Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"The mom is always the last to know," said Marlene. "Oh, shit! That stupid girl!"

"Calm down, Marlene," said Karp. "She was worried, she came, we'll deal with it. Why don't you call the Heeney place and talk to her?"

"Oh, I'll talk to her all right," said Marlene, and departed for the suite's bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

"Look, something's happening!" said Oggert.

The others turned their attention to the television. Karp cranked up the volume.

Marlene came out of the bedroom. "I can't get through on the phone. What's going on?"

The screen showed Pogue in the cab of the D8. A plume of black smoke shot from its stack as he revved the engine. The voice of the TV reporter was strained and barely intelligible over the roaring of the giant earthmover. Pogue was heading toward the line of helmeted, flakjacketed deputies standing behind sawhorses placed around the jail entranceway. The scene rolled and jumped as the cameraman ran alongside the great treads.

"That's a hell of a machine," said Karp.

"Yes, sir, it is," said Hendricks. "It weighs forty tons. It'd go through that jailhouse like a knife through pie." The ten-foot-high blade of the Cat edged ever closer to the sawhorses, moving slowly but inexorably. The deputies had gas masks on now. Their shotguns now pointed at the Cat and the crowd around it. Karp could make Swett out, unmasked, talking into a radio. A sawhorse crashed over. The deputies sighted their weapons. Swett was handed a bullhorn by a deputy and started to talk into it, but the soundman from the TV station was not in position to pick up what he said. Karp and the others could imagine it though. Pogue had his bullhorn, too, and said something back about release Emmett Heeney and we'll talk.

Then the door to the jail opened, and a gray-haired man in a dark suit walked out, carrying a briefcase. He shouldered through the line of deputies, stepped over the toppled sawhorse, and climbed up onto the yellow snout of the D8. The soundman was already poking his furry sausage out on its pole, so they were able to hear: "… it, Willie, turn this damn thing off and give me that bullhorn. They are letting him go. Now give me that damn thing before someone gets hurt." The engine sound cut off.

"Who the hell's that?" asked Hendricks.

"It's Poole!" cried Marlene.

The camera got its range and zoomed in a little. It was indeed Ernie Poole, who now raised the bullhorn to his mouth and gave a speech. He said who he was, and that he was representing Emmett Heeney. He said that the cops had tried to frame Mose Welch and he had got Mose Welch off free, and now they were trying to frame Emmett, and he would get Emmett off, too. There was no evidence worth looking at against him. He said that he guaranteed that the charges against Emmett would be dropped, unless they wanted to kill him, too, in which case you were at liberty to push the courthouse over. Laughter. But you had to go home now and move this equipment away, too, because what they want is a riot with gunfire, so that they can claim that a stray shot killed Emmett Heeney. Are you going to let them do that? Noooo! the crowd moaned. Poole said he'd applied for bail, and that Judge Bledsoe was inclined to grant it, but he'd said that no one would be released until order was restored, because old Judge Bledsoe did not want anyone to think he was acting out of fear of a mob. Poole said that the judge was an honest man, not like some of the judges we've had around here, and that he would see justice done, and now he was going to go back into the jail and sit with Emmett until they were both released. Vast cheering from the crowd, and in the room grins and applause.

Poole got down from the Cat, and the producer shifted to the on-scene guy, who started to tell everyone what they had just seen. Karp muted the sound. He looked at Marlene. "Way to go," he said softly, so that no one else heard.

Lucy drove the Land Cruiser down the Heeneys' long drive, smiled and waved at the state trooper, rolled slowly through the gauntlet of newsies, who pointed cameras and microphones at her and yelled questions. Does he think his brother did it? How does he feel? That's what they always asked. How do you feel now that your kid's been eaten by the bear, your mother hacked to pieces by a maniac? She thought it was because everyone felt dead inside and thought they could jumpstart their own withered hearts by some transfusion of pain from the victims of a catastrophe. Surely they felt something. It was a kind of vampirism; maybe that's why tales and movies about vampires were so popular just now.

Past the media encampment she gave it the gas, and once the vans and cars had vanished in the rearview, she called, "You can come out now." The boys were clapping and giggling as Dan climbed out from the rear compartment, where he had been concealed by a beach blanket and Magog the dog. He sat in the rear, next to Giancarlo.

"How far to the border?" Dan asked.

Lucy met his eyes in her mirror. "Not far but the Nazis are everywhere."

Giancarlo said, "You have dog slime in your hair."

Dan touched his head, examined his wet finger, and touched it to the boy's nose, provoking a giggling battle.

Lucy said, "If you two can't behave back there, there's going to be no ice cream."

"He started," whined Dan.

"Are we there yet?" whined Giancarlo.

"Where are we going anyway," Zak asked.

"To see Mom and Dad," said Lucy, to a chorus of boos.

"We want to go to Six Flags," said Dan.

"She never takes us anywhere fun," said Giancarlo. "She's terrifically mean, too. She scratches us with her nails."

"Do you like her?" asked Zak.

"Yeah," said his brother, "you kissed her on the mouth."

"I did," said Dan, "but it was yucky. I'm never going to do that again."

"If you get married, you have to," Giancarlo said knowledgeably. "Girls love it."

"Well, if that's so, I'm never getting married," said Dan.

This nonsense continued during the entire drive to Four Oaks, which lay west of McCullensburg. The traffic leading into town was still heavy, although it seemed to be flowing smoothly again. News vans were still in evidence around the courthouse.

Outside of town, the countryside was rolling hills, and more of what Lucy thought of as country. They passed fields with black-and-white cows in them, cud-chewing and stupid in the shade of big trees, and once a roan horse running across a green meadow.

"Pretty area," Lucy remarked. "I didn't expect this."

"South county," Dan said. "The seam gets thin here and it's still mostly agricultural. It's where the richer folks live."

He leaned forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, near her neck. "You're looking for a big sign on the right."

This was nice, she thought, a tiny sliver of normality: driving along a country road, a man with a warm hand on your shoulder, a couple of kids, going to visit Mom and Dad in the country. An exotic treat, like smoking opium would be to regular people. She wished he would keep his hand there, she wished she had the nerve to raise her own hand and cover his.

Which then removed itself and pointed. "There it is."

A certain chaos then ensued: greetings, fond looks, stern looks, arrangements made for sleeping quarters for the new arrivals. Gog came bounding out to sniff Lucy and the boys, and especially Magog, who curled her lip at him. He was twice her size, but the strange politics of dogland made her dominant, except when in heat. Lucy found that Four Oaks had more or less been taken over by the murder investigation, and it was agreed that Dan should stay there until things settled down, and Emmett, too, after he was released on bail. Marlene was cool to Lucy, while doting on the boys, which Lucy did not much mind. She saw the eye play that transpired when Marlene saw Dan and her together, and Lucy could see the wheels spin. Her mother did not like plots, except when she was in charge of them. Beneath the surface jollity the atmosphere was tense at the lodge because, Lucy suspected, of the difficulty of guarding the secret that now lay at the heart of the investigation. Her father greeted her distractedly and soon went off to confer with the cop, Hendricks.