The car stopped finally and they hauled Nhung out. Many more ASPers were assembled in a clearing in full regalia, including hoods. They hauled Nhung past a blazing campfire toward a wooden post in the center of the assemblage.
No—it wasn’t a post, Nhung realized. It was a cross.
They wrapped a thin cord around his hands and feet, then tied him to the cross. The ASP men moved closer, encircling him, none of them speaking. The field of green hoods filled Nhung with terror.
One of them approached. He was shorter and larger than the man who had beaten him in the car. This man stared at Nhung for a long moment, then walked behind him. A moment later, Nhung felt his shirt being ripped off his back.
Another man in green advanced. He was cracking a bullwhip over his head.
Nhung wanted to be brave, but it was too hard, too impossible. He clenched his eyelids shut and cried. “Please don’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t—”
The tail of the whip smacked his exposed back. Nhung screamed, a loud high-pitched wail. He felt as if his back had been split open, as if the skin had been ripped off and the soft wet underflesh left exposed.
The whip cracked again. The nerve-shattering pain pierced his back like a dagger. He was certain he could not bear it any longer. And then they hit him again.
His knees weakened. If he had not been tied to the cross, he would have collapsed. The man wielding the whip was quite skilled; each blow landed in almost exactly the same place as the previous one, deepening the wound, intensifying the agony.
The whip sounded again and again and again. Nhung’s vision began to blur. He felt his consciousness fading.
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the whipping stopped. The wind whistled through the trees, stinging Nhung’s back, licking at the open wound. But the whip did not crack.
The ASP men were moving away from him, huddling around the campfire. They worked busily at some task, but Nhung couldn’t tell what it was. He heard a few chuckles, then some malevolent laughter.
He became very scared.
The ASP huddle parted, and through wet and blurry eyes Nhung saw what they were doing. The short man, the one who had torn his shirt, was in the center, stoking the fire. No, that wasn’t it. He was holding something in the flames. Something long and thin, like a poker.
The man raised the iron object high above his head. Now Nhung could see it clearly. It wasn’t a poker.
It was a branding iron.
The hooded men on all sides began to chant. “Blood, blood, blood,” they cried. “Death, death, death.”
“We will strike back against the enemy,” the man with the iron cried out. “We will fight and fight until the land is pure once more!”
“Please don’t do this,” Nhung begged them. “Oh, God! Please no. Please no!”
“Death, death, death,” they chanted, even louder than before. “Kill, kill, kill!”
The short man held the glowing iron an inch from Nhung’s face. The heat emanating from it stung Nhung’s eyes. The brand was in the shape of a cross.
The short man ripped the drooping tatters of Nhung’s shirt off his chest.
“No,” Nhung whimpered, over and over. “I’ll do anything. Please. Please—”
He heard a hideous hissing noise, followed by the most searing pain he had ever felt, had ever imagined. It burned through his chest and ignited every nerve in his body. His agonized shout reverberated through the twilight. And to his horror, he found that when the iron was removed, his suffering was even greater.
The only mercy was that he fell into deep unconsciousness and, as a result, wasn’t aware of what they did to him next.
26.
BEN WAS GRATIFIED TO find that Deputy Gustafson was not on duty when he arrived at the jailhouse the next morning. Sheriff Collier waved Ben through, never once making eye contact with him. Ben wondered how much he knew about the beating Gustafson had dished out when Ben was here before. More than he cared to acknowledge, Ben guessed.
Vick was the only inmate of the county jail that afternoon, which Ben realized had probably been true for most of the time Vick had spent behind bars. That had to get lonely, day after day. Ben only hoped the mounting loneliness would make Vick more talkative than he had been last time around.
Vick rose from his cot when he saw Ben come down the hallway. “Are you here for a visit,” he asked, “or are you staying the night?”
“I’m definitely not staying the night,” Ben answered. “Ever again, if I can help it.”
Vick grabbed the cell bars. “What makes you think you can spring me from this hellhole when you can’t keep yourself out?”
“That night was no party for me,” Ben said. “But you’ll notice that I’m free now and you’re still behind bars.”
“Good point.” For a fleeting moment, Vick’s lips formed something that might have been a smile, or at least a smirk. “How’s the eye?”
“Much better, thanks.”
“What ticked off Gustafson so bad?”
“Principally the fact that I’m representing you.”
“Oh.” That caused Vick to reflect for a moment. Good. Ben was more than willing to let Vick be motivated by guilt. “Guess this was a bad career move for you.”
“Guess so. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Vick instantly pushed away from the bars. “About what?”
“This case, of course. How can I represent you without any facts?”
“I told you I want to plead—”
“Nonetheless I can’t handle this case without more information. You think I can just make the facts up as I go along?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Ben decided to move on to the questions. “I’ve been to the boardinghouse where you were staying, and I’ve talked to Mary Sue. She says you had some visitors shortly before the murder.”
Vick didn’t respond.
“Mary Sue described one of your visitors as Vietnamese. That wouldn’t have been Tommy Vuong by any chance, would it?”
A deep furrow formed over Vick’s eyes. “Why would I meet with him?”
“I can’t imagine. But I don’t think you met him for the first time in that bar. I think you two had some history.”
“Well, you’re dead wrong.”
“Am I?” Ben took a few steps down the hallway. “If it wasn’t Vuong, who was it?”
“I don’t know what Mary Sue’s talking about. She has a tendency to drink more than she should. She probably hallucinated it.”
“Imagined a Vietnamese visitor to a member of a white-supremacist group? Seems unlikely.”
“Maybe he was visiting someone else in the house. She had several tenants.”
Ben decided to move on. It was better to keep him talking, even if he was lying, than to tick him off and cause him to clam up. “Mary Sue also said someone else dropped by to see you, the night before the murder. A woman.”
Vick’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
“Don’t deny it,” Ben said. “I can already see that it’s true.”
“What’s she accusing me of? Fornicating with the whore of Babylon?”
“Nothing quite that serious. Actually she seemed to think you just talked. At least on this particular occasion. Who was she?”
“I—I—” Vick looked away suddenly. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?” Ben clung to the bars that separated them. “Donald, I’m your lawyer. I’m on your side.”