Absolute Rage (14 page)

Back at the farm, the Damicos had arrived with blasting gear, to remove the boulder that blocked the new water line. Assured by this event that the boys would be fixed and fascinated and out of trouble for at least a few hours, Lucy went into the house with the intent of retiring to her room for reading and a nap. Perhaps she might pray, although this had been dry for her recently. At one time, prayer had been able to move her into an alternative state of being, and this had taken the place of much that girls her age considered indispensable to life. The saints, however, had withdrawn. Perhaps that part of her life was closing down; perhaps she would become more like her mother. Thinking this, she shuddered slightly.

As she passed through, she noticed that there were messages on the answering machine and played them: her mother, from the City, informing her that she would be staying in town that evening, and issuing instructions for feeding children and animals. Next, several for her: Dr. McGinnis, from MIT, wondering when she would return to Boston, and trying to schedule something for next week; ditto, Drs. Sykes, Omura, Dunn, Salmonson. Lucy was popular in the research community, which held, not without reason, that somewhere between her ears was a clue to one of the major unsolved problems of science—how natural languages are acquired and processed. These demands tended to depress her. She understood that her gift came with responsibilities, but lately these had become more onerous, the demands of the scientists more irritating. Resentfully, she considered transferring to a school far from the centers of science, someplace isolated, West Virginia maybe, ha ha. In any case, she was too tired to return the calls just then, or not exactly tired, but drained. There was no call from Dan Heeney, not that she had really expected one, but that added to the draining.

She went upstairs, removed everything but a halter top and underpants, turned the fan on high, and took up Lockwood's
Indo-European Philology,
of which she got through two pages before sleep claimed her. From this she was awakened by a dull thump, which shook the bed and raised puffs of dust from the chalky walls. She pulled on shorts and sandals and went outside. Phil Damico was up in the backhoe, using its grab to lift thick steel-mesh mats out of the trench and deposit them neatly in the bed of their truck. She watched the operation for a while and did not object when Phil allowed Zak, delirious with joy, to sit on his lap and tweak the controls.

Later, she prepared supper, a cookout, and invited Billy Ireland to join them, thinking it was unfair to let the scent of grilling meat float around the place without so doing. It was a pleasant meal. She liked Ireland. She thought her mother a fool for flirting with him the way she did and felt no urge to do so herself, although she had to admit that she shared her mother's taste for the bad boys. After eating, they sat at the redwood table in the yard, drinking beer and watching the boys chase fireflies. Ireland told her a long and involved story about his hard life on the wrong side of the law. Meth had been his downfall. He had got hooked and had done some stickups under the influence. Lucy had spent considerable time among the addicted and the down-and-out and knew they loved to retell their former degradation. She listened companionably and was not shocked. Somewhere during this conversation she decided that she would not return to Boston, but spend the summer at the farm. She did not pursue the reasons for this, beyond telling herself that she needed a break from being a lab rat. She did not mind the linguists so much, but the neuro guys were starting to get to her. She knew that in their secret materialist hearts they were dying to dissect.

*  *  *

Marlene drove back to the Island the next day, full of good food and drink, having spent also a night of lust that made both her and her husband ask themselves why they did not get away together more often. Against her always upwelling feelings of discontent she counted her blessings: money, a loving husband, health, one eye, money, a body in the early stages of decrepitude—up a whole size since college—a large number of ugly, fierce dogs, three lovely mutant, peculiar kids not as ruined as they might have been by exposure to violence when young, but who knew?; an amusing and distracting business, but distracting her from what? Yes, that was sort of the problem now, wasn't it? Marlene had reached the age where she no longer thought either love or friendship would save her, that the decades of her career would not make her mark on the world. The children, of course—the children still needed her, the twins anyhow, Lucy hadn't needed her since age seven, what with her constant commerce with God and all the saints, but even the twins wouldn't need her for long. Already Zak was squirming away when she hugged him and tried to sniff his hair. Giancarlo was more patient, of course, but she could feel that he was suffering her intimacies as a favor, not because he needed them anymore. Empty-nest syndrome? Not likely, as she had never been much of a nester when it had been chock-full. So what was it, this niggling feeling, this tendency to snap, to be bored with the stuff of daily life?

“What is it, dog? Analyze me. What should I do with the pathetic tag end of my life? Do I want to run a corporation? Tried that. Private eye? Tried that. Lawyer? Yeah, but only certain kinds of cases, and even then, do I really want to get into that dusty pit with Butch? Doing good? I gave all my money to the Church. Should I also make soup and visit smelly old people, in competition with my daughter? No, thank you. So what?” She nudged the dog. “So? Give me some advice—are you my best friend or not?”

The dog raised its great head and stared at her. It said, maybe it's been too long since you felt the bones of your enemies crunch between your jaws and tasted the rich tang of their blood.

“Oh, right,” she snapped, “that's what you
always
say.”

*  *  *

“Really?” said Marlene when Lucy told her the changed plans. “I thought you had all kinds of stuff they wanted you to do in Boston.”

Lucy made a sour face. “Yes, but I don't want to do it. I decided to play hooky. Let there be wailing and gnashing of teeth up and down the river Charles!”

Marlene registered mock surprise. “Lucy! You're being
bad?
Oh, come to my arms! You
are
my little girl after all!”

“Cut it out, Mom,” Lucy said as her mother enveloped her in a theatrical hug. “So, is it all right? I mean, I could work. I could finish Malo and Gringo.”

“No, don't be silly—I mean, you
live
here, just as much as the twins do. I'm delighted, to tell the truth. If you're here with the boys, it'll free me up to do some things. We'll have a nice time.”

“We won't snap and snarl at each other, will we?”

“Of
course
not, darling,” said Marlene in a sugary voice. “As long as you don't oppose me in any way and anticipate my every need, we'll get along fine.”

“I mean seriously.”

“Seriously? What can I say, baby? I love you. I realize I get on your nerves sometimes, and I accept that most of it's my fault. I'm not an easy person to get along with.”

“Well, you're not boring anyway,” said Lucy, not wanting just at the moment to pursue the subject of why Marlene was hard to like. “What things?”

“Excuse me?”

“The things you said me being here to watch the boys would free you up for.”

“Oh, you know . . . things,” said Marlene airily, and then Billy Ireland had to see her about something and the moment passed.

As did the next ten days, amid the welter of ordinary life. The water line was completed, hose was laid, the vegetables therefore flourished in the face of unrelenting heat, and those parts of kennel life that depend on plentiful water became easier. The bitch Magog emerged from her confinement stiff and blinking and coursed around the exercise field with her mate and with Lucy, whose special dog she had always been. The puppies, remarkable for sturdiness, curiosity, and hideousness, were everywhere underfoot. Ads were placed; people came in expensive vehicles to look them over. On these occasions, Marlene demonstrated with Gog what a 210-pound Kohler-method guard dog looks like in action. She had added a few personal fillips to the standard training, in one of which Gog knocked his agitator to the ground and, on command, ripped his balls off, in fact, a brace of hand-balls sewn into a leather bag and attached with Velcro to the crotch of Russell's padded overalls. This always drew gasps of amazement and a pattering of applause from the ladies attending. Magog, who was actually a bit brighter than her old man, also demonstrated the location of personal objects, her forte.

Lucy got her trainees to float on the end of a lead with hardly a tug, to sit, to lie down, to stay. With the aid of a live wire from a fence charger, she taught them what every guard dog must learn: not to eat food except from their bowls.
(Zzzzzt!
Howl!) Lucy did not mind doing this in the least. She was tenderhearted, but not sentimental. GC harvested early tomatoes and young, tender lettuces. Zak shot three rats and a particularly stupid crow.

Lucy happened to be in the office when the phone call that ended all this arrived. It was Dan Heeney on the line. She felt her heart unexpectedly lift when she heard his voice and cruelly fall when he asked bluntly, “Is your mom there?”

“Sure, she's around. How
are
you?”

“Fine. Okay, I guess. Getting along.”

“Wow, that's vivid. It really gives a precise word-picture of your mental and emotional state.”

“Lucy, I really have to talk to your mom.” Now she heard the tension in his voice and said sure, she'd go get her, and did.

When Marlene came on the line, he did not pause for pleasantries with her, either.

“Why I'm calling, ma'am, I mean bothering you, is you said, if there was anything you could do . . .”

“Sure. If you call me Marlene instead of ma'am, I'm at your service. What's up?”

“Okay. Well, Emmett doesn't know I'm calling. I mean maybe this is crazy.”

“What is?”

“I mean . . . okay, they arrested this guy for the murders?”

“Good. I'm glad. Who was it?”

“A guy named Moses Welch. He lives down in Fairless Holler, about three miles from our place. Mom used to give him odd jobs, like hauling stuff, digging the garden, like that. He's about Emmett's age, a couple of years older.”

“How did they find him?”

“From his shoes. He had blood all over these yellow boots he was wearing, spatters and along the sole. He was in town and someone noticed and told the cops, and they went and picked him up. It was human blood and the right kind. When the tests came back from the state lab in Charleston, they charged him.”

“And . . . ?”

“Well, it's crazy. Moses Welch didn't kill my family. Moses Welch can hardly drive a car. He's got an IQ of about twenty. He wouldn't know which end of a gun to point.”

“So how did he get their blood on his shoes?”

“They weren't his shoes. He said he found them under the bridge over the Guyandotte. Almost new shoes. He thought it was paint on them.”

“And you believe him?”

“Well, yeah! The guys who really did it tossed them over the bridge and he found them.”

“And the cops don't buy that?”

“Oh, hell, ma'am . . . I mean Marlene—we don't
have
any real cops here. We got J. J. Swett. He's been the sheriff for about a hundred years and he's got a total of six officers, and none of them can tell their sorry butts from a hole in the ground. Besides, all of them are in with Weames or the coal company.”

“Weames is the man your father was running against.”

“And he beat him, too. Emmett did an exit poll after the election; Dad won by ten points. Then Weames announces the results, and of course he said he won. Dad was going to bring DOL into the election to investigate. That's why Weames killed him. Or had it done.”

“You sound pretty sure about this.”

“Well, hell, I didn't need to go to damn MIT to figure
that
out,” said Dan, his voice grating and loud over the phone. “One—he threatened Dad; two—he knew he was going to go down if there was an investigation of the election; and three—it wasn't some damn
retard
that did this.”

“Is that what Emmett thinks?”

“Oh, yeah. Except he thinks he's going to find out who did it and kill them himself. That's why I need your help. Could you come here? My mom told me . . . I mean about what you used to do, and you're a lawyer, too. Moses got a lawyer, but he's a joke, the courthouse drunk. He can't defend anyone on a murder charge. We've got some money from the insurance. We could pay you . . .”

“Hold on a second. You want
me
to defend this man, this suspect in your family's murders?”

“Well, yeah, to start with. If they convict him, hell, it's all over. No one will ever look at the thing again, not in Robbens County, anyway. And then after you get him off . . . well, you know, find out who did it.”

“Find out . . . ?” exclaimed Marlene incredulously. “Okay, look, Dan—I appreciate that you have a problem there, but first of all, I am not licensed to practice law in West Virginia. Second—”

“You went to Delaware. My mom told me about that girl who killed her baby.”

“She didn't kill her baby. And that was different. I had a local co-counsel and—”

“Well, you'd have Ernie Poole, wouldn't you?”

“Who?”

“The fella who's defending Moses now.”

“The drunk? Oh, thank you very much! Second, as I was saying, in the real world, as opposed to books and movies, crimes are solved by the cops, not by private investigators. I can't just drop into a strange part of the country, ask a few pointed questions, beat up some villains, and come out with the answer. It don't work that way. A triple-murder investigation is a big, big operation.”