Southern Cross (30 page)

I
pulled myself together, brushing the remaining tears from my eyes before I let
them fall. Freaking out wouldn’t do Diggs any good.

“Okay,”
I said, nodding. “So, it’s not the Wilson Club. What’s next, then?”

He
took my hand and led me out, pausing to slide the door shut behind him. I
looked back over my shoulder, taking one last glimpse inside. The door was almost
closed when the moonlight hit something on the wall high up—level with the
second story windows. I held the door.

“Hang
on—what’s that?” I pointed up, pushing the door open again as I stood inside. Juarez followed my gaze, shining his light on the spot I indicated.

“I
don’t see anything,” he said.

“It
was the way the light played off it a second ago,” I said. I paced, playing my
light along the wall, trying to get the angle right. After half a dozen passes,
I finally succeeded. I froze, keeping the light fixed where it was. My
heartbeat thundered in my ears.

“Do
you see?” I asked.

He
nodded, suddenly serious.

A
Latin cross.

Someone
had gone to a lot of trouble to remove it, but it was obvious once I had the
right spot.

“That
has to be at least a few weeks old,” I said. “They were here, Jack.”

“But
they’re not here now,” he said.

“It’s
a lead,” I said stubbornly. “I know it is—there’s something about this place.
It has to mean something.”

“I’ll
send someone out to look into it.”

“Look
into who owns the place, too,” I said. “They’re not from around here—I think
Mae said they were out in California. Whoever it is, I bet they’re the ones
working with Barnel.”

“Maybe,”
Juarez agreed. He was still quiet. He shut the door again and I double-timed
it back to the truck, Jack two steps behind. I took the wheel this time, tired
of being the co-pilot, and revved the engine. As soon as he was in, he turned
in his seat and looked at me seriously. I knew exactly what he was going to
say; I didn’t want to hear it.

“I’m
not preparing myself for the worst,” I said.

“How
do you know that’s what I was about to say?”

“Because
you’ve got a very ‘Prepare yourself for the worst’ look in your eye. And I’m
sorry, but I’m not gonna do it. He’s out there somewhere, and he’s not far
away. So buckle your goddamn seatbelt, and let’s go find him.”

He
smiled a little. “Yes, ma’am.”

I may
have laid a little rubber tearing out of the worn-down parking lot, but as far
as I was concerned, it was totally justified.

02:15:35
         

Just
as Barnel had promised, George Durham was waiting for me when Jenny threw me
back into the room. He wasn’t the only one who’d joined us, though: our crew of
eleven had swelled to twenty seething, bound, terrified prisoners. The room
barely held us all, and it had to be eighty degrees in there, the air humid and
stale. A woman in the back wailed, the hysterical gasps of someone long past
reason. Everyone else was coiled tight, the tension ratcheted so high that
breathing was a chore and violence seemed inevitable.

As I
waded through the bodies to get to George, Casey, and Danny, I spotted two of
the tweakers I’d seen earlier crouched together in a corner, backs to the rest
of us. The taller of the two—gangly, bearded, and shaking—cast a guilty look
over his shoulder at my attention, then quickly looked away when we locked
eyes.

George
had a patch of blood on his shoulder. Even in the surreal glow of our red
light, I could tell his color was bad.

“They
got you?” I asked, nodding to his arm.

“Clipped
me when I tried to get away,” he said. As a kid, I’d always imagined George to
be bulletproof. Another childhood fantasy shot to hell. 

The
wailing woman transitioned from cries to screams—jagged, ear-piercing shrieks
that shredded any equanimity I might have been feeling toward the others in our
group.

“Somebody
shut her up!” a bearded, flannel-wearing guy shouted across the room. He was
surrounded by two other men who may or may not have been his brothers.

“Why
don’t you shut up? How about a little compassion!” a woman shouted back.
Flannel started to make a move, but one of the brothers held him back. The
wailing woman quieted. I took a breath, knowing any peace we might have
achieved would be short lived.

I
scanned the room, studying the motley assemblage. George was the oldest among
us, but otherwise Barnel’s reach transcended socio-economic, cultural, and
ethnic boundaries. Case in point: a small, sixtyish man in spectacles,
undershirt, and tailored slacks stood to George’s left. He caught me looking at
him and attempted an awkward smile.

“Diggs,”
George said. “This is Dr. Munjoy. He’s a professor over to Smithfield.”

The
surprise must have shown on my face. “How do you know Jesup Barnel?” I asked.

He
shook his head. “I’ve never met the man,” he said. He was mostly bald, with
just a sparse bit of whitish blond hair ringing his pink scalp.

“But
you know who he is,” I said.

“Of
course,” he said quickly. He had an accent—possibly British. Maybe South
African. “I teach psychology at Smithfield. We’re doing a research project at
the moment; I’ve done a great deal of work in the fields of Christian
fundamentalism and cultist behaviors.”

“Ah,”
I said. “That would explain the reverend’s interest in you, I guess.”

He
nodded. A couple of twenty-something women stood beside him—good looking,
intellectual, and terrified. He introduced them as his graduate students.

“Do
you have any idea what Barnel’s got planned?” I asked George. 

He
shook his head. “I always knew Jesup was crazy as a bedbug, but I never pegged
him for something like this.”

“I’m
not sure he’s actually calling the shots on this one,” I said, thinking again
of Jenny Burkett.

The
others looked at me with clear interest. Before I could elaborate, the wailing
woman screamed again—so suddenly that nearly everyone in the room jumped. The
difference was, this time she didn’t stop screaming.

“Shut
up!” Flannel shouted again.

I
heard the woman who had come to her rescue before pleading for her to be quiet,
but it fell on deaf ears. The screaming escalated until my ears rang and my
head ached. Flannel lowered his shoulder and bulled one of his brothers out of
the way so violently that he knocked a woman behind him to the ground.

I
lowered my voice and addressed Danny and the others in our little clique. “Stay
back against the wall, okay? Don’t make eye contact. Don’t engage with anyone.
Just stay quiet and keep out of the way.”

They
all nodded readily—even George, which spoke to how bad off he actually was.
George didn’t take orders gladly from anyone.

I
stepped into the fray, headed toward the worst of the trouble.

“We
all need to calm down,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the growing
noise. “The only shot we have of getting out of this alive is if we don’t
panic, and figure out a way to work together.”

The
woman who’d been knocked to the ground managed to right herself, hands
awkwardly behind her, and stood. She was painfully thin. Forty-ish. Small and
frail looking.

I
tried an encouraging smile at Flannel. “Just give me a second—maybe I can quiet
her down?”

He
nodded.

When
I got closer to the source of the screams, I felt another shot of
disappointment hit my bloodstream; we might be worse off than I’d thought. The
wailing woman was hurt, crouched against the wall with her hands bound behind
her back. The side of her head was bleeding—the result of her having beaten it
repeatedly into the cement wall. She could have been anywhere from thirty to
fifty, her dark hair pulled back from a gaunt face that I expected had been
pretty once.

“What’s
your name?” I asked.

Her
eyes were vacant when she looked at me. The woman who had come to her rescue
before answered. 

“Glenda,”
she said. “There’s something not right about her—mental illness, clearly. Could
be she needs meds.”

She
had grey hair pulled back into a long braid, her familiar face the worn leather
of someone who’d spent a lot of time outside. She smiled as soon as she saw me.

“Daniel
Diggins. What in hell is Barnel doin’, rounding up every sinner that ever
crossed his path?”

Sally
Woodruff. “I didn’t think he’d gotten you,” I said, thinking of Sally’s clinic:
the cross burning in the yard and the broken fountain and the decimated garden.
“I went by the place, but the dogs were gone.” 

“They
didn’t burn the clinic down, then?” she asked. “Well, that’s something, I
guess. I got a couple threats… then after they found Wyatt and that Dairy Queen
blew, I figured maybe it was time to take a little vacation. I got the dogs off
to the boarder and was on my way out o’ state when some gorillas in black
‘jacked my car and brought me here.”

“Any
idea where ‘here’ is?” I asked.

She
shook her head. “Hell if I know. They knocked me out… Next thing I know, I’m in
a room with the dregs of Kentucky, and Jesup T. Barnel’s telling me I best come
clean about my sins.”

Glenda
the Screamer had settled down for the moment, her cries giving way to a low,
incessant moaning while she rocked. I nodded toward her. “You know anything
about her story?”

“She’s
got a Medical Alert bracelet, but all that’s on there is her name—Glenda
Clifton—along with a couple numbers, and NBD. Stands for Neurobiological
Disease. She could have anything from Attention Deficit to schizophrenia.”

“I’m
no doctor, but I’m thinking we can rule out ADD as the problem here,” I said.

“A
safe assumption,” Sally agreed. She looked around the room and lowered her
voice. “You know, I worked with half the folks in here. Not bad people, but
they’re not exactly the type you wanna have to rely on when push comes to
shove, you know what I mean? Most everybody here’s comin’ off something right
now. Rapid detox ain’t my choice in the best of situations.”

“And
this isn’t the best of situations,” I said.

“Not
by a long shot.” She studied me for a second, looking me up and down. “You look
like you been through the ringer. Backwards.”

“It’s
been a long week.”

She
fixed her intelligent brown eyes on me for a long while, a slow smile touching
her lips. “How long you been clean, sweetheart?” she asked.

The
last time I’d seen Sally, I was dropping Sarah Jennings off so we could sneak
her out of state and onto her new life far, far from Justice, Kentucky. I was
three sheets to the wind and looking for a fix at the time. I smiled back at
her.

“Four
long years,” I said.

“Good
for you.” She grinned, shaking her head. “I always said you’d be one hell of a
catch if you could just get your head out of your ass and dry out a little.”

“Well...
I dried out. I don’t know about the rest of it.”

Glenda
the Screamer started up again. I crouched beside her. “We’re gonna try to get
you out of here, Glenda,” I said quietly. “Can you try and stay calm for a
little while? Just a little longer?”

Silent
tears tracked down her face. She slid to the ground, blessedly quiet for the
moment. I straightened and looked at Sally.

“If
you can try and keep her quiet, that will help things as much as anything.”

“I’ll
do my best. That mean you’ve got a plan?”

“Not
in the traditional sense of the word,” I said. “I welcome suggestions.”

She
nodded toward the tweakers in the corner. “You might want to check in with
Biggie over there—the tall guy. He’s a mess from the word go, but he’s got a
good heart. Has three kids I know of, all different mothers; another couple
pregnancies I took care of. Hooked on everything under the sun. Couldn’t hold
down a job to save his life.
However,
” she looked at me significantly
and lowered her voice, “I do believe him and his buddy Riley are working on
tunneling us out of here.”

It
took me a minute to figure out whether she was kidding. I shook my head. “We’ve
got two hours. You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?”

“And
interrupt our reunion?”

“Right.
You mind doing a little introduction? I don’t want to freak the guy out.”

She
told Glenda she’d be right back, then led me over to Biggie and Riley, both of
them still up against the wall, their backs to the group. For the first time, I
realized there was a significant difference between them and the rest of us:

Neither
of them were bound.

Biggie
jerked around when Sally said his name, his body hunched in on itself. I fought
between empathy and disgust. My drug of choice was always cocaine: fast acting,
fun, toxically addictive, and—comparatively speaking—free of physical symptoms
once I finally got clean. I’d seen buddies try to kick meth or heroin; it was
the major reason I’d never gone down those roads in the first place.

“Biggie,
this here’s an old friend of mine,” Sally said quietly. “I want you to let him
help you, all right? He’s good people.”

She
made hasty introductions and then left us to it since Glenda was starting up
again. When she was gone, Biggie looked at me shyly.

“We
was thinking maybe we’d tunnel out,” he said. Beads of sweat rained down his
face, his body shaking so hard his words came out in frenzied jerks. Beyond the
physical manifestations of addiction and withdrawal, however, I saw a glimmer
of intelligence from surprisingly soft blue eyes.

“How?”
I asked immediately. “The walls are cement…”

“The
floor ain’t, though,” he said with a pained smile. He nodded toward their
corner. “There’s another room behind that wall. There’s gotta be a way out
there, right? Nobody makes a room that ain’t got no doors.”

“You
have an idea what we should dig with?”

He
smiled. “Ground’s soft—it don’t take much. I been usin’ my hands. Riley’s got a
spoon he found over there.”

“I
can’t help noticing you guys aren’t tied.”

He
smiled at that, producing a zip tie from his pocket. He fastened it around his
wrists, pulling it tight with his teeth. A second later, I watched as he
wriggled out of the tie again and it fell to the ground. When he showed me his
hands with a flourish, there was blood dripping down his left thumb. I caught a
glimpse of bone shining through, and my stomach turned.

He
caught the look. “You ever come off meth?” he asked. I noticed that his teeth
were jagged, several missing, when he smiled again.

“No—just
coke,” I said. 

He
laughed, still racked with tremors. “That ain’t nothin’. You come off something
like this and you know: this here,” he nodded toward his hand, “is a relief,
compared to the pain in my gut and in my head; the bugs crawling under my skin.
A distraction. Now, have a look.”

He
nudged Riley, who stepped aside. Sure enough, they’d managed to make a dent in
the dirt floor. Not a big dent—but if two tweakers in the throes of withdrawal
could get this far in a couple of hours, we might actually stand a chance.

“I
need to get out of these,” I said, nodding over my shoulder to indicate my own
hands. I had no idea whether we were being monitored in here, but it seemed
likely since our captors had gone to the trouble of providing us some light. In
all likelihood, Big Brother was watching. To compensate, I tried to make sure
we were well concealed by the wall of bodies around us, and kept my voice low.
“You mind giving me a hand?”