Dark Justice (28 page)

Much as it pained him, Ben turned the other direction and raced toward Sheriff Allen’s office at the courthouse. He just hoped someone was in.

And he just hoped they could get back before it was too late.

“W
HAT THE HELL IS THAT
racket?”

Tess pushed the drapes to the side and peered outside. There was a major commotion on the street, but it wasn’t close enough that she could see anything.

Every time Tess heard a noise from the street, she jumped three feet. And in the last few minutes, there had been a lot of noises.

Stay calm, girl, she told herself, as if that might actually do some good. You’ve been in tighter scrapes than this. Did you panic when the police caught you going through Madonna’s luggage? Did you turn to jelly when Sean Penn took a shot at you? Of course not. You’re a grown-up and a journalist—a journalist with a hell of a story to tell.

If she could only live long enough to tell it.

She had retraced all her steps, all her thoughts, all her conversations in her mind. Everything she had seen or heard since she first came to this backwater burg. And she had convinced herself she knew who killed Dwayne Gardiner. The killer had made a fatal error.

The only problem was that she was certain the killer would soon recognize the error, too. And as soon as that happened, the killer would be trying to remedy the mistake.

And the only way to remedy the mistake was to eliminate one Tess O’Connell.

She threw all her clothes and belongings haphazardly into her small suitcase. The clothes would be a mess when she arrived home—if she arrived home—but at the moment, fashion gaffes were the least of her concerns. She grabbed the bag, crossed the room in three giant steps, and flung open the door.

An instant after she opened it, she heard the sound of another door closing. It wasn’t a loud sound. It almost wasn’t there at all; it was more like a whisper, a soft whooshing of air. But she had heard it. At least she thought she had.

Why would someone close his door the instant she opened hers? Unless someone was watching her. Someone who didn’t want to be seen.

She bit down on her knuckle. That was the problem with paranoia—it wasn’t always unjustified. But when you were the paranoid one, it was impossible to know which concerns were ridiculous and which concerns might get your head blown off.

Well, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in her room—not if she wanted to get this story in print. She didn’t even have a fax machine here. And she wasn’t going to give up this Pulitzer sure-bet.

She took a deep breath and plunged into the hallway. So far, so good—no one jumped out of a hidey-hole with machine guns blazing. She walked rapidly down the corridor, dragging her suitcase behind her. She was glad she’d learned to pack light; she didn’t need anything weighing her down.

She paced the full length of the corridor, then took a right turn and made a beeline for the elevator bank. When she reached the elevators, she slowed. Her footsteps stopped.

But someone else’s didn’t. Not right away, that is. She stopped, and then a heartbeat later, so did someone else. Almost perfectly in step with her. But not quite.

Tess felt an icy grip at the base of her spine. Someone was following her. And there was only one person who would have a motive to do that—

To hell with the elevators. She ducked into the adjoining stairwell and raced down the stairs, baggage bumping every step behind her. A few years before, when she had been determined to lose the unwanted and unneeded extra ten pounds she wore around her waist, she had started walking the stairs every day during lunch hour. Since the LA. skyscraper she worked in had over forty floors, it was pretty strenuous exercise. Once up and down and she was usually bushed.

She just hoped she had retained some of those skills. Magic Valley wasn’t LA.; it was only five flights down. But at the moment, five flights seemed like an endless expanse.

She had almost made it to the fourth floor when she heard a pneumatic release of air. Someone else had opened the door. Someone else was in the stairwell.

She was not alone.

She tossed aside the suitcase. What did she need with a lot of clothes and underarm deodorant anyway? She had her money in her purse. What she needed was to make it to her rental car. Alive.

She was in a full-out run now, no holds barred. She raced down the stairs as fast as she could without falling, taking the steps two at a time whenever possible. She was making good time now—the third floor, the second …

But she could still hear the footsteps behind her, and they were moving just as fast. Whoever was chasing her seemed determined not to let her escape.

Tess hit the ground floor running. She thought about hailing the bell captain, trying to get help. But what if he wasn’t at his station, what if she didn’t make it in time? It all seemed too risky, in her panicked state. She didn’t want to be trapped in this hotel a second longer. She wanted to be in her car, leaving the whole town in her dust.

She crossed the lobby quickly and headed for the parking garage. The hotel had valet parking, but the valet wasn’t there. Just as well—she could do it faster herself. She snatched her keys from the pegboard at the valet station, then barreled into the parking garage scanning for space number twenty-two.

She ran up the nearest slope, checking the numbers painted on the asphalt outside each space. Twenty-two, twenty-two … the numbers she was seeing were in the thirties and getting bigger, not smaller. Where was it, damn it? She couldn’t be sure how much space she’d put between herself and her pursuer, but she knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

The numbers were still getting bigger. She must’ve gone the wrong way. She whirled around without breaking her speed, blazing down the slope heading the other way …

An arm reached out from nowhere and grabbed her.

Tess screamed.

She couldn’t decide whether to scream at him or to scream for help, so she ended up doing both at once. “
Help
!
Let go of me
!”

“Hey, lady, relax, okay?”

Tess pulled herself together and stared at the man holding her arm. He wasn’t the murderer. But she had seen that face before.

“I’m Johnny. The bellhop, remember? I’ve been working your floor. I showed you to your room.”

A wave of relief flooded over her. He was the bellhop, for God’s sake. The bellhop!

“I’m—sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I thought someone was following me.”

“You were right,” Johnny said. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’ve been following you since you left your room. You dropped this.”

It was her wallet. The boy was holding her wallet.

It was so pathetic she had to laugh. Here she was—scared out of her skin, certain she was about to die—and all the man wanted was to return her wallet.

Tess tried to regain some tiny measure of her composure. “Thank you. It must’ve spilled out of my purse when …” When she sprinted down the hallway like a madwoman, she thought, but did not say. “I threw everything together in kind of a rush.”

“It’s all right, ma’am. I just didn’t want you to leave without it.”

“Of course.” She opened the wallet. “Here, let me—”

“That’s not necessary, ma’am. Just doing my job.”

“Well, if you say so.” She closed the wallet and tucked it back inside her purse. “Anyway, thanks again.”

Waving, she started back in the direction where she now realized her car must be. What a fool I’ve been, she thought. What a fool I’ve made of myself. She started to laugh. It was so stupid now, in retrospect. A few noises in the street, a few creaks in the hallway, and she had totally lost it.

She found the Ford Taurus she had rented in Seattle and slipped inside. Jesus, it was just as well she was working this assignment alone. She’d never be able to live this one down back at the
National Whisper
.

She pulled up to the gate, waited for the crossbar to rise, then drove out onto Main Street. She hoped she didn’t have to get into a big argument with the boss when she showed up. He had not been happy with her when last she spoke to him. And now she’d been out of contact for almost two weeks. He must be pissed royally. He’s probably fired me a thousand times over.

But who was she kidding? When he got a whiff of what she had now, he’d be desperate to rehire her. For that matter, given what she now knew, almost any paper around would be happy to have her on the staff.

This was the chance she’d been waiting for, she told herself. Her ticket out of the tabloids. A whole new start. The beginning of something bigger. And better. And—

The hand emerging from the backseat clamped down on her right shoulder. “Time’s up, Tess.”

It was as if the whole world suddenly went silent. Time was suspended; she felt frozen. The sound of the air rushing around her was deafening.

Someone was in the backseat of the car.

Tess screamed, but this time, no one heard. She tried to wrench herself away, but the arm came forward and wrapped itself around the base of her throat.

“Stop the car, Tess.”

Like hell she would. She floored it, barreling down the street, blazing through an intersection. Maybe if she drove crazy enough, she could attract a little law enforcement attention.

The hand left her throat and clamped down on the steering wheel. The two of them grappled for control, Tess tugging one way, the arm from the backseat tugging the other. While the car continued to accelerate. Forty-five, fifty. Fifty-five, sixty …

All at once, the Taurus spun out of control. The car skidded sideways, trunk first, spiraling down the street. Tess pumped the brakes, but she was too late. The yellow brick wall—the north wall of Canfield’s Grocery—came looming up in her windshield.

The car impacted the wall with a heart-stopping crash. Glass and metal splintered and flew, smoke streamed in all directions. The front end was so severely smashed that the hood was nearly invisible; the wall reached almost to the driver’s seat.

The car stopped moving.

And so did Tess.

B
EN WATCHED AS THE
sergeants-at-arms opened the back doors of the gallery and allowed the spectators to pour into the courtroom. He was impressed; it was a respectable showing, particularly for a small town like Magic Valley. Few seats were vacant. There was a tangible sense of excitement in the room, a feeling of anticipation. A realization that much was at stake.

Of course, Ben mused, when a capital murder case is being tried, there are always high stakes. A man could lose his life. But the sad fact was, that grim possibility was the least of the concerns of most of the people in the courtroom.

The largest and loudest contingency was from the logging establishment. They were easy to pick out; they were all huddled together on the left-hand side of the courtroom. Jeremiah Adams sat in the very front of the pack, where everyone could see him, and Ben had a hunch he wasn’t here just as a proud papa who wanted to see his little girl in action. He was a representative, a symbol almost, for all the younger loggers huddled behind him. A senior statesman for the lumberjack crowd.

The exception to the rule was Slade. He was sitting on the opposite side of the gallery, in the back row, alone and apart. Ben wasn’t surprised. After all, technically he had no connection to the logging industry. Not officially, anyway. Officially, he was just an independent contractor doing some consulting work. Probably most of the loggers didn’t even know who he was or how much he had done for their noble cause.

Ben also spotted some representatives from the Green Rage camp—what was left of it. Al and Rick were still in much too bad shape to spend the day sitting on a hard bench in a muggy courtroom, but Maureen was there, and Deirdre and Molly and Doc and a few of the others. Ben had told them that they didn’t have to attend, that it might even be best if they didn’t, but they had insisted on being there to support Zak.

Whatever. Ben was just glad they were alive. After that stupid stunt with the chain and the trucks, the loggers were seeing blood. Luckily, Ben had managed to get to the sheriff’s office before any major damage was done. Deputy Andrews, a young but enthusiastic member of Sheriff Allen’s office, had immediately jumped into action, racing to the scene with sirens screaming. He showed up just about the time the loggers caught the Green Rage crew. They managed to land a few punches before scattering, but nothing more. The owners of the pickups filed complaints, of course, but they had no means of proving who had sabotaged their vehicles.

Just as Green Rage couldn’t prove who had destroyed their camp the night before.

And so the circle of hate went on and on and on.

There were a few people in the gallery Ben didn’t recognize. Townsfolk, he assumed. Locals with an abiding interest in law and order. Or maybe they just didn’t have cable.

Ben saw another familiar face push through the back doors. It was Al! Ben hadn’t seen him since his last visit to the hospital, but he seemed to be doing fine. His step was a little slow, but he was getting around just the same.

To Ben’s surprise, Al stopped and exchanged a few whispered words with Jeremiah Adams. Talk about opposites attracting, Ben mused. What could those two possibly have to discuss?

There was a commotion in the back of the courtroom. Sheriff Allen and two of his deputies were bringing in the prisoner. As soon as they started down the nave, some of the loggers began to hiss. Epithets were hurled. A few of the men looked as if they might jump out and start a fight, but Sheriff Allen held them in check with a steely look.

Zak ignored it all. Ben was glad to see him maintaining his composure. He was looking good, all in all. He had gotten the suit Ben had sent over and had the sense to wear it. He’d also had an opportunity to groom himself; he’d cut his hair shorter, shaved, washed. Altered his general appearance from crazed eco-terrorist to Ricky Nelson.

Sheriff Allen escorted Zak to his chair at the defendant’s table and removed his cuffs. “He’s in your hands now, counselor.”