Dark Justice by William Bernhardt

removed.
    She couldn’t make out the face yet, but he kept running closer, closer and closer, faster and faster. She could almost see it and then—
    And then the picture changed. The camera moved every which way at once, moved so quickly she could make out nothing. And then all she saw was the ground, moving fast.
    Tess knew what had happened. She had seen Sasquatch coming toward her and panicked. She had turned and fled for her life—just an instant before the monster’s face would have been visible on the tape.
    She punched the Stop button, cursing under her breath. And so, when all was said and done, she had nothing. Her big chance for success, her opportunity to bolt from the sleaze market, had dissipated.
    She felt a stinging in her eyes. It had been stupid to let herself fantasize. She should have known something would go wrong—didn’t something always go wrong? Face it—she was going to be spending the rest of her life with the ninety-five-year-old grandmother who gave birth to twins. There was no escape.
    She slapped herself hard on the side of the face. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, damn it, and think ! Suddenly she realized she knew a hell of a lot more than anyone else did about this case. She was the only living eyewitness—not counting the killer. She was the only one who knew exactly how it had happened. And she was the only one who knew there had been a fight preceding the explosion.
    A fight. That was the key—it had to be. She had read in the paper that the victim was a logger, which made sense, since he knew how to start the tree cutter. If he was a logger, then who would be fighting with him? Who would be having an argument in the dead of night, at the site of a massive clear-cut?
    Green Rage, that’s who.
    She knew that the police had arrested the leader of the group and charged him with the murder. But she didn’t believe he was guilty; he didn’t look anything like the person in the Sasquatch suit. The height and weight were all wrong. The police were just latching onto the obvious suspect, as they always did. They were assuming the bomb had been planted in advance, that it was part of a Green Rage terrorist strike, that the logger had just had the misfortune to be the person who turned the ignition that night.
    Tess knew better. She knew the killer had been there all along, including when the bomb was triggered. She knew the two men had fought. She didn’t know what they had fought about, but given the circumstances, it seemed more than reasonable to assume it had something to do with the destruction of the national forest.
    She pushed herself off the bed, grabbed her notebook, and started making plans.
    Somehow she would have to infiltrate Green Rage. The only way to learn what she wanted to know would be to gain their confidence, their trust. If she could get them talking, she might uncover the clues she needed.
    Of course she would, she told herself. She was a reporter, wasn’t she? A real reporter.
    But to do this, she would have to venture outside. And longer than it took to get to the video store, too.
    But what could happen to her? She had just been silly, hadn’t she? Paranoid? After all, she had nothing on the killer, whoever he was. He or she. There was no reason to go after her. Hell, the creep probably never even saw her face.
    Probably.
    She laughed, trying to convince herself. Probably didn’t have the slightest idea who she was.
    Probably.
    Enough. She was going to do this. No one and nothing was going to stop her. This might be the last chance she had to make the Pulitzer committee sit up and take notice. Or at least to get a job she didn’t have to lie about when she called her mother. She wasn’t going to let it pass her by.
    Her eye moved unbidden to the draped window. She wasn’t going to blow this opportunity, damn it. She wasn’t.
    No matter what the consequences.
    Sasquatch peered through his binoculars at the draped window of the Holiday Inn room. Of