The More They Disappear (2 page)

“What're y'all screaming about?” Lew asked as he stepped from the cruiser.

Josie pointed at Harlan. “He's ruining my lawn.”

“Well, why would he do a thing like that?” Lew turned to Harlan. He couldn't help smiling as Harlan stood up from his crouch, his gangly limbs slow to straighten. Harlan's every movement seemed strained by his height. Physically he was everything Lew wasn't and this made Lew think less of him. Harlan was a head-in-the-clouds kind of man, figuratively and literally; Lew was a feet-on-the-earth man.

Harlan didn't answer Lew's question; he just fidgeted with the hammer, letting it smack an awkward rhythm against his thigh. “Harlan,” Lew cooed. “Earth to Harlan.”

“There're gonna be kids around,” Harlan said, “running barefoot and all, so I figured I'd set up in this grass.”

“What do you think of that, Josie?”

“I'd say that's a damn shame reason to tear up my lawn.”

Lew cocked his head, as if considering the issue. “I have to agree with Josie on this one, Harlan. Now I know you're a bachelor, so I'm touched you were thinking of the kiddies and all, but kiddies are resilient. Don't matter if they're playing on grass or dirt or rocks. Hell, a kid can run over broken glass if they're having enough fun. Besides, Josie here has a vote in the election and kiddies don't, so move everything where she tells you, okay?”

Harlan nodded and followed Josie to a weed-strewn patch of dirt.

“Crisis averted,” Lew mumbled to himself before going to inspect the stainless steel grill in the bed of Harlan's pickup. Harlan's truck was so old it had been his daddy's when his daddy was a young man. Lew had driven by a broken-down-on-the-side-of-the-road Harlan countless times, but he always sped by to avoid commiserating about what had broke and why. Harlan was oblivious anyway, the curved bill of his sweaty ball cap pulled low while he tunnel-vision-tinkered.

Lew ran his hand over a slipshod patch of welding along the truck's gate and shook his head. Flecks of rusted metal broke off where his fingers pressed. The grill put the truck to shame. Its cooking surface boasted a second level for toasting buns and there was an extra burner on each side. Harlan had done good. Lew even considered lowering the grill from the truck to help, but when it came time to hammer a stake or set up chairs in the grass, Lew became bored. He believed fervently in the separation of tasks. Harlan's time was best spent preparing for the fundraiser while his was best spent looking at a freshly inked government check and ruminating on the future.

A couple of early birds parked on the shoulder of the river road, and when Lew noticed a familiar white SUV, he grabbed a bottle of Basil Hayden's from the trunk of his cruiser. The bourbon was left over from the bust of a truck loaded with stolen booze and cigarettes. Lew had kept a couple of crates as a finder's fee, and since it was election season, he'd hand delivered most to wealthy farmers and difference makers. There'd been a time in Finley County when the man who distilled the best moonshine won the election, and Lew figured that time wasn't so far removed as people liked to believe.

He made straight for Stuart Simon, the editor of the
Marathon Registrar
. “Gonna make a fortune on parking tickets today,” he said, his right hand extended. Stuart had moved from Chicago and liked the folksy quality of Marathoners, the one-line jokes and thick accents, so Lew hammed it up.

“Is that what this shindig is all about?”

“Ever lil' bit helps.”

“It can't be 'cause you're worried about losing the election.”

“Not a thing in this world is set in stone but the Lord's commandments.” Lew handed the bottle over. “Kentucky's finest,” he said. “I figure you mightn't've had the pleasure.”

“I've been here three years.” Stuart studied the bottle.

“Has it been that long?” Lew excused himself. Brevity was key in his dealings with other men. He couldn't abide a lagging conversation, considered pointless chatter a weakness.

While he looked for someone else worth talking to, Lew's son pulled up with his armpiece of a wife and their twin daughters. Lew's own wife was conspicuously absent. He hadn't expected Mabel to show up and it was just as well. He felt uncomfortable whenever he saw her moping along the edges of a party. Lew crouched down and beckoned his granddaughters, who ran and jumped into his arms. He lifted them up and spun a circle, smiling wide for anyone who might be looking. As he set the girls down, a claw of a hand gripped him by the shoulder; Lew turned to find Trip Gaines's smug face. Trip was family by way of his son's marriage—the armpiece's father—but Lew didn't feel like listening to his long-winded bullshit, so used their granddaughters as buffers and said, “Hug your Pappy Gaines now,” winking at Trip as the girls reached up their arms.

The guests kept trickling in and Lew kept busy pumping hands and telling jokes until it was time for him to man the grill. Someone started playing music, a rocking bit of country that had him shuffling his feet as he slapped steaks onto the fire. It was going to be a bash of a party—the best yet.

 

one

Mary Jane Finley was late. She'd changed her outfit three times but nothing seemed to fit. It was the mirror's fault, the way it reflected her body lumpen and plain. She had new curves, new skin—had for a while now—and no amount of makeup could bring back the face that had twice been Finley County's Junior Miss Harvest. Those years, from twelve to fourteen, had been her best. After that her body ran its own course, and no diet, fast, or finger down the throat could help her regain the promise she'd shown. There always remained twenty pounds she couldn't shed. After futilely changing her clothes one last time, Mary Jane scowled at the mirror and said, “Fuck you.”

She drove her red coupe past the house where her boyfriend, Mark, had lived before he left for college. She knew Mark was back in town, waiting by the window for that moment she drove by, and she resisted the urge to honk hello. The finished homes started to thin out as she rolled down the street at a steady twenty-five. In countless plots there lay only the expectation of a house—floor plans staked with wooden boards, electric boxes rising from the emptiness, scraggly seedlings of trees. Mary Jane parked in a deserted cul-de-sac next to the bones of a two-story and slipped on a backpack before hiking into the woods.

It was bow season but the trails were quiet. Most hunters waited for gun season to bag their bucks. The occasional bird flitted from branch to branch and called out, but Mary Jane paid them no mind. She adjusted the backpack, which held a broken-down rifle that weighted itself awkwardly against her shoulders. Her impulse was to step into the thickest woods and move under the cover of brush, but she knew her feet would kick up leaves that way and a stray limb might scratch her face. No. It was better to stay on the worn paths.

She moved with a certain grace through the woods, though that grace wasn't the result of years spent hiking so much as years spent walking down the hallway in heels. “Down and back,” her mother would say until blisters formed on Mary Jane's feet, Mary Jane refusing to show pain. Down and back. Mary Jane a plaything to order around. Down and back. A mindless animal.

She was not a born killer, nor an experienced one, but she'd prepared. If she was in over her head, she didn't realize it, and if she had doubts, they didn't show. She was buoyed by thoughts of her and Mark together. She thought of this act as not altogether different from a marriage—something that would bind them.

In many ways she was the perfect criminal. She came from a respectable family—her father was an investor, her mother a socialite. She descended from the Revolutionary War general who at one time owned all the land in the county that still bore his name. No one in Finley County would ever believe Mary Jane Finley had committed a crime. No one knew about her sadness, her addictions, or her faith that Mark Gaines would carry her away to a better place.

She reached a clearing along the ridge overlooking the river and the wind died down. Months before, the hike would have left her breathless, but no longer. To the west a few abandoned trailers hunkered along the river road and to the east Mary Jane could make out downtown. In the distance lay Josephine Entwhistle's house and behind stood only the skeletons of unfinished homes.

By the time Mary Jane arrived, the party was in full swing. She briefly considered turning back, but there were expectations, a plan to follow through with, and if it worked, Mary Jane would no longer she be trapped in Marathon, would no longer feel so damn alone.

She pulled a Ziploc of pill dust from her backpack—a mix of Xanax and Adderall that she snorted in bumps off her car key. She'd learned there was a pill for every need and Mark fed each one of hers. Afterward she took out the stock and barreled action of a .308 Winchester. The smell of gun oil calmed her. Her grandfather had taught Mary Jane to shoot when she was just a girl, the lessons his way of stemming her mother's influence, of showing Mary Jane there was more to life than beauty pageants. They'd gone hunting every deer season until he passed away, and when it wasn't deer season, there'd been wild turkey and dove. Somewhere in the basement the mounted head of Mary Jane's first buck—a four pointer—gathered dust. In a strange way she'd discovered that shooting a rifle wasn't altogether different from walking down the runway. Both required great balance, great composure.

She attached the stock and barreled action, tightened the action screws, and checked that the chamber was empty, then wrapped her index and middle fingers around the trigger, and pulled. A smooth click. The action was sound. She'd started to develop a kinship with the Winchester and regretted she'd have to get rid of it. The .308 was right on the edge of kicking too hard and she liked that about it, too.

She attached the scope, cradled the barrel in a tripod, and looked down the sight. Partygoers mingled. The mayor, the judge, and other politicians stood around laughing at one another's stale jokes—men with names that went as far back as Finley, names like Craycraft and January and Estill. Mary Jane could wipe the whole town clean if only she had the bullets. A .308 with a good scope: that's all it took. She moved the gun from face to face—a god above them. She wished Mark was there with her—to feel this, to see her as no one else could. She wanted Mark's hand over hers as she cupped the trigger—Mark caressing her, her caressing the gun—the power all theirs. She chambered a round and set the butt of the rifle against her shoulder. Theirs was a fated love. A sacrificial love.

The last of the pill dust went up her nose and her thoughts about the future dissolved and turned to smoke. Her fears drifted away and fell into an abyss. She was patiently numb to consequences—her mind focused by one pill, her doubts erased by the other. The shot was a touch under two hundred yards and it was quiet along the Ohio.

She peered through the scope and found Lew. Oblivious. Flipping meat at the grill. She drew a deep breath and aimed the rifle at his chest, let the world come into focus and thought of nothing but the pressure against two tips of fingers. When she exhaled, she drew those fingers toward her heart and the rifle kicked.

The smell of gunpowder floated in the air. Mary Jane felt the warmth of the barrel and looked back through the scope. Lew fell forward onto the grill. For a moment nothing else changed. Then came the distant sound of screams. Mary Jane watched the crowd scurry like ants as smoke rose from the grill. Her body convulsed and knocked the rifle from its cradle. Then she vomited a thin, weak stream onto the ground. She cursed and struggled to regain composure, started humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”—an old runway trick to calm the nerves. In less than a minute her body steadied and her stomach settled. She kicked dirt over the vomit, loosened the action screws to break down the rifle, and placed it in the backpack along with the casing before she headed back in the direction from which she'd come.

*   *   *

It may have been the music blaring from the speakers of a souped-up Mustang or the noise of the crowd or the fact that people had become accustomed to cars backfiring; whatever the reason, no one connected the boom from the hills to Lew Mattock's collapse. The spatula slipped from Lew's hand and spun to the ground, where dirt clung to its greasy edges. Harlan Dupee watched him double onto the grill and assumed heart attack, though he couldn't seem to move his legs and help.

It was Lewis Mattock who ran to his father's side, pulled him to the ground, and yelled, “Shooter!” The crowd scattered. Some ran for water, others the woods. Most ran in circles to nowhere particular. Harlan dropped to the ground and watched Lew's legs jangle until his massive belly—a mound rising from the cracked clay of a dry October—stilled. Lewis Mattock slumped back on his knees, a look of horror across his face. Time must have passed. When Trip Gaines, a local doctor, checked for a pulse and shook his head, Lewis wrapped one burly arm around his wife and the other around his twin daughters before shouldering them into the safety of Josephine Entwhistle's house. Dr. Gaines laid his suit jacket over Lew's wounded face. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air.

The crowd waited for someone to give the all clear, and even though no more bullets rained down, Harlan lay on the ground a long while before getting to his feet and asking people to please seek shelter inside the house and stay there until told otherwise. Most rubbernecked glances at Lew's body as they passed. A couple retched. More than a few sobbed in fits and starts. Two other deputies, Del Parker and Frank Pryor, joined Harlan around the body. Blood had begun to pool through the weave of the doctor's jacket, which Harlan lifted. Lew's right eye was gone and his face had become a pulp of meat and bone and yellow flesh. The earth swallowed what blood coursed from the hollow in his skull. Harlan dropped the jacket back in place and started giving orders. He did his best to sound confident, but it had been years since he'd asked the deputies to do anything other than what Lew told him to pass along. He had Del radio Paige Lucas, the rookie out patrolling roads, and tell her to stop any suspicious vehicles. After that Del was to get the neighboring county's dogs and search for evidence. This left Harlan with Frank, an overweight deputy with a ruddy face and a chip on his shoulder. “Head inside and get the contact information of everyone here. See if anyone noticed something unusual.” Frank shrugged before spitting on the ground and joining the crowd as they herded themselves into Josephine's.