"An accident?"

"Maybe. More like she got stuck. Some of those roads peter out to nothing, or they're busted up by landslides or fall-ins."

"Fall-ins?"

"Yes, sir. All these hills are riddled with mine shafts. The pit props rot out and the shafts collapse and the land kind of sags. And there are fires. We got underground fires burning for years up here. They hollow out a whole rise and then the land just collapses like a rotten pumpkin. Then you got your sloughs. A slide blocks a creek and the water pools up and makes a little swamp. You go into one of those, and you might have a worry getting out. And there's rock slides-"

A squawk from the radio interrupted this dire catalog. Hendricks picked up the mouthpiece and talked and listened to what to Karp was incomprehensible garble.

Hendricks hung up the instrument. "They spotted the truck. It was stuck in a fall-in, but there was no sign of her. Up on Belo, the north side."

Three hours later, Karp, now in sodden shirtsleeves, tieless, his city shoes covered with mud, was leaning against the side of a Bronco, drinking from a plastic water bottle, when he saw his wife, or what seemed like his wife, striding down the dirt road, trailed by her dog and a couple of uncomfortable-looking troopers. Her face was mottled red and she was covered in stinking black mud from shoe (she had but one) to crown.

She spotted him. "One laugh and you're dead," she snapped, "and you probably forgot to bring bagels."

12.

"T HEN I TRIPPED ON SOMETHING, " M ARLENE SAID, AND TOOK ANOTHER sip of gin and tonic, "a root, or a G.o.dd.a.m.n alligator, and went headfirst into the swamp. When I got out of it, I leaned against a tree and screamed for, I don't know, three hours? Then the dog barked and I heard your guys thrashing around in the bushes. They must have heard me." Another pull on her drink. "At which point I was discovered by this major countywide search you organized, adding the last possible increment of embarra.s.sment."

"People get lost up here all the time, Mrs. Karp," said Hendricks.

"Marlene, please. And you're Wade, right?"

"Right. Couple of times a year we got to go up some mountain and find a hunter. Sometimes it's people who lived here all their lives. They fall in holes, they get tangled in some laurel and get exhausted, heatstroke, hypothermia, depending on the season, or they get wrecked like you did. It's no big thing, really."

They were in the living room of the Heeney house, Marlene, Karp, and Hendricks. Marlene was freshly bathed, with her hair in a towel and wearing a black T-shirt with a calligraphic design on it and her only pair of clean shorts. She wanted a nap, and more than that, she wanted the previous twenty-four hours not to have happened.

Hendricks looked at his notepad and thumbed back through some pages.

"You said the boy said his name was Darryl?"

"Sounded like Darl. You think there's any chance of finding him?"

"Maybe. Lots of Darryls in these parts. This man behind the sheet-how come you asked if he was a Jonson?"

"Just a guess. The Jonsons are feuding with the Cades, right? If someone wanted to rat out the Cades for the murders, I figured it might be the other clan. Also . . . the way the boy talked, calling the man he in a funny way, like he was a leader or something, more than just an older relative."

Hendricks tightened his chin, causing his upper lip to protrude, and knotted his brow. Another of his portfolio of Gary Cooper grimaces, Karp thought. "Well. It might could be. It could be you talked with old Amos Jonson. That would be something."

"Why?" Karp asked. "Who is he?"

"No one's seen him for a while. He's the only survivor of the Jonsons of his generation. I guess he must be in his late sixties if it's him. He had four brothers and a sister, all dead." Hendricks looked directly at Marlene. "Killed."

"By the Cades?"

"That's what people say. Two of them were pa.s.sed off as mining accidents. No one was prosecuted. The last brother, name of Jonathan, was shot by Ben Cade, right on his own front porch. His sister, Dora, said she saw the whole thing. Well, they had to bring old Ben in on that. A couple of days before the trial, someone tossed a couple of sticks of dynamite through her bedroom window. Killed her and a couple of her kids, as I recall. So they had to let him go. That was when Amos sort of disappeared. Of course, there are still lots of Jonsons around, even if they keep sort of a low profile. He could've been staying with his kin all this time."

"Can we find him?" Karp asked. "According to Marlene, he's got lots of answers. Would he testify, do you think?"

"I would doubt it," said Hendricks after a silence.

"Right," said Karp. "And I expect that this guy Floyd and the three Cades would have alibis provided by all the merry Cades and various henchmen and would not be forthcoming out of, say, remorse."

Karp received the expected laconic agreement and clapped his hands briskly. "Well! a.s.suming that Marlene's guy is not just some kind of grudge horses.h.i.t, we now know who done it. Not a small thing, but on the other hand, we have bubkes on anyone from a purely legal standpoint."

"Pardon, bup what?" said Hendricks.

" Bubkes," said Karp, "a term widely used in the New York bar to signify an insufficiency of probative material. The point is, an anonymous message from a probable clan enemy is almost worse than nothing at all. That leaves the possibility of forensic evidence linking one or more of these guys to the crime. We have prints at the scene. I a.s.sume these sc.u.mbags have prints on file?"

Hendricks made an a.s.senting noise. "The Cades do. I don't know about Floyd."

"We'll find out and see if there're any matches. Next, we have the famous sneaker. We'll check that for biological traces of the last wearer and do a DNA workup. Also, we have the famous boots, expensive and new. We'll check around town and see who bought a pair like that recently. The murder gun, if it's still available, would be nice. Juries always like to see a murder weapon. Wade, I'd like your guys to go over all the evidence collected the first go-around. My a.s.sumption is they didn't bust their humps over it when Mose Welch stepped into the frame."

"As we speak," said Hendricks, "they're reviewing the material at the Charleston lab, and I got people going over the grounds outside right now."

Marlene added, "I've got beer cans and bottles from that overlook, too. It'd be interesting, at least, if any prints on them matched the prints found in the house."

"Good idea," said Karp. "What I'd like to do now is . . ."

A young man came into the room. He was wearing plain clothes and rubber gloves, which identified him as one of the crime-scene people in Hendricks's outfit. He stopped short and looked at Hendricks inquiringly.

"What's up, Frank?" asked Hendricks.

"We found something, Captain. I thought you'd want to take a look."

They all followed Frank out through the kitchen to the back stairs. Marlene saw that the storm door that had lain by the side of the stairs since the murders had been moved aside, and that in the damp, gra.s.sless earth near the stairs were two near-perfect impressions of boot soles. Marlene recognized the wavy tread pattern as being from the size-nine-and-a-half Rocky-brand boots found with Heeney blood all over them, and said so.

Hendricks looked down at the impressions. "d.a.m.n it all, Frank, how in the h.e.l.l did this get missed the first time?"

"No excuse, sir. Just pure sloppy work. n.o.body thought to move the storm door to see what was underneath it."

Hendricks looked to have a few other things to say to old Frank. Marlene could see muscles working in his jaw, and a dark flush was spreading up from the jawline. She said, "Say, Frank, could you generate a body weight from that print? By how deep the boot sank into the soil?"

The technician looked up at her with relief, and perhaps grat.i.tude on his face. "Yes, ma'am, we could. A range, anyway. Within five or so pounds."

"Well, if it's all right with Captain Hendricks, if you could do that test right away and it turns out that the fellow who made them was much less than two hundred pounds, I can probably get my man out of jail."

The technician looked at Hendricks, who nodded abruptly. "Go do it," he ordered.

To the Karps, he said, "I got to run into town now and see how they're doing on our temporary headquarters."

"We have headquarters?" asked Karp.

"Yeah, in the old Burroughs Building. An insurance company used to have it. They went bust and the state grabbed it up for the taxes. They still got all their furniture and equipment in there and the building's still in good shape. I got people cleaning it out now, putting phones in and all. I a.s.sumed that was okay. It's right near the courthouse. Trooper Blake's got an unmarked standing by and he'll drive you anywhere you need to go."

Karp found himself nodding in agreement, keeping the surprise off his face and suppressing any expression of what he knew to be petty annoyance.

"Good. That's real good, Wade."

"Also, we've arranged quarters for you. I was thinking it wouldn't look that good for you all to both be staying here, I mean it being the murder scene. There's a kind of lodge west of town, Four Oaks. They rent it out for groups, industry and church groups having retreats, what pa.s.ses for the tourist industry here. I arranged a cabin. I'll be staying there, and some of my guys and Cheryl, too. If that's all right?"

"I'm overwhelmed. Thanks," said Karp. Hendricks took his leave, and Karp and Marlene went back into the house, where Marlene refreshed her drink.

"Well," she said. "No flies on Captain Hendricks."

"No. I feel like a nature film where the queen ant is being shoved into position by the worker ants, my swollen abdomen being wiggled into position so I can lay the eggs. I guess I'm staying."

"You hadn't planned to?"

"I haven't planned anything since Lucy called. I've been responding to the crisis, which turned out to be a noncrisis."

"And you feel dumb because I'm just raddled with bug bites instead of smashed to pieces or kidnapped by desperadoes."

In answer he sat next to her on the couch, threw an arm around her shoulder, kissed her cheek.

"Ugh, how can you stand it? I look like an ill.u.s.tration from a medical textbook. I should have one of those black rectangles across my eyes."

"My bug-bitten beauty," Karp said tenderly. "I've missed you. Call me old-fashioned, but I used to like coming home to the happy family every night."

"Or the unhappy family, on occasion, if you recall."

"Even that. Anyway, it seems that since I'm here now instead of next week, I might as well put my game face on and play. Have you thought about what you'll do?"

"Well, I'll see my client out of jail and the charges dismissed, which should be a matter of days. Beyond that, I don't know. Leap on my horse and vanish with a hearty 'Hi-yo, Silver.' "

"Why not stay?"

"And do what?"

"Nothing. It's summer. Take a break. You went from busting your hump as a corporate mogul to busting your hump as a struggling dog farmer. Why not kick back?"

He cupped his hand to his ear. "Listen . . ."

"What? I don't hear anything."

"My point. No howling animals. No gormless employees requiring direction. No darling children yammering for attention. We haven't been alone together since Christ was a corporal."

"Yes, and if I stay, I'll be alone together, and you'll be consumed with your case."

"Oh, consumed, conshmumed! Look, darling: it's one case-count it, one-instead of the fifty I usually have to follow. Two, the people who did it are morons operating under the a.s.sumption of impunity. They've made a million mistakes, and they'll make more. Their hillbilly a.s.ses are mine. Three, as you just saw, I apparently have the entire Wehrmacht at my disposal. Four, no political horses.h.i.t to cope with. Compared to what I usually do, this is flower arrangement."

"Wait until you're here awhile," she said sourly. "Things won't seem so simple. This is a truly weird place."

"Why, because they talk funny and there're no Chinese restaurants?"

"No, really, Butch! There's a strange feel to it. Everyone's polite and helpful, at least when they're not trying to kill you, but you get the feeling that everyone knows a secret that they'll never tell. And there are little looks you catch, like in a family when someone mentions insanity, and everyone but the guest knows about Auntie Rose up in the attic. It's funny, but I've been trying and trying to think of where I had that feeling before and I can't quite recall it. But stick around and you'll see."

"Yeah, we'll see," said Karp dismissively. "Meanwhile, you'll let me know."

"You'll be the first. Where are you going now?"

Karp was up and moving toward the door. "I think I'll have Trooper Blake drive me to our new home, where I will take a shower and change my shirt, and then I'm going to show the flag to the state's attorney."

"Use short sentences," said Marlene, "and talk slow."

State's Attorney Hawes did not salute the flag when Karp carried it into his office late that afternoon. He looked as if he wanted to burn and trample it, the way Iranians so often do to Old Glory. He sat behind his desk with his jaw (and, Karp a.s.sumed, his a.s.s as well) as tight as could be and gave curt answers to Karp's polite questions about the triple murder.

Karp remembered about talking slow. He let a little silence descend, after which he said, "Mr. Hawes . . . Stan, if I can call you that?"

Hesitation, a short nod and a grunt.

"Good. I'm Butch. We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, so let's roll the tape back and start again. If I were you, I'd be p.i.s.sed, too. You picked up the biggest murder case in the last decade, and all of a sudden I show up, a big-time out-of-town prosecutor, and it looks like the big boys in Charleston think you can't handle your job. And on top of that, it's becoming more and more likely that you indicted the wrong guy."

"I can convict him."

"Well, you might be able to and you might not. That's not the point. I'm just now starting a complete review of the forensic evidence, and I would bet your next two paychecks that we come up with enough material to absolutely exonerate Moses Welch and shine a pretty bright spotlight on a couple, three other people."

"Who?"

"Earl, Bo, and Wayne Cade, plus George Floyd. Since Floyd works for Lester Weames, I'd a.s.sume he gave the order."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"It's around. Amos Jonson says that's how it went down."

"Hah! Jonson would say the Cades killed JFK."

"I agree. But the fact remains that Bo and Earl tried to kill my wife the other day and came around the Heeney place with weapons, in the hours of darkness. That's suggestive to me that Jonson or whoever was not just whistling 'Dixie.' Now here's a prediction. We will find their fingerprints at the crime scene, and on cans and bottles found at a lookout place above the crime scene, and we will find that the blood-covered boots that are virtually your whole case against Moses Welch were purchased by a member of the Cade family, and if we're a little lucky, we might get DNA evidence off the two pieces of footwear we have that were soaked in the victims' blood, evidence connected to the bunch that we like for it. That would const.i.tute a pretty good case, wouldn't it?"

"A lot of ifs." Sulkily.

"Uh-huh. Look, Stan, I know you wish I would just dry up and blow away, but I'm not going to. So there's two things you need to know about me. One is, I've tried and won over a hundred homicide cases, some of them against the best defense lawyers in New York. I am extremely good at this, not because I'm a genius or a better lawyer than you are, but just because of that experience. Two is, I have absolutely no political or ego-building agenda here. As far as I'm concerned, this was your case and it's still your case, and I will direct the PR lady that the governor sent down to present it that way to the press. I am perfectly content to lurk in the background while you win it." Karp's face broke into a grin. "You're looking at me like I'm trying to sell you a condo in Florida."

Hawes's face relaxed a trifle. "It is a little rich. Why the h.e.l.l did you come down here, then?"

"The truth? I got some political problems with my job in New York that I'm not ready to deal with yet, and this was an opportunity to carve out some s.p.a.ce. The main reason, though, is Saul Sterner. You know who he is?"

Hawes shrugged. "The union lawyer?"

"That's the one. He's an old friend. I studied under him in law school. He asked me to do it, and it's kind of hard to keep from doing stuff Saul asks you to do." Karp paused and was relieved to see that Hawes was working this over in his mind, that he was entertaining the idea that this was maybe not going to be a complete disaster. A rather too transparent face for a lawyer, Karp thought, but in the circ.u.mstances an advantage.

"So do we have a basis here?" Karp asked. "For now, you're willing to accept that I'm not bulls.h.i.tting you?"