“Gonna get you!” she heard him say with a laugh, pretending to chase the kids up the steps.
Breathing shallowly, she sat back. The phone rang.
“Hello, Susan, how are you?” Kathy said in a monotone.
Mark caught her eye, shaking his head.
“Sure, Susan, he’s right here. Just a minute.” She slammed the phone into his chest. Wordlessly, she went upstairs to check on the kids.
Mark was still on the phone when she came down, speaking in the intimate tone a man uses with his wife. “I know that Susan . . . I know. I know. Susan, don’t say that. You know that’s not true.”
When Kathy stepped into his sight, his tone became firmer. “Susan, if you don’t want to work with Ron, just tell him. It’s that simple, just tell him.”
Mark put the phone down with a shrug. “She hung up,” he said, coming into the kitchen where Kathy was busy with the dishes.
“What’s wrong with her now?” she asked in a flat voice.
“You know, I really feel sorry for her, really bad for her. She’s a good kid. She’s just so screwed up. If she’d get the hell out of here, she’d be okay.”
“Wouldn’t we all.”
He went on about Susan’s problems and was surprised to see disgust on wife’s face.
“You are too close to her,” she snapped, as if she herself hadn’t been encouraging Susan’s persistence. “What’s she doing for you now? You’re finished with her, Mark! I thought you wanted to get her off the books. She doesn’t want to let go, I can see the way she’s working you. Everybody knows her game. You know how naïve you can be.”
“Naïve? Hey, who almost shot off the cable television man’s ass today?”
“Shit!” she shouted.
Calmly, he picked up the leather billfold with his badge from the counter and tossed it onto the kitchen table in front of her.
“Hey, you know so fucking much, the job’s yours. Put on the badge. Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”
He slammed the door and went out for his run.
While he was gone, the phone rang again. This time it was Ron Poole, who registered her sniffles and asked what was wrong. Grateful for some sympathy, she blurted out her misery.
Poole lectured her sternly. “How many times have I told you? You guys don’t have to put up with this. What are you waiting for, shots through the window? You’ve had threats. Those boys in Letcher County play hardball. Who do you think let the air out of your tires? That was just a little warning.”
“Mark says—”
“Listen to me! All that husband of yours has to do is talk to Terry Hulse about the threats. Tell them you’re scared. They’ll get you out. I mean it. I’ll back you up. I’m telling you, you’ll be gone in a heartbeat.”
“Mark says there’s not enough of a real threat—”
“Fuck what Mark says! What the fuck does he know, a rookie scared of his boss? You’re smart. You do not have to stay here. You know how it works!”
When Mark came back he found his wife taking a hot bath, deep in thought. She asked him to close the door and leave her alone.
7
Kathy had come to the conclusion that Poole was right, even if his intentions were wrong. The threat she felt to the safety of her family was genuine, no matter how amplified it was by her personal anguish about having to remain in Pikeville, perhaps indefinitely, as her marriage drifted away from its moorings.
Mark didn’t see it that way at all. Yet he himself, deeply disturbed by the insidious way his work had penetrated into his home, had felt strongly enough about it to warn her repeatedly about the calls from Charlie Trotter, some of which—like Poole’s—she hadn’t even told him about. “Just don’t mess with him,” he said flatly. “Take a message and hang up. I’m the one that went to the academy, Kathy. I mean it, don’t get involved. These are dangerous people.”
Her position on that was, if they’re so damn dangerous and the family’s safety was being compromised, why not ask for a transfer? She knew the answer without asking. Mark thought he could handle it without endangering anyone. And besides, he was adamant about not wanting to look like a quitter.
So Poole’s advice to take matters into her own hands made sense, even though she was savvy enough to see that it was offered mostly to serve his own agenda. Poole disliked Mark, which figured. Mark was intensely competitive and determined to shine in the eyes of his superiors, which couldn’t help but make Poole look bad. Furthermore, Poole’s interest in Susan was obvious—he’d made that clear not just to Susan, but to Kathy as well. Meanwhile, poor misguided Susan was in love with Mark, as she had told both Kathy and Poole on several occasions. As time went on, she became obsessed.
The situation was crazy, Kathy thought. They had paid their dues. She had intervened previously, when her husband was mired in inertia and doubt about even getting a job with the FBI. It was time to do so again, for the sake of her husband, their children, and their marriage. It was time to find a way to get them out of town. The problem was that she didn’t know how to do it without driving her husband farther away.
An odd opportunity to force the issue presented itself quite unexpectedly in the second week of November, when Kathy’s sister, Chris, flew up from Florida to visit for a week and offered to babysit to allow Kathy and Mark a rare Saturday night out. They were delighted for the chance to be together somewhere other than at home. They went to dinner at a restaurant called the Showboat. Afterward, they stopped for a drink at the cocktail lounge of the Landmark motel, which was the most popular of the very limited nightspots in Pikeville.
As they entered the crowded lounge, they edged through a small group of people dancing woodenly to a blaring rock band. Through a haze of cigarette smoke clinging to the room, Mark saw a familiar face at a nearby table.
“That’s the guy I pointed out on television,” he whispered, trying to ignore the man’s wave.
Kathy squinted to recognize a local politician from a forlorn coal town in Letcher County. Mark knew him through one of his informants. When the official had been interviewed on television about a minor story out of Letcher County, Mark had pointed him out to Kathy as a man involved in cocaine dealing, saying, “That’s one of the guys I’d like to get talking.”
There were no vacant tables in sight, and the man kept beckoning. “We’ll stop for a minute and leave,” Mark muttered.
“What’s up?” he said as the politician scraped to his feet and swept Kathy onto a stool with a broad gesture of hospitality. Kathy was wearing a low-cut sweater and a skirt that was shorter than most people in Pikeville were used to seeing on a wife. She was uncomfortably aware that their new companion was staring at her thighs.
The man seemed delighted by the new company. “Why don’t you relax and let me buy you a drink?” he offered, flashing Mark a quizzical look that said, Wife or girlfriend?
Mark explained, “This is my wife, Kathy.”
The official was planning to go home soon and suggested they take the table when he left. But first, they should have that drink. A round was ordered. The two men spoke for a few minutes about something of more than passing interest to them both, the delay in making arrests in the chop-shop case. Everybody in Letcher County was talking about it. Their companion pursed his lips. “Well, you ain’t come up with any indictments yet. I hear some of the property is disappearing. Problems?”
This was a sore point, and Mark tried not to show his concern. He sipped a beer and said in a measured tone, knowing that the conversation would be repeated, “We’re very methodical. We always get our guy.” Looking his companion in the eye Mark said, “Why don’t you tell me something about the case that I don’t already know?”
This elicited a boisterous laugh. The politician wiped some beer from his chin. “I don’t know anything about that, man. Nothing.”
A
s they talked, Mark had spotted a local businessman he wanted to talk to at the bar and excused himself for a few minutes. He kept an eye on the table, though, and noticed with some amusement that the official had edged closer to Kathy. She nodded cordially at her companion. Watching him light his cigarette with a practiced flourish, she reconsidered Poole’s advice: Get involved in something. I’ll help get you all out of here. She wondered if she was looking at opportunity leering at her across the table, trying to get a peek down the front of her sweater. His voice was oddly high-pitched. “And what about you, little lady? Do you just sit there looking pretty or do you say something?”
She hated being patronized, but batted her eyelashes and replied, “When I have something to say I say it,” she said glancing pointedly across the room to show that she could see that her husband was out of earshot.
He had moved close enough on the high stool to press his thigh against her. She flinched, but covered by saying quickly, “You know, I saw you on television.”
This had its effect. “And did you like what you saw?”
“Actually, yes. I remember telling my husband, now this man is a politician. You had on just a casual shirt. Not like the windbags in fancy suits that we have back East.”
He exhaled cigarette smoke in a leisurely curl. His leg rubbed against hers. “Why do you sleep with a cop?” he said, not wasting any time.
“I married him.” She had her swizzle stick between her lips and ran her tongue around its tip, not quite believing her own nerve. He watched, transfixed. “Honey, I don’t get much from my wife either,” he said.
At that point, Kathy pressed her leg against his, which caused him to reappraise things. Now he looked startled. Boldly, he said, “Honey, your husband don’t know what he’s got, does he? You’re a hot little bitch, ain’t you?”
The music was loud. Many people in the room were drunk. She smiled brightly and led him on, telling him at length that she was bored, miserable, lonely, and never had any fun. “It’s been a long time,” she said, and watched his reaction. “My husband is always working, and I think he finds what he needs somewhere else, if you know what I mean.”
He did. This went on for a few minutes until Kathy deftly brought the subject around to the virtues of cocaine and sex together. “It’s a lot better when you do coke first,” she said with a small sigh.
“Hell, you didn’t never touch no coke.”
“Sure I did, back East. But now I’m an agent’s wife. There aren’t many chances to make a connection these days.”
“Hell, that ain’t no problem around here.”
They stopped talking and looked up innocently as Mark approached the table with another round of beers. Kathy had a gleam in her eye. When the politician got up to go to the men’s room, she had a mischievous look. “Mark, this guy is doing a lot of talking. I could find out anything I want from this guy.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Kat?” he said. Mark wasn’t quite sure what she had been up to, but he knew she was pumping the politician for information. Knowing Kathy, he also guessed that she would get some. The prospect was enticing, but he was cautious. He said, “Don’t say a word to him. If he wants to talk, let him talk.” She winked.
“Believe me, Kat,” Mark added, whispering in her ear over the noise of the music. “He’s smarter than he looks. When he comes back from the john, I’ll walk away again. Let him talk. But watch yourself. Just listen, OK?”
Kathy shot him an angry scowl and said, “Just get out of my goddamned face, Mark!” He stiffened, but then felt their companion looming behind his shoulder. Frowning, Mark made another excuse to leave. Walking away, feigning drunkenness, he placed himself in a group of people almost out of sight of the table, but still where he could keep a discerning watch on the man, who was grinning with the look of someone who thought his ship was about to come in. After a few minutes, Mark watched him get up and leave Kathy alone at the table. Then he came back. In a moment, Kathy sat bolt upright and the two shook hands. With a quick glance around the room, the Letcher County politician walked out.
Mark hurried back to his wife. She was already pulling her coat on and handed him his. “What’s going on?” he said, following her out the door in a hurry. It was well after midnight, and time to go home anyway.
“We got talking about drugs,” Kathy said when they got in the car.
“I kind of thought you would.”
“Well, I kind of told him that I like to party a little bit, but I can’t because of my husband being who he is. I told him everything has to be discreet.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Well, you can do coke anywhere,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, that’s true, but I don’t know anybody, and I can’t trust anybody.’”
“And he said?”
She took a gulp and giggled, imitating the official’s twang. “‘You can trust me, sweet thang. You sit tight for a minute, and I’ll be raht back.’”
“And?”
“And this.” Eyes wide, she opened her pocketbook and showed him a wrinkled plastic bag on top. “Mark, he put a gram of coke in my pocketbook. He said there was more, anytime I was interested.”
“What! Are you sure? Jesus, do you know how bad we want this guy?” He glanced furtively around the darkened parking lot, suddenly afraid that she had been set up. How would he explain this if he and Kathy got busted then and there with a gram of coke in her purse?
“Don’t touch it!” he ordered. “Let’s get out of here!”
Despite the hour, they drove to the office a few blocks away, where Mark got on the phone, and woke up Terry Hulse in Covington. Hulse took it in stride, if a bit groggily. His instructions were to phone Poole and have him come down immediately to witness Mark securing the cocaine in the office safe. Mark offered to take Kathy to the emergency room for blood and urine tests to show that she had not used any of it, “just for the record.”
That wasn’t necessary, Hulse assured him. “Just make sure the stuff is locked up.” Hulse said that he would want to interview Kathy himself “to see if this leads us anywhere.”
When Poole finally arrived, unhappy to have been called out of bed to witness something so trivial as a packet of drugs, Mark locked up the cocaine, which was in fact two grams, along with a cocktail napkin on which the Letcher County politician had written his phone number for Kathy.
It was after three by the time they got home. They talked a little about the implications of her stunt, with Mark bristling at her insistence on following up on the politician’s offer to supply more coke. Mark wanted no part of that. Entrapping a local politician certainly had allure, sure. Once a man with connections and declining options started talking, there was no telling where the lines could lead in the tangle of coalfield politics. Although he had at first encouraged her, and was in fact proud of her, he was also irritated by his wife’s impetuous intervention in what would be a criminal matter. This was a dangerous game, and he wanted her out of it immediately. He figured that Kathy could make her statement for the record, but beyond that, he wasn’t prepared for any further involvement by his wife. He made himself clear and drifted off to sleep.
Kathy stayed awake, her mind churning. She relished her success in inducing a presumably crafty politician to pass two grams of coke to an FBI agent’s wife, with the agent himself not twenty-five feet away. Now that was undercover work! Additionally, the encounter had shown her what she recognized as an opening—there was enough danger involved, that, if she were part of the actual police sting, it might be enough to transfer them out of town. She figured she knew what she was doing. All she needed was the chance to work it out.
It appeared as if she was going to get that chance, too. On Monday morning, energized by possibilities, Hulse and another agent from Covington drove all the way down to Pikeville to take her statement. They came right to the house, without Mark,
who was instructed to wait in the office. Kathy supposed they were there as a formality; but she saw their interest sharpen as she described what she had done—and insisted that she could do it again.
“I can get this guy,” she told them, quite sure of herself. “He told me he would get together whenever I want. I know you guys want this man, and I can get him without any problem.” Encouraged by their receptiveness, she plunged ahead, telling them, “The only thing is, I have to call my shot soon, one way or the other, so he doesn’t smell a setup. I’m already in this, you know.” They didn’t chuckle condescendingly, as she had feared they would. Instead, they discussed with her the wisdom of allowing an agent’s wife to participate in what would be a significant drug bust. Could she manage this? Would she be able to get away with wearing a wire? She concluded that she could and would.
Seeing that she had them, Kathy offered to take a drug test to establish for the record that she was not a user herself. That wouldn’t be necessary, Hulse repeated with a smile and a nod toward Danielle and little Mark playing in the next room. Saying he would be back in touch, Hulse left with his colleague.
Mark was furious when Hulse told him about the conversation with Kathy. He said, in a sharp tone that he never thought he would take with his boss, “We’ve got two small kids, for Christ’s sake. I’m not letting my wife get involved in this kind of thing. Would you let your wife get involved in something like this?”
Hulse shook his head understandingly. “Yeah, I see your point.”
But Kathy kept at it until Mark finally relented and called Hulse to say that he had changed his mind, that she was available to take the next step, which would be to make what the bureau called a “controlled call” to the official from their home, to set up a meeting, with Mark and Poole on hand as witnesses. Under bureau orders, Poole came to their house a few days later with a tape recorder to supervise the call, which was made from the upstairs telephone in the hall outside their bedroom.
Above Suspicion Page 12
