Free A Darker Justice by Sallie Bissell Page A

hopeless cause espoused by hippies unaware of the political realities of life.
    “Not really. He’s just letting me use the store as my home base. The Cherokee REPICs in Oklahoma are hoping I can enroll a lot of our Eastern brothers and sisters.” She picked up a mayonnaise jar. “Would you like to sign a list and make a donation?”
    “I’ll make a donation,” Mary replied. “But I’d prefer not to sign anything.”
    “So what brings you up here on Christmas Eve?” Ruth Moon smiled. Her teeth were so straight, Mary wondered if she’d grown up with braces. “Visiting someone for the holidays?”
    “Actually, I’m visiting a friend.”
    “Anybody we know?”
    Something about this woman confused Mary, kept her off balance. How could Ruth Moon know the same people Mary knew? She’d only lived here four months. How could she get Jonathan to go out and deliver computers? Mary had practically had to wage war to get him to put on a tie. She dug through her wallet, pulling out old grocery receipts and ATM slips. Finally she extracted a ten-dollar bill and stuffed it in the jar.
    “No,” she answered Ruth’s question slowly. “I don’t think you’d know them.” She glanced once at the front corner of the store, where she’d found her mother on the floor, strangled to death.
    “I know about your mother.” Ruth lowered her voice respectfully. “And I’m awfully sorry. It must have been terrible to lose someone like that.”
    “Yes.” Mary’s face grew clammy and hot. Had Jonathan told this woman everything about her? Everything about them? “It was.”
    She dropped her wallet back in her purse. Ruth Moon looked at her from behind the counter, as if waiting to see what she might do next.
    “Well,” Mary said. “If Jonathan’s gone to Cherokee, I guess I’ll be going.”
    Ruth smiled. “I’ll tell him you came by. He’ll be disappointed he missed you, but I’m so glad to have gotten to meet you. He talks about you all the time. Any message you want me to give him?”
    Mary met Ruth Moon’s gaze with a look of her own. “Tell him I said hello.”
    “Are you sure I can’t talk you into joining us?” Ruth again held out her REPIC brochure. “We could use someone like you, someone who really knows the system from the inside.”
    Mary tried to focus on the brochure. From what she’d seen of the federal government, she wanted as little to do with it as possible. “The system I know is judicial, at the local level. What you’re seeking to change is the legislative branch, at the national level. It’s like apples and oranges.”
    “But you’re used to dealing with white people,” Ruth Moon said excitedly. “You know how they think. You’d be such an asset.”
    “I’m used to prosecuting criminals,” Mary replied. “And they think pretty much alike, whatever color their skin.”
    “But . . .”
    For a
Tsalagi
woman, this Ruth Moon was insistent to the point of rudeness.
    “You have a happy holiday.” Mary smiled wistfully at the Christmas tree, strung with popcorn and cranberries, a few brightly wrapped packages peeking from underneath the branches.
    “You, too,” said Ruth, at last giving up on enrolling Mary in REPIC. “If you’re here for a few days, come and have dinner with us some night. I know Jonathan would love to see you again.”
    “Thanks,” said Mary. With a single final glance at the front corner of the store, she walked out the door and back to the truck, hoping with all her heart that Safer was reading his damn evidence files and not seeing the sorrow that was etched across her face.

CHAPTER 8
    Sergeant Wurth frowned as he twisted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Where ten years ago Richard Dunbar had treated him to his one-and-only first-class ticket, today he was stuffed in between a tiny window and an overweight woman who had dark sweat rings beneath the armpits of her Christmas red blazer. A bald-headed man reclined in front of him while to the rear, a