Fast Falls the Night

by Julia Keller

  “Okay,” he said to the woman.

  His silent contempt for her—born of his frank disdain for her bad teeth and her obesity and the fact that she was probably protecting the very bastards who were poisoning her neighbors—was quickly fading. This was a job. Jobs were hard to come by around here. She was fortunate to have it. She did what she had to do to keep it.

  She was a victim—just like the addicts he was trying to save. God, he hated the word “victim.” But it was apt. You could hate a word and still know that it was the right one. He shrugged. Time to go. For now.

  He paused before pushing open the door. He took a quick glimpse back at the plant on the table in the corner, the dead one, the one with the brittle leaves and the ugly brown color, and he wondered what that plant might have looked like if it had been given water, light, the right kind of soil, a little care and compassion. A little hope.

  Pam

  4:37 P.M.

  EDGAR LEE SUMMERSTALL, 28

  MARJORIE PEARSON, 52

  JIMMY DRAKE, 16

  Pam snapped off her cell. Jesus, she thought. She returned her attention to Dr. Childress, an austere, thin-lipped, hook-nosed man in a well-cut black suit. He sat very close to the edge of his seat. His back was straight, his posture perfect. Both of his knobby, wormy-veined hands lay flat on the conference table in front of him. He looked poised to flee the premises. She could not blame him. The number of overdoses had continued to climb. The hospital in which this conference room was located—its resources and staffing levels already precariously low—was undergoing unprecedented stress. Its imminent collapse would be on his watch.

  Pam’s most recent text had come from Deputy Brinksneader. He was manning the desk in the sheriff’s office, covering for the secretary, Trixie Scoggins. Trixie had skipped her lunch but she could not skip her bathroom break, for reasons she did not need to spell out to the deputy. Steve had received the call with the names of the latest overdoses—it came from Ernie Edmonds, the paramedic—and immediately texted them to the sheriff.

  Twenty-three. The total was now twenty-three. Still only the two fatalities. Thank God, Pam thought. But—twenty-three?

  She felt as if she had fallen into a grain elevator and was being buried under tons of heavy grain. She had seen that happen; rather, she had seen the aftermath of it. A farmer named Ray Fane out by Shawkey Ridge had slipped from the rim and tumbled in, creating a situation that was instantly and irrevocably hopeless. Likewise, Pam felt suffocated by the day’s onrushing glut of overdoses. She had no idea when it would stop. And no idea what to do about it.

  She was seated to the left of Vernon Childress. It was just the two of them. Pam had taken off her hat and placed it on the conference table, a beautifully smooth woodgrain with a deep honey lacquer that made it look almost edible. The high-backed, black leather chairs were uncomfortably luxurious. Pam was not used to meeting in such places, and in fact had only been in this conference room once before. When she recalled the venues in which she usually held briefings—the front seat of the Blazer, a booth at JPs diner, her cramped box of an office next to the jail in the Raythune County Courthouse—this room with its patterned carpet and fabric wallpaper and professional hush seemed, by comparison, like Buckingham Palace. Of course she had never been to Buckingham Palace. It was only an expression.

  Childress was an old man. He was scheduled to retire in four months. Pam could not read minds, but she had a fair idea of what the good doctor was thinking: If he had retired in June, his original plan, he would not have to be dealing with this. But the hospital board had persuaded him to stay on until the first of the year. And so here he was.

  “We’ve ordered more naloxone from Charleston. It should be here this afternoon by FedEx Ground,” he said. His voice was empty of inflection. It was a straight line seeking out the swiftest route from A to B. “The nursing supervisor has been on the phone all afternoon. She’s getting commitments from four other counties to send us additional support. Nurses, physicians, EMTs, patient-care techs. We’re even running out of gurneys, if you can believe it. And clean linens in the ICU.”

  “Sounds like our own version of nine-eleven,” Pam said.

  Childress’s head swiveled quickly in her direction. “What did you say?”

  His reaction startled her. It was just an analogy. What was his problem?

  “Nine-eleven,” she repeated. “Raythune County-style. I only meant—”

  “Don’t.” He cut her off, anger flooding his voice. “Do not say that. You don’t get to say that. Not in my hospital.” Now she heard something else in that voice: disgust. A raw, visceral disgust.

  It was the first honest emotion Pam had ever seen within the person of Vernon Childress. He had been, in all of her previous encounters with him, serene and unflappable. He had practiced internal medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, for forty-four years but now he was a strictly an administrator, a man who spent his days amidst charts and numbers, not human beings clutching their bellies and bleating with pain. He rarely found himself in the presence of feelings, and he surely had no need anymore to express them himself. Thus Pam assumed he had probably forgotten how.

  He hadn’t.

  “Pardon me?” she said.

  “Don’t you dare…” He took a deep breath, one that caused his bony shoulders to elevate and fall. It did not succeed in dissipating the emotion. “Don’t you dare make that comparison in my hearing. The victims of nine-eleven were professionals. Bankers and attorneys and executives. People who mattered. But these—these addicts—did this to themselves.” He had said the word “addicts” with such barbed malice in his tone that Pam was taken aback. “They caused this. They’re weak. They’re selfish. They don’t care about anybody but themselves. They’re lucky we don’t just leave them out on the street to die. That’s what they deserve.”

  The thought that came to Pam Harrison was simple and stark: Hope to God I don’t sound that like.

  Because the truth was, she shared Childress’s opinion. Or at least she had—until she heard him speak it aloud. There was nothing quite like hearing your own view espoused by a snobby, judgmental old bastard who, on account of his money and a couple of initials after his name, was able to glide through the world on a moving sidewalk of automatic privilege to show you the error of your ways.

  First thing she would do, when she got back to the courthouse, was talk to her deputies. And Trixie Scoggins, too. Anybody who reported to her. Make sure they weren’t cutting corners or taking their time responding to dispatches for possible overdoses. Make sure they understood: We take care of everybody. You want to stand in judgment of people? Go apply to be God. Or go be a doctor. Hang on—it’s the same thing. Just ask any doctor.

  “Okay,” Pam said. She picked up her hat. Childress, in his own way, had clarified things for her. She stood up. At the same moment, her cell signaled a new text. She checked it. Then she looked at Childress’s grim, sallow face, which he had tilted up toward her, awaiting confirmation of whatever fresh hell this was.

  “Another OD. And you got your wish. It’s one of your professionals this time. Fenton McHale,” she said, naming an attorney whose work for the coal companies had made him a millionaire several times over. He was a well-known man, as opposed to the nameless, faceless, anonymous people they had been dealing with thus far. “His secretary found him unresponsive in his office fifteen minutes ago. Probable overdose.”

  “Fenton? That cannot be correct. It’s a mistake. It must have been a heart attack or a stroke.”

  Childress had to say it to her back because she was already at the door and only turned around to remind him of what he already knew: No one was exempt from the Appalachian virus.

  “Come on, Vernon.” She had never used his first name before. It had seemed disrespectful. Now, the only respect she was thinking about was respect for the paramedics and the others who were in the field trying to save lives. Not hanging out in fancy conference rooms with black leather c
hairs and honey-lacquered tables. “You know as well as I do that anybody can lose themselves to addiction. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what your title is.”

  “Impossible. Fenton McHale was no drug addict.”

  Pam couldn’t stick around to argue. She didn’t have time.

  Twenty-four, she thought, jogging through the hospital corridor on her way to the main entrance and, beyond that, the Blazer. My God. Twenty-four.

  Shirley

  4:59 P.M.

  “So what’s going on?” Shirley said.

  She took a quick drink of her coffee. She knew when Bell was upset. The tip-off: Her sister wouldn’t meet her gaze. It had started the moment they sat down on their respective sides of the booth. Bell looked around the diner—everywhere but in Shirley’s direction. Not a good sign.

  “Lots,” Bell said.

  Shirley set down the mug. The coffee wasn’t hot enough, which made the problem unsolvable. If it was too hot, you could wait for it to cool; if it was too cool already, you were screwed. You could flag down a waitress and ask for another cup, a hot one this time, but Shirley didn’t like to make a fuss. She had made enough fusses in her life already.

  “Do tell,” Shirley said.

  JPs was a good place for a private chat. You wouldn’t think so, based on an initial glance; it was small, and the booths were shoved together haphazardly and too close to one another, and everyone knew everyone else. Oddly, though, those elements made it as private as a confessional. Had the room been bigger and filled with strangers, every gesture would have been an object of intense scrutiny. The old-hat familiarity made people relax in JPs. They let down their guard. Things slipped by. Bell had once joked to Shirley that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find Amelia Earhart in a booth in the back, sipping a glass of buttermilk and going over flight plans, having found the perfect spot in which to hide out for lo these many years.

  “Just a really hard day,” Bell said.

  She was being evasive. Shirley didn’t know whether to push or to let it be. They were back in each other’s lives now on a regular basis, after all that time apart, but they had missed out on so much. Hence their interactions could suddenly nose-dive and become rickety, uncomfortable; they did not enjoy the easy, effortless give-and-take of sisters who had spent a lifetime getting to a good and solid place.

  “Hard how?” Shirley said.

  “We’ve had an unprecedented number of overdoses since last night. Double digits.”

  “Jesus. I heard some chatter about it, but not the numbers.”

  “Yeah. The heroin’s been laced with something much more potent than usual—that’s how it looks, but we won’t know for sure until we get the tests back.” Bell regarded her coffee cup as if she had never seen such an object before, and did not have the least idea what to do with it. Her mind, Shirley could tell, was very far away from the diner.

  “You’re worried,” Shirley said.

  “I am. There’s no way to warn people. I mean—how would we do that? Addicts don’t come by the courthouse too often to shoot the breeze. And…”

  “And?”

  “And even if we could warn them, would it do any good? Probably not.” She paused. “It’s not nice to talk about, but there’s another issue, too. The money this is costing the county—it’s tremendous. Enough to fix a dozen torn-up roads or feed every hungry child in Acker’s Gap for a month. Between the squad runs and the deputies who have to respond and then the medical costs…” Bell stopped. She shook her head. “It won’t surprise you to know,” she added, sarcasm rippling through her tone, “that not many addicts keep up with their health insurance premiums.”

  Shirley turned her mug around in a circle. The tabletop was bumpy and scarred. There were cigarette burns, too, from the days when people could smoke in public places. She had not reached for a cigarette since her meeting that morning with Paul Wolford. Funny. All those years as a smoker, and it only took a one-sentence diagnosis to shoo away the desire for good.

  “So why don’t you want to talk about it?” Shirley said. “You wouldn’t be telling me this now if I hadn’t pushed.”

  “True.” Bell gave her a rueful smile. “I guess I figure you have your own problems to deal with.”

  You don’t know the half of it, little sister, Shirley thought. Out loud, she said, “For my money, you’ve got the toughest job in the world.”

  “I think some Navy SEALs might disagree with you. And a few brain surgeons, too, might have an argument.” Bell’s smile vanished. “But—yeah. It’s hard. You know what? People are always coming up to me and asking why we don’t do this or that. Why don’t we prosecute the addicts? And track down more dealers? And get rid of the drug gangs hiding out up in the mountains?” Bell made her voice high-pitched and persnickety, imitating the kind of people who constantly accosted her on the street with their moralistic fervor: “‘Don’t you know that drugs are ba-a-a-a-d? Hmm? Don’t you want to get rid of those terrible dealers? Do you enjoy watching the young people around here kill themselves with that poison?’” She took a quick, vicious drink of her coffee. The swallow was followed by a wince. Her voice returned to normal as she addressed her invisible audience. Earnest now. “Yeah. Yeah, folks, I know what drugs are doing to our town. I do. And if I had an army, I’d send it up into the hills and roust out every last gang I could find. I’d hunt down the local dealers. And if I were Bill Gates, I’d take all the addicts and I’d get them into a rehab program and when they got out, I’d find them decent jobs and decent places to live, and then I’d…”

  She stopped talking. Shirley had reached across the table and put her hand on Bell’s hand, settling her down.

  “God, Shirley. I’m sorry,” Bell said. “First I cancel lunch. Then I meet you here and I start yelling. You had something you needed to tell me. This is supposed to be about you, not me. So what’s up? I know the breakup with Bobo was hard on you.” Bell hesitated. “Do you need some money? Because I can…”

  “Hey—no. No, Bell. Come on. I wouldn’t ask you for money.”

  “You didn’t ask. I offered.”

  “Well, the answer is no. I wanted to talk. That’s all.” Shirley sat back against her seat. “I got some news.”

  “News.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bell waited. Before Shirley could speak again, Bell’s cell rang. She held up an index finger and mouthed Just a sec, then pushed the phone against her ear.

  “Elkins,” she said.

  Shirley watched Bell’s face. There was no movement in it. Nothing to indicate the nature of the news. You would’ve been a hell of a poker player, little sister, Shirley thought.

  Bell ended the call. She slipped the cell in her purse.

  “Tonight,” she said to Shirley.

  “Pardon?”

  “I have to run. I’m sorry. But why don’t you come over tonight? We’ll sit on the porch and talk. I’ll text you the minute I get home and you can head on over.”

  “That call just now. Another OD?”

  Bell waited. She seemed to be deciding whether to share more bad news with Shirley. Lowering her voice, she said, “Yeah. Which brings the grand total to twenty-four overdoses since midnight. And it’s not a kid this time. It’s Fenton McHale.”

  “That sleazebag lawyer? The Richie Rich?”

  “That’s the guy.”

  Shirley gestured to Bell with a brief wave of her right hand. “Go,” she said. “Do your job.”

  “Okay. Thanks for understanding.” Bell slid out of the booth and stood up. She took a last swig of her coffee and winced again. “So like I said—come by tonight, okay? We can talk. Things will settle down by then.”

  Hope so, Shirley thought. She felt the old Appalachian fatalism stirring again, curling around her brain like red on a peppermint stick. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.

  Jake

  5:40 P.M.

  Coal had been good to Fenton McHale.

  It had bought him lots and
lots of nice things. It had bought him this large building on the outskirts of Acker’s Gap, a former shoe factory that had been extensively and expensively remodeled into a sleek, airy, three-story headquarters for McHale & Associates. It had bought him a variety of shiny, showy vehicles, many of which, Jake noticed, he parked in the sprawling lot adjacent to his office—because why bother having things that other people can’t afford unless you can rub their noses in your good fortune and their lack thereof?

  Coal was no longer the ruling behemoth it once had been, but that change had had no appreciable impact on Fenton McHale and his lifestyle. He had already made his money. It had come flooding his way from black-hearted coal company executives eager to fight disability claims and civil suits involving workplace safety—and McHale proved to be a shrewd courtroom showman, all flailing arms and insidious accusations against the shy, shuffling, powerless plaintiffs. McHale had used that money to make more money—lots and lots of it. And that money, in turn, was used to make more money still.

  Coal money had bought him political influence and social prestige. Coal money had bought him a Gulfstream G650 and a thoroughbred with Derby potential and a minority stake in a Major League Baseball team. Coal money had bought him five wives and four divorces.

  But it had not bought him happiness.

  At least that’s what people hope, Jake thought. The idea of Fenton McHale, filthy rich but desperately unhappy, was one of the few pieces of gossip of which Jake could approve. It kept folks going—the notion that, with all of his possessions and all of his power, with his jet and his Jacuzzi, he still wasn’t as happy as they were with their honest, simple lives. It was a necessary platitude. One that helped them survive.