William Bernhardt - Dark Justice

Afterward, he took the two women back to their Jeep and helped pull it out of the ravine. Once it was back on the flat of the road, it seemed to work fine. It was banged up badly, but still operational.

Sheriff Allen bid them adieu. Maureen drove; Tess still had a hard time sitting up straight. About twenty minutes later, they pulled into the Green Rage camp.

Or what was left of it.

“Oh my God,” Maureen said breathlessly. “Oh, God.”

Tess couldn’t think of anything to add.

Their camp had been destroyed. The tents had been leveled, smashed to the ground. All their equipment, including Deirdre’s expensive scientific gear, had been smashed and destroyed. All their supplies had been dumped on the ground, ruined. Their clothes, books, and papers were strewn across the clearing. Some of their belongings had been burned. Tess saw all the pages of Deirdre’s extensive dendrochronology notes crumpled and strewn about the clearing. Everything had been ripped, broken, or destroyed.

Worst of all, there was no sign of life. Not Doc, not Deirdre, not Molly, not any of the rest of the Green Rage staff. They were gone.

Tess’s hand pressed against her mouth. After all they had been through-to come home to this. It was just too much, more than a person could bear.

Maureen’s face was steely and her eyes were dry. Tess knew she was struggling, forcing herself to maintain control.

“Well,” Maureen said evenly, “you warned us that the Cabal was planning some major retaliation. I guess tonight was the night.” Her face began to crumble. A cheek twitched, a shoulder shuddered. And then all at once she fell apart. She bent over, pressing her head against Tess’s shoulder. And she began to cry.

Tears streamed out of Maureen’s eyes. Tess placed her hand on the woman’s head, stroking her hair, trying to comfort her. But how could she possibly provide comfort, she wondered, when she felt so little herself? So much had happened tonight. So much had happened that-

Her eyes suddenly widened. In the midst of the excitement, she had almost forgotten. Forgotten what she had finally realized earlier that night.

She knew who had killed Dwayne Gardiner. And she thought she could prove it.

She knew.

It didn’t seem fair, Sasquatch mused. One gaffe, one minor slipup, and the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. All the plans, all the goals, all crumbled into nothing. It just wasn’t right.

But grousing wouldn’t help anything. The fact was, there had been a mistake. Not a huge one; most people would’ve missed it altogether. But not her, not given who-or what-she really was. She may not have picked up on it immediately, but she would. If she hadn’t already.

Whether it had worked its way to the forefront of her brain or was still lodged somewhere in her subconscious, the end result was the same.

She knew.

There was no question in Sasquatch’s mind. No amount of hand-wringing and self-recrimination would help. There was only one choice now, only one possibility.

It was time for action.

Tess O’Connell could not be permitted to make use of what she knew. Most of all, she could not be permitted to tell what she knew, not in a newspaper article or anywhere else. She had to be silenced.

Blackmail? Bribery? All interesting possibilities, but Sasquatch knew ultimately they would not be successful. Even if she accepted, there would always be a partly opened door, the possibility that she would change her mind, that she would want more. That she would fall in love or get drunk or get greedy and say too much.

No. No halfway measures would be acceptable. She had to be silenced-and in the only ultimately reliable way.

The fatal way.

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have a clue what’s going on out there?”

The sharp tone in Ben’s voice would’ve seemed harsh if he were speaking to an axe murderer. The fact that he was speaking to his trial judge, Judge Tyrone J. Pickens, made it extraordinary.

“This town is in an uproar! Everyone’s taking sides, hissing and cursing. You’ve got demonstrations in the street. Protests, blockades. Two fistfights in the city park. I got beaned by a rock on my way into the courtroom!”

Judge Pickens’s face was twisted up in a knot. His pursed lips were like floodgates, doing everything possible to hold back his rising temper. “Listen here, Mr. Kincaid. I don’t need to be lectured by some whippersnapper who just strolled into town.”

“Evidently you do.”

Pickens was livid. Steam rose from his judicial robes.

“Last night the Green Rage camp was destroyed. And I mean destroyed. Nothing was left. Thousands of dollars of equipment was ruined.”

“Which doesn’t even approach what your friends have cost the logging companies,” Granny noted. She was staying at her table, remaining calm. Of course she could afford to, Ben realized. She didn’t have to be an advocate when she had the judge doing it for her.

“Some members of the Green Rage team were seriously injured last night. Beaten. Even whipped. One of them is still in the hospital.”

“Is this true?” Judge Pickens asked.

“A complaint has been made,” Granny said. “We’re investigating. As to whether it’s true, well, with these people it’s hard to tell.”

“Hard to tell?” Ben’s voice was approaching shrieking level; he tried to calm himself. “Sheriff Allen himself was a witness!”

Granny shrugged. “Like I said, we’re investigating. But as of this time, we have no idea who was behind the alleged attack.”

“Could we please stop playing games for just one minute? We all know perfectly well who was behind the attack. We may not know their names, but we know who it was.”

“Even if that’s true,” Judge Pickens said, “I fail to see the relevance. This is not an environmental tribunal. We’re trying a murder case.”

“We’re going to have jurors, aren’t we?”

Pickens nodded.

“And the jurors are going to come from around here, aren’t they?”

“Yes, of course, but-”

“How can we hope to pretend that the jury can be unbiased and unaffected by all the turmoil? This city is up in arms.”

“It’s not my fault your man is a terrorist. We all pay for the sins of our past.

“It’s not a sin to want your grandchildren to know what a forest looks like,” Ben said. “But it would be a sin to allow George Zakin to be railroaded just because the community is in a stir about eco-terrorists. Regardless of the evidence, the jury will associate him with the turmoil in the community. Even if only subconsciously, they’ll vote guilty in the hope that it will put their anxiety to rest.”

“You’ll have the right to question the jurors during voir dire,” Pickens said. “And I can promise you I won’t allow any irrelevant matters to be brought up during trial.”

“But eco-terrorism is not irrelevant,” Granny said, rising to her feet. “To the contrary, the defendant’s political and environmental beliefs form the basis for … one theory of motive.”

“You see?” Ben said. “You know what she’s saying? She’s saying she has no intention of avoiding those irrelevant matters. Just the opposite. She’s going to fan the flames and milk the controversy for everything it’s worth. She’s going to try to whip the jury into a frenzy, to try to scare them into voting guilty.”

Pickens shook his head. “I will say this only one more time, Mr. Kincaid. I will not permit anyone to make an improper argument in my courtroom. At the same time, I can’t prevent the prosecution from pursuing their theory of motive.”

In other words, Ben thought, you don’t plan to do a damn thing. “Judge, please-this is not right. You’ve got to stop this from happening.”