Divine Justice

'I saw you crying over Debby's grave. You want to tell me about that?'

Danny's head snapped up. 'Nothing to tell. I was sorry she was dead. And I knew Willie was all busted up about it.'

'You know who killed her, don't you?'

'If I did I would've told Tyree, wouldn't I?'

'Would you?'

'I'm tired, man. Going to sleep.'

'You sure you don't want to tell me?'

'Sure as I'm lying here doing nothing.'

Stone returned to his room but did not get back in the bed. Something was gnawing at him. Something he'd seen, heard or maybe both. Something that just did not add up.

He absently pulled out Danny's phone. He went through the contact list again, to see if anyone on there would provide him with a clue and explain why Danny refused to tell him what had happened. Yet nothing stuck out.

He continued pressing buttons, pushing the phone's memory into advanced fields of content. Then he stopped as the screen came up with only one name and phone number on it. Tyree. Yet the phone number next to the name was not the one Stone knew for the lawman. He punched it in. A few rings later a voice answered.

'Danny?' the man said.

Stone immediately clicked off. It was Tyree. He'd recognized the voice. Why would Danny have the man's name and a different phone number hidden in his phone's memory? And if this number was to be a secret, why not just memorize it? Why input it where someone like Stone could find it? He looked back at the regular contact list. Even on here he saw the numbers for Abby's house, the restaurant, numbers Danny should have easily remembered. On impulse he called Abby and told her about his conversation with Danny, though he didn't tell her about finding Tyree's number on her son's phone.

'Abby, does Danny have trouble remembering numbers?'

'Ever since high school. Doctors said it was from the concussions he got playing ball. I told him to stop playing but he loved it too much. Killed him when his knee wouldn't let him play for Tech. Why do you want to know?'

'Just sitting here with too much time on my hands. Thanks.'

He clicked off and then heard a rumbling sound coming from down the hall and glanced over in time to see an orderly passing by with a load of boxes. That ordinary sight produced an extraordinary reaction in Stone.

It came together in a neat little box all its own.

Sixty, not eighty boxes. Black dirt instead of the normal red clay. And miners who left town to get their methadone pop long before the crack of dawn.

It seemed like a spontaneous revelation, but it really wasn't, Stone knew. This stuff had been swirling around in his subconscious for a long time now. And it had finally percolated to the surface.

He grabbed his bag from the closet and quickly changed into clean clothes.

'Come on, let it be there,' he said to himself as he searched the bag some more. He remembered putting it in there.

His hands finally closed around the gun Abby had loaned him. He stuffed it in his waistband and covered the bulge with his shirt. A moment later he peered out the door. When the nurses' station was empty he bolted down the hall. When the nurses came that night to give him his meds they would find his room vacant.

He had no way of knowing that they would find the very same thing in Danny's room. An hour earlier, the young man had juked his guard and made his escape.

CHAPTER 57

KNOX ROLLED INTO DIVINE not really knowing what to expect. It was late and it was dark and hardly a light burned on the town's main street. He drove down the road looking to the left and right, although he doubted he'd see John Carr loitering on the corner awaiting his arrival. He passed a restaurant named Rita's. There was a courthouse and jail, both seemingly deserted at this hour. Knox contemplated whether to wake up the local constabulary to help him in his quest, but he'd found the other town cops to be useless at best. He would try a different approach this time.

He turned off the main drag and headed east, at least according to his vehicle's compass. Knox's own internal direction monitor had long since given up trying to keep track of his heading after meandering through the boxy Appalachians all this time.

He slowed the truck when he saw what looked to be the remains of a trailer home. At first he thought it must have been a tornado passing through that had destroyed the place, but the trees and earth around it had not been disturbed by a twister's route. He stopped the truck, got out and inspected the site.

The blackened and jagged remains and the diameter of the debris field told him that an explosion of some kind was the cause. That was a little unusual. Of course it didn't mean that John Carr was in the vicinity, but it was at least something out of the ordinary.

He did a circle of the downtown area and drove back through. That's when he spotted the little rooming house. He parked down the street from the entrance and did a slow walk up, keeping his gaze alert for any sign of Carr.

He knocked on the door and kept tapping for another five minutes until he heard the steady if unhurried footfalls heading his way.

The door opened and the little old man with tufts of white hair standing on the other side of the threshold looked up crossly at him. 'Do you know what time it is, young man?'

Knox hadn't been called a young man in at least twenty years. He hid his smile and said, 'I apologize. But I got in a lot later than I thought I would.'

'You mean you were heading to Divine?' the old man said incredulously.

'Is there a law against that?' Knox said, now smiling broadly and, he hoped, disarmingly.

'What do you want?' the man said gruffly.

So much for disarming. 'Right now, a place to sleep, Mr…?'

'Just call me Bernie. Sorry, but I'm all booked up.'

Knox looked over his shoulder. 'This the high season in Divine?'

'I've only got two rooms to let.'

'I see. Thing is, I was supposed to meet a buddy of mine up here. Maybe you've seen him, tall, lean guy around sixty with close-cropped white hair.'

'Oh, you mean Ben? He's got one of the rooms, but he's not there right now.'

'Any idea where he is?'

'Over at the hospital?'

'What's he doing there? Did he get hurt?'

'Almost got his butt blown up. Killed Bob and Willie Coombs, and your buddy came real close to meeting his maker.'

Knox kept his voice calm and level. 'So where is this hospital? I want to go see if he's okay.'

'Oh, he's okay. We're all glad of that. Ben's a real hero.'

'How's that?'

'Helped a couple of our own. Danny Riker when he got in trouble on the train. And Willie Coombs when he almost died on drugs. Ben saved ' em both. Right good fellow. And then Danny got attacked here in town. And Ben saved him again. Beat up three guys, or so I heard.'

'Wow, that sounds like Ben all right. He was always in the middle of all the action. I'll give him your best when I see him at the hospital. And where was that again?'

Bernie told him. 'But visiting hours are long over.'

'I'll try to talk my way in. But if I can't, anybody else around here that can help me?'

'You can try Abby Riker out at her place, Midsummer's Farm.' Bernie gave him directions. 'From what I heard she and Ben got real tight.'