Mary saw Didi's vacant stare. 'What're you thinking?'
'About Edward's book,' Didi lied. At Mary's sarcastic insistence Edward had told her what he was writing. 'I'm not sure Jack would like that.'
'He'd want Edward executed,' Mary said. 'No pity for traitors. That's what he used to tell me.'
Didi looked at the child in Mary's arms. An innocent, she thought. It was wrong for him to be there. Mary's arms were folded around him as if he were cradled by vipers. 'You said… you wanted to give Jack the baby.'
'I wanted to give him a gift. He always wanted a son. That's what I was carrying for him the night I got hurt.' Was it true or not? She couldn't remember exactly.
'So you're going underground again?' Click, click, click: the mental Rubik's Cube at work.
'Tomorrow, after I take care of Edward. Then I'm heading for Canada. Me and Drummer.'
She's going to kill Edward, Didi realized. And how long would it be before she had another fit and maimed or killed the baby? Click, click: more pieces, turning. Maybe Edward deserved to die. But he was a brother in arms, and didn't that count for something? The baby certainly did not deserve the fate ahead of him. Click, click. Didi stared at her earth-mother hands, and realized more human clay lay at her mercy. 'Mary?' she said softly.
'What?'
'I -' She paused. The secret thing had been a secret so long, it was reluctant to be born. But two lives – Edward's and the infant's – hung on her decision. 'I… think I might… know where Jack is,' she said.
Mary sat without moving, her mouth partway open.
'I'm not sure. But I think Jack may be in California.'
No response from Mary.
'Northern California,' Didi continued. 'A town named Freestone. It's about fifty miles north of San Francisco.'
Mary moved: a shiver of excitement, as if all the blood had suddenly rushed back into her body. 'That's near the house,' she said. Her voice was tight and strained. 'The Thunder House.'
Didi had never been to the Thunder House, but she knew about it from the other Storm Fronters. The Thunder House was located above San Francisco, hidden somewhere in the woods that rimmed Drakes Bay. It was the birthplace of the Storm Front, where the first members had signed their names in blood on the pact of loyalty and dedication to the cause. Didi understood it had been a hunting lodge abandoned thirty or more years earlier, and its name came from the continual thunder of the waves on the jagged rocks of Drakes Bay. The Thunder House had been the Storm Front's first headquarters, their 'think tank' from which all the West Coast terrorist missions had originated.
'Freestone,' Mary repeated. 'Freestone.' Her eyes had lit up like spirit lamps. 'Why do you think he's there?'
'I'm a member of the Sierra Club. Five years ago there was a story in the newsletter about a group of people who were suing the town of Freestone for dumping garbage near a bird sanctuary. There was a picture of them in the council meeting. I think one of those people might have been Jack Gardiner.'
'You couldn't tell for sure?'
'No. Just the side of his face was in the picture. But I cut it out and kept it.' She leaned forward. 'Mary, I remember faces. My hands do, at least. Come to Ann Arbor and look at what I've done, and you tell me if it's him or not.'
Mary was silent again, and Didi could see the wheels going around in her head.
'Don't kill Edward,' Didi said. 'Bring him with you. He'll want to find Jack, too, for his book. If Jack is in Freestone, you can take both Edward and the baby to him, and he can decide whether Edward should be executed or not.' Buying time for Edward, she thought. And time for herself, to figure out how to get the child away from Mary.
'California. The land of milk and honey,' Mary said. She nodded, her smile beatific. 'Yes. That's where Jack would go.' She hugged Drummer, waking the baby with a start. 'Oh, sweet Drummer! My sweet baby!' Her voice rose on a giddy note. 'We're going to find Jack! Going to find Jack and he'll love us both forever, yes he will!'
'My plane leaves at one-thirty,' Didi told her. 'I'll go on ahead. You and Edward can follow me.'
'Yes. Follow you. That's what we'll do.' Mary beamed like a schoolgirl, and the sight ripped at Didi's heart. Drummer began to cry. 'He's happy, too!' Mary said. 'Hear him?'
Didi couldn't bear to look at Mary's face anymore. There was something of death in it, something brutal and frightening in its maniacal joy. Was this the fruit of what we fought for? Didi asked herself. Not freedom from oppression, but madness in the night? 'I'd better get back to my hotel,' she said, and stood up from the sofa bed. 'I'll leave you my phone number. When you get to Ann Arbor, call me and I'll give you directions to my house.' She wrote the number on a piece of Cameo Motor Lodge stationery, and Mary tucked it into her shoulder bag along with Pampers, formula, and her Magnum pistol. At the door, Didi paused. The flurries had ceased, the air still and heavy with cold. Didi forced herself to look into the big woman's steely eyes. 'You won't hurt the baby, will you?'
'Hurt Drummer?' She hugged him, and he made a little aggravated squalling sound at being so rudely awakened. 'I wouldn't hurt Jack's child, not for anything in this world!'
'And you'll let Jack decide about Edward?'
'Didi,' Mary said, 'you worry too much. But that's part of why I love you.' She kissed Didi's cheek, and Didi flinched as the hot mouth sealed against her flesh and then drew away. 'You be careful,' Mary instructed.
'You, too.' Didi glanced at the infant again – the innocent in the arms of the damned – and she turned away and walked across the parking lot to her car.
Mary watched until Didi left, and then she closed the door. Behind it, she danced around the room with her baby, while God sang 'Light My Fire' in her mind.
It was near the dawning of a brand-new day.
4: Crossroads
'Jesus,' Bedelia Morse said as she stood looking at her wrecked kitchen.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows. The house was cold, and Didi saw the missing pane of glass in the back door. Dead leaves were scattered about, her antique kitchen table overthrown and two legs splintered. Someone had broken in, obviously, but the only sign of ransacking was in this room. Still, she hadn't checked the pottery workshop yet. She looked out a window, could see the padlock and chain were secure. She didn't have much of value; her stereo was still in the front room, and so was her little portable TV. She had no jewelry to speak of, just what she fashioned on the wheel. What, then, had the intruder been after?
Terror gripped her. She walked through a short hallway into her bedroom, where her unopened suitcase lay on the bed, and she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. It was full of old belts, socks, and a couple of pairs of well-worn bell-bottom bluejeans. Her sigh of relief was explosive. Beneath the jeans was a photo album. Didi opened it. Inside were old, yellowed newspaper stories and grainy photographs, protected by cellophane. Storm Front Shootout in N.J., said one of the headlines. FBI Hunting Escaped Terrorists, another trumpeted. Storm Fronter Killed in Attica Riots, a third headline said. There were pictures of all the Storm Front members: old photographs, snapped when they were young. The picture of herself showed her beautiful and lithe, waving at the camera from astride a horse. It had been taken by her father when she was sixteen. The picture of Mary Terrell, standing tall and blond and lovely in the summer sunlight, hurt her eyes to look at, because she now knew the reality.
Didi turned carefully to the back of the album. The last few stories had to do with Mary's kidnapping of David Clayborne. But before them was the article and black-and-white picture she'd clipped from the Sierra Club's newsletter five years earlier. Citizen Group Saves Bird Sanctuary, said the headline. The article was five paragraphs long, and the picture showed a woman standing at a podium before a council meeting. Behind her were seated several other people. One of them was a man whose head was turned to the right, as if talking to the woman beside him. Or avoiding the camera, Didi had thought when she'd first seen it. The lens had captured a portion of his profile – hairline, forehead, and nose. The names of the 'Freestone Six,' as they called themselves, were Jonelle Collins, Dean Walker, Karen Ott, Nick Hudley, and Keith and Sandy Cavanaugh. All of Freestone, California, the article said.
Didi had always had an eye for faces: the curve of a nose, the width of an eyebrow, the way hair fell across a forehead. It was detail that made up a face. Attention to detail was one of her strengths.
