The More They Disappear

 

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About the Author

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For my family

 

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with life outside us.

—VIRGINIA WOOLF,
THE COMMON READER

You can forget everything. The least little thing bothers you, you run to them.

—DANNY SHELLEY, INMATE

 

prologue

OCTOBER 1998

The sheriff's cruiser swung onto Highway 68, a winding track of asphalt laid over a centuries-old buffalo trace that had been carved from salt lick to water's edge. Its driver headed north toward eight turn-of-the-century city blocks wedged between limestone cliff and muddy river. People had taken to calling these blocks “downtown” Marathon ever since the county seat began its expansion out from the shores of the Ohio. Behind the cruiser, strip malls and neon signs advertising gas prices and fast-food specials lined the highway until you reached the Walmart on the edge of town. Suburbs had formed along the newly paved roads that crisscrossed the highway, and attached to those roads were lanes that snaked into the hills and led to neighborhoods with names like Redwood Estates and Thousand Lakes, names that had nothing to do with their surroundings. It was this part of Marathon where most people lived and they simply called it Marathon.

Sheriff Lew Mattock crested one final rise before the river, dropped into third gear, and revved his engine. He believed this was how a competent man kept his valves clean. Ahead of him lay a quarter mile of open space and sky—the distance between two Marathons. The sheriff had been one of the first to buy property atop the hill, so he considered himself a trailblazer of sorts. Over three consecutive terms his acre of land had doubled in value and the best place to drum up votes had become the Walmart on a weekend. Downtown was dead. A few stodgy holdovers who romanticized the town's pioneer past kept calling for its restoration but they were outnumbered and unpopular.

The steering wheel ran loose and easy in Lew's right hand as he watched a window-tinted Camaro cross the double line to pass a lumbering dually. He could have issued a citation but he didn't particularly care to put on his flashers and go through the headache. Instead, he rolled the window down and sucked the crisp fall air like it belonged to him alone. At some point, he placed his hand atop a manila envelope sitting passenger-side to keep it from fluttering away in the breeze. Inside was a grant check from the DEA to help wage the federal government's never-ending war on drugs.

Lew had time to kill before a campaign fundraiser, and at the T-junction by the river, he parked along a scenic overlook the highway department had cleared a month or so before. He snapped off the dispatch and turned on the radio—the talking guitar of Peter Frampton following him as he stepped out and spit a stream of tobacco juice. Lew put one foot atop the guardrail and stretched his thick thighs. A cobalt sky extended above him, banded by the golden light of a waning sun. In the valley below a thicket of trees lined a creek that splintered out from the Ohio. The birches and maples and sycamores had turned golden and ochre and crimson. A bronze historical marker pointing out the remains of a log cabin told the story of the McGoverns, a husband and wife with four kids who'd moved to Kentucky from Boston for the
abundant lande
and
clean aire
. Apparently, they'd headed west again ten years later,
fearing Kantacke awash with new blood
. Lew read the placard and imagined McGovern as a hippie with shaggy hair and necklaces, his wife in long, fluttering dresses. He knew the type. Living off the grid, they called it, but it was more like death than living. A man made his mark on the world through other people. Lew kicked a chunk of gravel over the edge, pulled his sagging pants to a point just below his ample stomach, and offered McGovern his middle finger. Then he laughed at himself for gesturing to a dead man.

As he pulled a handful of index cards from his pocket, Lew started addressing the air, ad-libbing off his stump speech every now and again, letting his voice echo over the stereo. He was guaranteed four more years. He'd won the Democratic primary unopposed and Marathon was Democrat country. The only person stupid enough to run against him was a nut-job anarchist who looked homeless and spoke nonsense. Not a single Republican had stepped up to challenge him despite a lefty president who couldn't keep it in his pants. Lew considered adding a couple Clinton jokes just to let people know how goddamn independent he was—things he'd heard about cigars and what you could do with them. Lew was Marathon's president. Four more years. And who knew how many after that? He was fifty-two years old, and he had at least three more terms in him if the voters did their job.

As he gestured toward the sky, Lew imagined he was being watched and he wanted to make sure his audience knew that before them stood a man who commanded respect. By the time he finished, ending in a flourish of “God bless this” and “God bless that,” spittle was raining from his gummy maw onto the valley below.

Satisfied with his performance, Lew continued along the river road. At a four-way, he flipped his flashers to run the stop. It was a habit the mayor had fielded complaints about but Lew did little to change.
A quirk of mine,
he said.

Downtown had been built atop the footprint of the original settlement and was still laid out like a western outpost. Main Street included a clapboard-church-cum-perpetually-closed-visitor's-center, a diner wedged between vacant storefronts, and various county offices. The side streets were filled with row houses, but unlike a western outpost, Marathon had been built with brick—its houses modeled on those the town's founders had left behind in Philadelphia and Boston and New York. Across the street from the stone courthouse, the sheriff's department sat in shame. It was the ugliest building in town—a concrete box built in the 1950s with little regard for windows. An ancient, dying beech towered over the building and killed the grass. Lew had petitioned the mayor to chop the tree down, but the city council landmarked it instead. An arborist from Lexington had even come out to cable its heaviest branches.

Lew parked in his usual spot. Every day he imagined men in suits walking down the courthouse steps, belittling his ugly little piece of the pie, and as if on cue, the county's newest public defender walked by and waved. Lew barely returned the gesture. He didn't like lawyers. He believed justice could best be served by a single, exceptional man. Lawyers were on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand men, could convince themselves of damn near anything if they thought long and hard enough about it.

Lew cut a straight line across the sheriff's department's dirt in short, determined steps. “Did Harlan get me a grill?” he asked his secretary as he plowed into the office.

Holly finished stuffing an envelope before answering. “I believe so,” she said.

Lew smiled. What his chief deputy lacked in brains, he made up for in stick-to-it-iveness. “Is it a good one?”

“I wouldn't know,” Holly said. “I don't ask questions about the important stuff.”

“I intend to grill fifty pounds of prime Kentucky beef, so I consider this pretty damn important.”

“If you're worried, drive on over to see Harlan and get out of my hair.”

Lew strode up to Holly's desk and rested his substantial heft against the small section free of paperwork. Holly was proof a person could age with grace. The wrinkles on her skin didn't make her look old so much as skeptical. Near seventy, she dressed in the fashion of a bygone era—square, gold-rimmed glasses, monochrome ladies' jackets, skirts that fell below the knee. On her left hand she still wore the ring of a husband who'd died young. Lew knew she didn't like his demanding nature or crude jokes, but together they helped an undermanned department keep the relative peace. Occasionally Holly annoyed him with her insistence on dotted
i
's and crossed
t
's, but given their lackluster deputies, hers was the only opinion besides his own that Lew respected.

“Will I see you at the barbeque later?” he asked.

“Social functions and I don't mix.”

“But I can still count on your vote?”

Holly gave him a thin smile. “I have to think on it.”

Lew slid the envelope with the DEA check onto her desk. “Does this change your mind?”

Holly removed and studied the check. “Depends on whether this goes to giving me a raise.”

Lew grabbed the check back. “That sounds like extortion, Ms. Dilts. But maybe if you nice up a little, I'll consider it.”

Holly rolled her eyes as Lew continued on to his office, where he pressed Play on his voicemail and listened to people spout various forms of recorded bullshit. He fixed his thirst with a pull from his desk flask as he hit Delete over and over.

Soon enough he was back in his cruiser and heading down the river road to Josephine Entwhistle's waterfront spread. As he pulled onto her pea gravel drive, Lew spotted Harlan crouched with a tent stake in one hand and a hammer in the other. Josie was squawking at Harlan about something or other. The rotted lean-to that Josie's ancestors had built stood behind them in a nest of hackberry and scrub oak. Josie liked to remind people that she descended from Marathon's founders, that her land had been passed down for over two hundred years. Lew couldn't stand when she started regaling people with her history, couldn't stand any of the families who thought their last names still mattered in Marathon. Lew didn't live in the past. He'd escaped his own, which began in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, and started anew along the banks of the Ohio, succeeding on his own intelligence and fortitude, not some passed-down privilege.

Josie claimed not to care much for politics, but she'd been more than happy to loan Lew her patch of riverside. In Marathon you couldn't refuse Lew Mattock a favor regardless of your last name. Josie had a dope-smoking grandson with a girlfriend he'd knocked up, and the last thing she needed was for Lew to make a point of arresting said grandson when he inevitably fucked up.