RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King

by George D. Shuman

  “We all came in together,” he assured her. “Nobody touched anything before I did, I can guarantee.”

  Judy nodded. “Any chance of finding out who was up here last night? I mean are people friendly up here?”

  Marty shrugged. “Those shacks and house trailers you saw on the drive up here make up the bulk of people who live on the mountain. They’re reluctant around strangers and that would include me, but the lady who runs the general store is a friend. She knows and hears about most everything that goes on.”

  “The pouch.” She pointed at Marty’s back pocket. “It’s possible she’s seen it before?”

  “We’re sure going to ask.”

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling better and taking her first real look at him. He was better looking than his picture in the paper.

  “You’ve been doing this for a while?”

  He nodded. “Started out in Pittsburgh, taking DOJ courses at night. My dad was Sheriff here until a year ago when he died. One thing led to another and I ended up running for the job. Crazy, huh?” He shook his head.

  “Why crazy?”

  “Oh, I had other things in mind. Wanted to live in the city and leave the small town stuff behind. Dad held the office for forty-four years, five years short of a national record. I always said I’d never end up like that. Thought it was a bad thing.”

  He looked at her a long minute. “You were right to think what you thought up there. I was sweating bullets when I first looked into that fuselage. It wasn’t until after I saw the leather pouch and packed earth by the tree that I started to calm down. A lot of people in Marion knew that a plane had gone down, firemen, policemen, the mayor and all their families. I only told the people that needed to know about you joining us this morning, but you can never be sure who told a neighbor or one of their kids. Anyhow, I understand your reaction completely.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I lashed out too quick.”

  “Noted.” He smiled. “So how’d you end up in drug work? You’re not from a long line of cops, I gather.”

  The sun was going behind the mountain. The sky was powdery blue. She swatted through a cloud of gnats before opening her mouth. “Actually, I was in law school when I attended a lecture given by the Director of DEA. I graduated but never took the Bar. About a week later I was filling out an application.” She stumbled over a vine and Marty caught her by the elbow.

  “Thanks,” she said, concentrating on her feet. “I remember thinking books weren’t enough for me at the time. I needed to do something more physical. In a sense, that Director recruited me.”

  “And you like the work?”

  She nodded. “I like the work.” Except for the fact that I’m prone to panic attacks and afraid to touch my own gun.

  Marty suddenly pointed at the horizon. “Mars.”

  Judy leaned down, following the direction of his finger. She shook her head. “Jupiter.”

  “You’re sure?” He squinted.

  She nodded, amused by his disappointment.

  “Daylight up ahead,” Marty said. “Almost back to the power lines.”

  “Thank God,” she said, visibly relieved.

  When they reached the Jeep, she climbed onto the passenger seat and began wrenching off her boots. Marty reached across her lap to open the glove box and handed her a first aid kit with fresh bandages.

  “You can join me for dinner tonight if you like. I haven’t eaten all day and I know for a fact you didn’t bring a lunch.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Judy said. “I might not be able to get up to an alarm, but I can still find my way around a town.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’ll be eating alone.”

  She looked at him. “No one at home?”

  He shook his head and started the engine, making a U-turn in the field.

  “Can we stop by the motel so I can put on real shoes?”

  “You’d be the only one in the restaurant wearing them.”

  Judy heard herself laugh at his joke and the sound of her laughter caught her by surprise.

  “Actually, I have to stop at the office, make a few calls. I can drop you at your motel room and pick you up in an hour or two.”

  “That would be fine. I have to do some calling of my own.” Judy was thinking of what she was going to say to Jack Halligan.

  The ramshackle community of Kettle Hollow appeared as they crested a hill. This time she was struck by the hopelessness of it all; a third world piece of country and just hours from the nation’s capital.

  Marty pulled the Jeep to the curb outside Hattie Wilson’s general store. The air was dry and the field around it baked by the sun. You could hear the chickens squawking, beating their wings in combat. One of the trailer doors slammed closed. Someone moved away from a stoop and disappeared around the side of a building.

  The door to the general store had a CLOSED sign on it.

  “This way,” Marty called, and Judy followed him behind the store to a small gray trailer. There were jars of honey stacked outside and a galvanized bucket of wilting dandelion. A tall tank of propane gas was attached to the front of the house.

  Marty knocked and there was no answer.

  They waited a moment. He circled the trailer and knocked once again.

  “I can stop off tomorrow to show her the bag.”

  “I can stay another day, if you don’t mind,” Judy said. “I’ve got to document this anyhow and might as well hear it all firsthand.”

  She wasn’t looking forward to writing the report, especially the part listing who was present when they located the wreckage. The least she could do now was try to find out what happened to the cocaine. There was an informant involved, a major drug investigation derailed, and with or without her there was going to be an investigation.

  “Tomorrow then,” he said and they walked back to the truck.

  They descended the winding roads toward a neon haze on the horizon. It was the glow of Quills Landing and beyond them a string of diamond-like lights that were cars heading south on the interstate. At the bottom of the mountain, before the bridge that crossed over to Marion, Judy saw the cross on the roof of an old cinderblock church.

  “Church of the Pentecostals,” Marty said. “They pass the snakes around in there.”

  “You’re kidding.” She leaned to look out the window.

  “Every Wednesday.”

  “Thought they made that illegal?”

  “Not in West Virginia,” he said. “And not that Quills Landing doesn’t have bigger problems.”

  “Sam mentioned the town on our way up. He said they had a lot of drugs.”

  “They get truckers by the thousands. Six diesel super stations grossing fourteen million dollars a year. Add cargo thieves, prostitutes and pimps and you’ve got a real party.”

  “And cocaine,” she said.

  Marty nodded. “Absolutely. They’re a municipality and pay their own police chief. I’ll give him a call when I get in.”

  He lowered the window to look out at the stars.

  “I used to stare at the sky all the time when I was a kid,” Judy said. “A cousin of ours had a lake house in Deep Creek, Maryland. I’d stay with them two weeks every summer, and when everyone went to bed I would sneak out and lie down on the dock until dawn. I can still hear the sound of water lapping against those pilings. I could just look up into space and never get my fill. Mapped out my whole life under those stars.” She sighed. “I haven’t paid them any mind since then. Simple things, huh?”

  She stretched out her arms and examined her fingers, feeling cramped from being in the cab so long.

  The Jeep lurched in and out of the ruts. A chuckhole sent them to the ceiling and back. “So what’s for dinner around here, Marty?”

  “You like possum?”

  “Still getting back at me?” She made a face at him, but then smiled, deciding she liked the Sheriff of Marion Township.

  Judy showered, dressed and put on sneakers, then called her offi
ce. Jack was disturbingly quiet when he heard the news about the missing cocaine. He wanted to call the state police to launch an internal investigation, but Judy discouraged him. She said she saw the evidence with her own eyes. Someone had been there before them. It wasn’t going to be the final word on the investigation, but he accepted it for now. Judy was pretty sure they would take the case from her soon enough.

  Marty and Judy ate hamburgers and drank milkshakes in a diner overlooking Silver River.

  Judy, who wasn’t all that eager to go back to her empty room, ordered cream pie and pushed it around her plate with a fork.

  “So tell me more,” Marty said. “You grew up where?”

  “DC,” she said, laying down her fork. “Dad was a lawyer for the Department of Commerce. Mom was a stay-at-home philanthropist. She spent all the money.”

  Marty smiled and she turned to face the dark window.

  There was nothing to see, only her image on a black pane of glass. Over her shoulder in the reflection was a pie case on a counter, a Coca-Cola wall clock and an old black and white picture of a horse and buggy standing in front of the original diner. In that surrealistic moment she saw a younger version of herself and it made her sad.

  “They’re still in Washington?” Marty asked.

  She shook her head, eyes fixed on the reflection. “Dad died when I was eight, Mom when I was nineteen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  She nodded, feeling the oddest compulsion to go on. “Mom was frail all her life. She had heart problems at birth. When Dad died, she didn’t handle it well. She had a stroke and then a heart attack and finally her immune systems began to fail.”

  He shook his head, silent for a moment. “You said you were in law school. You wanted to follow in your father’s footsteps.”

  Judy shrugged, noncommittal. “Yeah, I think there was something inside me that wanted to be like my father.” She pushed a loose strand of hair behind an ear. “He had an office in our house with these humongous windows overlooking a garden. Books on the shelves from floor to ceiling. I can still smell the old paper and leather. He had a picture of me on the mantle and he would hold me in his lap and read books to me.” She smiled. “He had this big leather recliner …” Her eyes became distant and she tilted her head in thought. “I have this indelible memory of him trying to teach me a poem: Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land …” She laughed and looked at her reflection again and slowly raised a hand to cover her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  “Judy?” Marty leaned forward.

  She lowered the hand and looked at him. “When you can no more hold me by the hand nor I half turn to go yet turning stay, remember me when no more day by day …”

  Tears filled her eyes and she looked up at the ceiling with amazement. “I was eight!” she said, half laughing and half crying. “Oh my God, I was eight.”

  “You remember the rest?”

  She shook her head, trying to hold the tears back. Then she picked up a napkin to dab her eyes. “Sorry,” she said, smiling. “That came out of nowhere.” She took a deep breath. “When Dad died, Mom had his office things removed from the house. I was still staying with a neighbor at the time. I remember coming home to discover it was all gone – the desk, the books, everything. I never went back in that room again.”

  A customer paying his bill dropped some change on the floor. She bent to scoop a quarter and squeezed out of the booth to hand it to him.

  Marty watched her, thinking how she changed when she talked about her father. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something left unsaid.

  “You never married?” he asked when she returned.

  “I was,” she said, “but it didn’t work out. How about your father,” she asked abruptly, changing the subject. “It must be strange losing him and then having to fill his shoes all at the same time.”

  Marty took a drink of water. “My father was an icon. You don’t fill an icon’s shoes.” He set the glass down. “I could chew your ear off about my father. It’s strange how much I know about the man and yet I can never say we were close. Maybe it was a generational thing but my father wasn’t big on affection. He didn’t encourage it either. He liked people, well enough, but when it came to emotion he completely shut down. My mother said it was the way he was raised. His parents were Dunkers, which is like being Amish with a D. I mean strict! So we didn’t pal around and go to carnivals and stuff, but losing him was hard. Looking back I wish I’d used the time with him better.”

  “He was happy you became a policeman?” Judy asked.

  Marty nodded. “Yeah, actually he was. He came to Pittsburgh to attend all three of my promotions.”

  She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “So chew my ear off,” she said. Marty looked at her for what seemed like a long second. “Tell me all this stuff that you know about your Dad.”

  “Dad,” Marty repeated, folding his hands and placing them on the table, “left home when he was seventeen. He worked in a coal mine until he was twenty and took the job as Marion’s first constable. He was always quick to say he got the job because no one wanted it and it barely paid. The coal mines were running at peak back then and cash was the only currency, so his number one job was to escort payroll between the bank and company stores. One day a man from the next county killed his wife and went on the run.” Marty straightened the silverware on the table. “The area was still very rugged. You needed horses to get around. Dad rode up to Kettle Hollow during the spring washouts and when he entered the village someone ran behind an old smoke house.” He tapped the table with his finger. “Dad walked around the side of the building and a man leveled a shotgun on him and pulled the trigger. Just like that. No warning. He said he could hear that sound for the rest of his life.”

  “God.” Judy leaned forward.

  “But it was the sound of metal on metal,” Marty said. “He’d heard the hammer striking the firing pin. No explosion, no buckshot. Nothing happened. The man quickly broke open the shotgun barrel to eject the faulty shell, but by then Dad pulled his pistol and put a bullet in his chest. Next morning a reporter took a picture of him with the dead man over his saddle. The reporter happened to work for TIME Magazine so you can imagine what happened next. The town grew, they appointed him Sheriff, gave him a department and some men. Politicians came and went and until a year ago he outlasted them all. He never had much to say to people, but he stood at every baptism and knelt at every funeral. He nailed rooftops after storms and carried sandbags when the rivers flooded. He flipped pancakes at the church and sold Christmas trees for the Veterans of Foreign War. He couldn’t walk into a bar in this county and buy his own beer. Not ever.”

  “You were proud of him,” Judy said.

  Marty shrugged. “Yeah, I was. Maybe even more now than when he was alive.”

  The waitress stopped by and refilled their coffees.

  “How did he die?” Judy asked.

  Marty looked at her. “Oh it’s a story, like everything else.”

  “I want to hear it,” she coaxed.

  “Okay. His best friend was the son of an Indian Chief. We call him Uncle Toby, but his name is Toweenah. He still owns the property adjoining me up on Emmett’s Fork. Anyhow, the two of them would take off hunting and not come home for days at a time. When they did come home, Mom would give them hell and feed them and send them off to bed. About a year ago there was a rabid bear on the mountain. Bears with rabies are very rare, but now and then you hear of one. A camper was killed on Gaudineer Mountain in his tent. Six months later a Pocahontas park ranger was attacked. The ranger made it into his pickup truck, but the bear hit the side of the truck and the next morning they found a claw embedded in the steel door.”

  “God,” Judy whispered.

  “A couple months later it tried to break into a house, knocked an air-conditioning unit out of a window and got its head in the bedroom. So Dad and Toby started to track it.
They found signs of it, trees clawed to shreds, game killed and left for no reason. Dad was sixty-five at the time, but still hard as a board. One day Toby stayed behind to have a tooth pulled and Dad went up without him. A day went by and no one heard from him. Toby went up looking for him, but I don’t think anyone was seriously worried. He had spent plenty of nights in the woods on his own. But when another day went by the official search began. That night Sergeant Watson called me in Pittsburgh to tell me they had found him sitting with his back against a tree. A blood clot had traveled to his brain and paralyzed him from the waist down. He died exactly two months later. Everyone said it was because he couldn’t walk anymore. Possibly that’s true.”

  “You never mentioned your mom.”

  “Mom died of cancer five years ago.”

  “Wow,” Judy said. “Too young, both of our parents.”

  Marty nodded slowly.

  “You never went after the bear?”

  “Never had the chance.” Marty looked down and chuckled. “Toby killed it the day of the funeral. Five months later he had his first heart attack. Now he stays at home and I drop by to bring him pizzas.”

  “Whew! What a story.”

  Marty laughed. “The story is trying to operate a modern police department in Dad’s wake. When I ask the Mayor for something, like software for the computers, he’ll scrunch up his face and say, ‘old Cal never needed one of them, Marty’.”

  Judy laughed and glanced at the clock. An hour had passed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve interrogated you enough. Ladies’ room?” she asked.

  He pointed and Judy left the table with a strange smile on her face.

  Chapter 12

  Marion, West Virginia

  Judy dressed in her jogging things, replacing the Band-Aids on her heels and padding them with a roll of gauze purchased at the Gas-and-Go. Minutes later she was crossing the lawn in front of the motel, sun breaking out of the trees, blades of dew-soaked grass clinging to the tops of her running shoes. She reached the intersection of a narrow asphalt road and started running up a hill, slowly at first, testing the dressings on her ankles, feeling more confident as she passed the bank’s billboard near the top.