Absolute Rage (48 page)

She threw claims into the scales: her time on her knees, her many good works, her self-denial, her faith . . . Nothing. She felt nothing, except the muscle stiffness and a stuffiness in her head. She was talking to someone who wasn't there; from this commonplace it was only a short jump to thinking: talking to someone who doesn't exist. She felt a chill. An explanation presented itself: she was crazy, just like Mom, a fanatic, always had been. There
was
no one there. Maybe there had been once—who knew?—but it was gone. Giancarlo would die or not, according to chance and the skill of his doctors. That tabernacle was remarkably ugly. I've lost my faith, she said to herself, amazed. It was just here in my purse and now it's gone. Her chest felt tight. She had to . . . what? Hide? From God? But there wasn't any.

She stood up, feeling light-headed. Dan Heeney was standing outside the sanctuary.

“I thought you'd be here. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Just, you know, praying.” For the very first time she felt embarrassment at saying this.

“Uh-huh. I stopped by the hospital. He's still in the OR.” She looked different, he thought, diminished in some way. He attributed it to the catastrophe. She was not looking at him. “What's that thing?” he asked, pointing to the tabernacle. “It looks like an espresso machine.”

“It
is
an espresso machine,” said Lucy, sliding toward hysteria. “It's the very espresso machine that Saint Paul got a double tall latte out of just before he hit the road to Damascus. You're very fortunate to have it here in McCullensburg.” She had to get out of the church or she was going to do something awful. She walked rapidly out, not pausing at the altar as she always did. In the small lobby she stopped with the feeling that she had forgotten something. Wallet, bag, sunglasses, keys, all there, what was it?

“You okay, Lucy?”

“Yeah, just a little . . .”

“You have dirt and blood on your face.”

“Do I?” She checked her image in the glass of the church notice board. Then she pulled out a bandanna, dipped it in the font, and wiped the stains from her face.

“Can you do that? I thought that was holy.”

“It doesn't matter.” She walked out of the church.

He had a motorcycle, a canary-colored Suzuki dirt bike. “Get on. I'll take you back to the hospital.”

“I didn't know you had a bike.”

“I don't. It's Emmett's. After you left, he picked me up at the hospital and drove me back to the house. We took some of the good stuff out of the ruins. The garage fell on my mom's car. I guess it's my car now. Or was. This was out behind the garage. Not a scratch on it.” He threw a leg over the machine and started it, the sound startling on the quiet street. Crows flew from the neighboring trees, complaining.

Suddenly she felt deep shame. “You've lost everything. Oh, Danny, I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, what can you do? Cry? I didn't lose my computer, though. And I still have the family pictures. They threw the dynamite into the kitchen, and the appliances and the sink took a lot of the blast. Get on now and hold tight.”

She did and did, pressing the side of her face flat against his back. She thought she could hear his heart beat over the roar of the engine. He was real at least. No, don't stop at the hospital, just drive, just drive, we'll give up everything for love, have a life together, we'll worship each other, like pagans, like Americans . . . no, she thought, I'm not good enough for him.

As they rode up the drive to the hospital parking lot, they heard a roaring that nearly drowned out the sound of the motorcycle. A small helicopter was coming in for a landing atop the six-story building's roof. Dan switched off his engine and they watched it land.

“That'll be Mom,” said Lucy, and felt a peculiar and perverse pride. I'm like her, now. Took a while. Will she be
pleased?
Lucy found she didn't much care.

“Should I come in?” Dan asked.

“No, I don't think . . .” She saw his face fall. “No, I need to . . .” She had lost the ability to talk to him. She wanted him to go away now. He saw this. He shrugged, nodded, turned away.

*  *  *

Zak was now stretched full-length on a vinyl-covered couch with his face on Karp's jacket. A number of people had come by to see Karp. The lawyer Poole, to express his condolences. Cheryl Oggert, to express the governor's. Besides that, Oggert wanted Karp to talk about the legal situation regarding Floyd and Weames, angling to see if something could be pulled out of this disaster. Karp was polite, monosyllabic; she soon left.

Hendricks came by later with a number of other state troopers. He had not, as it turned out, come just to offer comfort, but when he spotted Karp, he walked over, shook his hand, and did so. Karp thought Hendricks looked uncharacteristically rumpled, bleary. His eyes were red-rimmed. He sat down heavily in a chair next to Karp.

“You get them?” Karp asked, more out of sympathy than because he still cared.

“No. I'm sorry to say we didn't. We only got one roadblock out ahead of them and they blew right through that. They had a five-ton truck they stole from a coal company lot. Then we followed them up Burnt Peak, on that road, and they dropped the side of the hill there with dynamite right in front of my lead car. Road's full of big rocks. So that was that. Two of my boys're dead and two are here. Pruitt and Vogelsang are the ones didn't make it. I got to go call their families, I guess. Never happened before, never had to make that kind of call.”

Hendricks seemed dazed. Karp, however, although normally a sympathetic sort, was not inclined to be so just then.

“Meanwhile, could you tell me how the
fuck
this was allowed to happen? A jailbreak in broad daylight?”

“What can I say? They kept it real close. Normally, you get a sense of what them boys are gonna do, and I got informants in the family. You recall I took you to see one of them.”

“Russell.”

“Him. But there wasn't a peep about this. They blind-sided us, that's for damn sure.”

“So what happens now?”

“Well, there's no way in hell the governor's gonna keep the feds out of it now. We don't have the resources to put a siege on a whole mountain. I'm not sure anybody does, if you want the truth. I mean Waco, that was a bunch of houses on the flat, in the desert. Ruby Ridge, that's the other big case, you had terrain, but there was only two men with guns, three if you count the kid they shot. Now put them two together. You got a, hell, figure a whole platoon up there, forty men, with all the dynamite they want and heavy automatic weapons. Plus you got the mine shafts. That hill's riddled with 'em, so it's perfect defensive territory. They know the shafts and the good guys don't. If this was a military operation, say in the Pacific or Vietnam, you'd chase them off the surface with artillery and air strikes, and then you'd go in with infantry, at least two hundred men, I'd reckon. If you got any serious resistance, you'd take major casualties: twenty, thirty dead and more wounded. Then you'd just blow the tunnels, seal 'em up inside. But we sure as hell ain't gonna do nothing like that. We ain't gonna take those kind of casualties, not with cops. And we ain't gonna use artillery, not with women and kids involved. You know, when you think on it a little, the gun nuts are right. You get you enough crazies and enough automatic weapons, and if you're in some rough country and you got enough food and water, well, then you got yourself your own country if you want it.”

“That's what the Cades have now, their own country?”

“Pretty near. We'll block off the roads, of course, but there's no way on God's green earth we can stop up every rabbit trail off of that mountain. It'd take the whole West VA state police. So they'll keep being able to sell their dope and bring in reinforcements and food. Hell, it ain't much different from the way they live now. They could hold out for years up there if they want to. And I think Ben Cade wants to. He's been easing up to this kind of thing for years. We hear stories, you know. Girls, runaways, picked up and took away up there. For his wives.” Here he paused and stared at his dusty shoes.

“So, the truth is, this is our problem, here. We let it grow like a boil for years and now it's time to pop it, come what may. I wanted to say, though, and all the boys think the same, and all the people I been talking to in town, we're all real, real sorry your boy got hurt. It wasn't none of your fight, and you came in and helped us out, and this happened. I guess after what happened to Lizzie Heeney I should've known the Cades were mean enough to gun down a little boy, but I reckon it's still a shock. I had half a dozen men come up to me and say, Captain, if'n you need another gun, just ask. And those that pray are praying for him. I know it don't mean much, but I wanted to say it. I'm sorry.” Hendricks's steely blues locked on Karp's eyes. They looked teary. Karp did not think he could hold it together if Gary Cooper went all blubbery on him. He firmed his jaw and said, “Thank you.” They shook hands. The captain left.

Karp's daughter and his wife arrived almost simultaneously, Marlene stepping out of the steel doors, Lucy coming down the corridor.

Karp gaped at his wife. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I leased a helicopter.” Embraces, brief ones.

“How is he?”

“Still up in surgery the last I heard. They said they would contact us.”

She checked her watch. “It's been five hours.” She gave him a quick, appraising look. Everyone had a weakness, she knew, even hypercompetent people like her husband, and this happened to be all matters medical as they related to his family. His normally mighty powers of assertion seemed to flee when the kids were sick and the white coats were pontificating. That was why she had moved mountains and spent money like water to speed her way back here.

Marlene now took over. She made a scene, several in fact. People started moving a good deal faster than they were wont to at the Robbens County Medical Center. In short order the commotion arrived at the doctors' lounge, where Edward Small, MD, was taking a brief nap after operating on the kid. He had actually done a good deal of gunshot work in his time, although he usually left the cranial stuff alone. Stick a drain in there and either the patient would live or would die. Of course, it mattered which one—they were not heartless—but either way there would not be consequences for the docs. Robbens County Medical Center was essentially a medicaid/medicare mill, with a sideline servicing the stingy union health plan and telling injured miners they were fit to go back to work and not to bother suing the company. Anyone who could afford to pay got treated in a real hospital in Charleston or D.C.

Small had heard the helicopter land, but assumed it was something to do with the police who were hurt. It never occurred to him that one of his patients would have a relative rich enough to arrive in a private helicopter. Informed that this was the case by a frantic nurse, he hurried downstairs.

Small was a pink-faced, heavy, balding man of around sixty. Marlene sized him in a trice as a genial loafer, competent at routine, but not one to take pains, and definitely not good enough for her boy. Small told them how the surgery had gone. He had removed double-aught pellets from Giancarlo's legs and back. The good news was that no vital organs had been struck. The bad news was that he had a pellet lodged in his brain.

“When will you remove it?”

“Well, we don't think that's advisable now,” said Small, addressing his answer to Karp. “With these cerebral wounds, we think it's advisable to wait and let nature take her course.” A little chuckle here. “You know, despite all our advances, and at my age I've seen an awful lot of them, Mother Nature's still the best healer.”

“What tripe,” said Marlene. “I want him moved out of here. I intend to fly him to New York.”

“He can't be moved,” said Small with some satisfaction. “You can't move someone out of ICU. He wouldn't make it to Charleston, much less New York.”

They went back and forth about this for a round or two until Karp put his vote down for not moving, after which she demanded to see the CAT scans of her son's brain and looked at them, as did Lucy, who had a lot of experience looking at CAT scans. She pulled her daughter aside.

“What do you think?”

“I don't know, Mom. I'm not a doc, but it looks awful. It's in his occipital lobe and it's all swollen.”

“I don't mean the pictures. I just wanted to know he'd at least taken them. I don't buy this crap about not going in and fixing it. I want a second opinion. You know brain surgeons, don't you?”

“I know people who do. I'll call Morrie.”

She did. Morrie Shadkin, called at his home, was horrified to hear what had happened and yet more horrified (though he did not mention this) to learn that the precious brain of Lucy Karp was wandering around in range of people shooting bullets.

“Lenny Polanski,” he said. “He's the best brain-trauma surgeon in the world, if you believe him. I got him through physio our second year at P and S, absent which he would not be a surgeon at all, but humping refrigerators in his old man's warehouse. He owes me big-time. You say the kid can't be moved?”

“No. We'll fly your guy and his team down here. We have a helicopter.”

Shadkin said he would get back to her, and after fervent urgings that she watch out for herself, he hung up.

Then they all trooped into the ICU to look at Giancarlo. At the sight of her son lying still and dead-white in the mesh of tubes and blinking machinery, Marlene lost it, giving way to operatic grief, and frightening the personnel. After this, Karp was back in charge. He made the necessary arrangements with the hospital (Small had heard of Polanski and was awed), getting the helicopter to a parking place, and its pilot housed in a motel, and transporting his family back to Four Oaks. Marlene and the two children, who seemed to have regressed nearly to infancy, were put to bed, the former with half a bottle of Scotch and pills, the latter with meaningless, calming words.