Absolute Rage (24 page)

It took a while for him to respond, and as she studied his face, she thought that was a good sign. A lot of lip-biting and brow-knotting there, the signs of an intact moral center working hard.

At last he let out a long breath and began to talk technicalities and legal minutiae, which Marlene was happy to do for as long as he wanted. They left with a receipt for the evidence bag and an assurance that he would have it delivered to the state lab himself.

Outside the courthouse, Poole said, “Do you really think he's going to do what he said?”

“Yes, I do. I think he'll do the right thing. Don't you?”

Poole laughed and rolled his eyes. “Hell, no, I don't. I think he was on the phone to whoever owns him the minute we were out of there. That damn shoe is history.”

“How cynical you are, Poole!” she exclaimed, laughing. “You should try to regain some faith. No, I think what we have here is a malleable kid up against his first real test of integrity, and I think he's going to pass it.”

“And if not?”

“If not, I know approximately where the
other
sneaker is, and I will shout to the high heavens and hire a bunch of guys to find it while the TV cameras roll. Even Mr. Hawes knows that two sneakers make a pair. No, I think we turned a corner here. How would you like to come out to the Heeney place tonight? We'll have a cookout to celebrate.”

Poole hesitated, looking away. “I don't know . . .” “Oh, come on! It'll be fun. We'll get functionally drunk together.”

He smiled. “Oh, in that case . . .”

They mounted the red Dodge, stopped off at the Pay 'n' Pack for supplies, and headed out of town on Route 119. After a few minutes, Marlene said, “Say, Poole? Do you know anyone with an electric blue Ford 250 pickup on big wheels?”

“Where?” he said, startled, looking around.

“Right behind us. A couple of guys in the front. They've been driving around me all day. Who are they?”

“I have no idea. Say, you know, on second thought, I'm not feeling too good right now. My stomach. Could you just swing around and drop me at my house?”

“No. Who are they?”

“Cades. That's Earl Cade's pickup.”

She checked her side mirror. The big truck was edging closer. Marlene tapped her brake and pulled to the right. The blue pickup came closer still. It towered over the Dodge, its heavy bumper and grille filling her entire rearview mirror. Her gaze flashed up the road, looking for a turnoff or a driveway, but there was nothing useful ahead, only a shallow roadside ditch and a line of phone poles. They had picked this place with care.

In the distance a tanker truck filled the oncoming lane. A grinding thump from the rear. The Dodge shook and swerved. She gripped the wheel, fighting for control. Another thump. Poole yelped and pressed his palms against the dash.

When she looked again, the blue truck was gone from the rearview, to appear immediately in the side mirror. Marlene looked out her window, but the giant tires raised the blue truck so high that she could not see anything but a sheer wall of shiny blue paint and chrome, which came ever closer. There was a crunch and tinkle as her side mirror tore away. Her right wheels were on shoulder gravel now, the pebbles machine-gunning against the underside of the Dodge. The oncoming tanker leaned on his horn. She heard the scream of air brakes.

We're going into the ditch, she thought. A phone pole ripped off the right-side mirror. She jammed on her brakes and jerked the wheel hard to the right. The Dodge fishtailed and plunged into the ditch, leaped into the air, crashed through a fence, and came to rest in a field, festooned with barbed wire.

The engine had stalled. There was no sound but its cooling tick, bird twitters, and heavy breathing. “Well,
that
was exciting,” said Marlene at last.

“They tried to kill us,” Poole gasped.

“Yes, but they didn't succeed. You should never
try
to kill anyone. You should either kill them or play nice.” She opened the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Checking the dog and the truck,” she called over her shoulder. The dog was fine, the truck less so, but drivable. She started it, shifted to four-wheel, and backed across the ditch and onto the edge of the road.

“They might try again,” said Poole.

“I'm sure, which is why it's time to call for help.”

“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 garrulous 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.