John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

“I don’t know how much you know about Jack’s life, but – he achieved so much, and then… it was just so sad. And unfair, too.”

“Unfair?”

“Bad luck.”

“How so?”

Apple sighed. “About a month before Jack went to trial, some lunatic walked into a courtroom in San Jose, and just opened fire. Shot the judge, a bailiff, and a popular young attorney on the prosecution team. Then he turned the gun on himself.”

“How’d he get into court with a gun?”

“The papers said it was a Glock. Lots of plastic parts, though I guess it’s mostly metal by weight. Anyway, you have to be trained to recognize it on a scanner if it’s disassembled. I guess he put it together in the men’s room. But the point is, if it wasn’t for San Jose, I don’t think Jack would have been prosecuted. They didn’t have a case, but they really wanted to send a message.”

“I read what Wilson said on the tape,” Burke told her. “It sounded like-”

“-bullshit. Which is what it was. He was angry. Who wouldn’t be? But murder ? No way. If you’d seen that sleazeball on the stand… what’s-his-name? I’ve blocked it out.”

“Maddox?”

She made a disgusted sound. “This is the man they’re talking about when they talk about someone with ‘a record as long as your arm.’ So, of course, he was a professional snitch, and Jack, well, Jack had never been inside a jail before. So he was easy pickin’s.”

“Why was he in jail, anyway?” Burke asked. “Couldn’t he make bail?”

“He was arrested on the weekend, and I don’t think they arraigned him until Monday afternoon. He had a public defender at that point, and I think he was trying to arrange a loan, using his condo as collateral. But it took a few days and… Maddox happened. It was bad luck. Like I said.”

“You also said he was easy pickings,” Burke reminded her.

“Right. Maddox set him up. I can imagine how it went down. If you listen to the tape, there’s no context for anything. All of a sudden, Jack says, ‘Sozio,’ like it’s a revelation. And the conversation isn’t continuous. There are all these gaps. I had an expert witness examine the tape, and he suggested Maddox was manipulating the microphone. But we couldn’t prove it. And in the end, the jury didn’t buy it.”

“Did you call Wilson to the stand?”

She hesitated. “I did, and it was a mistake. Jack was… he’s very charismatic, one on one. Handsome as hell. But on the witness stand? I wanted a victim up there, but what I got instead was John Galt!”

“The Ayn Rand thing,” Burke said.

“You know about that!”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it wasn’t helpful,” Apple told him.

“I’m surprised you let him talk about that-”

“I didn’t! I cut him off as soon as he got started. But the prosecutor picked up on it, and jump-started the whole thing all over again on cross. And he just hung himself. He actually told the jury that it didn’t have a right to judge him because they weren’t his peers.” She paused. “This did not go over well.”

Burke laughed. “Meanwhile-”

“Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep the jury focused on the throwaway Indian boy who was left on a doorstep in a cardboard box. You know, he didn’t even know who he was named for until he was ten years old. I mean, he looked Indian, but he had no idea what tribe he was or anything like that. That’s when he got a foster mother who finally did some mothering. She helped him find out who he was, and where he’d come from.”

“When you say he was named for someone,” Burke asked, “who are we talking about? Who’s ‘Jack Wilson’?”

“The Paiute. You never heard of him? He was famous! Invented the Ghost Dance. You should put that in your story. He lived in Nevada way back when.”

“‘Jack Wilson’ doesn’t sound like an Indian name,” Burke said.

“That was his white name – the name of the family he grew up with. His native name was ‘Wovoka.’”

“Like the company,” Burke said. “Wilson’s company.”

“That’s right! I’d forgotten that.”

The connection had been there all along. Burke had seen it in a list of Google cites, but he hadn’t paid attention. It seemed irrelevant. Jack Wilson… the Ghost Dance… He thought it was a coincidence, if he thought about it at all. But there was that woman, the one in Belgrade – Tooti! She’d said something about Wilson dancing. And Ceplak, talking about Wilson’s last day with him: Time to dance.

“Let me ask you a question,” Burke said.

Apple chuckled ruefully. “I think we’ve probably talked enough. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“What was the invention? The invention that started it all?”

The lawyer laughed. “Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? Or does that date me?”

“It’s pretty important for the story,” Burke told her. “I mean, it’s at the heart of everything.”

“I suppose it is,” she replied, “but that’s why they call it the Invention Secrecy Act.”

“I’m not trying to find out how it works, or anything. I’m just curious – the readers are going to be curious – about what it is.”

“Well…”

“I’m guessing it’s some kind of weapon. I mean, for the government to seize it like that, it would have to be.”

The lawyer sighed. Finally, she said, “Can we go off the record here?”

A road trip.

In a few weeks, such a thing would no longer be possible, so Wilson resolved to take his time as he drove east. He wanted to savor every last moment: the subtle changes in the land, the search for decent road food, even the chance to gripe about the weather and the price of fuel with waitresses and other strangers. It would have been fun to drive cross-country with Irina, he thought, show her the diverse beauty of the country, just meander west and take it all in.

Not possible, of course. After June 22, the pleasures of this kind of driving – of any kind of driving, really – would come to an end. The intricate web of highways and roads and streets that knitted the country together would, in an instant, be useless. Virtually every vehicle on the road would come to a stop. Their engines would sputter and die. And they would never start again.

Vintage cars and a few diesels, like the ones back at the B-Lazy-B would still be capable of travel, but their range would be limited by the dead cars littering the roads.

Even if the occasional old car could get around, most of the fuel would be trapped underground in tanks, inaccessible without the electricity needed to work the pumps.

Bicycles would become quite valuable.

Although he’d modified the suspension, and created a sort of gimballed cocoon for the weapon, he winced as the Escalade shuddered over the rough road from the ranch to Juniper. He felt better when he hit Route 225.

Now that the road was smoother, he tapped the dashboard controls to select the Russian language CD. When it came on, he spoke out loud at the prompts, mimicking the recorded voice.

Thank you: Spashiba

You’re welcome: Pajalsta

Sorry: Izvinche (to strangers); Izvinit (to friends)

As well as making this effort to learn Irina’s language, he’d purchased more than a hundred books in the Russian – everything from dictionaries to poetry to classics, contemporary fiction, and children’s books. He’d bought an array of DVDs, as well, along with several icons, a samovar, and sets of matryoshka dolls for their children. He didn’t want Irina to feel cut off from her culture.