Divine Justice (31 page)

Tyree closed the door and motioned for her to sit. He plopped behind his meticulous desk, still clutching the picture.

“Now why don’t you tell me what this is all about,” said Tyree.

“This is sort of confidential,” she said, looking at Trimble. “No offense, but I’d like to speak to the sheriff in private.”

Trimble got up. “We can talk more later, Sheriff.” He glanced over at the photo. From this angle he could see it was the man he knew as Ben. “Maybe you and I can talk later too, ma’am.”

Once he’d left Annabelle said, “My name is Susan Hunter. Here’s my ID.” She handed him across a professionally done and totally fake driver’s license. “The man in the photo is my father. He might go by Oliver or John, or maybe another name.”

“Why so many names?” asked Tyree as he studied the license before handing it back.

“My father worked for the government many years ago. He left under somewhat unusual circumstances. Ever since then he’s sort of been on the run.”

“Unusual circumstances? Is he a criminal?”

“No, these unusual circumstances are that enemies of this country are looking to kill him because of what he did to them.”

“Enemies? Like who?”

“Like governments, the names of which you would recognize. I don’t claim to know the whole story, only that between the ages of six and when I started college, we moved fourteen times. Different names, histories, jobs were lined up for my parents, we had handlers.”

“Then y’all were sorta like in witness protection?”

“Sort of, yes. My dad was a real American hero who did incredibly dangerous work for his country. That work came with a price, though. We’ve been paying that price for a long time.”

Tyree rubbed his chin. “That might explain a lot.”

Annabelle leaned forward eagerly. “So he has been here?”

He leaned back in his chair. “He was, yes. Called himself Ben, Ben Thomas. How’d you track him up here?”

“Something he managed to send me, a coded message. But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been to just about every small town in the general vicinity. I was running out of hope.”

“Well, like I said, he was here, but he’s not here now.”

“Where did he go?”

“He was in the hospital the last time I saw him.”

“Hospital? Was he hurt?”

“Got himself nearly blown up. He was okay, though. I went by the hospital early this morning to see him but he was gone.”

“Gone voluntarily?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“You said he was nearly blown up?”

“We’ve had some strange things happening here. Haven’t gotten my arms around it. Your dad was helping me. And he’s not the only one missing. Fellow named Danny Riker was at that hospital too. Had a guard posted to watch him because some folks tried to kill him. But Danny slipped by my guy and he’s gone too.”

“And you have no idea where my father might be?”

“No ma’am, I don’t. Wish I did. I’m a one-man police force in over my head. But if he was in protection why is he on the run now?”

“A few weeks ago an attempt was made on my father’s life. He made sure I was okay and then he left. The way the attempt came I believe he thought it was an inside job.”

“Well, if he was looking to hide out here and get a little peace and quiet, he was sorely mistaken.”

“What are you talking about?”

Tyree took a few minutes to sketch out what had happened in Divine since Stone arrived there.

Annabelle sat back, thinking fast. She didn’t want to get bogged down in whatever was happening in Divine. Yet if these events were connected to Oliver’s disappearance it also might be the only way to find him.

She rubbed her hands nervously over the arms of her chair. “Has anybody else been in town, another stranger, asking questions about my father?”

“Not that I know of. He was staying over at Bernie’s, that’s a little rooming house right around the corner from here. You could check there.”

“I will, Sheriff, and thanks.” She rose and so did Tyree. “Anybody else in town you think I should talk to?”

“Well, there’s Abby Riker. She owns Rita’s just down the street. She and Ben seemed to get on right good.”

Was it Annabelle’s imagination or did she detect a note of jealously there?

“Thanks.” She handed him a card. “Here’s my phone number in case you think of anything else.”

She left Tyree standing in his office looking troubled.

Outside the jail the man had obviously been waiting for her.

Charlie Trimble said, “I couldn’t help but see the photo of the man you were looking for. I interviewed him in connection with some of the things occurring in town. Perhaps the sheriff explained that to you?”

“Murders and suicides and people getting blown up, yeah, he filled me in. You say you talked to him? What did he tell you?”

“Well, perhaps we could have a bit of negotiation there.”

“Excuse me?”

“I own a newspaper, ma’am. I thought when I moved here and started running the little town paper that the most exciting thing I’d have to report was when someone drove his truck off a mountain road or a mine cave-in. Now with all that’s going on I feel like I’m back in Washington.”

Annabelle looked impatient and felt more than a little disgusted at his gleeful tone. “What exactly do you want?”

“You tell me things and I tell you things.”

“Like what?”

“Like who Ben really is.”

“And if I do, what can you tell me?”

“We have to have a bit of good faith there. But I can tell you that he struck me immediately as not being your typical drifter. He was too well-spoken, too cunning. And his physical abilities spoke for themselves. According to what I’ve learned, he beat up three men on a train, saved a man’s life using battery cables and fought off three other men wielding baseball bats. Not your typical wandering soul.”

“He had some special skills, yes.”

“And your relation to him?”

“My father.”

“Excellent. I’d heard he was in the military.”

“Vietnam.”

“Special Forces.”

“Very special.”

“And does he make a habit of wandering the countryside?”

“He had a job in the government for a while but got tired of sitting behind a desk.”

Trimble gave her a patronizing smile. “I doubt your father ever sat behind a desk. If you don’t tell me the truth, I have no reason to accord you any.”

“Well, it seems like I’ve told you a lot already. How about some action on your end?”

“All right, that seems fair actually. Your father has been spending a lot of time with Abby Riker and her son Danny. He’s a troubled youth. Sort of the epitome of the high school poster boy who reached his prime when he was eighteen and everything’s been downhill since.”

“Is he a druggie? A boozer?”

“Not drugs, but he does like his alcohol. His mother won a big lawsuit against a coal company involving an accident that cost her husband his life. So they have a lot of money, live in a big house, but Danny’s life has been off track for a while.”

“The sheriff says he’s missing too.”

“Your father struck me as a good man trying to do the right thing. My advice would be to not assume that anyone else here has those same intentions, including Danny, even though your father saved his life.”

“Would that caveat include you too?” she said.

“I’m a fairly recent arrival here. I called Washington home for forty years. I still have a lot of friends there, get regular updates. And—” Trimble broke off, his eyes seeming to look right through Annabelle and on to something of far greater interest.

“Mr. Trimble?” Annabelle did not like that look at all.

He seemed to refocus on her, but his eyes showed his mind was still elsewhere. “Excuse me, I have something I need to check right now.” He hurried off.

Annabelle raced down the street to the van and climbed in. She quickly filled them both in on what Tyree had told her and her run-in with the reporter.

“You think he suspects who Oliver really is?” asked Caleb.

“I wouldn’t bet against it. And right now our margin of error is zero.”

“Damn, Oliver can’t buy a break, can he?” exclaimed Reuben. “The one town he picks turns out to be teeming with killers.”

“Let’s hit the rooming house fast. The clock is running.”

A few minutes later Annabelle had charmed the entire story out of Bernie Sandusky.

She got back in the van. “Knox was here. He found out about Oliver. Bernie told him that Oliver was in the hospital or else he could try Abby Riker’s place, A Midsummer’s Farm. If Knox went to the hospital and found Oliver gone he might have tried Midsummer. Let’s roll.”

CHAPTER 61

S
TONE AND KNOX SAT,
manacled to metal chairs that were bolted to the slab floor, in a windowless cement block room painted gray. They’d been here for many hours now and the room was so cold that they were both shivering. They jumped when the door banged open and the group moved in. There were five of them, all in blue uniforms and all armed with pistols and billy clubs dangling from thick belts. They formed a semicircle of flesh behind the pair of prisoners, arms folded across their muscular chests.

So fixated were Stone and Knox on this little army that they didn’t hear the other man come in until he closed the door.

When Stone turned to look at this new arrival, he flinched.

It was Tyree. Only it wasn’t Tyree. Not Lincoln Tyree anyway. It was a shorter, stouter version of the man.

In an instant Stone made the connection—Howard Tyree, the older brother who was also warden of this place. He wore a navy blue polo shirt, pressed khaki pants and tasseled loafers; wire-rimmed glasses covered his clean-shaven face. He didn’t look like a rottweiler warden at a supermax. He looked like an insurance salesman on a golf holiday.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Tyree.

Stone’s heart sank with the words. It was the voice he’d heard when he’d made the call on Danny’s phone. He and the sheriff sounded nearly identical.

Son of a bitch!

The other men had instantly come to attention when Tyree walked in. He sat down behind a small table opposite Stone and Knox. The warden held a file in his hand, opened it and read through the contents.

A minute later he slipped off his glasses and gazed across at Stone. “Anthony Butcher, triple murderer, fortunate enough to have done it in a state that does not believe in capital punishment. So you received a life sentence without possibility of parole instead of the execution you so well deserved. Transferred out of four different correctional facilities over the last twelve years, including the supermax in Arkansas, because you have an anger issue.” He glanced down at the file. “And a problem respecting authority.”

Stone glanced at Knox and then back at Tyree, his
anger
at what was being done to them building beyond all hope of containment. Stone knew he shouldn’t but he also couldn’t stop himself. “How much does one of those scripts cost, Howie? They must come in real handy in your line of work.”

The warden tapped his thumb on the table and one of the guards handed him his billy club and a towel along with a bungee cord. Tyree stood, took his time wrapping the towel around the head of the club and secured it there with the cord.

The next instant Stone was slumped sideways in his chair, blood running down his battered face.

Tyree sat back down after dropping the bloody club on the table. He resumed looking at the file after methodically wiping a speck of Stone’s blood off his glasses with a handkerchief he pulled from his pants pocket.

“With the towel it doesn’t really leave much of a mark,” he murmured in a casual tone. “We find that helpful in keeping order here. Prisoners have far too much time to complain about trivial things.”

He thumbed through more pages of the file and then pointed at Knox. “You’re Richard Prescott, a.k.a. Richie Patterson from the great state of Mississippi. Killed two people in an armed robbery in Newark twenty-one years ago and one more since you came into the correctional system. The Garden State didn’t want you anymore so you’re now our guest for the rest of your natural life.” He said all this as though he were reciting tedious lecture notes to an auditorium full of bored college freshman.

“My name is Joseph P. Knox of the Central Intelligence Agency. And in about twenty-four hours there’ll be an army of feds at this place, and the next thing you know, you assholes are the ones who’ll be rotting in a supermax.”

Tyree hit Knox so hard with the billy club that the chair tore loose from its underpinning and he fell over unconscious onto the slab floor.

Tyree closed the file. “Get ’em up.”

The guards unhooked them from the chair shackles and pulled the men to their feet.

Tyree looked at the unconscious Knox. He said in a weary tone, “Wake him up, George. He has to hear this.”

A bucket of water was thrown in Knox’s face. Gagging, he came to, spitting up water and his own blood.

Tyree waited for Knox to catch his breath and then paced in front of the two with his hands clasped behind him.

“This is the Blue Spruce Supermax Prison. It is unlike any prison you gentlemen may be familiar with. My name is Howard W. Tyree. I am privileged to be the warden of this outstanding facility. Here, we receive from all over prisoners who have problems adjusting to the life of incarceration, or simply who have problems in general. Our sister prisons sent you here because at Blue Spruce we specialize in being problem solvers. We have never had any disruptions here or, needless to say, any escapes. We are a professional organization. So long as you follow the rules, you will have no reasonable cause for concern for your personal safety either from your fellow prisoners or the fine men who guard this place.”

Blood from both Stone and Knox dripped onto the floor as Tyree was talking. He impatiently flicked a finger at one of his men, who quickly cleaned it up with the billy club towel.

“Excessive force is only used here when absolutely necessary. Just so we’re clear on the boundaries, I will demonstrate.”

He stopped pacing and faced the two men.