No one had any quarrels with Dugan, just with the county system and some of the more blatant examples of party patronage, which they knew Dugan could no more help than all the sheriffs before him, though he'd come into office with much higher hopes. Everyone's entitled to a little youthful stupidity, was the message. Dugan had smarted a bit under it but had remained scrupulous about protocol, etiquette. The cops knew it and appreciated it. The car in front was etiquette. Its left turn signal suddenly began to flash, and Eddie followed suit, already braking for the Pemberton driveway before the lights in front flared red and the police car turned,
bounced over a curb cut and disappeared downhill behind a hedge.
“Charlie, we can still turn around.”
“Eddie, you're pushing. You don't usually push.”
“You're not going to find anything.”
“I believe you're right.” He felt himself again, his voice suddenly quiet and calm.
“I was afraid you might agree with me,” Eddie said, and they were both okay once more.
A pond was somewhere nearby, the chattering of frogs filling the darkness beyond the deeper shadows of a brick Tudor-style house. Except for a dim light in the entry hall, the windows were dark. “County One on a four on Pine Terrace,” Eddie said into the mike, not giving out the street number on this oneâtoo many people listening to CB radios. Dugan opened his door as the city officer, silver badge glinting in the headlights, made his way back to the Dodge. The officer, his face blank, stood in silence looking at Eddie, not Dugan, but Dugan knew he was paying very close attention. He was a Roper, a country boy come out of the mills into a uniform and more education than his family had ever known. Now he had a new house and a pretty wife he'd dated since grammar school. A nice fellow, and steady.
The officer shone his flashlight on the doorbell while Dugan pushed the button. Then the three of them stood in an awkward silence waiting for something to happen.
“I appreciate your bringing us over here, John,” Dugan said quietly, his eyes still on the door.
“Happy to oblige, sheriff.”
He listened to the two cars idling a few feet away, their lights shining across a huge lawn down into some trees, where another house was just visible. The radio crackled faintly inside the city car, and then the silence descended again, frog-filled and dense with the smell of fresh-mown grass and the rain of the early-evening hours, when he was dumping whisky and knew of no trouble on the mountain.
Dugan pushed the button again. A window creaked as it swung open overhead, and the three men looked up to see a woman glaring down, her face pale in the indirect light from the cars. A mass of dark hair fell down
one side of her face. Dugan couldn't tell whether she was pretty or not, though he remembered she was from the one time he'd seen her up close, when he'd been introduced to her at Dr. Willis's funeral years earlier, before Pemberton appropriated the nickname “Doc,” something he wouldn't have dreamed of doing while Willis was alive. Anyhow, whatever political association Dugan and Pemberton had sure didn't spill over into their social lives.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Pemberton?”
“Yes?” A prickly, almost manlike quality in her voice hid some distress. He'd learned to listen for such things.
“Ma'am, this is Charlie Dugan. Is your husband home?”
“Just a moment.”
They heard the window close, then waited in the darkness again, watching the dimly lit entry through a small ivy-covered window with leaded glass. The lights went on in a room nearby, followed by the sound of an inner door opening and the clatter of a latch in the door in front of them. A wrought-iron lamp popped on above the entry as the door swung open.
The woman was about chest-high to Dugan. The mass of hair was pushed over her right shoulder, revealing a heart-shaped face and large, dark eyes that looked out upon the three men without any fear. Close up, Dugan saw that her paleness was not sickly nor the whiteness nurtured by women who avoid the sun, but almost olive, a very fine, smooth skin that went with the darkness of her hair. He wondered if she was of Italian extraction. She was from South Carolina, he remembered that, the daughter of a rich man. Forty now? She cinched the belt of a calf-length terry-cloth robe a little tighter, emphasizing a fine body, but the gesture was unconscious, even angry. She was barefoot. Her feet were small and pretty.
“My husband isn't here, sheriff,” she said before any polite introductions or excuses could begin. “He has his own apartment. You know that.”
“Yes, ma'am, I do. I've already checked by there. I know he comes here, too, still. I'm sorry.”
Her eyes took in all of them. She seemed very certain of herself and of
where she was, a confidence that had nothing to do with her husband, he was sure. Dugan suddenly felt awkward, like a little boy.
Later he said, “Eddie, I've known about her since I first came here, and I've met her before, but I never really saw her till tonight. Carla, right?”
“They call her that. Her real name's Carlotta.”
But Dugan wouldn't have dreamed of calling her by either name, the way he would most of the people he dealt with, who appreciated the informality, the effort to put them at their ease at a time that was never easy. It was not a matter of talking downâhe never talked down to anyone. But a first name in that part of town, to any woman? Or man, for that matter? Not by him or anyone like him.
Dugan nodded politely. It was almost a bow but not obsequious. “Would you know where he is?” he asked, his voice soft and patient, not at all aggressive the way it could be.
“He went out after dinner. I haven't any idea.” He watched her answer her own question, the self-disgust flitting across her face. Strange, but it was almost like he smelled her. It wasn't at all unpleasant, just sad.
“Yes, ma'am.”
“What do you want him for?” Her glance, taking in Dugan first, then Eddie and the Damascus officer, was accusatory, not confused or worried, as might be expected, especially with a woman being asked questions in the middle of the night.
You've brought all these men just to serve a warrant?
That's what her look said. No use explaining.
“You and your husband own a Cadillac Eldorado, Mrs. Pemberton, black and white, is that correct?”
“It's his. It's in his name.”
“I have a search warrant for that car, ma'am.”
She stared at Dugan like she didn't understand what he'd said.
“It's probably nothing, but I need to search the car,” he clarified with gentleness.
“Why?”
He'd anticipated that question even before going for the warrant. “A car similar to his was identified in an incident earlier this evening. I have to rule his out.”
“Why?” Her lips compressed.
Dugan wordlessly handed a folded paper to her. She opened it and lifted it into the light, pushing away her thick hair.
She's not just pretty
, Dugan was deciding as she read the warrant, when she exclaimed, “My
God
! What are you doing?
What
are you saying?”
In an instant, Dugan was back in that judge's office, seeing the man's disbelief in a shake of his head as he'd signed the warrant. Her outrage wasn't fakedâit wouldn't be, not in this neighborhood. Dugan had told Eddie once that he preferred raw emotions, maybe a hint of povertyâsome kind of edge, anyway, something fertile, as he put it, and hungry, no pretensions. This part of town with its sense of privilege that rode over even hard personal feelings left him empty. He hated having to come here.
He only looked at her.
“Well, that warrant won't do you any damn good, Charles Dugan. The car's not here.” She slammed the door in his face.
For several minutes, he watched the indistinct shadow that was his wife as she slept curled on their bed, face up, a bare arm slung out over the emptiness where he usually lay. His heart ached at the sight of her, even now after twelve years, the feeling not one of possessiveness but wonder, like she was a gift. The warm spring night had fallen into deep predawn silence, and all he heard was the soft puffing of the curtains at the window and her gentle snoring. If he were there beside her, he would touch her now, lightly, and she would roll over and retreat into a quiet sleep, and he would fall asleep again.
But he wasn't going to sleep at all this night, he knew, despite the fatigue tugging at him, because suddenly everything felt precarious in a way it hadn't for so long. It hadn't up on the mountain earlier, even though he'd been aware of what Eddie was harping about, and even though Mort hadn't really said anything. Not even when the judge had acted the way he did signing the warrant. No, it hadn't begun until that ride into the part of town where Pemberton, or rather his wife, lived. Had he really thought he
could get away with that? He never saw the likes of a Pemberton or Trotter in the crowds at the courthouse when he was dumping whiskey. Still, it took that look on Pemberton's wife's faceâCarla, that was her name. She really hadn't believed he had the gall.
“Oh, hell, who do I think I am?” he whispered. It hadn't felt this bad since Alabama. And that was fourteen years ago, before he knew Blackstone County even existed.
His mind wouldn't stop. Like Eddie said, people depended on him. What he did affected them, and if he lost, they lost big. So why push this one? To satisfy some injured pride? Investigate and let it die. What would he have lost?
But he knew it wasn't pride, not ordinary pride anyhow, and knew it by the physical revulsion he felt when he thought about giving in, and knew also by the way he felt that even if he let it go, it wouldn't die. And yes, it would be damn near impossible to win in court.
Eddie's right about that, too
, he thought.
I should have been a lawyer
.
But he knew that wasn't true either, even if he'd been able to afford the education. Lawyering was after the fact, and though he'd come to love the law more than almost anything in the world because of its possibility, its hope, he knew that the courtroom was the last resort for its practice. In his mind, court was way too far back from the fire and heat of life. A lot of law happened well before the courtroom.
As he retreated from the bedroom and his sleeping wife, his mind drifted to Alabama all those years ago. He was standing in the rain in his highway patrol uniform and breathing in the raw smell of earth tinged with a hint of coal. As he watched the woods on the steep hillsides vanish into the gray that weighed upon everyone there that day, he'd felt a tightness grip his stomach, felt the nausea grow. Before long, that nausea became the most awful shame he'd ever known. In the middle of that shame rose a vision of his uncle, a tall, bony man with caved cheeks, a shock of dark hair falling over his high brow, dark eyes that could blaze like the coal he mined. The eyes could smile, too, with a tenderness that defied everything around him.
Dugan had a little over four years with the highway patrol when he left Alabama. He liked it. He had a way of getting to know people, good and bad, an ease coming out of a real curiosity and interest, so people
trusted and talked to him, a gift that had never failed to impress his colleagues. But he was intelligent in other ways, too, and had a way of seeing through people and taking no grief. The other officers loved having him at their backs.
After that rainy day, his superiors and fellow patrolmen urged him to take a little time off. “It's too bad about your uncle, there, Charlie. Give it a little while. Go fishing or something.” Yes, they'd liked him; they wanted him to stay in Alabama. Law enforcement was a good way up and out, if you didn't ask certain questions.
Dugan loved his uncle, who had raised him after his mother died and his father took off. He would love to talk to him right now, about this night, though he knew where such a conversation would go. He slumped forward in the hard wooden kitchen chair where he'd taken a seat, his hands dangling between his knees, and in the darkness felt the humiliation sweep over him as it did every time his mind wandered back to that time.
Goddamn Martin Pemberton! You have to believe in something, though. All my life, I've tried to believe
.
He heard the bedroom door creak and his wife pad down the hall to the bathroom. She wasn't looking for him; it wasn't unusual for him to be out all night. Still, he swallowed his breathing, waiting for her to return. In his state, he wasn't ready for people at allâespecially her, because he loved her. After a moment, the sound of the toilet flushingâsudden, invasiveâswamped the house and his thoughts and memories and high-flung ideals, mocking like laughter so he couldn't think about anything at all. Then the silence returned, deeper than ever, it seemed, and that hot wire of shame ran through him again, and now anger, too. It always took awhile for the anger.
He became aware that the house was breathing and alive once more. His thoughts and memories slipped back, surprisingly intact and seductive, and he found himself recalling the first morning he ever saw the sun shine in Damascus. It was after a solid week of rain and a near-empty tent, two mornings after he'd shamed Martin Pemberton out of that donation for which he now knew Pemberton had never forgiven him, no matter how hard they both had triedâand which he, Dugan, couldn't be troubled to regret at all. It was also the very morning after he said farewell to the
preacher he'd traveled with for over a year, even refusingâout of kindness and respect, though the old man didn't seem to understandâhis last pay. He'd stuffed the worn bills gently in the old man's suit pocket, feeling the warmth of the pale, parchment-like skin beneath, the still-enduring vitality, but also the bewilderment and, worse, the doubt that he, Dugan, had sown. So he had only $22.50 to his name as he closed the door to his room at a cheap motel at the lower end of Charlotte Street. Then, standing in the washed, clean air, he saw the Blue Ridge Mountains for the first time. His heart stopped, then reached out and embraced everything he saw. After a while, he started up the street to the sheriff's office to see about work.