“Scott loves that truck,” Rand said to Tig.
“You want to put yours there instead?” Tig asked.
“Hell no,” said Rand. “Are you crazy?”
The only vehicle they left untouched was Barry Holden’s RV, situated in the handicap space by the cement path to the Intake doors.
6
Minus Vern Rangle, Roger Elway, and the department’s female officers, all of whom had been confirmed as asleep during Frank’s cataloging operation, seven deputies remained from Sheriff Lila Norcross’s duty roster: Terry Coombs, Pete Ordway, Elmore Pearl, Dan “Treater” Treat, Rupe Wittstock, Will Wittstock, and Reed Barrows. It was a solid group, in Terry’s opinion. They were all force veterans of at least a year, and Pearl and Treater had both served in Afghanistan.
The three retired deputies—Jack Albertson, Mick Napolitano, and Nate McGee—made ten.
Don Peters, Eric Blass, and Frank Geary made lucky thirteen.
Frank quickly martialed a half-dozen other volunteers including Coach JT Wittstock, father of the deputies who shared his surname, and the defense-first coach of the Dooling High School varsity football team; Pudge Marone, bartender at the Squeaky Wheel, who brought along his Remington shotgun from beneath the bar; Drew T. Barry of Drew T. Barry Indemnity Company, by-the-book insurance agent and prize-winning deer hunter; Carson “Country Strong” Struthers, Pudge’s brother-in-law, who had fought to a 10-1 Golden Gloves record before his doctor told him he had to quit while he still had some brain left; and two town board members, Bert Miller and Steve Pickering, both of whom, like Drew T. Barry, knew their way around a deer stand. That was nineteen, and once they were informed that the woman inside the prison might have information related to the sleeping sickness, maybe even knowledge of a cure, every single one was eager to serve.
7
Terry was pleased, but wanted an even twenty. The sight of Vern Rangle’s bleached-out face and torn neck was something he would never be able to forget. He could feel it the way he could feel Geary, silent as a shadow, following everything he did, judging every choice he made.
But never mind. The only way out was through: through Norcross to Eve Black, and through the Black woman to the end of this nightmare. Terry didn’t know what would happen when they got to her, but he knew it would be the end. Once the end came, he could work at blurring the memory of Vern Rangle’s bloodless face. Not to mention the faces of his wife and daughter, which no longer exactly existed. Seriously drinking his brain into submission, in other words. He was aware that Frank had been encouraging him to use the booze, and so what? So fucking what?
Don Peters had been tasked with calling around to the male officers on Dooling Correctional’s roll, and it didn’t take him long to figure out that Norcross had four officers on duty, max. One of those, Wettermore, was a swish, and another, Murphy, had been a history teacher. Throw in the Black woman and the old coot, Burke, plus maybe a couple or three others they didn’t know about just to be generous, and that meant they were up against less than a dozen, few if any of whom could be expected to stand fast if things got hot, no matter how much armament they had acquired.
Terry and Frank stopped at the liquor store on Main Street. It was open, and busy.
“She didn’t love me anyway!” one fool announced to the entire store, waving a bottle of gin. He smelled like a polecat.
The shelves were largely empty, but Terry found two pints of gin, and paid with money that would soon be worthless, he supposed, if this terrible fuck-up went on. He filled the flask with one pint, carried the other in a paper bag, and walked with Frank to a nearby alley. It opened into a courtyard piled with garbage bags and rain-softened cardboard boxes. Johnny Lee Kronsky’s scuffed apartment door was here, at ground level, between two windows with plastic sheeting for glass.
Kronsky, a mythic figure in this part of West Virginia, answered and spied the bottle in the bag. “Those who come bearing gifts may enter,” he said and took the bottle.
There was only one chair in the living room. Kronsky claimed it for himself. He drank half the pint in two ginormous swallows, his Adam’s apple rolling like a bobber at the end of a hooked line, paying no attention to Terry or Frank. A muted television sat on a stand, showing footage of several cocooned women floating on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. They looked like weird life rafts.
What if a shark decided to bite one? Terry wondered. He guessed that if that happened, the shark might be in for a surprise.
What did any of it mean? What was the point?
Terry decided the point might be gin. He got out Frank’s flask and had a tug.
“Those women are from the big plane that crashed,” Johnny Lee said. “Interesting that they float like that, isn’t it? The stuff must be mighty light. Like kapok, or something.”
“Look at them all,” Terry marveled.
“Yes, yes, quite a sight.” Johnny Lee smacked his lips. He was a licensed private investigator, but not the kind that checked up on cheating spouses or solved mysteries. Until 2014, he had worked for Ulysses Energy Solutions, the coal company, cycling through their various operations, posing as a miner and listening for rumors of union organizing, working to undercut leaders who seemed particularly effective. A company dog, in other words.
Then had come trouble. A right smart of trouble, one could say. There was a cave-in. Kronsky had been the man handling the explosives. The three miners who had been buried under the rock had been talking loudly about holding a vote. Almost as damning, one had been wearing a tee-shirt with the face of Woody Guthrie on it. Lawyers hired by Ulysses had prevented the levying of charges—a tragic accident, they successfully argued before the grand jury—but Kronsky had been forced into retirement.