Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

In the bathroom (which showed the grungy effects of two young bachelors living there alone) she heard voices raised. She finished and followed these into the kitchen. Dan and his brother were standing across the room from one another, glaring and calling each other unpleasant names.

"What's up, boys?" she said cheerfully.

Both young men had red faces. Marlene didn't know whether it was from anger or embarrassment, nor did she care.

Emmett actually stamped his foot and yelled at his brother, "Goddamnit, what the hell did you think you were doing?"

"We need help, Em, and you're too damn boneheaded to see it."

Emmett cursed and got redder and made a move toward his brother, from which he was brought up short by a rumbling growl from Gog.

Marlene said, "Emmett, you're upsetting my dog, and you're upsetting me. We both prefer peaceful discourse to yelling. I have just driven twelve hours straight to help you all out, and whether or not you are personally willing to accept my help is beside the point. Right now, I'm a guest of your brother in his home. I'm sure your folks taught you better manners than what you've been showing." She indicated the enameled kitchen table. "Let us sit down and take counsel with one another and see where we are."

All three sat. After a brief silence, Marlene said, "Welcome to McCullensburg, Marlene. Did you have a pleasant trip? Would you care for some refreshment? A frosty glass of beer, perhaps? A mint julep?"

Dan looked startled for an instant and then broke into a sputtering laugh.

Emmett tried to keep his face grim and failed. "Dickhead."

"Shit for brains," said Dan kindly. "I think I can offer you a beer," he added, rising to open the refrigerator. The bottom two shelves were completely packed with cans of Iron City.

They popped, they drank. "How was your drive?" Dan asked.

"Pretty good," she said. "Your state seems extremely mountainous, however. I guess you noticed that already."

They laughed and told several mountaineer jokes, mainly hinging on people or animals having legs on one side shorter to compensate for the slope. Judging the ice to have been sufficiently broken, Marlene said to Emmett, "I couldn't help overhearing-I take it you don't approve of what Dan did. Calling me, I mean. Would you mind telling me why?"

Emmett looked uneasy as he replied, "Oh, you know, nothing personal, but Dad always told us to handle things ourselves. There's no need to have you all bothered about our troubles."

"That's good advice, generally," she agreed. "But if it'll make you feel any better, I don't intend to do very much. Dan said that the police had a man…"

"Moses Welch," Dan put in.

"Right. Who Dan thinks is a frame-up. What do you think?"

Emmett dropped his head for a moment, considering. "Yeah, I guess. I mean we all know who really done it. Or hired it done. Mose, all they got on him is the boots. And him being…" He tapped his temple.

"Okay," she said, "so the first thing is to look into his case. If, in fact, he's innocent, we want to get the charges dismissed so that the cops will keep looking for whoever really did the murders." She saw them nod in agreement. "Okay, Emmett, tell me about the night of."

"It was about a week after they stole the election. A Friday. We had a meeting here, about twenty guys from the union. Dad was telling them about him going to Washington and his meeting at the Department of Labor. They were real depressed at first, but he got them up again. He thought DOL would throw out the results and call another election and supervise it and then we'd win. The meeting went on till about ten, ten-thirty. Then everyone left. I went over to Kathy's house-that's my girlfriend-and stayed over. I usually do on weekends. The next morning, we slept in and then I came back here. I came around back and saw that somebody'd taken off the storm door in the back and tossed it down next to the stairs, and the back door into the kitchen was all ripped up around the lock, like with a wrecking bar." Emmett paused, swallowed.

"I found them inside. Mom and Dad in their bedroom. Lizzie in her bed." He paused and took several breaths. "It was pretty bad. Do you want to see where it happened?"

"Later. What did you do?"

"Well, they were dead. Anyone could see that. They used a shotgun on Dad and Mom. He must have known they were coming because he was out of bed and he had his pistol. He had a.38 he kept under the mattress. Lizzie was in her bed. They shot her sleeping. In the head."

"You said, 'they.' What makes you think there was more than one of them?"

"Had to be. Lizzie was a light sleeper. Her room was right next door to theirs. No way she wouldn't have got up to a couple of shotgun blasts. But she was shot in her bed, sleeping like I said. You could tell that."

"I take it she wasn't killed with a shotgun."

"No, a pistol. Which they didn't find on Mose or anywhere around his place. They said he must've tossed it."

"I guess they probably didn't look all that hard," she said. "Blame the lame; it's a famous stupid cop trick. He's confessed to it, naturally."

"Sure," said Dan. "They promised him a dish of chocolate ice cream is what I heard."

"And what was his lawyer, what's-his-face, doing while all this was going on?"

"Ernie Poole," said Emmett. "Sleeping, probably. That's what he mostly does. He stands up to be counted in the court and then takes a nap. It's a joke."

"Good. I love a joke. So after you found them, you called the cops."

"Right. Swett came over with a couple of his guys. They found Dad's wallet was missing. He always carried a bunch of cash on him, so they said that was probably it, a random robbery. They said the killer came on foot."

"Because…?"

"Well, that part made sense," Emmett admitted. "After they shot our dog, Dad rigged up one of those sensors like they have in gas stations, across the drive. At night it turned on the floodlights and rang a little bell in the house. They said that would've got him up, and it would have."

"I see. Did they do any crime-scene work? Take prints, vacuum for fibers, like that?"

Emmett let out a bitter laugh. "Hell, no! Those jerks don't do any of that stuff. They just about good enough to grab drunks and kids smoking weed in the bushes. The state cops do all that kind of thing."

"And did they call the state cops?"

"Yeah, they sent a team of guys out from the barracks in Logan. They took up the carpets and all and sprayed a lot of black powder around. They said they would be back and not to touch anything. I stayed with Kathy that night. Then the next day, Mose Welch came to town to show off his new boots, and they arrested him. It went with what they said about the car. Mose can't drive."

"I see. How convenient. And then…?"

"Nothing. I called the sheriff and he said the case is over, you can move back in, so we did. I got some people in to help clean up and fix the back-door locks. I still haven't put the storm door back on. Not that we need it any with this weather. We've been here since."

Marlene made some notes on her pad. "Tell me, does this Moses Welch have any relatives, a guardian of some kind?"

"I don't know about a guardian," said Emmett, "but Fairless Holler got a load of Welches. It's their home place."

"And of these Welches, which do you think would care the most about old Mose?"

The two Heeneys considered this for a moment. Then Emmett said, "I guess that would be Betty Washburn. She's his sister. He used to live in a busted-up trailer back of their place, and I guess she kept him fed and dressed, more or less."

"Good, we'll go see Mrs. Washburn," said Marlene briskly. She turned to Dan. "Meanwhile, did you get any paperwork from Poole?"

"No, sorry. He wouldn't give me any. He said it was none of my concern."