her for a moment, then crept back into the hall beyond.

The old judge slept differently from her pretty young guard. Wurth opened her door to snoring so loud that he had to rush in, lest all the racket rouse the sleeping bodyguard from her dreams. Then he realized that the racket came not from Judge Hannah, but from the broad-shouldered man who slept with his arms wrapped around her. Though no pistol hung from the bedpost here, Wurth knew he was in much more danger.
Double the number of hostile eyes, reduce your chances accordingly.

Silently he skirted the male sleeper and crept toward the judge. Unlike her young friend, she slept in pajamas; her face turned toward her lover. Her hair was a cloud of silver, and though she smiled in her sleep, there was a strong Anglo-Saxon thrust to her jaw that no doubt gave every defendant in her courtroom pause. She looked of average height and weight, with a neck surprisingly straight for someone her age.

She moaned once in her sleep, then nestled closer to the whiskery fellow beside her, tucking her head just beneath his chin.

Wurth sheathed his knife and withdrew a loaded syringe from his pocket. This was perfect. She would feel a single tiny pinprick, then, fifteen seconds later, her heart would seize, then stop. She would die in her own home, in her own bed, nestled in the arms of her lover. Wurth smiled. Most old people would give anything to go like that. He uncapped the syringe and leaned over to inject the poison into the woman’s flesh, then he stopped. With his needle poised just inches from its target, David Forrester’s twisted body flashed before him. He heard the thud of a baseball bat slamming into his kneecaps, another one crushing his skull. Then he heard someone gasping in pain, then a single agonized cry that shrieked up to heaven. No, he suddenly decided, looking down at the sleeping judge. David had not gotten to die like this. Why should this woman be allowed to go so easily?

Moving like a magician skilled in sleight of hand, he recapped the syringe and returned it to his pocket. With a single step backward from the bed, he crept into the shadows and padded around the edges of the room, noting with a tiny penlight the books by her bed, the papers on her desk, the business cards by her telephone. By the time he circled to her bedroom door again, he’d learned everything he’d needed to know.

Sleep well, Judge Hannah,
he silently bade her as he slipped back out into the darkened hall.
Enjoy your dreams. Someday soon, we’ll meet again.

CHAPTER 16

The raucous honk of a goose woke Mary up. She opened her eyes, for an instant unable to place herself in time and space; then she heard a horse neigh outside and downstairs, the slamming of a cabinet door. Yesterday was Christmas, she remembered. Last night she’d slept in her old room at Upsy Daisy—tucked into the narrow bed beneath the eaves, snuggled beneath a blue patchwork quilt. Lifting her head from her pillow, she saw her Beretta hanging over the end of the bed like a gunfighter’s in some Hollywood western. First Christmas I’ve ever spent armed, she thought.

She threw the quilt off and padded to the bathroom, the hardwood floor frigid under her bare feet. Her thighs and buttocks felt like liquid fire, and every joint below her waist seemed to have been glued into one position. At first she wondered if she wasn’t coming down with some kind of flu, then she remembered they’d ridden horses yesterday. All over the farm and up into the woods behind the pasture they’d galloped, the horses making long puffs of steam with their breath in the bright, cold air. Afterward Hugh had concocted some kind of turkey hash for dinner and opened a bottle of Irish whiskey. They’d roasted potatoes in the fire, then moved into the living room, where Irene had played her piano long into the night, Lucy honking a laughable accompaniment from the porch. Irene ran through her classical repertoire, then Hugh passed around the bottle and they’d sung songs and carols until Mary’s eyelids drooped. Although she’d forgone the whiskey in an effort to stay awake, she’d stumbled up to bed exhausted, falling asleep to a sweet, slurred version of “Danny Boy.”

Now she had an entirely different Danny boy on her mind. If Agent Daniel Safer could see her now, he would be furious. Bodyguards don’t encourage their charges to drink whiskey. Bodyguards stay awake. Bodyguards know where their clients are at all times.

“Oh, shut up, Safer,” Mary grumbled aloud as she flushed the toilet. “Irene’s perfectly all right. No harm done.”
Better not let it happen again,
an inner voice scolded her as she winced at her reflection in the mirror and brushed her teeth with cinnamon-flavored toothpaste.

She pulled on her jeans and a thick wool sweater and then clumped noisily down the stairs, lest she interrupt another tryst by the fire. When she reached the kitchen, however, only Irene was there, sitting at the table, reading the business section of the newspaper.

“Morning.” Mary yawned, blinking at the dull light that licked at the windows. “What time is it? Where’s Hugh?”

“Six
A.M.
” Irene looked up from her paper and smiled. “He’s delivering flowers in Raleigh. He’ll be gone till tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Mary plopped down in the chair across from her. It had always made her sad that one day it was Christmas, and the next day it was business as usual. She guessed she liked her holidays to fade away gradually, rather than just end. “Thank you for a wonderful Christmas. I can’t remember when I had so much fun.”

“It was fun, wasn’t it?” Irene stepped over to the stove and poured Mary a mug of coffee. “If Lady Jane would have had her foal, it would have been absolutely perfect.”

“Have you checked on her this morning?”

“Twice, already. She’s still pregnant. I’m on my way to the stable to feed everybody. You want to come along?”

“Sure.” Mary gulped her coffee while Irene stepped into a pair of green Wellingtons and stashed a small thermos in her eiderdown jacket. “Just let me get my gun,” Mary said, draining her cup.

“We’re only going to the barn.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be back in a flash.”

She raced up the stairs, grabbed her holster, and strapped it on at the run. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Irene was halfway out the door, leading the way with her flashlight. The trees were just gray shapes in the mist, and the mountains looked like dark, sleeping giants. Mary smiled.
Udusanuhi—
the Old Men.
Dakwai, Ahaluna, Disgagistiyi.
Her mother’s people had named them well.

“Do you remember who got fed what yesterday afternoon?” Irene flipped on the overhead lights when they reached the stable.

“I think so.” Mary looked at the six equine heads that were peering at them over their stalls. “Spindletop, Banshee, and Stella get sweet feed and hay. Scooter and Dutchess get extra corn. I can’t remember what you gave Lady Jane.”

“Pregnant mare chow.” Irene laughed. “Come on. The two of us can get this done fast.”

She swung open a door to a room that contained several metal garbage cans full of grain. With Mary glancing at a cheat sheet tacked to the wall, the two women filled six different buckets with varying ratios of corn to oats. They delivered a bucket to each horse, along with a pailful of fresh water. As the rhythmic crunch of six horses serious about their food filled the barn, Irene sat on a bench beside the tack room and pulled the thermos from her vest.

“I’m out of Lady Jane’s supplement,” she said. “I’ll have to pick up some more when I go into town.”

“Did you say you were going back to Richmond on the fifth?”

“Yep. We’re ruling on an ICC case that week. That’s why I want Lady Jane to hurry up and get on with it.”

Mary knew better than to ask specifics; still, she couldn’t resist one more question. “This case isn’t a hot button for any lunatic fringe group, is it?”

Irene chuckled. “No. In fact, on January fifth the interstate trucking industry should send me roses.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t know what I’d do if semis started chasing you.”

Irene shook her head. “Mary, nobody’s going to come after me. I’m an old broad. My only claim to fame is being the lone liberal voice on the conservative Fourth Court.”

“You’re an important jurist, Irene. You could be appointed to the Supreme Court.”

The smile faded from Irene’s face. “Is that what this is all about?”

“Nobody knows what it’s all about. That’s what makes it so scary.”

They waited for the horses to finish, then turned out all but Lady Jane. While the mare stayed in the little paddock next to the stable, nuzzling at the tiny green shoots of clover that sprouted even in the winter, the others galloped up the hill like schoolchildren freed at recess.

“They’ll graze up in the woods for the rest of the day, then come back here around sundown.” Irene smiled as the horses scattered up the hill. “See how totally not at risk we all are here?”

Mary gazed up into the mountains that ringed the farm, hoping that Irene was right. When the horses had disappeared into the tree line, she helped Irene muck out the stalls, then they walked back to the house.

“Are you going to work all day?” she asked as Irene slipped out of her boots by the kitchen door.

“All morning,” she replied. “I’ve got a dental appointment at two. And I’d like to stop and get those vitamins for Lady Jane at the feed store.”

“A dental appointment?” Mary frowned. Safer had showed her how to rip out someone’s eye, but he’d neglected to tell her what to do if Irene had to get a cavity filled.

“I’ve put off getting a crown as long as I can.” She clacked her teeth together loudly. “I shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of hours, though. Maybe we can go for another ride when I get back.”

“Would you mind if I came with you?” Mary rinsed her coffee cup in the sink, abruptly aware of the gun beneath her left arm.

“To the dentist?” Irene looked mortified.

Mary shrugged. “I’m sure that’s what Safer would want me to do.”

“Well, okay. But if you bring that pistol, don’t let anyone see it. Dr. Moreland’s as old as I am. I don’t want him any shakier with that drill than he already is.”

Mary washed out the coffee cups while Irene went to work on her opinion. She put Hugh’s mostly empty bottle of whiskey on top of the refrigerator and threw some stale biscuits out for Lucy. When she’d gotten the kitchen tidy again, she fixed a large pot of tea, remembering from her clerking days that Irene started the day with coffee, then switched at midmorning to Earl Grey tea. She smiled as she tapped on the door of the study, tea tray in hand.

“Irene?
Doyust zaditasti duli?
” Impishly, she phrased her question in Cherokee, wondering how much Irene remembered.

“I’d love some,” Irene called, laughing. She looked up as Mary opened the door. “Wahdo!”

“Boy, I’m impressed. You’ve kept up!” Mary set the tray down on Irene’s desk.

“Actually, it was a lucky guess,” admitted Irene. “Other than you, I don’t have anyone to speak Cherokee with.”

“Me, neither.” Mary poured Irene a cup of tea, counting the people with whom she could speak the language her mother had so proudly taught her. Beyond Jonathan, who only knew about three phrases, Irene was the only one left. Unless, of course, she counted Ruth Moon, who probably spoke fluently and wrote in the syllabary as well. Too bad she had so little to say to Ruth Moon.

“No Cherokees in Atlanta?” Irene asked as she took the cup Mary offered.

“None have introduced themselves to me.” Mary poured herself some tea and walked over to one bookshelf. If Irene’s house was her favorite house in all the world, then Irene’s study was her favorite room. A massive rolltop desk sat on a faded sarouk carpet in the middle of the room, looking like a huge frog on a lily pad. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with bookcases, and the only spot not given to books was covered by an exquisite tapestry.

Mary’s heart twisted as she looked at the weaving. She remembered the day she and her mother first met Irene Hannah. She’d come into Little Jump Off to buy fishing worms. Three hours later Irene and Martha Crow had become fast friends. The two women had discovered in each other a passion for books and art and the distaff mountain crafts—quilts and coverlets and the tapestries her mother wove. Her fishing trip forgotten, Irene Hannah had grinned at Martha with dancing brown eyes and declared, “I want you to weave me the mountains!” “But how big?” her mother had asked, flustered at Irene’s expansiveness. “Just like this,” Irene replied, spreading her arms wide.

The next day Martha had started weaving. It had been spring, and Mary and Jonathan had discovered a nest of wood ducks in the reeds beside the river. Six months later, as the grown-up ducks headed south for Florida, her mother finished it. Then Federal District Judge Irene Hannah had written out a check for a thousand dollars. It was the most money Martha Crow had ever earned for a piece of work. After Irene had driven away with the tapestry in the backseat of her Mercedes, Mary and her mother had piled into their old Chevy and splurged on a steak dinner in town. Christmas had been more than abundant that year, and Mary did not see the worry lines in her mother’s face again until the next spring.

“That piece just goes on forever, doesn’t it?” Irene’s voice broke the comfortable silence of the room.

“Every time I see it I’m amazed all over again.”

“Your mother was an extraordinary artist. She should have been rich and famous.” Irene’s funny caned-back swivel chair squeaked as she turned around. “Do you paint much anymore?”

“A little. I brought a set of pastels with me. Maybe you and Lady Jane could pose.”

Irene looked up at her. “Do you ever regret my hauling you out of the studio and into the courtroom?”

Mary thought of the dark, brackish paintings she’d produced her first two years in college, after her mother’s murder. “No.” She smiled. “I’m a pretty good prosecutor. As an artist, I would have starved.”

While Irene turned back to her work, Mary moved around the room, looking at Irene’s books, smiling at the various mementos among her legal tomes. A Japanese tea set, a Cherokee dream catcher, pictures—Phoebe on a Shetland pony, William in his Navy uniform, even a small snapshot of her, resplendent in her Emory gown, lifting her law school diploma in triumph.

When she came to a small cast-iron statue of a tree with six wedding rings dangling from the branches, she began to laugh.

“Remember Reuben Loveless? The guy with six wives?”

Irene nodded. “I sure do. Married six women without bothering to divorce a one. As I recall, five of the Mrs. Lovelesses were mighty pissed. The sixth one thought Reuben was just misunderstood.” She turned to Mary and raised one eyebrow. “Remember the state of North Carolina versus Marcus Stephens?”

“Oh, lord, yes.” Mary’s cheeks flushed. “My first case to research. North Carolina real estate codes. I pored over those books for days.”

“It was brilliant research,” said Irene. “Too bad you just weren’t looking in the latest books. . . .”

Mary shook her head. “I’m still mortified by that. You would have ruled for Stephens and been overturned in a heartbeat. And it would have been all my fault!”

“You were a kid.” Irene laughed. “And I caught the error in time. Believe me, honey, worse legal errors have been made by grayer heads than yours.”

“Thus ended my career as a dirt lawyer,” said Mary.

“Honey, you were a criminal prosecutor right out of the gate. Anything less would have bored you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun as when I clerked for you in Asheville.”

Irene chuckled. “You got a good education. We heard everything—murder, arson, kidnapping, embezzlement.”

“Bigamy,” added Mary.

“Ah, yes. I’ve still got most of those old files in my hall closet.” She took a sip of her tea, then set the cup back in its saucer with a clatter. “You know, I remember seeing an old file of your mother’s in that closet, a couple of months ago.”

Mary looked at her, stunned. “You have a file of my mother’s?”

“Yes. As I remember, it’s nothing more than a transfer of deed and some letters she wanted to keep safe.”

“Some letters?” Mary frowned. Other than her husband, Jack, all Martha’s friends had been local, people she saw every day. She would have no need to write a letter to any of them.

“I think so.” Irene looked at the papers on her desk. “How about I dig it out as soon as we come back from the dentist? I need to get back to work right now.”

Mary wanted to ask if she could just get the file herself, but she said nothing. It would be a terrible breach of professional courtesy to rifle through another attorney’s files.