Above Suspicion

by Sharkey, Joe;

  Susan, however, had yielded hers to Kenneth, with whom she was still trying to live. In the fall, Mark had given her another $4,000, which he said was payment for assisting Poole on his drug cases, as well as for the work on the Phelps bank robbery. In reality, the $4,000 was more of a charity payment. Kathy had been pleading Susan’s case—Susan was afraid of Kenneth, she needed to find a place to live—and Mark knew there would be no problem getting the bureau to approve another $4,000. But Susan didn’t use the money to move out. Instead, soon after she got it, she phoned Kathy to say that Kenneth had claimed half for drug debts he said she owed. The other half had gone to a used car—Kathy thought it was interesting that the car was a Dodge Diplomat, similar to Mark’s bureau-issue vehicle. Kenneth had promptly taken possession of that, too.

  “I bought that car as an investment,” Susan told her.

  Shaking her head, Kathy wondered if this was hopeless. An investment?

  Mark insisted that it was pretty much hopeless. Yet he had no stomach for the scene that Susan would undoubtedly make if he tried to break the connection entirely. For a cop, Mark had an unusual aversion to confrontation. Trying to foist her off on Poole wasn’t going to solve the problem, either. Poole was obviously interested in continuing to work with Susan—in fact, she’d told Kathy that he had expressed his interest in a “long-term relationship with benefits for the both of us.” But she hated working with him. On paper, Susan’s cooperation as an informant continued to look good—but Mark was seriously worried about the lengths to which she would go to ensure her continued employment. The Phelps bank robbery was a case in point. Susan had helped solve the case for the FBI, but the fact was, she had also helped to plan the robbery, entrapping Cat Eyes’s uncle. The entrapment had been clever, almost brilliant. What, Mark worried, would this girl come up with next?

  Mark kept busy elsewhere, mostly over in Letcher County. While working the chop-shop investigation, he was trying to position himself to make inroads into official corruption that would dovetail with the secret corruption investigation he’d learned about. Letcher County, where anything (and, it was said, anyone) could be bought, was an excellent place to do that.

  He wasn’t aware of the fanciful stories Susan had been circulating in the Tug Valley. Unable so far to interest him in her sexually—and Susan was a woman for whom sexual attention was crucial—she had simply wished it to be true, as she had wished so many other things in her life. And characteristically, her wishes were grand. To hear Susan tell it—and her sister Shelby was hearing all of the details now, as Susan spent many nights at her house—Mark had fallen deeply in love with her. They had gone to motels, even to his house (Kathy, she said, was often away with the kids in Connecticut), where they had wild sexual romps that lasted until dawn. Susan told people that she had already become pregnant by Mark, but lost the baby in a miscarriage. Still, there was plenty of time for more! There was a lifetime, in fact, since Susan maintained that he assured her he was going to divorce Kathy to marry her. Furthermore, Mark had appointed her, Susan Smith, to a special position as a US informant, fully protected from assault by federal law, she said—“just the same as a clerk in the post office.”

  People in Freeburn knew Susan well enough to assume that only about half of what she said was true. But there was at least a suspicion that some of it was true. Shelby was furious at Susan’s imprudence and warned her to forget about the FBI man and stay away from Pikeville. Kenneth also showed his disapproval, but more bluntly. As Susan made clear to Kathy, without fully explaining why, he roughed her up regularly, though Kenneth always denied it.

  Unable to turn her back on Susan, Kathy championed her cause more urgently to Mark, importuning him to do whatever he could.

  Late one afternoon at the end of October, Susan called Kathy to tell her she was in the hospital. At first, Kathy was afraid she’d been beaten up, but Susan assured her she was in only “for tests” for a few days because she was “run-down” and exhausted and needed to “build myself up because I lost too much weight.” Kathy was considering telling her what she really thought, which was that she needed to cut out the pills and cocaine, when Susan burst into tears. “Nobody has been out to see me since I got here,” she sobbed. “I haven’t even heard from my family.”

  Kathy bought a get-well card, signed it, had Danielle write her name on it in her child’s loping scrawl, and handed it to Mark when he got in that night. He didn’t want to sign it. He was even less happy when Kathy suggested that he deliver it personally. Kathy insisted, “That girl has led a tough life, and you owe her, Mark. Aren’t you going to go visit her?”

  “Absolutely not. No way. That’s personal, not business.”

  “Well, I think you should, Mark. That girl has helped you out. You’ve kind of put her out front with those people where she lives. A lot of them won’t even speak to her now because of what she did for you. I think you owe it to her to at least go see her.”

  He acquiesced, not wanting to get into it more with Kathy, but her interference in his business with Susan annoyed him. Sure, he felt sorry for Susan. Yes, her work had put a feather in his cap—she had delivered, no argument. She had also been paid well. As far as he was concerned, it was well past time to move on.

  Susan was in a hospital in Williamson. Unhappily, Mark drove out there and found her alone in a double room, pale and thin, but animated. She giggled over the card when he gave it to her. Then she put it on the nightstand. Tugging at his hand, she said, “Why don’t you climb into bed with me? Ain’t nobody else in this room. The door shuts.”

  “Susan, cut it out.”

  She stuck her chin out raffishly. “Right here, right now. Nobody would ever know. What do you say, Mark?” She pulled the sheet back. She was naked underneath.

  “Come on, cut the crap,” he protested.

  She just smiled innocently.

  “Susan, that would be a major mistake. You know that.”

  She knew no such thing. “Not if nobody ever found out,” she insisted. “And they won’t.”

  He changed the subject and left within a few minutes. But on the drive back home, he found himself reflecting on the offer. She made it sound so simple. Pure submission, he thought. In his cranky, beleaguered frame of mind, it had a certain appealing lack of ambiguity. In the days ahead he put Susan out of his mind and forced himself to think about his other mounting troubles, as if by way of penance.

  He had come to comprehend, with some bitterness, that the career potential in the chop-shop case could cut both ways. The US attorney’s office in Lexington, exercising particular caution in assembling the case because of its possible use as a springboard for bigger things down the road, hadn’t yet come up with the indictments of the Mullins gang. In Letcher County, the delay was being read differently. On the one-year anniversary of the raid, noting that no suspects had been charged, although everyone knew who they were, a Letcher County newspaper had even printed a story suggesting that not only certain local police officers, but the “federal boys” as well, had been paid off by the criminals. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, least of all Mark’s, who the “federal boys” were. He was infuriated by the story, and he took it very personally, since it was the first time in his life that he had ever been accused, however elliptically, of wrongdoing. He was convinced that the insinuation had compromised his reputation in the area. Yet he never mentioned it to anyone, not even his wife.

  The pilfering of material from the site had become so routine that it had become a local joke that the stolen goods were cheaper now than they were back when Vernon Mullins and the boys were selling them. Mark was convinced, though he had no evidence, that at least one of the local cops was working with the thieves. This gnawed at him constantly. He didn’t know whom he could trust, and so he trusted no one.

  He left the house early one morning and saw that all four tires of the Olds had been flattened in the drive
way. That was the first warning that the line between work and home had been erased. Others lie ahead like a boulder on a hairpin mountain road.

  Another came when he was working in the driveway one Sunday afternoon, furiously chopping firewood for the stove, working up a comforting sweat. He was interrupted by the light tapping of a car horn. At the curb, Poole had pulled up in the Bronco, with Susan beside him in the front seat. They waved and looked as if they were going to get out to visit, but after Mark turned his back and strode into the house, they drove off.

  He confronted Poole in the office the next morning.

  “Why in hell did you bring her to my house, Ron?”

  Poole showed innocent surprise. “We were out for a drive and she only wanted to see where you live, old buddy. That’s all.”

  Mark’s face was so red that Poole thought for a second that he might throw a punch. “Don’t you ever bring a fucking informant to my house! Do you hear me, Ron? Don’t ever do that again.” Poole muttered that he’d meant no harm.

  That night, Mark angrily warned Kathy to be more careful. He wasn’t the only one she was hearing such warnings from, however. One day she was out front picking up Danielle’s toys in the driveway when a woman who lived across the street, and who hadn’t been particularly friendly in the past, came over.

  “I know your husband’s got that case in Letcher,” the neighbor said, crossing her arms against a chilly wind knifing down through the hills. “You should tell him to be very careful up there, that’s probably the worst county there is.” As she left, she added, “My brother was shot and killed up there.”

  At the end of the day, Kathy was standing at the kitchen sink pouring milk into the baby’s bottle when she happened to glance at the window. She was startled to see a man looking directly at her. He grinned, showing missing front teeth. He wore a knit cap over stringy, greasy hair. She dropped the milk carton into the sink and in a panic grabbed the .357 that Mark kept on the top pantry shelf. She glanced at eleven-month-old Mark Jr., smiling in the playpen, then checked to see that the gun was loaded.

  Feeling her throat constrict, she moved toward the front door and yelled up at Danielle, “Stay in your room, okay, honey?”

  A small voice came down. “I’m just playing. I’m the mommy and Amanda is the baby.”

  “Just stay in your room!”

  Kathy slipped outside trying to remember what Mark had taught her about the gun—defensive tactics, how to round a corner, confront a suspect. You keep the gun down, not up by your head like the goddamn cop shows. Try to stay sideways to your opponent to present a smaller target. She took a breath and edged around the corner of the house—and promptly forgot everything Mark had shown her. She faced the intruder clutching the gun with both hands in front of her face, just like on the cop shows.

  “Don’t you move!” she ordered.

  Terrified, the stranger raised his hands as high as he could, just as he himself had seen on the cop shows. “Okay, lady! Okay!” he said, practically choking on the words. From the corner of her eye, she saw another figure dash behind the bushes next door.

  “What are you doing looking in my window? You’re in my backyard looking in my window!” Kathy shrieked.

  His eyes were wide. “Okay, okay, lady! We was just a-fixing the cable wire, putting in new wire. The cable TV?” His hands fell to his side and he turned to look for his partner, who was peeking from an azalea bush at the corner of the house.

  “I said don’t move!” Kathy screamed. But then she saw the spool of heavy wire on the ground beside the patio.

  Seeing that she wasn’t going to shoot, the cable man forced a nonthreatening smile that had the effect of making her angrier. “I was just looking in to see was anybody home,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Let you know we was working back here.”

  She lowered the gun to her side. On the man’s shirt was the logo of the local cable television company. She felt more foolish than she ever had, but she let loose on him in anger. “You dumb fucking hillbilly!”

  He shrugged and looked askance.

  “Why didn’t you simply ring the doorbell and let me know you were out here? Looking into windows. How stupid can you be?” She felt like a bully, which only made her madder. “I almost shot your ass, do you know that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly, glad for the opportunity to provide an answer this madwoman might accept.

  Just then, Mark’s car pulled into the driveway. They watched him approach with a quick alarmed stride.

  “What’s going on here, Kat?”

  “This idiot. I almost shot him. He was looking in the window!” Her heart was thumping; she felt like a frightened child. She also realized how easily she could have pulled the trigger if the man had made even one careless move.

  Scowling, Mark realized that his wife had almost shot an innocent laborer. He thought fast. The best way to diffuse the situation—he didn’t want Kathy to have to explain herself to the local police—was with an effective offense. No point in letting the guy see himself as a victim, he decided. Pikeville was a litigious place, always had been. Let him think he’s getting off easily. Mark flashed his badge at the stranger, who looked it over carefully and nodded in acknowledgment. “What’s going on here friend?” Mark asked in an accusatory tone, while casually taking the gun out of his wife’s hands.

  The cable man yammered like a schoolboy to a teacher breaking up a fight, “I’m just a-fixing the wires, officer, and she comes out wanting to shoot me! I didn’t do nothing!”

  Mark demanded some identification, which the man dug nervously out of his pants pocket, and said, “Don’t you think it might be a little better to go the front door and knock instead of looking in the window?”

  “Yes, sir, buddy. We should of thought of that.”

  “Next time you will, right?”

  “Sure will, sir.” Mark handed him his identification card back like a state trooper letting a speeder off with a warning.

  After the cable truck pulled away, Mark marched Kathy into the house and sat her down at the kitchen table. She felt her face burning. He tried to make a joke out of it while admonishing her at the same time: “Hey, Kat—I know they raised the rates, but you can’t be holding the cable company at gunpoint, you know.”

  She was not amused. “You bastard!”

  “Me? Hey, you’re the one who almost shot the guy for Christ’s sake! What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  He went upstairs, pointedly taking the .357 with him. Hearing him laughing with Danielle as if nothing had happened, she banged around in the kitchen in a fury. How could her marriage come to this? Had the power shifted so decisively? How had she become so ridiculously afraid?

  He trotted back downstairs and stood there stretching, cocky and smug in his gray sweats, ready for his run before dinner. Outside, the mountain in back of the house loomed dark against the twilight sky.

  She snapped on the kitchen light and fumed, unwilling to speak. “Come on, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” he said with an attempt at cool reassurance, patting her behind and trying to hug her. But she pushed him away and said sharply, “Don’t patronize me, goddammit!”

  His expression darkened. “You knew what we were getting into from the beginning, Kat. I thought you had what it takes. You took this on, Kathy.”

  “I didn’t take this on,” she said, flinging a gesture toward the window. “I was always there for you. I did my best, Mark. But I didn’t bargain for this. This, Mark, is too much to ask!”

  “What is? Pull yourself together, Kathy.” He was shouting. Mark never shouted in the house.

  That did it. She threw down the fork she’d been using to fix Danielle’s plate and brushed past her daughter, ignored the baby’s wailing, grabbed her coat and her keys, and stormed out the door in tears. As she backed out of the driveway, sh
e screamed at the face of the woman next door peering from her window.

  “Mind your own fucking business!”

  A few miles out of town on Route 23, she acknowledged that she had nowhere to go. She stopped at a convenience store for cigarettes. On her way back home, she pulled off in the dark near the sway bridge over the Levisa and sat there furiously smoking, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. She forced herself to think of the last really happy time she could remember, in Myrtle Beach: sunlight on the faces of her husband and children, a startling blue sky, the surf breaking in clean white curls at their backs. Amusement-­park lights twinkling on black, dinner, walks in cool night sand. When the kids were in bed in the next room, she’d put on a silky teddy and they’d nibbled cheese and crackers and sipped red wine while they talked. She’d given him a massage with lotion heated in the baby’s bottle warmer. They’d made love in the dark, smelling of the sea and suntan oil.

  As she calmed down, she ordered herself to stop overreacting. She remembered the lectures they gave for agents’ spouses who came to the orientation session at the academy before their partners started training. Know what you are getting into: The pressures of a cop’s life are intense. Marriages fail. Keeping them working requires constant vigilance. For some reason she thought of a much earlier time in their life together. He was still a clerk waiting to get into the FBI; she’d had six FBI most-wanted posters framed and hung them in the hall as a joke. He loved them. The “Putnam collection,” he’d called them when showing them to friends.

  A car rattling over the bridge made her look up. Feeling the chill, she turned on the engine and went home.

  But the warmth of the house seemed artificial, the colors too bright. In her cotton Strawberry Shortcake nightgown, Danielle bared tiny white teeth to show that she’d brushed them; Mark played with the baby, who tottered into a castle of plastic blocks his father had built. “Okay, buddy, knock it down, go ahead.” And young Mark kicked the castle blocks down. “Okay, buddy, you want to play, you got to pay, help to pick it up.” The children and their father lay on the floor.