Thirteen
MARY CHANGED INTO clean jeans, threw a couple of sweaters into a small overnight bag, and jumped in her car. Someone’s taken Lily! Ruth’s panicked words had sounded like those of the mothers, mothers she sometimes interviewed at precinct houses, wildly venting their rage and heartbreak over what somebody had done to their child.
“It’s probably just a huge mix-up,” she told herself, trying to warm away the cold, sick lump of fear in the pit of her stomach. She’d been to powwows before where child care had been a communal effort, with babies passed from person to person. Somebody had probably taken Lily to hold and then just lost track of the time. By the time she got there, Lily would be back in Ruth’s arms, sound asleep.
She tried hard to cling to that belief as she sped toward Tennessee, her speedometer seldom dipping below ninety. At eleven p.m. she turned east, passing campground signs that invited people to “come play in the foothills of the Smokies.” She exited the interstate, then crested a hill to discover a line of Tennessee state trooper cars pulled off the side of the road, their flashing blue lights slicing the darkness.
Her stomach twisted, but she ignored it. They’re here because their boss just got smacked with a pie, she reminded herself, recalling the comical scene on television. “They have nothing to do with Ruth at all.”
She slowed to a crawl, pulling out her identification both as a Georgia driver and as an officer of the Deckard County Court, but the troopers made no move to stop her. They leaned against their cars as she passed, regarding her with cold cop eyes. When she came to the en trance of Hillbilly Heaven campground, she pulled in.
A long-haired man wearing jeans and a red T-shirt leaned out of a small information booth. “Hi,” he told her, keeping a cautious eye on the fleet of police cars lighting up his campground like a carnival midway. “Twenty dollars, please. Rally starts at eight tomorrow.”
“I haven’t come for the rally,” Mary answered him. “I’ve come to see Ruth Moon Walkingstick.”
“You and everybody else.” He pulled out a clipboard. “Name?”
“Mary Crow.”
He shook his head as he scanned the yellow sheet. “I don’t see your name. Are you police?”
“No,” Mary replied. “I’m law.”
“Law?” He glanced over at the cruisers again, as if suspicious the cops were trying to sneak her in as a spy.
“Never mind.” She pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her purse. “Just tell me where I can find Ruth.’’
“Piney Grove campsite. Straight ahead, behind the stage.” He pointed into the darkness behind him.
Mary drove into Hillbilly Heaven, following the road as the guard directed. Knots of people gathered at the small fires burning between the campsites, and she could hear the low, insistent beating of drums. An eeriness hung in the air, and she felt as if she’d somehow driven back in time, when red men gathered to fight the white eyes once again.
She crested another, higher hill. To her left, tall lights illuminated an empty stage. A bank of amplifiers lined the back of it, while three microphones awaiting their next speakers stood like skinny stalks of corn.
Driving on, she finally came to a sign that pointed to the Piney Grove campsite. The road twisted through tall trees, then bottomed out beside a creek where three vehicles were parked. One was a police car, one a sleek new camper van, the third a familiar pop-up camper. The last time she’d been in it, Jonathan had given her such a fierce orgasm she wondered if she might not die from the pleasure of it. “But that was a long time ago,” she whispered, feeling a single, sharp stab of sadness.
She nosed her Miata in front of Jonathan’s truck and turned off the engine. Only when she got out of the car did she realize that she’d been gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her fingers had gone numb.
She scuffed through the dead leaves to the camper door and peered inside. Although both mattresses looked rumpled, nobody was home. Furious voices rose abruptly from the nearby van, where two men stood outside its open door.
“Mr. Bench, we’ve searched every trailer in this campground. I’ve put out an APB in North Carolina, Tennessee, and the better part of Georgia.” The short, bald man’s khaki uniform had more gold braid than most four-star generals. “I’m holding both Miss Wachacha’s boyfriend and John Black Fox in jail, along with every Mexican construction worker I could run down. Just what else do you figure I should do?”
“It’s Benge, not Bench, Sheriff Dula. Like binge drinking. I don’t understand why you haven’t called the FBI.” The second man towered over the sheriff. He wore jeans with the ubiquitous red T-shirt, and had a face more intelligent than handsome. Short, dark hair curled around his forehead, making him look younger than the thirty-something Mary guessed him to be.
“I’m fully prepared to call the Feds, Mr. Benge. But not for twenty-four hours. And not until I’m totally convinced a crime has been committed here.”
“What do you mean? Lily’s been gone since this afternoon!” Ruth Moon’s voice, coming from within the van was tearful. Mary’s heart sank. This was not some oversight in communal baby-sitting. Lily Walkingstick had indeed gone missing.
She stepped forward. “Excuse me,” she called. “Is Ruth Moon in there?”
Both men turned, surprised.
“Who wants her?” asked the sheriff.
“My name is Mary Crow. I’ve just driven up from Atlanta.”
“Mary.” Immediately the taller man smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Gabe Benge. This is Sheriff George Dula. Thanks for coming.”
Mary shook Benge’s hand, then looked inside the van. Ruth Moon sat in the turned-around driver’s seat. Another, slightly younger woman sat beside her. Both wore jeans and the red SOB shirts, but where Ruth’s friend had the bright nervousness of a frightened squirrel, Ruth looked as if she had just washed up on some shore in hell.
Mary stepped inside and knelt in front of her. “Hi, honey. How are you doing?”
Ruth’s eyes were red and haunted. “I didn’t think you would come…”
“Of course I came.” Mary hugged her close, catching the aroma of cigarette smoke and nervous sweat. “I’m Lily’s godmother. Remember?”
“Jonathan warned me.” Ruth shook her head. “He said something bad would happen…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mary whispered, smoothing back her hair. “We’re all going to help you.” She smiled at Ruth, trying to impart as much hope as she could, then she turned to the men.
“What happened?”
The sheriff rested one booted foot up on the edge of the van and pulled a little notebook from his back pocket. “First why don’t you tell me who you are.’’
“I’m a friend of the Walkingsticks,” Mary explained. “I’m also an ADA for Deckard County, Georgia. Mrs. Walkingstick called me to come here. I dropped everything and here I am.” She dug her ID from her purse and passed it to the sheriff. She knew it would zoom her to the top of his shit list, but she didn’t care. Predictably, Dula took his time in studying her credentials, then handed them back with a disdainful sneer. “Aren’t you a little far from your jurisdiction?”
“I’m the baby’s godmother.” She looked directly into his eyes, refusing to back off. “Now would you please tell me what has happened?”
The sheriff turned to the young woman who sat beside Ruth. “Miss Wachacha, why don’t you tell Ms. Crow the story?” He flipped back several pages in his pad. “I’ll go over my notes again while you talk.”
Ruth’s companion gave a disgusted sigh, but began a tale she’d obviously told more than once, about how she and her new friend Bobby Puckett were sitting in the pop-up when a man named Joe Little Bear appeared, claiming to be an old Army buddy of Jonathan’s who’d been sent to fetch the baby to be on TV with Ruth.
“What Army outfit was your husband in?” Sheriff Dula interrupted, looking at Ruth.
Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know… Jonathan doesn’t talk much about it.”
“Eighty-second Airborne,” Mary answered quietly. “He was a medic in the Gulf War.”
Dula raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as he jotted something down on his pad. Mary had her own question for Miss Wachacha. “Had you ever seen this Joe Little Bear before?”
“No.”
“Did your friend Bobby Puckett know this man?” Mary instinctively fell into the rhythm of the courtroom. Gabe Benge leaned against the door, his face rapt with attention.
“No.”
“So you’re telling us that you just handed Lily over to a man you’d never seen before merely because he claimed to know Jonathan?”
The woman’s mouth curled downward, sneering. “He knew Jonathan. He said Ruth was going to be on TV. It sounded okay.”
Mary looked at the sheriff. “Why haven’t you put her in jail?” she asked, not bothering to hide her disgust. “For child endangerment.”
“I had her loaded up in my squad car,” Dula replied coldly. “But Mrs. Walkingstick here threw such a fit that I let her out.”
“For God’s sake, she’s my cousin,” Ruth snapped. “She came here from Oklahoma to baby-sit Lily, not steal her!”
Mary bit back a cruel response: there was no point in questioning Ruth’s choice of babysitters now. At this moment Lily was the only one who was important, and every second counted. “Does anyone know what this Little Bear looked like?”
“Here.” Gabe Benge handed her a piece of lined notebook paper. “Puckett drew this.”
Mary looked at the drawing. Bobby Puckett had drawn a surprisingly detailed drawing of a man in his mid-twenties. The man’s eyes looked scared more than hostile, and he sported the scraggly mustache popular with southwestern tribes.
“He wore a rally badge and said he was Navajo,” Clarinda added helpfully.
“All the official badges are photo badges.” Gabe Benge lifted his own for Mary to see. “And none of the Navajos here have ever heard of a Joe Little Bear.”
“Have you searched the campground?” Mary asked the sheriff.
Benge answered. “Our security teams did an immediate camper-to-camper search. Sheriff Dula closed off the campground about three hours later.”
“Son, my boys have searched every car that’s left this place since we first got the call.” Dula thrust out his lower jaw like a bulldog. “Most of my men have been busy trying to keep a lid on John Black Fox’s boys.”
Mary frowned. “Who’s John Black Fox?”
“President of the Red Nation,” Dula told her.
“Runs around in makeup and a diaper. Assaulted the governor this afternoon.”
“John Black Fox is a radical environmentalist,” Gabe Benge explained further. “Believes we are truly in the eleventh hour, ecologically speaking, and any action to save the planet is morally supportable. Today he gave the governor a pie in the face.”
Mary repressed a smile. “I saw that on television. Sheriff, you believe the pie thrower also took this baby?”
“Could have. Any one of a number of people could have. Environmentalists out to air their griefs, construction workers out of a job, a few locals who don’t care for outsiders coming in and making trouble. Hell, I’m not sure that Mrs. Walkingstick’s husband didn’t do it.”
Mary blinked, stunned. “Jonathan?”
Sheriff Dula turned to Ruth. “Why don’t you fill her in on the rest of the story?”
The heartbroken woman lowered her face like a beaten dog. “Jonathan never did want us to come here. We argued about it all day Thursday, and yesterday, as we were getting ready to leave, he decided to take some man hunting instead.”
“Is that why he threw his car keys at you?” Dula needled.
“He tossed the keys to me, Sheriff. Nobody threw anything.”
“Miss Wachacha here claims he got pretty mad.”
“Miss Wachacha hands babies over to total strangers, Sheriff,” Mary reminded him. “Believe me, Jonathan Walkingstick would never throw anything at his wife.”
Dula turned his chill gaze on her. ‘’Miss Crow, for someone who lives two hundred miles away in Atlanta, you seem to know an awful lot about Mrs. Walkingstick’s husband. You two don’t have any little secret sweet thing going on, do you?”
Mary’s throat grew tight. Once we did, she wanted to say. Very secret and far sweeter than you can imagine. “I’ve known Jonathan Walkingstick all my life, Sheriff,” she replied steadily, keeping her eyes away from Ruth. “I can absolutely assure you that he would not kidnap his own child. Has anybody even tried to get in touch with him?”
“We’ve notified the Pisgah County sheriff and the Cherokee tribal police,” Dula said. “They haven’t found him yet.”
“Gabe loaned me this.” Ruth raised a cell phone. “I’ve called the store every fifteen minutes, but he’s not there. He’s still out with his hunting party.”
“Did he say who he was taking with him? Where they were going?”
Ruth shook her head. “Out for boar is all he said.”
“That’s probably Cherokee County,” said Mary. “Southwest Carolina.”
“You hunt boar, too, Ms. Crow?” Dula smirked.
“No. But I grew up there.”
“Okay, folks,” the sheriff said, putting his pad back in his pocket. “That’s it for tonight.”
“What are you going to do?” Mary asked him.
“I’ve got some boys coming over at first light with their bloodhounds. Those dogs can find most anything, living or dead.”
Ruth covered her face with her hands. Mary noticed two huge wet spots on her T-shirt, directly over her breasts. Then she realized that even though her baby was gone, Ruth was still a nursing mother.
“I’ll see you folks first thing tomorrow,” Dula threw over his shoulder as he walked, toward his cruiser. “Get some sleep.”
They stood in stunned silence after Dula left, then Ruth began to weep.
“I’m so sorry…” Her apology came out in wrenching sobs. “Jonathan was right. I never should have come here…”
As Ruth wept, Mary sat numbly, unable to comfort her. Once again, Jasmine Harris’s scream echoed in her head, this time joined by a newer, smaller voice, both crying for help, both turning dark, imploring eyes directly at her.