Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"Yes, I should be sadder about his misfortune, but somehow… anyway, then I will whistle up Captain Hendricks and go bring in Mr. Floyd. But no catfish dinner for Mr. Floyd. He's already had his catfish."

George Floyd did not dwell in a mobile home like so many of the people who employed him, but in a large, distinctly stationary two-story brick home on nicely kept grounds in the southeastern, more genteel regions of the county. It was hard to find a place in Robbens County unscarred by coal, but a good number of people had persevered, it seemed, and the community of Peale was the result. Peale was ten miles south of McCullensburg on Route 11. Here were located the substantial estates of the coal barons, the Killebrews and the Hergewillers, as well as the (somewhat) less imposing homes of the union grandees.

Armed with warrants for arrest and search, Karp arrived at Floyd's house in the evening, accompanied by Captain Hendricks, two Blazerloads of green-clad troopers, and a crime-scene van from the state lab at Charleston. The frightened housekeeper tried to keep them out, but was bullied out of the way with threats and waved papers. Some forty minutes later, Floyd himself pulled up in his Chrysler. Karp watched Hendricks arrest him in his own living room, while troopers dismantled his home. It was a good arrest, the rights read out properly, no violence, or rather, no obvious violence. Karp had, of course, heard the expression if looks could kill, but had not often seen a demo so vivid as the one he got from George Floyd, who kept looking at him as Hendricks snapped the handcuffs on. Floyd's face had turned an interesting shade of lavender, tending to scarlet along the cheekbones. His pale eyes bulged and his lips were drawn back over his big yellow teeth, as if preparing to rend living flesh. He didn't say anything dramatic, as they do in the movies, neither protesting his innocence nor promising dire consequences.

After Floyd was driven off, Karp hung around to watch the search. Troopers carried out boxes of papers and one locked four-drawer filing cabinet.

"Find any guns?" he asked a technician.

"Yes, sir. Rifles, shotguns, a couple of semiautomatics."

"Not a.38?"

"Not yet. We're still looking, though."

Karp nodded and the man went out of the house. After a moment Karp followed him. Puffy clouds had appeared, bringing a gentle mountain breeze. It had turned cooler, too, nice weather for strolling around the grounds. The sun was behind the mountains, but the day still hung on in the long twilight of high summer, still plenty light enough to find things. Karp strolled, observing men probing flower beds, going over the lawn with metal detectors. The man he had spoken to and another man were in the center of the backyard, inspecting a birdbath made from some black, glossy stone. Karp wandered over and inspected it, too.

"That's a birdbath," said Karp.

Karp's pal smiled. "Yes, sir. It's a birdbath someone moved not too long ago. Lookee here." He knelt and indicated a tiny width of naked earth forming a crescent around the base.

The man addressed his colleague. "Bob, let's get the digital over here."

"Wise move," said Karp. "There might be something under it. Unless an extremely large robin used it."

"I'd almost rather believe that than that the man buried a murder weapon in his own backyard."

"Oh, about now I'd believe nearly anything," said Karp.

The other man came back with a fancy Sony digital camera and began to click it. Karp helped the technician lift the bath proper off its pedestal. When the base column was rolled away, they saw a round patch of naked earth. The technician probed it with a trowel.

"Was that a clink?" said Karp.

The photographer snapped away as the trowel uncovered a revolver wrapped in a Bi-Lo clear plastic bag.

"You think that's it?" asked the technician.

"Would you bet against it?"

The man laughed. "Not me."

"Me neither," said Karp. "How long will it take you to generate prints of these pictures?"

"Couple of minutes. We got a laptop and an ink-jet in the van."

"Everything's up-to-date in West Virginia," said Karp. "I'm impressed."

The man gave him a grin and went off. The other technician lifted the weapon. "Looks like a Smith.38, three-inch barrel."

"Any chance of prints?" Karp asked.

"Well, sir, we'll check, but I kind of doubt it. This puppy's been in the water. It's got rust on it, look here. Probably down in the mud, too. You can see it stuck to the cylinder."

Karp could. It was greenish and it stank of chemistry.

Karp drove back to town with Hendricks, followed by their motorcade. Karp was silent, so silent that Captain Hendricks broke a life-long habit and opened a conversation.

"Something wrong? I thought it went pretty good."

"Oh, no, it went great. I'm thinking about that pistol."

"It's on its way to Charleston with results asap."

"Right. I'm assuming that we'll find it's the gun that killed Lizzie. If it is… it doesn't make any sense. According to Bo Cade, his cousin Wayne used it on Lizzie. According to your technician, someone tossed it into the water. If both of those things are true, how in hell did it migrate to George Floyd's birdbath?"

"Floyd took it from Wayne on the night of the murder?"

"Unlikely in the first place, but suppose he did. Then he throws it into some lake and then thinks, hey, the bottom of a river isn't that good of a hiding place, I think I'll… duh!… dredge it up and bury it on my property, and I'll stick a birdbath on it, because the cops never think to look under birdbaths."

"Criminals do stupid things," said Hendricks.

"Yeah, they do. And to tell you the truth, the first thing I thought when we found it was something like that. This whole murder has been amateur hour anyway, and I thought, it's the impunity. They never thought there'd be a serious investigation, so they were sloppy. George probably had it in his bedside drawer, and then when we picked up the Cade boys, he said uh-oh and shoved it under the birdbath. I'd still believe that, if it wasn't for the mud. That gun was at the bottom for a while, in slimy, polluted mud. What I'd guess is that the boys threw it into a local body of water sometime after the murder, and someone saw them do it and picked it up and sometime later buried it where we found it. Someone was trying to implicate Floyd."

"But… Floyd is implicated," Hendricks protested. "By Cade. So…"

"Yeah, so why go through the trouble of framing a guilty man?"

"Unless Floyd did it himself, to mess up any case against him."

"Yeah, that crossed my mind, too, but if you don't mind me saying so, that's a little too deep of a game for Robbens County. In any case, it tends to cloud the value of our presumed murder weapon. It's a complexity, and I like it simple. According to Bo Cade, Floyd never had the pistol anyway. The whole thing ranks way up there among stories I would prefer not to tell a jury."

Upon arrival in town, Karp went immediately to see Stan Hawes. "How'd you do?" Hawes asked.

"Found the murder weapon. It was under a birdbath."

"A black birdbath? Shiny?" Karp nodded; Hawes snorted. "That's kind of ironic."

"Why? This is a famous birdbath?"

"Oh, they had a testimonial for George a couple of years ago, fifteen years of distinguished service to the union. It's carved out of slate from Majestic Number One."

"That's interesting." Karp told him about the mud and the rust. "It adds to the theory that some third party was trying to make a point. How'd you make out with Earl?"

"Oh, Earl rolled right over when I confronted him with Bo's statement. He got all red up about it. According to him, it was Bo that shotgunned the Heeneys. He was just along for the ride. Confirms that Wayne did the little girl, though, and that Floyd was there. Also confirms the payoff, twenty-five hundred cash to each. He spent his fixing up that truck. Back to the gun: This is not good for the good guys, is it?"