“The issue at hand is the disease of alcoholism,” he said, eyes still on the paper.
I didn’t care if he had saved my life; he was going to owe me on this one.
4
Once I got home, I made myself another pot of coffee because sleep is for pussies, anyway. As my burgeoning insomnia brewed to life in the coffeemaker, I sat at the dining room table and read the Rolling Stone article about Meadow.
The picture painted of Serenity and of Parker County in the article wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t incorrect, either. It described the area as a dying coal field gasping for breath, the landscape scarred by mountaintop removal, the downtown littered with empty storefronts and “Closed for Business” signs. The graduation rate for Parker County High School was twenty points below the national average, and test scores were a punch line for late-night comedians. There was a mention of the white supremacist compound that wasn’t there anymore, and I tried not to think about the ring finger that wasn’t on my left hand.
The article rehashed the growth of the opioid problem in towns like Serenity. It dated back to when doctors began filling out prescription after prescription for painkiller OxyContin, and pharmacies morphed into pill mills in the wake, doling out painkillers like they were PEZ. As addictions rose and people died from overdoses, the state police came in and shut down the pharmacies, which left addicts twitchy and in need of new highs. It all coincided with heroin transitioning from ’80s glamorous and ’90s chic to New Millennium cheap. Roads out of Chicago and Detroit stayed hot from the tires of cars transporting smack into Appalachia. Rednecks who spent most of their lives calling black folks the N-word greeted their big-city saviors with open arms and hands full of cash from disability checks so they could smother their regrets in a drug-induced haze, even if it lasted just long enough to need to do it all over again.
It brewed a perfect storm of desperation so bad the local paper stopped doing individual stories about overdoses; now they keep a graphic on the front page with the number of ODs updated daily.
For the Charles family, the focus turned to Meadow’s father, Robert Charles. He talked about his family’s grief, the sense of loss and the struggle to keep things afloat after his daughter’s death. Meadow’s stepmother declined to talk, and Robert Charles kept Meadow’s siblings out of the article. He said he wanted to “maintain his family’s privacy.”
Eddie Dolan seemed a confused individual who found his way into drugs because he didn’t have another option. He had a criminal record—he and some other guys had broken into some cars, he’d sold copper wiring stolen from a construction site, and he’d gotten busted with painkillers that weren’t his. Once upon a time, he might have worked a coal mining job, but those gigs were harder to find and required a level of technical knowledge he had no hope of being able to handle.
Eddie was stuck in an environment that didn’t have much mercy for someone who didn’t fall into line or meet the bare minimums expected. He was a shitty criminal who avoided jail time out of the sympathy of the county prosecutor and the local judge. Had a kid he’d never met. Was met with pity at best, mocking and scorn at worst.
So Eddie did heroin. His sister being a nurse, he knew from watching her give their parents various medical injections over the years how to do it. This task, he mastered without effort.
Eddie and Meadow should never have been friends, except when you’re an addict, the only people who’ll have much to do with you are other addicts. AA meetings come stocked with those who realize all the people they thought they depended on in the bars were assholes. Of course, AA meetings are full of the same assholes who were in the bars, but that’s another story.
Eddie denied anything to do with Meadow’s death until an hour before the trial was to start, when he took a guilty plea. Katie read the confession to him since he couldn’t read it himself, and his signature on the document was all but illegible.
The writer talked to Eddie. He never spoke about killing Meadow and focused on how kind she had been to him, how much he had cared for her. He denied having any feelings for her beyond a desire for friendship. When asked if he killed her, he said, “Yes,” turned away, and refused to say any more.
5
The Mount Olive Correctional Complex is a two-hour drive from Serenity. The state’s maximum security facility, it’s a bland gray construction surrounded by razor wire and a sense of hopelessness that makes everything around it seem all the more bleak by association. There’s spots throughout where you can watch the sun come up over the mountains, and it’s beautiful the way all sunrises are, but you’re still in prison when you see it. There can’t be a punishment greater than seeing a sunrise that doesn’t offer you a sense of hope.
Visitations are on Sundays, but I still had friends in corrections, so I set up an appointment for a Thursday afternoon. I didn’t want to disturb Eddie Dolan’s routine, or closer to the truth, I didn’t want to disturb his sister’s routine. Katie Dolan found comfort in Sunday visits to see her brother. Routine isn’t a terrible thing in the absence of hope. Also, she seemed like she could kick my ass.
The visiting area is a group of tables in a cement room with small barred windows to allow in sunlight. Toys were in the corner—Legos, blocks, puzzles—for the kids who came to see their fathers.
Eddie Dolan looked like the guy who asks if you’ve got a few bucks to spare and he’ll get it back to you next week, but that next week never comes. He was small and stoop-shouldered, his hair shaggy and greasy looking, his skin pockmarked. A dentist would need to pull teeth soon. His were the eyes of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, surprised and unaware of inevitable doom. Eddie wasn’t the type who’d adapt to prison life, who’d toughen up and learn to fight. He was the type the system would devour, bones and all, and never notice he was gone.
He shifted around in the chair and glanced at the guard at the door. The guard was the size of a water buffalo who enjoyed bench presses.
I said, “You keep looking at the guard. You don’t like him?”
His eyes shifted around like they were loose in his skull. “They don’t like me around here.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“The guards.”
“Why?”
Eddie looked at me as though it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. Perhaps it was. “Because this is a prison, and they know the only reason you’re in here is ’cause you’ve done something wrong.”
It was hard to fault his logic on that.
I took out a notepad and a mechanical pencil from my jacket pocket. Ever the professional, always ready. “You’re saying you haven’t done something wrong, aren’t you, Eddie? That you didn’t kill Meadow Charles.”
He dropped his head down. The repentant child. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and scratched at a sore along his jawline. His fingernails were filthy and chewed to the quick. He looked at one then gnawed on it. He kept that shit up, there’d be bone showing soon.
I waited. Time dragged along like a turtle in a body cast. “Eddie, did you kill Meadow Charles?”
He took a deep breath. Shook his head. At least it seemed like he shook his head. The movement was small, and you’d have to work to notice it. Could have been a tremor.
“Use your words, Eddie,” I said. “Did you kill her?”
Head still down. “No.”
“Look at me, Eddie.”
He lifted his gaze to me. His eyes were small and dark, too close together, resting above a nose that, on a more handsome face, would have been described as Romanesque, but on Eddie Dolan, it was just a big nose.
“Then why’d you tell them you did?” I said.
His already-rounded shoulders dropped further. “They told me they knew I did it. Couldn’t have been nobody but me, they said. That if I didn’t tell ’em now, I’d go to prison and never get out and”—his eyes darted back and forth. Legit terror in there—“that I’d get ass-fucked every day for the rest of my life, a
nd they’d make sure it was by the biggest, nastiest—” He paused and bit on his bottom lip. “ You know the word. The N-word.”
“I know the word.”
Eddie ran his hand across the back of his neck. “My momma, she told me to never call no one that, that it wasn’t a good word. But yeah, they said they’d make sure I was in a cell with the biggest one they could find.”
“Did you keep telling them you didn’t kill her?”
“I did, but no one would listen. I said I wouldn’t never hurt Meadow. We weren’t never nothing but friends.” He smiled. “She’d laugh when I told jokes. No one laughs when I tell jokes.” His eyes flashed bright. “You wanna hear one? It was Meadow’s favorite.”
“Sure. Tell me, Eddie.”
“You know what’s the difference between a guitar and a fish?”
“No. What’s the difference?”
He was giggling before he could even get the words out. “You can’t tuna fish.”
I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I bet this was the happiest that Eddie got. He was like any little kid, desperate for an adult’s approval.
He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and gave me a smile full of small, dark teeth. “I know more, if you wanna hear ’em.”
“In a minute. First, I need you to tell me why that pipe had your fingerprints on it.”
“Because Meadow, she’d stopped doing drugs, and she was headed to school. I was proud of her. She was smart, and she didn’t need to do the shit she did with me and the other folks. I was happy for her, and I asked if she and I could meet so we could say goodbye.”
“Why are your fingerprints on the pipe, though, Eddie?”
He sighed. “So I was supposed to meet her there at seven, and I was late because my momma, she asked me to pick up eggs and milk and a bag of those little Snickers bars at Walmart, and the line was real long at the self-checkout, you know the one, where you do all the stuff yourself—”
Jesus, but this was going to be exhausting. “The pipe, Eddie.”
“Sorry. Sometimes I get mixed up, and it takes me longer to tell something than it should. Anyway, I was late, and when I got to the landfill I saw something piled up on the ground, and I thought maybe it was just a bag, someone dumping their garbage there, ’cause people, they do that there. But closer I got, I saw it was Meadow. Like she was sleeping, which now I think, ‘That’s stupid, Eddie, ’cause why’d she be sleeping on the ground like that.’ She had blood all over her, and it was on the pipe, too, and I know I wasn’t thinking, ’cause I picked the pipe up and then I saw there was bits of stuff everywhere and I realized those were little bits of Meadow, and I let it go like it was on fire.” He sniffed and closed his large, watery eyes. “Meadow was good people, Mr. Malone. She called me the only good guy she knew, on account I didn’t want nothin’ from her. She said being with me made the world seem sunnier. No one never talked to me nice, ’cept my family. So no, I never could have done nothin’ mean to Meadow.”
Eddie turned away from me, staring at the children’s toys.
“Your mother’s sick,” I said.
His focus stayed on the toys, but the edges of his expression changed slightly. Discomfort.
“Is that why you told your sister you didn’t kill Meadow? You don’t want your mother dying thinking you killed someone?”
He shivered like he was holding back a chill or struggling not to cry. “I didn’t kill Meadow, Mr. Malone. She was my friend.”
The words sounded as though they hurt as they came out. But they also sounded like he meant them.
He looked at me. “You wanna hear another joke?”
“Go for it, Eddie.”
“What do you get when you cross a vampire with a snowman?” He didn’t even give me a chance to respond. “Frostbite.”
6
Lily Wilder and I sat on her living room couch, looking at one another. A lot of CGI exploded on the TV, but we didn’t pay attention to it. I drank a Coke, and Lily sipped wine.
“Meadow was a sweet girl,” Lily said. “Not one of those rich-bitch types, the ones who like to wear daddy’s money.”
“What would the school board say if they heard the principal using such language?” I said.
“Fuck ’em,” she said.
Dr. Lillian Wilder was principal at Parker County High School, and despite a good education and common sense, she had taken a liking to me, and we had been seeing a good amount of one another. We agreed to take things slow. I had trepidation around relationships, combined with the ink still being wet on my divorce papers. Lily seemed okay with moving slow. She also told me if I called her Lillian, she’d slap me, and while that turned me on more than I wanted to admit, I didn’t tell her that, because I was sure we hadn’t reached there yet, either.
We spent most of our time at her house since my trailer could have qualified as a Superfund site. Lily’s place, on the other hand, was clean and smelled like citrus. She had framed art on her walls, and none of her dishes were chipped, and all her throw pillows matched. Hell, she had throw pillows.
“Did you like Meadow?” I said.
“I didn’t deal with her much. The other teachers all seemed good with her. She didn’t cause trouble. She didn’t fight in the hallway or give blow jobs behind the bleachers at the football field, so she was already ahead of the curve compared to her classmates.”
“Those aren’t huge hurdles to clear.”
“We’re in a world of standardized testing, Henry; the benchmarks are constantly being lowered.”
“Goddamn, but the cynicism is so hot. I can barely control myself now.”
She leaned over and kissed me. She tasted like cold, sweet red wine. “You’ve been doing well controlling yourself.”
“I’m pure of heart and stout of virtue.”
“Your virtue is costing me a fortune in C batteries. I’m beginning to feel like you’re only coming over for the free meals.”
“Your house smells nice, too.”
“These are the things every woman wants to hear.” She kissed me again. “You’re a charmer, Henry.” She left and came back with a full glass of wine. “You’re okay with me drinking?”
“You know I am.”
“I want to be sure. I’m working to be considerate here. Cut the girl some slack.”
“Of course.”
“And even with the kissing?”
“Even with the kissing. I’m very big on the kissing, by the way.”
“I’m not sure what the protocol is on these things.”
“There’s not what you’d consider a set-in-stone group of rules on the matter.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“On your kissing? I think it’s great. I’d encourage more of it.”
“On me drinking and kissing you.”
“That’s fine, too. I was never a wine guy anyway, but if this is what makes me drink again, I’m not sure how strong I am in being sober.”
“Were you a mean drunk?”
“Less mean, more angry. I drank a fair amount when I was a trooper, and it got worse after I was shot because I didn’t have any way to deal with my anger.”
“Didn’t have a way or didn’t want to find a way?”
“I thought the drinking was a way to handle it.”
“Except you just got more angry.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And your ex, she drank with you.”
“She did.”
“Is she an alcoholic?”
“I don’t know. You come to your own terms with that. If you can’t function without it, or it’s interfering with the day-to-day of your life, then you have to give that some examination.”
“What made you want to be a cop? Why not a doctor or a lawyer?”
“‘Indian chief’ was also considered.”
“Be serious. Please.”
“I guess the main reason came from everything involving my mother.”
“And now thing
s take a turn to the Freudian. What happened?”
I drank some Coke. “She was murdered when I was three years old.”
Lily’s cheeks flushed red and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh Jesus, Henry, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be; it’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay she was murdered. That part was horrible.”
“What happened?”
“She left the house one day to go to a flower club event, and she never got there. They found her car at a rest area, her plants still in the back seat, and a few days later they found her body in the woods.”
“Christ. Did they catch the person who did it?”
“No. But what I remember was how cops were around for a long time, because Billy, since he was the husband, jumped to the top of suspects. He’d been at work all day, though. Dozens of people saw him. Combine that with the fact they hadn’t been fighting, there had been nothing. My parents loved one another right up to the end.”
“So becoming a cop was about what? Solve her murder? Avenge her death? Right some wrongs?”
“All of those things, and none of them. There were a few who never let the case go, and they came by every year or so, talked to Billy, told him when there were new leads, let him know they’d keep working the case. Billy held out hope for a long time, but the years went by and the cops became more like old friends coming to visit. Billy would cook, and he and the cops would talk about kids and grandkids and WVU and fishing. I watched them change from superheroes to human beings, and it gave me something to be. So I went and tried to be that until I did something stupid and couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Getting shot wasn’t your fault, though.”
“I didn’t follow procedure. I should have waited. The guy who shot me, he was jacked up on meth. Plus, he had murdered his wife and his mother less than an hour earlier.”
“You killed him.”
“I did.”
She Talks to Angels Page 3