Blood of the Earth (23 page)

Someone in the room started to laugh and turned it into a cough. The man who was clearly in charge steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “Why did you kick Senior Special Agent Rick LaFleur?” he asked from behind his hands.

Everything about the man declared him to be the boss, from his steepled fingers to his fancy suit to the brass nameplate in from of him. They rest of the people had folded paper cards with their names written or printed in marker. I figured he was either right proud of his name or he came from unimaginative stock, seeing as how they’d used the name for five generations.

“Mr. Thomas Benton the
fourth
,” I said, hearing the sarcasm in my tone and trying to tamp it down a mite, “I done told him to get off a me and he didn’t. I been used and abused by men all my life. Men who believed that they had a right to tell me where to go and what to do, when to get bedded, when to get married, when to pretend to be happy, and when to suffer. Men who used threat of rape to get their way.” I leaned toward the man at the head of the table, my cuffs clinking. “No man is ever,
ever
, goin’ to tell me what to do like I’m stupid or ten years old and too dumb to know better. Not ever again. Or threaten me again. Or hurt me again.” I looked at Rick. “You got that?”

Neither man answered for a long-drawn-out moment. The man at the head of table spoke from behind the protection of his fingers and asked, “Senior Special Agent LaFleur, did you by word or deed threaten or injure this young woman?”

Rick had gone tense as the man spoke. “I suppose, by the standards under which Nell lived for most of her life, that I did appear to be about to . . .” He stopped and started again, more stiffly. “I may have appeared as if I was threatening. My apologies, Nell.”

“Accepted,” I said, not looking his way. “Now iffen you want to know how I found out what I did, Mr. Thomas Benton the fourth”—I dropped the accent and went on—“it’s called
analogical reasoning
. There are two steps to analogical reasoning: recognizing that two or more things have one characteristic in common, and assuming that if they have
one
characteristic in common, they may have
others
in common. Fact one: a thirty-three-year-old man named Simon A. Dawson, a man who, so far as I can tell, has never had the brains to plan anything more complex than how to serve himself up as dinner and sex partner to vampires, has reason, in his own deluded mind, to be angry at the vampires. Fact two: two
Dawson men were seen on property belonging to God’s Cloud. Fact three: someone has carried out some very complex kidnappings—possibly, but not definitively, an organization called Human Speakers of Truth. If, however, the kidnapper was Mr. Dawson, then by use of
deductive
reasoning
, we can deduce that he didn’t act alone. You need a dictionary explanation of deductive reasoning?” I asked.

Surprisingly the man nodded, a single incline of his head. From a girl with a church background, it was an alien gesture for a man who had been mildly insulted, one without heat, calculating and probing and totally without emotion. I realized he was curious about me and what I might know and how I might think. I said, “Deductive reasoning, also called deductive logic, or logical deduction, or, if you want to be informal, top-down logic, is the process of using one or more statements or premises to reach a logically certain conclusion. The thought process links premises with conclusions, which is somewhat different from analogical reasoning. None of the reasoning processes work perfectly alone, but using them together, they offer a chance of reaching a cogent and correct conclusion or a satisfactory correlation.

“Back to Mr. Dawson. My use of analogical and deductive reasoning suggests that the man named Dawson, if he was the kidnapper, almost certainly had help, because he ain’t real bright and we know that three males and an unknown driver carried out the kidnappings. Now I’m moving from reasoning to instinct. Instinct is based on past experience, current information, and a lifetime of deductive, inductive, and analogical reasoning. It’s always personal and might not be based on anything one can put a finger on. Instinct says if he is a kidnapper, then he might be part of the Human Speakers of Truth.”

The man at the head of the table said from behind his hands, “That doesn’t explain how you found the name when we have not.”

I grinned then and looked at Rick. My tone might have been full of satisfaction. Or maybe even malice. “Actually, Sister Erasmus found it. I just researched it. I called Yellowrock Securities.”

If it was possible for Rick LaFleur to look any worse than when I kicked him, he did. Paler. More pained. Stunned. From
down the table a voice purred, “I
told
you to call her.” It was Occam, and his voice was gloating and growling in the way of cats. “I also told you Nell would if you didn’t.”

I stretched against my handcuffs and looked down the table at Occam, whose eyes were on Rick. Occam’s expression shifted quickly from delighted and insulting, the way house cats look when they’ve done something they shouldn’t, to something else when he caught my eyes. He rose from his chair, moving along the table, his body slinky and graceful. He bent over me, but from the side, not making me feel trapped. I felt his breath against the side of my neck and realized he had paused in bending down to sniff my scent. The warm feel of his breath made the little hairs raise along my nape in a prickling wave, like grass moving before a summer wind. He whispered, “It’s okay, Nell, sugar. Everything is all right.” And I knew, somehow, that I’d be, forever more,
Nell, sugar
to him. An endearment that was totally improper for a widder-woman and a strange man. My daddy would bust a blood vessel in his brain. Embarrassment and hint of fear flushed through me, and I knew Occam could hear my heart rate speed.

With his bare hands, Occam took the two cuff bracelets holding my wrists together and pressed them apart. The two chain links that attached one bracelet to the other separated with a soft sound of metal bending and tearing. My hands were free of the chair, and I placed them on the tabletop, still wearing the bracelets. A woman two places down from me stood and used a key to open each. Mildly, she said, “Impressive display of nonhuman strength. But keys are less destructive.”

“I’m totally unconcerned about destruction, little lady,” Occam said, a challenge in his tone. I had a feeling that the woman had never been called a
little lady
before and she didn’t like it. I did, however. To Rick, Occam said, “You and me will talk about this later,” and his voice was deeper this this time, an unquestioned challenge. Occam dropped beside me to the floor, one knee down, one foot down, one elbow on his knee, and one hand on the arm of my chair, but not touching me. To me he said, “Fill us in, Nell, sugar. And don’t leave nothing out.”

*   *   *

The feds were rude and snooty and too busy to observe even the most casual, minimal form of manners; they made sure I knew I was the outsider and useless, despite my unexpected and, as they put it,
accidental
addition to the list of suspects. What they meant was that I had provided them with the only real, viable suspect, with ties to vamps
and
the church, which they had been looking for, but they didn’t have the breeding to say so. I informed them that they needed a lesson in manners and maybe a spanking with Mama’s hairbrush. They didn’t take my comments well, though the man at the head of table seemed amused. But once I finished my monologue and answered questions, they banished me from the room again. I didn’t care.

Rick slid the keys to PsyLED’s van across the table to me. I nodded, picked up my things, and left without telling him where I’d be or asking how he and Occam would leave when they were ready. Mostly I was wondering if he was still in pain or if his were-taint abilities healed his nuts faster than a human male’s would.

I didn’t feel guilty about kicking him. In fact, every time I thought about it I felt a welling sense of satisfaction. As if by kicking him, I’d kicked every other man who had tried to hurt me. But I also thought that maybe I shouldn’t have kicked him quite so hard. Maybe he hadn’t deserved the fear overreaction or the amount of muscle, momentum, and force I’d applied. But instead of guilt, I was carrying a sinful amount of selfish delight at having taken a stand against a man
before
he managed to hurt me.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,
I thought, though that particular saying had been looked down upon most strongly in the church, as it implied that women had the same position as men and might be allowed to take multiple husbands, a fundamental sin for sure. In my case, it meant that if a man could hurt me, could threaten me, then I could threaten or hurt him back. Maybe hurt him first. I was still trying to decide how I felt about that unexpected violent side of me when I unlocked the van and tossed my laptop into the passenger seat.

It was warm inside, and I hadn’t noted the cold of the air
until it was gone. I closed the van door and took in the sky and the clouds that were gathered there, and decided that we might have early snow in the hills by nightfall, a dusting, too light to stick. And something about the sight of the clouds made me want to buy some laying hens. There was nothing better than fresh eggs for breakfast and chicken and dumplings from a fresh hen for supper. And chicken poop became excellent fertilizer when it was properly handled. But chickens would be good targets for the churchmen. Maybe later. If I survived all this.

I figured out how the van’s controls worked and started the engine, making my way through the steel gate and out of the FBI’s compound. I drove back to the main Knoxville library, questions about the name Dawson tangling in my mind like roots circling around a pot—getting nowhere but more tangled. I parked in back under the gnarled limbs of an oak tree, and the sight of the oak called to me, making me want to rest my face against its bark and my feet against its roots. It was a need that thrummed through me like a bass drum, low and deep. I locked the van and stepped to the trunk of the oak. No one was around, and so I placed the laptop on the ground at my feet and leaned in, laying my cheek against the rough bark, my arms around the trunk. Leaning harder, I rested my body against the trunk and took a deep cleansing breath. And relaxed. I’d no idea how exhausted I was until the tension flowed out of me and through the tree into the ground. I took another breath and let clean, healing energy flow up through the tree into me. I could feel my woods through the oak, pulling on me, calling me home, sending me energy and calm.

I stayed hugging the oak for what felt like a short time, but later I discovered that I had lost half an hour as I communed with the tree. Tandy’s words. Occam’s words. Communing. Feeling calm and focused, I went inside the library to the computer access room and logged my new laptop on to the Internet through the library’s Wi-Fi.

Using the laptop was much faster than using the old computers in the computer room. I could get spoiled with this. After an hour of tracking down different search words under three different search engines, I discovered a oodles of information about the church’s recent legal troubles, but there was nothing
useful on the Internet about the history and establishment of God’s Cloud of Glory Church, except one hint from a World War II newspaper. The article suggested that the church was allowed to keep their land when the government stole all the other farms at pennies on the dollar, because a certain powerful senator interceded. Maybe he attended services there. That senator wasn’t named, not that it mattered. Back then newspapers didn’t mention some things because the nation was at war. What mattered was that some few hundred acres on the long hills that bordered the Tennessee Valley was left in private hands.

Other than that, there was only the information that the church itself had on their Web page, which, according to the photographs and the listing of church elders, hadn’t been updated in five years or more. However, there were other avenues open to a persistent researcher.

I drummed my fingers on the keyboard before signing off and went looking for a librarian. Fortunately, Kristy had just come on shift, and she knew that I had used microfiche before. “Come on, girl,” she said, flipping her hair back and leading the way. “I’ll let you into the historical records room. You help yourself to any old newspapers, police reports, land deeds, marriage licenses, death certificates, and business transactions you want. Everything from every old newspaper and all the old deeds are on microfiche. Eventually we’ll get the rest of Knoxville’s history scanned into the Library’s Internet, but at least the microfiche is complete.” She opened the records room with an old-fashioned key, and turned on the lights. “You remember how to change from one source to another?”

“I do. Thanks, Kristy,” I said. “Coffee on me someday?”

“That’d be fun,” she said. “But not for this. This is my job. Call on the in-house phone if you need something,” she said, pointing to the wall phone.

She closed the door behind her, and I heard the lock click shut. I could get out, but no one could get in without being let in, which gave me a feeling of security I wouldn’t have had otherwise, so far down in the bowels of the building. I started with my most obvious option—newspapers. The information storage system was set up by newspaper and by date and was not complicated to search, though it was time-consuming.

The
Knoxville Gazette
and the
Knoxville Register
were early pre–Civil War newspapers, the
Gazette
with pro-slavery leanings, the
Register
more pro-emancipation. The
Western Monitor and Religious Observer
was a newsletter. I wasn’t sure what the difference was between a newspaper and a newsletter, but the newsletter was violently pro-emancipation. And it had taken a stance against the newly founded God’s Cloud of Glory Church late in 1823.

Every child in the church was taught the tale of the church’s establishment and early history, all about how the founder, the first Jackson, had come from Wales and bought land, nearly a thousand acres outside of Knoxville. About how he had gathered like-minded Christians around him and started a church, and how the townspeople had hated them, despite the heroic and gallant actions of the God-fearing churchmen. The history I had been taught was full of Scripture verses and photographs of the founding fathers, mustached and bearded, holding weapons that they had used to defend their way of life. The accounts in the newspapers were different. In October 1823, the
Western Monitor and Religious Observer
newsletter described the churchmen as particularly immoral, forcing their vile acts upon the weaker sex.