Days of Reckoning (7 page)

With nothing more to do at the scene, Miranda left the store and went to her car. If she was lucky, she might be able to find Damon at Beaumont’s house.

#

Henry Beaumont owned a small farm north of Sparta. Before he died, he’d been a man who valued his privacy. Bushes masked the access road to his home, and twenty yards up that road was a gate, normally kept locked. A fence surrounded his property, electrified of course, ostensibly to keep the deer away from his few plantings. Miranda approached the property with her lights out and parked well out of sight from the main road. She noted with satisfaction that the lock on the gate hung open and the indicators on the fence showed it had been deactivated. Miranda moved forward in a crouch until she reached Beaumont’s house, where she knelt at one of the corners.

The house looked to be deserted. She strained her ears, searching for the slightest sound that didn’t fit. She moved along one of the walls of the house, ducking beneath the windows. She could see a trailer and a shed sitting on the back property, but nothing that seemed out of place. No doors or windows were forced open, but if Damon had the keys to the place, he wouldn’t have needed to resort to such measures anyway.
So now what
?

As she moved along the back of the house, Miranda finally heard the sound she’d been waiting for: a muffled “whump” coupled with a metallic clatter. But it didn’t come from the house or the other structures.
What the hell…?

A beam of light split the darkness in the middle of the yard, and Miranda flattened herself against the ground. She watched a figure rise from the earth, like some resurrected corpse coming out of a grave. She stared, imagining for a wild moment that some zombie was emerging and coming for her brains.

“Goddammit!”

A ridiculous sense of relief washed over Miranda. According to the movies, zombies didn’t talk, and this thing swore very clearly in the voice of Damon Shearer.

The next sound was more solid: something heavy hitting the ground. Damon knelt and doubled over, catching his breath in loud gasps. He swore again and disappeared back into the earth.

Miranda moved forward, recognizing the grave from her imagination as the underground shelter it actually was. Despite the hills of the region, tornadoes still blew through, and many farmers built such shelters to cope with the threat. She found that the door was open and lying flat against the ground. She could see a light on within, and shadows flickering below. When Damon next emerged, she was ready for him.

#

Damon still felt like he was on a roller coaster when he woke up. His stomach lurched and his head hurt. He wondered if he’d hit it on the seatback or something. He reached up to touch the tender spot, but his hands refused to move as he commanded them to. He tried and failed again. “Goddammit!” he meant to say, but all that came out was an indecipherable moan. Cotton filled his mouth, and spitting didn’t budge it.

Then Damon remembered he hadn’t been at an amusement park or on any roller coasters, and he began to sweat.

#

Miranda looked over her shoulder at the form lying across her back seat. “Make yourself comfortable back there. It’s a nice night for a drive.”

Damon strained and moaned in protest, but her seatbelts kept him in place, and the sock in his mouth absorbed whatever curses he was flinging at her.

“Just relax, buddy. We’ll be there soon.”

She didn’t actually have any idea where she wanted to go, but she knew she wanted to be as far away from Sparta as possible right now. She had a small arsenal in the trunk of her car, and her prisoner wasn’t exactly restrained according to procedure. All she knew was that there was no way he was ever going to see the inside of a Sparta PD holding cell.

Miranda passed a sign indicating that the West Virginia border was only ten miles away. She remembered taking camping trips with her father and one of their favorite places to hunt and fish had been just inside the neighboring state. As she drove, Miranda decided that would be a perfect destination. It was isolated, quiet and probably not yet in use. Perfect spot for an interrogation, if she could remember the roads that led to it.

It took some doubling back, but Miranda eventually found the place she was looking for. She turned down a small two-lane access road and drove another two miles before shutting off her lights and rolling to a stop. After parking the car, she got out and went around to her trunk. Miranda selected an MP5 sub-machine gun from the various weapons she’d recovered from Damon. Anyone who was unlucky enough to happen upon her and her prisoner would have to be dealt with quickly and permanently. The idea was unsavory, but Miranda knew she’d passed the point of no return when she bound Damon in duct tape and shoved him in the back seat of her car, rather than cuffing him and driving to the police station. From here on out, it was kill or be killed.

Damon thrashed around as Miranda pulled him out of her back seat, but a quick blow to the side of his knee with the butt of her weapon calmed him down. She made him shuffle and limp several yards along a small hiking path. After he fell for the second time, Miranda cut the tape that had bound his ankles. She tucked the muzzle of the gun behind his ear. “You move anywhere except where I tell you, and you’re dead.” She grabbed his elbow and pulled him upright. “Move forward, nice and easy.”

The gurgle of rushing water greeted them as they came upon a stream swollen from rain and the previous winter’s melted snow. Miranda guided Damon down an embankment underneath a narrow footbridge. From there, they were out of sight to anyone who didn’t know they were there.

Miranda tore the sock out of Damon’s mouth. He launched into a tirade of cursing and yelling, but she cut him off with a swift kick to the back of the same knee she’d hit with the gun. Damon crumpled to the ground, and his cry of pain was cut off when Miranda grabbed the hair at the back of his head and shoved his face into the water beneath the bridge.

She decided to count to sixty before she let him up, but by thirty her hand was already numb. Miranda slung her weapon at her side, and pulled Damon out of the water. He gasped, coughed and choked all at once, spitting and shivering at her feet.

She shoved his head under water again. This time she made it to forty. His lips were blue when his head came up again. “Should’ve brought gloves or something,” Miranda said. “Water’s fricking freezing. So let me guess, you killed Beaumont for all these guns that are now in my car, right?”

The worst part about late-night TV, Sam thought, was the selection. It was talk-shows, infomercials or old westerns he’d seen a thousand times since he was a kid. He flipped through the stations and landed on the public access channel, where a large red-faced man with a microphone was pacing back and forth, hollering to an unseen audience that cheered each time he took a breath. “This ought to be good," he muttered.

Across the bottom of the screen ran Reverend Wallace Dean Mercer: The Freedom Revival. Sam had never been overly religious, and he almost flipped past the station, but then he caught a few lines of what “freedom” meant to this Reverend Mercer, so he paused before switching back to the western.

“We must protect ourselves from the mongrel races!” Meyer shouted, both to the crowd and the camera. “Send them back to Africa! Send them back to China! We don’t want those commies here anyway! Send them back to Japan, and Mexico! Tell them to quit stealing jobs from honest, hard-working Americans!”

Sam whistled. “Swell. Another one of those freaks.”

“People!” Mercer continued. “Our noble race, our Christian race, is being snuffed out before our very eyes. ‘Keep ye separate,’ sayeth the Lord! ‘And touch not the unclean thing!’ These mongrels want to defile our women, infect our children, and turn hard-working folk such as yourselves into slaves. They want nothing less than the destruction of our religion, our race and our lives. To survive, we must take up arms and defend our homes and families! The government won’t stop them. The government’s owned by them! Them and the Jews, anyway. It’s up to us, you, to keep our kind pure and free.”

Sam snorted in disgust. Freedom of Speech was one thing, but these people almost made him wish there were more exceptions to that rule. He reached for the remote again.

“I have heard that one of our noble institutions of learning not only tolerates this inter-breeding, this perversion, it also actively promotes it! Why, next weekend, the College of Sparta is even celebrating so-called diversity.”

The television audience roared in protest, and Sam stayed his thumb yet again.

“I have been informed that next weekend, there is a Unity Day Rally at that college, where perverts and Jews and mongrels will be celebrated, and our good citizens will be encouraged to co-mingle with them. People, we cannot let this go unopposed!” He paused to allow for another burst of cheering and applause. “My Deacons and I will be at this rally, in opposition to perversion, there to preach The Word to good folks suck as yourselves, and to save our noble Christian race from those who would defile it. I encourage you all to attend as well.”

That was more than Sam needed to hear. Unity Day was one of the major festivals at the college, and his department would be working in concert with the campus police department to provide security for the event. Having an insane rabble-rouser like this Reverend Mercer around meant the job for him and his fellow officers just got a whole lot more difficult. Sam couldn’t imagine how Mercer had received permission to hold a counter-rally. He made a note to confer with Wainwright on the matter and then finally turned off the television.

#

Miranda only had to dunk Damon once more before he gave her all the information she needed. The tale he told was an appalling one, but it confirmed her suspicions that Wainwright was dirty. It also sealed Damon’s fate, but that was something for which Miranda was ready. The only comfort she took was that Sam’s name had never been mentioned. At least he was someone she could continue to trust.

Damon closed his eyes and shook his head. “He got seen, burnin’ down a church over in West Virginia. Chief didn’t want anybody questioning him and coming back to us, not with Unity Day coming up. So we… We took him out in a field. Chief gave him a gun and one bullet, said either he could do the job himself or you’d get hurt. Justin didn’t think twice about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear to God it’s true! I didn’t want to see him die, but Chief ordered it! Please don’t put me back in the water!”

Miranda swallowed the lump forming in her throat and drew in a deep breath. “He didn’t beg, try to talk his way out of it or anything?”

“No ma’am. He just sat down, stuck the pistol in his mouth… and that was it.”

Miranda grabbed Damon by the back of his head. “Then he was a bigger man than you are.”

Before he could scream, Miranda shoved Damon’s head back under the water. This time, the cold of the stream didn’t bother her at all.

Chapter 7

“Sam, you got a moment?” Chief Wainwright stood in the doorway of Sam Connor’s small office.

The detective looked up from his paperwork. “Never. What can I do for you?”

Wainwright walked in and sat in the chair across from Sam’s desk. “Looks like you were up late last night,” he said, noticing the rings under the younger man’s brown eyes.

Wainwright chuckled. “Aren’t we all.” Then he got down to business. “This is probably nothing, but I’ve had a few complaints from people about not being able to get into Sparta Trade and Gun.”

“Why should they call us? Henry’s allowed to close up whenever he wants.”

“Yeah, I know. I tried to call him at his house, but there wasn’t an answer. And he usually lets us know when he’s gone so we can keep an eye on the store. If you want to get away from all this paperwork, would you mind driving by, see if he’s about, and if not, see that the place is tight?”