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"I was just trying to get you, " said Karp. "Your cell phone doesn't work?"
"This is West Virginia, the Mountain State," said his wife. "Here in Robbens County we have no TV except satellite and no cell phones."
"It sounds like my kind of place."
"No bagels, however, and I looked."
"They barely have bagels in New York anymore. How are you?"
"Not bad. The case is going well, but somebody just tried to kill me. That's why I called."
A silence. "How serious was it? You're not hurt?"
"Shaken up. They tried to run us into a phone pole on the road. I was with Poole, the local defense counsel."
"Maybe it's time to come home."
"Oh, it's just starting to be fun," she said lightly, knowing the tone would irritate him. It was a little game they played, had played for years. In philosophical moments she wondered why they didn't get beyond it, or if it was permanently fixed in the structure of their marriage, like a trilobite in chert. He said nothing, so she continued, "But why I called is, I was wondering if you got any information from Sterner. Whether the feds are going to move on the murder."
"They may, but the state is in it for sure. The governor would very much like to preempt federal involvement, in fact. They're appointing a special prosecutor with full powers, bringing in state cops. The governor's more or less decided to clean up Robbens County."
"That's a change. Any idea why?"
"It's time, I guess. The global village. People are starting to get more sensitive to killing and corruption, even in the backwaters. They want wild and wonderful West Virginia to be a little less wild and a little more wonderful."
"I'm impressed," she said. "Have they picked the guy yet? Or girl?"
"Not officially," replied Karp after the briefest pause. "The governor wants to examine the cut of his jib, but for all practical purposes, according to Saul, it's a done deal."
"Do you know who it's going to be?"
"Yes." Two beats. "Me."
"No, I mean really."
"Really," said Karp, aware of a rush of faintly sadistic pleasure. She was always pulling sneaky surprises on him, and this was a delicious turnabout. "I'm flying down to Charleston tomorrow. They're actually sending the state plane to pick me up at Teterboro."
An even longer silence. "Marlene?"
"I'm gaping. Wait a minute-you're leaving your job? What about the kids?"
"I'm not leaving my job. Jack was more than happy to lend me. The crocodile tears were falling so fast he had to wring out his tie. And Lucy can handle the twins until you get back there."
"Who says I'm going back?"
"Well, if I'm in charge of the prosecution, it's clearly impossible for you to be associated with the defense."
"Yeah, but the guy I'm defending isn't the guy. The case against him is a joke."
"If that's true, we'll obviously quash the indictment. And then you can go home."
"Home?" She said it like a foreigner trying an unfamiliar word.
"Yes, home. You know, among your pet children, your beloved dogs, the familiar felons. You can do the laundry, cook nutritious meals, and in the evenings embroider by the fire."
"You're loving this, aren't you?"
"Since you ask…"
"Rat! When is this all scheduled to happen?"
"Oh, you know, it's state bureaucracy, so figure weeks, not days. Will you promise not to get killed until I rescue you?"
"You know me, dear. It'll take more than a bunch of hillbillies to do me in. As a matter of fact, I might have this whole thing wrapped up by the time you get here."
Karp's tone changed. "No, be serious! There's no reason to poke into anything anymore until I get down there with the cavalry. Besides, you could screw up something." Oh, God, that was a mistake, thought Karp, the instant the words had passed his lips.
"Oh, well, I'll certainly try not to screw things up for you, dear. But I don't know, I'm such a total klutz, when it comes to legal procedure and all the other boy things. I swear, I don't know how you men keep all that stuff in your heads."
"I didn't mean it that way, Marlene, and you know it. You're just spoiling for a fight because you're miffed because you're going to have to give control of this thing over to me, which as you know has absolutely nothing to do with any assessment of your abilities. I'm sorry I said you might screw things up. I'm sure everything you've done down there has been in accord with the highest standards of legal procedure."
"Oh, I hate it when you try to wriggle out of it, when for once your true thoughts manage to slip out from under all the hypocrisy. Why don't you admit it? You really want a little wifey safe at home."
"Marlene, that is such total bullshit! I can't stand that whenever you're pissed at me, you trot out this absurd feminist cant. How long have we been married? In all that time, have I ever once-"
"Innumerable times. You really do want me to do embroidery."
"It would be a strange choice if I did," Karp snarled. "As far as I know, the only thing you've ever embroidered is the truth."
They went back and forth like this for a couple of more increasingly nasty rounds until Marlene hung up, leaving both parties feeling stupid, guilty, and irritable. Every long-married couple has a tape like this-some have whole racks of them-and they are wise who avoid pushing the Play button. Marlene knew she was a sneak who cut corners, when not actually committing crimes, but she wanted her husband to treat her like a model of legal prudence. Karp had spent nearly twenty years waiting for a call from some police agency telling him that his wife was either dead or under arrest for a violent felony. Most of the time he suppressed the anguish this caused him but occasionally it popped out, as now. The root of the pain was that each deeply loved the other, but wished the other different in this small way: why the divorce courts hum as they do.
"Bad news?" said Poole. He had heard the yelling from the porch. She glared at him and slammed a wedge of chopped chuck into a bowl hard enough to stun it.
"I see you've found the bourbon," she said, eyeing his highball.
"Yeah, I'm good at that. Trouble at home?"
"No. My husband has informed me that your governor is appointing a special prosecutor on the Heeney case and he's it."
A half smile appeared on Poole's face. "You're kidding, right?"
"No, I'm not."
"He's a prosecutor?"
"Yes. A big-time labor lawyer named Sterner arranged the whole thing."
Poole took a long swallow. "Well, I'll be damned! This'll be something to see. A hotshot New York prosecutor come to straighten out the hicks. He any good?"
"A lot of people think he's the best."
"I hope he's bulletproof, too."
"Don't be stupid, Poole. Nobody's going to do any more shooting. There's no way this arrangement you've got down here is going to stand up to serious public scrutiny. He'll find the idiots who did the crime, try them, convict them, and put them in jail for life. End of story."
"Maybe. But I'll tell you one thing, city girl. They brought the United States Army up here in '21. Fought them a little guerilla war up in the hollers, and it was a toss-up who won it. The folks up in Mingo and Logan laid down their arms when the troops showed up, but not here. Lot of people around here aren't too happy with the U.S. government."
"You mean like militias?"
"No, I mean families. They don't like people in fancy suits telling them what to do. They don't like the liquor laws, or the tax laws, or the drug laws. A lot of them got their own religion, too. They've been that way since 1790 or thereabouts. They'll take money from the coal company when it pleases them, and from the union, too, but mainly they do what they like. You'll see."
"Yes, we will," snapped Marlene. "Now, unless you want to help, scram out of here while I fix this goddamn cookout."
She fixed, Poole drank. It was not a fun affair. Marlene was grumpy, Poole drank and talked. Of the two sorts of drunk, he was the gar
rulous kind. Dan sulked. Emmett made sarcastic comments about Poole's stories. Emmett's girlfriend, Kathy, a small blond who might have been cloned from Rose Heeney, started using let's-split body language fairly early in the evening. Around nine, Emmett said they were going to go back to Kathy's to watch Gladiator on satellite, and they left.
"Young squirts don't know how to party," said Poole after they had gone, and launched into a rambling story about a memorable spree. He kept stopping and asking Marlene if she remembered old Joe Whitman and what he'd done with the cake some woman had made for some church supper, as if she were one of the old McCullensburg gang of his youth. She gave short answers, or none, but the odd thing was that she didn't think he was drinking that much, not enough for this kind of behavior. It was as if he was trying to live up to his reputation as a hopeless, drunken bore, while not really believing in it. He avoided her eye.
After several increasingly broader hints, Marlene decided to ignore him and tried not to think about what she was like when drunk, and whether she was even now on the first steps of the slope that led to this sort of display. She was clearing the picnic table using the kind of hyper-efficient and semiviolent motions women apply to household tasks when they are angry. Crash, clang. Dan hung around dutifully, trying to help, getting in the way. She was short with him, too, and finally he vanished into his room. She felt a pang of guilt and ruthlessly suppressed it. What was she feeling guilty about? She was doing them a favor! She had abandoned her family, and her business, and come here to this shitty little town, to get a half-wit out of trouble and hand the bad guys their lumps, only now it was her husband who was going to do that, so she was not only stupid but useless as well. Poole was still out in the yard talking away to the crescent moon. And nursemaiding a pathetic drunk, too, another thing she really enjoyed doing. She eyed the bottle of jug wine she had bought earlier, grabbed it, poured a juice glass full, stared at it, felt a tumult of revulsion in her gut, threw it splashing into the sink. No, coffee was the thing now, sober the both of them up and drag Poole back to his house; yes, cut off his booze and fill him with black coffee, a little sadism-stuffed virtue here, and why not? She loaded the coffeemaker, then the dishwasher, the latter with such enthusiasm that she smashed a large majolica serving dish.
Cursing, she swept up the pieces of bright pottery. You didn't get plates like this at the Bi-Lo in town, or at Wal-Mart, she could not help noticing. It was, or had been, a lovely moss green with flowers painted on it in shades of rust, tan, and yellow. Rose Heeney had selected it in some New York boutique, a bit of her native heath brought into exile. Marlene found herself sitting on a hard chair, crying bitterly into a dishtowel, and not just for Rose Heeney, either.
Then the dog growled. Marlene wiped her face and sprang to her feet, for it was that kind of growl.
Gog had been hanging around the kitchen, hoping she would allow him to preclean the dishes. Now he was standing stiffly, nosing the back door, the hair on his back bristling, making his bad-muffler noise. Marlene snapped the kitchen light off and looked through the back-door window. The floodlights illuminated a rough oval twenty yards out from the house; beyond that, the rural night hung like black drapes.
Marlene tapped on the door of Dan's bedroom and went in. He was lying on his bed with a set of headphones on, reading. He took the phones off and looked at her inquiringly.
"Turn off your light. Gog thinks we have company."
He sat up instantly and snapped off the lamp. "What should we do?"
"I need a big flashlight, if you have one, and your pistol."
He stalled for a moment, his eyes confused, but then leaped from the bed. A moment later she had Red Heeney's.38 Smith and a boxy camping flashlight in hand. She switched it on briefly to check the beam, then led him to the back door. They could hear Poole mumbling to no one by the picnic table.
"Stay by the light switch, watch me, and flick it off when I signal. I'll be outside in the shadow of the stairs."
"Shouldn't we call the police?"
"Yeah, that's a good idea," she said carelessly, "but watch my hand and stay by the switch." As he dialed the kitchen cordless, she went outside with the dog and crouched on the storm door lying by the stairs. The dog was whining and panting eagerly.
A few minutes later, she saw two figures, one large, one smaller, pause on the edge of the lit area. They seemed to converse for a moment, and then they started toward the house, running in a ridiculous crouch, as if that would make them less visible against the floodlit lawn. The bigger one carried a shotgun. They were both wearing ball caps, but as they looked around, she could catch glimpses of their faces. The bigger one had a stupid, brutal look, like a child's sketch of the bogeyman: lantern jaw, shadowed with beard, a floppy mouth, a shapeless nose. The smaller was good-looking in a weedy country-boy way, the sort of look that had made the fortunes of Elvis and James Dean. Their eyes were hidden in the shadows cast by their cap bills.
When they had crossed half the yard, she raised her hand and brought it sharply down. The lights went off. "Get 'em, Gog!" she cried. The dog vanished into the blackness and she followed at a trot. She heard a cry and then a boom as the shotgun discharged. She stopped and turned the flashlight on.
Gog had the big man down, with his jaws clamped around the man's throat. James Dean was crouched, blinking, and waving a large silvery revolver around. Marlene put the beam on his face and said, "If you don't drop that pistol, son, I'm going to shoot you." She held her weapon in the light beam so he could see it. He hesitated. Marlene snapped an order to her dog. The man on the ground wailed and made interesting noises indicating a deficiency of breath. She said, "I could have the dog take his windpipe right out of his neck, and I will, if you don't drop the gun. Now drop it!"
After one longing glance over his shoulder, he did. She made him lie down and called the dog off the other man, who sat up rubbing his throat, which oozed blood. Marlene tossed the shotgun away as far as she could, picked up the dropped pistol, and called out, "Dan! Hit the lights!"
The lights came on and Dan walked over.
"You know these guys?"
"Yeah," Dan said. "That's Earl Cade and his brother Bo."
"Earl and Bo Cade, huh?" said Marlene. "So what were the Cade boys doing sneaking up on this house late at night, armed to the teeth? Hmm?"
"We warn't sneakin'," said Bo. "We was huntin'."
"Yeah," said Earl, "we was huntin', and you had no call to set that damn dog on us."
"What were you hunting for?" Marlene asked.
They looked at one another briefly. "Coon," said Bo.
"Yeah, that's right. Coon," said Earl.
"Gosh, I thought you needed dogs to hunt coon," she observed.
A look of confusion came over Earl's face, but Bo spoke up. "Shows you don't know much about huntin'."
"Well, maybe not," agreed Marlene. "We'll let the police sort it out. By the way, you guys murdered the Heeney family, didn't you? And you tried to run me off the road today."
She was watching Earl's face as she said this, looking straight at his eyes. These were very pale blue and practically vibrated with the effort to keep meeting her eyes, which she knew was a habit particularly stupid criminals adopted to fake sincerity.
"No, we didn't," he said.
"Mose Welch killed them folks," said Bo. She examined him, too. Same eyes, but a more skillful liar. Get them isolated from one another, and a halfway decent interrogator would have the whole story out of them in half an hour. She reached out her foot and tapped the sole of Bo's boot. There were old OD combat boots, cracked and stained. "They caught him wearing your new boots. It must've hurt to toss them away like that. You should've worn those old ones to the murder."
"I didn't kill nobody," he said. "And I ain't got any new boots to throw away."
A car sounded on gravel and red lights flashed against the foliage. Shortly there appeared a stout police officer in a tan uniform with a big American flag sewn to the left shoulde
r. He had a slack pie face and a boozer's lump of a nose, and his eyes looked squashed, as if he had just been awakened from a long sleep. The steel name tag on his breast identified him as Omar Petrie.
"What all's the problem here?" he asked, taking in the peculiar scene.
Dan said, "I made the call. We caught these guys sneaking up to the house with weapons."
Bo Cade said vehemently, "Damn it, Omar, we wasn't sneakin'. We was huntin' and she set that dog on us. It just about ripped Earl's throat right out."
At this, Earl started to get to his feet, the better to argue, but Gog barked at him and showed his impressive fangs.
"See! See!" Earl shouted, scooting away. "That's a bad dog, Omar. You ought to shoot him right now."
Marlene moved to put herself between the cop and the dog. "Officer, that is a highly trained guard dog and it's under my complete control." She lowered the timbre of her voice and ordered, "Gog! Off! Down! Stay!"
The dog seemed to forget about Earl Cade. He walked over to Marlene and dropped to his belly with an audible thump.
"See?" said Marlene. "He's perfectly safe."
"Who're you?" the cop demanded. He still had his hand on the butt of his pistol.
Marlene introduced herself. "I'm a guest here and doing some legal work for the Heeney family. The dog warned us and we saw these two sneaking up to the house. Sneaking is definitely the correct word. Three people were murdered in that house a little while ago and we thought we should take precautions. It could've been the murderers coming back."
Bo said, "Aw, shit, Omar, you know us! We ain't no murderers. Besides, they got the fella did it, that dumpy Mose Welch. We's just walking across the yard here and she attacked us. You ought to arrest her."
Marlene saw Petrie's eyes darting back and forth from the Cades to her. This is not going as it should, she thought.
The cop cleared his throat heavily and spat on the ground. "Well, what I see is one man chewed up by this dog and you got all the guns. Why don't you give them here for a start."
Marlene turned over the two pistols and Petrie stowed them in his capacious uniform pockets. Turning to the Cades, he said, "Boys, whyn't you all run along now. It's late."
Absolute rage kac-14 Page 18