The Big Finish (8 page)

“You keep stalling.”

“Over dinner,” she said.

Sugar shrugged, took their orders, and on his way out the door he shot Thorn a warning look.
Don’t try some harebrained stunt while I’m gone
.

When the door shut, Cruz went to her room and returned with a laptop computer, set it on the desk by the front door, and switched it on. She got on the Internet, typed in an address, and stepped back.

Thorn rose from the bed. He didn’t believe in premonitions, but the burn prickling across his shoulders was impossible to ignore.

Through the window he watched Sugar trudge across the parking lot, head down, shoulders slumped, reduced to an errand boy.

Cruz turned the laptop around. Motioned for Thorn to sit. He moved over, lowered himself into the chair. The chills still jingling across his back.

“This is a Web site,” she said, “the press office section for ELF. I believe you’re familiar with the ELF.”

“I am.”

“Use the down arrow to scroll.”

At the top of the page there was an image of a man in a black ski mask cradling a young goat against his chest. Below him were a series of mug shots with a paragraph posted next to each face.

“What’s this have to do with anything?”

She nudged the laptop closer to him.

The page’s headline: “Snitches and Informers.”

“The people in these photos were activists busted by the FBI or another branch of law enforcement. Once in custody they saw the light and flipped, took a plea deal, cooperated, wore a wire, testified in court, things of that nature, and for their cooperation they either got a reduced sentence or immunity. And their faces wound up on this Web site.”

“Why’re you showing me this?”

“Scroll down.”

Thorn pressed the arrow key and the pages rolled by. Most mug shots were of white kids in their twenties, mainly guys, a few females, a single Asian, and a black woman. He read about a couple. The crimes they were busted for, their plea deals, the names of those incarcerated because of them. Their eye and hair color, distinguishing features, tattoos, scars. Last known location.

“And that?”

He nodded at a photo of a pudgy young man with long curly hair and thick glasses. There was a bright red X marked across the photo image.

“It’s not obvious?”

“They caught him.”

“And dealt with him.”

“Say what you mean.”

“That particular case, I don’t know the specifics, but if the kid was lucky, a bullet to the back of the head.”

He paused, staring at the screen, tried to focus, concentrate on the young man’s face, block out the dizzy spin of the room.

“What does this have to do with Flynn?”

“Keep scrolling.”

He tapped the down arrow, continued to scroll through the page until he came to a dark-haired girl whose eyes stopped him. Intense, but with an impish squint. A vague familiarity. Another red X across her face. Printed in bold letters, her name was
CARMEN SANDIA CRUZ.

He looked up at Madeline and she closed her eyes and nodded.

“In that photo she was nineteen,” she said. “Since the time she was old enough to walk she adored animals. The kid who brought home snakes, iguanas, stray dogs, birds wrapped in fishing line. We built cages in the backyard for the possums.

“She went off to vet school in Georgia, befriended a woman in the ELF. This person is taking courses in the daytime, spending her nights breaking into chimp labs or SUV dealerships, tearing up the places. Her new friend talked Carmen into going along on a raid. Carmen thought it was a harmless political protest for a cause she believed in, but it turned out to be more than that, a lot more, and afterward she felt so guilty about the vandalism they’d committed she confided in me and I passed along a few names to my superior at the FBI and some of the culprits went to prison. Though not her friend, not the leader.”

“And her friend figured out where the leak came from.”

“Yes,” Cruz said. “She did.”

She stared out the window at the shadowy parking lot.

“When did it happen?”

“Sixteen months ago. Carmen was thrown from the rooftop of a four-story apartment building in Atlanta. Supposed to look like suicide.”

“And you’ve been tracking this woman.”

“Since it happened, every hour, every day. I’ve gotten close, lots of near misses. But now I think I have her. Where you and I are headed, Pine Haven, North Carolina, the woman who did this to Carmen, she’s holed up there, she may be injured. She and your son, Flynn, are members of the same group. In fact, I believe you may have crossed paths with her before. She calls herself Cassandra.”

Thorn repeated the name quietly.

Cruz said, “Red hair, thick and curly, a tall woman. Athletic. Imposing.”

Thorn nodded. That was her. That was Cassandra.

“And Flynn?”

“Cassandra and Flynn and a few others were in Carolina, planning some kind of action against a hog farm.”

“Hog farm?”

“Concentrated animal feeding operation, known as a CAFO. A high-density process, large number of animals crammed into tight quarters. A heavy environmental impact on the surrounding community. Just their sort of target.”

“I don’t understand,” Thorn said. “What about Tina, the guns, all that?”

She tapped him on the shoulder, motioned for him to get up.

She took his place in front of the computer and brought up a Web page with a black background and faint yellow print. Lots of boxes filled with brief messages.

She scrolled through several pages until she found the one she was after, then stood up and signaled for Thorn to sit.

“What you’re looking at is a message board where the radical ecocommunity congregates. A public forum, so they mostly speak in code, it’s not easy to follow. But this particular message is straightforward. Posted ten days ago, just before Thanksgiving. Jellyroll, the one who signed it, he’s a member of Cassandra’s cell.”

Dobbins Hog Farm, NC. U dont hear from us tmrow, come lookin for bodies.

He turned to look at her.

She pursed her lips and expelled a breath as if blowing out candles.

“That was a week and a half ago,” she said. “Nothing’s been posted since.”

He absorbed her words and the message on the screen for a long while then came slowly to his feet. He drew in a deep breath but it did nothing to relieve the swelling inside his chest. He moved toward Cruz.

She stared into his eyes and held her ground. He came close, raised his hand to her chest, pressing her against the wall.

“This is a lie. Flynn’s not dead. I’d know if he was. I’d feel it.”

“Every parent thinks that. But would you? I know I didn’t.”

He cocked his arm, pressed his forearm against her throat. Trying to hold himself back, to quiet the teakettle’s scream in his ears.

“Step back.”

“This is a lie, it’s a fucking lie.”

“Step away from me, Thorn. Do it now.”

He got a breath down and said, “It can’t be.”

“No one’s said your son is dead.”

Thorn lowered his arm and turned away. His heart floundering.

“The group was attacked and some of his associates were killed. We believe Flynn was shot, injured. He and Cassandra have gone into hiding. They’re still in the area. That’s why I need you, Thorn. You can entice him.”

“What does that mean?”

“He learns you’re in town, he’ll seek you out. That’s the outcome I’m looking for. You get your son back, I get Cassandra.”

“How do you know this? How do you know he’s injured?”

“I went to Pine Haven immediately after I saw the post on the message board. I met Webb Dobbins, the owner of the hog farm, met the sheriff, got the lowdown.”

“How badly is he hurt, how’d it happen? I want details.”

“We don’t have time for this right now. You’ll have to trust me. I’ve got a plan. You’ll get Flynn, I’ll get justice.”

“Trust you? Why should I? A couple of hours ago you were talking about dangerous people hanging out by the Neuse River, a larger federal operation under your command, Tina’s job was to deliver me, she was leading me into a trap. Now it’s something else. It’s about Flynn and Cassandra.”

“What I said earlier was for Sugarman’s benefit, not yours. What I’m telling you now is the truth.”

“Then you lied pretty goddamn easily.”

“Okay,” she said. “So don’t believe me. Go ahead, you go to Pine Haven, you and Sugarman. Go on your own, fumble around in this minefield, see how that works out.”

“How do you know Flynn was hurt? That he’s still alive?”

“Listen. We have to sort out Sugarman before he gets back.”

Thorn couldn’t name the feelings rocketing through his chest. His face was hot. His ears rang. Body clenched.

Cruz said, “Sugarman can’t be involved. It’s got to be you and me, Thorn. Just the two of us.”

He gripped the back of the chair, looked around at the unsteady room.

“He
is
involved.”

“Not after tonight.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”

Thorn was struggling to fill his lungs. He settled into the chair.

“I want a name. The fucker who shot my son.”

“I can’t do that.”

“But you know who it is, the shooter.”

“Right now there’s only one thing you need to know. You and I have a common objective. You want to rescue Flynn, I want Cassandra. I know the lay of the land where they’re hiding out, and you have the ability to draw them into the open. What that means is we have no choice but to work together.”

EIGHT

“AFTER WE GET TO PINE
Haven I’ll give you everything I have about the man who attacked your son. Not before. If I revealed it now, you’d jump ship, try to settle this on your own. You have that history, Thorn, a reputation. So not until we’re there, until we’ve finalized our plan, gone over everything.”

“Sugar,” Thorn said. “He’s coming.”

She looked out the window, saw him crossing the lot carrying the bags of food, seconds away.

“I know he’s a good person,” Cruz said. “I have no doubt. Sheffield speaks highly of him, and we could use the manpower, but he can’t come.”

“Why?”

“Because he believes in the rule book. We can’t have that.”

Thorn pulled himself from the screen, stood up again. He blinked his eyes clear and stared at Madeline Cruz.

“Why?” he said. “Because we aren’t going to be playing by the rules?”

“No,” Cruz said. “Because where we’re going, there
are
no rules.”

He looked back at Sugarman out in the darkness.

“Your friend, is he willing to step over the legal line? Way across that line? Do whatever it takes to accomplish our goal, despite how many laws we have to break?”

“No.”

“Then you have to cut him loose. This is going to be messy.”

“You’re not FBI, are you?”

“I was for many years.”

“But not anymore.”

“That’s correct. Not since I lost Carmen.”

Sugar came into the room, set the sacks of food on the desk.

When he registered the look on Thorn’s face, he halted.

Madeline stepped over to the laptop and shut the lid.

“We need to talk,” Thorn said.

“Aw, great.” Sugar rolled his eyes to the ceiling, then looked back at Thorn. “God help us every one.”

“We’re not going to need you anymore,” Thorn said. “Cruz and I are going to take it from here.”

Sugar’s gaze drifted from Thorn to Cruz, then to the window and the open blinds.

At that second the even-tempered, all-enduring look on Sugarman’s face sent Thorn back to an afternoon from twenty years earlier, Sugar still in his deputy’s uniform, he and Thorn drinking a beer at the Caribbean Club in Key Largo, where tourists stopped in to see the local badasses misbehave and where the local badasses came to put on a show for the tourists.

Thorn couldn’t recall why they’d wound up there, but he remembered Sugar was talking to a college girl from a little town in Mississippi Thorn had never heard of. Sugar was married at the time, a devoted husband, not the least bit flirty, simply doing his best to shield the girl from the roughnecks in that bar. He and the girl were having a good time, Sugar being funny in the wry, understated way he had, not trying to make her laugh, not trying to charm her, simply describing his afternoon shift, a domestic spat he’d broken up between two eighty-year-old men who’d been roommates for the last half century but now were trying to claw each other’s eyes out over whose turn it was to do the dishes. And one of the badasses across the bar took exception to the fact that the Mississippi girl with the languid eyes and the molasses in her laughter was enjoying the company of a black man in a cop uniform, and he came strutting around the bar, long-haired guy with a drunk’s sloppy smile, wearing only a leather vest over his sunken chest, and he wedged in between Sugarman and the Mississippi girl, planted his elbow on the bar, and proceeded to call her a nigger-loving little cunt who should get her ass back in her rental car and keep on driving down to Key West, where the faggots would be more accepting of her nigger-loving ways.

Thorn took hold of the badass’s ponytail and gave it a jerk, which was Thorn’s hands-on approach to introducing the asshole to civilized behavior.

And the badass swung around, spoiling for what came next, but Sugar already had the guy’s left wrist cuffed to a piece of angle iron that supported the bar. The guy swung and lurched but the cuffs had him caught. Sugar and Thorn and the college girl moved around the bar and continued their conversation on stools with a view of the red sun dissolving into Blackwater Sound while the badass swung his free arm and cursed until he was all used up. On the way out of the bar Sugarman unlocked his cuffs, never saying a word to the bigoted asshole, and he and Thorn walked the college girl to her car, and with his blue lights flashing, Sugar saw her safely back to the motel where she was staying a mile down the road and then he drove home to his wife.

That was Sugar, the rules he played by. The man Thorn was dismissing.

Sugarman turned on Cruz.

“Where’s Tina being held?”