Absolute rage

8

"So, are you going to do it?" asked Murrow.

"I might," answered Karp. "I practically said I would just to keep him from hoching me. He's the kind of guy who, if he thinks faking a heart attack will roll you, will turn gray and collapse."

"Can I come, too? I kind of like the idea of fighting real bad guys, like in the movies, instead of the pathetic characters we usually put away."

"No, you have to stay here and watch the store while I have all the fun."

Murrow slumped in his chair, clutching his chest and producing a good imitation of Cheyne-Stokes respiration.

Karp laughed briefly. "I better stay here. You need supervision."

"You'll do it," said Murrow confidently. "I can see it in your eyes. I'd do it in a minute, in the unlikely event that anyone ever asked me to."

"Yeah, but you're a young squirt without responsibilities, and you don't have a wife working the very same operation unofficially."

"Would that be a problem?"

"Oh, Marlene? Investigating a sensitive and complex case on her own? A problem? No, why would you think that? Fortunately, I have reason to believe she's unarmed at the present time." Karp leaned back in his chair, swiveled to face the window, chewed on a pencil. Murrow, seeing this, left quietly, closing the office door behind him. He knew these were the signs that Karp was entering Karpland, as all the office called it, and was therefore not to be disturbed until he reentered the terrestrial sphere, usually with the solution to some intricate problem.

Being manipulated stood high on the list of all the things Karp didn't like. Why should he disturb his life and dash off to some godforsaken province because it was important to Saul Sterner? Let them handle it themselves. Let them all shoot each other. Red Heeney was an idiot who'd gotten his wife and daughter killed along with himself because he was stupid and full of bravado and a drunk besides, unlike himself, who was cautious and smart and free of alcoholic fumes in the brain, and unlike also his wife, who was rattling around in the same hellhole that had killed the Heeneys, New York not being dangerous enough for her anymore. Marlene, he knew, was in a familiar phase of her cycle. A settled life afflicted her like a slow toxin, building up in her soul until it flipped a switch, at which point she had to do something grotesque and outrageous, usually involving gunshots and financial ruin. The woman had given away something like $40 million because the money had a smell of deceit and death on it. Nice that she could afford such scruples, whereas he had to punch the clock at the DA every day until forever, until he retired a desiccated husk and corrupt to the eyes, waiting for the cancer to get him, like Guma.

He wondered what she was doing this minute. Should he call? Did he have the Heeney phone number? Somewhere around here. Probably something quasi-legal, if not an actual felony. And naturally he was going to have to go in there and fix things, smooth things over, paste a legal fig leaf over whatever mess she made. And she would make a mess, she always made a mess. Whereas he had a safe, respectable, boring, tedious, stupid job, supervising the installation of impoverished morons in state penal institutions. Meanwhile, he couldn't just take off and ditch Lucy with the boys and that goddamn dog farm. What he should do is take three weeks of leave and just go out there and lie on the beach until he got sunstroke. Keegan wanted to get rid of him anyway. The office could run itself. It was summertime. The living was easy. Prosecution was easy, too, since they'd cut the budget of the Legal Aid Society practically in half and the courts were hiring barely conscious hacks at $40 an hour to defend indigents, meaning the vast majority of persons brought before the New York DA. It was even more of a joke than it had been when crime was rampant, except, of course, when crime had been rampant, you could kid yourself with the illusion that you were defending something worth-while. The staff had grown slack, he had grown slack, slack and stupid and old.

He took the pencil out of his mouth and examined it with distaste. It looked like a dog had been at it. He tossed it at the wastebasket; it bounced off the rim and fell on the floor. He couldn't even sink shots anymore. The phone rang: Dick Sullivan, the new homicide bureau chief, with the latest on Lok the Decapitator, as the tabloids had named him. The ME report had come back on Emilio Solano, the seventeen-year-old deceased in the case. Apparently Lok had hacked the robber heavily enough to render him quite helpless before delivering the fatal chop. Therefore the decapitation was a homicide and not strictly self-defense. Sullivan was going to charge him with manslaughter one.

"Sounds right," said Karp. "Will he plead?"

"Not likely. The Asian community's got a huge defense fund already. They've retained Morrie Silver on it."

"I hope you gave him my regards, the sly fucker."

"He sends his, likewise," said Sullivan. "He was dickering for man two, minimum sentence, minimum security, the usual."

"I hope you told him to blow it out his ass."

"Not in so many words. Anyway, I guess maybe we're going to have to try this beauty, in the full glare of the media, editorials, ethnic cleansing, et cetera." There was a question in his voice. Sullivan had not been Karp's first pick for homicide. He came from the Queens DA, and Karp liked promoting people from within. Besides, Queens? Karp suspected that there had been some political juice for Keegan in the appointment. The man seemed competent enough, however.

"Well, try him and win it, Dick. That's what we used to do around here all the time."

"I assume it's okay with the chief."

"It's the right thing to do," said Karp blandly. "The district attorney always does the right thing, as you know."

Karp hung up, cursed, paced, kicked a steel filing cabinet. Sullivan would not take his word for it and would call Keegan, and of course Keegan would not stay the hell away from meddling in a case that involved two important electoral communities and was getting major press. Karp sat down and jabbed at a speed-dial button.

A treble voice answered, "Wingfield Farm, registered mastiffs, GC Karp speaking."

"Hello, this is Madonna. I'd like a dozen registered mastiffs in assorted colors, please."

"Hi, Dad."

"What are you doing in the office?"

"Answering the phone."

"I know that, dummy. Why aren't you playing and generally having a carefree little-boy childhood?"

"Lucy made me. She's being Cruella."

"You poor thing. I'm thinking of coming out there for a couple, three weeks. Maybe Lucy would let me answer the phone sometimes."

"We can use the help," said his son with a disappointing lack of boyish enthusiasm for merry hours spent with Daddy. "Actually, I like being inside. It's too hot out and I can play on the computer. Do you want to talk to the Luce?"

Karp said he did and heard the phone drop with a clunk. Minutes passed.

"Dad? What's up?" asked the Luce.

"You're being Cruella."

"Did that little rat call you and complain?"

"No, I called. Do you really need someone manning the phone?"

"Boying it, technically. Yeah, until we move the pups. The phone's ringing off the hook since we placed ads."

"Everything okay? The felons all in good order?"

"Yeah, they don't mess with Cruella. How's your lonely grandeur?"

"Hm. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I'm on the horns of a dilemma."

He explained briefly what Saul Sterner wanted him to do, adding, "So the good part of the deal, besides its inherent virtue, is that I'd get to be with Mom for however long, the summer at least, until we saw how things lay, sort of a vacation in the mountains."

"Meaning you could keep an eye on her."

"That, too," said Karp, glad once again that another person in the world shared his view of his wife. "On the other hand, I'm uncomfortable with both of us being out of town and you stuck here in charge."

"We could all come down there," said Lucy brightly.

"What about the farm?"

"Oh, we'd bring Magog. Billy can handle the place after the puppies are sold, and if not, he can hire a teenager from town."

"I don't think so. That's all we need is to have to worry about you all. Apparently it's a pretty violent part of the country."

"Violence! Heavens to Betsy! What a sharp contrast that would be to my entire childhood! Well, you've succeeded in terrifying me out of that idea."

"I was actually thinking of the boys," said Karp, a little more sharply than he had intended.

"Oh, right-sorry," she said, and actually was, because she had not thought for a second about her brothers. What had immediately occupied the center of her thoughts when her father had proposed going to West Virginia was the prospect of seeing Dan Heeney again. "Okay, if you decide to go, I can hold the fort here. Don't worry."

"Are you sure? I mean, they can get someone else."

"But you're dying to go, right?"

Karp hesitated before replying to this. "I'm not sure… the main thing is I'm concerned about you. You have all that scientific stuff to do up in Boston. It doesn't seem fair to tie up your summer with babysitting."

"It's starting to sound like you're using us as an excuse. You're the responsible parent and Mom is the cuckoo."

"Not really…"

"Really. Look, the way it sounds is that they want you and you can do it better than anyone. And it's important-getting the rats who killed them. It's just your kind of thing. As far as the Boston guys are concerned, I already blew them off. It's not like they can find another me by placing an ad in the Globe. It's a seller's market in the prodigy biz."

"You actually are irreplaceable," said Karp fervently. "And I don't just mean all the Swahili."

"And you likewise. Since you're all guilted up, this would be a good time to ask you if I can get the Toyota fixed. It would be great to have."

"Is it fixable?" asked Karp, who knew little about vehicles.

"Russell says yes, and apparently he's a car maven as well as a dog agitator, kind of a Renaissance man. I'll pay for the fixing if you'll handle all the plates and insurance crap."

"A done deal. Are you absolutely sure…?"

"Of course. Go. Don't worry about us. And keep in touch, okay?"

After hanging up, Karp sat back in his chair. He had a peculiar feeling, hauntingly familiar, but it took him some little time to identify it. The last day of school? Winning a big case? Oh, right, he thought: happiness. He kicked off and spun his chair around half a dozen times. Swiveling around to the desk again, he dialed Saul Sterner's number.

Marlene was swinging in a hammock strung in the Heeneys' backyard, using a finger against the skull of her dog to push herself in a gentle rocking motion, and at the same time scratching him in the place he liked behind his ear. The dog was happy with this arrangement; Marlene less so. She did not like being stymied. She finished her beer and tossed it in a graceful arc, which did not quite reach the lip of the rubber trash can. Dan Heeney stirred himself from the lounge chair where he was drinking, reached out an arm, and flipped the can in. It was hot under a milk-glass sky. Only vagrant zephyrs stirred the dusty leaves of the maples. She was officially thinking about their next move, but productive thoughts were slow in coming. Had this been a real case, she would have been working with a private detective, doing the investigation that the cops had fluffed, maybe establishing an alibi for the defendant, maybe collecting new evidence. In this particular abortion, however, this was not going to do much good, because the cops and the criminal justice system would take anything she discovered and lose it, or phony up something that undermined it.

Stan Hawes might be interested. She didn't think he was really dirty yet, but it would take an extremely pure-minded state's attorney to actively cooperate in wrecking the biggest case he was likely to see in a decade. She needed something new and major then, the murder weapon maybe, or a signed confession from the real guys, one about as likely to turn up as the other. There was no crime-scene forensic evidence that did her any good. There were prints in the house from dozens of people, but distinguishing among these, separating the killers' from those of the Heeneys' many guests, was a job beyond her resources. If she had been there from the beginning, in charge of the investigation, or even on defense from the get-go… no, useless thoughts: if your grandma had wheels, she'd be a garbage truck. Still, if the cops had done a half-assed job, there might be areas still worth investigating. Where, though? She rolled out of the hammock, went to the cooler, and cracked another Iron City, feeling Dan's eyes on her as she did so. He was waiting for her to pull out rabbits, but she was all out of rabbits today.

She walked across the lawn, the grass cool on the soles of her feet, the can icy when she pressed it against the back of her neck. Go back into the house, look at her notes, maybe something would pop up. She closed her eyes, her mind blank. When she opened them, she was staring at a mountain. This was not unusual, as there were mountains everywhere one stared around here. This one, she recalled, was known as Belo Knob. There was a flash of light from the mountainside and then another. She heard, above the buzzing of the insect life, the distant grind of a truck in low gear, climbing. She looked up at the mountain again. The truck had disappeared. A road on a hillside: Why was that of interest? She didn't know yet, but it was, something about the night of the crime. She wandered back to the hammock and sat on its edge.

"Dan, the night of the murders," she said tentatively, "there were people at the house-Emmett said…?"

"Yeah, there was a dissident-faction meeting, maybe about twenty guys. It lasted until ten, maybe ten-thirty."

"Right, and then the killers came. But, what I'm wondering is, how did they know the house was empty except for your family?"

Dan twitched his shoulders. "I don't know. They were watching the house?"

"Uh-huh. But from where? Where was their car while they were watching? It couldn't have been in your driveway or on 119 or on that little access road. Someone would've spotted them. A bunch of dissidents, all paranoid as hell, probably armed… the killers wouldn't have wanted to take that chance. Come here a minute."

They walked around the house. Marlene pointed to Belo Knob. "There's a road across that mountain."

"Uh-huh. Belo Road. It hooks up Route 10 on the east side of the knob to 130 on the west, and it picks up a bunch of no-name dirt roads that go to where folks live up there. What about it?"

"I was just thinking that if someone parked their car on that road, they'd have a pretty good view of your yard. They could see when the last guest left. Have you got a large-scale map of the county?"

"Sure. It's on the computer."

A few minutes later, Marlene was looking over Dan's shoulder at a bird's-eye view of the house they were standing in. He punched a key twice and the view expanded to take in the south flank of Belo Knob. "We have fifty-meter resolution on this. The whole county, and we have the subsurface, too, down to three thousand meters."

"Where did you get this?" she asked. "It's fantastic."

"My mom. There's a state law that says the coal companies have to map all their abandoned shafts, mines, and impoundments and share the information with the community. The state makes them do the mapping, and they also do their own mapping and subsurface exploration, to plan where they're going to cut next. They use sonar to find what the rock's like under the mountains. My mom's little enviro group sued Majestic to release this data."

"And won?"

"Amazingly, yes. It was a federal court decision. That's how we knew that Gillis Holler was going to happen before it did." He saw her puzzlement. "A local disaster." He hit some other keys. The view on the monitor changed to what looked like a cutaway of a layer cake prepared by a drunken pastry cook.

"This is Hampden, to our east. The coal-bearing strata show up in gray, and those red lines are old shafts and adits. Where the coal strata are exposed, that's Majestic Number Two, the main surface mine in the county. They're taking the whole top off Hampden." His finger tapped the screen. "This blue blob is an impoundment, or was, Impoundment Fifty-three A. They set off a charge at Number Two and the shock waves whipped along this boundary layer, under the limestone stratum, see? And focused right here. It cracked open the rock between the bottom of the impoundment and an old shaft. Half a million cubic feet of water came out of that shaft like a steel rod and blasted half a dozen houses and trailers into toothpicks."

He told her about what had happened after that, the wildcat strike, the election. He spoke with regret mixed with cynicism, a young man's approach to corruption and horror. She'd heard some of this from Rose, but she let him talk until he was through and then steered him back to the matter at hand. The south flank of Belo appeared once again. His fingers on the mouse made the vegetation details vanish, leaving only landforms, roads, and structures.

"Can we go there?" she asked.

"Sure. You mean now?"

"I almost always do." She ran off to gather some items.

Belo Road was rutted and ran narrowly through hemlocks and laurels, two lanes of thin blacktop chopped into the mountainside. Marlene drove, flicking her gaze between the road ahead and the steep slope to her left, a wall of vegetation. Which vanished briefly and then reappeared. Marlene hit the brakes and threw the truck into reverse. There was a wide place in the road, a sandy area just big enough for one vehicle, under a big slate outcrop, dripping with seepage. She jumped out and crossed the road. Dan came up beside her.

"This has to be the place," she said. "You can see everything from here-the house, the yard. Christ, what a waste! If they'd brought a crime-scene unit up here the morning after the crime, they would've got tire tracks and footprints and God knows what else. Well, let's look around anyway."

"What are we looking for?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. A matchbook with the name of a nightclub on it. The murderer's diary…"

"A lot of broken beer bottles," said Dan, standing at the base of the slate outcrop. Marlene looked and saw the remains of at least two dozen brown beer bottles and two white-glass Jim Beam pints lying in the shallow declivity below the rock wall. Marks on the wall showed that they had been thrown against it. Marlene returned to her truck and brought out a sheaf of plastic supermarket bags. She stuck her hand in one of them and selected several of the more intact bottles.

"What're you doing that for?"

"You never can tell. These might be from our guys. In fact, unless this place is a famous parking spot, I'd say it's likely. Look, they drive up here after dark, say about nine-thirty. They have to wait an hour or so until all the cars leave and they sit around and drink and smoke. See all the butts?" She knelt and bagged a collection of these. "I figure three guys. One smoked Winstons, one smoked Camels, and one smoked those cheap, thin cigars. The amount of drinking's right for three guys, too. Now the cars are gone from your yard, so they're ready. Do they drive down? Where does this road go?"

"West of here it hooks into 130 west on the other side of Belo, or 11 north a little farther along. East of here was the way we just came, off 119 about a quarter mile from our drive."

"Wait a second-130? Does that go over some kind of bridge? A green bridge?"

"Yeah, it does. Over the Guyandotte. Why?"

"Because that's where Mose said he found the bloody boots. They stayed here, drove down to your place, did the murders, and what…? Came back the same way, past here, and out to 130, across the bridge, where they tossed the shoes off the bridge, but not too carefully, because they landed on dry land instead of in the water."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Dan agreed, "because otherwise they would've had to go through the middle of town on 119 and someone might have seen them. There's not much traffic in McCullensburg after 1 A.M. But what does that do for us?"

Marlene was leaning against a pine and looking down the slope of the hill. A scrim of young pine and ash bordered the road, below which rolled a curiously even, glossy green carpet. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe it gives us their getaway route. On the other hand, they might not have bothered to move the car at all. They might've walked down this slope. It's not more than a couple of thousand yards and the slope isn't that steep. And that would've been better for them, assuming they knew about the driveway alarm and the lights."

"Maybe, but you can't walk that slope. It's a laurel hell."

"A what?"

"They don't have those in New York?" said Dan in mock surprise. "A laurel hell is an extremely dense growth of mountain laurel or sometimes rhododendron, mixed with greenbrier and other creepers. Rabbits can go through it but nothing else. Sometimes they roll on for miles. This one is pretty small. I guess they could've gone around it, though, on the other side of that deadfall." He pointed to where a good-sized tulip tree had come down.

"Yeah, I guess," said Marlene, still looking downslope. "What's that?"

"What?" He came over to her and followed her pointing finger. "That white stuff? Some trash. People fling stuff into laurel all the time. We call it West Virginia recycle. It makes a perfect dump."

Marlene went to her truck and came back with a pair of binoculars. She propped her shoulder against a tree and looked through them. "It's the heel of a sneaker. It's got what looks like a dark stain on the sole. I'm going to go get it."

"Marlene, it'll take you two hours to get down there and back. You got no idea what it's like in one of those."

"Nevertheless, I have a good feeling about this." She handed him the binoculars. "Stay up here and guide me." She started down the slope and before long discovered why they called it hell. The air was still, smelling of leaf mould, and breathtakingly hot. The laurel plants grew within inches of one another, so that each step was a contortion. Before she had gone five yards she was covered in sweat, wringing wet, stinging from dozens of scratches. Tiny flies rose from the damp earth and filled her nose and mouth and crawled into her eyes. The world contracted to the next stiff branch, the next tripping root. Several times she fell and had to stop to pick thorns out of her hands. Dimly she heard Dan's shouts, giving directions. She moved sluggishly in response. Her brain was frying. She could barely remember left from right. Time slowed and ground to a halt.

"There! You're right there!" came a shout. She stopped, wiped her eyes. Her palm, when she looked at it, showed a slurry of mud, sweat, and blood. She could barely recall what she was there for. Some punishment, perhaps. The brain wasn't working too well. The heat. What was he yelling about? There was nothing there, just green leaves and cruel branches inches from her face. She looked up. There was no sky, only more green, and something white, a flower or a fruit. She wiped her burning eyes again, blinked the sweat out of them. Not a fruit. The toe of a sneaker. She reached up and plucked it. A Nike, size eleven, well worn. On the sole, a curious design in red-black, almost calligraphic, that ran up onto the heel.

"Jesus Christ!" cried Dan as she staggered out of the laurel. He grabbed her before she fell.

"Bag it," she said, holding out the sneaker.

Back at the house, she didn't even bother removing her clothes, but stood shaking under the cold stream of the shower for ten minutes before she thought of undressing.

Forty-five minutes later she emerged in a robe, with a towel wrapped around her head, went straight to the refrigerator, got a beer, and moved to the porch, where Dan sat.

"Feeling better?"

"Much." She sat in a rocker, drank a long pull, sighed.

"You should have seen what you looked like when you came out of there. Red as a tomato and covered with dirt and blood. I thought you were going to collapse. People have, you know. Died in those things."

"I can believe it. How long was I in there?"

"A couple of hours. Campers look at a map and figure they can cut a couple of miles of trail by bushwhacking through the laurel. They don't usually try it more than once. How do you feel?"

"Like I've been whipped by chains. But we got our sneaker."

"Yeah, you did. I guess that's blood on it, huh?"

"I'd bet."

"What're we going to do with it?"

"I've been thinking about that. I think we should take it to Poole and get his advice."

"Poole? He's a drunk."

"Yes, when he's drunk. When he's not, he's a smart lawyer and he knows the situation here a lot better than I do."

Dressed in a crisp cotton shirtwaist and with the worst of the scratches covered up, she drove into town, which took longer than she expected because a moron in one of those pickups with huge tires dawdled in front of her and would not let her pass. Redneck fun. It took a while to track down Poole, but she eventually found him at the VFW hall. He was at a table in the back of the barroom, a high-ceilinged, dim, echoing place smelling of old beer. He was drinking bourbon with beer chasers. Being a private club, the VFW was allowed to supply him with his own bottle, whether or not he was actually a veteran of a foreign war. She sat at his table and plopped the sneaker in its plastic bag down on the table.

"I ordered the ham on rye," he said. "That's a sneaker."

She told him what she thought it was and where she had found it. "Ah, deeper and deeper, Ciampi. Why is it people never listen to good advice? What do you expect to gain from this?"

Good, she thought: he was at the expansive stage of his drunk. "The release of our client, for starters. The murderers came down from that ridge, broke in, killed the Heeneys, and walked back up to their car. One of them noticed he had blood on his shoes, so he chucked them into the laurel. I'll bet you a bottle of Jack Black that the blood on it matches up with one of the victims. That shit-cans the state's theory of the case."

"If Murdoch doesn't throw it out. He'll say you cooked it up. There's no custodial chain, and without one there's no probative value. If you give it to Swett, it'll just disappear."

"I wasn't thinking about Swett. What do you know about Hawes?"

"Hawes? He's new. Been in there six months. The old state's attorney was a guy named Hailey, an old drinking buddy of mine as a matter of fact. His evil ways caught up with him and he kicked off, and the governor put this kid in there. He's ambitious as Satan and he's smart enough to know he's never going to get anywhere by bucking the system."

"But is he bent? I should say, 'bent yet'?"

"I'm not sure anyone has bothered to bend him, but I'd say he's eminently bendable. The Majestic Coal Company hires a lot of lawyers, and they fund a lot of campaigns."

"Well, let's us go and find out," she said, rising and retrieving the shoe.

"Us? No, dear, this is your play. I don't want anything to do with it."

"I thought we were partners, Poole."

He threw a half shot of the bourbon down his throat and reached for the bottle. "No. You are an annoyance and I am the annoyee. That isn't partners." He carefully poured a shot. "Also, I am thinking of the original owner of that very large shoe. It looks to be a size eleven. Did you think that he might be a local resident? That he might harbor some animus against someone who was trying to pin a triple murder on him? That he might try to dissuade that person, or take some revenge? Revenge is big in Robbens County, Ciampi. It's what we have instead of youth soccer."

"Okay, suit yourself. But you better pray that Hawes isn't completely bent, because I'm going to tell him you gave me the Nike and that you know who owns it."

She had reached the door before she felt a hand on her arm. "You're not really… I mean, that was a bluff, right?"

"I rarely bluff, Poole." She turned to look him in the face. "You know, you're looking a little better than you did the last time I saw you. I think you're turning into a functional drunk."

"Thank you," he said as he followed her out. "I always wanted to be beaten to death while cold sober. You look like hell, by the way. What did you do to your face?"

"I scratched it in some bushes," said Marlene, her tone short. Marlene prided herself on not depending upon her looks to get things done (a false pride necessarily, the world being what it is), but did not appreciate having any shortcoming in that department pointed out. They walked the few streets to the courthouse in chilly silence.

The state's attorney had a suite of offices on the second floor of that building and a pretty red-haired secretary to put in it. Aside from that, there did not seem to be much going on in the office, which was, however, nicely paneled and equipped with heavy, old-fashioned oak furniture. Poole greeted the secretary by name (Margie) and asked if Stan was free. He was not, he was in a meeting. Poole made to leave, but Marlene clutched his sleeve. "We'll wait," she said, and sat on a wooden bench under a glassed print of Washington crossing the Delaware. Poole sat grumpily beside her. She held the sneaker on her lap like a gift cake. The clock on the wall ticked, Margie typed slowly on her keyboard, Poole fell asleep, snoring gently. Marlene let the time flow past, pushed Poole away when his head slumped toward her shoulder, and tried not to imagine herself back in the choking laurels.

After forty minutes, the door to Hawes's office flung open and a large man in a blue suit strode out. He had a big jaw and a nose that looked as if it had been broken. His hands were big and red, as was his face. His hair was pale brown and freshly cut, as if he had just stepped from a barber's rather than a state's attorney's place of business. He was almost out the door when he caught sight of Marlene and Poole. He stopped short and smiled, showing big yellow horse teeth. There was definitely something horselike about him, Marlene decided, the kind of horse that kicked and bit. His voice was loud and confident: "Ernie Poole."

Poole snapped awake. He wiped his chin where he had dribbled on it and blinked at the big man.

"George," he said neutrally.

"How ya doing, Ernie? Catching up on your beauty sleep?"

"I have a hard life."

"Yeah, you want to take it easy, now. Don't strain yourself any."

Some more banter here, George's tone patronizing, hectoring, Poole's dry and his answers minimal. The interesting thing, Marlene thought, was that while George was talking to Poole, his eyes were fixed on her; pale, hard ones, like tin. She met his gaze without flinching.

"Nice seeing you, Ernie," George said, pointing a finger gun-fashion at Poole. "You take care now, hey? Stay healthy."

When he was gone, Marlene asked, "Who was that?"

"That was George Floyd, the business manager of the Mining Equipment Operators Union."

"Oh? I'm sorry you didn't introduce me."

"If you live your whole life without meeting George Floyd, you can consider yourself lucky."

"That bad, huh?"

"Bad? No, I'd say he was just an average degenerate sadist and crook. We have worse." He stood up as Margie told them they could go in now.

Hawes was behind his desk looking angry, although not necessarily at them.

"I have court in ten minutes. I hope this'll be quick," he said without offering his hand to them or a chair. Marlene sat down anyway, and Poole followed suit.

"Well, no small talk then," said Marlene. "We've discovered some new evidence in the Welch case and we'd like to share it with you."

"What kind of evidence?"

Marlene placed the sneaker on his desk and explained what she thought it was, how she had found it, and what it implied for the state's case against her client.

He gave it the briefest glance, waited until she had finished, and said, "What is this bullshit, Ernie?"

"Well, it's a shoe with blood on it, found near the scene of the crime. I'd say that wasn't bullshit. The blood can be tested. If it belongs to one of the victims, I'd say there goes your case."

"Oh, come on! A lawyer walks in here with a shoe that could've come from anywhere with blood on it that could've come from anywhere. That's not evidence. If she thought she found something, she should've gone to the police. As it is, there's no chain of custody. I'll oppose it and the judge'll back me up."

"That's not your role, Mr. Hawes," said Marlene.

He looked at her as if she had just popped out of the ether. "What?"

"That's not your role. Your role is not to disparage evidence but to establish the probative value of any evidence you come across, to make sure you bring the right people to justice. I bring you, as an officer of the court, a sealed bag, the seal signed by me and the son of the victim, in which bag is a shoe smeared with a substance that appears to be dried blood. We propose that it was disposed of by the real killers. Could I have concocted the evidence out of whole cloth? Yes, and opened myself to criminal penalties with a scam that any competent lab could detect. Would I do that? On a pro bono case? It's absurd on the face of it, and just as absurd is the idea that the victims' own son would conspire to allow the real killer to get off. Meanwhile, blood will tell, as the saying goes. They'll DNA it and age it and tell you that it flowed out of the body of one of the victims at about the time of the murders. They'll find carpet fibers that match the crime scene. They'll tell you it's genuine unfakable. It's particularly telling, since your own case rests entirely on finding blood on the shoes of a mental incompetent, which shoes are at least two sizes too small for him."

Hawes indicated the sneaker on his desk, using his chin. He seemed not to want to examine it. "That one'd fit him all right."

"Yes, but it changes your theory of the case a good deal, doesn't it? The murder then would involve at least two participants, one wearing a fairly expensive pair of Rocky-brand hunting boots, size nine and a half, and the other a fairly expensive pair of Nikes. It should be easy to check it. There can't be many pairs of such shoes sold in this county, and I think, in fact I'm sure, you'll find that my client never owned either type of shoe. He's more of a Goodwill dresser. The plain fact is you have the wrong man in custody. My assumption is you want the right man or men. I assume you don't want to railroad a poor dummy just to make a case and make nice with this courthouse and the people who run this county." She gave him a sympathetic smile. He did not return it, but did something more revealing. Good God, she thought, he's blushing. He's in the wrong business.

He cleared his throat. "I don't like the word railroad. "

"Neither do I. But I want you to find who did the crime, and you have to know now that Moses Welch is not going to go down for it. Given this"-she picked up the bag with the Nike and let it thump down-"and given the general weakness of your case, no jury will convict, not with the defense we intend to mount. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem like the sort of man who wants to retire as state's attorney in Robbens County. Find the right bad guys and everyone will forget about this little excursion. But push this case to the bitter end and you'll end up looking very bad indeed. As in stinky bad. I'm on your side here, Mr. Hawes."

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."