Susan opened the door. She was in street clothes again. I don’t know why I expected some kind of uniform, but I admit to a degree of disappointment. This time, she had no wordplay for me. She nodded at me and I at her and then she stepped aside silently and I headed into the big sitting room where Temple was waiting, her face in her hands. I stood there until she looked up at me. She’d been crying, but now her face was composed and angry. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, and her blouse was torn a little at the right sleeve and the skin was torn, too, and bleeding. The way the light was, for the first time I saw that the black stone on her finger was a slice of coal, cut into a disk and stamped with an elegant cursive “L.” There might not have been any pictures of the old man in the room, but he was there with us nevertheless, along with the evidence of Temple’s grief. There was a mess in the corner, broken glass and an overturned tray and what I guessed were the remains of breakfast. A few of the curtains were torn down.
Temple looked torn down, too. She said, “It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.”
“I can’t think of anything that is.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“I sure don’t.”
She slapped the tops of her legs twice and stood suddenly and walked to a mini bar I hadn’t noticed before. It was roughly the size of a small yacht, so I’m not sure how I missed it. She took down two heavy crystal glasses and a bottle of something brown and filled them, neat. She drank one of them and refilled it. She picked up both glasses and walked over and set one in front of me and returned to her seat with the other.
“You don’t have to drink it,” she said. “But at least now I’m not drinking alone.”
“Maybe you could have one with Susan instead.”
“Susan doesn’t drink.”
I sighed and pushed the glass a little farther away. I didn’t want to get too close to it. “Mrs. Beckett, where is your husband?”
“Temple,” she said, “I want to be called Temple. And I honestly don’t know.”
“Dammit, if you’re playing some kind of game . . .”
She said again, “I honestly don’t know.” She sat there a moment, quite still, taking in her new reality. It had closed up around her all of a sudden, like a steel trap. Life had a way of doing that. You can plan for it, plan against it, hoard your shekels, stockpile bullets or bombs or quivers of arrow. And then life happens, and you blunder right into it like a dope. Temple shuddered and drained her second drink and said, “You . . . You saw him?”
I’d seen him. She nodded her head in jerks.
“You think I should be crying, don’t you?” she said.
“I don’t think anything,” I said. “People mourn in their own way.”
“That’s just something to say.”
“Sure.”
She said, “My relationship with my father wasn’t good. I guess you noticed.”
“I don’t know.”
She thought I was just being polite and she didn’t like it. She frowned at me but pressed on. “I don’t think he thought much of me. I’m pretty sure he didn’t. And I know I often didn’t think much of him. He was more or less a stranger to me when I was a girl, and after my mom died . . .” She looked up at me and shrugged and left it at that. She said, “Your father was something once, wasn’t he?”
“I guess he was.”
“Did you get along with him?”
“You have to know a person first to find that out, and I never did.”
“He was distant?”
“He was a sonofabitch.”
She didn’t have anything else to ask about my father. Just as well. She turned her eyes to look at the door. “The police left just before I called you. They’re going to post a patrol around the house, day and night. Cops with guns. They think I’m in danger.”
“You might be,” I said. “Maybe it’d be best if you went somewhere else. Stayed with family or friends for a while.”
“They seemed to think so, too,” she said. “But I’m not going. Besides, there isn’t anybody.”
“What about Jonathan?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“A hotel then?”
“You’re kidding, ri—”
“Or maybe just get out of town.”
“I’m not going.”
That was that. I wanted to argue with her about the wisdom of sticking around, but I’ll be honest, I was weary and in no mood for arguing. Trouble does that to you, I was finding.
“And you say you’ve had no word from Guy?”
“None.”
“But you know what he was working on before he disappeared. You knew before and didn’t say anything,” I said. “I wish you had.”
“I know.”
“You told me that he and Mays were working on a piece about the meth trade?”
“I think so.”
I threw up my hands. “Temple . . .”
“Dammit, I think so. I don’t know for sure. Guy and I . . . Guy and I didn’t talk much about his work. I’ll be honest with you . . .”
“Never too late to try something new.”
She ignored me.
“I’ll be honest with you. Guy wasn’t actually living here when he disappeared.”
“He wasn’t living here?”
“Not actually.”
“Not actually?”
“No.”
I thought about it. I said, “With Mays?”
“How did you know?”
“Just a guess. He doesn’t have any family, and if it were another woman I doubt you’d be mentioning it now at all.”
“Probably not.”
I said, “Their story, the meth story. Who were they looking at?”
“First, I need you to understand something. The pension. Your pension. My father was killed before he could secure it. That kind of thing takes time, and he didn’t have the time.”
I just stood there looking at her. I knew what was coming. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. It was like blundering onto the tracks and turning around and realizing the train was bearing down on you, too late.
I said, “But you do.”
She stepped to me and pressed her hands on me and said, “But I do. And I will, Slim. You’ve got to believe me. I do and I can and I will. I own the Knight Hawk now. And there’s only one thing I want.”
“Let me guess.”
“Find who did this.”
“You know,” I said, “funny thing is, I was on my way to your father’s to resign.”
“I don’t blame you. But you won’t quit now. You don’t strike me as the type who likes getting jerked around.”
I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” But damned if she wasn’t right. I was involved and that’s all there was to it. I thought for the hundredth time of Round-Face and his promises of violence. I thought for the millionth time of that pension. If there were going to be dead bodies, the least that could happen is I could get that damn pension. I said, “Before I can press forward—assuming I can—you’ll have to tell me who your husband and Mays were looking at.”
“A lot of people, at least at first, but one name kept coming up. Jump. Jump something. Something like that.”
“Jump Down?”
She said, “That’s it. You know him?”
“Yeah, I know him. Everybody knows him. And once again I’m changing my mind about this mess. Jump Down, he’s a vampire. Actually, he’s worse than a vampire because he’s real. Mrs. Beckett . . .”
“Temple.”
“Temple, I’m not sure what you want from me. Even if I did know, I’m not sure there’s anything I could do to help you. Fact is, I’m pretty sure there’s not. I can tell you this, though. If your husband and Mays were looking to tangle with Jump Down and his crew, you really are in danger. Those people are killers. They’re the kind of killers that other killers are afraid of. You should tell the police everything you know and let them handle it, because now that I know what’s going on here I am taking my family and running for the hills.”
I got up and turned to go.
“Wait, Slim,” she said. “It’s worse than that.”
I shook my head.
She lifted one of her eyebrows. She said, “No?”
“No. Because nothing’s worse than that.”
“It is. It’s worse,” she insisted. “Do you know a man named Roy Galligan?”
“I know of him. His name’s coming up a lot these days.”
“He’s . . . he was my father’s greatest business rival.”
“I know all that,” I said. “He owns the derelict mine up the hill there above your house.”
“And the working mine across the gap from it.”
“The King Coal,” I said. I knew it. My pal Jeep Mabry worked there.
Temple looked at me with a grim mouth and said, “Galligan’s involved.”
“Involved? What do you mean? Involved in what?”
She said, “Slim, Roy Galligan has got his hand in the meth trade at the Knight Hawk. He’s in it up to his scrawny neck. That’s what Guy and Dwayne were working on—the connection between Jump Down and Galligan. I think my father found out what was going on and confronted Galligan, and Galligan had him murdered.”
Like the late Matthew Luster, Roy Galligan was an Illinois native and a true son of Little Egypt. It makes a man proud, having homegrown villains like that. His grandfather founded the first coking plant in Stotler County, and his father was such a big shot that he turned down pleas from both political parties to run for governor. On his twenty-first birthday, Roy’s daddy had given him his first coal mine, a Union County scratchback, and he’d been in mining ever since.
Sometime in the early sixties, at the height of his industry, Galligan managed to cobble together a six-outfit string; it was too small to compete with the big conglomerates but more than enough to keep himself on the map. In ’78, he made a bundle selling out to Amax, OBC, and Zeigler. He kept the King Coal and one or two of the smaller shops where he could mine coal and be left alone to run things his way without anyone paying him much mind. It was a hobby, I guess, or more likely it was just in his blood.
Those were good days for Galligan, but lately the pendulum of his happy fortune had swung the other way. Mounting operational costs and environmental laws, which guys like Roy hated more than they hated labor unions, were slowly bleeding him out of the business. The King Coal wasn’t the last small outfit in Little Egypt, but in the past twenty years or so its breed had become increasingly rare. Pretty soon they’d be extinct, and then the mining would be done by remote control, by faraway people who wouldn’t give two shits how they left the land, people who knew how to use the federal courts to their best advantage. Even with the sorts of restrictions most outfits had to work under, a federal suit could be tied up until all the complainants were in the cold, hard ground, and their problems passed on to a younger, less refractory generation, one that’d been taught to live with disappointment.
So he was something of a wounded animal, and if he really was involved in this business, I thought, I’d have to run a lot farther than the hills until I felt safe.
It was just past noon when I left Temple’s house. I’ll tell you, I was hoping never to see it again. Or her. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but that’s where my head was at. The morning’s events had shaken me to my socks. Actually, it had turned my socks back into raw wool and the raw wool back into a sheep, and the sheep had bitten me on the ass.
It wasn’t raining for a change, but now it was cold. A front had bullied its way in from the north, and a wintry change had overtaken the weather. I zipped up my jacket and changed to the heavier gloves I keep in the saddlebag just in case. Cold on a motorcycle is something you don’t want to mess with. Even moderately cool air will slice right through you, and in wintertime hypothermia sets in so fast you’ll still be wondering what the fuss is all about when they’re cutting off your fingers and putting them in a jar of formaldehyde. Still, I needed some time and space to think, so I rode east to Wolf Creek Road and then south around the edge of the swollen lake until I found old Hampton Cemetery.
It’s a quiet place, very small, and surrounded on all sides by red oaks and a few crooked silver maples. I got off the bike and walked through their shadows and fallen leaves until I found a familiar grave and sat down near it, not knowing what to think.
I don’t think I’d ever been so confused or out of sorts. I didn’t know where to turn or where to run or even whether running was an option. That was a lot of not knowing, I’ll grant you. At least one thing was sure, though—guys like me didn’t go up against people like Roy Galligan, and when we tried, we usually found ourselves buried in earthen dams or filling out a bag of dog food in some backwoods general store. It wasn’t a happy thought, but it was the one that stuck with me.
After a while, I said good-bye, apologized for not visiting enough, and got back on the bike and rode away. I was up the road a few miles when I pulled over again and took out my cell. I called Jeep Mabry first. That was a terrible call to have to make, but it was maybe more pleasant than the one I made next, to Peggy. Then I rode into Herrin and pulled in at Hungry’s on Main. I went inside and sat at the counter with some coffee. After a while, Peggy came in.
She sat next to me and ordered a coffee for herself. I asked for a refill. Neither of us spoke while we waited. After a long while the waitress came back carrying the dirty carafe, explaining that she’d had to put on a fresh pot. After she left, Peggy looked at me.
“Well?”
“Coffee sucks.”
“Now’s really not a time to be funny.”
“Sorry.”
She sighed. “So let’s have it.”
We had it.
When I was finished, she said, “Jesus fried eggs.”
“That’s one way to say it.”
“They killed Matt Luster.”
“Someone did.”
“Well, that’ll lead tonight’s news.”
I said, “I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Of course I know him. Know his reputation anyway,” she said. “Anyone who gives a damn about local environmental business knows that.”
“I honestly didn’t know you did,” I said. “Give a damn, I mean.”
“It’s something I try not to talk about around you, darling. I don’t want it to come between us. It’s your job, after all, and it was your father’s job, too.”
“Could we not mention him, please? Everyone wants to talk about the old man these days. It’s like I can’t get away from him.”
“Sorry. But, yeah, I do give a damn—a damn about the planet, Slim. A great big hollering damn. You saw what happened down in the Gulf a while back. Or what about Martin County?”
“Martin County? The sludge pen? I’d almost forgotten.”
Peggy looked regretfully at me and shook her head. “One of the worst environmental disasters in the history of this country, and everybody’s forgotten.”
I had to give her that one: it was a lulu, more than three hundred million gallons of coal sludge released into the Tug Fork and surrounding area when a Massey Energy impoundment pen failed. And this was no ordinary failure: there was an abandoned coal mine underneath the pen. Somehow they’d missed it during the land survey. Or maybe they hadn’t missed it; maybe they just didn’t think it would be a problem. It was a problem. One fine morning, the ground in the impoundment gave way, and the sludge emptied into the mine, and eventually flowed out the entries and into the world. As disasters go, it was like Rube Goldberg had started doing gags for hell. And, the thing is, three hundred million gallons was a bargain. The company’s Brushy Fork impoundment pond in West Virginia is built to hold between eight and nine billion. In a rogues’ gallery of reckless industrial actors, it’s hard to select a chief villain, but the ratfuckers who ran Massey might just have captured the prize. Even their corporate logo—a black capital letter M, aflame, like a basalt altar—betrayed a satanic worldview. They’d changed their name of late—after the public at large began finally to catch on to their dirty dealings—but the players were more or less the same and the institutionalized contempt for humankind and natural places remained intact.
She looked at me suddenly. “But let’s not stray too far off topic.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“I recall, I was reading you the riot act.”
“Just getting started, probably.”
“Keen as always,” she said. “Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way. You lied to me about what happened to you the other day. Your injuries.”
“I did, and I feel bad about it, too. I felt bad while I was doing it. But I didn’t want you to worry, and I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”
“And now I’m doing both.”
“Well, it’s a fail then.”
“Pretty much,” she said. She sighed and thought a while. Then her head snapped up and her eyes widened.
“Oh my God. Anci.”
“Is safe,” I said. “Jeep’s keeping an eye on her.”
She cocked her head. “Jeep?”
“Yes.”
“Jeep Mabry?”
“Yes.”
“The psychopathic Jeep Mabry?”
“He is not,” I said. I shrugged. “Borderline, maybe . . .”
“And what do you mean, looking after her? You sent him into the school?”
She was aghast, so I said quickly, “No, no. Not inside. He’s, you know, outside, watching over everything.”
Well, that just made things worse. Peggy said, “Oh, dear God in merciful heaven. He’s outside, lurking in the bushes?”
“I had to guess, I’d say he’s in the empty field across the street. Better cover there.”
“Not helping.”
“Right. Sorry.”
She put her face in her hands. “Tell me he’s not armed.”
I sat quietly for a spell. At last I said, “I won’t tell you.”
“This gets better and better. I don’t guess you geniuses gave any thought to what’ll happen if he gets caught out there? People are a little paranoid these days about men with guns lurking around schools.”
I shook my head. “He won’t get caught.” She was right, of course. Neither of us had thought of it.
Peggy looked at me for a long time. A small change was happening in her eyes, a fleck of dark light, like a flaw in the iris, and it was a change I didn’t like. I could almost hear her starting to think of me as another of those adult mistakes we’d been talking about a couple nights earlier. What I was going to do, I’d have to do as quickly as possible.
Peggy was impatient for a resolution, too. She said, “I’m waiting to hear your plan, Bubba. And, for your sake, I hope it’s a good one.”
“Maybe not good, but it might be the only way through this mess. Way I see it, if this Temple Beckett is right, and Roy Galligan really has dealt himself into the meth racket in some of these local mines, then none of us is safe until I convince him I’m out of his way and out of it for good. If he’s dealt himself in with Jump Down and his team, convincing them is going to be tough and dangerous. These are the kind of people who deal with the discovery of mouse droppings by burning down the house. Measured steps are not their thing.” I paused and drank some coffee. Its general awfulness seemed to fit the occasion. “On the other hand, I can’t go to Galligan just yet. There are too many unanswered questions, and Temple’s suspicions aren’t any kind of proof anyway. Accusing him of being a meth dealer without hard evidence is almost as dangerous as anything else. So basically I’m in the worst position of all. Everyone thinks I know something, when the truth is I don’t know anything. I need more. I need something to trade. What is it you schoolteachers say? Knowledge is power.”
“Now you’re just sucking up.”
“I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
She said, “You’re actually going to do it, aren’t you? You are. You’re out of your mind, you know that?”
“Maybe I am, but I don’t think I have any choice. There’s only one person who knows the truth about what’s happening here, assuming he’s still alive,” I said. “I’ve got to do what I was hired to do in the first place. I’ve got to find out what happened to Guy Beckett.”