Call the Devil by His Oldest Name (27 page)

Forty-five

KIMBERLY KHATAR LOOKED up
as two more claimants to Jennifer Aziz stumbled into the security room. She could hardly believe that their nightmare was still expanding. After the strike force of airport guards stopped them just as they were stepping onto the plane, they had been escorted at gunpoint into this room, to give statements to the airport security cops and a tall, bird-like black woman who claimed to be some kind of DA. After another DA from a different jurisdiction took the sputtering Mrs. Hatcher away, a bald man who flashed a FBI badge started asking them where they were going and what they intended to do with the child.

“Just raise her,” Kimberly said, trying to explain the situation and quiet the squalling Jennifer Aziz at the same time. She had just begun to calm the fretful baby when a sour-faced woman from Child Protective Services came in, swooped the child from her arms, and took a seat in the far corner of the room. Later, when the tall black DA brought in a wild-looking woman who tried to grab the baby away from the welfare worker, Bijan demanded an attorney. Now they all sat across from each other, outrage and hostility hanging heavy as cigarette smoke in a backstreet bar. On her side was her husband and Mark Thompson, a local attorney Bijan had contracted through his lawyer in Florida. Facing them was the tall DA, the FBI agent, two airport security guards, and Jennifer's supposed mother, the wild-looking woman who claimed to be a Cherokee Indian called Ruth Moon. Now two more people entered the fray. A snappily uni­formed sheriff who led in a tall, dark-haired man whose blackened eyes and swollen jaw looked as if his head had met up with the business end of a baseball bat. Though the man wore handcuffs and leg irons, he carried himself like a king.

“Who the fuck is that?” Bijan whispered bitterly.

“I don't know, honey,” Kimberly replied. “Let's just wait and see.”

Bijan glared at the newcomers. “This is such a pile of shit. We have papers proving who Jennifer's biological parents were.”

Kimberly watched as the woman who claimed to be Jennifer's mother leaped to her feet and threw her arms around the handcuffed man, clinging to him as if she were surprised to find him still alive. They started talking with each other in muted voices, every so often glancing over at her and Bijan with angry, accusing eyes. Each time, Kimberly felt her face grow hot with an inexplicable shame.

Finally they sat down. A moment later yet another person entered the room—an older man with wire-brush eyebrows and a thick gray mustache. Suddenly the airport cops, the young DA, and even Ruth Moon became inconsequential. Kimberly realized instinctively that this was the person she truly needed to fear; this was the man who could take their Jennifer away. Frightened, she tapped their attorney's shoulder. “Who is that man who just came in?”

“Jim Falkner,” Thompson replied in a whis­per. “Used to be the best prosecutor in the state of Georgia. He retired last year.”

“What's he got to do with Jennifer Aziz?” cried Kimberly.

“I wish I knew,” replied Thompson glumly. Kimberly slumped back in her chair. They had given all the statements they had to give, truthfully answered all the questions asked them. As Mark Thompson gathered his papers and got up to join the on going battle in the middle of the room, there was nothing left for them to do but watch.

“I can't believe this,” Bijan whispered as he leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

Kimberly put her arm around him and tried to comfort him. “Don't worry, honey,” she whispered. “If this doesn't work out we can try again.”

He lifted his head and glared at her with strange, hostile eyes. “That's Jennifer Aziz, Kimberly. I'm her
Baba
. I don't want to try again.”

They sat for hours as everyone tried to figure out who the child belonged to. Mark Thompson would occasionally step over with updates, once happily informing them that he'd convinced the prosecutors that the Khatars had acted unwisely, but without “malice or forethought.”

“That's fine,” said Bijan. “But what about our baby?”

Thompson had no answer for that, so they sat and listened some more. Though Jonathan Walkingstick, the regal-looking man who claimed to be Jennifer's father, had been brought from the Nikwase County jail, they could hear Jim Falkner slowly and calmly explaining his various crimes away, then floating the words “lawsuit against Nikwase County” in the diminutive sheriff's direction. Mrs. Hatcher's colleague Edwina Templeton, whom Falkner was now calling a coconspirator, had been apprehended at the Nashville airport, trying to board a flight to New Orleans.

Please let them be mistaken,
Kimberly prayed, her hands like ice. P
lease let Jennifer Aziz still be ours
.

As more people began coming in and out of the room, a weariness came over Kimberly that extended down into her bones. She put her arm around Bijan again, wishing she could fix it all, wishing that they, too, could accomplish that most fundamental of things, having a child of their own. She leaned against him for a long time, reassured by his smell, the feel of his shirt against her cheek. She'd begun to nod off into a dream about the beach when she felt someone sit down beside her. She opened her eyes to see Mark Thompson.

“I'm afraid I've got some bad news,” he told her softly. “Apparently, Edwina Templeton gave you a forged birth certificate. We can't find any Behbaha Jane McIntosh born in Sullivan County, Tennessee. Nor can we find any John Winston McIntosh enrolled in Vanderbilt Medical School or any drowning victim by the name of Mahvash Ankasa. Both the Georgia and Tennessee Bureaus of Investigation did independent searches of the relevant databases. Both came up with nothing.”

Deep inside, Kimberly felt a door beginning to close.

“However, identifying footprints were never taken for this baby, nor is there a birth certificate. As full-blood Cherokee Indians, the Walkingsticks claim the baby was born at their home, and Cherokee tribal law applies fully to their child.''

“But why doesn't anybody think they're lying?” Bijan demanded.

“They could well be. I just asked for and got a court order to do a DNA test on them. For it to be legally admissible in a custody case, the chain of evidence will have to be maintained. The police will take both the baby and the possible parents to Grady Hospital. They'll use buccal swabs on the inside of their cheeks.”

“So we'll know in a few minutes?'' asked Bijan.

Thompson shook his head wearily. “It'll take at least five days, and that's with Falkner rushing it through.”

“But who's going to take care of Jennifer Aziz?” cried Kimberly. “Isn't she still legally ours?”

“I'm afraid not, Mrs. Khatar. Right now she's a ward of the state of Georgia. If she turns out not to be the natural child of the Walkingsticks, you can reapply to adopt her here.”

“But there are thousands of Georgia couples ahead of us, aren't there?”

Thompson took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid so.”

Kimberly felt as if she were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. Though no DNA tests had been performed, she knew that she would never hold Jennifer Aziz Khatar again.

She closed her eyes, trying to hold back her tears. For an incredible half a day, she'd been a mother. Now she was childless once more.

Mark Thompson continued. “They've taken Myrtle Hatcher to the police station for further questioning. As long as you stay in touch with my office, you two are free to go. So far, Georgia has no case against you.”

“But what about Jennifer Aziz?” asked Bijan.

“Do the Cherokees get to take her home with them?”

“Until the lab reports prove they are her parents, she'll stay in foster care.”

“But she's so little,” Kimberly protested, her tears beginning to flow. “She's just three months old.”

“I'm sorry.” Mark Thompson offered her his handkerchief.

They watched as two airport guards escorted the Walkingsticks out of the room. The case worker who held Jennifer Aziz followed, accompanied by the tall DA and the FBI agent.

“They're going to the hospital now,” explained Thompson. “After they do the swab test, they'll take the baby to a foster home.”

Kimberly stood up, panicked. “Can't we even hold her one last time?”

Mark Thompson shook his head as if embarrassed by his state and its legal code. “I'm afraid not.”

Bijan reached up and pulled her back into her chair, putting his arms around her. She kept her eyes on the people who still stood in the doorway; the two Indians, the attorneys, and the little girl who had once been theirs.

“Goodbye, Jennifer Aziz,” Kimberly whispered. “I know you'll have the most wonderful life.”
And she will,
Kimberly thought, weeping as she lay her head on Bijan's shoulder.
I just wish I could say the same about ours.

Forty-Six

THEY DROVE FOR hours—Logan
humming his bouncy polka while Mary's thoughts churned. She wondered about Gabe in the hos­pital, Ruth now in Atlanta. Had Danika gotten to the airport in time? Had Gabe recovered from his illness? And Jonathan—what had become of him? As she was pondering everything that might have happened to her friends, she noticed that the pavement was growing bumpier, gravel began to pop under their wheels. Abruptly even that sound stopped, and she felt the van slide.
Dirt road,
she thought.
Clay soil. Slick mountain soil. Logan had told her the truth. He was taking her home.

Clumsily the van corkscrewed up what felt like a forest trail. Tree limbs thwacked against the windows as they bounced over rocks and deep ruts in the earth. When she thought they could go no higher, he made a sharp right turn and continued on for another five minutes. Then he braked hard and turned off the engine.

He got out of the driver's seat and slid open the cargo door. As she watched him, she found it hard to believe that this sour-smelling old man had ever danced at a prom or quarterbacked the Hartsville Rebels to a state football championship. By the same token, though he and her mother would have made an unlikely couple, she could imagine her mother going out with him a few times, then politely turning him down thereafter. Logan emitted no light; such a grim plodder would never have captured her mother's heart.

He pulled a small knife from his pocket, cut the tape around her ankles, but left her wrists bound in front of her. “Okay,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “Jump down here.”

She did as he told her, her hips brushing against the sleek little Smith & Wesson he carried in his belt. A damp breeze cooled her face and carried the pine-cedar-earth smell of the Appalachians. Though she had no proof beyond her nose, she knew she was somewhere in North Carolina.

“Come on,” he said, pushing her toward a dark stand of trees. “This way.”

“What about Irene Hannah?” Mary resumed her questioning, again hoping to distract him. “Why her?”

“That moron Wurth needed a judge to kill. I suggested Hannah because she and your mother were such good friends. I figured Martha had probably shown her copies of the letter from that bastard who nailed me for your dad. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if you didn't have that letter now.”

You're absolutely right,
Mary thought, remembering the pages she'd sneaked out of Irene's closet and stashed in her lockbox in Atlanta.

She looked around, wondering if she might scurry around the front of the van. She could probably hide in the woods long before he could get a shot off. But as if reading her mind, he drew his weapon and pointed the stubby barrel of the gun at her.

“Over there.” He nodded toward a narrow footpath that led up the mountain “And for once, Mary, just cooperate. I don't want to have put a bullet in that pretty brain.”

You and me both, you asshole,
she thought.

He pushed her up a steep trail, full of switchbacks, through trees that had recently shed their leaves. Above her she could see stars twinkling in the sky, below her nothing but blackness. They were high and climbing higher.

By the time sweat began to dampen the back of her sweater, they reached the top of the mountain. Logan had to stop, to catch his breath.

She looked over her shoulder to find him bent double and gasping for breath. A hope kindled that he might be having a heart attack, but in a moment his wheezing stopped.

“Over to the right,” he gasped, his voice sounding like air escaping from a leaky tire.

They walked into a small meadow, bright in the moonlight. Fighting the muzziness she still felt from the chloroform, she struggled hard to stay alert.

He steered her through more pine trees, then the terrain began to slope downward. They came to a kind of clearing between the rocky face of a mountain and a mountain stream that was only a glistening ribbon in the darkness.

“Where are we?”

“Madison County, North Carolina.” He nodded at a dark gap in the rock that seemed to crack the mountain face in two. “After Russell Cave I ran north, mostly at night, mostly in the shadow of the Appalachian Trail. I got lost east of Hot Springs, but I also got lucky. Found me quite a little hidey-hole up here, and put it to good use, too.”

“What do you mean?''

“I found me a cave with a hole so deep, I've never heard a rock hit the bottom. I pushed poor old Clootie Duncan down there some months ago. In just a few minutes, you're going to join him.”

Mary's heart began to pound like a drum.

Logan had hit upon the one fear neither Xanax nor Dr. Bittner had been able to help her overcome—her utter terror of tight spaces and total darkness. She would take a slug in her brain any day before she would die that way. Her mind raced, desperate for a plan. As she looked up to watch high clouds scudding across the moon, she had an idea. She turned to Logan. “Can I go to water in that creek first?”

He frowned. “Go to water?”

“Cherokees go to water,” she said. “Before battle, before we marry, before we die.”

“Your mother didn't.”

“You didn't give her much of a chance, did you?”

A curious look of sadness passed over his face, then he nodded. “Go ahead. But I'll be pointing this at you the whole time. Try anything funny and I promise you'll die in a lot of pain.”

With Logan on her heels, she walked toward the creek. They climbed down several layers of shale-like rock until they both stood on the bank. Ten feet wide, the dark water curled around smooth boulders, its voice a low rumble in the night.

She knelt and plunged her face into the stream trying hard to keep her balance with her wrists bound. The water was so cold, it made her skin burn. She held her breath and prayed for some way to kill Logan. She considered wrenching his pistol away, creasing his head with another rock, then she remembered what Czarnowski, her boxing coach, always told her.
Find the sweet spot and nail it!
She thought about that, then, when she could hold her breath no longer, she raised up, dripping and cold.

“Okay,” Logan's voice came from behind her. “I think you've washed all your sins away.”

She shook the water from her face and rose to her feet, stepping up close to him.

“I'm not going in any cave, Logan,” she said calmly, staring into his ravaged face. “You're going to have to kill me here, and you're going to have to look me in the eye while you do it.”

He shrugged. “Not a problem.”

He raised his pistol, aiming it directly into her face. Just as his finger eased over the trigger, she lunged forward. She felt the bones of her left hand pop as she slammed both her fists into his jaw. The force of the blow thrust her sideways, but it took him totally by surprise. With rubbery legs, he collapsed on the ground, groaning as the wind whooshed out of him. She heard the gun clattering across the shale, rattling like bones in the night. Swiftly she lifted her right foot to punt his balls into the next county, when he rolled sideways and tangled his feet up with hers. She fell, her tailbone smacking hard against the rocky ground.

“You little bitch!” he gasped, scrambling for the gun.

She picked up a piece of shale and threw herself on top of him, smashing the rock into his skull. He roared with pain, then rolled toward the creek, desperate to shake her off. She scrambled up and started kicking. Kidneys, eyes, scrotum, whatever she could connect with. He rolled toward the water like a hewn log. In the darkness she heard him curse. Gasping for breath, she looked for the gun, but it was impossible to see. Now struggling to his feet, in the shadows he looked like some fat slug trying to crawl through salt.

With the bloody rock in both hands she flung herself at him again. This time he fell back into the water, thrashing and churning as he tried to regain his footing. She attached herself to him like a barnacle, holding him under the frigid water despite his blows to her stomach and breasts. “Don't,” he sputtered, bobbing to the surface, desperate for air. “I can't—”

“Is that what my mother said?” cried Mary. “Or was it my dad?”

“Swim—” he gurgled.

“I didn't know that, Logan. But then, I'm as dumb a fuck as my dad!” With those words she crashed the rock into his temple. He sank again; she pummeled him twice more, the blows making sick, wet whacks against his head.

She lost her grip on him, then he surfaced a few feet downstream, the current now carrying him along. Blood gushed down his face and his one good eye held the wide, shocked stare of death as he made a grab for the last boulder that would save him. Though she knew she was pushing the limits of her own strength, she awkwardly splashed forward. She brought the rock down again and again, smashing his face, his hands, trying to break his hold on anything that kept him breathing air instead of water.

“No!” he pleaded, choking and coughing.

“Don't like dying, huh?” She flailed at him like something gone mad. “Neither did Irene. Neither did Jack Bennefield. Neither did Martha Crow!”

He sank beneath the water for a moment, then rose again, blood covering his face, his fingers no longer able to find purchase on the boulder. “But she was mine!” he cried. “I loved her!”

For a second Mary almost pitied him, this singular monster for whom love had grown into a virulent cancer. Then she remembered that all the sorrows of her life had sprung from his heart, his hands, his sick brain. “But she never loved you back, Logan,” she told him.

She never knew whether he heard her or not. His eyes rolled back in his head, his hands slid off the boulder, and he sank beneath the water. She listened for the sound of anyone thrashing farther downstream, but all she heard was the endless roar of the water on its millennia-long journey from the mountains to the sea.

Chest heaving, she hoisted herself upon the boulder. She sat, shivering, still gripping the bloody rock, then she began to cry great, gulping sobs. It was finished. Finally, and completely. She'd killed the man who'd killed her mother and ended a malevolent love that had begun back when young men brought their dates fat corsages and combed their hair like Paul McCartney. A long time by human standards, but not long at all for the stars. She looked up into the sky and found Jonathan's beloved Orion, Betelgeuse beaming centuries-old light down from the hunter's shoulder. Finally she'd found the answer to the great question of her life. For the first time ever she finally knew the
why
.