Butch Karp: Absolute Rage Part 25

"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 doc.u.ment 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 circ.u.mstances will try to f.u.c.k 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 sc.u.mbag all day, pretty soon he finds it hard to go back to being a nonsc.u.mbag. 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 h.e.l.l, 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. h.e.l.l, 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 horses.h.i.t! 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 fict.i.tious wanted posters of the make-believe drifter."

"Ah, that's so dumb," said Emmett. "How in h.e.l.l would someone like him find a d.a.m.n 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 d.i.c.k 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 n.o.ble. He's Rose Heeney's kid down to the bone. Plus, he doesn't give a s.h.i.t 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 c.r.a.p 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 dej 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."

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

They pa.s.sed 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 b.u.mper, 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 d.a.m.n coal miners are having some kind of d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n pain in the b.u.t.t. 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.