Chapter 40
Tangled webs are spun with secrets
And the spider is never far away.
~The Author~
April 20, 1998 – Hazzard, the Duke farm
Turk had believed Lance's final destination was Hazzard before Thompson started trailing him in that direction, even though the dots seemed to span the global map. The intricately laced connections reached back in time and further in the past than '88. He was convinced it could all be traced back to '86 when Darcy Kincaid was murdered…by a woman who might have been Daisy had another of his victims not done it first. Rape is about power, not sexual appetite. Enos had worked the case with the GBI. Only one woman, Daisy Mae Duke, who'd been dating Kincaid at the time, was brought in for questioning. Enos Strate, Deputy Sheriff, known as the only honest law enforcement officer in Hazzard County, was the alibi that eliminated her as a suspect.
Turk's façade indicated a man cautiously formulating his response to Aaron – because Daisy had told him things only Enos had known previously. Daisy's family didn't know the whole story of how she had narrowly escaped Kincaid the night before he died. It wasn't like she hadn't been warned by her cousins and Enos to steer clear of him. How many women before her had not been so lucky? She only knew about the one. The one who, like herself and probably every other woman he had victimized, was too ashamed, too traumatized, and afraid to go to the Sheriff. Afraid of what her cousins would do to Darcy if they found out.
Daisy had confided to Turk that she sometimes wondered if it was Darcy's murder that set her and Enos on divergent paths – Enos to pursue his dragons and her to find her way on her own.
"There are things about this jigsaw puzzle that we can't talk about," Enos told Aaron.
"Call it experience, call it gut instinct," Turk added, grateful Enos had stepped in, "but we know what we know."
Aaron understood that a cop's gut could be as useful in an investigation as facts and evidence, but that didn't make him any less anxious.
With Aaron and Enos out of earshot, Daisy asked, "Jay, what happens if Inez isn't with him anymore?"
"We find Lance, we find Inez…or what he's done with her," Turk said. He wasn't cold or callous, just realistic.
Daisy shivered involuntarily.
But Tommy had told Enos much more. The search of Inez's house, in particular her bedroom, was something they were trying to keep under wraps, but it would get out eventually.
There was little doubt that Lance had abducted Inez. For what reason? Revenge or leverage? Some twisted agenda of Lazzaro's to eliminate anyone who could testify against him? After all, it was the way he'd slipped through the net in the past, eliminating witnesses.
Taking Inez was insane, an act of desperation, and that made him doubly dangerous. Enos's greatest fear was that Lance would not make the same mistake he'd made with Kate. Once Inez's usefulness was exhausted, he would kill her.
Rosco had brought old maps from way back in the 60s and 70s, when 'revenuers' roamed Hazzard and the surrounding counties rooting out stills and arresting ridge-runners.
"By the late 70s," Enos told Aaron and Turk, "Treasury Department agents were usin' infrared flights to cut stills cookin' at night. By the early 80s, most large moonshine operations had been dismantled. When the government focused its attention on other unlawful activities, the moonshine trade resurfaced."
"Illegal shine is still flowin,' but these days it comes mostly from southwest Virginia," Rosco added. "There's no shine runnin' through this county, no sir! 'Cause I'd cuff um and stuff um."
It occurred to Turk that not only was Enos's own father a moonshiner, but they were having this conversation in the home of one of Hazzard County's most successful ridge-runners. There was so much irony in Enos Strate's life; it was hard to keep up sometimes.
"Y'all know the GBI doesn't think there's anything to your notion that Lazzaro, or this slimy, no good, snake in the grass Lance, has a bead drawn on Hazzard County or the Dukes. They think we're makin' a mountain out of a molehill because that phone tap investigation went as nowhere as the old mine tunnels out in Skunk Holler." Rosco bent over the map. "They got him headed for Atlanta. State Police are already talking about cuttin' down on surveillance of the main roads into Hazzard."
"But they can't do that, Sheriff. They've only been watchin' them for 24 hours. It'd leave the county wide open."
"Maybe you should tell that Agent Johnson," he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "about you know who."
"Not my call to make. Or yours, either." Enos gave him a stern look.
"Cool your jets, Enos. I was just askin.' Besides, me and Sheriff Goodey and Sheriff MacDonald got together and convinced them to stay put for now. But, we're on our own as far as these back roads go. And there's the question of 'how would Lance know the back roads?'"
Turk spoke up. "He's Lazzaro's nephew. Looks like Niki's been groomin' him for a long time. Lazzaro was also Darcy Kincaid's boss. My bet is, he or somebody in his operation knows everything there is to know about this part of Georgia."
Enos studied the map, thinking of all the times he'd driven those roads, some of them no more than buggy paths, back in the days when his father was alive. Only ridge-runners could navigate ruts that jiggled your insides into jelly and cracked a truck's axle easier than breaking a dry twig.
"What about deputizin' some of the old-timers, or their kin?" Enos suggested.
Rosco looked at his former Deputy with one eye closed and the other squinted. "You been dippin' into some bad buttermilk, Dipstick?"
"Hear him out, Rosco," Turk said. "It makes sense."
"And be the laughin' stock of every self-respecting lawman from here to Kentucky?"
"Sheriff," Enos said, "the old shine-runners know those hills better than either of us. They got away from us plenty of times."
Rosco leaned in. "You and me both know it wasn't like you were tryin' real hard, now was it?"
Aaron was learning more about Uncle E than he knew before. Enos had told him about where he grew up in a nostalgic context but rarely talked about his exploits as a Deputy for the county.
For instance, Aaron knew the best fishing spot at Hazzard Pond, that Alvin Dobbins was the biggest gossip in the county, that Emma Tisdale had been postmaster since the beginning of time and would likely be that until the Rapture. He knew that Daisy Duke, not his mother, had been the love of Uncle E's life…until Soonie.
Enos had wanted to spend some time alone with Daisy, but by two in the afternoon, the jet lag and sleeplessness caught up with him. He had difficulty focusing. Rosco had left, convinced that deputizing any capable relations of moonshiner families had been his idea and the only way to make thirty Deputies out of two…and for the county to foot the bill.
By nightfall, Enos received another call from Gordon Thompson. David Shapiro had been arrested earlier than expected. By eight the next morning, the Special Agent Johnson had arrived on the Hazzard County Sheriff's Office's doorstep. Within two hours, the national and state news syndicates picked up the scent and, under the umbrella of 'journalistic investigation,' connected a whole lot of dots.
April 21, 1998 – Hazzard, the Strate farm
"Why do you have to go?"
"Aunt Judy, it's only a matter of time before the press finds out where we are. And they'll be all over this farm."
"But where are you gonna' go?"
"I can't tell you that. If you don't know, you don't have to lie."
Frank Strate stood in the doorway with his shotgun in its case and a box of shells. "Let him be, Judy. Nephew knows what he's doin'."
Enos hoped that was true. He never imagined when he reached out to Ginny that the need would be to secrete Aaron instead of Annie. He'd only had an hour or so to think it out. Turk would take care of any diversion at the Dukes' if it came to that, and Rosco could hold off the press in town. Neither of them had any problem stretching the truth – Turk had worked undercover for years, so it was a tool of his trade; Rosco did it purely for the fun of pushing the limits of what he could get away with.
There was no time to think of everyone at once. Aaron was his primary focus until Tommy could get better intel on where Lance was and what he had done with Inez.
In the last hours of that night they'd hung suspended over a crevasse in North L.A., she had exacted from him a solemn promise. He never thought he would have to keep it.
April 21, 1998 – Chattahoochee National Forest
Enos parked Frank's old work truck under the camouflaged cover close to the gravel access road. The area was remote to the extent traffic amounted to two vehicles on a busy day, so also quiet. Any sound would carry a long distance out there.
It was two in the morning in Goyang-si, so he hadn't wanted to wake Soonie just to talk to her. She would only worry. He could hike down to get a signal later when she would be awake.
Aaron, who had followed Enos's instructions without protest, and had been quietly compliant for most of the trip, finally spoke. "I know we went north, but where are we exactly?"
"About thirty miles northwest of Dahlonega. Small county, not many people, deep woods. People get lost up here even with a map and a compass."
Aaron had given up arguing about how they should be looking for his mother, not traipsing around the woods like Grizzly Adams. When 'Dad' made up his mind about something, not much would change it. Mom called him a 'force of nature.'
"So, where do we go from here?"
Enos pulled the shotgun and shells from behind the seat and pointed. "Up."
The hike from where Enos had left Frank's truck to the cabin was just shy of a mile. The half-mile trek took about twenty-five minutes through the circuitous route that took them in a zig-zag pattern to cover their tracks. He and Aaron had hiked three times that in Big Sur.
"Why all the effort to cover our tracks?"
"I taught you this, Aaron. When you're off-trail hikin', never go over the same steps twice. Besides, I don't want to do anything that'll make it necessary for the railroad to abandon usin' this place down the line. It's just till we get a ways up, then the trail will be clear where it's hidden from the road and from the air."
Contrary to Aaron's limited expectations, the cabin was warm, reasonably comfortable, and recently stocked with provisions. There was no electricity, only propane for the water heater and the small gas stove.
"You said this cabin is part of an underground railroad?"
"For families, mostly women and kids, runnin' from somethin,' usually an abusive husband or boyfriend. This place is for families whose batterers are…police officers or somebody with connections in high places," Enos answered ruefully, ashamed that his profession harbored such monsters. "Usually, just a night stopover, like most of the safe houses along the line."
The cabin was only one room. The privy, Aaron had been informed, was a good 500 feet from the cabin. Again he wondered how women with small children could brave the elements on winter nights. Maybe the cabin wasn't used in cold weather. But then, he thought, it would have to be, wouldn't it, if families needed a safe place to stay on short notice?
"Not exactly legal, is it?"
"No. Harboring fugitives is most definitely illegal."
"But, you know enough about it to know who to contact."
"There's some things that have to be done 'cause it's what's right. The law's not always just, and justice ain't always lawful."
Natural curiosity kept Aaron's mind occupied for a few minutes until Enos asked him to bring in some firewood from the stack out front, which kept his mind from wandering back to fears for his mother's safety, at least for the duration of the task.
April 22, 1998 – Goyang-si, Republic of Korea (Korea Time)
Baek Sung-mi was scuttering around the kitchen preparing the morning meal, which had become a strange mixture of California-style and Korean-traditional cuisine at the Strate household. Stranger still because Soonie preferred a breakfast burrito (minus the spicy Mexican french fries due to the queasy stomach) or an acai bowl. In contrast, Enos liked Korean banchan (the spicier, the better) and enjoyed the array of side dishes set before him every day. Gem had taken up the practice of sampling both fare.
They had abandoned using the traditional Korean dining table, with its low-lying humility, in favor of one of Western height to which she and Enos were both more accustomed. Also, it was becoming increasingly more challenging for her to get up from the floor once seated. Secretly, although he would not have said, Enos had been grateful when she suggested an additional mattress layer for their low-profile platform bed as well.
When Soonie had showered and dressed, Ms. Baek steered her to the small kitchen where Eun-kyung was waiting with palpable anticipation.
"You must eat to keep up your strength, Kyung-soon. Before your husband calls," Ms. Baek entreated.
"Will I be allowed to speak to appa too?" Gem asked.
"Not this morning, little one," Ms. Baek told her gently. "He will only have time to speak with omma."
When Gem's face fell in disappointment, Soonie tenderly cupped the little girl's chin with her hand and said, "Appa is in a place where his phone will not operate inside. He must be outside, in the cold, to make the call. And it is almost nighttime there."
"In Gee-or-gee-ah?" Gem struggled in the pronunciation.
"Yes, in Georgia. We would not want him to catch a cold because he stayed out in the weather for too long."
"Ani."
Meals at the Strate household were also a strange mixture of English and Korean. Soonie insisted Gem speak English as much as possible in preparation for the eventual move back to California, and Gem was quickly becoming one of Enos's Korean language teachers.
April 21, 1998 – Chattahoochee National Forest
Around 4:00 in the afternoon, Enos hiked down to the gravel road to make his phone calls. By the time he neared the roadside, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, and the fog was quickly rolling in. Refracted through the mist, the waning sunlight split through the trees and spread a host of sunbeams onto the forest floor as if angels were reaching out to Earth.
'Good night for spider web hunting,' he thought, reflecting on the less complicated days of his early childhood.
The terminus of the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail was a mere ten miles from where he was standing. The early-blooming mountain laurel covering many of the hills reminded him of cherry blossoms. Shortly before he left the peninsula, he and Soonie had made a trip by themselves to the Hwagae Cherry Blossom Festival in Gyeongsangnam-do to walk the 'Marriage Road' under the long stretch of cherry trees.
Because the distance covered seventeen time zones, the clocks in Goyang-si would read 7:00 am - tomorrow morning. Figuring that out was more difficult without his cheat sheet, but the concentration the task required gave him respite, not from where they were but why they were there.
During separations, which over the past four months had previously consisted of no more than three days and two nights, Enos and Soonie's interaction on the phone was usually kept conversational. They could have been sitting together at the dinner table or in the small meditation garden they shared with three of their neighbors. It was how they maintained a balance between their private and professional lives.
The conversations since the rescue in Turkey had been different. Soonie knew he'd been wounded. He'd promised to tell her up-front about any threat to his safety, partly so that she could prepare herself, partly because she did not want to be sheltered. Enos not telling his wife things she would eventually find out anyway had an inevitable and absolute result.
"Soonie…" He nearly sighed with relief at the sound of her voice. "How are you feelin', honey? Still able to keep your food down, I hope?"
She had only been working full days for the past three weeks. Until it began to subside, she'd been working half days because the morning sickness kept her tired and often dehydrated.
"As long as I maintain the B-6 and ginger and drink plenty of coconut water, I can keep everything down. But you should not be worried about our baby or me...How is Aaron?"
"Angry, confused…scared." He stopped short of telling her how scared he was but figured she probably knew. Soonie didn't miss much. "We're both tryin' to make sense of it all. Hope I made the right decision bringin' him up here while Inez is still out there…somewhere."
"And what would the alternative have been, mi amor? Stay where he would be hounded by people shoving cameras and microphones in his face, asking ridiculously callous and misleading questions?"
"I know…I know. But he's countin' on me to find his mother and keep her safe…not sure that's even possible…not sure of a lot of things right now."
Chilled by a sudden damp breath of wind, he shuddered.
"'Suelta los pensamientos que no te hacen fuerte.' Siempre estoy contigo en mi alma."*
"Oh, Soonie, I miss you somethin' terrible..."
"I know." Her voice was soft and soothing. "We miss you more. But you are you, and I love you for that. You will do what you must, then you will come home to us."
The call to Turk confirmed his decision. Several affiliate vans were parked quite visibly in downtown Hazzard and willing to take their 'news' from anyone who would give them the time of day.
"To their credit," Turk said, "the residents of Hazzard have taken great pains to ignore the media…at least so far." Enos might have been a curiosity to most of them, but he was their curiosity. "The only positive is that with all this high-profile attention, Lance would be a complete moron to attempt any move that would endanger Daisy."
Rosco and the GBI hadn't satiated their appetites either. And at the Strate farm, the press had been met by a stern-faced Uncle Frank with an array of menacing hay rakes attached to his tractor and at the Duke farm by two very pissed-off cousins with compound bows brandishing arrows tipped with dynamite.
April 22, 1998 – Seoul, Republic of Korea (Korea Time)
Soonie boarded the subway at Wondang Station. The thirty-two-minute commute to work gave just enough time for the apprehension she'd felt upon ending the phone call with Enos to intensify. On approach to the Gyeongbokgung Station in Seoul, apprehension turned to dread.
Reaching her office at 8:30, the first call she made was to the American Embassy. The second call went to the immigration attorney, and the third to Uncle Sang-Jun in San Francisco.
Translation (Spanish to English):
The inspirational quote is of unknown origin but used in multiple sites under keyword "Strength encouraging quotes":'Suelta los pensamientos que no te hacen fuerte.' means 'Let go of the thoughts that do not make you strong.'
Siempre estoy contigo en mi alma." means I am always with you in my soul.
