A Darker Justice by Sallie Bissell Page A

bounce against the steering wheel. He repeated the procedure once, then twice, then he put the car in park and sauntered back to the old man.
    “Sorry about that, buddy. I was in such a hurry to get out of your way that I just lost control.”
    The old man sat, slack-jawed, his glasses shattered. Blood streamed from his nose.
    “Here.” Wurth grabbed a blue paper towel from the dispenser. “Let me help you out. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.” He rubbed the rough towel all over the old fart’s face, smearing blood up into his eyebrows and hair.
    “Awrrrr,” the old man groaned, woozy in the seat.
    “You take it easy there, old-timer.” Wurth wadded up the paper towel and threw it on the passenger seat. “I hear there’s a lot of road rage out here in California.”
    With that, he got back in his car and turned toward the airport. He would have to show the rental agent what happened, but he didn’t care. The car had been charged to the FaithAmerica account; Dunbar could get it fixed. After all, what’s a busted bumper when you were out to rearrange the entire United States?

CHAPTER 6
    “Good morning and Merry Christmas, Atlanta! We’re gonna start off this hour with a real blast from the past, Roy Orbison and ‘Sweet Dream Baby’!”
    Mary smiled at the disk jockey’s choice of tunes. According to her mother, “Dream Baby” was the first song her father ever sang to her. “He just got out his guitar,” Martha had told her daughter one evening long ago. “And suddenly Roy was right there in the store. Singing ‘Dream Baby,’ just to me.”
    “Could he really play the guitar?” Mary had asked, impressed that anyone related to her could play anything beyond the radio.
    “Oh, yes.” Martha smiled. “He was wonderful. He could play the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix. Everybody.”
    Mary listened until Roy finished, then she switched off the radio. On workdays, the oldies station helped her wake up as she inched along in her tedious, bumper-to-bumper commute. But today, this early on Christmas Eve, the streets were empty. Downtown Atlanta looked like a ghost town.
    Impatiently, she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as two joggers wearing red elf hats loped across the street in front of her.
Seven days.
Surely she could talk Irene into being guarded by the FBI for that long.
Irene.
Where would she be without Irene, the infinitely kind, wise woman who’d taken Mary home with her the afternoon they’d loaded her mother up in the back of an ambulance, a black body bag zipped over her head. She’d taken her to Upsy Daisy and fed her soup with crusty bread. Then Irene had made a pallet on the leather couch in front of the big kitchen fireplace and held her while she’d cried from a well of tears that seemingly had no end. Two years later, when every picture Mary had painted in her art classes gave her nightmares, Irene had driven down to Emory and taken her to lunch, suggesting that perhaps art was not the course of study she should follow.
Why not try the law?
she’d said that day, gently squeezing Mary’s arm.
Let the seeking of justice retool the workings of your heart.
    “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” Mary murmured, trying to shake away the image of Rosemary Klinefelter holding her own head.
    She turned her car into the courthouse parking lot, coming to a stop in space number twenty-nine. The lot was empty, except for a black Dodge pickup with a camper top, around which paced Agent Daniel Safer. Though he’d changed from his sleek Italian suit into worn jeans and a red flannel shirt, she could tell by the urgency of his stride that Safer was a city boy; concrete probably did feel better under his feet. She waved at him as she parked her car. He glared back.
    “Well, screw you,” Mary said as she shoved her car into park. Angrily she grabbed her backpack and walked toward the truck. If this Agent Safer was going to pout about being saddled with a “female civilian” all the