I saw the deputy backhand Vernon, but it took a fraction of a second for the sound to carry to us. “You listen to me, you little pissant. I don’t got to do nothin’ with you. I don’t got to give a rat’s ass about you or your snotty-nosed sick kid or your crippled grandmother or any other sob story you got. And you can cry all you want to, but it don’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Are we clear on that?” I saw Vernon’s head nod slightly. “I can’t hear you. Are we clear?”
“Yes. We’re clear.”
“Good. When I come back in two weeks, that harvest moon better be shining, and you damn well better have me a thousand dollars in your hand.”
“I…I just give you two hunnerd, Orbin. Means I’ll owe you eight hunnerd next time.”
“Shut the fuck up. Penalty for late payment. Thousand dollars, and be grateful I ain’t rattin’ you out to the DEA or burning you out my own damn self.”
Beside me, I heard Waylon draw in a long, angry breath, then exhale slowly through his mouth. His breath, warm and redolent with tobacco, wafted directly into my face. With a sense of impending doom I clenched my jaws tight, but there was no holding it back this time, and I began to vomit. Up came the Kentucky Fried Chicken I’d consumed at eighty miles an hour. Right behind it came the mashed potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. Duke yanked free of Waylon’s grip and began slurping up my lunch. As my retching and coughing continued, Orbin’s head snapped in our direction. “What the hell is that?” demanded Orbin. “Vernon, you got somebody over there waitin’ to bushwhack me?” Waylon clapped a hand over my mouth, and Vernon squawked a desperate denial. “I swear I’ll shoot you both, you son of a bitch.” I could hear angry footsteps crashing toward us.
“Wait,” Vernon yelled. “It’s just my dog. He ate a dead coon this morning — been thowin’ up all day. Duke, come here, boy. Duke! Git over here!” Vernon’s command was directed as much at us as at Duke. Waylon reached down, tore the dog from my spattered lunch, and flung him away from us. Duke stumbled out of the brush and loped into the clearing. “There you are, Duke.” Vernon sounded a little less scared. “You still sick, buddy? I hope you done learnt your lesson ’bout eating roadkill.”
Crouching behind the fallen pine, I heard Orbin shout. “Hey! Git, dog! Git, goddamnit!”
“Aw, he ain’t gonna hurt you,” said Vern. “He just wants to—”
“Git!” I heard a dull thud, the sound of a boot hitting flesh and bone. A yelp of pain and confusion split the air. I peered over the trunk.
“Damn you, Orbin Kitchings, you had no cause to kick my dog.”
I saw the deputy strike Vernon again, knocking him flat this time. When he did, it was as if a circuit was completed deep within the dog’s instinctual brain. The gentle, dopey hound began to roar and snarl, lunging and snapping at the deputy. Orbin launched a series of flailing kicks, which the dog met with flashing jaws. Suddenly the big dog hurtled backward, twisting in midair, as the crack of a gunshot reached us. Duke crumpled to the ground, and after a moment’s shock, Vernon scrabbled over and threw himself onto the animal’s body, sobbing. The deputy stood over him, the gun pressed to Vernon’s head now.
Beside me, I felt Waylon stir and start to rise. His face was purple with rage. I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off and stood, drawing a pistol from his combat pants. I scrambled up and hissed in his ear, “No, Waylon. He’ll shoot Vernon. Then he’ll shoot us.”
Waylon turned a murderous gaze on me. “He’s got to die,” he muttered. “I’m gonna kill that black-hearted, bottom-feeding cocksucker.”
“You can’t!”
“You watch me, Doc.”
“Wait,” I whispered. “Do you want Vernon to die? Even if you could hit him from here, you can’t be sure he won’t pull the trigger.”
Waylon clenched his jaw and glared furiously from me to the deputy and back again. Crouching down again, he propped the pistol on the fallen tree trunk, taking careful aim at Orbin. He held so still I wasn’t sure he was even breathing. The deputy stepped away from Vernon, but he kept his gun pointed directly at the man on the ground. “Vernon, you stay where you’re at, and not another damn word out of you. You have that thousand when I come back in two weeks, or I’ll shoot you like a dog, too.” He backed away and climbed into the chopper, the gun still pointed out the open door. Only when the engine had spooled up did he withdraw the gun and slam the door. Seconds later he was gone, leaving behind a vortex of dry leaves and fresh grief.
CHAPTER 28
O’Conner poured waylon another shot of whiskey — his third, by my count, and I was counting pretty closely, as I was depending on Waylon for a ride back to my truck. “I know you want to,” O’Conner said for the hundredth time, “but killing him won’t help. It’ll ruin your life, and Vern’s too.” Waylon just snuffled and shook his bearlike head.
“What turns a man into something like that,” I asked O’Conner, “all mean and hateful inside?”
O’Conner shrugged, as if he had no clue, but I was reasonably sure he possessed some insight, so I waited him out. Finally he spoke. “Well, Cooke County alone — the hardscrabble life that requires a man to break the law or break his back just to get by — is enough to harden anybody,” he said. “Anybody predisposed to it, at least.”
“But this goes way beyond hardened,” I said.
“Well, then there’s the Kitchings family itself — sort of the Cooke County of families.”
“How so?”
“Well, you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the matriarch and patriarch yet,” he said, “but they’re about as warm and nurturing as those copperheads on the trail to Vern’s. A copperhead mostly wants to be left alone — he won’t generally come after you — but provoke him, and you’ll get a nasty dose of poison.”
“But the father’s a minister, isn’t he?”
“He is, but you’ve got remember what kind of church he’s in. Primitive Baptists—‘Hardshell Baptists,’ they’re also called — are about as flinty as Christians get, in my experience. Their faith is the washed-in-the-blood, fire-and-brimstone variety. Not as keen on the touchy-feely, love-thy-neighbor part of the gospel. Most of the time, they’re pulled in pretty tight — don’t tolerate drinking, dancing, or card-playing; take a pretty dim view of movies and television; don’t much trust a woman who cuts her hair or wears pants or makeup. Funny thing is, though, on Sunday, this tamped-down, thou-shalt-not crowd completely cuts loose, working themselves up into a frenzy of righteous enthusiasm.”
I nodded. Cultural anthropology was full of studies of religious ecstasy; that variety of spiritual experience cuts across virtually all nations and cultures, including highly conservative groups. Even Pentacostal churches that practice snake-handling and speaking in unknown tongues — practices at the far end of the Christian spectrum — were based on ecstatic, trancelike states.
“I heard Reverend Kitchings preach a few times in my youth,” O’Conner went on, “back when I was courting Leena, trying to make a good impression on the family. Sitting in that cold stone building, I would just marvel at the transformation this tight-lipped, tightassed puritan would undergo once he got fired up. He’d get into this preaching rhythm that was almost hypnotic, more incantation than sermon. He’d punctuate every sentence with a ‘Praise God!’ or a ‘Hallelujah!’ instead of a period. Go hell-for-leather till he’d run out of breath, then give this final, quacklike gasp, then draw in another huge breath and let fly again. I reckon he’s still at it these days. You should go hear him; I bet you’d find it fascinating.”
“I probably would,” I agreed. “How about the mother? How would you describe the family dynamics?”
“Well, I’d say the reverend is a big fan of St. Paul—‘Wives, submit to your husbands’; that sort of thing. I don’t think she’s had an easy or pleasant life with that man. Pretty hard for the sons, too.”
“In what way?”
“Well, let’s just say that if it took a liberal application of the razor strop to ke
ep his boys on the straight and narrow path to salvation, the reverend was just doing his Christian duty.” He said this with a grim look that told me he had probably witnessed a Kitchings flogging or two firsthand.
“But why did Tom and Orbin turn out so different,” I asked, “if they both came from that same harsh environment? Not to let Tom off the hook — after all, I’m pretty sure he’s derailing this murder investigation — but he doesn’t seem to be a bad guy at heart. Unlike Orbin, who seems truly bad to the bone.”
“Damn right,” growled Waylon. “Meanest sumbitch on the face of the earth.”
O’Conner smiled slightly. “I’d say you’re a pretty shrewd judge of manflesh, Doc. He is bad to the bone. Not sure why. I mean, why do some abused children grow up to be serial killers, while others grow up to be compassionate doctors and teachers and social workers?”
Ah: the Problem of Evil. I’d spent a lot of fruitless hours pondering that conundrum. “I guess it would’ve been hard to be Tom’s little brother,” I ventured.
“Real hard,” O’Conner said. “Still is. The halo’s slipped some by now, but Tom Kitchings was Cooke County’s golden boy. Didn’t get a huge amount of nurture and affirmation at home, but to the rest of the county, Tom was practically a god. Led the high school football team to two state championships, then led UT to a couple, too. Good-looking, pretty smart, and really personable. Orbin, less so.” Judging by my two brief encounters, O’Conner was giving Orbin a huge benefit of the doubt there. “Be easy to turn hateful if you found yourself being measured and found wanting your whole life. Hell, even now, Orbin’s still playing second fiddle to Tom. Sort of the age-old story of Cain and Abel, isn’t it? Orbin can either bash his brother’s brains out, like Cain did, or he can use weaker folks like Vern as his whipping boys. Been doing it just about all his life.”
O’Conner’s armchair analysis made a lot of sense. “So would you guess Orbin’s flying solo when he puts the squeeze on pot farmers and cockfighters, or is it possible Tom’s in cahoots with him?”
He frowned. “Don’t know. When he was younger, Tom would never have stooped to that. But when he was younger, he had a lot more choices. He’s had some big disappointments to reckon with, and you never can tell whether somebody’s going to walk out of the valley of the shadow as a bigger person or a smaller one.”
As he said it, I found myself wondering whether I was seeing a bigger or a smaller Jim O’Conner than the one who’d courted Leena Bonds. Then I found myself wondering whether he was seeing a bigger or a smaller Bill Brockton than the one who’d lost Kathleen. I remembered my last phone call with Jeff, and I knew the answer. I vowed to call him and apologize.
“Hell, that’s enough of my cracker-barrel psychology for one day,” said O’Conner, draining the last of his whiskey. “Let me get Waylon to take you back to your truck.”
“You sure Waylon ought to be driving?”
“Hell, Doc, I could drive that stretch of road with my eyes closed,” said Waylon.
“He’s not kidding — I’ve seen him do it,” O’Conner laughed. “It’d take another three drinks before Waylon started to feel that whiskey, and even then, he’d be a better driver than you or I stone-cold sober.”
With some misgivings, I climbed into the truck with Waylon. I rolled down the window and called to O’Conner, “Will you please make him promise not to drag me into any more adventures along the way?”
He laughed. “You hear that, Waylon? Straight to the Pilot station; no stops. All right?”
Waylon nodded. “No stops,” he said.
It never occurred to me to extract a promise to drive with the headlights on. Halfway along the river road, Waylon flicked off his lights, leaving us careening along in utter blackness.
“Waylon, stop!” I yelped.
“Cain’t,” he said. “I promised — no stops.”
“Then turn your lights back on!”
“You b’lieve now?”
“Believe what?” Had something in our discussion of religion struck a nerve in Waylon?
“B’lieve I can drive this with my eyes closed.”
“Yes, for God’s sake. Now turn on your headlights.”
He did. As the beams shot through the blackness, I saw that the big truck was tracking dead-center in the right-hand lane, halfway through an “S” curve, as if it were on rails.
“Waylon, you’re going to turn me into either a believer or a dead man.”
He laughed. “Well, either way, you won’t feel scared no more.”
CHAPTER 29
The guard at the John J. Duncan Federal Building was the same stony-faced sentinel who’d been keeping watch over the lobby the last time I was here. This time, I was determined to get a smile out of him. I checked his name tag. “Morning, Officer Shipley,” I said cheerily. “I’m Bill Brockton, from UT. I’m going up to the FBI’s offices again.” He nodded ever so slightly. “You doing all right today?” He looked startled.
“Just fine, sir.” He said it stiffly, but it was a start, at least.
“Glad to hear it. By the way, did you read the paper this morning?” He nodded warily. “Did you see that story about the recently declassified CIA case?”
“Uh, no, sir, I don’t believe I saw that one.”
“You’ll appreciate this, being familiar with federal agencies,” I said. “You remember back when President Jimmy Carter got attacked by that wild rabbit?” He looked puzzled, so I decided to refresh his memory. “Carter was fishing in a pond down in Georgia, and this big bunny came swimming out toward his boat in a threatening manner, hissing and gnashing his teeth. Remember that?” He nodded, and I could tell he wondered where this was going. “Well, according to this new report, the CIA sent double agents — undercover squirrels and chipmunks — scampering throughout the forest to gather every scrap of intelligence they could about this foiled rabbit assassination plot. After spending months on analysis and millions in payoffs, they still couldn’t catch this killer rabbit. The reason, it now turns out, is the CIA itself had been infiltrated…by a mole.” He looked at me without expression. “Get it — a mole?” I grinned and nodded encouragingly.
I saw pity in his eyes. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I do get it.” He shook his head sadly. “That,” he said, “has got to be the worst joke I’ve ever heard.” He continued to take the measure of the joke’s lameness, and when he’d finished, he finally cracked a smile.
“There,” I said triumphantly. “You’re a tough audience, but I knew I could make you smile.”
“Don’t quit your day job,” he said, waving me toward the elevator.
Up on the sixth floor, I tried the CIA joke on Angela Price and the rest of the federal and state agents. They liked it about as much as Shipley had, so I decided to hold the FBI joke I’d prepared as an encore. “Okay, a lot has happened since I saw you last,” I said. First I told them about what I’d seen in the pot patch just twenty-four hours earlier; then I recounted what happened in the cave; finally I circled back to the sheriff’s drunken phone call. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Maybe it was just the liquor talking, but he sounded like a man who’s trying to do the right thing.”
Price looked dubious. “Well, I’d be happy to be convinced of that. But it’ll take a lot more than a sloppy drunk crying into the phone to persuade me. I’d give more weight to the theft of the bones and the explosions in the cave.”
“Yeah, the phone call rang a bit hollow to me after that, too,” I admitted, “although we don’t know for sure the sheriff was involved in those. Or in his brother’s shakedown operation, either.”
The DEA agent — I had never really gotten a fix on his name — leapt in and began asking questions about the pot patch: who was the farmer, where was his patch, how big, and so on. Some things I could answer, but others — the location, Vern’s full name, the number of plants — I didn’t know. “I’m sorry I’m not more help on the specifics,” I said. “I was a ways off, I was sick as a dog, and I was scared ou
t of my wits. Not at my most observant.” I hesitated. “I’m not sure I should say this next part, but I feel sorry for Cousin Vern. He’s obviously struggling, he’s got a sick kid, and Orbin shot the man’s dog out of pure spite. Looked like it just about broke Vern’s heart. I don’t know how much leeway you have in cases like this, but if there’s any way to give that guy a break somehow, it seems like the humane thing to do.”
An awkward silence followed my plea. Finally Price spoke up. “Well, Doctor Brockton, it’s a good thing you became a scientist rather than a law enforcement officer or a prosecutor. If we let everybody who’s got a sad story off the hook, we wouldn’t make many arrests. Still, if it makes you feel better, I’ll remind you that the focus of this informal investigation is corrupt officials, not small-scale pot farmers. And we do have some discretion in how we deal with small fry who help us land bigger fish. Beyond that, we can’t promise anything.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. I appreciate that. And I’ll certainly encourage anyone who can to cooperate as fully as possible. Mind you, I haven’t seen anything that suggests that Tom Kitchings is involved in extortion. However, sick and scared as I was out in the pot patch, I saw enough to testify that Tom’s brother — who is also his chief deputy — is crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”
“Is he taking bribes, or is he extorting money?” The question came from a man who had slipped into the room right after I’d started talking. Price introduced him as David Welton, the in-house lawyer for the FBI’s East Tennessee field office.
“Well, he put a gun to the man’s head and promised to kill him if he didn’t come up with a thousand dollars in two weeks. I’d sure call that extortion.”
Welton was taking notes now. “And he was in uniform when he did this?”
“Hell, even his helicopter was wearing a uniform.”
The lawyer looked at Price. “Sounds like we’ve got him on both Hobbs and colorful law,” he said. She nodded.
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