Absolute rage

15

There were no formal interview rooms at the Robbens County jail, so they had Bo Cade brought to the deputies' lunchroom, a fluorescent-lit, windowless nine-by-twelve with a Formica table and several mismatched straight chairs. Its air was warm, stagnant, reeking of burnt coffee and microwaved pizza.

"Do you like catfish, Mr. Cade?" was Karp's first question.

Bo looked confused, then nodded warily. A trick question, his face declared. He still smelled strongly of beer, but no longer felt drunk. Being arrested for murder often has a literally sobering effect.

"Good," said Karp. "I brought you some catfish from Rosie's." He handed over a paper sack. "We can talk while you have your supper. I think the sheriff can spare a soda, too."

Karp and Hawes watched Bo eat catfish and drink RC. "Pretty good, isn't it?" said Karp. "I never had catfish before today, but I'm a fan now. I don't think it's usually on the menu in the prison system-correct me if I'm wrong, Stan."

"No, I wouldn't think so," said Hawes, "not at Mt. Olive. Or not fresh like Rosie's anyway. Maybe you'd get some soggy frozen fish fingers, though."

Cade stopped chewing. "I got nothin' to say to you. I didn't do nothin' and I don't know nothin'. I don't even know why I'm here."

"Uh-huh," said Karp, "I hear what you're saying. Well, let me do something then. I'm going to read to you off this sheet of paper, and then I'm going to ask you to sign it if you understand what's on it." Karp read off the Miranda rights and asked, "Do you want to see a lawyer now, or would you like to talk with us some more?"

"Hell, I told you I don't know nothin'. Why'd I need a lawyer then?"

"Good, then sign the form." Bo signed. Karp said, "Okay, Mr. Cade, let's talk about your situation. On May twenty-eighth of this year, you went into the Bi-Lo in town and purchased a pair of Rocky-brand hunting boots, size nine and a half. We have a copy of the receipt and the clerk remembers you. You wore those boots the night you killed Mr. and Mrs. Heeney and Elizabeth Heeney."

"I didn't kill-"

"Right, you didn't do nothing. But just hold that for a second. Subsequent to the murders, upon finding the boots were spattered with blood, you threw them off the green bridge on Route 130, where they were found and worn by Mose Welch. You also left several good sets of fingerprints at the Heeney home. Now, we have done a detailed analysis of the interior of the boots-"

"Hey, now, wait a minute! I thought you got that Emmett Heeney for all that anyway."

"No, actually, that was a ruse."

"A what?"

"A trick. A swindle. We pretended to arrest Emmett Heeney so that you boys would come down from Burnt Peak and we could arrest you without having to go up there and drag you out, with the chance that someone might get hurt."

Bo Cade gaped.

"Yes, I thought it was pretty smart, and it worked," said Karp. "As I was saying, we took apart one of your boots. Do you know what DNA is, Mr. Cade?"

"Yeah, the forest rangers."

"No, that's DNR," said Hawes. "The Department of Natural Resources. DNA is a chemical found in your body. It's different for different people. If we got some DNA from a crime scene, we can compare it to the DNA in your body and tell if you were there."

"Thank you, Stan," said Karp. "Well, Mr. Cade, it turns out that when you wear boots, little flecks of skin get shed through your socks and stick to the leather. We've extracted some of those little flecks from your boots. Now, naturally, some of them belong to Mose Welch, because he wore those boots, but others of them we've found belong to someone else. I would bet a lot of money that when we compare that DNA to a sample from your body, it'll match right up. Also, we've got good footprints of where you stood on the night of the murder right outside the Heeneys' back door. Our lab people can tell the weight of whoever made those footprints with your boots, and I would also bet a lot of money that they're going to come up with exactly your weight. So we have what we call a good circumstantial case. That means we can put you in your fancy boots at the Heeney home the night of the murder, where you got them splattered with Mrs. Heeney's blood right after you killed her."

"I told you I didn't kill no one."

"Yes, you did. But the problem here is you're the one we have. You're the only one with bloody boots."

"Oh, hell, Earl had blood all over his shoes, too. He throwed them away into the laurel."

A considerable silence followed this remark. Karp let it hang, then said, "Uh-huh. He killed the Heeneys with his shotgun, didn't he?"

Bo hesitated, looking sullen. Karp waited, his expression neutral. Bo said, "I ain't got nothin' more to say to you."

Karp said, "I see. So that means you were the one that shot Lizzie Heeney in the head? That's funny, because I didn't figure you for someone low enough to shoot a ten-year-old girl while she was sleeping in her own bed."

"I did not! I didn't do no killin' at all," Bo shouted. In a smaller voice, he added, "It was Wayne did the little girl. I didn't think they was gonna kill all of them."

"Uh-huh. And where was George Floyd while all this was going on?"

"How'd you know about him?"

"Mr. Cade, I know everything," said Karp, smiling gently. "I'm only asking you these questions because you're a kid in trouble and I'm trying to catch you a break. I know you didn't kill anyone. But you're going to go away for murder unless I hear it from your own lips that you weren't pulling any triggers that night and you sign a paper that says so. Then I can go to the judge and get you off. But you have to tell me the whole truth about what happened so that I can tell him that your part of the story is true, okay?" Karp passed a pad of yellow paper and a ballpoint across the table. Bo Cade looked at it, glowered briefly at Karp, then took up the pen. I dindt kil no one, he wrote, the pen clutched vertically in the crotch of his thumb. It was Gorge Floyd got my broter and my cousin Wayen and me to do it.

Two hours later, Karp and Hawes were in the latter's office waiting for Bo Cade's handwritten confession to be typed.

Hawes still seemed a little stunned. "Boy, I thought they'd be tougher nuts to crack. You were pretty smooth."

"Oh, right," said Karp, eyes to the ceiling, "the battle of the Titans. I was rolling dumb kids twice as bright as Bo Cade before he was born. No, the real sweat on this case is going to be getting Floyd, and then getting him to rat out Mr. Weames. In fact, as soon as that confession's done, I've got to get a hold of Judge Bledsoe, have him issue a warrant for Floyd, and a warrant to search his personal effects and any bank accounts to which he has access. You can take a statement from Earl. I don't think he'll give you any trouble. I presume Wayne is still having his testicles reattached?"

"That's what I hear. He won't be ready for questioning until tomorrow late at the earliest."

"Yes, I should be sadder about his misfortune, but somehow… anyway, then I will whistle up Captain Hendricks and go bring in Mr. Floyd. But no catfish dinner for Mr. Floyd. He's already had his catfish."

George Floyd did not dwell in a mobile home like so many of the people who employed him, but in a large, distinctly stationary two-story brick home on nicely kept grounds in the southeastern, more genteel regions of the county. It was hard to find a place in Robbens County unscarred by coal, but a good number of people had persevered, it seemed, and the community of Peale was the result. Peale was ten miles south of McCullensburg on Route 11. Here were located the substantial estates of the coal barons, the Killebrews and the Hergewillers, as well as the (somewhat) less imposing homes of the union grandees.

Armed with warrants for arrest and search, Karp arrived at Floyd's house in the evening, accompanied by Captain Hendricks, two Blazerloads of green-clad troopers, and a crime-scene van from the state lab at Charleston. The frightened housekeeper tried to keep them out, but was bullied out of the way with threats and waved papers. Some forty minutes later, Floyd himself pulled up in his Chrysler. Karp watched Hendricks arrest him in his own living room, while troopers dismantled his home. It was a good arrest, the rights read out properly, no violence, or rather, no obvious violence. Karp had, of course, heard the expression if looks could kill, but had not often seen a demo so vivid as the one he got from George Floyd, who kept looking at him as Hendricks snapped the handcuffs on. Floyd's face had turned an interesting shade of lavender, tending to scarlet along the cheekbones. His pale eyes bulged and his lips were drawn back over his big yellow teeth, as if preparing to rend living flesh. He didn't say anything dramatic, as they do in the movies, neither protesting his innocence nor promising dire consequences.

After Floyd was driven off, Karp hung around to watch the search. Troopers carried out boxes of papers and one locked four-drawer filing cabinet.

"Find any guns?" he asked a technician.

"Yes, sir. Rifles, shotguns, a couple of semiautomatics."

"Not a.38?"

"Not yet. We're still looking, though."

Karp nodded and the man went out of the house. After a moment Karp followed him. Puffy clouds had appeared, bringing a gentle mountain breeze. It had turned cooler, too, nice weather for strolling around the grounds. The sun was behind the mountains, but the day still hung on in the long twilight of high summer, still plenty light enough to find things. Karp strolled, observing men probing flower beds, going over the lawn with metal detectors. The man he had spoken to and another man were in the center of the backyard, inspecting a birdbath made from some black, glossy stone. Karp wandered over and inspected it, too.

"That's a birdbath," said Karp.

Karp's pal smiled. "Yes, sir. It's a birdbath someone moved not too long ago. Lookee here." He knelt and indicated a tiny width of naked earth forming a crescent around the base.

The man addressed his colleague. "Bob, let's get the digital over here."

"Wise move," said Karp. "There might be something under it. Unless an extremely large robin used it."

"I'd almost rather believe that than that the man buried a murder weapon in his own backyard."

"Oh, about now I'd believe nearly anything," said Karp.

The other man came back with a fancy Sony digital camera and began to click it. Karp helped the technician lift the bath proper off its pedestal. When the base column was rolled away, they saw a round patch of naked earth. The technician probed it with a trowel.

"Was that a clink?" said Karp.

The photographer snapped away as the trowel uncovered a revolver wrapped in a Bi-Lo clear plastic bag.

"You think that's it?" asked the technician.

"Would you bet against it?"

The man laughed. "Not me."

"Me neither," said Karp. "How long will it take you to generate prints of these pictures?"

"Couple of minutes. We got a laptop and an ink-jet in the van."

"Everything's up-to-date in West Virginia," said Karp. "I'm impressed."

The man gave him a grin and went off. The other technician lifted the weapon. "Looks like a Smith.38, three-inch barrel."

"Any chance of prints?" Karp asked.

"Well, sir, we'll check, but I kind of doubt it. This puppy's been in the water. It's got rust on it, look here. Probably down in the mud, too. You can see it stuck to the cylinder."

Karp could. It was greenish and it stank of chemistry.

Karp drove back to town with Hendricks, followed by their motorcade. Karp was silent, so silent that Captain Hendricks broke a life-long habit and opened a conversation.

"Something wrong? I thought it went pretty good."

"Oh, no, it went great. I'm thinking about that pistol."

"It's on its way to Charleston with results asap."

"Right. I'm assuming that we'll find it's the gun that killed Lizzie. If it is… it doesn't make any sense. According to Bo Cade, his cousin Wayne used it on Lizzie. According to your technician, someone tossed it into the water. If both of those things are true, how in hell did it migrate to George Floyd's birdbath?"

"Floyd took it from Wayne on the night of the murder?"

"Unlikely in the first place, but suppose he did. Then he throws it into some lake and then thinks, hey, the bottom of a river isn't that good of a hiding place, I think I'll… duh!… dredge it up and bury it on my property, and I'll stick a birdbath on it, because the cops never think to look under birdbaths."

"Criminals do stupid things," said Hendricks.

"Yeah, they do. And to tell you the truth, the first thing I thought when we found it was something like that. This whole murder has been amateur hour anyway, and I thought, it's the impunity. They never thought there'd be a serious investigation, so they were sloppy. George probably had it in his bedside drawer, and then when we picked up the Cade boys, he said uh-oh and shoved it under the birdbath. I'd still believe that, if it wasn't for the mud. That gun was at the bottom for a while, in slimy, polluted mud. What I'd guess is that the boys threw it into a local body of water sometime after the murder, and someone saw them do it and picked it up and sometime later buried it where we found it. Someone was trying to implicate Floyd."

"But… Floyd is implicated," Hendricks protested. "By Cade. So…"

"Yeah, so why go through the trouble of framing a guilty man?"

"Unless Floyd did it himself, to mess up any case against him."

"Yeah, that crossed my mind, too, but if you don't mind me saying so, that's a little too deep of a game for Robbens County. In any case, it tends to cloud the value of our presumed murder weapon. It's a complexity, and I like it simple. According to Bo Cade, Floyd never had the pistol anyway. The whole thing ranks way up there among stories I would prefer not to tell a jury."

Upon arrival in town, Karp went immediately to see Stan Hawes. "How'd you do?" Hawes asked.

"Found the murder weapon. It was under a birdbath."

"A black birdbath? Shiny?" Karp nodded; Hawes snorted. "That's kind of ironic."

"Why? This is a famous birdbath?"

"Oh, they had a testimonial for George a couple of years ago, fifteen years of distinguished service to the union. It's carved out of slate from Majestic Number One."

"That's interesting." Karp told him about the mud and the rust. "It adds to the theory that some third party was trying to make a point. How'd you make out with Earl?"

"Oh, Earl rolled right over when I confronted him with Bo's statement. He got all red up about it. According to him, it was Bo that shotgunned the Heeneys. He was just along for the ride. Confirms that Wayne did the little girl, though, and that Floyd was there. Also confirms the payoff, twenty-five hundred cash to each. He spent his fixing up that truck. Back to the gun: This is not good for the good guys, is it?"

"No, not necessarily. Let's wait for what the lab has to say before we start worrying too much, though. Have you been in to see Floyd?"

A hesitation here, a hint of embarrassment. "No, I was… I mean I thought we could go in and see him together."

"Sure, let's talk for a minute about how we're going to play him. I think double-teaming is the way to go with George. And let me order some muscle from Wade. I don't much trust the jailhouse guys."

Floyd had taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white-on-white shirt. His forearms were massive and flecked with brownish hair. He rested them on the coffee-room table, their muscles flexing as he clenched his fists. Behind him, flexing even more massive forearms, stood Curtis Vogelsang, the largest state trooper in southwestern West Virginia. A much smaller jailhouse deputy, Peagram by name, sat on a chair in a corner.

"Here's what we got, George," said Karp breezily as he sat down. "We have two confessions to the murders of the Heeney family, from Earl and Bo Cade. They say you organized the whole thing. They say you were there in the house supervising the proceedings."

"I was at a meeting. Twenty guys will vouch for me."

"All on your payroll, I have no doubt. We'll see how much they vouch when we explain the perjury statutes to them. Also we have this." Karp passed across a sheaf of ink-jet printouts-the photographic record of the finding of the.38 under the birdbath. "That's a.38 there, George. If it proves to be the murder weapon, you're in big trouble."

To Karp's dismay, Floyd barely glanced at the photographs. He grinned and said, "That's horseshit. Someone planted it. Maybe you, or your little dickhead friend there."

"No, you know it wasn't anything like that," said Karp dismissively. He stared for almost a minute at Floyd silently, as if examining a specimen. He had found it a useful technique before this. Then he said, "It is interesting though. Although we know you're an asshole, I can't quite believe you're that big an asshole, because I couldn't help noticing that you walked in here with your shoes on the right feet, and also neatly tied with bows. We know you're an asshole because only an asshole would have planned a murder with a bunch of half-wit hillbillies for triggermen. And of course they screwed it up, and of course we grabbed them, and of course they ratted you out instantly. But you were smart, in just the way that assholes think they're smart. You told them to throw away the gun because you saw on the TV somewhere that we could match bullets to guns. You didn't take the gun and throw it away yourself. You're not capable of that much intelligence, you pathetic sap! No, you told your witless accomplice to throw it away. But this moron actually had more sense than you. This moron planted the gun on you, so that if anyone ever asked any questions, they could say, 'Oh, George did it. George shot a sleeping little girl.' And you're going to go away for it, for the rest of your miserable life. You know, George, they don't like child killers in prisons. You'll be at the bottom of the pecking order in the joint, instead of at the top like you are here. When you go up, you better bring a large jar of Vaseline and a frilly negligee-"

George Floyd actually shouted arrgh like they do in comic books and came out of his chair at Karp, knocking the table aside. They grappled. His clawing hands came within millimeters of Karp's throat before Trooper Vogelsang whipped a mighty arm around Floyd's neck and strangled him back into his chair. Karp cocked a fist and went for Floyd, but Hawes got in his way and pushed him back. "What are you, crazy?" Hawes shouted. "Don't ever talk to a prisoner that way in my courthouse again! Who the hell do you think you are?"

"I'm in charge of this investigation," said Karp in as authoritative a tone as he could manage.

"The hell you are! This is my courthouse, goddamnit, and right now you're not welcome in it. Get out!"

Karp did a glare and then spun on his heel and walked out, slamming the door behind him. Outside in the narrow corridor he straightened his clothes and took a drink from the water fountain. The guard on duty looked at him curiously as he signed out of the jail.

"Having some trouble?" the deputy asked.

Karp replied, "Just torturing the prisoners, Deputy Wyatt," and walked up the stairs.

He thought it had gone fairly well. Because he had a genuine sympathy for evildoers-he could not have stayed married to his wife had he not-Karp was extremely, famously effective as the good cop and hardly ever got the chance to be the bad one, as he had just now. He did not think he would ever get to like it, although he knew some perfectly decent people who doted on the role.

It was dark when he left the courthouse and walked the few streets to the Burroughs Building. As he had expected, the lights were burning still. Hendricks and his team had taken over the largest room in the place. At desks and at makeshift trestle tables, several detectives were methodically ploughing through George Floyd's papers.

"Did you find the diary, yet?" Karp asked Hendricks.

"What diary is that?"

"The one with the entry 'June 26, pick up frozen yogurt, kill Heeney family.'"

"Oh, that diary. No, not just yet. Floyd seems to be a cagey fellow. Most of what we looked at so far is copies of routine union business and personal stuff. How did you make out with the man?"

"I did my crude New York monster impression. Stan is soothing him as we speak. Somehow, I doubt we'll get much. We don't have much except the confessions."

"And the pistol."

"Could've been planted. Was planted, more likely, and, boy, would I have loved to have found it all oiled and fingerprinted under his Simmons. But anyway, whether or not Floyd was at the scene, he's definitely the guy who set the whole thing up. He paid for the whole thing. You serve that subpoena for the bank stuff yet?"

"Right after we got it, Floyd's personal account. Mel Harkness is going over them now. It might take a while."

"As long as it takes. We're looking for seventy-five hundred dollars, if the Cade boys aren't just blowing smoke. Seven point five K cash."

"Follow the money?"

"That's what they say. The weak point of every criminal enterprise. It'll probably be in the union accounts, though. We need those, too."

Karp went to the room he was using as an office and called Marlene at Four Oaks. Not in. He sat back in his chair, a cheap old-fashioned job, not nearly as comfortable as the big judge's swivel he used in New York. He swiveled. It squeaked. He tried to make it play a tune while he tapped out "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on his teeth with a pencil. The phone rang.

"Butch? Stan."

"A full confession. Remorse. Tears. You stroked his head and said, 'There, there.' "

Hawes laughed. "Not quite. I had to take some abuse, but I calmed him down. He thinks I'm still one of the boys."

"Yeah, that's why you were the good guy. What's his story?"

"Outraged citizen. He allows as how it might have been suggested around the Cades that Heeney was trouble and that no one would cry their eyes out if he got hit by a truck. But planning his murder? Heaven forbid! It was like that old movie with what's his name, Richard Burton?"

"Becket," said Karp. "'Who will rid me of this troublous priest?' He mentioned that?"

"No, I was thinking of it while he was lying. His story is the Cade boys got the idea that Floyd and the union bosses wanted Heeney dead and they thought they were doing a favor. He wasn't there, didn't know nothing about it until it happened. A pretty good defense, I thought. At trial, it'd come down to the gun and the testimony of a couple of convicted felons, or three. And they tried to implicate him because they knew he had the county wrapped up and they wanted to get off."

"Uh-huh. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. Their play was to hold out for a deal before they ratted out George. But you're right, our case versus. Floyd could be a lot better. Did Weames come up at all?"

"I broached the subject. Funny expression on his face, like wheels were spinning. But what he said was Weames didn't have anything more to do with it than he did."

"Truer words were never spoken," said Karp. "How about that two grand in the brown envelope?"

"Never mentioned. But he contrasted me as quote 'one of us' with you, 'the Jew bastard.' I blamed you for everything."

"Right move. Okay, we've gone about as far with him as we can right now. Let's wait for the physical evidence to firm up and we'll see where we go from there. But my sense is that this is going to be settled when we find the payoff. That's the key."

After he got off the phone, Karp called the inn again and again found no answer. He walked out of the Burroughs Building and looked down the street. McCullensburg shut down early. The courthouse was dark, as were the Market Street businesses. Traffic was light. It had been a while since the catfish supper and he was hungry. In the middle distance golden arches gleamed. He walked a couple of blocks and went in. There he found three-quarters of his missing family.

He slid into the booth and snatched up the plastic movie-marketing toy in front of Giancarlo. "My monster!" he said, clutching it dramatically to his breast.

"Garcon!" Marlene called. "Encore de Happy Meal! They were whining for Micky D and they wore me down. I called you but you weren't in the office."

"I was fighting crime. And all of a sudden I realized that what I really wanted was not justice but a cheap plastic Disney figurine and a thin, tasteless burger."

"Dad, I have news for you," said Giancarlo. "You're a grown-up."

"No toy?"

"No. As a matter of fact, I think I'm outgrowing Happy Meals myself," said Giancarlo. "You can give it to Zak. He'll be ordering Happy Meals when he's forty-two."

The response to this from Zak was a quick knuckle to the ribs. Giancarlo flinched and yelped. "Dad! Zak punched me!"

"Yes," said Karp. "You abuse him verbally and he responds physically. A few minutes pass. Then you abuse him verbally and he responds physically. A few minutes pass. You abuse him verbally and he responds physically. Do you see a pattern here?"

"He's not supposed to hit me."

"No, and you're not supposed to insult him either." Karp handed back the toy. To his wife he said, "Have they been like this for long?"

"Only all day. I tried to drown them but they were too slippery. I heard about your big-boy day from Emmett. He came by after they sprung him. How's Lucy?"

"She seemed perfectly cool. Apparently the dog intervened before anything really nasty went down."

"Yes, that's what they're for," said Marlene. "In any case, dingdong the witch is dead. The bad guys are in custody. My work here is done."

"Planning on leaving?"

"I guess. It's not really fair to stick Billy with the whole burden."

"Oh, hell, Marlene, take a break! Have him hire some more people. You've got the money and the whole thing's just a tax dodge anyway."

"We can't leave now, Mom," Zak interjected. "Emmett promised to take me hunting. We're going to go hunting at night, Dad, with real shotguns and dogs."

"When I'm dead, you can go hunting at night, darling," said Marlene sweetly. "It's not just a tax dodge. It's a tax dodge I have a substantial emotional investment in. It's my profession. I'm good at it and I like it."

Karp sighed and slid out of the booth. "Whatever. Do what you like, you always do. I'm going to get a couple of Big Macs."

He had been hungry, he decided, after the first Mac had vanished, and it had made him unnecessarily cross. The boys had left for the McPlayground just outside. Giancarlo had done a drawing on the back of the place mat, made with the crayons supplied by the franchise. It was a typical Giancarlo product, monsters in extraterrestrial landscapes. Karp was no connoisseur, nor could he draw a straight line himself, but even to his eye his son's artwork was more sophisticated than he imagined was typical of ten-year-old boys. The crayoning was layered, smudged, and mixed to yield colors not in the Crayola box, and the line was vigorous and confident. Where did it come from? he wondered. Another disturbing miracle, like the languages. Zak seemed to be the one normal kid, if saying four words a day and wanting to shoot everything moving was normal. Karp felt Marlene's eyes. Around a wad of the second burger he said, "Sorry for snapping. Besides the brats, how was your day?"

"I worked on my tan. I hated three teenagers who showed up at the pool for their sleek limbs. I swore I would never wear a bikini again. I flirted with Trooper Blake and reneged on my swear about the bikinis on his unspoken advice. I arranged for the truck to be deposited at Buddy's Body and spent a good deal of time waiting for Buddy to get to where he could look at the damage and let me know how long it would take him to fix it. Buddy is a deliberate fellow, which I guess comes naturally when you weigh three-fifty. Have you noticed how many remarkably fat people there are in this town?"

Karp looked around the restaurant to confirm this. "Yes. Are you afraid it's catching?"

"Frankly? I am; it may be something in the air. Buddy was telling me about Alma Knox, whose Chevy he had right there in the shop. Alma got into a little fender bender out on Route 11 that squished the latch on the driver's-side door. Well, Alma could not actually slide across to the passenger door to exit the vehicle. They had to call fire and rescue to cut her out with the Jaws of Life. In any event, I got to sit in the shade of Buddy's Body for a good long time, drinking diet RC and occasionally easing my bladder, while the rich life of McCullensburg flowed around me. Buddy's junkyard is one of the places to see and be seen, it turns out. A parade of codgers, mainly guys with few teeth and tobacco stains on their stubble. Very polite gents, all retired miners looking for junk parts to keep their 1978 Pontiacs humming. Apparently they occasionally get a little bonus of some kind from the union pension fund, and they all just got one and were blowing it on Delco alternators. They weren't fat, though. Would you still love me if I weighed three hundred pounds?"

"Of course, dear."

"How incredibly sincerely you lie. You must be a lawyer. On the strength of that guarantee, however, I will risk another french fry." She chomped. "In any case, Buddy says it will take the better part of a week to fix the truck, and there's no point in leaving before then."

"Good. When you're tired of McCullensburg, you're tired of life. I assume that our daughter has not reappeared?"

"Oh, her! Speaking of my work being done, that's the one good thing about this whole adventure. I don't have to resign myself to having raised a sociosexual failure. I will have grandchildren before I get Alzheimer's. I will!"

"She's still with that Heeney kid, huh?" Karp grumbled. "What, you think that's serious?"

"I saw a couple of looks pass that would've melted plastic."

"From him you mean?"

"Mutual. They were sliding their limbs over one another in the pool like spawning grunion."

"And you approve of this?"

"Darling, he goes to MIT, plus I'm almost a hundred percent certain he's not a junkie and not HIV-positive. He doesn't belong to a cult, he doesn't pick his nose, he doesn't weigh three-fifty, and he has excellent table manners. What more could a mom ask?"

Karp had stopped listening at HIV-positive. Mental pictures he did not wish to entertain entered his mind. "Wait a minute, you think they're…"

"Fucking their brains out? I deeply and profoundly hope so. And about time, too."

Lucy and Dan had made their police statements, and Dan had been examined by paramedics, after which Lucy had volunteered to drive Dan back to his house. Lucy drove south on 130, Dan slumped in his seat, not speaking.

"What's wrong? Are you in pain?"

"No, I'm fine."

"I hate it when people say 'I'm fine' when they don't mean it, especially to people who are supposed to mean something to them. If you have cancer and the mailman asks how're you doing, then 'fine' is an appropriate answer, if false. But I really want to know."

"Well, what do you expect, cheerful? Happy? I just got the shit kicked out of me by a bunch of guys who probably killed my family. And they probably were going to do something really bad to you, and I didn't do shit."

"Yes, you did. You hit an armed man with a chair and while you were hurt, too. He might have shot Magog if you hadn't done it. I thought it was incredibly heroic."

Here he gave her a quick look to see if she was serious. He determined that she was, which was fine; but still the association of his sense of what he knew himself to be and the concept of heroism had a profoundly jarring effect on him, as if he had just been informed that he was adopted. He was not a hero; he was a shy bookworm; his father and brother were the heroes.

"The dog was the hero," he mumbled.

"Of course," said Lucy matter-of-factly. "That's what she's trained and bred to be. She'd give her life for me without a thought, assuming she thinks at all. There are people like that, too, I guess, people who just, like, jump into danger without thinking. Like a dog. You can call that heroic, and people do, but that's not really all that impressive, when you think about it. It's like being strong because you happen to be six-seven with a big frame. Well, yeah? It's really much more impressive when someone who's careful and thoughtful and imaginative does something courageous, because you know it was moral strength that got them over all their fears. Like my mother-she does brave things all the time, but you know it's really all in the nerves. She just acts without thinking. My dad's brave, too, but he suffers, before and after: 'What should I do, did I do the right thing?'"

"And which one are you like?"

"Both, I guess. I act without thinking a lot, but I still suffer." She laughed. "The worst of both worlds."

"You're just trying to make me feel better."

"True. Am I succeeding?"

"Mm. Try harder." This time they both laughed.

"But really," she said, "I meant it. If you hadn't behaved well, I would have told you that, too."

"Yeah, all the time I was thinking, take the girl, do whatever you want, just don't hit me again."

"No, you weren't."

"No, I wasn't thinking at all, except getting hold of a gun or weapon and killing all three of them."

"Yes, and if you'd done that, we wouldn't be sitting here."

"Oh, you don't approve of revenge?"

"It's not me that's in charge of approving or disapproving," said Lucy. "I'm obliged to love my enemies, being a Christian; you're not. But it would've changed you. You don't think it would've, and the movies and everything tell you it doesn't. The good guy kills the villain and hugs the girl, music up and fade to black. But that's not the way it is in real life, and believe me, I know. When you strike your enemy with a sword, the blade goes through your own body first. St. Augustine." She slowed the truck. "Is this the turnoff?"

"Yeah, but don't turn. Keep going on 130. I want to show you something."

"Ooh, yet another wonder of Robbens County! I have goose bumps already."

"Yet another," he agreed, and sat back in his seat. Somehow, the darkness that had lately borne him down was gone. He placed his left hand on her thigh below the hem of her shorts and felt a tide of gladness when she removed a hand from the wheel and placed it on top of his.

"Dan handwich," she said, "on thigh."

Dan had heard the phrase she made him happy many times, but until just then he had thought it to be a mere figure of speech or hyperbole. Before he could think about it or reduce it to the level of strategy, his usual way with girls, he heard his voice saying it: "You make me happy." And blushed.

She nodded. "Uh-huh. I know. You make me happy, too. You won't believe this, but I was actually thinking just that, and how funny that phrase is. I was also thinking, I don't know where we're going, but I hope it's hours and hours."

It was only twenty minutes, though, before he directed her to a left turnoff. The asphalt lasted only a hundred yards or so, as usual, and then they were on oiled dirt and gravel, rat-a-tat-tat, steeply back and forth up the mountainside. Then off that road up a rutted track to a clearing dotted with little twisted pines and gray boulders on a field of whispering, pink-tinged ocher grasses.

"This's Mount Knox, the highest point in the county," he said. "You can see almost the whole thing from here." Hand in hand they picked their way among the boulders, the dog casting before them, nose asniff.

He helped her clamber up a whaleback boulder resting against a much higher mass of naked rock. "You're looking north. You can make out the town there."

"Yes, the storied towers of McCullensburg, and their promises of romance and adventure. What's that smear?" She pointed to where a dirty tent of yellow-brown haze hung under the dome of the sky.

"That's the pit. Majestic Number Two, Hampden Mountain. That mountain used to be nearly as high as this one until they cut the top off it. What do you think?"

She looked at the splotched landscape, scarred by coal working and obscured by colored smokes. " Terribilita. "

"Come again?"

"It's what they said in the Italian Renaissance for the mighty works of men. Iron furnaces and foundries. Horrible, but also terrific, what puny man has accomplished and so on."

"Yeah, I've felt that. I didn't know there was a word for it, though."

"Oh, there's a word for everything, just about, in some language."

"And you know them all, huh?"

"Yes. Or will." She bent down, scooped up a stone, and flung it into the void.

They tossed stones for a while. Then he said, "Come on, I want to show you something else. This is the real reason I brought you up here. Hold on to my hand, it's tricky."

He led her down a narrow path around the base of the cap rock. The tops of forty-foot pines waved like meadow grasses far below. The path curved south, then climbed upward over a set of natural stairs. She saw that the southern rock face of the peak had fallen away, leaving a high, rectangular niche, open at the top and flanked by a pair of horizontal ledges.

"It's like a huge chair!" she exclaimed.

"Uh-huh, it's called Aaron's Throne. This last part is a little rough. Watch where I put my feet. And don't look down."

He clambered up the vertical base of the throne, and after a moment she followed him. It was not as hard as it looked. Dan helped her onto the seat of the throne, an area three yards square, covered (to her great surprise) by short, soft grass. Below, Magog complained about not being able to follow.

"This is incredible," she cried. "It's like fairyland."

"Yeah, now turn around."

She did and gasped. Green and purple-blue, the corrugated mountains stretched in waves to the limits of vision, their hollows boiling with white mist. In the middle distance a large bird cruised some invisible torrent of air. There was no sign of man's mighty works at all.

He came up behind her and clasped his hands around her waist. "This is what this country looked like before people got here. The Throne is set so you look over the south end of the county and into Virginia. That's Jefferson National Forest to your left. Pretty, huh?"

"It's gorgeous. Is that an eagle?"

"Turkey vulture. But we do have eagles and hawks. We can sit down and lean against the back wall. It's just the right time of day for the light show."

They sat. They watched. The beams from behind them lit up the hills in odd colors, converting the view into something like a Maxfield Parrish landscape. They lay down on the grass. They chewed on each other's faces, wound tongue around tongue. His arm was up to its elbow in her baggy shorts, his hand exploring the country he had glimpsed for a second on the train, before everything…

"Whoops," she said, and rolled away, spinning on her long axis several times. She stopped a yard or so from him, looking up at the sky, catching her breath.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm about to sink into uncontrollable carnality, and as I think I mentioned on the love boat, I can't do that." Silence. She turned her head. "Oh, now you are pouting."

"Well, it's not fair to me. I mean it's not natural."

"You could procure a trollop," she offered. "To afford you carnal release."

"I don't want a trollop. I want you. Besides, wouldn't you care if I did? Procured one."

"It would pain me, but I'd try to live with it. I would offer it up, as we say. And I am yours, except in that way. As you very well know." She reversed her rotation and ended propped upon an elbow, looking down into his face. "Look, I have a feeling this is big-time, and I don't want to mess it up, and I don't want it to be some boring fifties-type thing, us grabbing at each other and me pulling back and you getting all cranky."

"We could do other stuff."

"Oh, right, blow jobs, the prep school solution. You're missing the point. The point is not to release it, because I know and you know that, once we start, we'll be on each other like minks and that'll be that. The thing is to raise the energy from here…"

And to his amazement she bestowed a gentle squeeze upon the bulging crotch of his jeans.

"… to here." She placed her hand under his shirt, on his beating heart. "Do the same to me."

"Under your…?"

"Of course." He did so. She was extremely warm to the touch. The beat was firm and rapid.

"Now look into my eyes. Let the energy flow up from your sex organs to your heart."

"How come you talk like a book? How come you know this stuff?"

"Do I talk like a book? Maybe. It could be the languages, a taste for precision. I like words. I can't bear the inarticulate yawp that passes for conversation. Complaint. Boasting. Sarcasm. Tag lines from sitcoms. How about those Sox? But language is sacred. It has glory, even in ordinary speech. The way most people use it, it's like a winged horse pulling a junk wagon. As for this"-she pressed on his chest-"this is how I whiled away the long, lonely years waiting for you. My mystical readings. It's working, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's weird. Did you ever do this before?"

"Of course not. This is my maiden flight. Don't talk now. In a little while time will stop. Don't be frightened."