but found none. The CIA had effectively buried it all, deflecting suspicion onto a logical if bogus source.
Knox stared at the old black-and-white image of Claire Michaels that he had taken a copy of from the archives. He wondered if the fragments of another picture of the woman currently resided inside the ballistics entry in the chest of a senator from Alabama. If he were a betting man, he would’ve laid down a stack of hundred-dollar chips that the photo taped to Senator Simpson’s newspaper the morning he died was of Claire, John Carr’s wife.
Okay, Finn had been telling the truth. They’d killed the man’s family because he wanted out. Knox didn’t want to believe that his government would treat a man who’d served them faithfully for many years in such a way, but the reality was it certainly could’ve gone down like that.
Knox walked to his book-lined study. He was chasing a man who’d been betrayed by his own government. True, the evidence was compelling that Carr had killed Gray and Simpson. Knox stared over at a photo of his wife on one wall. Yet what would he have done if he’d found out the two men had killed Patty? He sat down in a chair and stared at the floor. He couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the very same thing.
And if that wasn’t enough, Carr had been screwed in Vietnam by the very man Knox was working for. The war hero had never gotten his just due. The military man in Knox took great umbrage at that. It was hard enough to fight. It was hard enough to survive without some prick denying you something you’d earned fair and square. And Knox still didn’t know why Hayes had cheated Carr out of his medal. Yet if he had to guess, he would have concluded that the fault rested with Hayes and not the heroic enlisted man.
The real question became: what did Knox do now? He had to keep looking for the man. But maybe what he did when he got there might change. And that meant he was now basically a traitor to his own agency. Helping the enemy. It could tank his career, ruin his retirement, perhaps cost him his freedom or maybe even his life.
For a man he’d never even met, but one whom he felt he probably knew better than many he’d called a friend.
Was John Carr worth it?
He didn’t have the answer to that. At least not yet.
CHAPTER 38
ABBY AND STONE had just finished breakfast. Stone had been famished while Abby barely touched her food.
He looked at her nearly full plate and said, “Remember that Danny is going to be okay.”
“For now, yeah. He never should have come back here.”
“And you’re saying you only wanted him to go because there were no decent jobs here? You’ve got plenty of money.”
“It’s not the money! He hated how I got it anyway.”
“They killed your husband, Abby. What other way was there for you to get justice? You can’t exactly imprison a company.”
“For what they did to my husband somebody should’ve gone to jail.”
She rose, poured another cup of coffee and sat down next to him.
“You know much about digging coal out of the mountains?”
“Only that I probably wouldn’t want to do it for a living.”
“My husband worked at a dog hole mine. I guess you don’t know what that is?”
“No.”
“Small-scale shops, usually only a single shift crew and a foreman. Doesn’t pay as well as the big shops and you get no health insurance. But if you’ve failed enough drug tests the dog holes tend to be more forgiving than the big outfits. Nice fallback.”
“So your husband had a drug problem too?”
“The men are beat to hell from digging in the earth on their hands and knees. Sam had three back surgeries before he was forty. Got a hand caught in a grinder machine that they use to chew up coal seams. Even after a bunch of surgeries his hand was still a mess. Out of his mind with pain and the meds the clinic gave him didn’t do anything after a while. He was snorting six hundred dollars’ worth of crushed-up oxycodone up his nose every day.”
“Can’t they get help for their addiction? Other than the methadone juice?”
“I kept begging until Sam tried. Tore my heart to see him all wormed over after a few days in withdrawal. But he could never hold it.”
“I’m sorry, Abby.”
“The mining companies don’t care so long as you pass your pee test and show up for work. They make their money and America stays warm.”
“Abby, how did your husband die?”
She put down her cup and gazed past Stone, perhaps all the way to the past when her husband’s life had abruptly ended. “Lot of things to worry about when you’re sitting a thousand feet under rock, but there are two big things to keep in mind besides the earth falling on top of you. One is carbon dioxide and the other is methane gas. The first one will suffocate you and the second one will blow you up. The methane got Sam because the meter the company gave him to use to check out a new seam line was faulty. And they knew it. Explosion caused a cave-in. That was it.”
Stone didn’t know what to say, so he just stared down at his hands.
“Yeah, we’re going through a real boom right now, coal and natural gas just pouring out of the mountains. Funny thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Most folks around here use propane or wood to warm themselves and cook with, not coal or natural gas. Maybe nobody else knows the real cost of digging that stuff out of the rock, but we sure as hell do, you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes.”
“A young man right out of high school with clean urine can start in the coal mines at twenty dollars an hour. Never get that kind of money anywhere else. But by the time they’re thirty-five they’ll be broke-backed and worn out, looking closer to seventy with lungs full of shit.”
She finally looked over at him and her eyes seemed to refocus. One large tear was perched at the corner of her right eye.
“So you staying or going?”
“I’m not going to leave you like this, Abby.” If Stone was startled by his words he didn’t show it.
She reached over and squeezed his arm. He involuntarily grunted in pain.
“What’s the matter?” she said in an alarmed tone.
“Nothing, just . . . it’s nothing.”
“Ben, what is it?”
“One of the guys with the bat got me a little bit on the arm.”
“Oh good Lord, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Abby, it’s nothing.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“What?”
“Take it off.”
He slowly peeled it off and she exclaimed, “Oh my God.”
There was a lumpy black bruise the size of a walnut on his left upper arm and the discoloration had spread down to his forearm.
She ran to the freezer and grabbed an ice pack and placed it over the bruise. “You’re a hero, okay, you don’t have to be stupid,” she scolded. “And if—”
She was staring at his chest and other arm. Stone followed her gaze to the old knife slashes and bullet pocks.
She looked up inquiringly.
“Coal miners aren’t the only ones with scars,” he said quietly.
A half hour later, she came back into the room. He noticed that she’d changed her clothes and the scent in the air spoke of a shower and shampoo. She gave him an unfathomable look as she checked his arm. “Does it feel better?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Good.” She leaned down and kissed him. In the same motion her arms slid around his middle and he felt her nails dig lightly into his back. Before he realized it, Stone felt himself kiss her in return. Abby’s lips tasted sweet.
Stone felt his hand slide to her back and squeeze but then he pulled back.
“Abby, I don’t think—”
She put a hand against his mouth. “That’s right. You don’t have to think at all. Come on.”
Abby took his hand and led him up the stairs to her bedroom. She closed the door and motioned for him to sit on the bed. She st
ood in front of him and undressed.
She was fit and fleshy in all the right places and Stone felt a small gasp jump from his throat as he took all of her in. He noted that she had a small tattoo of a cross near her left hip bone. She pressed against him, her warm breasts pushed flat against his own hard chest; her hands began massaging his shoulders and back even as she made soft moaning sounds in his ear. She nimbly worked his pants off. A minute later he lay down beside her on the bed.
Later, they lay back, side to side, her hand clasping his arm, lightly rubbing the hairs.
“I haven’t been with anyone since Sam died.” She rolled over on her stomach, her arms supporting her chin. “Not once.”
“There must’ve been opportunities, Abby. You’re . . . beautiful.”
She kissed him on the cheek and smiled. “Opportunities, yes, desire on my part, no.”
“Not even Tyree?”
“It’s not like that with us. We’ve known each other since we were little kids. Went on exactly one date in high school and we didn’t really click. I think he might want more now. He never married, but I don’t feel the same way.”
“It’s been a long time for me too. A long time.” He wondered if Claire would have disapproved of what he had just done. After decades of loneliness for him, perhaps she would have understood.
“Opportunities or desire lacking?”
“Both.”
He rolled over on his side and rubbed her back. She stretched and smiled and Stone smiled back as he watched her do this. The braids in her hair had come out and several tresses dangled in her eyes. He carefully moved one away, revealing a green pupil looking at him.
“You ever think about leaving Divine?” he said.
“All the time.”
“Why’d you never do it?”
“Scared, I guess. Divine’s a little pond but I know it well. Hard to prove yourself all over in a new place.”
“I suppose.”
He rolled onto his back.
She curled next to him and slid her leg up and down his. “You ever think about settling down somewhere?”
“Lots of times. In fact I thought I had the place to do it, but it turned out it wasn’t.”
“What happened?”
“It just wasn’t.”
The phone rang. Abby looked at the clock. “Who could that be at this hour?”
“The hospital?”
“I just talked to them before we had breakfast. And to Danny. He was okay.”
“Maybe it’s the restaurant. People want their breakfast at Rita’s.” Stone was glad of the change in the conversation’s direction.
“I already called there too. I got my helpers opening the place.”
She climbed over Stone and snatched up the phone. Stone put a hand on her butt and gave her a gentle squeeze. She smiled, grabbed his hand and gave her backside a hard slap with it. Then she let go.
“What? Um.” She glanced at Stone. “No, he’s not here. Right. If I see him I could ask him, sure. Okay, right.”
She put the phone back in the cradle, pulled a pillow into her lap and sat cross-legged facing him.
“Who was that?”
“Charlie Trimble. He heard about Danny and what you did. He wants to ask you some questions. And he seemed very determined.”
“Great, well, my position hasn’t changed. I’m not answering any questions.”
“Ben, listen to me. If you don’t want to do it, fine. But if you keep saying no to Charlie he’s going to start digging. And unless you’ve got nothing you care about him finding, it might be smart to just talk to him. That way he can focus on what happened here instead of on you.”
Stone opened his mouth and then closed it. “How come you’re beautiful and smart? That’s hardly fair.”
“Just the luck of the draw, I guess.”
“You have his number?”
“Yes, or you can just go to the newspaper. It’s around the block from the restaurant. Can’t miss it.”
“Call him and tell him I’ll be there sometime this afternoon.”
He rose to get dressed.
“This afternoon? We can do a lot in that amount of time,” she said playfully.
“As great as that sounds, I’ve got something I really need to do.”
“What’s that?” she said, sounding a little hurt.
“I’ll let you know if I find it.”
He finished dressing and drove Willie’s truck back to the trailer. A few minutes later, after a thorough search, he found the bottle of Tylenol. It was empty. Had Willie taken the last few pills but forgotten? Were they oxycodone tablets? But why leave an empty medicine bottle in the drawer? As he looked around at the mess Willie Coombs called home, he concluded an empty bottle left in a drawer in this pigsty was hardly compelling evidence of anything. But still, it might be important. Maybe this was what Shirley Coombs had been looking for.
He pocketed the bottle, left the trailer and started to climb in the truck.
The next instant Stone lay unconscious on the ground, blood seeping from the wound in his head.
CHAPTER 39
STONE ROSE SLOWLY to a sitting position, his limbs shaky, his head throbbing and his belly queasy. He touched the knot on his head. The blood was dried solid over the wound. He’d been out for a while, apparently. He sat on his haunches for a bit, breathing slowly, trying to keep from puking.
He finally staggered to his feet and looked around. Or tried to. He could move his hand a foot in front of him and be unable to see it. He put a hand up and it nicked the hard, low ceiling.
He was in a cave. He breathed in and nearly gagged. No, he was in a mine. A coal mine. He took a few tentative steps forward and then stopped.
Rattle-rattle.
Stone took a slow step back from the sound. It seemed like more than one snake actually. Standing in the pitch black with rattlesnakes within striking distance probably constituted a pretty decent nightmare. Most people would have been frozen to the spot, waiting to be bitten and die. Stone was not stupid, so he was scared. But he wasn’t paralyzed. He moved both arms out from his sides. One hand brushed wall, his left nothing but air. He leaned toward the left and his fingers now grazed the rough side of the mine. That the mineshaft was not very wide was not much help since he couldn’t exactly walk on walls. He reached up again and his hand hit the low ceiling. Rattlers could not see very well in the dark, he knew. But they could register his body heat and also sense any movement he made from the vibrations on the ground.
He was in grave danger of being fanged repeatedly with no way to get out. How long before they found his body? Or his bones? And then it dawned on him. That’s why they hadn’t just killed him and left his carcass to be found. Here he would die and never be discovered. People would just assume he had left town. No explanation or cover-up required. And yet there was more to it, he sensed. Whoever had done this could have just left him in the mineshaft with no way out; they didn’t have to use snakes too. Or they could have just shot him and left him here. There was a desire here to cause not only death, but terror as well. They wanted him to die horribly, and alone, and in the dark. Then the panic did hit him. But not for the obvious reason.
Abby.
He’d been with her. They might know that. They might think he had told her things. What things he wasn’t sure. But they might go after her just in case.
Stone felt around the ceiling until his fingers touched what he deduced was a support beam. The beams helped hold up the ceiling, preventing tons of rock from raining down and crushing him, for which Stone was understandably grateful. Yet more important, there was a light cage attached to the beam by a sturdy metal plate. The light obviously wasn’t working. Yet he didn’t need light, just the cage.