The More They Disappear Read online

  She was not a born killer, nor an experienced one, but she’d prepared. If she was in over her head, she didn’t realize it, and if she had doubts, they didn’t show. She was buoyed by thoughts of her and Mark together. She thought of this act as not altogether different from a marriage—something that would bind them.

  In many ways she was the perfect criminal. She came from a respectable family—her father was an investor, her mother a socialite. She descended from the Revolutionary War general who at one time owned all the land in the county that still bore his name. No one in Finley County would ever believe Mary Jane Finley had committed a crime. No one knew about her sadness, her addictions, or her faith that Mark Gaines would carry her away to a better place.

  She reached a clearing along the ridge overlooking the river and the wind died down. Months before, the hike would have left her breathless, but no longer. To the west a few abandoned trailers hunkered along the river road and to the east Mary Jane could make out downtown. In the distance lay Josephine Entwhistle’s house and behind stood only the skeletons of unfinished homes.

  By the time Mary Jane arrived, the party was in full swing. She briefly considered turning back, but there were expectations, a plan to follow through with, and if it worked, Mary Jane would no longer she be trapped in Marathon, would no longer feel so damn alone.

  She pulled a Ziploc of pill dust from her backpack—a mix of Xanax and Adderall that she snorted in bumps off her car key. She’d learned there was a pill for every need and Mark fed each one of hers. Afterward she took out the stock and barreled action of a .308 Winchester. The smell of gun oil calmed her. Her grandfather had taught Mary Jane to shoot when she was just a girl, the lessons his way of stemming her mother’s influence, of showing Mary Jane there was more to life than beauty pageants. They’d gone hunting every deer season until he passed away, and when it wasn’t deer season, there’d been wild turkey and dove. Somewhere in the basement the mounted head of Mary Jane’s first buck—a four pointer—gathered dust. In a strange way she’d discovered that shooting a rifle wasn’t altogether different from walking down the runway. Both required great balance, great composure.

  She attached the stock and barreled action, tightened the action screws, and checked that the chamber was empty, then wrapped her index and middle fingers around the trigger, and pulled. A smooth click. The action was sound. She’d started to develop a kinship with the Winchester and regretted she’d have to get rid of it. The .308 was right on the edge of kicking too hard and she liked that about it, too.

  She attached the scope, cradled the barrel in a tripod, and looked down the sight. Partygoers mingled. The mayor, the judge, and other politicians stood around laughing at one another’s stale jokes—men with names that went as far back as Finley, names like Craycraft and January and Estill. Mary Jane could wipe the whole town clean if only she had the bullets. A .308 with a good scope: that’s all it took. She moved the gun from face to face—a god above them. She wished Mark was there with her—to feel this, to see her as no one else could. She wanted Mark’s hand over hers as she cupped the trigger—Mark caressing her, her caressing the gun—the power all theirs. She chambered a round and set the butt of the rifle against her shoulder. Theirs was a fated love. A sacrificial love.

  The last of the pill dust went up her nose and her thoughts about the future dissolved and turned to smoke. Her fears drifted away and fell into an abyss. She was patiently numb to consequences—her mind focused by one pill, her doubts erased by the other. The shot was a touch under two hundred yards and it was quiet along the Ohio.

  She peered through the scope and found Lew. Oblivious. Flipping meat at the grill. She drew a deep breath and aimed the rifle at his chest, let the world come into focus and thought of nothing but the pressure against two tips of fingers. When she exhaled, she drew those fingers toward her heart and the rifle kicked.

  The smell of gunpowder floated in the air. Mary Jane felt the warmth of the barrel and looked back through the scope. Lew fell forward onto the grill. For a moment nothing else changed. Then came the distant sound of screams. Mary Jane watched the crowd scurry like ants as smoke rose from the grill. Her body convulsed and knocked the rifle from its cradle. Then she vomited a thin, weak stream onto the ground. She cursed and struggled to regain composure, started humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”—an old runway trick to calm the nerves. In less than a minute her body steadied and her stomach settled. She kicked dirt over the vomit, loosened the action screws to break down the rifle, and placed it in the backpack along with the casing before she headed back in the direction from which she’d come.

  * * *

  It may have been the music blaring from the speakers of a souped-up Mustang or the noise of the crowd or the fact that people had become accustomed to cars backfiring; whatever the reason, no one connected the boom from the hills to Lew Mattock’s collapse. The spatula slipped from Lew’s hand and spun to the ground, where dirt clung to its greasy edges. Harlan Dupee watched him double onto the grill and assumed heart attack, though he couldn’t seem to move his legs and help.

  It was Lewis Mattock who ran to his father’s side, pulled him to the ground, and yelled, “Shooter!” The crowd scattered. Some ran for water, others the woods. Most ran in circles to nowhere particular. Harlan dropped to the ground and watched Lew’s legs jangle until his massive belly—a mound rising from the cracked clay of a dry October—stilled. Lewis Mattock slumped back on his knees, a look of horror across his face. Time must have passed. When Trip Gaines, a local doctor, checked for a pulse and shook his head, Lewis wrapped one burly arm around his wife and the other around his twin daughters before shouldering them into the safety of Josephine Entwhistle’s house. Dr. Gaines laid his suit jacket over Lew’s wounded face. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air.

  The crowd waited for someone to give the all clear, and even though no more bullets rained down, Harlan lay on the ground a long while before getting to his feet and asking people to please seek shelter inside the house and stay there until told otherwise. Most rubbernecked glances at Lew’s body as they passed. A couple retched. More than a few sobbed in fits and starts. Two other deputies, Del Parker and Frank Pryor, joined Harlan around the body. Blood had begun to pool through the weave of the doctor’s jacket, which Harlan lifted. Lew’s right eye was gone and his face had become a pulp of meat and bone and yellow flesh. The earth swallowed what blood coursed from the hollow in his skull. Harlan dropped the jacket back in place and started giving orders. He did his best to sound confident, but it had been years since he’d asked the deputies to do anything other than what Lew told him to pass along. He had Del radio Paige Lucas, the rookie out patrolling roads, and tell her to stop any suspicious vehicles. After that Del was to get the neighboring county’s dogs and search for evidence. This left Harlan with Frank, an overweight deputy with a ruddy face and a chip on his shoulder. “Head inside and get the contact information of everyone here. See if anyone noticed something unusual.” Frank shrugged before spitting on the ground and joining the crowd as they herded themselves into Josephine’s.

  Harlan marked off the area around Lew with caution tape and radioed Holly from the sheriff’s cruiser, explained to her what had happened, and asked her to send someone out from the state police, the crime lab in Frankfort, and the coroner’s office. Then he pulled out a textbook on criminal investigations from the toolbox of his truck. He hadn’t worked but a couple of murders, and Lew had always been there to guide him. The textbook was left over from a correspondence course he’d taken years before, and the mere fact that he kept it made him the best deputy in an otherwise apathetic department. He flipped to the chapter on murder investigations, found the gunshot section, and started making checkmarks as he completed each step. He started by removing the blazer from Lew’s face and snapping photographs with a point-and-click. Then he drew badly scaled sketches of the scene with a shaky hand and redrew them to keep from examining Lew up close. He wrote hi
s account of the murder, trying to recall the details. He waited for help.

  The witnesses came out of Josephine’s one by one, hurried to their cars, and sped away, as if putting distance between themselves and Lew’s corpse would help them forget. But it wouldn’t. They would talk about it at dinner and dream about it at night and even people who hadn’t been there would claim to be haunted by the sight of Lew Mattock’s dead body.

  Harlan stared at Lew as if he might provide some guidance, and when a burly hand touched down on his shoulder, he jumped. “Jesus,” Frank said. “Relax.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Frank pinched a load of snuff and showed his bean teeth. “I’m finished.”

  “Already?”

  Frank tapped his notebook. “I talked to every last person.” A thin man wearing a fleece jacket stood behind Frank with a pen and paper. Harlan looked to Frank for an explanation. “This guy’s with the newspaper,” Frank explained. “I told him you’re in charge.”

  “Stuart Simon,” the man said. “I edit the Registrar.”

  Harlan shook his head. “Not now.”

  “Just a couple questions, Deputy.… It’s Dupee, isn’t it?”

  “Frank, can you escort Mr. Simon to his vehicle?”

  “I just want to know—”

  “Now,” Harlan yelled.

  Frank took Simon’s arm. “Come on, Stu,” he said.

  Simon started to wage a halfhearted protest but stopped as the dispatch from Lew’s cruiser crackled with Holly’s voice. Harlan couldn’t make out what she said and asked her to repeat herself. “Fire,” she said. “Over at the Spanish Manor. The volunteers are on their way. Want me to do anything else?”

  Harlan looked at Frank. “Head over there, but on your way pull over every car with a busted taillight or expired registration. Look for guns.”

  “I don’t think hoping the shooter has a busted taillight is much of a plan,” Frank said.

  The editor slipped Frank’s grasp and started writing in his notebook.

  “Just do it,” Harlan snapped. He radioed back to Holly that Frank was on his way. He was thankful the textbook had been safely hidden in the cab of his truck. He didn’t need Frank or the other deputies doubting him. And he definitely didn’t need some reporter doing the same. Harlan had grown soft since he joined the department. They all had. You kept your job by avoiding any police work that might cause extra paperwork. Harlan had been promoted because of those through-the-mail criminology courses, but whatever policing knowledge he’d learned was rarely put to use. Now was his chance to prove himself. He’d always wanted the sheriff’s badge on his chest—not like this, of course—but you didn’t get to choose what life threw your way. Or when.

  Along the river road an ambulance-style hearse pulled up with the coroner who serviced Finley and the neighboring counties. Behind him came a state police cruiser with lights flashing. The state policeman came down first, took a look around, and said, “Damn shame.” He put out a thick hand and introduced himself. His eyes were almost all pupils and he wore a gray-flecked mustache. “You want me to take samples from the body?” he asked. “I didn’t know the man, so it won’t affect me the same.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Harlan replied.

  The coroner joined them a minute later. He was new—a kid with a two-year degree, fresh pimples, and a talkative manner. The sun started to set as they worked and the sound of crickets chirping rose from the woods. Harlan held a flashlight while the coroner labeled plastic bags the Statie handed him. At some point, he looked up to watch a sports car speeding along the river road before it disappeared into the coming dark. He realized, perhaps for the first time, that his life of writing traffic tickets was over.

  “I can’t believe someone shot Lew,” the kid coroner said, trying to sound like some wizened old-timer. “He seemed invincible.”

  “No one’s invincible,” the Statie replied.

  The crime lab investigator from Frankfort showed up just in time to say “nice work” and collect the samples. He told Harlan to develop and send him the pictures. The sooner the better. They bagged Lew and the Statie helped lift him onto a gurney while the kid coroner struggled with his end; meanwhile, the investigator and Harlan loaded the grill into a van. Harlan closed the lid so as to not see the burnt flesh along the grates.

  He examined the crime scene one last time, and just as he was ready to call it, he noticed a small depression that had been beneath the body. It led to a fragment of bullet buried four inches into hardpack.

  “That’s good police work,” the Statie said as Harlan sealed and marked the evidence.

  “More like good luck.”

  The kid coroner had lit a cigarette by the side of the road, and Harlan walked up to join him, rolled a smoke of his own, and listened to the Ohio murmur its song—a gurgling chorus of choking mud.

  * * *

  Mary Jane chewed her last bite of Big Mac and searched along the bag’s bottom for stray fries. Tara Koehler had been working the drive-thru, and as she handed the order over, Mary Jane mentioned she was going to see a movie to set up an alibi. Tara had added a fried apple pie on the house, so Mary Jane finished off her meal with dessert, licking the last bits of sugary glaze from her fingers.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen another car, which should have been comforting, but the emptiness made her nervous. She kept checking the rearview mirror expecting to see flashing lights where there was only blackness. After her dinner, she lit a Marlboro Light and one cigarette turned into two turned into a quarter pack and soon enough she felt nauseous again. The burger and fries sat heavy in her stomach and Mary Jane stifled the urge to pull over and jam a finger down her throat.

  Mark had told her to drive out to the West Virginia border and toss the rifle into a wide branch of the Big Sandy, but Mary Jane couldn’t make it that far. In the darkness, she had trouble figuring out how far she’d traveled. The names of the small towns she passed weren’t written on any map, and even though the rifle was stowed safely in the trunk of the car, she felt like it was sitting beside her—chatting away. When the stereo began losing its station, she snapped it off and heard nothing save the wind rushing through a seam in the window. She downed another dose of nerve pills but it didn’t work. Lose the gun, she told herself over and over. Lose the gun.

  A sign marking a one-lane bridge flashed in her headlights, and Mary Jane banked onto the road paralleling the water. Her wheels caught a pothole in the dark and the wind snatched the cigarette from her hand and flung it to the backseat. Flustered, she hit the gas, cursed, hit the brake, and pulled sharply to the side of the road before rescuing the still-burning Marlboro and bringing it to her lips. Crickets whirred and animals scurried in the woods. A small hole had burned where the cigarette came to rest and she fingered its scorched edges. Through a cut of trees, the river muttered. It wasn’t wide like the Big Sandy but in the scant moonlight it looked deep enough, and if she couldn’t return to find this place, how could anyone else?

  She stuffed every last trace of the crime in the backpack and hiked to the river before swinging it two-handed into the dark. After the bag plopped in the water, she lit one last Marlboro. A ceremony of sorts. It had been that way ever since she took up smoking. A cigarette for making it to school, for making it to lunch, for making it through the final bell. A cigarette while driving, while walking, while staring out the window and thinking important thoughts. A cigarette to celebrate the arrival and a cigarette to celebrate the leaving behind.

  On the road home, Mary Jane could almost trick herself into believing she was returning from some innocent adventure—that she’d been lost but found her way. After an hour, she passed the sign that marked twenty-six miles to Marathon. There were three such signs on the roads that led east, west, and south from town. The road north lacked one despite the mayor’s best attempts to weasel himself a square of Ohio dirt. Mary Jane offered the sign her middle finger, a rite of passage Marathoners
learned as soon as they were old enough to drive and had the good sense to head someplace else.

  Her father was sitting alone on the porch when she returned. The lit end of his cigar pulsed and Jackson tilted his head to blow smoke toward the stars. In his other hand he swirled a highball glass that Mary Jane guessed was more gin than tonic. “I’m afraid you’re on your own for dinner,” he said as she climbed the stairs. “I haven’t heard from your mother. Do you think you can manage?” Jackson tried to pass this last bit off as a joke, but Mary Jane knew it was a barb meant to draw blood. Ever since she’d been rejected from colleges six months before, her father couldn’t help reminding Mary Jane that she was a disappointment.

  “I already ate,” she said.

  “What did you have?”

  “McDonald’s.”

  Jackson laughed. “Your mother would love that.”

  “You know she wouldn’t.”

  “On that matter, at least, I agree with her. Do you know what that trash does to your body?”

  Mary Jane opened the front door. “Yeah,” she said. “It makes you fat.” She let the door slam and ran upstairs to her room where she opened the window and screamed into the night. Her room looked onto the street and she could hear the groans of the porch swing echoing as Jackson rocked back and forth, could smell the smoke of his cigar rising. If he had more commentary, he kept it to himself. Mary Jane fingered a hole she’d cut in the window screen for her hash pipe. For years she’d worried her parents would ask about it, but they either didn’t realize what the hole meant or didn’t care.

  She stepped back from the window and grabbed a teddy bear off the bed. It had been a present from her father when she was nine. The bear had come with a name—Teddy Ruxpin—and a tape deck so he could tell stories. In a way the bear was a substitute for Jackson himself, who rarely told Mary Jane stories or tucked her in at night. She opened the tape deck and removed a bag of pills. Pills were her ticket out of Marathon. Mark called Oxy a “miracle” drug, and the first time he gave Mary Jane one and taught her to grind it to dust, she came to understand the meaning of the word. Oxy wasn’t like pot, which made her paranoid, or booze, which made her sloppy. It didn’t skew the world or make things funny; it offered separation. Separation from her father’s passive-aggressive insults and her mother’s chain-smoking sadness. Separation from the fat girl in the mirror. Separation from a life that stalled out in high school. Oxy offered oblivion.