A Darker Justice (13 page)

CHAPTER 19

Turning, Mary ran down the hall, out to the end of the veranda beyond. The wide porch wrapped around the east side of the old house, stopping at the locked exterior entrance to the Masterson Insurance Agency.

She raced to the other side of the porch, running down wide steps that led to a short driveway. She followed that to the rear of the building, where two cars were parked near the exit.
Dr. Moreland and Rebecca Taylor are the only ones here,
she realized.
Whoever grabbed Irene took her out of the building, out the back door.

She sprinted toward the alley that served as access to the parking areas behind the buildings on Main Street. Except for a single calico cat parading stiff-legged toward a trash Dumpster, it was deserted.

With a sick knot in her stomach, Mary turned and ran back into the house, bounding into Dr. Moreland’s office. The old dentist and Rebecca Taylor stood exactly as Mary had left them, their expressions a blend of bewilderment and alarm.

“I think that Irene Hannah may have been abducted from this building,” Mary told them. “You two need to stay in this office.”

“What do you mean
abducted
?” cried the receptionist, her eyes growing wide. “Who would have taken her?”

“I don’t know,” Mary answered. “But I’m calling the FBI to find out.”

“Are you calling them right now? I’ve got plans tonight,” Rebecca Taylor whined.

“Yes, you do, Ms. Taylor,” replied Mary. “And I guarantee that one of them will be giving a long and detailed account of the day’s activities to the FBI. I suggest that you don’t leave this building. They like it a whole lot better if they don’t have to come to you.”

“Oh, dear.” Dr. Moreland’s voice sounded like a flute with a bad valve. “Poor Irene.”

“Please sit down, Doctor,” Mary told him. “Read some of your magazines.”

Quickly she began to dig in her purse. That cell phone was in here somewhere. She found her wallet, her checkbook, then a lipstick and a pen. Where was the damn thing? She turned her purse upside down and dumped the contents onto the carpet. Only the things she’d already found fell out, along with a half-eaten roll of Tums.
Damn,
she cursed silently.
I must have left it on the table beside my bed. I was so worried about not forgetting the stupid gun, I walked off without that phone!

Scooping her things back in her purse, she took a deep breath and tried to think, the eyes of Rebecca Taylor and Dr. Moreland upon her. Irene was gone. She had a gun and a truck, but no way to reach Safer. Dr. Moreland’s phone wasn’t programmed with the FBI’s special code. What should she do?

She glanced at the window and thought of running down the block to Sheriff Logan’s office. Safer had tipped him off about their concern for Irene’s safety, but Stump Logan was a slow, deliberate county sheriff more accustomed to lost hikers than abducted federal judges. In the time it would take her to explain everything to Logan, she could have Safer right beside her, barking out orders to a trained staff.

She looked at the badly frightened dentist. “Dr. Moreland, I’m going to have to return to Irene’s farm. I’ll contact the FBI from there. They’ll need to interview you and Ms. Taylor. I can’t force you to stay here, but it would go a lot faster for everyone if you did.” She turned to Rebecca Taylor, who was still pouting at having to remain at work, off the clock. “Please lock both entrances to this building. And whatever you do, don’t touch anything in the bathroom. That’s where they grabbed her. It’s now an official federal crime scene.”

“Of course.” Dr. Moreland nodded. “Rebecca and I will wait right here. We won’t touch a thing.”

“Thank you.” With a single fierce glance at Rebecca Taylor, Mary walked out the door and back into the late December afternoon.

*  *  *

She drove back to Upsy Daisy in a fury, careening around the curves, roaring like a madwoman past a wobbling pickup loaded with firewood. Hunched over the wheel, she kept turning Irene’s disappearance over in her mind. Why had the Black Feathers not just slipped the needle to her and let her go into cardiac arrest in the bathroom? Why take her someplace? Mary answered her own question.
To torture her.
To do to her what they did to Judge Klinefelter. But where in Hartsville would they take her?

Home?
Mary wondered, her fingers turning to ice as she pulled into Irene’s driveway.
Would they have the balls to behead Irene in her own home?

Instinctively she pulled the truck off the drive, into a coil of laurel. She cut the engine and withdrew the Beretta from her holster. She’d always imagined that the act would make her feel ludicrous, like some overly dramatic TV cop, but the cold, heavy weight of the pistol felt good in her hand.

Keeping the gun pointed at the ground, she crept toward the house, slinking through the tall trees that lined the driveway. The sun had dropped below the mountains, bathing the farm in an amber light. A thin, gray haze hovered like smoke over the orange fields while the bulbous shape of an owl swooped through the bare, spidery branches above her head.

She moved forward, her footsteps crunching on the frozen earth. Rounding the final broad curve in the driveway, she waited in the last bit of cover, listening as the shallow creek kept up its low, throaty gurgle.

Nothing indicated that any strangers had visited Irene’s house. No one had painted swastikas on the front door, no skinhead graffiti decorated the porch. Lucy and the guineas pecked for the day’s last worms in the sparse grass on the far side of the house. Still, Mary sensed something different about the place, as if the air had somehow grown thicker.

She eyed the bridge, then slipped through the weeds to the creek below. She hated the thought of wading through the freezing water, but if anybody was lurking inside Irene’s house, the wooden bridge would announce her advance like a drum roll.

Without bothering to remove her shoes or socks, she waded into the stream, gasping as the freezing water foamed up to her knees. She picked her way carefully among the slippery rocks to the cattails that grew on the other side of the bank. Gratefully, numb from the knees down, she left the icy water and began to crawl to the yard’s edge.

She ran with her knees bent, sneaking onto the porch, garnering minimal notice by the worm-hunting guineas. She tiptoed past the front door and peered through the living room window. Though the interior of the house lay in shadow, she recognized the dark bulk of the grand piano and the Christmas tree. Grasping the doorknob through the pocket of her down jacket, she turned it slowly. The door opened without a sound. That surprised her. Had Irene locked it before they left? She couldn’t remember.

Keeping to the shadows, Mary slid forward and closed the door behind her. The comforting tick of Irene’s old grandfather clock broke the house’s silence, and the aroma of the bacon they’d fried that morning still lingered in the quiet air.

Normal,
Mary thought, her edginess growing.
Everything looks just like it did when we left.

She tiptoed down the hall, turning lights on first in the living room, next the dining room, then the huge old kitchen. Everything looked normal—dishes drying in the drainer, Hugh’s whiskey on top of the refrigerator where she’d put it herself. Mary moved back down the hall toward the staircase, this time stopping at Irene’s study. If anybody wanted to decapitate the Fourth Circuit judge on her own turf, they would have done it here, right behind this door.

Again she grasped the doorknob through her jacket. For an instant she paused, longing to close her eyes. She often did that with crime scene photos, hoping in vain that if she didn’t look at the slit throats and savaged vaginas that maybe the women wouldn’t be dead; maybe they would still be alive somewhere, shopping for clothes or drinking coffee with their friends. As much as she wanted it to, it never worked. Once her eyes took them in, they were gone. No more coffee, no more new shoes. In that instant they became dead people; just new victims in the system she served.

She took a shaky breath, then opened the door. With trembling fingers, she reached for the light. When the bright colors of the room hit her eyes, relief hit her like a blow. Irene’s great haven of law and order looked just as they had left it. Her beloved old desk still stood in the middle of the room, covered with the variously colored pages of the legal profession. The case-law books she’d been studying lay open where she’d marked their pages, a half-drunk cup of tea rested on the table by the phone. Martha Crow’s beautiful tapestry still hung on the wall, the old sarouk carpet still covered the floor. Mary took in all these details, struggling to grasp what it all meant. With a sinking in her chest, she knew it in an instant. Whoever had taken Irene had not brought her back here. Whoever had taken Irene had taken her someplace else.

Swiftly she backed out of the study and hurried upstairs. Nothing up there had been touched, either. She dug Safer’s cell phone out of her backpack and punched in her mother’s birthday. Moments later, she heard Safer’s crisp greeting.

“Agent Safer,” she said, her voice sounding as if it were coming from the depths of a barrel. “You need to get over to Upsy Daisy Farm. Someone has kidnapped Irene Hannah.”

CHAPTER 20

Seven minutes later the green vans screeched to a halt a yard away from the bridge. Mary watched from the porch as three FBI agents leaped out, led by Daniel Safer. Safer had sounded more alarmed than furious when she’d told him what had happened. He requested only that she remain where she was, if she felt safe. That was not a problem. No one was in danger here at Upsy Daisy.

“Are you okay?” Safer asked now, his dark eyes intent as his men went past her into the house.

“I’m fine.”

“Anything inside?”

“Nothing. I don’t think anybody’s been here since we left.”

“Have you touched anything?”

“Nothing but the doorknobs of the downstairs study and the small bedroom on the second floor. They grabbed her at Dr. Moreland’s dental office in town. That’s where you need to be looking for prints.”

“Mike Tuttle’s on his way there now. We’ll dust here, anyway. You want to come inside?” he asked softly.

Mary shook her head. “I’m going down to the stable. I need to check on Lady Jane.”

“I’ll meet you there as soon as I see what’s gone on up here.”

Nothing,
thought Mary, as Safer disappeared into the house.
Nothing has gone on in there at all.
Drawing her gun just the same, she hurried around the house and through the backyard. Opening the gate, she ran down to the stable.

The dying light cast the interior of the stable in a network of dense shadows. She hesitated, wondering if perhaps whoever had taken Irene had brought her here. She curled her fingers tighter around the Beretta and smiled. If Irene’s abductor was hiding in here, so much the better. She would kill him. And she would feel happy while she did it.

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped inside. The only noise she heard was from doves cooing from the hayloft over head, but she gripped her pistol with both hands and held it straight in front of her. Slowly she walked down the center aisle. The first two stalls were empty. Peeking into the crack of the feed-room door, she saw that it contained nothing more than barrels of grain. She inched along, checked the stall on her right, then turned and looked at the foaling area. Empty. Except for her and the doves, nothing alive and breathing was in this barn.

Suddenly a hand gripped her shoulder. She whirled, her finger tightening around the trigger.

“Hey!” a voice cried. Someone grabbed her right arm and twisted it behind her back, then gathered her in an awkward embrace.

She knew it was Safer before she saw his face; she could smell the laundry soap in his shirt, feel the tautness of the muscles in his chest. Shaking with nervous exhaustion, she leaned against him. The day that had started so happily this morning had, in the last two hours, turned into a nightmare.

He held her for a moment, then he let her go. “Are you all right?”

Mary nodded as she stepped back and slid the Beretta in her holster. “I just need to find the horses.”

“Why did you leave Judge Hannah alone?”

Safer’s question cut her like a knife. “She ran back inside the dentist’s office, to get some medication. She left me in the truck with the motor running. I guess I thought she would be safe for thirty seconds.”

“Why didn’t you call me immediately?”

“We left for town in a hurry, already late. I was so concerned about carrying this,” she touched the handle of her gun, “I forgot the stupid cell phone.”

He looked like he was going to scold her; his eyes blazed. Instead, he said, “Tell me everything.”

Mary explained exactly what had happened. She’d gone first to Moreland’s office, then the bathroom. She’d found the black feather lying in front of the sink. “I told the dentist and his assistant not to touch anything.” Mary remembered the thin, sullen line of Rebecca Taylor’s mouth. “I think they understood.”

Safer studied her for a moment, his dark eyes boring into her. Then he shook his head. “I knew this wasn’t going to work.”

“Oh, really? Well, where were you? And where was your little surveillance team?” Mary demanded, stunned. “I thought you hotshots had everything covered.”

“I stayed here with the vans. Mike Tuttle was behind you the whole time in the truck.”

“Then why didn’t he see Irene go back inside that building?”

“One of Logan’s deputies tried to ticket him for being double-parked. By the time Tuttle got the deputy straightened out, you’d pulled back into traffic, headed here. Mike figured everything was okay.”

“Didn’t he see that I was alone in the truck, driving like a fiend?”

“You had a tinted rear window. And you drove no worse than the judge did on the way to town.” Safer’s tone was grim. “Come on. Let’s go back to the house. I need to get your prints, so we can separate yours from everybody else’s.”

They crossed the paddock in a furious silence. Every window of the house now blazed. Mary could see the crime scene investigator moving around inside, gathering clues that might lead them to Irene. Suddenly a figure appeared in the floodlights that illuminated the patio—tall, male, khaki-shirted with a white Stetson hat. Mary knew that the man’s eyes would be gray, his mouth thin, and his face creased with deep lines of worry around his mouth and between his brows.

“Hello, Mary. Agent Safer,” the man called as they came closer.

“Sheriff.” Mary gave a tense nod.

Stump Logan turned to Safer. “You want to fill me in on what’s going on out here? Them boys of yours aren’t too cooperative.”

“Judge Irene Hannah disappeared from her dentist’s office at approximately three o’clock this afternoon, mostly because one of your deputies was trying to cite my second-in-command for a parking violation.” Safer talked as if his jaws were wired together.

“There was a slight misunderstanding between them. Son, you need to let me know if you’re bringing your investigation to Main Street of my town.”

Safer did not blink from Stump Logan’s accusing gaze. “I don’t
take
my investigations anywhere, Sheriff. I go where they take me.”

“Uh-huh.” Logan cast a sideways glance at Irene’s house. “You guys dusting now?”

Safer nodded.

“Mind if I go in and have a look?”

Though Logan had phrased his request politely, Mary knew the pissing contest had started.
This is my county, you candy-ass Yankee boy,
is what Logan really said.
Just try to keep me out of an ongoing investigation.

“Please.” Safer pulled a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and tossed them at Logan. “In fact, why don’t we discuss this situation further? Inside.”

Logan caught the gloves and turned toward the house. Mary sat down on the edge of the patio.

Safer looked at her. “Aren’t you coming?”

She shook her head, suddenly weary of cops and G-men and the constant, bitter turf wars of law enforcement. “You and Sheriff Logan can hash it out on your own. I need to go feed the horses.”

“Whatever.” Safer snapped as he turned and followed the chief crime officer of Pisgah County, North Carolina, into Irene’s home.

Mary gazed up into the sky. God, how could everything have gone wrong so fast? Why hadn’t she just gone back to Moreland’s office with Irene? Irene would have been irritated, but hell, at least she might still be here.

Mary got up and walked back to the stable. Where just minutes ago it had been devoid of anything resembling a horse, now Irene’s entire herd of six all stood at the back paddock gate, each looking at her, ears pricked and tails swishing.

“Okay, guys,” she told them softly, touched by the simple, innocent expectance of their gaze. “Tonight, dinner’s on me.”

She doled out each one’s ration of grain, then opened the gate to let them into the stable. Each knew exactly where to go. They didn’t fight, they didn’t complain, nobody tried to shove their way into another’s stall.

“Maybe this is what Irene loves about you so,” she whispered as their quiet, rhythmic crunching filled the stable. “Whatever scrapes happen in the pasture, you guys work it out. As long as you have a bucket of oats and a warm place to sleep at night, everything is okay.

“Wonder why everybody can’t take a lesson from that?” she murmured as she rubbed Lady Jane’s silky mane and wished that somehow she could just relive the afternoon all over again.