Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"What changed your minds?"

"Oh, you know, new governor, new broom. You need to put your seat belt on now." Hendricks sat in the seat opposite and affixed his own. Karp looked out the window. They were flying at what he estimated to be fifteen hundred feet, over ground that resembled green corrugated cardboard.

"Are we landing?"

"No, but we'll be heading over Robbens any minute now. At this altitude we sometimes have to use evasive maneuvers."

"Evasive from what?"

"Ground fire," replied Hendricks blandly. "We have state markings. A lot of folks down there don't like official kinds of airplanes flying over them." He looked at Karp innocently. "Unless it makes you nervous. I could tell the pilot to get upstairs again."

"Not at all. I think everyone should be subjected to antiaircraft fire at least once."

Hendricks nodded, his face neutral. He pointed out the window. "Okay, you can see mining from here. We're still over Mingo. That's Mateawan down there. You heard of that, haven't you?"

"Yes. That's a coal mine?" It was a smudge of black and ocher the size of a town, intermittently veiled by greasy smoke, threaded by railways.

"Yeah, a Peabody operation, I think. In a bit, we should be coming up on… yeah, look there, see that big flat area?"

Karp did. It was a huge, perfectly flat oval, looking unlikely amid the rippled hills, as if God had dropped a soccer field for giants on top of the mountains.

"What is it?"

"It used to be a mountain called Thatcher. They chopped it flat and dumped the spoil in the hollers all around it, and smoothed it out and planted it with grass."

"They can do that?"

"Oh, that's a prize exhibit of reclamation. They fixed that one. Just wait, we're coming up on something real interesting."

Karp thought the interesting thing might be a controlled flight into terrain. A mountain was looming in front of them, whose top looked to be higher than the altitude of the plane. He stared at the approaching green wall; out of the corner of his eye he saw that Hendricks was watching him. A little mountain-state aviation initiation, then, he thought, and made himself yawn. When he could count individual trees on the mountainside and distinguish the very one upon which the King Air was about to impale itself, the aircraft twitched its wing up and zoomed through a break in the mountain wall. Karp thought he could see squirrels running for cover as the towering forest flew past.

"This is Conway Gap, and that's Majestic Number One," said Hendricks.

It looked like something had taken a huge bite out of the rear half of the mountain, leaving an orange and black earth pit that looked large enough to swallow New York City. Orange creeks ran off the sore and disappeared into the surrounding timberland.

"That's what they look like when you don't clean 'em up, and Majestic don't."

"Don't they have to?"

"Oh, it's the law all right, but try and make them. There's court cases been going on for ten years on this pit alone. See, what they do is dump the spoil from the hole down into the hollers. They bury everything, homes, farms, graveyards, whole little towns. Of course, the people've moved out before then. The mining ruins the water first, tears up the water tables and kills the creeks. And that's what you got left. You all have your coal, though. This here's downtown McCullensburg."

The plane dropped even lower and sped over a group of low buildings and a green square with a golden-domed courthouse in it.

"Not much to it at this speed," said Hendricks. "On the other hand, there ain't much to it on the ground neither." The plane circled the town twice, while the trooper pointed out the hills and highways, scars of coal patches, and the coffee stream of the Guyandotte River.

"We're passing over the murder house there."

Karp pressed his face against the glass and looked down with interest. A yard, a roof, a red truck in the driveway. Marlene's maybe. Then it was gone.

"One more beauty spot and then we'll put the pedal down and get us home," said Hendricks. The plane rose, rising with the curve of the mountain he had identified as Hampden. The top of the mountain was gone, leaving a great mustard-and-black scab upon which yellow trucks and bulldozers rolled. It looked like a sandbox occupied by a child unusually well supplied with Tonka toys. In the center was what appeared to be a white, rectangular, five-story office building.

"Majestic Number Two. There's the dragline," said Hendricks, answering Karp's unspoken question about what a five-story office building was doing in the middle of a mine. "They use a Bucyrus 2570, maybe the largest shovel in the world, although I hear they got one even bigger out in Wyoming."

"That thing moves?"

"Oh, yeah. It never stops, day and night. Every scoop is near four hundred tons. Those trucks down there? Cat 797s. Over six hundred tons fully loaded."

"I'm impressed," said Karp. "Every little boy's dream."

"Uh-huh. The reason I'm showing you this is to give you some idea. You want to bury a body around here, you don't have to go out at night with a spade and a lantern."

A few minutes later the plane heaved and rolled onto its side, climbing. Karp's belly lurched and he grabbed the seat arms.

"What was that?"

"Oh, Rudy probably saw a flash. He's real nervous when he flies over weed."

"Marijuana?"

"Yeah. It's getting as big as coal around here. We go down and chop it back some from time to time, but there're lots of hollers and not enough of us."

The plane climbed rapidly. Hendricks loosened his seat belt. He grinned. "Wild and wonderful. We'll be down in twenty, twenty-five minutes."

As they were. The trip to the capitol was swift, in a convoy of two state police vehicles. Karp and Hendricks rode in the back of one of them, with the captain pointing out the features of what looked to Karp like a nice little city on the banks of a not-too-clean river. The capitol itself was the usual massive gray-stone, gilded-domed structure. The governor was meeting them in his office there, instead of the one at the governor's mansion, in the interests of privacy, Hendricks explained.

"In case I piss on the rug."

"We're careful folks hereabouts."

"I might, though. I never met a governor before. The excitement…"

Hendricks laughed and opened a walnut-paneled door.

They were ushered in immediately. The office was modern and not impressively large, much like its occupant. Roy Orne was a small man with excellent barbering and a peppy manner. A young woman, trim in a fawn suit, her blond hair in a neat bun, was introduced as "my aide" Cheryl Oggert. Shakes all around, seats, offer of coffee, soft drinks, declined, the usual banter. Governor Orne asked how was the flight; Karp commented on the abundance of mountains. Laughs.

Time to turn serious: Orne asked if Karp had read the binders. What did he think?

"I think you got the wrong man. I think the people down there botched the investigation."

"Incompetence, do you think, or malevolence?" asked the governor.

"Hard to tell. Could be either. Based on the other binder, I would tend to bet on the latter. Otherwise it was a really dumb investigation. In any case their suspect is a joke."

"What does your wife think?"

Karp was taken aback. The governor had certainly done his homework. "Well, clearly, she believes her client is innocent," Karp said carefully. "As to malevolence, there seems to be plenty to spare. An attempt was made on her life the other day."

The governor looked grave, and a glance flicked between him and Hendricks. "Well. That's awful. Was she hurt?"

"No. Marlene is hard to hurt. Experts have tried. Of course, she'll be out of there once I get there, provided you want me. Speaking of which, why do you?"