"Yeah, I guess," said Marlene, still looking downslope. "What's that?"
"What?" He came over to her and followed her pointing finger. "That white stuff? Some trash. People fling stuff into laurel all the time. We call it West Virginia recycle. It makes a perfect dump."
Marlene went to her truck and came back with a pair of binoculars. She propped her shoulder against a tree and looked through them. "It's the heel of a sneaker. It's got what looks like a dark stain on the sole. I'm going to go get it."
"Marlene, it'll take you two hours to get down there and back. You got no idea what it's like in one of those."
"Nevertheless, I have a good feeling about this." She handed him the binoculars. "Stay up here and guide me." She started down the slope and before long discovered why they called it hell. The air was still, smelling of leaf mould, and breathtakingly hot. The laurel plants grew within inches of one another, so that each step was a contortion. Before she had gone five yards she was covered in sweat, wringing wet, stinging from dozens of scratches. Tiny flies rose from the damp earth and filled her nose and mouth and crawled into her eyes. The world contracted to the next stiff branch, the next tripping root. Several times she fell and had to stop to pick thorns out of her hands. Dimly she heard Dan's shouts, giving directions. She moved sluggishly in response. Her brain was frying. She could barely remember left from right. Time slowed and ground to a halt.
"There! You're right there!" came a shout. She stopped, wiped her eyes. Her palm, when she looked at it, showed a slurry of mud, sweat, and blood. She could barely recall what she was there for. Some punishment, perhaps. The brain wasn't working too well. The heat. What was he yelling about? There was nothing there, just green leaves and cruel branches inches from her face. She looked up. There was no sky, only more green, and something white, a flower or a fruit. She wiped her burning eyes again, blinked the sweat out of them. Not a fruit. The toe of a sneaker. She reached up and plucked it. A Nike, size eleven, well worn. On the sole, a curious design in red-black, almost calligraphic, that ran up onto the heel.
"Jesus Christ!" cried Dan as she staggered out of the laurel. He grabbed her before she fell.
"Bag it," she said, holding out the sneaker.
Back at the house, she didn't even bother removing her clothes, but stood shaking under the cold stream of the shower for ten minutes before she thought of undressing.
Forty-five minutes later she emerged in a robe, with a towel wrapped around her head, went straight to the refrigerator, got a beer, and moved to the porch, where Dan sat.
"Feeling better?"
"Much." She sat in a rocker, drank a long pull, sighed.
"You should have seen what you looked like when you came out of there. Red as a tomato and covered with dirt and blood. I thought you were going to collapse. People have, you know. Died in those things."
"I can believe it. How long was I in there?"
"A couple of hours. Campers look at a map and figure they can cut a couple of miles of trail by bushwhacking through the laurel. They don't usually try it more than once. How do you feel?"
"Like I've been whipped by chains. But we got our sneaker."
"Yeah, you did. I guess that's blood on it, huh?"
"I'd bet."
"What're we going to do with it?"
"I've been thinking about that. I think we should take it to Poole and get his advice."
"Poole? He's a drunk."
"Yes, when he's drunk. When he's not, he's a smart lawyer and he knows the situation here a lot better than I do."
Dressed in a crisp cotton shirtwaist and with the worst of the scratches covered up, she drove into town, which took longer than she expected because a moron in one of those pickups with huge tires dawdled in front of her and would not let her pass. Redneck fun. It took a while to track down Poole, but she eventually found him at the VFW hall. He was at a table in the back of the barroom, a high-ceilinged, dim, echoing place smelling of old beer. He was drinking bourbon with beer chasers. Being a private club, the VFW was allowed to supply him with his own bottle, whether or not he was actually a veteran of a foreign war. She sat at his table and plopped the sneaker in its plastic bag down on the table.
"I ordered the ham on rye," he said. "That's a sneaker."
She told him what she thought it was and where she had found it. "Ah, deeper and deeper, Ciampi. Why is it people never listen to good advice? What do you expect to gain from this?"
Good, she thought: he was at the expansive stage of his drunk. "The release of our client, for starters. The murderers came down from that ridge, broke in, killed the Heeneys, and walked back up to their car. One of them noticed he had blood on his shoes, so he chucked them into the laurel. I'll bet you a bottle of Jack Black that the blood on it matches up with one of the victims. That shit-cans the state's theory of the case."
"If Murdoch doesn't throw it out. He'll say you cooked it up. There's no custodial chain, and without one there's no probative value. If you give it to Swett, it'll just disappear."
"I wasn't thinking about Swett. What do you know about Hawes?"
"Hawes? He's new. Been in there six months. The old state's attorney was a guy named Hailey, an old drinking buddy of mine as a matter of fact. His evil ways caught up with him and he kicked off, and the governor put this kid in there. He's ambitious as Satan and he's smart enough to know he's never going to get anywhere by bucking the system."
"But is he bent? I should say, 'bent yet'?"
"I'm not sure anyone has bothered to bend him, but I'd say he's eminently bendable. The Majestic Coal Company hires a lot of lawyers, and they fund a lot of campaigns."
"Well, let's us go and find out," she said, rising and retrieving the shoe.
"Us? No, dear, this is your play. I don't want anything to do with it."
"I thought we were partners, Poole."
He threw a half shot of the bourbon down his throat and reached for the bottle. "No. You are an annoyance and I am the annoyee. That isn't partners." He carefully poured a shot. "Also, I am thinking of the original owner of that very large shoe. It looks to be a size eleven. Did you think that he might be a local resident? That he might harbor some animus against someone who was trying to pin a triple murder on him? That he might try to dissuade that person, or take some revenge? Revenge is big in Robbens County, Ciampi. It's what we have instead of youth soccer."
"Okay, suit yourself. But you better pray that Hawes isn't completely bent, because I'm going to tell him you gave me the Nike and that you know who owns it."
She had reached the door before she felt a hand on her arm. "You're not really… I mean, that was a bluff, right?"
"I rarely bluff, Poole." She turned to look him in the face. "You know, you're looking a little better than you did the last time I saw you. I think you're turning into a functional drunk."
"Thank you," he said as he followed her out. "I always wanted to be beaten to death while cold sober. You look like hell, by the way. What did you do to your face?"
"I scratched it in some bushes," said Marlene, her tone short. Marlene prided herself on not depending upon her looks to get things done (a false pride necessarily, the world being what it is), but did not appreciate having any shortcoming in that department pointed out. They walked the few streets to the courthouse in chilly silence.
The state's attorney had a suite of offices on the second floor of that building and a pretty red-haired secretary to put in it. Aside from that, there did not seem to be much going on in the office, which was, however, nicely paneled and equipped with heavy, old-fashioned oak furniture. Poole greeted the secretary by name (Margie) and asked if Stan was free. He was not, he was in a meeting. Poole made to leave, but Marlene clutched his sleeve. "We'll wait," she said, and sat on a wooden bench under a glassed print of Washington crossing the Delaware. Poole sat grumpily beside her. She held the sneaker on her lap like a gift cake. The clock on the wall ticked, Margie typed slowly on her keyboard, Poole fell asleep,
snoring gently. Marlene let the time flow past, pushed Poole away when his head slumped toward her shoulder, and tried not to imagine herself back in the choking laurels.
After forty minutes, the door to Hawes's office flung open and a large man in a blue suit strode out. He had a big jaw and a nose that looked as if it had been broken. His hands were big and red, as was his face. His hair was pale brown and freshly cut, as if he had just stepped from a barber's rather than a state's attorney's place of business. He was almost out the door when he caught sight of Marlene and Poole. He stopped short and smiled, showing big yellow horse teeth. There was definitely something horselike about him, Marlene decided, the kind of horse that kicked and bit. His voice was loud and confident: "Ernie Poole."
Poole snapped awake. He wiped his chin where he had dribbled on it and blinked at the big man.
"George," he said neutrally.
"How ya doing, Ernie? Catching up on your beauty sleep?"
"I have a hard life."
"Yeah, you want to take it easy, now. Don't strain yourself any."
Some more banter here, George's tone patronizing, hectoring, Poole's dry and his answers minimal. The interesting thing, Marlene thought, was that while George was talking to Poole, his eyes were fixed on her; pale, hard ones, like tin. She met his gaze without flinching.
"Nice seeing you, Ernie," George said, pointing a finger gun-fashion at Poole. "You take care now, hey? Stay healthy."
When he was gone, Marlene asked, "Who was that?"
"That was George Floyd, the business manager of the Mining Equipment Operators Union."
"Oh? I'm sorry you didn't introduce me."
"If you live your whole life without meeting George Floyd, you can consider yourself lucky."
"That bad, huh?"
"Bad? No, I'd say he was just an average degenerate sadist and crook. We have worse." He stood up as Margie told them they could go in now.
Hawes was behind his desk looking angry, although not necessarily at them.
"I have court in ten minutes. I hope this'll be quick," he said without offering his hand to them or a chair. Marlene sat down anyway, and Poole followed suit.
"Well, no small talk then," said Marlene. "We've discovered some new evidence in the Welch case and we'd like to share it with you."
"What kind of evidence?"
Marlene placed the sneaker on his desk and explained what she thought it was, how she had found it, and what it implied for the state's case against her client.
He gave it the briefest glance, waited until she had finished, and said, "What is this bullshit, Ernie?"
"Well, it's a shoe with blood on it, found near the scene of the crime. I'd say that wasn't bullshit. The blood can be tested. If it belongs to one of the victims, I'd say there goes your case."
"Oh, come on! A lawyer walks in here with a shoe that could've come from anywhere with blood on it that could've come from anywhere. That's not evidence. If she thought she found something, she should've gone to the police. As it is, there's no chain of custody. I'll oppose it and the judge'll back me up."
"That's not your role, Mr. Hawes," said Marlene.
He looked at her as if she had just popped out of the ether. "What?"
"That's not your role. Your role is not to disparage evidence but to establish the probative value of any evidence you come across, to make sure you bring the right people to justice. I bring you, as an officer of the court, a sealed bag, the seal signed by me and the son of the victim, in which bag is a shoe smeared with a substance that appears to be dried blood. We propose that it was disposed of by the real killers. Could I have concocted the evidence out of whole cloth? Yes, and opened myself to criminal penalties with a scam that any competent lab could detect. Would I do that? On a pro bono case? It's absurd on the face of it, and just as absurd is the idea that the victims' own son would conspire to allow the real killer to get off. Meanwhile, blood will tell, as the saying goes. They'll DNA it and age it and tell you that it flowed out of the body of one of the victims at about the time of the murders. They'll find carpet fibers that match the crime scene. They'll tell you it's genuine unfakable. It's particularly telling, since your own case rests entirely on finding blood on the shoes of a mental incompetent, which shoes are at least two sizes too small for him."
Hawes indicated the sneaker on his desk, using his chin. He seemed not to want to examine it. "That one'd fit him all right."
"Yes, but it changes your theory of the case a good deal, doesn't it? The murder then would involve at least two participants, one wearing a fairly expensive pair of Rocky-brand hunting boots, size nine and a half, and the other a fairly expensive pair of Nikes. It should be easy to check it. There can't be many pairs of such shoes sold in this county, and I think, in fact I'm sure, you'll find that my client never owned either type of shoe. He's more of a Goodwill dresser. The plain fact is you have the wrong man in custody. My assumption is you want the right man or men. I assume you don't want to railroad a poor dummy just to make a case and make nice with this courthouse and the people who run this county." She gave him a sympathetic smile. He did not return it, but did something more revealing. Good God, she thought, he's blushing. He's in the wrong business.
He cleared his throat. "I don't like the word railroad. "
"Neither do I. But I want you to find who did the crime, and you have to know now that Moses Welch is not going to go down for it. Given this"-she picked up the bag with the Nike and let it thump down-"and given the general weakness of your case, no jury will convict, not with the defense we intend to mount. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem like the sort of man who wants to retire as state's attorney in Robbens County. Find the right bad guys and everyone will forget about this little excursion. But push this case to the bitter end and you'll end up looking very bad indeed. As in stinky bad. I'm on your side here, Mr. Hawes."
It took a while for him to respond, and as she studied his face, she thought that was a good sign. A lot of lip-biting and brow-knotting there, the signs of an intact moral center working hard.
At last he let out a long breath and began to talk technicalities and legal minutiae, which Marlene was happy to do for as long as he wanted. They left with a receipt for the evidence bag and an assurance that he would have it delivered to the state lab himself.
Outside the courthouse, Poole said, "Do you really think he's going to do what he said?"
"Yes, I do. I think he'll do the right thing. Don't you?"
Poole laughed and rolled his eyes. "Hell, no, I don't. I think he was on the phone to whoever owns him the minute we were out of there. That damn shoe is history."
"How cynical you are, Poole!" she exclaimed, laughing. "You should try to regain some faith. No, I think what we have here is a malleable kid up against his first real test of integrity, and I think he's going to pass it."
"And if not?"
"If not, I know approximately where the other sneaker is, and I will shout to the high heavens and hire a bunch of guys to find it while the TV cameras roll. Even Mr. Hawes knows that two sneakers make a pair. No, I think we turned a corner here. How would you like to come out to the Heeney place tonight? We'll have a cookout to celebrate."
Poole hesitated, looking away. "I don't know…"
"Oh, come on! It'll be fun. We'll get functionally drunk together."
He smiled. "Oh, in that case…"
They mounted the red Dodge, stopped off at the Pay 'n' Pack for supplies, and headed out of town on Route 119. After a few minutes, Marlene said, "Say, Poole? Do you know anyone with an electric blue Ford 250 pickup on big wheels?"
"Where?" he said, startled, looking around.
"Right behind us. A couple of guys in the front. They've been driving around me all day. Who are they?"
"I have no idea. Say, you know, on second thought, I'm not feeling too good right now. My stomach. Could you just swing around and drop me at my house?"
"No. Who are they?"
"Cades. That's Earl Cade's pickup."
She checked her side mirror. The big truck was edging closer. Marlene tapped her brake and pulled to the right. The blue pickup came closer still. It towered over the Dodge, its heavy bumper and grille filling her entire rearview mirror. Her gaze flashed up the road, looking for a turnoff or a driveway, but there was nothing useful ahead, only a shallow roadside ditch and a line of phone poles. They had picked this place with care.
In the distance a tanker truck filled the oncoming lane. A grinding thump from the rear. The Dodge shook and swerved. She gripped the wheel, fighting for control. Another thump. Poole yelped and pressed his palms against the dash.
When she looked again, the blue truck was gone from the rearview, to appear immediately in the side mirror. Marlene looked out her window, but the giant tires raised the blue truck so high that she could not see anything but a sheer wall of shiny blue paint and chrome, which came ever closer. There was a crunch and tinkle as her side mirror tore away. Her right wheels were on shoulder gravel now, the pebbles machine-gunning against the underside of the Dodge. The oncoming tanker leaned on his horn. She heard the scream of air brakes.
We're going into the ditch, she thought. A phone pole ripped off the right-side mirror. She jammed on her brakes and jerked the wheel hard to the right. The Dodge fishtailed and plunged into the ditch, leaped into the air, crashed through a fence, and came to rest in a field, festooned with barbed wire.
The engine had stalled. There was no sound but its cooling tick, bird twitters, and heavy breathing. "Well, that was exciting," said Marlene at last.
"They tried to kill us," Poole gasped.
"Yes, but they didn't succeed. You should never try to kill anyone. You should either kill them or play nice." She opened the door.
"Where are you going?"
"Checking the dog and the truck," she called over her shoulder. The dog was fine, the truck less so, but drivable. She started it, shifted to four-wheel, and backed across the ditch and onto the edge of the road.
"They might try again," said Poole.
"I'm sure, which is why it's time to call for help."
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