Twenty-Six
JONATHAN FELT ENCLOSED in a kind of bubble. Though he stood outside the police station in a throng of police and Guardsmen, he saw only Ruth, heard only her voice and the urgent thudding of his own heart.
Somebody took Lily. Saturday afternoon. The syllables rang in his head, but the words didn’t form any stream of logic he could comprehend. Now Ruth was talking on a cell phone, almost screaming into the tiny receiver. He watched her mouth moving, noticed the redness of her eyes, the small fever blister beginning to swell on her upper lip. Somebody took Lily. Saturday afternoon. While he’d been at the parts store, buying a new clutch.
She closed the phone. “That was Mary. She got another picture of Lily. In Christiana, Tennessee.”
“What?” he said, the bubble bursting, all the noise suddenly crashing around them like breaking glass. Men were shouting to each other, jeeps roared by on the street, choppers flew overhead. “Who?”
“Come on.” Ruth grabbed his arm. “We’re going to see Dula, whether he wants us to or not.”
She dragged him into a building, into a large duty room where men in various uniforms milled about. Standing beside an open door, talking to an EMT, was a man with gold braid on his shirt. Ruth pushed her way through the crowd, pulling Jonathan after her.
“Sheriff Dula!”
The short man glanced at Ruth wearily, then straightened when he saw Jonathan behind her. “Sheriff, this is my husband.” Ruth shoved Jonathan forward. “He does not have our baby. And Mary Crow just got another e-mail!”
Dula sent the EMT on his way, then beckoned them into his office. “Come in. Have a seat.”
Jonathan felt as if he’d driven into some kind of bizarre movie. Although the characters looked familiar, their lines were all wrong, the plot racing somewhere he couldn’t comprehend. First Ruth had jabbered a tale about Lily, now this sheriff was whining about this being the worst three days of his career. Where was his baby? What had happened to his child?
“Where’s Lily?” he demanded of both Ruth and Dula, as if they were conspiring against him.
“That’s what I’d like to ask you, Mr. Walkingstick,” Dula replied evenly. “What have you been doing these past three days?”
“You tell me what happened to my child.” Jonathan’s voice came out like a growl.
“Since I wear this,” Dula tapped the badge on his chest, “you go first.”
Jonathan felt his temper flare, but played it Dula’s way. He knew all too well the power of small-town sheriffs. Lily’s survival could depend upon having this man on their side.
“Friday morning I drove down to Cherokee County, North Carolina, to meet a man named Clootie Duncan, who’d hired me as a hunting guide. I drove to the Dick’s Creek trailhead, but Duncan never showed up. I waited till dark on Friday, then decided to drive here and meet my wife. I didn’t make it out of the trailhead.” He shot an accusing glance at Ruth. “The clutch on her truck gave out. Saturday I hiked fifteen miles to Murphy, North Carolina, where I persuaded a guy to keep his store open long enough to sell me a new clutch. Then I hiked back. Spent all day Sunday replacing it. I drove out late last night, went to get some food at a place called Red’s Market. There I heard about the rioting and that they’d closed off the interstate. I took a wrong turn on the detour and wound up down in Georgia. It took me a while, but I drove straight here.”
“Anybody see you do any of this?”
“I’ve got a receipt from Blue Ridge Auto Parts in Murphy,” said Jonathan, remembering how the clerk had been eager to close so he could head off to Disney World with his kids. “And the clerk at Red’s Market saw me last night.”
“Nobody else?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“You a full-time guide?”
“During hunting season.”
“Are your parties often no-shows?”
“First time. Usually I ask for a pretty big deposit. This guy called Wednesday, at the last minute, so I told him I’d need my whole fee up front.”
“You get his name and address?”
Jonathan pulled a scrap of paper from his wallet and tossed it on the man’s desk. “That’s his number.’’
While Dula paused to reload more questions, Jonathan took his turn. “Tell me what happened to Lily.”
“At two-seventeen Saturday afternoon, a call came in to this office that a Native American female, three months old, had gone missing. Officers Finch and Green took the call and did a search of the immediate vicinity. When the baby did not turn up, I took over. I arrived on the scene at four-oh-five p.m. I interviewed your wife, Clarinda Wachacha, Gabriel Benge, Bobby Puckett, and fourteen other members of the Save Our Bones organizing committee. Then I—”
“Wait,” Jonathan interrupted. “You’re telling me what you did. You’re not telling me what happened.’’
“NBC news was interviewing me, Jonathan,” Ruth explained. “I left Lily with Clarinda, in the camper. She was talking with Bobby Puckett when a man named Joe Little Bear appeared. He was wearing a rally badge and he told Clarinda that I had sent him to get Lily, to be on television with me.”
“Who’s Bobby Puckett?”
“Someone Clarinda met.”
“And Clarinda and this Bobby just handed Lily over?” Jonathan could just imagine the conversation Clarinda had been having. Puckett probably had his pants to his knees and his dick shoved down her throat when Joe Little Bear showed up. Small wonder she’d handed Lily over.
“This Joe Little Bear said he was a friend of yours,” Ruth went on. “Said he’d served with you in the Gulf.”
“I didn’t serve with any Indians over there.”
“Well, that’s what he told Clarinda. So she figured it was okay. It wasn’t until I finished my interview and came back to nurse Lily that we realized something terrible had happened.”
Jonathan felt a hot, helpless rage begin to seethe inside him. To keep from yelling at Ruth, he turned back to Dula. “So have you searched all the campers? Called the FBI?”
“We searched the entire campground. Puckett voluntarily took and passed a polygraph. I called the FBI Sunday morning, filling them in on the situation. They opted not to get involved.”
“Why the hell not?” Jonathan wanted to thrash Dula, Ruth, Clarinda, that fucker Bobby Puckett, and everybody in this miserable county.
“Because they weren’t convinced we had a case. To be frank, neither was I. You and your wife had quite a little spat before you came over here. Your ex-girlfriend is already knee-deep in this case, and other than a receipt from a parts store, you can’t really account for any part of your weekend.”
“My ex-girlfriend? What the hell are you talking about?”
Ruth put her hand on his arm. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do, Jonathan. When I couldn’t reach you, I called Mary Crow. She drove up right away.” Ruth swallowed as if her next words were painful. “Sheriff Dula thinks you two planned this all along.”
“That’s bullshit. Where’s Mary now?”
“I just told you. She and Gabe Benge have tracked Lily to Tennessee. Mary started getting these on her office e-mail, right after Lily disappeared.” Ruth pulled a sheet of paper from her purse.
The image made him sick inside. His Lily, lying on the ground, naked and screaming. Some son of a bitch had stolen his baby and this pissant sheriff thought he and Mary Crow had planned it. He strode around the desk, and jerked Dula up by the front of his shirt. Holding him by the collar, he snapped the images of Lily in front of his face, ignoring Ruth’s shriek of protest. “What’s the matter with you, you sawed-off little jackass? You honestly think I would steal my own child, then send pictures like this?”
‘’Jenkins!” Dula gurgled. “Green!”
Two big Nikwase County deputies burst through the doorway. Jonathan dropped Dula, but too late. The second after he let him go, deputy number one pinioned his arms behind his back, turned Jonathan around as if he was a feather pillow, and kicked his legs apart. Jonathan saw it coming, but there was nothing he could do to protect himself. His breath snagged as the end of a nightstick slammed into his stomach, once, then once more, then once again. Distantly, he heard Ruth screaming, then his knees crumpled as Dula bellowed about how nobody can tell him how to run an investigation, and his own voice crying the only name that really mattered—Lily.