Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Technically, he's right. Well, we'll have to change that. Starting with me. Show me a place I can get cleaned up and changed, will you?"

Neither of the Heeneys had ever seen Marlene in any apparel but the sort of rags she wore around her farm. She now emerged in a gray Anne Klein silk and linen suit over a pearly, loose-necked blouse, dark nylons, and Blahnik sandals. Her face was made up and her expensive haircut had been arranged the way her hairdresser had intended. A whiff of L'Aire du Temps hit them; their eyes widened; she grinned back at them.

"What do you think? Good enough for Robbens County?"

"I guess," said Emmett. "What are you going to do?"

"A couple of things. One is I have to get up to speed on local criminal statutes and procedure. I don't suppose you have anything around town like a library with a computer connected to the Internet?"

They both laughed. Dan said, "Uh, I think so. We got electricity and indoor plumbing, too. Follow me, lady."

He led her to a bedroom, a teenager's den, posters on the wall, dirty clothes strewn about, an unmade bed decorated with books and magazines, and on a table, a squat, black IBM tower, a large monitor, and a DeskJet printer.

"Oops," she said. "I forgot MIT. Sorry."

"No problem. What do you want? I got a satellite hookup."

"Great. Get me the state criminal code and the rules of criminal procedure for a start. While you're doing that, I'll take a ride with Emmett."

She went to leave and then stopped. "No, wait. Could you bring up a word-processing program?"

He did. She sat and typed out a short document and printed it. "Emmett! Let's go see Mrs. Washburn."

They drove back through town, north on 130, and off the blacktop onto a rutted gravel road that wound back and forth across a narrow stream on timber bridges. Through gaps in the trees Marlene could see little groups of structures-small, rickety houses with washing flapping on lines in their yards, some newer mobile homes, and weathered gray sheds falling back into nature. Every dwelling had several elderly vehicles in front, in various stages of demolishment or repair. From time to time a glint of metal indicated a dump in the woods. The GMC jumped and shook; a rooster tail of tan dust rose behind it.

"This is Belo Knob," Emmett told her. "I mean the mountain we're on. The town's on a flat place where five mountains come together, like in the middle of a flower. Belo's on the north side, say twelve o'clock. Then Hampden's at three, where our place is, Hogue is at six, down south of town, then Filbert Ridge, that's the highest one, at seven through nine o'clock. And then Burnt Peak's up at ten or eleven."

"And the hollows are on the mountains?"

"Up in there. The hills are all cut up by streams and those make the hollers. This is Peck Creek we've been going over, and Fairless comes into it, just up here a piece."

They turned off the gravel onto an oiled dirt road and off that onto a driveway marked by a white-painted truck tire. The Washburn home was a one-story affair with pale green siding and a narrow porch in front, on which stood an ancient round washing machine and a rocking chair. An old-fashioned "streamlined" aluminum house trailer with no wheels squatted on concrete blocks just to the rear of the house. In the front yard were a rust-red, twenty-year-old Ford pickup and an El Camino with the hood gaping. Among these stigmata of rural poverty stood, jarringly, a satellite dish eight feet in diameter, round and white as the moon. When they pulled up, two yellow dogs ran out from beneath the house and ran around their truck, barking and snarling.

The woman sitting in the rocker yelled at the dogs, to which they responded not at all. She rose heavily, picked up a baseball bat, and started toward the GMC. The dogs retreated. Emmett and Marlene left the car and walked up to the woman. Marlene thought she must have weighed 250 pounds; her upper arms looked the same size as Marlene's thighs. Her hair made a long, dirty-blond braid down her back; her eyes were small, almost colorless, and wary. She wore denim cutoffs and a pink, sleeveless sweatshirt with a picture of Tweety bird on it.

"How're y'doing, Betty," said Emmett.

"Fair," said the woman. Marlene noted she continued to grip the ball

bat. "I'm sorry about your loss, Emmett, but you know my brother didn't have nothin' at all to do with that."

"I know that. That's why we're here. This here's Marlene Ciampi from New York City. She's a lawyer. She wants to help get Mose out of jail."

The woman stared at Marlene unbelievingly. "We can't pay nothing."

"There's no need to pay, Mrs. Washburn," Marlene said. "I'm taking your brother's case pro bono."

"Who?"

"It means I'm working for free."

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Why'd you want to do that?"

"Because Rose Heeney was a friend of mine. Lizzie played with my kids. I have two boys her age. Someone killed them and I want them to pay for it, and the first thing we need to do to make that happen is getting your brother free of the false charge that he killed them."

Betty Washburn flicked her eyes rapidly between Marlene and Emmett, and Marlene could see how difficult it was for her to accept anything a stranger said at face value. Finally, her features relaxed a trifle, as did her grip on the ball bat. "Well, you all better come on in, then."

The house was cooler than the yard, but musty. The ceilings were low and made of pressboard. Everything in the house was old and worn. It was clean, though, the furniture and floors rubbed down past the finish so that their substance was slightly ground away. They sat in the kitchen around a wooden table covered by sticky lace-pattern plastic. Betty Washburn served them thin, oversweet iced tea in jelly glasses. Marlene explained that before she could do anything for Mose, she had to be named formally as his attorney. She asked whether Betty was his official guardian.

"No'm. He don't need no guardian. Mose, he kept to hisself and never hurt nor bothered no one. He got his playthings and his animals. He's real gentle with my kids. Sometimes he takes him long walks in the woods. Tell you the truth, I'm more scared of what other folks might do to him than what he might do."

"I understand. Tell me, has Mose ever been examined by a psychologist?"'

"Yeah, way back, when Maw first noticed he wasn't right. We took him upstate to this school? You know, for slows. They said he wasn't going to ever get much more'n five years old."

"Do you have any papers relating to that?"

"There was some in a box. I took it in when Maw passed. I guess they's somewheres around."

A search was organized, a dusty cardboard box appeared, and after rummaging, Marlene came up with a brown envelope containing a paper with several paragraphs of psychological bureaucratese pertaining to Moses Welch's mental abilities. She stuck it in her bag.

"Okay, the next thing is, we'll have to go down to the jail and get him to sign a paper. Have you talked with his lawyer at all?"

Mrs. Washburn sniffed. "Him? Ernie Poole ain't no more use'n tits on a boar hog."

"So I hear. Maybe I can persuade him to be more useful. Anyway, we need to go see your brother."

"What, now?"

"Unless you like having him sit in jail."

Mrs. Washburn seemed to think about that for a slow minute. Then she said, "Well, let's go do it."

She rose up, she grabbed a white patent leather handbag, and strode out of the kitchen. They followed her into the house's main room. In it were a sagging couch covered by a tan chenille bedspread, a green La-Z-Boy, a couple of rickety tables, a standard lamp with a paper shade, a wooden chest covered by a plastic doily, and a shining thirty-two-inch color television set. Two little girls were sitting on the couch watching cartoon people fight each other. They were dressed in worn tops and shorts, and each had her blond hair in a bowl cut, which Marlene was sure had been done in the kitchen with an actual bowl. Mrs. Washburn barked, "Girls, get on your shoes. We're goin' to town to see Uncle Mose."