Above Suspicion

by Sharkey, Joe;

  “That coke was really good,” Kathy said during the short conversation, practically purring into the phone. The man was smart enough not to incriminate himself on the phone. But he did say he would be glad to meet her somewhere. She told him she’d call when she knew she could get away.

  The ball was in the bureau’s court. Hulse told them he would have to notify the US attorney’s office in Lexington before the next step was taken. Meanwhile, Kathy was instructed to avoid any contact with the target. The long Thanksgiving weekend was coming up, and a decision about pursuing the matter had to wait.

  Kathy was feeling a lot better now that she had at least taken some initiative, no matter what might come of this wacky scheme, and she found herself looking forward to the holiday. She always liked to cook a big dinner for Thanksgiving, which posed something of a problem in Pikeville because their social circle was so small. The men Mark knew at the courthouse and state police post all had their own family obligations, and none of them had been anything more than casual work-acquaintances anyway. The Putnams really hadn’t had much time to develop friends. But Kathy had a thought. She hadn’t spoken to Susan for several days, and she was hoping Susan had made some progress in her so-far futile attempts to leave Kenneth and start looking for a new place to live. When Mark came home from work, she suggested, “Why don’t we invite Susan and her kids for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  Mark felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle. “Wait a minute,” he said; “I do not want an informant in this house. Do you understand? All I want is a day off to be with my family. I don’t even want the phone to ring.”

  As it happened, Susan called that night, but the talk wasn’t about Thanksgiving or finding a place to live. It was about the encounter with the same man from Letcher County who had slipped Kathy the cocaine. Kathy was further alarmed to hear her rattling off most of the details of the possible sting operation, including the controlled call from their home and the fact that Kathy had agreed to wear a listening device during the sting.

  “Susan, how did you find out about that?” Kathy demanded.

  “Oh,” Susan said off-hand. “Ron Poole told me.”

  Kathy was flabbergasted. Without alerting Mark, she called Poole at home and demanded to know why he had given such sensitive information to a woman who had the biggest mouth in eastern Kentucky. Poole was in no mood to be challenged; he was a mumbler, but this time he spoke with clear intent and vitriol. “I didn’t tell her anything. Your fucking husband probably did. You listen to me: Nobody fucks with me like that! Don’t you ever fucking talk to me like that. I’ll tell you something else, Kathy; your fucking husband has been fucking me over on two of my cases. Tell him he better smarten up or else.”

  Kathy didn’t know what to say. It was obvious to her that Mark wouldn’t have told Susan, who had no reason to lie about that, at least. But she was stunned to hear what sounded very much like a threat from Poole, her husband’s partner. She was shaking when she hung up the phone.

  Then she had another disturbing phone call on a night when Mark was working late. “The boys in Letcher understand that you like to party,” said a man obviously disguising his voice. If so, the caller said, Vernon Mullins would be happy to arrange that party. All he wanted in return was a look at Mark’s investigative file on the chop-shop case. Shaking, Kathy had a sudden suspicion that the anonymous caller was Charlie Trotter. Brashly, she said, “Vernon has to deal directly with me, Charlie. Got that?”

  There was an appreciative chuckle on the phone. “You really are one holy bitch, ain’t you? You just be careful not to screw me over. Just remember, I got the FBI behind me anytime I need it.” The caller cackled uproariously and hung up.

  The week after Thanksgiving, Mark got a call from the US attorney’s office in Lexington asking him and Kathy to come to a meeting to discuss the talk of the drug sting. They argued about it on the drive all the way to Lexington, where they met with US Attorney Louis DeFalaise, and two of his assistants. Terry Hulse was also there. It was readily apparent that the men had discussed the idea thoroughly—and liked it. Mark was appalled and especially peeved at the way Kathy kept addressing her comments and appeals directly to DeFalaise.

  “You guys are nuts,” Mark said with distaste when they asked him if he would leave the room for a moment so they could talk to Kathy alone. In the receptionist’s office, he thought, That woman is going to sell them on this! They’re going to deputize her ass right in there.

  He was right. When he was asked to come back in, it was apparent from their faces that she had persuaded them. “I know you guys want this man,” Kathy was saying, “and I can get him.”

  Mark tried to suggest that, rather than Kathy, they use a more conventional informant; he mentioned Susan, but even he knew that wouldn’t work. Everybody knew Susan. Finally, when it was decided that Kathy would be authorized to call and arrange a buy, he threw up his hands in disgust. Extraordinary precautions would be in place. The meeting was to be in a car in the Kmart parking lot in Pikeville, a safe, logical place for a drug dealer to meet a housewife. There would be agents and cops hiding in cars. When the cocaine got passed, dozens of cops would leap out and make the arrest before the perpetrator knew what hit him. Full details were to be worked out in the coming week.

  After the meeting, Hulse, who had quietly begun to share Mark’s misgivings but was reluctant to dampen the enthusiasm in the federal prosecutor’s office, sent a Teletype message to FBI headquarters in Washington outlining the plan and requesting official authorization for an agent’s wife to go undercover. The Drug Enforcement Administration was also notified.

  The Putnams were hardly back home when they got the word. A reply to Hulse’s Teletype message had rocketed back from Washington practically with flames coming off it. No one in Washington had ever heard of such a lamebrained idea! Not approved! Chastised but also somewhat relieved, Hulse ordered it called off immediately.

  Out of the hospital and back with Kenneth, Susan needed money. More than that, she needed attention from Mark. Sadly aware that she had exhausted—or alienated—most of the sources of information she had used in the Tug, where no one trusted her after she double-crossed Cat Eyes’s uncle, she knew that she had to develop a new forte to rejuvenate her career as an informant for Mark.

  Poole suggested that if nothing in Pike County was working, she might look to her past, specifically her drug connections up north. She’d mentioned a cop she and Kenneth had gotten to know when they lived in Cicero, Illinois, a cop heavily into drug traffic who could line up a fairly big deal if the money was there. That was worth considering, Poole said appraisingly, while also envisioning a few nights in Chicago in the company of Susan.

  Susan figured it was worth a try since she didn’t know what else to do. First she made a call to Cicero to ascertain from an old contact that the crooked cop was still active. He was. She then called Mark, not Poole, to tell him she had important information on a new case. She met him at McDonald’s, where he said he didn’t have time to take her for a ride. They sat in the car in the parking lot while she described the scenario she had in mind, which involved infiltrating a major urban cocaine and crack operation and drawing its connections to the Tug Valley. Yet Mark looked bored.

  “The guy that runs it?” she continued, moving in for the close.

  Impatiently he said, “Yeah?”

  “Well, he’s a cop.”

  Now he was interested. He took out a notebook.

  It was apparent, however, that she didn’t have a lot to offer yet. Susan hadn’t had much contact with the Cicero crowd since well before Cat Eyes showed up at the house. Actually, on those increasingly infrequent occasions when Susan would manage to put together enough cash to make a drug deal, she and Kenneth usually scored out of Cincinnati, closer to home.

  Susan told him that she had already discussed the situation with Poole. That was fine, Mark said. Y
ou can work it out with him. Poole knew the Chicago drug scene. When Mark mentioned to his partner what Susan was considering, Poole brightened. They decided it could work—if Susan was able to back up what she said and deliver a crooked cop engaged in interstate drug trafficking. It would involve undercover activity—Poole figured he could pose as her boyfriend and help her to infiltrate the operation. Crooked cops seldom worked alone—it was likely other officers were involved, if one was. What’s more, cracking this kind of a drug operation out of Pikeville had a special appeal; the bureau brass would love to see the imperious Chicago office tweaked by two agents out of the hills of Kentucky. Poole, in particular, savored the prospect of a triumph over his former colleagues. This was, he maintained, a “win-win situation.”

  There was a problem, however. Susan still didn’t want to work with Poole, who physically repelled her and, as her instincts flashed alerts, even frightened her. She only wanted to work with Mark. Poole took this personally, as an insult from Mark as well as Susan. A week before Christmas, Mark drove Susan into the hills north of Pikeville to a place where they had stopped to talk often in the past, a clearing just off an abandoned coal-mine road, twenty minutes out of town. The name of the road was Harmon Branch, and he would drive her to this mountaintop once more, about six months from then. Mark had been brooding about his difficulties, professional and personal. Nothing was working out; nothing was being resolved, and his marriage was on the rocks.

  It was late afternoon, not yet dusk, but the sun had dropped behind the mountains and the air was cold. He let the engine run, scribbling notes disconsolately while Susan talked. Then he felt Susan’s hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

  “Is there something wrong? You seem way out in left field, honey.”

  She had not called him that before.

  “Oh, you know, everybody’s got problems, Susan.”

  “I know there’s problems at home because Kathy tells me about them.”

  He was not happy to hear that. How often did Kathy and Susan talk about personal affairs? He had no idea.

  “She’s feeling as bad as you are, honey, but there isn’t anything you can do about that right now. You have got to have somebody, and maybe for right now I’m that person for you. Whatever I can do to help you feel better about yourself, I intend to do. Like I always say, you are real different. You care about people. You listen to me. You helped me a lot. A lot. Now it’s your turn for attention.”

  As she leaned toward him, he noticed the gold chain with a tiny cross she wore. She was rubbing his neck now, and he leaned in to enjoy it.

  “God, are you tense.”

  “I just need some time off. That or a good ten-mile run to sort everything out.”

  “Well, you can’t run here. Look at me, Mark. You know how I feel about you.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Any time you need a release, I’m around.”

  “I appreciate that, Susan. But I don’t think that would accomplish anything. It would just dig me in deeper, you know? I’m already in pretty deep.” He was not sure exactly what he was trying to tell her.

  “Mark, sometimes you have got to look past that and take care of yourself. You’ve been looking terrible lately. Real ragged.”

  She moved close to him, kissed him, stroked the inside of his thigh, studied his face with a smile. “I think you should make love to me right now, Mark.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Susan”

  “I think it’s too late for that, honey. Just relax.” Jesus, he thought. Why the hell not? Why the holy hell not?

  In the car on that mountaintop they made love for the first time.

  He didn’t see her for a few days afterward. He told himself it had been nothing. Quick, passionless, detached, as if he weren’t even a part of it. He told himself, It’s like a pickup in a bar at college. You see a girl you know will do it. It’s over and forgotten before you know it. No sweat. That’s the last you think of it.

  Of course, that wasn’t true.

  And he knew what a fraud he was a few days after that when he drove her up to the same place again, like a horny teenager. Afterward, he said he would take her home to Freeburn.

  “You seem pretty upset,” she said as they drove back onto the main road.

  “I am. I’m pissed off at myself, not at you.” He stroked her hair lightly, caught his reflection momentarily in the rearview mirror, and said, “I betrayed myself, my wife, my kids, and my job.”

  She laughed at his gloom. “Mark, honey, you take yourself entirely too seriously. It wasn’t no—any—big deal, baby. It was just a fuck in a car.”

  Years later, Mark would insist that, rumors in Pikeville and Freeburn aside, they had sex no more than five times over a two-week period, always in his car. Then, aghast at his recklessness, disgusted with himself as he had never been before, he broke off the relationship.

  Characteristically, instead of confronting Susan, he chose to avoid her. He shut her out of his life. Now, more abjectly than ever before, Susan felt abandoned, but she was determined not to show it. She doubled down; became energized and even agitated with her fantasies. She countered suicidal thoughts by telling herself, and others who would listen, that she and Mark Putnam planned a wonderful life together, once the details could be ironed out. As on TV, a happy ending was coming.

  Kathy had never really suspected that her husband was having an affair. But around Christmastime, she detected a palpable change in Susan’s demeanor. She wasn’t calling as much as before, and when she did call, she chattered on about things other than Mark or her own wretchedness in Freeburn. She seemed happy and more confident in herself than Kathy had ever known her to be. In some ways, she even seemed manic. “She seemed like she was on top of the world, for once,” Kathy would later recall. Kathy was heartened to think that her self-esteem seemed to have undergone repair. Maybe Susan was finding ways to take responsibility for her own destiny. At least, Kathy thought, something seemed to be getting better for someone.

  She wished she could say the same about her own situation, which had deteriorated alarmingly. She was constantly, vaguely afraid. Later, she would struggle to analyze the breakdown and sort out its causes. What parts were depression and paranoia, and what was a reasonable psychological response to real threats? How much fault lay in unreasonable expectations, Mark’s overbearing pride, the bureau’s indifference and ineptitude, the infernal manipulations by Poole, Susan, Trotter, and others who might have agendas she could not quite see?

  This much was for sure: Free-floating anxiety aside, there were deliberate attempts to frighten her. The worst came in the middle of January, with Mark out of town for the night on a bureau training session. The phone rang around midnight. Picking it up tentatively, Kathy heard a voice growl, “We ain’t sure whose side you on no more. We think you been sleeping with cops too long. You’re alone with them babies tonight, ain’t you?” Frantically, she grabbed the .357 from the shelf and stormed around the house snapping off lights. She spent the night on the living room floor in the dark, back against the couch, gun pointed at the door.

  On February 2, there was another frightening call, this one at four-thirty in the morning with Mark at home. Kathy would remember the date because she always had a notepad by the phone and she’d learned a form of shorthand when she managed her father’s apartments. She always, almost obsessively, took good and copious notes, even in the middle of the night. She also kept monthly calendars, and on this date, next to the notation Kids portrait Sears 9 A.M., she’d scrawled, Kenneth called A.M. ??? She remembered it because the exuberant Susan she had experienced so recently had now plunged back into despair.

  She had never spoken to Kenneth before. All she knew about him was what Susan had told her. Kenneth, who sounded drunk, wasted no time on social preliminaries.

  “Kathy, this is Kenneth. You listening?”<
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  “Kenneth?” she said huskily, standing in the dark upstairs hallway in her nightgown. For some reason, the previous owners of their house had installed only one upstairs phone jack—in the hallway on the second floor. Mark had been promising to run one into their bedroom for over a year. It was one of the chores he hadn’t got around to yet.

  “Do you know what’s going on with yer husband and Susan?” he demanded. In the background, Susan cried, “Kenneth, quit it!”

  “What’s going on Kenneth?”

  “Mark and Susan, that’s what’s goin’ on. Been goin’ on. They been fuckin’ in motel rooms. You think that’s right? You care about that?”

  “Kenneth—”

  Susan grabbed the phone crying. “Kathy, I am so sorry!” There was a crash as something hit a wall.

  “I’m so sorry, Kathy! Kenneth is just wild. See, he found out that, well, see I was pregnant and I lost it, but he’s saying that the baby was Mark’s and I told him it wasn’t true. You know what I been going through with him. He just doesn’t understand that Mark and I, we have to meet sometimes in private places and all, for work.”

  There was a scuffle. She heard Kenneth: “Your fucking work? That’s what you call it?”

  “Kenneth no!”

  Susan was tiny but she knew how to fight. She managed to grab the phone as Kenneth screamed, “Tell her if she wants to see the pictures I got of you two goin’ to them motels—”

  “Kathy, I swear there ain’t nothing going on with me and Mark.”

  The phone dropped again and Susan yelled, “Fuck you, Kenneth!”

  Now Kenneth was back: “Is that all right with you, Kathy? Them fucking is all right with you?”

  Mark had gotten out of bed and was standing beside his wife, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, incongruously scrawling notes in the dim predawn light.

  “Who is it?” Mark said anxiously.