gazed up with gaping mouths as if they were witnessing a solar eclipse. Through the optic, Ben observed dirty children, weary women, and missing teeth. They appeared dirt poor. A Confederate flag flapped lazily on the tall pole rising above the camp. One of the men unbuttoned his jacket then his shirt; his enormous belly was covered with tattoos and on his breastplate where Superman wore his S were three large letters in fancy scrip: KKK. He was probably the grand wizard of this little klan.
Dicky yelled back, “Them people remind me of a joke I heard in town: If a husband and wife move from Alabama to Idaho, are they still legally brother and sister?”
“How long you gonna leave her down there?”
Jacko had found Junior sitting at the table, looking like his dog got run over.
“Long enough to break her.”
“She ain’t no horse.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and shook his head. “The hell you expect, she was gonna love you and live here happily ever after?”
Jacko sighed. The son ain’t near the man the daddy was. Maybe Junior would have turned out different if he had had a mama to raise him; she had died suddenly when Junior was only a boy. Jacko had always felt sort of responsible. On the major’s orders, he had put a bullet in her brain and buried her out back because she had become a security risk. Of course, Jacko’s mama had left them when he was only five because of his daddy always getting drunk and beating her up, and he had turned out okay.
“Look, boy, that’s twenty-five million down in that box. You gonna let her die down there, least get the money!”
Junior just glared back at him. Fuck this, Jacko thought. The money would be nice, but the important thing was that the girl, dead or alive, was going to bring Ben Brice to him. Man Jacko’s age, settling old scores was a hell of a lot more satisfying than money. He grabbed the keys to the Blazer off a nail by the door.
“I’m going up to Creston.”
Jacko went back outside and checked the Blazer to make sure no ordnance was still in the back. Last thing he needed was some Canadian Mountie at the border searching the vehicle and finding a nape canister: Shit, officer, that ain’t my napalm!
He got in and fired up the vehicle and headed down the mountain. Once a month he drove the twenty-four miles into Canada. He had angina; too much booze and red meat and tobacco, the doctor said. Not that he was going to stop any of those habits. So he took nitroglycerin tablets whenever the angina flared up, which was most every day. Hundred bucks a month for his prescription but only half that in Canada. So he bought his nitro over the border. It ain’t like a terrorist group plotting to kill the president had some kind of fucking health plan.
“Dr. Vernon?”
“Yes, Agent Jorgenson, I have the file now.”
There was a connection between Major Charles Woodrow Walker and Elizabeth Brice and Gracie Ann Brice’s abduction, FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson was sure of that. But Walker was dead. And only two persons involved with Walker’s case at Justice were still alive: Elizabeth Brice-Jan would talk to her later, face to face-and President McCoy. She didn’t figure on talking to him. So she had called the Idaho hospital where Walker had taken his son ten years ago. Dr. Henry Vernon was still the ER chief and the only other person she knew who had seen Major Charles Woodrow Walker alive.
“That’s not a day I’ll ever forget,” the doctor said, “FBI arresting the most wanted man in America in my ER.”
“Can you describe Walker?”
“Big man, blond hair, blue eyes-I’ll never forget his eyes, the way he looked at me. Sent chills up my spine. Said he’d been out of the country, returned home and found his son like that, rushed him in.”
“His son was dying?”
“Arthropod envenomation. Spider bite. Hobo spider. People always confuse it with the brown recluse because the bite effects are so similar, but recluses are rare up here.” She heard papers being shuffled. “Let’s see, here it is: Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., white male, fourteen, presented as severe headache, high fever, chills, nausea, joint pain, and a necrotic skin lesion consuming one entire finger, eaten down into the bone. Never seen one this advanced. We admitted the boy, put him on an IV, antibiotics, steroids, and dapsone, but the finger had to be amputated to stop the necrosis from spreading. Right index finger. Boy had gone so long untreated, I didn’t think he’d make it. After the FBI took his dad away, I went in to check on him. He was gone. I figured he’d die on a mountain. No record of him being treated here again.”
Major Walker was dead and probably his son, too.
“Doctor, thanks for your help, I… Doctor, what did the boy look like?”
“Big, like his daddy. Same blond hair, same blue eyes.”
Dicky was pointing down and yelling back to his out-of-town passengers over the engine noise: “Elk Mountain Farms. They grow hops for Budweiser!”
Down below Ben could see farmland dotted with patches of snow lying next to a river snaking through the valley. They had flown over all seven of the known camps west of town and were now flying east.
“Best damn fishing in the country!” Dicky yelled. “Cutthroat trout, rainbow, bass, whitefish! Up in the mountains, big game hunting-elk, moose, deer, even bear!”
Minutes later: “Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge! Three thousand acres, couple hundred different species! Summertime, you can see bald eagles!”
The sheriff had been silently shaking his head. Now he turned to Dicky and said, “Dicky, shut up and fly! You sound like the goddamned chamber of commerce! They ain’t tourists come to look at birds! They’re looking for their girl!”
The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
Elizabeth Austin had been the junior AUSA on the Walker prosecution. An up-and-comer at Justice and slated for a top spot in the department, she had abruptly resigned only two weeks after Major Walker had died in Mexico. Two weeks later, she had married John Brice and moved to Dallas. It was as if she had been running away-but from what? Or whom?
An answer was brewing in the back of FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson's head, but she couldn’t give it words yet.
She needed to know more about Elizabeth Brice, so Jan had searched through the file for names of co- workers and found the phone number for Margie Robbins in the federal employee database; she was currently employed as a legal secretary at the Department of Agriculture and had been previously employed at the Justice Department. It was Saturday morning, so Jan was trying Robbins’s residence number. After a dozen rings, a soft voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Margie Robbins?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Robbins, my name is Jan Jorgenson, I’m an agent with the FBI. I’m investigating the Gracie Ann Brice abduction.”
“Oh, yes, Elizabeth’s daughter. It’s terrible.”
Bingo. “You know Elizabeth Brice?”
“Her name was Austin when I worked for her. I didn’t even realize it was her child until I saw Elizabeth on TV.”
“You worked for her at Justice?”
“For five years. I was her secretary. Did they find her daughter’s body?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I thought the case was closed.”
“I’m tying up some loose ends. Tell me about Mrs. Brice.”
“Oh, Elizabeth was a wonderful person, a bit serious and a bit sad, actually, like something was missing in her life. She never talked about it, except once she mentioned her father had been murdered when she was only a child, said she had never gone to church again. I remember that. But she was brilliant, and so articulate. We all said
