The More They Disappear (21 page)

“None of this sounds familiar?”

“It sounds familiar,” Pedersen said. “But that doesn't mean I recollect it.” He was playing dumb but he'd perfected the art.

“That check wouldn't have anything to do with Adam's arrest, would it?”

Pedersen started fiddling with the engine of his International. He couldn't keep still.

“Did you know Lew wrote the judge a note on Adam's behalf?”

“Is that right? Maybe he was a better man than I thought.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Pedersen pulled a rag from the pocket of his overalls and rubbed his face. “All these questions.”

“I'll stop asking when you start answering.”

Pedersen methodically folded the sweat rag into a pocket-sized square with his gnarled but nimble fingers, then slipped it back into his overalls and focused his attention on Harlan. “Lew asked for a campaign donation around the time of Adam's court date. He didn't say anything about the donation getting Adam off the hook but I knew it couldn't hurt. When the check bounced, Lew was some kind of angry, so I offered to butcher him a couple cows instead. Damned if he didn't pick my two best heifers. I butchered one that day but he asked me to fatten the other one up, came over a couple weeks ago, told me it was time to bolt the poor girl. Adam wasn't locked up, so I figured I owed him what was due and paid.” Pedersen pulled a flathead from the back pocket of his overalls and continued to tinker with his tractor. “Look, I'm sorry Lew's dead, but what kind of asshole takes advantage of a down-on-his-luck farmer?”

“Sounds like you had an ax to grind.”

“Naw. It worked out in the end. Adam, he's doing better. Wants to write poems or something. I might be out two cows but I don't need much to get by.”

“You own any guns, Lingg?”

“Yep.”

“How about a 30-06 or a .308?”

“Probably.”

“You mind if I take a look at them?”

Pedersen put the flathead down. “You got a warrant?”

“Nope.”

“Then I suppose I mind. On principle. But you don't need to worry about me, Sheriff. I didn't want to hurt Lew. Hell, the fact you told me he wrote that letter for Adam makes me feel like this was all worth it.”

“It's a crime. What you did.”

“You wouldn't have done the same?”

Harlan shrugged. “If I called you into court, would you tell the truth about the bribe?”

“Campaign donation,” Pedersen corrected and reached above him to finger some still green tobacco. “Besides, what are you gonna do? Dig Lew up and put him on trial?”

“No. I don't know. But maybe not all the people Lew wrangled campaign donations from were so forgiving.” Harlan put out his hand and gripped Pedersen's calloused paw. “I'll be back with that warrant,” he said.

*   *   *

Mary Jane rubbed the goose bumps along her pale arms warm. Mark had cocooned himself in the sheets and slept as if he were a rock, so she settled for big spoon and dealt with the cold, and when she couldn't fall back asleep, she tickled the bottom of Mark's feet with hers. He squirmed and fidgeted and eventually sat up, his dime-sized nipples erect from the cold. “You need to turn on the heat,” she said and ran her fingers through his tousled hair. “It's not like we'll be here when the bill comes.”

Mark glanced at the alarm clock. “Shit,” he said. “We need to get moving.” He jumped out of bed, tucked a button-down into khakis, and told Mary Jane to wear her new dress.

She'd never seen how Mark's business worked up close, but he gave her a crash course as they got ready. It was all about acting, he said. They'd have new names—Stephen and Ashley—and new personalities. They were two college kids out doing a good deed.

The first house they visited was a two-story brick with plantation windows. Elm trees lined the street and neglected flower beds led to the front door. Mark carried a couple of flowers he'd stolen from the bouquet he'd bought Mary Jane. Black tape covered the doorbell, so he used the knocker, which was shaped like the head of a Labrador. When the door opened, a woman with a bathrobe draped loosely over her wrinkled body stared out. Gray hair twisted atop her head. Behind her the house was shrouded in dark.

“Good morning, Ms. Morrow,” Mark said, exaggerating the southern lilt to his voice.

“Oh my, Stephen. I forgot you were coming,” the woman said. “And you have a friend?”

“This is my girlfriend, Ashley.” Mary Jane gave a polite half wave and a wide smile. “We brought you some flowers.” He checked the time on his watch as he handed them over.

The stately brick of the house gave way to a run-down interior. The woman led them through a shade-drawn living room flooded by the rank odor of cats to a kitchen of peeling wallpaper and chipped tile. A tabby rubbed against Mary Jane but hissed as she bent to pet it. Three plastic tubs filled with kitty litter and shit sat before the stove. The cats had kicked large piles of litter to the floor, though the barefooted Ms. Morrow didn't seem to notice or care. “I'll be a minute getting dressed,” she said.

Mark stopped her. “You know, Ms. Morrow, I have class today. Do you mind if we chat another time?” He winked at Mary Jane as a sadness stretched across the woman's face. How terrible to be so old and alone.

“I understand,” she said. “Young people keep very busy.” She tightened the bathrobe around her sandbag breasts. “The prescription is on the counter.”

Mark picked up the bottle and took three twenties from his wallet. A dollar a pill he'd explained to Mary Jane. “I hope this helps,” he said. Ms. Morrow nodded and assured him that it would, it would. Then Mark pocketed the pills, took Mary Jane's arm, and guided them out as quickly as they'd come in. Mary Jane glanced back at the woman—stranded in the kitchen—the cats swarming her like sharks.

Outside, Mark explained that Ms. Morrow had been selling her belongings to pay for a degenerate son's legal fees. When Mary Jane told him she found the woman and her cats depressing, he said, “We need the Oxy, don't we?” Mary Jane couldn't help feeling he'd missed the point.

Their second stop was in a black neighborhood on the other side of town. Every third house looked empty and run-down but none were empty. Mark called the pickup a twofer since both husband and wife had prescriptions. The third stop was an old Victorian, not unlike her parents' house in Marathon. An older, half-deaf man lived there. He wore a big, bushy beard, carried a cane, and kept calling Mark “dahling” in a long southern drawl. At each pickup, Mark presented himself as an eager student doing a public service. If anyone asked, he had a lie prepared about giving the drugs to cancer patients without insurance, but no one ever asked. They just needed the money.

Mary Jane asked if he ever worried about getting caught, and Mark explained that dealing drugs wasn't like in the movies. He didn't stand on street corners and run from cops. “The reality isn't very exciting,” he said. “I'm a middleman. I collect pills in bulk and sell to dealers. It's hard to bust someone like me. I barely pop up on the cops' radar. I make sure my suppliers have other pain meds and tell them about doctors that are sympathetic to pain. The dealers need me because the suppliers wouldn't trust them. It's symbiotic.”

“What's that mean?” Mary Jane asked.

“Mutually beneficial. See, a lot of these old people don't have enough money to pay for basic shit like food and electricity. Apparently, Social Security doesn't cut it. Selling their Oxy is good income because Medicare covers the cost of the drug, but they need me to get their pills into the hands of the dealers. I'm a pharmacy student, so I seem legit.”

Mary Jane nodded as if it all made sense. Drug dealing was nothing like she'd expected. Driving around dressed in their finest, she felt more like a yuppie than a criminal.

As Mark headed out of the city, Mary Jane opened one of the new prescriptions and held a blue forty between her thumb and forefinger. “You know,” she said, “my tongue hurts pretty bad.”

“Didn't I give you some already?”

“I used them for the pain from my tattoo. And I tipped one for good service.”

“You shouldn't sell to strangers.”

“I didn't sell it. I tipped it.”

Mark rolled his eyes, but he wasn't mad. Not really. He put out his hand. “Give me one, too,” he said. “But don't crush it. We need to be functionally high.”

They each swallowed a pill, and while Mark focused on passing a hay truck, Mary Jane pocketed a couple extra for later. “That
stranger
invited us to a party,” she said. “If we're still in town, we should go. It could be a last hurrah. Goodbye, Kentucky. See you never.”

“Sure,” Mark said. “Whatever you want.” He drove them north along the road that led to Marathon, which made Mary Jane anxious, and she told him as much.

“We're just going to Paris,” he said.

“My mom begs my dad to take her to Paris,” she replied. “You'd think he wouldn't mind since it's only an hour away.” It was an old joke but Mark laughed anyway.

The sun beat into the dash, beat into Mary Jane's skin. Oxy always seemed to suit her mood and today it offered a mellow, mature high. Her bones radiated a steady pulse, as if plucked like strings from a bass. Her insides turned watery and slushed through her undammed.

Driving the state highways reminded Mary Jane of those end-of-summer days when she and Mark would go to an abandoned farm and practice shooting watermelons nestled in the branches of trees. The plan to get rid of Lew had still seemed like a game then; it was as if they were living in a movie. Mary Jane would teach Mark to measure his breath and keep his hand loose, but he proved a terrible student. He possessed a restless energy ill-suited to aiming a weapon and each miss seemed to sap his confidence. A couple of weeks into their lessons, Mary Jane peppered the targets to demonstrate, and Mark admitted he was hopeless, which only made her love him more. When Mary Jane could prove to Mark there were things he didn't know, things he couldn't do, he turned soft like putty, and she liked when he was putty. “You're amazing,” he said after she sent three straight bullets into the target. “I wish you were there to pull the trigger.” And that was all it took. It wasn't much. Mary Jane said maybe she should. She saw the logic in it but that wasn't the real reason she said yes. She said yes because she yearned for a moment like this, a time and place where she could take center stage and do something grand. Most people wanted the same. They were just too afraid to admit it, to follow through.

In the weeks that followed, Mark crafted plans and burned the evidence as Mary Jane bull's-eyed targets. Afterward, they'd fuck in the backseat of his Mustang. Life had never been better. If ever Mary Jane had a moment of pause, if ever she thought about how in movies criminals get caught, she convinced herself that they would be the exception, that together they were unstoppable. And if that didn't soothe her, there was always an Oxy nearby.

Now they were on the road again. Working together. Partners. Mark stopped at a pharmacy in Paris and grabbed a cane from the backseat. “I should do this one alone,” he said and pulled a prescription from the glove box. Mary Jane watched as he faked a limp into the pharmacy. Across the street, people went in and out of the Get-on-Down Deli, and Mary Jane stepped out to buy lunch.

By the time she returned, Mark had the engine running. The cane sat passenger-side and she moved it to sit down.
“Bonjour,”
she said. “I got us some sandwiches. I wanted wine since we're in Paris, but the clerk asked for an ID.” Mark dug into the grocery bag and shoved a ham and cheese into his mouth. Mary Jane looked up at the soft blue sky, the bare sun. The piercing made it difficult to eat, so she picked at her sandwich like a bird. Her new diet. Mark finished his in a few minutes and started the car again. “Back to work,” he said. Mary Jane had barely touched her lunch and ended up tossing it out the window for the animals to eat.

They drove to towns all around Lexington—Winchester, Richmond, Versailles. Mark perfected his limp as the day lingered. He pretended he was new to town, pretended he was a traveler passing through. He'd been in a wreck. Been hurt on the job. Each time, he came back with another prescription.

Mary Jane wanted to help, so Mark taught her how to hustle a pharmacist. If the pharmacist seemed skeptical, she was to insist on getting her medication—always use the word
medication
—and cause a scene. The pharmacist would fill the prescription just to get her out the door. In the end, Mary Jane didn't need antics. The pharmacists barely looked at her. A couple of times, she found a way to mention bone cancer or a tragic accident to make the game more interesting, but the pharmacists barely reacted. They were numb like cows.

And by the time the sun set and the small-town pharmacies closed, Mary Jane and Mark had more than two dozen prescriptions—orange plastic bottles rattling with opportunity.

*   *   *

Harlan didn't consider Lingg Pedersen a serious suspect. Pedersen's bounced check was a pittance compared to the amounts coming in and out of Lew's bank account. What Harlan really wanted to know was why the Silver Spoon extended Lew such a large line of credit, but his messages to Little Joe O'Malley had gone unanswered. The Pedersen check opened one other avenue, so Harlan walked across the street to chat with Wesley Craycraft.

He found his path to the courthouse blocked by a crowd of people, and at the top of the stone steps stood Lewis Mattock in a suit. Beside him were his wife and two daughters, each holding a sign that read,
CHECK MATTOCK ON YOUR BALLOT
. Lewis stepped up to a podium and unfolded a sheet of paper. “I know some of you will find it surprising that I'm standing here days after laying my father to rest,” he said, scanning the crowd before looking back to the paper. “But these are dark times and they call for action. Behind me this great courthouse represents justice.” Another pause and a gesture toward the building. “And the people of Finley County deserve to feel like justice will be carried out. They deserve to feel safe. For almost two decades you gave my father the honor of protecting this community. I'm standing here asking for that same honor. That is why, after consulting with my wife, our daughters, and our families, I'm announcing my intention to run for sheriff of Finley County.” Lewis nodded once, stepped back from the microphone, and hugged his wife. Applause went up from the crowd.