Call the Devil by His Oldest Name (12 page)

Sixteen

THE BLOODHOUNDS FOUND nothing.
Though they sniffed along the ground for the better part of two hours, all the scents led them in a large circle around the last place Lily had been seen—Ruth's camper.

“That's because everybody carried her everywhere,” said one of the trackers as he loaded his weary dog back in his pickup truck. “If she'd been old enough to walk, she would have laid her own scent down. Moe could've followed that.” He looked at Ruth with mournful eyes that mirrored those of his canine friend. “I'm mighty sorry, ma'am.”

“Thank you.” Ruth shook his hand and forced a smile. “Thank you for trying.”

The trackers drove off, just as the radio in Dula's squad car began to squawk. Dula scurried over to catch the call. A static-filled dispatch crackled through the campsite. Finally Dula signed off and walked toward them like a man with a pipe bomb up his ass.

“Okay, folks. Here's the deal. Quite a scrap broke out down by the condo site. John Black Fox's boys set a couple of bulldozers on fire and the construction workers are retaliating by tearing up the campground. Two men were assaulted, and I just got word that the governor has officially expressed a lack of confidence in our local authorities. He's sending in the National Guard to keep order. It might be better for everyone involved, Mrs. Walkingstick, if you just went home.”

“Go home?” cried Ruth. “What about Lily?”

“Your husband has your child, Mrs. Walking­ stick. Go home and wait for him. He'll cool off and come back.”

“Why can't you understand?” Ruth shook her head wildly. “Jonathan would not do that. Joe Little Bear stole Lily! You've got to find her! I'm an American citizen. It's my right to demand that—”

“Okay, okay.” Dula held up one hand, as if a crazed woman was one problem more than he could tolerate. “Go down to my office in town. You can set up your camper in my parking lot, at least until your baby shows up. Otherwise, I can't assure your safety. Those construction boys are mad as hell and they're lookin' to crack some heads.”

“But you'll keep searching for her?” Ruth asked frantically.

“As long as I can, Mrs. Walkingstick.”

Mary helped Ruth and Clarinda pack up the camper, then she followed them, along with Gabe Benge, down to Sheriff Dula's office in Tremont. They parked at the back of the lot, un­derneath some tulip trees whose yellow leaves were big as dinner plates. As Mary got out of her Miata, Clarinda was already striding toward Gabe Benge's van, her spike heels clicking across the pavement. Ruth paced around Jonathan's truck in a tight circle, as if motion of any kind was preferable to standing still.

Mary went over and put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, Ruth. Let's go sit down.” They joined Clarinda inside Benge's van. They all crowded around the tiny dinette, their knees bumping.

“When did you last call about Jonathan?” Mary asked Ruth.

“I called Aunt Little Tom, the state troopers, the tribal cops, and the Forest Service about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Anybody seen him?”

“Not a soul.” Fighting back tears, Ruth fin­gered the buttons on the cell phone. “They promised to send him here, though, if they do. Aunt Little Tom said she would call all the ladies in her canasta club and organize a prayer circle.”

“Ruth, is there anybody else you can think of who might have any reason at all to take Lily?” Mary asked.

“Nobody.” As she gripped Mary's hand, tears rolled down Ruth's cheeks. “Isn't there anything else we can do? If I have to sit here and make cell phone calls all day, I'll go crazy.”

Mary knew she was right. They needed jobs.

Busy fingers kept worried minds from wandering into territories that were simply too terrible to consider. Her gaze fell on the photocopied sketch of Joe Little Bear that was lying on top of Benge's tiny refrigerator. She smiled. She'd just thought of something they could all do.

Half an hour later, Benge returned to the camper with thirty more copies of the Joe Little Bear sketch. Mary, Gabe, and Ruth divided them up and set out in three different directions, leaving Clarinda in the van with instructions to call Little Jump Off every fifteen minutes. Ruth and Benge headed to the big Baptist church on the edge of the square, figuring that most of this little town would be there on Sunday morning. Mary covered the religious recalcitrants, electing to go from house to house along Mountain View Drive. Most of Tremont was indeed in church, but she did get a few responses—two young mothers home with sick children, who clutched them tighter when she showed them her picture; a retired Army colonel who swore he'd shoot Joe Little Bear on sight, no questions asked.

“No, sir,” Mary protested, terrified that this man might, indeed, kill some innocent stranger. “If you see this man, just call nine-one-one. Please.”

Assured of the colonel's cooperation, she worked her way down the rest of the street, then hurried back to Dula's office. On the way she met Benge, headed back from the other end of town.

“I thought you and Ruth were at the Baptist church,” she said as he fell into step beside her. “We split up. Ruth took the Baptists. I canvassed the Methodists at the other end of town.”

“Any luck?”

He shook his head. “People are pretty upset about us coming to protest. I got the feeling no one wants to have anything more to do with any Native American problems.”

Traffic was heavy for Sunday morning in a small mountain town; Indians seemed intent on reaching the SOB rally, tourists seemed equally intent on getting away from the demonstrations. Benge stopped at a little caf
é
called the Green Trout Grill. “Let's go in here. We can show them our sketch and maybe get a cup of coffee.”

The place was empty, except for a teenage boy who slumped behind the cash register, playing a game on the restaurant's computer. Reluctantly he looked up from the screen. “Table or booth?”

“Booth,” said Gabe.

He handed them menus. “Order anything. We're serving both breakfast and lunch.”

“Bring us two cups of coffee now, please,” Gabe told him. “And keep it coming.”

They sat at a booth beneath the front window. Once the boy brought them mugs of hot coffee, they ordered ham sandwiches, two for here, two more to go. The boy shuffled back to the kitchen; they sat in exhausted silence, watching the line of campers and cars that crawled past the window.

The coffee was hot and strong and reminded Mary of the stuff Jim Falkner used to brew in his office, when they worked late and needed an extra jolt of caffeine to keep going. She smiled at the memory; she loved and sorely missed her old boss. The thought of him brought back the office; the thought of the office brought back Dwayne Pugh. In less than twenty-four hours, his trial would resume. Although she felt reasonably confident about wrangling with Virginia Kwan again, she knew that unless either Lily or Jonathan turned up soon, she was going to have to stay here. She couldn't leave Ruth alone, in the care of her nitwit cousin and a sheriff who didn't seem at all convinced Lily had been abducted. She would give it a couple more hours, then she'd call Danika and instruct her to ask for a continuance. Mott would be pissed beyond all reason, but who cared? Lily Walkingstick was missing. Mary opened her purse and pulled out her phone to get Danika up to speed when she noticed that the e-mail icon was blinking. Odd, she thought. She'd deleted all her work e-mail yesterday afternoon, and no one ever sent anything from Deckard on Sunday mornings.

Must be Danika, she decided as she punched the READ option. Already working at the office. But when she saw the message on the little screen, her heart turned to ice.

“Good God,” she whispered. “I've got an e-mail.”

Benge gave her an odd glance. “So?”

She turned the phone so he could see it. “It's a picture of Lily Walkingstick!”

Seventeen

“WHAT THE HELL?” Benge
stared at the tiny screen, uncomprehending.

She fumbled with the phone, uncertain about all its features. She'd never received a picture on the thing before, and though the tiny image looked out of focus and bizarre, she knew it was definitely Lily Walkingstick.

“Where is she?”

“I can't tell.” Why hadn't she paid more attention when Hobson handed these phones out? “The screen's so small, it's hard to see the details—”

Just then the boy sauntered back to the table with their sandwiches. “Y'all want any dessert or anything?” he asked, eager to slap their ticket on the table and return to his computer.

“Are you hooked up to the Net over there?” Benge asked him.

“America Online.”

“You got a printer attached?”

The boy shrugged. “An old one. Prints about one page an hour.”

Benge pulled out his wallet and handed the boy a twenty-dollar bill. “Ten of that is for lunch. The rest is yours if you can get us online and give us ten minutes of time.”

The kid's pudgy face lit up. “Sure. Come on over.”

Behind the counter, he shut down a game called “Saracen Assassin” and logged on. As the pleasant male voice bid them welcome, the boy relinquished his chair. Gabe Benge held it out for Mary.

“Go to your server at work,” he instructed her. “Download the image from there. The graphics might be better.”

Mary navigated quickly to the Deckard County server, typing her password in at the prompt. Instantly a larger version of her e-mail filled the screen. The computer warned her not to open the attached file unless she knew who sent it, but she ignored the warning. If she crashed this kid's computer, she'd see that he got it fixed.

Drumming her fingers on the counter, she waited. A blurred image finally appeared on the screen. As she realized what it was, she felt as if she'd been flash-frozen from the inside out.

A picture of Lily Walkingstick swam into focus on the larger screen. But not the happy, healthy Lily she'd held in her arms six weeks ago. This Lily looked as if she'd been left out for wolves. She lay naked on her back, crying, tears rolling from tightly closed eyes. Her little hands were balled into fists and her feet looked blurred, as if she were trying to kick her kidnap­per away even as the photo was snapped. She lay behind some kind of iron fence at the base of a pile of rocks. What Mary's eyes could not get past were the words that blazed across the bottom of the picture.
Mary, we need you. Jonathan.

“Holy shit!” Gabe Benge leaned so close, she could feel his breath on the top of her head. “That's Nancy Ward's grave!”

“Nancy who?”

“Nancy Ward. You know, Chief Attakullakulla's niece. The
ghighau
.”

Ghighau
. Most Honored Woman, Mary trans­lated, her Cherokee coming back with painful slowness as she tried to recall her history. Nancy Ward had been a Cherokee woman who'd counseled peace with the whites, way back in the eighteenth century, when North Carolina still belonged to George III. But what had that to do with Lily? And who had sent this picture to her?

“Where is this grave?” she asked Benge urgently.

“North of Chattanooga. I take my undergraduate classes to dig along the river there. It's mostly dug out, but it's a great place to learn technique.”

Suddenly he wheeled her chair around, his eyes snapping with a dark fire. “Look, if the sheriff guessed right about you and Walkingstick, then you need to come clean right now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She met his hard look with one of her own.

“I watched you last night. You defended Jonathan Walkingstick like someone who was much more than a friend.”

“At one time we were more than friends, Mr. Benge. That is no longer the case.”

“Then why is this e-mail addressed to you?”

“I don't know. All I can tell you is that Jonathan Walkingstick would not kidnap his own child. Nor would I be involved with any man who could.”

For an eternity Benge's eyes bored into hers, then he nodded. “Good,” he said. “I'm glad to hear that.”

“I'm printing two copies of this.” She turned back to the computer. “One for Ruth and one for Dula. The Feds can track these address lines and figure out where this was sent from.”

Gabe gave the boy five more bucks for two prints of the photo, then they left the caf
é
, only to find that in the course of a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, the Tennessee National Guard had invaded the town. Soldiers in combat gear patrolled the streets, while hulking troop carriers squatted next to the curbs. As they picked their way through the tangled traffic, Mary felt as if she'd been dropped by mistake into someone else's nightmare. She was certain Jonathan would never kidnap Lily, however furious he might be with Ruth. But who else could have sent her that message with his name at the bottom? Who else could both link her with Lily and Jonathan and access her through the Deckard County server?

And then, as she and Gabe Benge crossed Main Street, she realized exactly who could. Stump Logan. Logan knew her, he knew Jonathan, and as a former sheriff, he knew how to reach her through the back door, so to speak. Logan could have found out about Lily easily. No doubt he still had pals in Pisgah County who told him everything that was going on.

Stop it
, she scolded herself.
Logan is dead. The Atlanta cops say so, the FBI says so, Dr. Bittner says so. It can't be Stump Logan. It must be Dwayne Pugh.

“I think I know who might have done this,” she said, as if giving voice to the words might increase their veracity.

Gabe Benge scrambled to avoid a guardsman lugging a huge bottle of water. “Who?”

“Dwayne Pugh. A man I'm currently prosecuting for child pornography.”

“Where is he?”

“He's been locked up in the Deckard County jail for months. We're in the middle of trial right now.”

Benge frowned. “If Pugh's locked up in an Atlanta jail, how could he have stolen Ruth's baby?”

“He's got brains and money and friends. The kiddie pornographers are like a brotherhood of roaches.''

“Okay. Say this Pugh did this. What do we do?”

“Here.” Mary handed one of the prints to him. “Take this over to Dula. Tell him he needs to get the Feds tracing this. I'll give this one to Ruth. As hard as this is to look at, at least she can see that Lily's still alive.”

They pushed through the crowded sidewalk. When they reached the sheriff's parking lot, Gabe headed into his office while Mary hurried to the van. She looked in the door to find Clarinda sitting cross-legged on the sofa, filing her nails, a fashion magazine open on her lap.

Mary asked her, “Have you gotten in touch with Jonathan yet?”

“Nope.”

“Where's Ruth?”

“Putting up posters.” Clarinda looked up from her nails as if Mary had interrupted something vital to her existence. “Did you find out anything?”

“A little,” Mary replied. “I really need to talk to Ruth.”

“Here I am,” came a voice over her shoulder. Mary turned. Ruth hurried toward her, clutching her last copy of Puckett's drawing and a roll of masking tape. “I've been putting these up all over town. Has something happened?”

“Kind of. Someone sent me this through my office e-mail.”

“Oh, my God!” Ruth cried. “It's Lily!” She covered her face with the picture, as if needing to inhale the image, then drew back and studied it intently. “But where is she?” she asked, just be­ ginning to fully comprehend the horror of the image. “And why did they take off all her clothes?”

“And what does
‘Mary, we need you, Jonathan
' mean?” Clarinda's query dripped with suspicion.

Mary put a hand on Ruth's arm. “Honey, I'm in the middle of prosecuting a child pornogra­pher named Pugh. He's wealthy and clever and mean.” She winced as she saw the new hope in Ruth's face begin to flicker and die. “I think Pugh could have had Lily kidnapped and some­ how have put me together with Jonathan.”

“Oh, God. My poor little girl!”

“Ruth, as awful as this is, try to see the positive side of it.”

“Like what?” huffed Clarinda. “That her kid's been snatched by some perv who takes pictures of her naked? That doesn't sound so positive to me.”

“Lily's alive.” Mary ignored Clarinda and tried to connect with Ruth's stricken eyes. “She's not lying dead somewhere. I've got some leverage here, now. Because of this, I can get the Atlanta cops on board.”

Gabe Benge walked up. Reading his tight lipped frown, she asked, “You couldn't find Dula, could you?”

“The National Guard has commandeered his office. I left a message with one of his deputies to tell him to come see Mrs. Walkingstick immediately.” He brushed past the three women and stepped into the van. A few moments later he came back out, a thick red book in his hand. He handed it to Mary. “Doesn't this photo look a lot like where the baby is lying?”

The women clustered around him. The grave in the e-mailed photo did look startlingly similar to the one on the printed page. A pyramid of rounded stones, surrounded by an iron picket fence. In the middle of the stones in Gabe's photo was a plaque erected by the DAR, memorializing the site of Nancy Ward's grave.

Ruth looked at Gabe. “Is this
the
Nancy Ward grave?”

He nodded. “It's just north of Chattanooga.”

“Then let's go!” she cried. “Chattanooga isn't far—”

“Hang on Ruth, I'm not sure that's the best thing to do.”

“Why not? If Lily's there…”

“Ruth, we don't know when this picture was taken. Lily's probably not there anymore. And if you leave Dula's jurisdiction now, he'll be even more certain this kidnapping is some kind of do­mestic squabble between you and Jonathan and he'll drop the search like yesterday's news. As long as you stay in his county, he's got an open case on the books. He'll have to work it.”

“So we just have to sit here?” Clarinda stuck out her lower lip.

“No,” said Mary. “Go park yourselves in the Sheriff's office. Convince Dula that Jonathan had nothing to do with this. If you don't get to talk to him within the next hour, call the FBI yourself.”

“I can do that?” asked Ruth.

“Yes, you can. The Feds may opt not to get involved at this time, but at least you will have lodged a formal complaint.”

“What are you going to do?” demanded Clarinda suspiciously.

“First I'm going to call Atlanta, then I'm going to go pay my respects to Nancy Ward, the Most Honored Woman of the Cherokees.”