The More They Disappear (7 page)

He picked up the folder of witness statements Frank took following the murder. Frank's apathy for the task was apparent in his chicken-scrawl writing, and Harlan could make out little more than the names, but the more he read, the more he was reminded of how close Lew kept the kingmakers of Marathon. And it wasn't just local politicians. There were heavy hitters from the state Democratic Party—men and women who decided which candidates to back in the primary—and, since Finley was longtime Democrat country, pretty much decided who would run things. There were a few lines from Lewis Mattock about pulling his father off the grill, a few from Josephine about nothing being out of the ordinary that day. Little else. Harlan put down Frank's notes and started in on Lew's case history, earmarking repeat offenders and files that caught his eye.

In the desk's top drawer, he found Lew's flask and had a taste. Lew had hidden his drinking when Harlan started as a deputy—it was the sort of thing you smelled on his breath and pretended didn't exist—but over time Lew tired of the charade. For years Harlan had envied Lew's position, his swagger and easy talk, but aside from a grate-covered window that looked onto a patch of dirt, Lew's office wasn't much different from Harlan's old one. It wasn't even Lew's anymore. Soon someone would come along and scratch his name off the wire-hatched glass, ship his belongings home to his family.

Harlan opened his new window and lit a smoke, started taking down Lew's photos and plaques one by one. There was Lew and his son holding a gigantic catfish. Lew shaking hands with the governor. Lew brandishing his service weapon. A collection of
MATTOCK FOR SHERIFF
signs leaned against the wall and Harlan lifted one up to study it. Lew's last name was in white over a blue background. A large red star anchored the top left corner. Lew had a flair for the patriotic; he liked to pepper his speeches with phrases by Lincoln and Jefferson—bits of wisdom borrowed from inspirational quote books. Harlan carried the sign to his desk, cigarette dangling from his lips, and started drawing his own campaign logo. At first he just copied Lew's, but Harlan's last name didn't have the same weight as Mattock. “Dupee for Sheriff” wouldn't work. Even as an adult Harlan was embarrassed by the name—its strange French pronunciation, its damning link to the men who'd come before him. His first name was better, taken from a great-uncle who'd been named after the county where he was born, but even that didn't have the same ring as Mattock. Harlan decided on his full name, started sketching pictures around it. A flag. A line of stars. A badge. None of them seemed right and he settled for simplicity—
HARLAN DUPEE FOR SHERIFF
—no ornament. He liked the way the black ink looked against the background of his yellow pad.

As he admired his work, Holly barged in and said, “No smoking in the office.”

“I thought I was in charge,” Harlan replied.

“Sheriffs have rules, too,” she said. “Snuff it.”

Harlan pushed the butt through the window grate and put up his hands like an innocent. “I thought I'd go grab a bite to eat. You want anything?”

“Clean air would be nice.”

*   *   *

His mother asked Lewis to drop her off at her house. The thought of leaving her alone made him feel guilty—it was Lewis's responsibility to comfort her—but then again his mother didn't seem to need much comforting, and Lewis didn't know what to make of that. His father hadn't exactly treated his mother well; there were reasons Mabel Mattock might not be heartbroken over her husband's death, but it would have been easier if she just came out and said so, if she didn't just sit there like some enlightened nun while the world teetered around her.

He parked in the driveway of his childhood home and killed the engine. The house sat matter-of-factly at the end of a cul-de-sac, the street's other houses a straight-line procession leading up to it. The lot was double-sized but the house itself, unremarkable—vinyl siding, small windows, a taped-over doorbell. Two dogwoods that had never learned to flower leaned at an angle in the yard and the shrubs that bordered the front were scraggly and thin.

“Let me help you,” Lewis said, opening his door.

“I can manage,” his mother replied. As she made her way to the house, Mabel's stooped back straightened ever so slightly, and she waved before closing the front door. The street went silent. The house pressed flat as if Lewis was looking at a poster and not the real thing.

He club-footed the gas and headed downtown. He needed a cup of coffee and could stand a gravy biscuit, but when he reached the diner, he saw that a table of his father's buddies had gathered inside. If he walked in, a hush would fall over the place, and Lewis couldn't bear the thought of more condolences. He watched Susie, the Korean woman who'd married a vet and saved the diner from being boarded up, set a bucket of beer at the table. The men would sit there all day, drinking coffee and beer and eating fatty food when it suited them. Some of them were so old they'd worked in the mills when cargo boats still tread up and down the river.

When he was a kid, a different table of old-timers had regaled Lewis with tall tales about dinosaur fish in the river and Simon Kenton, who'd owned half the state and lost it all because he couldn't read. It was as if the men had lived since the dawn of time. They talked about Daniel Boone like he was an old friend. But when Lewis repeated their stories, his father would chide him. “Don't put stock in those fools,” Lew would say. “A man shouldn't live in the past.”

In that, at least, his father stayed true to his word. Lew Mattock always looked ahead. In high school Lewis had been a decent football player; he played both ways—linebacker and tight end—and during his junior season, he single-handedly won a game with a forced fumble and a last-second touchdown grab. He'd been given the game ball, a rousing cheer from the stands, and a headline in the newspaper, but what Lewis remembered most about that night wasn't the adoration of strangers, it was the ride home with his father. Lew reminded him he'd missed a tackle at the end of the first half and dropped a pass on third down, that he could do better next time. “Never be content,” he'd said. They'd driven the rest of the way in silence, and when his mother cut out the newspaper article a few days later and suggested they get it framed, Lewis told her not to go to the trouble, to wait until he did something truly special.

Knuckles rapped against the passenger-side window of the Explorer, and Lewis looked up to find the crooked face of Harlan Dupee staring back at him. Harlan removed his ball cap and brushed his stringy hair behind his ears as Lewis lowered the window.

“I saw you setting here,” Harlan said. “And I didn't want to bother you but I felt I should tell you we're all real broken up about what happened. Shocked. And we're going to work around the clock until we figure out who did this.”

Lewis nodded. He'd never minded Harlan but he'd never thought much of him either. Harlan had been a few years ahead in school, but he never stood out in any particular way, a loner then just as he was now. He looked older than his thirty-some years but then again he'd always somehow looked old. Harlan had only been promoted to chief deputy because his father wanted a patsy in the position. Lew had worried a capable second-in-command might campaign against him one day. Now that plan had backfired. It was Harlan who was left to find his dad's killer. Harlan, who'd been cowering on the ground while Lewis pulled his dad from the grill.

“You have any leads?” Lewis asked.

Harlan looked down. “We're coming at it from a couple angles. There's evidence down at the crime lab and we're checking in with people he arrested recently. That sort of thing.”

Lewis changed the subject. “I came to get a cup of coffee,” he said. “But I don't feel like dealing with those old liars.”

“Wait here.” Harlan headed inside and came back a minute later with a Styrofoam cup and boatloads of cream and sugar. “I didn't know how you take it,” he said.

“I appreciate it,” Lewis replied.

Harlan opened his mouth as if he had something more to say, then closed it.

“I should be heading home,” Lewis said.

Harlan put out his hand to shake before Lewis raised the window. “I'll be by at some point to talk. Just standard investigation stuff.”

“I don't know how much help I can be. You were there, same as me.”

“Like I said. Just standard procedure.” Harlan donned his cap. “Take care of yourself, Lewis.”

Lewis watched Harlan head back into the diner, then headed home for a drink.

*   *   *

Jackson opened Mary Jane's door just enough to poke his head in and say he was going to the country club for dinner. “Your mother seems to have left,” he said. “I don't know where to, but I doubt it was the grocery store.”

“That's fine,” Mary Jane said. “I'll manage.” She hoped this might end the conversation. She understood that her father wasn't inviting her to join him; he just needed a sounding board to complain about Lyda. Sometimes she felt less like a daughter than a warehouse to store her parents' grievances.

“Maybe tomorrow we'll all eat Sunday dinner together,” Jackson said. “Like a proper family.”

“Maybe,” Mary Jane replied, unable to mask her sarcasm. Formal Sunday dinners were a relic of her father's childhood that he futilely tried to maintain, though they usually ended in raised voices and at their best were filled with awkward silence.

“I don't know why I try with you,” Jackson said.

Mary Jane couldn't let this pass. “Yeah,” she said. “You try real hard.”

Jackson huffed dramatically. “I don't know what's going on with you, Mary Jane, but you need to look in the mirror and start making some changes.”

She flicked him off as he closed the door and tried not to cry, tried not to care. She'd never felt close to her father. As a child her grandfather had filled the void. It wasn't until she started spending the night at friends' houses and met fathers who played games and hugged their kids good-night that she realized her own dad was notable mostly for his absence. Most days Jackson could be found hacking the golf ball at Idle Haven; most nights he could be found at the bar trading bullshit stories with other old rich men. As a kid, Mary Jane had loved swimming at Idle Haven's pool, but she grew to hate the rules about what you could wear and who you could bring and when. The Haven, as its members called it, was a throwback to old-guard southern conservatism, a place with separate lounges for men and women and black porters in white gloves. Her parents found comfort in Idle Haven's defense of status quo, but as Mary Jane grew older and learned to think for herself, she came to hate everything about the club. She didn't want to become her mother playing doubles tennis, didn't want to become her father talking about what kind of “stock” this person or that came from.

It was only after she failed to get into college that Jackson's fatherly indifference turned into outright disappointment and that disappointment morphed into resentment. Both his and hers. Jackson tried to persuade the University of Kentucky to rethink their decision—it was his alma mater after all—but Mary Jane's grades and test scores were an embarrassment. They couldn't talk anymore without fighting. It was the same with her mother, though Lyda's shortcoming had never been indifference. Her mother had tried to shape Mary Jane into a version of herself, as if she were a nesting doll, but Mary Jane stopped fitting the mold. Every once in a while she told Mary Jane she could still be beautiful, but it was always couched with the words
if you only
or
if you would just
 …

Mary Jane climbed the stairs to her father's third-floor office. Jackson's desk was that of a man who spent too much time with his work. Papers paralleled edges in perfect stacks. Ornaments sat catercorner. A gilt pen was clipped to a notepad with a list of letters and numbers that had something to do with investment. Mary Jane licked the coating off an OxyContin, crushed it, and snorted a line of blue dust. Her life had become a routine of drug-induced ups and downs, but the office was a special treat—the best room in the house to get high. The windows were two squares that touched both the floor and slanted ceiling. She'd liked to stand between them as a girl: big as a wall!

Mary Jane couldn't spend another night in the house sad and alone; she wanted to go out into the world, to revel. She decided to call Tara Koehler. Even though Tara was a year younger and they'd never been that close, Tara liked to party. Besides, Tara was as close a thing to a friend as Mary Jane had left in Marathon. Almost everyone she'd known growing up had moved on—to college, the military, jobs in other towns. Mary Jane was supposed to have done the same but she'd stalled out.

She snorted the rest of the Oxy, pulled out the phone book, and dialed Tara's number. When a voice said hello, her thoughts cobwebbed. “Hello? Hello?”

Mary Jane's eyelids fluttered as the Oxy pulsed through her. “Tara?”

“Yeah. Who's this?”

“It's Mary Jane. Finley.”

“Mary Jane? You don't sound so good.”

“I'm okay. I took some pills.”

“Hold on.” She heard the cupping of the receiver, followed by a whisper. “What did you take?”

“An Oxy. Will you pick me up and take me somewhere?”

“You got any more?” The room shifted. The ceiling bore down. Mary Jane became lost in the pattern of a rug. “Mary Jane?”

“Sorry. I … I have more.”

“If you can get me high, I'll take you to the dirt track.”

“Sure. Anything. Just come over.”

Mary Jane hung up and looked down at her legs. They jangled but she didn't control them. Parts of her raced, flew, and hummed. Parts of her stayed numb. She grabbed the desk and swiveled the chair. Come on feet! Come on legs! She stood. She stumbled. She walked. What freedom!