The More They Disappear (5 page)

“New office?”

“That's right. The one that says ‘sheriff' on the front. A town needs a sheriff, a sheriff needs a sheriff's office, and by God, you're about to be sheriff.” She tossed a set of keys to him. “You're driving Lew's cruiser now. I had it brought back this morning.”

The phone rang again.

“On second thought,” Holly said, “take the coroner's forms and fill them out while Craycraft makes you wait.”

She picked up the call and covered the mouthpiece while Harlan stood there like a rock. “How do you know he's gonna make me wait?”

“'Cause he wants to prove he's got bigger balls than you,” she said. “That's the way men do things. Now get.”

The judge did make Harlan wait. Craycraft passed him on the way into his chambers, said he needed a minute to get settled, then took a good ten before calling for Harlan. Craycraft talked about Lew and what a good man he was and how shocking his murder was and who would do such a thing and so on, and by the time he bestowed upon Harlan temporary authority as sheriff, the first drops of rain had started to hit the Ohio. Harlan sprinted from the courthouse hoping to reach the ridge before the storm was more than a drizzle, but as soon as he started the cruiser, the dispatch buzzed with Holly's voice asking if he wanted his old files in his new office.

Harlan sped away from downtown. “Can this wait?”

“Sure. But I think it would be good to show the other deputies you're the new boss.”

“I'm sure they'll figure it out.”

“You'd be surprised. Speaking of the deputies, they're complaining about the extra shifts.”

“What extra shifts?” Harlan nearly missed his turn, banked hard left.

“I have Paige flanking school busses so parents feel safe. Del is checking in on everyone recently out of lockup, and Frank is following up on the best tips that have been phoned in.”

“That sounds good.”

“I know, but that's everyone, Harlan. Short term it works but we can't all work twenty-four-hour shifts.”

“Can this wait, too?”

“Sure. Whatever you want. I'm just keeping you in the loop.”

Harlan pulled the cruiser to the side of the road. “Is anybody else in the office with you right now, Holly?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Then here's the deal. I don't care which office is mine and I don't want to explain a schedule I didn't make. I'd like to do a little real police work first. So call the state police and ask them to up their presence in the county. Otherwise, as much as I'm sure it will pain you, deal with it.” There was silence on the other end. Harlan laid his head softly against the steering wheel. He couldn't afford to piss off Holly; she was the glue that kept the department together. “You still there?” he asked.

The dispatch crackled again. “That's the first sensible thing you've said all day.”

Harlan sighed and pulled back onto the road, though as soon as he turned in to a subdivision that bordered the ridge, the clouds opened up and rain started collapsing in sheets across the windshield. The subdivision was a lagging project started by Square Homes, developers who'd invested heavily in northern Kentucky but had yet to see a profit. Each year a handful of newcomers moved into one of the prefab houses and slowly a neighborhood formed but just a half mile in from the entrance you came upon a wasteland the builders deemed “potential.” Plumbing snaked through the ground, and electric was strung on poles, but the fruits of labor—the houses—were nowhere to be seen. Barren lots bordered by paved roads and sidewalks.

Harlan didn't know what he expected to find that the dogs hadn't, but he couldn't think of any other place to start. He parked next to a home the builders would be lucky to complete come winter. Rain raced through the frame and splashed against the foundation, which was fast turning to mud. Above him heavy gumdrops beat against the cruiser's roof with no apparent rhythm and no sign of letting up. Harlan stepped out.

Leaves slicked the wooded paths and he slid down a couple embankments in his boots. The trees provided cover but by the time he reached the clearing, the storm was full bore. He stepped to the edge and looked east toward the soggy downtown. The river had crested a couple times in the past but more often it was the runoff from the hills that caused flooding and sent mud slides oozing through the streets of downtown. A halfhearted waterfall formed by his feet and pitched small rocks and leaves below. Harlan rolled a cigarette from under the cover of trees and looked across the murky river.

The Ohio side hunkered down against a low fog. The widest banks protruded from the mist like tiny islands veiled in silk. Harlan cupped the cigarette to his mouth. Through the haze he could make out the Entwhistle place. The tent and chairs were still set up for the party—the tent sagging with rain, the chairs sinking into the ground. It looked like a mistake, a party planned on the wrong day. Harlan wondered how long it would be before Josephine called the department and asked them to clean up their mess.

He tried to imagine the shooter but his mind drew a blank. Harlan could understand the petty criminals of Marathon—the drunks and small-time thieves who started fights and stole because they were bored, desperate, and depressed. Their sort of impulsive wrongdoing made sense but shooting another person, that he couldn't understand. He crouched down and pretended to be the culprit. The river road cut a clean path to Josephine's and the rock beneath him was flat. It wasn't an easy shot but not impossible, not for a person with a steady hand. Whoever wanted Lew dead had planned it, that much was certain. Harlan made a note to have Del check in with C. Alistair Noll, the end-of-days crazy who was running against Lew in the election, but he doubted Alistair was involved. He was more local eccentric than criminal, liked to run for sheriff every four years by promising not to enforce drug laws or issue parking tickets.

Until the crime lab finished their work, Harlan wouldn't have much to go on. Murders in Finley County were usually straightforward: wives fed up with abusive husbands, cuckolded husbands exacting revenge on unfaithful wives, friends and families turned against one another for reasons of money or pride or sin. Harlan walked the clearing once more, looked for something, anything, that might give him some direction—found nothing.

*   *   *

Mary Jane scanned the street from her bedroom window. Except for a heavy rain, it was unremarkable in every way. No police. No angry mobs. No reason for pause. She walked by the guest bedroom and noticed her mother—still asleep—though there was nothing unusual in that either. Lyda Finley spent more time sleeping in the guest bedroom than she did beside her husband. Mary Jane hesitated at the door. For the first time in as long as she could remember her mother
looked
vulnerable. Lyda's mouth hung slack and her horsey teeth, once so striking, protruded. They'd yellowed from cigarettes and strands of her golden hair had faded to silver and the skin between her breasts was spotting. For all her harping on Mary Jane about letting herself go, about needing to put down the ice cream and pick up the jump rope, Lyda was aging in a way that would devastate her.

Mary Jane drove through the downpour to a gas station pay phone, hunkered under the store's awning, and dialed Mark. She needed to know that he was out there, thinking about her just like she was thinking about him. She needed connection. As the phone rang, she practiced saying hello casually and was caught off guard when he picked up.

“Hey,” she blurted.

“MJ,” Mark said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I mean … yeah. I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

“Everything is fine. I did it. I mean, we did it.”

Mark hushed her before she said more.

“It's okay,” she said. “I'm at a pay phone. Like in the movies.” The rain beat down behind her in a steady rhythm—the soundtrack to their story.

Mark sighed. “We need to act normal and not call attention to ourselves. And calling me from a pay phone is
not
normal. Do you understand?”

“Sure. It's just … I'm sorry.” Mary Jane hesitated. She didn't owe Mark an apology. It was easy for him to decide what was normal. He hadn't been there. He hadn't watched Lew die. She searched for the right thing to say, came up empty, listened to Mark breathe. He was the one person in the world who might understand what she was feeling, though what that was she didn't exactly know. “Just tell me everything is going to be okay,” she said.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

Mary Jane took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Let me hear some of your French.”

“Je voudrais un
œuf, s'il vous plait.”

“That's good,” Mary Jane said. “I hope you like eggs.”

Mark gave a small laugh. “Hang tight, babe,” he said. “There's no reason to worry.” But Mary Jane did worry. She worried. She couldn't stay in Marathon and listen to people talk about Lew, couldn't hold up under that stress. “Just act normal,” Mark said again, as if it were that easy. “We're almost there. I'm going to get the money and then we'll leave. Just like we planned.”

Mary Jane cracked a smile. She liked when he referred to them as a pair—we, us, our. “I love you,” she said, but Mark was talking over her.

“I've got to run to class,” he was saying. “Stay strong.”

The line went dead.

Mary Jane couldn't be sure if he'd heard her. He'd told her he loved her before, but his love always followed hers. An
I love you, too,
as if his was conditional. One time she'd become angry with him over it, but Mark claimed the more you used the word love, the more you became accustomed to it, and the less that love meant, which sounded like BS to Mary Jane.

She hurried back to her coupe through the storm, hands shaking as she fit the key in the ignition. She'd said it. Why didn't he? Why couldn't he even hear her? Mascara ran from the corners of her eyes, whether from the rain or the tears, it didn't matter. Her lips trembled as she turned the rearview mirror on herself. Was this the face of the girl Mark would build a life with? That he would love? “Fucking ugly.” Mary Jane wept. “Fucking monster!” She slapped herself hard across the cheek, then banged her fist against the steering wheel. The horn sounded and a couple of people pumping gas glanced in her direction, but they didn't see her, they didn't care. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out a pill, hesitated, then swallowed it dry. Swallowed another. The world was such an easy place to fade away.

Mary Jane pined for those days when other girls clamored to be her friend, when boys—men even—had stopped to look at her. People had seen her then. Mark was the one person who'd stayed by her through the worst years, the guy who took her home from the party, the friend who listened when she complained about her parents, the boy who took her virginity. Theirs was a clandestine but long-standing love, an understanding. She belonged with him.
I love you
was just a phrase. Just words. Actions spoke louder than words. And Mary Jane had acted. They were in the darkest part of the story but the dawn lay ahead. She imagined driving north with Mark through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, crossing the border into Quebec, into a whole different country. She closed her eyes and started the coupe, kept the car in park as she pressed the gas and listened to the rattle of the engine as if it were taking her there. She imagined snowflakes melting on the windshield, tires crunching along icy ground, Mark pointing the way beside her.

*   *   *

Mark Gaines's left hand moved robotically across his notebook, copying whatever the professor wrote on the board even though he was busy thinking about Mary Jane. He wished he could be in Marathon with her—put a pill in her hand if need be—but it was better to keep his distance in case the situation took a bad turn. Mary Jane wanted to run away that moment, as if the cops were chasing her, which they weren't, so far as he knew. He could tell she was scared and he was scared, too, and that united them, but Mark was scared because she'd done her part and now it was up to him to follow through on his.

He looked at his notes—chemical compounds he didn't recognize and phrases he couldn't parse. The professor droned on, switching dry erase markers from blue to green to red, as if the rainbow of color might make what he said more interesting. Mark gathered his books. He'd seen other students leave midlecture but he'd never been so bold himself. He half-expected the professor to stop him or his fellow classmates to
tsk tsk,
but no one so much as raised an eyebrow as he climbed the auditorium steps and escaped into the bright hallway.

He hadn't skipped a class in college yet, a fact he was proud of and occasionally wrote in his planner to remind him of how hard he'd worked since beginning at the university. But that achievement was over. He needed to put school behind him. Another student came barreling out of the classroom not long after and said, “BORE-ing.” Mark forced a smile, listened to the guy complain, and nodded along without offering much in return.

It was a blustery, wet day, and Mark kept his head down as he trudged across campus toward the library. His pager went off and he checked it even though he knew it was Chance. In his backpack Mark carried thousands of dollars in prescription pills, and in less than an hour he'd be making his final deal—the end of an era he was all too happy to see pass.

He settled himself at the usual nook in the library basement and waited. Chance marched in like clockwork thirty minutes later wearing a ripped shirt, warped cap, and steel-toed boots. The backpack slung over his right shoulder seemed out of place. With his pinched face, tattoos, and graying stringy hair, Chance didn't pass for a college student. He looked more likely to be fresh out of jail, though he'd once bragged to Mark that he'd never been arrested, never even been pulled over for driving too fast. This fact he chalked up to his intelligence and the authorities' lack thereof. Every time they met, Mark wondered what onlookers would make of them—the student and the menacing hillbilly.