Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Not at all. We just think that there remains a connection open between people who have died and people who're still alive, and there's an unseen world that can touch us and that's just as real as the one we can see. It's pretty complex and we're not encouraged to speculate about it in detail, or to try to penetrate the barrier. But it happens, there's contact."

"You don't think it's simpler to call that kind of stuff hallucinations?"

"Yes, if your purpose is to defend simplistic materialism. But that's a choice; it can't be proven scientifically one way or the other."

"But Occam's razor-"

"Yes, yes," she said impatiently, "Occam's razor, don't multiply entities beyond necessity, but that leaves open the question of what's necessary. William of Occam was a medieval churchman. He probably thought belief in the real presence was necessary, and certainly that God was. The bottom line here is that you've had an experience. You can call it an hallucination, which means that you consider that your brain is a machine with a screw loose, and that your sister is essentially erased from being, or you can believe that she still has her being in a state unimaginably different, but still real, and that your experience was also real, as real as the bed you're lying on."

"How do you know I'm lying on a bed?" he asked.

"Projection. I'm lying on a bed, so…"

"Gee, we're in bed together already, and we've barely met."

To his relief, after a brief pause, she laughed. "Yes, I'm such a slut, but I can't seem to help it. Men with their insatiable demands are ever at my heels."

He laughed, too, and after a moment said, "So, will I ever see you again?"

"In real life? Yeah, we both go to school in Boston. We could probably arrange it."

"I mean before that."

"I'm working on it," she said.

"Mr. Karp?I' m Wade Hendricks," said the man in the airport lounge. "From the governor's office?" Karp shook the proffered hand. "I'll be flying down to Charleston with you. We figured I could brief you on the way."

Hendricks was almost as tall as Karp, but rangier, and although he wore a blue suit, a certain stiffness about his bearing suggested to Karp that he had spent a lot of time in a uniform. Hovering behind him was another man who was actually in uniform, the green of the West Virginia State Police. "Trooper Blake will take your bag," said Hendricks, and Trooper Blake did. They all walked out of the gate onto the blazing tarmac and up a boarding ladder into a white twin-engined propeller aircraft. The plane held eight large, comfortable first-class-style seats, with the center four set opposite each other, so that the people sitting in them could converse face-to-face. Hendricks directed Karp to one of these and went forward through a curtain. Trooper Blake entered and sat in the rear. A uniformed woman came out from behind the curtain, closed the exit door, and popped behind the curtain again. The engines started with a cough and a whine. Hendricks reappeared, smiled at Karp, and buckled himself into the seat facing Karp. The plane taxied onto the runway.

"Is there a movie?" asked Karp.

"No, sorry," said Hendricks. "I got a copy of Wonderful West Virginia Magazine you could read, though."

"Maybe later. How long is the flight?"

"Well, it's four hundred and twenty-five miles as the crow flies, and that's usually about an hour and a half, but we've modified our flight plan to swing southwest, so you can see Robbens County from the air, low and slow."

"Will I be looking for murder clues?"

Hendricks looked startled for a moment and then registered that Karp had made a light remark. A slow grin spread across his face. "No, except maybe indirectly. The governor thought you might like to see what a strip mine looks like from the air, and also get an idea of the geography of the place. You being from away. You don't mind?"

"Oh, not at all. This is pretty exciting for me anyway. I don't get to fly much in private planes."

"No? Heck, most of the folks I see getting in the private jets and all look like lawyers."

"You might be right," Karp said. "I guess I'm not that kind of lawyer."

The engines roared, the plane sped down the runway and lifted into the air. Hendricks expounded on the virtues of the King Air 350, its comfort, its safety, its economy, its usefulness to the governor of a mediumsized state. Karp was not much interested in this palaver, but found the man worth study. Not the kind of face you saw much of in New York, but oddly familiar nonetheless. Karp recalled faces like that from the Saturday-matinee movies of his childhood-ten cartoons and two westerns-the faces on the people who hung around with Randolph Scott and Hoot Gibson, lean cowboys, the classic American stock, as alien as Martians to the little Italians and Jews yelling on the plush seats. He had the pale eyes, the small, straight nose, the lipless mouth, the strawlike hair. Karp saw him in a white hat. And a six-gun.

In fact, as he saw when Hendricks released his seat belt and stretched, there was a six-gun.

"You're a cop?" Karp asked, indicating the weapon.

Hendricks glanced down at his waist, as if he had forgotten it was there.

"Yeah, captain, state police. I should have said. Fact is, I'll be going down to Robbens with you."

"If I get the job."

"As far as I know, that's a formality, unless you call the governor a son of a bitch and piss on the carpets."

"I'll try to remember that. How did you get picked for this?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Hendricks said with a soft grin. "I was in charge of the security detail during the campaign, and we found we got along, and when he won it, well, he told me to stay on. Besides security, he's asked me to do a couple of chores for him the past year or so in the criminal justice line, and when this came up, he said I was it." Hendricks paused. "I'm from there originally. He thought it could help."

"You're from Robbens County?"

"Yes, sir. Coal-patch kid. When I was ten, my daddy sat me on his knee and made me swear on the Bible I'd never go down in the mines."

"And you kept your word."

"I did, too. When I was seventeen, I joined the Marine Corps. I did a hitch in the embassy guards and then my next hitch I got into the military police. Daddy was sick by then with the black lung, so I got out of the service and joined the staties, so's I could watch over him. After he passed, I stayed on. I liked the work, although, between you and me, I don't much care for the political end of it, which you have to if you're rising up. I'd rather just cop."

"A man after my own heart," said Karp. "But there's politics involved in this thing, isn't there? Or your governor wouldn't have reached out to a complete stranger."

Hendricks dropped his eyes, a shadow of unease crossing his face. "Well, I guess you'll have to discuss that with Governor Orne." With that, he reached under his seat and pulled out a fat, blue plastic portfolio with the state seal printed on it in gold. Handing it across to Karp, he said, "Here's all the information we have on the Heeney murder to date, plus we got some background material in there about Robbens you might be interested in. Why don't you read through it, and after you're done we'll talk." He stood up and dropped a large folding table down in front of Karp, then nodded and went to the rear of the plane, where he talked quietly to Trooper Blake while Karp examined the contents of the portfolio.

This comprised two three-inch loose-leaf binders, one containing all the documents relevant to the state's case against Moses Welch, and the other labeled "Robbens County: Historical Analysis and Situation Report." This latter had a governor's office seal on the cover, but no attribution or author. The Heeney case binder, neatly tabbed, began with a letter from the state's attorney, Hawes, to the attorney general, summarizing his case. Karp was particularly interested in the bloody sneaker, the finding of which he already knew about from Marlene. The lab had made a good DNA match on it and found that the stain on its sole was Rose Heeney's blood. Hawes had tried to put the best face on this discovery by postulating that the sneakers had actually been worn by the defendant while committing the crime. The boots must have been in the Heeneys' bedroom during the time of the murders, been splattered there, and stolen by the defendant. Karp snorted and paged through the data, trying to find any indication that Hawes had determined, whether through a search for receipts or checking records, whether anyone in the family had purchased such boots, or even some indication of what all the Heeneys' shoe sizes were. Nothing; nor had Hawes seemingly made any effort to determine the provenance of those boots, the only piece of evidence he had linking his suspect to the crime. Karp couldn't wait to meet Mr. Hawes.