The Abduction (41 page)

“Ben, do you think Gracie’s okay?”

“She’s alive, John.”

“Do you think those men … you know … did they … with Gracie …”

Ben’s eyes turned harsh. “Don’t say it, John. Don’t even think it.”

“I can’t help thinking it, Ben … or wondering if she’ll ever be the same again.”

“John, listen to me. Whatever they did to Gracie, we’ll get her through it. She’s strong, in her mind. We’ll fix her. I’ll take her to Taos. She’ll live with me until she’s ready to be with people again.”

Ben’s jaw muscles clenched; he turned to stare out the window.

“Ben, I want to kill those men.”

“If there’s killing to be done, I’ll do it. It’s what I know.”

Ben abruptly stood and was out the door before John could open his mouth. He jumped up and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Outside, he looked up and down the sidewalk and spotted Ben, already a half block away. John ran to catch up.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Man up ahead—blond hair, camouflage pants, six foot, two hundred pounds.”

The blond man entered a tobacco shop. John and Ben sat on a bench outside, just two dudes enjoying a fine spring day, not a father and his father searching for the men who had kidnapped his daughter. Ten minutes later, the man emerged with a cigar in his mouth and continued his walk up the sidewalk. They followed.

Two blocks later they stopped in their tracks. Two little girls ran up to the man; he bent over and picked up the smaller child. A woman walked to the man and kissed him.

A family man.

“Mama, I got me a family now.”

Junior stood before his mama’s grave out back of the cabin in a little clearing that he kept real nice. He came out and talked to his mama almost every day. Some days she talked back.

“Well, course I’m gonna let her out, Mama. Tomorrow morning. Two nights in the box ought to break her of running. She’s awful cute, ain’t she, Mama?”

Junior had grown up a mama’s boy wanting to be like his daddy. But the major had left them months at a time—business, he had said. Junior had never gone to school in town; the major wouldn’t allow it. So his mama had taught him almost everything he knew, except what the major taught him about shooting and hunting and hating Jews. Funny, but mama seemed happiest when the major was off on a business trip. Only then could she go into town and see her old friends; she took Junior with her and she laughed and she sang when she was cooking and they sat under a tree and she read poems out loud. Junior and his mama did everything together. She was beautiful.

And then she was gone.

And Junior never read another poem.

“You take this one. I’ll take the one across the street.”

John watched as Ben waited for a car to pass then jogged across the street. John plopped down on the nearest bench. They were staking out every white SUV on Main Street. The three they had seen so far were owned by an old woman, a teenage girl wearing the tightest jeans John had ever seen on a female, and an old coot chewing tobacco.

It was almost five. The sun would soon drop below the mountains, and the fine spring day would turn back to winter for the night. Gracie would be cold.

Gary Jennings had all ten fingers when he had tied one leg of his jail pants around the sprinkler pipe in his cell and the other leg around his neck and stepped off the jail cot.

An innocent man was dead.

Which meant Gracie Ann Brice might be alive.

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson knew now that Gracie’s abduction had nothing to do with Colonel Brice or revenge over the Vietnam War. It had everything to do with Elizabeth Brice and a son seeking to avenge his father’s death. Maybe Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., figured the federal government killed his father, so he’d just kill everyone responsible. But why didn’t he kill Elizabeth Brice, too? Why did he take her daughter instead? And did he have plans for the president?

Jan Jorgenson was in over her head. She needed experience. She needed Agent
Devereaux. But his cell phone put her to the answering service for the fifth time today.

“Eugene, this is Jan again. It’s Saturday, almost seven Dallas time. Please call me as soon as possible. Jennings was innocent. And Gracie may be alive.”

She ended the call.

Jan was sitting on the sofa in the Brice study waiting for Mrs. Brice. More questions filled her mind: If the major’s son was the abductor, where is he now? If Gracie is alive, where is she now? The major and the son had lived in Idaho back then; maybe the son still did. And Colonel Brice thought Gracie was in Idaho because of a call-in sighting in Idaho Falls. But Agent Curry had personally interviewed the Idaho source and reported that the source could not ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo. Odd.

Jan needed to speak to the Idaho source. That required the computer printout of leads which was sitting on her desk in downtown Dallas forty miles south of her present location. There wasn’t much chance of anyone being at the office at this time on a Saturday night—except the security guard.

She got Red on the first try. No doubt he was sitting behind the security desk in the building lobby watching TV, where he had been every night the past week when she had signed out after hours. Red was fifty and lonely. He made sweet with her each night.

“Red, this is Agent Jorgenson.”

“Well, hidi there. I saw from the log sheet you’d left.”

“I have an emergency. Can you help me?”

“You want me to come to your place?”

“Uh, no. I want you to go to my office.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I can get up there in a bit.”

Yep, as soon as
Wheel of Fortune
is over.

Jan Jorgenson possessed the round face, big eyes, and solid stature befitting a Minnesota farm girl. If she were a horse, they’d call her sturdy. Most guys called her cute. She wore her hair short, stood five-seven, and weighed a rock-hard one-thirty. (Muscle weighs more than fat.) Men often took one look at her and assumed she was lesbian—her muscular legs caused her to walk a bit too manly—but she was hetero through and through. She just hadn’t found a man worth letting between her legs. And Red the security guard wasn’t him; but he wanted to be. Jan wasn’t the type to lead men on, but she needed that printout. She whimpered into the phone.

“You know, Red, when this case is over, I’m going to have more free time, and maybe we could—”

“I’ll go up there right now!”

“Alrighty, then. On my desk is a thick computer printout with a bunch of yellow stickums on pages. Look through those for a listing from Idaho Falls, start at the back. When you find it, use my office phone and call me at this number.”

She gave Red her cell phone number, and he was off, probably packing more than a ring of keys in his pants. She made a mental note to change her cell phone number when this was over.

Red called back in under ten minutes. Clayton Lee
Tucker, Idaho Falls, Idaho. With a number. Red said, “Bye, honey.”

Gag me
.

Jan checked out the Brice’s phone system; ten incoming phone lines. That many lines, they could afford a long distance call to Idaho. She punched a button and dialed direct, hoping Tucker worked late. A man answered on the thirteenth ring.

“Hello? Hello? This phone working?”

“Clayton Lee Tucker?”

“Yep. Didn't know my phone was working again.” Then to someone else: “Be right there!” Back in the phone: “Got a customer.”

“Mr. Tucker, I’m Agent Jan Jorgenson, with the FBI. I’m investigating the Gracie Ann Brice abduction.”

“They come by yesterday.”

“Colonel Brice and the father?”

“Yep.”

“What time?”

“Right after I got in, about eight.”

“Do you think the girl you saw was Gracie?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it now, after looking at her pictures.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“From when?”

“From when the FBI agent showed you those pictures?”

“Like I told them, ain’t no FBI agent been here.”

What?
Jan tried to think that through, but Tucker interrupted her.

“Got me a customer.”

“Mr. Tucker, where were Colonel Brice and Mr. Brice heading after they left your place?”

“Bonners Ferry. Up in Boundary County.”

“Deputy Sheriff Cody Cox,” a voice answered.

“Deputy, this is Agent Jan Jorgenson, with the FBI, calling from Dallas. I need to speak with the sheriff.”

“Sheriff Johnson? He’s out with the missus, it’s their anniversary. Well, actually, yesterday was their anniversary, but the sheriff got tied up and—”

“Did a Colonel Ben Brice and a John Brice meet with the sheriff?”

“Sure did. They went flying around this morning with Dicky in his helicopter. Sheriff said he owed his life to the colonel.”

“Deputy, I need to speak to the sheriff. This is an emergency.”

“Give me your number—I’ll track him down, have him call you.”

Elizabeth closed the door to the study behind her. Agent Jorgenson was sitting on her sofa.

“What’s the emergency, Agent Jorgenson? I’m on my way to church.”

The young woman took a deep breath and said, “Tell me about Major Charles Woodrow Walker.”

“He’s dead.”

“Did you know he had a son?”

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession.”

The Saturday evening before Easter Sunday was always a busy confession night. So far, Father Randy had listened to four dozen confessions from anonymous confessors kneeling on the other side of the confessional in St. Anne’s Catholic Church, all routine sins for which he had dispensed routine penances: ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. But he perked up upon hearing this confessor’s voice, for two reasons: thirty years was a long time between confessions and might require a non-routine penance; and the woman’s voice sounded oddly familiar. Her next words confirmed his suspicions.

“Father, I am possessed by evil. And now evil possesses my daughter.” Her voice was breaking up. “Father, Grace might be alive!”

Elizabeth Brice was in his confessional. Father Randy knew Gracie, the poor girl, and the rest of her family. He saw them every Sunday morning. But Elizabeth Brice had never set foot in his church.

“Gracie might be alive?”

“Yes!”

“What do you mean, she’s possessed by evil?”

“He’s taken her to Idaho!”

“Idaho?
Who?
”

“The devil’s son.”

Father Randy shoulders slumped.
The devil’s son?
The poor mother was likely having a nervous breakdown. He decided to treat her gently.

“Why thirty years since your last confession?”

“My father was murdered when I was only ten. I blamed God.”

“For thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve not been to Mass for thirty years?”

“No.”

“Communion?”

“No.”

“You’ve lived without faith for thirty years?”

“Yes.”

“Why now?”

“I want to come home. I want my daughter to come home. I want God to give us a second chance.”

It was not easy being a Catholic priest these days. With so many priests being convicted of sexual assault on children and the Catholic Church becoming the favorite whipping boy of plaintiffs’ lawyers, he had often thought of quitting. What good was he doing? He was spending more time testifying in depositions than spreading the word of God via Masses and his website and the CDs and audiotapes and tee shirts. And did anyone really believe in God anymore? In Satan? That there truly was a daily battle between good and evil waged within our souls and for our souls? Had he saved even one soul in fifteen years? Now an odd sensation came over him and he knew: God was giving him his chance.

“Evil took me ten years ago,” Mrs. Brice said. “It won’t let go of my life.”

“Because you don’t possess the power to fight evil. Faith is our only defense to evil—we fight evil with faith.”

“But why my daughter?”

Father Randy now said words he did not understand: “Because there is a bond you and Gracie share, a bond with evil that must be broken.”

“Yes, there is. Father, how do I break this bond?”

“You don’t. Someone must die for the bond to be broken.”

“No! Don’t take her!”

The woman jumped up and barged out the door and opened the door to his side of the confessional. She lunged at him and grabbed the big silver crucifix hanging down the front of his vestment. Her eyes were wild.

“God, take me instead!”

“Patty, can you hear me?”

No answer.

Junior’s mouth was at the opening of the air vent and his hands were cupped around both, so she could damn well hear him. She was just being stubborn.