Absolute rage

13

The press loved it. West Virginia does not ordinarily generate a lot of news aside from car wrecks, so that the local TV stations and newspapers seized upon the doings in naughty Robbens County like the castaway upon his coconut. The results of this interest shone from the screen in the living room of the Karps' cabin at Four Oaks, the evening after Judge William Murdoch announced his retirement for reasons of health. The team-Hendricks, Hawes, Cheryl Oggert-had gathered to watch with Karp and Marlene.

"Oh, we have a logo!" Oggert exclaimed. "The great PR nightmare. I never had a logo before."

"Mazel tov!" said Karp, and smiled at her. The logo, floating above the sculpted hair of the anchorpersons at WOWK (Huntington-Charleston), consisted of three red skulls and crossbones, superimposed over a stylized dragline, under the caption (with the sort of gore-dripping letters associated with B horror movies) "Blood on the Coal." The coverage started with a look at a crime-scene photo, the bloodstained bed in the Heeneys' bedroom, ten seconds of the funeral, with inset photographs of the three victims, a shot of Moses Welch being arrested, then one of him being released. A shot of Hawes eating crow and announcing the expectation of new arrests, some excited blather from the anchor, then stock footage of Murdoch as a state senator, with a coda showing him with wife and kids, giving ten seconds of resignation speech. He had health problems and wanted to spend more time with his family. Knowing comments from the anchors, suggesting otherwise.

After that, a round of applause in the room, as their own Cheryl faced the press on-screen, announcing the appointment of Justice Honus Ray Bledsoe, late of the state supreme court, to fill Judge Murdoch's shoes until a new election could be arranged. A still photo of that jurist appeared over the anchor's right shoulder.

"What a face!" crowed Marlene. "He looks like an engraving on a Confederate twenty."

There was indeed something stern and nineteenth century about the man, the bristling eyebrows, the grim, lipless slash of the mouth, the odd peaks that decorated the spare, bony face. Then the image was gone, replaced by an inserted talking head, a political reporter standing in front of the state capitol. What does Charleston make of this, Barbara? Barbara allowed as how Charleston was all agog. Murdoch was not just a county judge, it seemed; he'd served three terms in the senate and had plenty of powerful allies. He was known as a good friend of big coal. Rumors of corruption? No plans for any prosecution? Not now, according to sources. Connection with the triple murder and the union troubles in Robbens? Too early to say, Jim. Jim gave us all a sincere smile, and the scene dissolved to a car crash involving a truck and a family car and the miraculous escape of a baby thrown from the latter. But first this.

Karp muted the set as the commercial came on. He looked at Hawes. "You know this Bledsoe guy, Stan?"

"Only by rep. Vinegary but fair is what I hear. He's from around here originally."

"Everyone's from around here originally," said Karp. "I'm surprised it doesn't have the population of Brooklyn. Meanwhile, I think you all did real good, defined as keeping my name out of the news."

"Don't think they didn't ask," said Oggert. "The print guys, especially. The story is you're a technical consultant to Stan here. The Charleston Gazette is doing a feature on the crime-fighting Karps. I told them no interviews."

"You told them right," said Karp. "Wade, can we pick up these guys anytime we want?"

Hendricks waited his usual couple of beats before answering, his face knotting around the mouth, pursing, unpursing, lower-lip chewing, a half frown, cheeks sucking in, then releasing. "Well, I have some fellas generally keeping an eye out for them, but I don't have the resources for a twenty-four-seven tail on all four of the suspects. Floyd is no problem. He's in the union offices every day and he lives right outside of town. The Cade boys are another story. First of all, they can't hardly be followed up onto that mountain. Burnt Peak I mean. Once they're up there, there's a million ways they can get off it, and there's no traffic and no concealment for a following car. Unless you want them to know?"

Hendricks saw Karp make a negative gesture and went on, "If we can pick them up in town, that'd be good. If we have to go up the mountain…" He made a shaking gesture with his hand, stuck out his lip consideringly, shrugged.

"You think they'd resist?"

"They might. Ben Cade swore the last time that he wouldn't let the law touch him or his again. He don't believe in the state of West Virginia much."

Hawes said, "I'm a little tired of hearing that. What's wrong with going up and getting them? You've got enough cops."

Karp thought, wrong move, Stan, but said nothing.

Hendricks gave Hawes a considering look, not hostile, but not interested, either. He did the business with his face again; those muscles seemed to be linked to his thought centers. "Have you ever been up there on Burnt Peak where those Cades live?"

Hawes indicated he had not.

"Burnt Peak," said Hendricks reflectively. "I been there. You come up off the county road onto a dirt switchback that climbs up the face of the mountain through big outcrops of greasy shale. That whole mountain is pretty well coaled out. What they live in is the remains of the old coal patch, plus they got some newer double-wide trailers. They had to take 'em apart to get them up there. Any one of them switchbacks, three men with automatic rifles and dynamite could hold up an army. Well, maybe not a real army, but let's say the whole of the West Virginia State Police. I guess there's eighty or so living up there, a little more'n half of them men, all Cades. Got a nice spring and a big diesel generator. They never took the public power when it came in 'round the Depression. Old Devil Rance said he wouldn't have it, and he didn't need it, 'cause he had all the old plant from the Canker Run coal mine. No phones either. Anyway, the compound, or village I guess you could call it, is built on a big shelf that trails off into a bunch of hollers all full of laurel. They got some fields they cleared, but nothing much, mostly vegetables and some cows and hogs. Ben likes to have animals around, is what I hear. It makes it more Old Testament for him, flocks and herds. It would take a month to climb up through those hollers, if no one was shooting at you, that is, which I guess they would be, if they didn't want you up there. Which generally they don't. I won't even mention the dogs, big packs of vicious dogs they keep, let 'em run wild in the woods. Over on the back, that's the northwest side of the mountain, you got the leavings of the first strip mine in the county. That whole section is chewed away. It looks like a stairway, with each step maybe four hundred feet high, and a lake at the bottom. You could get up there if you were mountaineers."

"I thought you were all Mountaineers," said Marlene.

Hendricks did a grin 'n' head bob to acknowledge the joke. "No, I mean those technical rock climbers. Rangers."

"You're trying to tell us it'd be rough, I mean, dragging them out," said Karp.

"Rough, yeah, for a full-scale military operation prepared to take major casualties. Which we're not prepared to do right now, even if we had the resources. Speaking of military, the Cades ain't poor. They had that coal, and they had their rackets, moonshining and now marijuana and meth labs…"

"How do they get the product out? Car?"

"Well, no, they know better than to try that, because we'd stop them just on general principles. What they do, we think, is pack it out to a county road feeding into Highway 712 around Ponowon and their contacts pick it up there. There's a grocery store outside Ponowon where they get messages and use the phone. The drug boys got a tap on it, but the Cades are pretty careful about what they say. There's trails down that mountain, but they're all trip-wired and booby-trapped. People around here tell their kids to stay off Burnt Peak, and they do. Occasionally someone goes up there and don't come back." Hendricks looked at Marlene. "Marlene here'll tell you that ain't hard in these parts, even if no one means you any harm. Anyway, about their money. Ben Cade is sort of a famous miser. He's supposed to have a lot of gold, so he'll be sitting pretty when the country falls apart, which he expects it to. But a lot of the time they trade their dope for weapons. They're well armed, maybe they even have heavy machine guns and rocket launchers." Hendricks looked at Hawes again. "So that's the answer to your question. I heard that the ATF was planning a raid up there a while back, but after Waco they kind of lost interest. Women and kids and heavy weapons? No one wants to go there again."

"But they come off the mountain, don't they?" Marlene asked. "The guys we're interested in don't seem to have any problem showing themselves."

"Uh-huh, that's so," said Hendricks, "but since you all let Mose Welch loose, they haven't stirred from home. And if you swear out warrants against the three Cade boys, I can guarantee you they will disappear permanently, or at least until this show goes home and things get back to normal. For them, I mean."

"It would be good," said Karp reflectively, "if we could lure them out. And grab them up in town or on the road."

"Lure them?" Marlene asked. "I could do my Streisand medley from the bandstand in the courthouse square. Do you think they'd be attracted by sophisticated song stylings?"

"I think we need to hold that in reserve, dear," said Karp, "if all else fails." He got up and paced. Everyone watched him do it. "Let's see," he mused, "we know these people aren't rocket scientists, so how hard could it be to schmeikel them?"

"Pardon?" said Hendricks.

"Oh, schmeikel? An old Norman French legal concept meaning to cozen, deceive, gull, shaft, bamboozle, generally in financial matters but by extension in any negotiation. And now that I think of it, you said something interesting there a while ago, Wade. You said the Cade boys holed up after we let Welch go. Because they're afraid we'll go after them next, since they really did it. Also, let's assume they have a leak or leaks letting them know all about the evidence we have pointing their way."

"Leaks? What leaks?" said Hawes.

"Hey, in a small place where everyone is related to everyone else, most of what we're doing will become general knowledge before long. Believe me, it happens in New York and Washington, too. But this, what we're planning now, absolutely can't get out. It can't go beyond the five people in this room plus one."

"Two can keep a secret if one is dead," observed Marlene darkly.

"Yes, thank you," said Karp, "good advice from the Sicilian delegation."

"Who's the plus one?" asked Cheryl Oggert.

"The new judge. He'll have to be in on it. I'm hoping that with enough hoopla and verisimilitude we can roll them, even if they hear rumors to the contrary. You're going to have to be the key man in the deception, Stan."

"Deception? I don't follow," said Hawes, scowling. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, sorry. I thought it was obvious. The schmeikel. You have to go into the tank, and let them know that you're going in. You have to find another Mose Welch, but a more plausible one, a more shocking one, and Cheryl here has to grind out publicity on it and all of us have to have our pictures taken, grinning like idiots. Once we've seemed to settle on the new suspects, and once Stan has told Floyd that he's aboard, our real scumbags ought to come down from their impregnable mountain stronghold to join in the fun, just like they did when we had Welch."

Everyone was silent for a moment, digesting this. Then Hendricks asked, "Is that legal? Arresting someone like that just to get someone to come out of hiding?"

Karp forbore to roll his eyes. "No, Wade, we're not really arresting anyone. The persons involved will of course be volunteers. Legally, the whole thing will be a nullity. It's analogous to those scam contests the cops in New York and the feds use to pull in fugitives. The cops send an official-looking letter to the fugitive's last known address-congratulations, you've won the lottery, come to such and such an address and pick up your check. Or it's season tickets to the Yankees. The mopes show up and get nabbed."

"They actually fall for this?" asked Oggert incredulously.

"Every time. And these are streetwise hoods we're talking here, not…" Karp searched for a nice way to put it.

"Dumb hillbillies?" suggested Oggert.

"Thank you," said Karp with a grin, and to the group: "Well, what do you think?"

"It might could work," said Hendricks. "Who were you thinking of? I mean for the phony killers."

"Ideally, like I said, it should be someone both plausible and scandalous, so that the fake carries some weight. We want big publicity on this, and we want the Cades to really believe that they dodged the bullet again, that Stan here is bought and wired. I also want them to think it's amusing. I want them to want to come to town and sit around in bars and chat about ain't it awful how-"

Marlene interrupted, "I know who you're thinking of and I think it's disgusting. How could you?"

"It's right, Marlene. You know it's the only way to go."

"It still stinks on ice."

As the three others observed this exchange, confusion grew on their faces. Hawes said, "Would you mind telling us what you're going on about?"

"Sorry," said Karp. "My wife is objecting to my plan, which she figured out because she knows my devious ways, as I know hers."

Marlene said, "He wants to use the boys. The Heeney boys."

Karp saw the ripple of revulsion replace the confused looks. He ignored it. "If they'll agree," he said. "And if the judge will go for it."

Judge Honus Ray Bledsoe had not enjoyed retirement much, although he had a generous pension, a comfortable house with a garden in which he grew roses. The roses won prizes; they dared not do otherwise. He read widely; he gave an occasional interview; he recommended bright local kids to law schools; and he was bored. He had left the high court bench at age seventy-eight as he had promised himself he would. By no means a fearful man, he admitted to himself that he feared the loss of mental powers he had seen among many of his older colleagues. Appointed judges may in most places serve for life, and it is a sad peculiarity of their status that usually no one in their milieu is comfortable with telling them they have become senile, while many may benefit from manipulating them in their infirmity. The problem, Bledsoe thought, was that the victim of advanced age was the last person to know he was losing his sharps, and in his case no one was around anymore he could trust to tell him. His wife would have told him, but she was dead. His kids all lived away, and besides, they thought he was immortal, which he knew he was not, but was eighty-three all the same. So when Orne had called him about cleaning up Robbens, he had agreed to do a job he had thought about on and off for four decades, provisional to an interview, during which they had discussed points of law (Orne had been his clerk) and the events of the day. At the end Bledsoe had asked Orne in his characteristically blunt manner whether the governor thought he still had all his marbles, and Orne had said that in his opinion the judge had more marbles than anyone else in the state of West Virginia.

Armed with this opinion, he had driven himself, in his 1985 Cadillac Seville, from his place in White Sulphur Springs to Windy Grove in Robbens County, where he shacked up (as he said) with Marva, his baby sister, who was living in the ancestral home. After a day of rest to recover himself (on Marva's insistence, actually, since he felt fine), he had reported to the Robbens County Courthouse, where he terrified the staff, who had become used to Bill Murdoch's slack ways. Judge Bledsoe disliked slackness, nor was he overly fond of fancy lawyers, especially fancy lawyers from New York, especially very large fancy lawyers from New York. Judge Bledsoe was, on the outside at least, a rather small man.

Karp thought he looked, close up, like a rooster. The TV photo had been taken some years ago, it seemed. He had a cowlick, for one thing, which stuck up like a silvery crest, and wattles that got red when he was annoyed, which Karp thought might be most of the time. Maybe it had been a mistake to let Hawes do most of the talking. They were in Bledsoe's chambers. Bledsoe had recorded his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the investigation so far (although Karp thought that was really none of his business) and with the arrest and detention of Moses Welch. His wattles had reddened at the mention of bribes, and reddened more when Karp had explained (in approximate terms) just how Murdoch had been dispatched. When they told him about the plan to apprehend the Cades, the red moved up his jaw and blossomed on his cheekbones. Karp imagined that if it reached his crown, it would detonate, like a thermometer in a cartoon.

"You want this court to participate in a public fraud?" Bledsoe asked, his voice quiet but deadly.

Hawes hemmed; Karp interjected, "Your involvement will be minimal, Judge. You have no reason to speak to the media and can refuse to comment if asked. Obviously, you're one of the few people who need to be apprised of the plan. Also you'd be issuing the warrant. We'd want to have Sheriff Swett do the arrest."

"Why?"

"Because Swett will leak it to the Cades as genuine."

"If Swett is corrupt as you claim, then get rid of him."

"Good idea, but after the Cades are in custody."

"So your plan is to fight corruption by chicanery."

Karp took a deep breath and kept his face neutral. "Yes. Because given the time frame the governor has set, there are only two other alternatives. One is to let them get away with it. The other is to go up onto Burnt Peak and drag them out of there. I assume being a local man you know what that would be like."

"I'm not afraid of Ben Cade."

"I'm glad of that, sir. I am. I have it on expert advice that doing the dragging would cause the biggest bloodbath since the Robbens County War, even assuming we could get official permission for an assault. I'm as big a fan of legal niceties as you are, Judge, but I wouldn't want that blood on my hands, if there was any alternative. And I think we have one here."

Karp and Bledsoe played the staring game for a while, the judge's mouth line bending down into a hair-thin parabola.

"This how they do things in New York, Mr. Karp?"

"When necessary, sir."

"All right. I want all this documented and signed by you two and anyone else with cognizance of it. Who does what when and where and to whom. That includes the putative suspects. I assume they're on board?"

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"We're working on the details."

The judge grunted. "Well, make sure they know exactly what they're getting into."

"Yes, Judge," said Karp. "And, Judge? That would be a document you'd want to take some care of."

Bledsoe shot him a fierce look, then tapped his breast pocket, slowly, thrice. "It'll sit right here, Mr. Karp. I think that'll be all for now." Bledsoe turned pointedly to some papers on his desk. Karp got up immediately and left, and after a moment's hesitation, so did Hawes.

Out in the hallway, Karp said, "What's the matter, Stan? You look like you've never been contemptuously kicked out of a judge's chambers before."

"Never like that. I don't think he likes you much."

"No, he made that very clear. Which is just another reason for me to take a low profile and you to take a high one. On the other hand, I have the impression that Judge Bledsoe is the kind of judge who, if he doesn't like a lawyer, makes an extra effort to be scrupulously fair, as opposed to the kind who in similar circumstances will try to fuck you up. Let's get out of here. I want to talk in the open air."

They found a bench in the courthouse square, in the shade of a huge oak. Karp said, "I meant it about you being the center of this thing. You have to convince Floyd that you're going to do everything you can to pin this on anybody but the people who did it. Besides that, you're going to have to play a corrupt bastard in front of a TV audience, the town, all your friends, and your family. And you can't tell anyone about it until we have those people in custody. You understand that? Not your wife, not your parents."

"And you're wondering if I can do it."

"Yeah, a little. I'm a control freak and I'm giving up control. It makes me jumpy. I guess I want to make sure you understand how miserable you're going to be. And also this: undercover work, which is what this is, is the worst work in the world. I've seen it a million times in the cops. A decent guy pretends to be a scumbag all day, pretty soon he finds it hard to go back to being a nonscumbag. Every undercover detective I know has been divorced at least once." Karp allowed a moment to let this sink in. "But if we're lucky, it won't last long."

"I can do this," said Hawes. "I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried about a failure. What I'm worried about is, even if this works, and we get them, and we can convict them, and Floyd, and the rest, and you're back in New York City, I'll still be here. I'll still be here with my family. And the Cades will still be up on that mountain, mad as hell, and looking for someone to hurt."

Karp nodded. He didn't have a good answer to that.

This conversation stuck irritatingly in Karp's mind and nagged at him during the even more unpleasant interview he and Marlene had that evening with Emmett and Dan Heeney, in the living room of their home.

"You must be out of your mind if you think we're going to do that," declared Emmett at the conclusion of Karp's pitch for the idea. "Get arrested for killing our family?"

"It's not a real arrest," said Karp patiently. "It's a scam. I explained that the Cades are holed up-"

"I heard you. That's not our business. Hell, maybe now is the time to blast those Cades out of there. Let 'em drop napalm on 'em, I don't give a rat's."

"Well, but that's not going to happen, Emmett. The only way, the only practical and realistic way to bring those men to where we can get at them is to show them that they have nothing to fear, that the law has made a big mistake again."

"Okay, but why us?" said Emmett sulkily.

"It's the most convincing scenario. It'll get the kind of publicity they won't be able to ignore. And, frankly, it's so outrageous that they won't believe it's a scam. Also, you have an interest in it. I'd have thought you'd be glad to do it."

"Well, you thought wrong." Emmett crossed his arms.

Marlene said, "Emmett, I know it's an awful thing to ask you to do, and I was truly disgusted when Butch brought it up. But he's right when you consider the alternatives. What you need to do is think about what your dad would've wanted you to do. What would Red Heeney have done?"

Emmett made no response to this. A silence ensued. Then Dan said, "He's worried about Kathy."

"I am not!" snapped Emmett.

"Yeah, you are. You're thinking of what she'll be thinking while everyone else thinks you killed our family. And you're thinking about what her parents will say, what the town will say."

"Oh, that's such horseshit! You always think you know what I'm thinking."

"I do. And what am I thinking, huh?"

Emmett looked startled. "Well, too bad, you can't, you weren't even here when it happened."

"No, but I could've hired it done," said Dan. He said to Karp, "That's a plausible scenario, isn't it? Everyone knew my dad and I didn't get along. So we say I hired a drifter to do it. I didn't want him to kill my mom and Lizzie, but he did, and then I confessed just now out of remorse. You're still looking for the drifter. Would that work?"

Karp's glance flicked briefly between the two brothers. "Yeah, that would work fine, if that's how you want to do it. We could put out fictitious wanted posters of the make-believe drifter."

"Ah, that's so dumb," said Emmett. "How in hell would someone like him find a damn contract killer? Not one person in this whole town would believe it. The Cades would laugh themselves sick."

Dan said, "Well, you don't know dick about it, do you? Butch is the expert. He thinks it'll work."

"You ain't doing it," said Emmett with finality. "If anybody does it, it'll be me."

"What do you think," asked Karp somewhat later as a trooper in an unmarked police car drove them home, "was that a little brotherly manipulation we saw there?"

"Who, Dan? I don't think so. He really would've done it because he's genuinely noble. He's Rose Heeney's kid down to the bone. Plus, he doesn't give a shit what anyone in this town thinks about him. Emmett does. He'll do it, mainly to stop Dan from doing it. But ten to one, he'll tell his girl."

"No bet," said Karp, and then dejectedly, "This is not going to work, is it?"

"It might," Marlene said, but without enthusiasm. "But I never want to hear another lecture from you on the ends not justifying the means. Meanwhile, it'll depend on how fast the McCullensburg grapevine is against how stupid the Cades are. You have a shot. Even if it does work, however, you're not going to love it, are you?"

"No. The idea that once we have probable cause for an arrest, we can't in fact arrest an individual without the potential for a huge disaster… it makes me break out in hives. I hate it. And I hate what it makes us do. Like this crap with the Heeneys."

She saw how upset he was, and instinctively she leaned closer to him, ran her arm through his, clutched his hand. "Yes, you're a law-and-order fellow, with law first."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. But the concept clearly hasn't penetrated to every corner of the world, including here. We can but hope things improve. You know, you're going to laugh, but ever since I got here, I've been having a sort of deja vu, a sense that I've been in this kind of place before. You recall I mentioned that earlier? And I just tonight figured out where it was. It was something you said when we were planning this. The mountains, the lawlessness, the families, the vendettas…"

"Where was it?"

"Sicily. No wonder I felt right at home."

"Sicily, huh? Gosh, Marlene, you really know how to cheer somebody up."

"Thank you. It just occurred to me also that the miners are not going to take the arrest of Emmett very well. For the dissident faction, he's sort of the crown prince, the son of the martyr."

"What are they going to do about it?"

"No, you're still thinking New York. There, when people protest, it's a bunch of liberals with placards. In extreme cases, a riot, stores get trashed, and everyone goes 'Oy vay!' Here they use dynamite and everyone's armed to the teeth. But I have an idea."

He waited. "Are you going to tell me what it is?"

"No. You'll know if it works, though. I don't want to jeopardize my reputation for perfection."

Giancarlo Karp awoke before dawn to find his sister in the bedroom he shared with his brother. She was stuffing clothes into a couple of duffels.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Packing some stuff for you guys. We're going on another road trip."

"Where to?"

"West Virginia. Listen, as long as you're up, get some clothes on and go down to the kitchen and make a bunch of sandwiches. I want to leave right away and not stop. And fill the red cooler with ice."

Zak sat up in bed. "We're going away again?"

"Yeah," said Giancarlo. "We're going to West Virginia to see Mom and Dad."

"Among others," said Lucy.

The murder of the Heeneys had attracted some modest national attention, but the news that the family had been killed by one of the two sons set off a media tornado. On a slow summer newsday it had led at six on all three major networks, and the Times ran it front page above the fold, column left. Lucy had seen it the previous evening on the eleven-o'clock and had immediately called Dan Heeney fifteen times over three hours, receiving a busy signal each time. Only then had she thought to call her parents. After some arguing with the night manager, she had been put through and engaged her sleepy father in an unsatisfactory conversation, consisting largely of (from him) the unhelpful statement that he couldn't talk about it. She had then slept badly for a few hours and awakened with the resolve to drive immediately to McCullensburg.

She went out to the barn, fed and watered the dogs out of guilt, and let Magog out of her pen. Billy Ireland was in bed when she barged into his room and then barged out again when she saw Marjorie Rolfe was in it, too.

"Sorry," Lucy said. "Look, I have to leave. I'm taking the boys to see my folks. Will you be okay?"

"Well, yeah, for a while," Ireland said. "Are the bills paid?"

"Yes. Also, I want to take Magog. The pups don't need her anymore and I think she'd appreciate the break."

"Hell, she's your dog," said Ireland, "I just work here. Have a nice trip."

They passed Alex Russell as they headed out the drive. "See ya later, agitator!" Giancarlo yelled as they sped by.

The old-style Toyota Land Cruiser was not built for speed, but she kept it at a steady seventy-five from Jersey west through Pennsylvania and down into Charleston, stopping only once for gas, and twice, fuming, in rest stops, so that the boys could empty their absurdly small bladders.

"Why are you angry?" Giancarlo asked her after the second of these.

"I'm not angry."

"Well, you're driving like a maniac, you don't talk, and you're bossing us around like we did something wrong. That's what Mom does when she's angry."

"I'm sorry, guys. I'm upset, not angry at you."

"What about?"

"You remember Emmett Heeney from the beach? Lizzie's brother?"

"Is he the one you like?" asked Zak.

"No. That's Dan," she said automatically. "No, that's not… what I mean is, the cops down there are saying that Emmett was the one who killed the Heeneys and Lizzie. It was on the news, and I can't reach Dan for some reason, and Dad won't tell me what's going on. That's why we're going down there."

"How could he murder his parents?" Giancarlo asked. "Was he crazy?"

"I don't think he murdered them at all," said Lucy firmly. "I think it's a horrible mistake."

"Is Dad going to find the real ones?" asked Zak.

"I hope so."

From the backseat, Giancarlo said, "He will. Don't worry, everything will be fine."

An hour later they were descending the steep grade on Route 130 south that the map said led into McCullensburg when they saw red lights flashing ahead and traffic stalled. They stopped behind a tractor-trailer and waited. After ten minutes, Lucy got out and walked along the shoulder. The trucker was standing on his front bumper, looking down the line of vehicles.

"What's the problem?" Lucy asked. "An accident?"

"Nah, some trouble down in the town. I was just talking with some drivers on the CB. The damn coal miners are having some kind of damn riot in town. They drove some coal haulers into the junction of 130 and 119 and parked them there and they blocked the railroad, too. Traffic's backed up for miles in all four directions."

"What are they rioting about?"

"Oh, the cops arrested some union fella for killing his folks, and his buddies think it's a frame-up. What it is, is a damn pain in the butt. I should've been in Williamson half an hour ago."

"Is there any way to get to 119 east of town without going through the junction?"

"Well, yeah, if you want to go over the top of the mountain. You hang a U-ey right here and drive on back till you get just outside of Logan, hang a right, and follow the signs to Gilbert Corner. Shoot on through there and in four, five miles you hit the highway. I'd do it myself but the bridges won't hold my weight."

She did as the trucker suggested. Twenty minutes later she was in first gear, four-wheel drive, climbing a dirt road. Zak had a road map spread out on his lap, complaining that the road they seemed to be on did not exist and that they were lost. Giancarlo was spinning a tale about them getting permanently lost, wandering through the desolate mountains until they ran out of gas and then having to eat human flesh. Lucy paid attention to neither of her brothers. The news about the riot was good; it meant that substantial numbers of people thought the charges absurd.

"There's the highway, smarty-pants," she said as their wheels rolled onto the blacktop. "Intuitive driving once again triumphs over map-bound patriarchical worrywarts."

"Dumb luck," said Zak. "And I have to pee again."

Several cars, a police cruiser, and a couple of news vans were parked at the turnoff to the Heeney house.

"Sorry, miss," said the trooper. "You can't go through there."

"Why not?"

"Family's having some trouble. We've been asked to protect their privacy. There's a wide place just ahead where you can turn around."

"I know about the trouble. We came all the way from New York."

"And you are…?"

"Lucy Karp. I'm Dan Heeney's, um, fiancee."

The trooper looked the car over, saw the boys, the dog slavering in the window. He said, "Why don't you follow me in."

He got in the cruiser and turned down the drive, Lucy following. She watched him knock on the front door, saw Dan come out and talk to the trooper, saw the smile break out on his face, his vigorous nod. Lucy got out of the Toyota. Dan came running down the steps, threw his arms around her, and planted a kiss on her mouth.

"Darling," he sighed. "I've longed for this moment."

The trooper was observing them from his cruiser. Satisfied, he drove off.

"He's gone," she said. "You can let go of me now."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Oh, stop it! I had to say that or he wouldn't let me in. The road is full of reporters. Will you just tell me what is going on?"

The boys and the dog jumped out. Dan, releasing Lucy, made much of them and Magog, after which he said, "We better go in unless you want to be on TV. I think they've got a crew up on the mountain there."

Dan played host, to Lucy's great impatience. He poured drinks, showed them the house, settled the boys in front of his computer with Quake II. When he and Lucy were alone on the living room sofa, he said, "Relax, it's a scam."

"What do you mean, a scam?"

He explained. She listened, her face still, not interrupting. When he had finished, she asked, "This was whose idea? My mother's?"

"I don't know. Your dad was pitching it pretty hard. Why?"

"I don't know. It just sounds like something she would think up. So I seem to be the prize schmuck of the Western Hemisphere. Why didn't he just tell me on the phone?"

"I think because they're keeping it really close. The desk clerk at Four Oaks likes to listen in, it's well-known. In fact, your dad made a big point about not discussing the deal on the phone at all." He met her eyes. "You're sorry you came, right?"

"Of course I am!" she cried, and then seeing his face, she said, "No, of course, I didn't mean that. Oh, I don't know. When I heard the news, all I could think about was how awful it must be for both of you, and I dumped what little logical process I have and just tossed the twins into the car and drove. My mother will go crazy. She's the only one allowed spontaneous excesses in the family."

"It was a nice kiss, though," he said. "You have to admit that. Maybe not worth an eight-hundred-and-sixty-mile drive, but…"

"Oh, stop it!" Then a grin broke out on her face. "Yes, it was. My feet sweated."

"That's supposed to be an infallible sign." He moved closer on the sofa and dropped an arm around her. "We could try it again. Then it would only be a four-hundred-and-thirty-mile kiss."

She found herself on her feet. "Maybe later. I have to get in touch with my folks before they find out from someone else and go nuts." This was not the real reason, though.

"What's the situation now?" asked Karp. "Is it as bad as it looks on the TV?"

They were in the Karps' cabin at Four Oaks: Karp, Marlene, Hendricks, and Oggert, all of them looking grim and flicking eyes toward the live coverage on the room's television.

"Well, it's a mess," said Hendricks. "The local troop is trying to straighten out the traffic tangle, rerouting and all, but what I'm worried about is the mob down at the courthouse. That's Willie Pogue up on a D8 in front of the courthouse demanding they release Emmett right now or he's going to take the jailhouse down and pull him out."

"Who's Willie Pogue?" Karp looked at the screen. A fiftyish man with a mane of white hair and a florid face was haranguing the crowd through a bullhorn from the nose of an immense yellow earthmover.

"One of Red Heeney's pals. I guess he's the head of the dissident faction now. There's about eight hundred miners out, with wives and kids. Some of them're armed. The sheriff's in full combat mode, and there's a bunch of security guys from the company standing around, also armed. Deputizing mine security is kind of a tradition in Robbens County. That happens, all bets are off."

"Can't you do anything?" asked Marlene.

Hendricks shook his head. "I don't believe I have a horse in this race unless the governor tells me different. The local troopers are pretty much tied up, and I don't have enough men to get between that mob and a bunch of scared cops."

"And we have no idea where the Cades are right now?" asked Karp.

"No. I pulled my cars back so it'd look like we weren't interested in them anymore." He stared briefly at the TV. "We didn't count on this."

"No," said Oggert. "And if this keeps up, someone's going to get hurt, and if that happens, we will get absolutely no support from the governor. He'll repudiate the bunch of us. Maybe it's time to pull the plug."

"Pull the plug?" said Karp.

"Yeah. Release the kid, say we have new evidence that exonerates him. Take a breather and then play it straight against the Cades."

"That gets us back to the siege business, Cheryl. I thought we all agreed that was the worst case."

"Yeah, but that was before this happened. Even if it comes to a siege, at least we'll be the good guys. I'll tell you right now, no one is going to take responsibility for cops or miners killed pursuant to a fraudulent arrest. The lead will be 'Cops Too Chicken to Go after Cades, Four Dead in Phony Arrest Riot.' Uh-uh."

"No. We're hanging tough," said Karp. "And you can tell the governor I said so."

Oggert glared at him and seemed about to say something when Hendricks cleared his throat. "Uh, also, Butch? You ought to know this, too. We had a call from Murchison, the trooper who's watching the Heeney place? Do you know a Lucy Karp?"

Karp felt a hammer descend on his diaphragm. "Yes, she's my daughter. What about her?"

"Well, she showed up at the Heeney place a little while ago, in a car with two little kids and a big dog. She said she was Dan's fiancee, so Murchison let them through. He said they looked like they knew each other pretty good."

"The mom is always the last to know," said Marlene. "Oh, shit! That stupid girl!"

"Calm down, Marlene," said Karp. "She was worried, she came, we'll deal with it. Why don't you call the Heeney place and talk to her?"

"Oh, I'll talk to her all right," said Marlene, and departed for the suite's bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

"Look, something's happening!" said Oggert.

The others turned their attention to the television. Karp cranked up the volume.

Marlene came out of the bedroom. "I can't get through on the phone. What's going on?"

The screen showed Pogue in the cab of the D8. A plume of black smoke shot from its stack as he revved the engine. The voice of the TV reporter was strained and barely intelligible over the roaring of the giant earthmover. Pogue was heading toward the line of helmeted, flakjacketed deputies standing behind sawhorses placed around the jail entranceway. The scene rolled and jumped as the cameraman ran alongside the great treads.

"That's a hell of a machine," said Karp.

"Yes, sir, it is," said Hendricks. "It weighs forty tons. It'd go through that jailhouse like a knife through pie." The ten-foot-high blade of the Cat edged ever closer to the sawhorses, moving slowly but inexorably. The deputies had gas masks on now. Their shotguns now pointed at the Cat and the crowd around it. Karp could make Swett out, unmasked, talking into a radio. A sawhorse crashed over. The deputies sighted their weapons. Swett was handed a bullhorn by a deputy and started to talk into it, but the soundman from the TV station was not in position to pick up what he said. Karp and the others could imagine it though. Pogue had his bullhorn, too, and said something back about release Emmett Heeney and we'll talk.

Then the door to the jail opened, and a gray-haired man in a dark suit walked out, carrying a briefcase. He shouldered through the line of deputies, stepped over the toppled sawhorse, and climbed up onto the yellow snout of the D8. The soundman was already poking his furry sausage out on its pole, so they were able to hear: "… it, Willie, turn this damn thing off and give me that bullhorn. They are letting him go. Now give me that damn thing before someone gets hurt." The engine sound cut off.

"Who the hell's that?" asked Hendricks.

"It's Poole!" cried Marlene.

The camera got its range and zoomed in a little. It was indeed Ernie Poole, who now raised the bullhorn to his mouth and gave a speech. He said who he was, and that he was representing Emmett Heeney. He said that the cops had tried to frame Mose Welch and he had got Mose Welch off free, and now they were trying to frame Emmett, and he would get Emmett off, too. There was no evidence worth looking at against him. He said that he guaranteed that the charges against Emmett would be dropped, unless they wanted to kill him, too, in which case you were at liberty to push the courthouse over. Laughter. But you had to go home now and move this equipment away, too, because what they want is a riot with gunfire, so that they can claim that a stray shot killed Emmett Heeney. Are you going to let them do that? Noooo! the crowd moaned. Poole said he'd applied for bail, and that Judge Bledsoe was inclined to grant it, but he'd said that no one would be released until order was restored, because old Judge Bledsoe did not want anyone to think he was acting out of fear of a mob. Poole said that the judge was an honest man, not like some of the judges we've had around here, and that he would see justice done, and now he was going to go back into the jail and sit with Emmett until they were both released. Vast cheering from the crowd, and in the room grins and applause.

Poole got down from the Cat, and the producer shifted to the on-scene guy, who started to tell everyone what they had just seen. Karp muted the sound. He looked at Marlene. "Way to go," he said softly, so that no one else heard.