The Will

by Reed Arvin

  “I wanted to stay in Washington, but the EPA wasn’t hiring. I went down the list of state jobs, and ended up here.”

  “And it’s just possible that you grew up thinking that the people around here weren’t too sophisticated, that they were a bunch of cow herders. Is that about right?” Coulton asked good-naturedly.

  “Sir?” Amanda answered. That was, in fact, exactly what she, and most of her other friends, had thought. She had taken a fair amount of ribbing to that effect when she took the job in the first place. But she wasn’t sure where Coulton was headed with this.

  “It’s all right,” the senator said, as if reading her mind. “Don’t sweat it, I’ve run into it before. College girl, liberal, activist comes down here thinking we’re all a bunch of country bumpkins. Thinks we don’t get out much, and she’s lived up in Washington, where the big dogs play. Thinks there’s a little Mickey Mouse show down here she can chew up and spit out.”

  Amanda swallowed, tasting her dry mouth once again. For once, however, she kept her mouth shut.

  “Let me explain a couple of things to you, Ms. Ashton,” Coulton went on. “First, I like you. You’re a hell of a smart woman, and I admire that. Can’t afford to lose you to one of your crazy indiscretions, though, so listen up. Politics down here is just as devious, just as calculating, and just as god-awful evil as anywhere else in this glorious country, the only difference being that we’re fighting over a few less zeros. We just argue about millions instead of billions. You’ll find, though, that millions seem to be enough to get in a snit over.”

  “Sir, I honestly never . . .”

  “I know, honey. And don’t give me any crap about calling you honey, ’cause that’s what we do around here. In spite of what they told you in Washington, it doesn’t mean we think you’re stupid, it means we like you. So listen a second, and you’ll learn something about that little pit of vipers we like to call the Kansas Senate.”

  Amanda sat still, saying nothing.

  “Good girl. Here’s the deal. Carl Durand saw you coming a mile away. He says to himself, ‘Right, here’s a clever little girl from D.C., and she could be trouble. Best thing about her, though, is that she thinks she’s smarter than everybody else. That makes her vulnerable.’ You following me so far?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. So for starters, he submarines your testimony. Durand gets his buddy, the president pro tem of the senate, to call a vote on the one thing nobody who likes his job can possibly sit out on, the highway appropriations bill. So bang, you’re out of the committee. I assume you picked up on that.”

  “Yes, sir, I caught that.”

  “So you thought, ‘Great, that’s over.’ But it’s not over. And do you know why it’s not over, Ms. Ashton?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, in a backhanded way, the buzzard paid you a compliment. He says, ‘Right, this girl is a fighter, she doesn’t give up so easy. She makes noise. She gets reporters to committee meetings that they haven’t gone to in years. Things would be so much better for me and my oil company buddies if she could be out of the picture completely.’ In his twisted world, this is taking you seriously, you see.”

  “You mean Durand was afraid of me?” Amanda asked cautiously.

  “Damn right he was afraid of you,” Coulton said. “There’s nothing scarier in government than a smart, principled woman with a little bit of courage.”

  Amanda smiled in spite of herself. She suddenly felt better than she had all day.

  “Also, you foolishly pissed him off with your last little remark.”

  “I had the feeling.”

  “So, Durand, who you think is nothing but a good old boy, calls your agency head, and the good senator sounds all concerned about the environment. He says, ‘Look, send me over the info on these saline levels. I want to be aware of everything going on in the great state of Kansas.’ And she does send them over. And he sees that the Triple Z is ground zero for your little experiment. And he thinks for a little while about Ms. Amanda Ashton, smart, gung-ho activist who’s all worked up in a lather. And a little plan forms in his head. He calls his good buddy Rory Zachariah, who he knows hates government like a polecat hates dogs, and he says, ‘Rory, how’d you like to chew on a pretty little government agent for a while?’ And Rory says, ‘Send her over, Carl, I’d like that fine. When she gonna get here?’ Carl says, ‘Oh, sometime tomorrow afternoon, I’d say.’”

  “How on earth could he know that? I didn’t even have the truck until . . .” Amanda slowed. “You mean . . .?”

  “That’s right. He thinks about how damn eager you are, and he finds out who has that truck, and he finds something for him to do. And he makes sure that you get called offering it. Child’s play.”

  “You’re telling me this whole thing was set up from the beginning?”

  “I am.”

  Amanda swallowed. She had never felt so stupid in her life. “But how could he know that I would go on Zachariah’s land?”

  Coulton laughed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ms. Ashton, all right? But are you kidding?”

  Amanda grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”

  “You, Ms. Ashton, are as obvious as a tent preacher on the last day of a crusade. So you step into a big cow turd, I mean the full-sized model. And I had to fight like hell to keep the buzzard from legislating not only you but your entire agency out of existence.”

  “Sir, I’m deeply grateful . . .”

  “You don’t have to be grateful, Ms. Ashton. I didn’t do it for you, I did it for my grandchildren. Just do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “Well, two favors, actually. First, don’t underestimate Carl Durand anymore just because he grew up in a house without plumbing. He was risking his fortune on wildcatting when you were watching cartoons.”

  “I can assure you that I will never make that mistake again.”

  “Good. And second, don’t give up this fight.”

  “Sir?”

  “Fight even harder. Take your lumps and get back in there.”

  Amanda listened, trying to let his words work in her. She was, she now realized, having a pity party of monumental proportions.

  “You know why all us government types turn into hard-asses, Ms. Ashton?” Coulton asked.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Because we either turn into hard-asses or we quit. I’m hoping you’ve got some hard-ass in you, Ms. Ashton, because we need you around here. Now I’d like you to shake this off and get on the phone tomorrow morning and start working on getting on some of those properties. It won’t be easy. No doubt Zachariah’s put the word out on you, and the word will not be good.”

  “No doubt.”

  “But I have one bit of hope to offer, albeit a small bit.”

  Amanda perked up. Hope, even small hope, was exactly what she needed. “I’m listening.”

  “Good. The property adjacent to the Triple Z belongs, or rather belonged, to Tyler Crandall.”

  Amanda thought for a moment. “Crandall, that’s right. I remember seeing the name on the plat. That property is nearly as important as the Triple Z.”

  “Crandall’s dead, as it happens. Can’t say as it’s a tragedy. He made a few bucks, threw his money around the statehouse. Made him feel like a big shot. But here’s my point: his estate’s in probate, and it’s a mess. There’s a big blowup down there about it. Ordinarily, I’d say Crandall’s boy wouldn’t give you the time of day, but the whole thing’s temporarily under the control of the executor. Maybe you can work something out.”

  Amanda grabbed a pencil. She was back in business. “Do you have a name?”

  Coulton laughed again. “You want me to do all your work, don’t you, Ms. Ashton?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Amanda answered quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

  “That’s all right. I had a feeling you’d be a little down in the dumps, so here’s a present for you: the executor’s name is Henry Math
ews. Chicago lawyer, which should suit you. You two urbanites will have so much to talk about.”

  Amanda smiled, not minding the teasing. “I don’t suppose you have . . .”

  “Seven-three-one-oh-six hundred. Area code three-one-two.”

  “Senator, I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  “Just get out there and kick some ass for truth, justice, and the American way, will you, Ms. Ashton?”

  “I will do that, sir. And, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “You can call me ‘honey’ anytime, sir.”

  Coulton laughed, and hung up the phone.

  While Amanda leaned back on her couch and thanked God for Sam Coulton, Raymond Boyd moved slowly through the dusk toward Ellen’s house, crawling on his hands and knees. It was his second consecutive night coming to Ellen’s. The first night he had been content simply to watch. He had squinted up at the house from a great distance, catching glimpses of her form through half-open window shades. But tonight he had dragged several large sheets of cardboard with him into the scrub. His palms crushed the thick underbrush, opening tiny cuts on his skin. He smiled at the red slowly seeping from his fingers, watched the blood coagulate, combining with the caked dirt on his palms to make a burnt-reddish poultice. For a moment, the color filled his mind and he saw great licking flames scorching outward from his hands, burning the earth and sending thick black smoke climbing into the sky. Not yet, he thought. The burning is later. He shook his head, clearing his mind. Today had not been good; his thoughts were constantly changing, modifying before he could act. He grimaced and shook his head, reminding himself of his mission: The virgin. She is untouched by the black sea. He will come for her, and she must be protected. He resumed his crawl. Five feet closer to the house he peered through the tall bluestem grass that filtered through the bracken and scrub trees behind Ellen’s backyard. The dense foliage created a natural hiding place about sixty feet behind the house, and Boyd had little difficulty concealing his motions. He stared across the lawn; no light shone from the windows.

  Boyd leaned a large square of cardboard against a dead cottonwood, then tacked a nail into the middle of it, securing it to the tree. Repeating the process on another tree close by, he began to construct a makeshift shelter. Over the next several minutes he added another side and covered the lean-to with a cardboard ceiling held together with duct tape. He crawled back and examined the hut: a little less than four feet high, with three sides and a roof. Bracken, tall weeds, and bluestem obscured it from the house almost completely, and he could move within it without attracting attention. He reentered the lean-to, pulled out a long knife, and cut a slit into the wall facing Ellen’s. Expanding the slit, he roughed out a three-inch circle as a kind of peephole at the right height to use when sitting. He blew the cardboard dust off the hole, feeling it with his fingers; a drop of his blood made a tiny stain on the edge. He stared at the drop a moment, then leaned back to wait.

  Some time later, deep in the night, the lights flicked on in Ellen’s house. Boyd stared as her blinds were pulled open, and he saw her moving through the rooms to her bedroom at the east side of the building. As he watched he began to chant softly. “There shall be fire and sulfur. Torrents of rain. The Lord God brings the hidden things into judgment, ain’t that right, bird?” He smiled, his head bobbing its quirky motion, up and down, up and down. He sighed, settling himself onto the dirt floor, and his eyelids fluttered shut. His lips moved silently for some time. “The virgin is untouched by the black sea,” he whispered. He repeated the words several times, followed by a flow of apparent delirium. When he opened his eyes again, he was leaning forward, straining toward the yellow light that flowed from the house. “He will come for her,” he said. “He will come.”

  “Henry? What’s going on down there in Podunkville, anyway?” It was nine-thirty Saturday morning, and Henry had left a voice mail for Parker to call the minute he got the message.

  “You’re up. Didn’t expect that.”

  “Of course I’m up. I’ve got tennis in thirty minutes.”

  Henry fleetingly pictured Parker in absurdly expensive tennis clothes swinging a four-hundred-dollar racket, then discarded the image. “I’ve got something, Sheldon. I found a connection between Boyd and Crandall.”

  “So tell me.”

  “First off, this guy Crandall could have made a living pissing people off. But that ended up a good thing, as it turned out. The bank manager down here practically did somersaults trying to help me.”

  “The rich are rarely popular.”

  “With their bank managers?”

  There was a momentary silence. “All right,” Parker admitted, “I’ll grant you that one. So what did you find out?”

  “I got curious. How did everything start? Where did Crandall get his money in the very beginning, the jump start on his whole operation? I went through every bank record for the last twenty-five years on the family . . .”

  “How the hell did you get access to all that? What did you do, hack into a computer?”

  “I hacked into a bunch of dusty boxes. Anyway, this guy Walters, the bank manager, just gave them to me, if you can believe it. He had his own reasons.”

  “Glad you aren’t in litigation. Inadmissible.”

  “The point is that Crandall needed some serious dollars to buy the land he found oil on. But he was just back from the service with a few bucks in combat pay and the shirt on his back. No job, no prospects. Approving that loan was a suicide move. But somebody at the bank did approve it, somebody was willing to risk his job to do it. And do you know who that person was?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Raymond Boyd.”

  There was a short silence while Parker processed Henry’s words. “The crazy guy worked at the bank.”

  “Twenty-five years ago. But only for a few months, apparently. Right about the time he went insane.”

  Parker whistled. “So what are you saying, that this whole inheritance thing is some enormous act of gratitude? That Crandall was paying Boyd back for standing by him in the early days?”

  “Gratitude wasn’t one of Crandall’s virtues.”

  “Maybe he surprised you. Guilt in his last hours.”

  “I don’t think he was planning on such an early exit. He was only fifty-six.”

  “All right. Then what’s your idea?”

  Henry hesitated; the fact was, he didn’t know what was going on, not yet. But Parker had promised more time if he could connect Boyd and Crandall, and he intended to collect on the promise. “Look, Sheldon, I’ve got a wedge in it now, something to go on. I want some time to play it out.”

  “Centel is what’s playing out, buddy, more quickly every day,” Parker answered. “Why does this have to be now?”

  “You didn’t hire me because I didn’t give a damn, did you? This is part of the package.”

  “Keep your shirt on. Anyway, the fact is I didn’t hire you because you gave a damn, at least not about bird lunatics and farmers. What you’ve got is this guy Boyd’s name on a loan. But when you come down to it, what does it mean? Is that all you have?”

  “I’ve got Ellen Gaudet.”

  “Who’s she and what about her?”

  “Early fifties, too much makeup, dresses one size too small. Works at the bank, opens accounts, mundane stuff. But she’s been there forever, and her name’s on some of the early papers, too. I’m pretty sure she was working at the bank when Boyd was there. So she knew the old Boyd before he went crazy. And she knew there was a positive connection between him and Crandall. Which is interesting, because when I asked her about it she denied it cold.”

  Parker paused, thinking. “I’ll play along, for the purposes of conversation. You say the sexpot lied.”

  “Point-blank.”

  “You want to know why. Ask the obvious question.”

  Henry knew that in Parker’s mind, there was, in the end, only one question. “What’s in it for her?”

  �
��Thank you for playing.”

  Henry paused. “There’s always money.”

  “It tends to come up. But in her case I doubt it. She’s a worker bee.”

  “Which means?”

  Parker sighed. “The world is separated into two distinct classes, Preacher. There’s important people, people who run things and own things. Us, in other words. Then there’s everybody else—worker bees. People who do what they’re told. And little miss short-skirt-varicose-veins Ellen Gaudet is definitely worker bee.”

  “Charming analogy.”

  “She’s a secretary, Preacher. She’s never done anything. I doubt she’s doing anything now.” Parker paused. “Unless she was humping Crandall? That’s doing something.”

  Henry shook his head silently; Parker was so sex-obsessed, it was the one topic where his normally crystalline vision was clouded. “Yeah, Sheldon,” he said, “it’s called getting used. And for what? If she’s still a secretary she got nothing from it, and sugar daddy’s dead and buried. He sure as hell didn’t leave her anything.” He paused, thinking. “Maybe it’s pressure from the outside. Somebody leaning on her, forcing her silence.”

  “Makes sense. If it’s not for money it has to be for something else. You just need to find out who she cares about. Who’s not dead, I mean.”

  “Doesn’t seem like she cares about anybody. She’s the cold type. But what are you saying? That love is at the bottom of this?”

  “I’m a lawyer, Preacher. What do I know about love?”

  “Does this mean I get more time?”

  There was a pause on the line, and Henry could almost hear Parker thinking. “If it goes to criminal it blows up in your face. We don’t do small-town criminal. There’s no money in it.” Another pause; then: “Look, Henry, why don’t we just drop this crap and talk about what’s really pushing your buttons?”

  “What would that be?”

  “Just the fact that this screwy will was written by your father. That’s the real reason you want to sort this out. And that’s what’s clouding your judgment. You’ve let this get way too personal.”