by Jack Ketchum
The Passenger
Jack Ketchum
2001
It wasn’t the best of days even before her car died.
She’d fallen asleep the night before at her desk in the study and awakened from a dream of Micah Harpe, all three-hundred-plus pounds of him, crashing through the picture window and spraying her with shards of glass, slamming up against her desk and scattering papers and cigarette butts everywhere and then laughing, leering up at her, saying, troubles, counselor? and she rode that sudden wakefulness for a moment like a bucking steer.
Then Alan walks in from his shower wrapped in a towel, carrying a manila file folder, drops the folder on the end table and asks her not to let him forget these briefs tomorrow, please. Sure, Alan, thanks, no problem. It took him a full two minutes to really see her there, pale as chalk, and yet another to ask what was wrong.
“Dream,” she said.
He glanced at the desk littered with paperwork.
“You been down here all night?”
She yawned, nodded.
“So? How’d it go?”
“So I think I’m screwed without Micah Harpe, that’s what it comes down to.”
“I could have told you that.”
“All I can do is argue insufficient evidence.”
She watched him throw the towel over his shoulder and turn and walk toward the kitchen.
“Uh-huh. You want some coffee? I need some coffee.”
“I want some sleep. I want a case I can win, goddammit.”
He said, “Settle for the coffee.”
* * *
Then later she and Milton Wendt, the prosecutor, before the bench and Judge Irma Foster—another stunning excuse for a conversation.
“We’re not arguing,” she said, “that my client wasn’t at the Willis home that day, your Honor. They were old friends and he had every reason to be there. The prosecution has placed my client in the house and we allow that he was, in fact, present. But Big was there too and there is nothing ...”
“Big?” Judge Foster squinted at her.
“Micah Harpe, your Honor, the defendant’s older brother.”
The judge looked past her to Arthur “Little” Harpe at the defense table. Arthur was looking pretty good today, Janet thought, all told. As good as he could look, anyway. A new suit and tie off the rack at Burton’s and a shoeshine in the courthouse lobby. But Janet still knew what the judge was seeing—a chubby pasty-faced country-ass snake watching them through idiot eyes. She just hoped he wasn’t using the eraser end of the pencil to clean out his earwax again.
“Big and Little?’’ she said.
“Yes, your Honor.”
“Good God.”
She tried to move on.
“The prosecution has presented no physical evidence whatever to suggest that it was my client and not, as we contend, my client’s brother, who was responsible — without my client’s knowledge or cooperation—for the murders of these two people. I move to dismiss.”
“He confessed, Counselor.” Wendt sighed.
“He’s since recanted and implicated Micah as the shooter. That confession was taken under duress and you know it. The police went at him for over twenty- two hours. All because they couldn’t find his brother.”
“They still can’t.”
“That’s simply not true, your Honor.”
Then the judge sighed too. “Let’s take this into chambers,” she said.
* * *
In chambers she fared no better than expected. The trial was set for Monday morning. She had the weekend to prepare. But to prepare what? She certainly wasn’t putting that little weasel on the stand. The best she could hope for was to shake the detectives who’d handled the interrogation, or to pull off a miracle in summation. It wasn’t very promising. Harpe had confessed to the shotgun murders of Joseph and Lilian Willis over a drug deal gone bad and that was probably that. In the hallway she gave it one last try with Wendt, though.
“It should have been postponed,” she said. “It should never have come to trial.”
“Come on, Janet. We don’t know Big’s even in there.”
“And you don’t know he isn’t.”
“Nobody’s placed him there. Not even his brother has definitively placed him there. What do you want the cops to do? Remember probable cause, for god’s sake? We’ve gone onto that estate half a dozen times. The place is an armed camp—safe house for half the psychos in the state. But every gun in the place is registered to its owner. You know what the locals call it.”
“I know. Hole-in-the-Wall.”
“That’s right. We’re talking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid right here in quiet old Adderton County. But it’s still private property. These guys have influence. They’ve got bucks. Big bucks. With a cleanup crew to dispose of their disposables as good as any in the U.S.A. And we don’t have probable cause.”
“He’s in there. And he did the crime.”
She stopped and opened her briefcase and pulled out the folder second from the top. She handed it to Wendt. “Look at this.”
“Big’s rap sheet. I’ve read it.”
“Read it again. Arrests for arson, rape, armed robbery, another rape—this one a man, sodomy—murder, attempted murder, assault...”
She was aware that her voice was rising, echoing through the nearly empty halls, turning a head or two. She didn’t give a damn.
“You can do something, Milton. You can send them in there after him.”
Wendt shook his head. “Wish I could. Look, nobody’s saying Big’s a sweetheart, Janet. I’ll even grant you that they could have done it together. But the point is we’ve already got your boy. So I think I’ll go right ahead and fry him if that’s okay with you.”
* * *
The Turtle Brook Inn was all amber lights and dark wood paneling and tables and chairs upholstered in burgundy—a steak joint with romantic aspirations. Seven- thirty on a Friday night and not half the tables full, nor even half the bar, a testament to northern New York State’s fundamental lack of any real trickle-down prosperity. She was halfway through her second glass of wine when Alan finally made his appearance. There was no point scolding him. Alan was late. Fact of life.
“So?” he said.
So again. She took a sip of wine.
“Alan, you can be boring as spit sometimes. You know that?”
“It didn’t go well.”
“No, it didn’t.”
He reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. His own hand was warm and dry and despite herself she always found comfort in his touch.
“I love you, honey,” he said.
“Alan, you damn well cheat on me.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Don’t worry about the case. You’ll think of something. Listen, I’m staying at the apartment in town tonight. I have to take a deposition first thing in the morning. You mind?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Behind him their young pretty blond waitress was approaching.
“I do,” he said. “I mind. I may be boring as spit sometimes but I know one or two sex crimes we haven’t committed yet that I’d rather try tonight.”
The waitress froze.
“It’s all right,” Janet told her. “He’s an officer of the court.”
* * *
She was on her way home when the Taurus started shuddering and then died, cresting a hill on the dark slice of two-lane country road that was Route 605 northeast of Meville. She managed to pull over to the shoulder and tried to start it up again but the ignition only screeched at her like an angry cat. She stepped out onto black macadam and a warm still moonlit night. Below and far away across the valley she could see the lights from a single farmhouse. She walked to the front of
the car and then the back and looked at emptiness in both directions.
She’d been meaning to get a new cell phone for nearly a week.
This could take a while, she thought.
It did.
Nearly twenty minutes passed with her standing there smoking Winston after Winston and listening to the frogs and crickets and she was seriously considering the trek down to the farmhouse before she at last saw a pair of headlights moving north in her direction. She was relieved but apprehensive too and wondered why in hell she hadn’t had the sense to take the tire iron out of the trunk when she had a chance to. It would be nice to have it on the car seat where she could reach it through the window in case of trouble.
Especially when the moonlight revealed the outline of a pickup with a wooden frame.
By then it was too damn late.
She thought of the old joke, What’s the difference between a good ol’ boy and a redneck? A good ol' boy throws his empty beer bottles in the back of the pickup— a redneck heaves ’em out the window.
She was hoping for the former.
The headlights washed over her. A pickup wasn’t what she had in mind. Not at all. She waved anyhow.
And the truck rolled right on by.
“Jesus!” she said.
She couldn’t believe it. How the hell dare he?
She whirled and ran to the front of the Taurus. “You asshole!” she yelled.
The truck slowed.
Stopped.
Sat there idling thirty feet away.
Oh, shit, she thought. Now you did it. He fucking heard you.
You better get that goddamn tire iron after all, she thought, and started digging in her purse, watching the compartment of the cab, a man’s silhouette inside, waiting for the driver’s door to open and the light to come on, which would mean he was coming out to god knows what purpose and praying that he’d just start moving again, get moving and go the hell away and then she had the keys out and was headed toward the trunk fumbling for the right one. As the truck moved slowly into reverse and started rolling back, taillights stalking her like glowing eyes.
And then suddenly she was stabbed into bright light again and a horn blared long and loud behind her.
She turned to see a station wagon in the process of slowly passing, pulling up alongside the Taurus and stopping, and she glanced at the pickup and saw it start to roll again—this time forward, this time in the right direction. Inside the wagon the driver leaned over and pushed open the passenger-side door and she saw that the driver was a woman smiling at her and she damn near leapt inside.
“God! Thanks!”
“No problem. Car died on you, huh?”
She shut the door. “That truck. He was coming after me.”
“He was? The sonovabitch. You want to go after him?”
“God no.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. We’ll just drive.”
Janet looked at her. A woman of about her own age. Tight jeans and a tight pale yellow short-sleeve blouse, braless, her long hair pulled back in a lush dark ponytail. Rings on every finger of her right hand and hooped costume-jewelry bracelets, at least half a dozen, dangling from each wrist. A good strong profile, a little too much mascara maybe but still, she thought, quite attractive in her way. And then the woman turned to her and smiled again as they pulled away, and she saw the slightly crooked left incisor.
“Marion? Marion Lane?”
It was the woman’s turn to stare now.
“I’ll be good-goddamned! It’s Janet, right? Janet... wait, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I can’t believe this . .. hold on a minute ... Harris! Janet Harris!”
“Close. Morris.” She smiled.
“Morris! You lived ... ?”
“Plainfield Street.”
“That’s right, Plainfield Street! Up where the money was. Hell, where the money still is. God! I mean, look at you! Jesus, what’s it been?”
“Since high school? A long time. A very long time.”
“No, really ... I guess it’s got to be, what...?” “Seventeen years.”
She laughed. “Oh my god. Seventeen years. Seventeen goddamn years! You know how long that is? Hell, we were only what? eighteen when we graduated? I mean, that’s half a lifetime ago!” She laughed again. “Damn! I think I need a drink,” she said. “Maybe a few drinks.”
She gave Janet’s leg beneath the skirt a light slap. “Hey, it’s good to see you!”
“Good to see you too. You don’t know how good. That guy was starting to scare me.”
“Forget the bastard. Someday he’ll pick up the wrong lady, know what I mean? Where we headed?”
“You know Ellsworth Road? Just outside of town? I’m living over there now.”
“Sure I do. No problem.”
She watched the road ahead wash away beneath their wheels. The pause between them was only momentary but still a little awkward. She really hadn’t known Marion well in high school. They’d traveled in wholly different circles. Janet was definitely college-bound. Marion hadn’t been. She wondered whether or not she’d ultimately made it there anyway but decided that at least for now it would be wrong to ask.
“Listen. There really is half a bottle in there.” She pointed to the glove compartment. “That jerk give you the willies? Open it up and have a hit or two. Good for the nerves.”
“No, thanks.”
“Go on.”
“Honestly. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well, dig it out for me then, okay?” She laughed again. “Seventeen years! Jesus!”
She really didn’t want to. Not only was it against the law but it was dangerous as hell. She’d seen the results of drinking and driving plenty of times. Enough to know what a fundamentally stupid thing it was to do. But Marion was saving her ass here, for all she knew in more ways than one. And she hadn’t smelled any liquor on her breath thus far so this one might well be her first. It was still illegal but she guessed it was safe enough so long as she kept it down to one or two. She pressed the button to the glove compartment and watched the door fall open and the light come on inside.
She saw the flat pint bottle of Kentucky Bourbon. And behind it the .22 revolver.
* * *
When Ray Short leaned back in his chair and neatly lifted the wallet from the baggy jeans of the passing Saturday Night Cowboy, Emil Rothert was almost finished with his fifth beer and just drunk enough not to be seriously pissed at him for waving it around the table like some kind of goddamn trophy, smiling, looking for Emil’s approval, and Billy’s too, he guessed. Even though the barman could have seen him or any one of the five guys sitting at the bar or the four in back by the pool tables. Not seriously pissed but still pissed.
He had to give him his due, though. Ray was good with his hands.
“Put that goddamn thing away,” he said.
“Yeah. Jeez, Ray, you want to get us comprehended? ”
Rothert sighed and shook his head. Sometimes Billy amused him and sometimes not. Sometimes he thought Billy Ripper was a spaceman only just learning how to appear human.
Ray’s smile faded. “You guys are no damn fun at all.”
“We’re drunk, Ray. What do you want from us?”
He finished his beer.
“I’ll have another, though. You’re buying.”
Rothert watched him walk to the bar. Sitting to his left was a guy in a rumpled gray suit drinking what looked like whiskey neat. The guy was facing straight ahead into the rows of bottles but he still hoped Ray had sense enough not to pay out of the stolen wallet.
“Three more,” he heard him say to the bartender, and then the bartender said something back that must have been three more what? because Ray said beers and then the bartender must have asked him what kind of beers? because Ray turned around with a look of annoyed confusion just as the girl walked in. He saw her register on Ray’s face—one
helluva looker—and he turned and she was a looker all right and too young he thought to be walking into a place like this alone, probably underage in fact, long blond hair and cutoffs and tank top straining across her tits. Yet here she was, alone, moving past his table toward the back like she owned the joint.
Willie Nelson stopped singing “Blue Hawaii” and the place went silent so that he could hear the bartender and Ray.
“. . . we got Bud, we got Schlitz, we got Miller, we got Miller Lite. We got Heineken, Heineken lite, we got Coors. We got Tuborg, Becks and I can piss in this bottle for you if any of this don’t interest you.”
“Huh?” Ray still had his eye on the girl.
“Forget it.”
The bartender started to move away and Ray finally got it together.
“Buds. Make it Buds.”
‘Three Buds.”
And then it was Elvis singing “Blue Hawaii” good god as the bartender opened the beers and put them on the bar and sure enough, Ray pulled out the stolen wallet and started counting out the bills. I got me a reckless fool on one side of me, Emil thought, and a complete fool on the other.
Ray handed them their beers and sat.
“See that?”
“I’m still seeing it,” Emil said.
“I think you should go over,” said Billy. “Buy her a drink. Talk to her. I think she looks like someone who’d appreciate to talk to you.”
“I’m thinking about it.” He drank from the bottle.
Billy smiled. It wasn’t a nice thing to see.
“I’ve always liked a girl like that. Y’know? Somebody who can exist themselves to a function where they can manipulate.”
Emil and Ray just looked at him.
Emil thought that sometimes this boy just plain scared him.
* * *
The pint bottle rested between Marion’s legs and she’d only had two sips, but Janet still wished she’d put the thing away. She was driving slowly though, and carefully. She had no real reason to complain.
“Your parents still live in town?” Marion asked her. “No. Florida. My dad retired, sold the house. My mother says she’s a golf widow now. Yours?”