Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(15)
Birk sat back and let out a sigh. “But he gets out in a month. After that, he’ll be a ghost.”
“Then he’s a ghost. So is his money.”
Swonger cursed and kicked the side of the trailer. “Well, this was a waste of time. Guess that’s what we get for listening to this old vegetable.”
“I’m sorry,” Gibson said.
“Yeah, everyone’s sorry,” Birk said. “Uncle Hammond’s sorry for flushing the entire family’s life savings down the toilet. The rest of the family’s sorry for being a bunch of lemmings and listening to this old faggot. Dad’s sorry that Jim Beam bottles have bottoms. Swonger’s dad is sorry he worked thirty years for a man who doesn’t keep his word. Yeah, it’s just a chorus of sorry around here.”
“I’m sorry,” the judge echoed.
“Hey. Screw you and your sorry,” Swonger said.
“Take it easy.”
“Don’t tell him to take it easy,” Birk said. “Our families are barely scraping by while Merrick is set to live the high life on some tropical island. Dad’s gonna lose this farm. Been in my family since 1947. The Swongers’ll be out on their ass. And the day that happens, I’m driving up to DC and dumping him on a street corner. You hear me, old man?”
Christopher Birk threw back his chair and stalked toward the house.
Swonger stood staring at the judge as if trying to make his mind up about something. “Show yourself out,” he said and followed after Birk.
The judge watched the pair go, eyes rimmed red and sorrowful. Gibson flipped the magazine over so he wouldn’t have to see Merrick grinning up at him. One more powerful man who had gamed a broken system, ruined lives, and lived to rub it in his victims’ faces.
CHAPTER SIX
The town of Niobe sat on the West Virginia bank of the Ohio River. In the mornings after a long shift, Lea Regan liked to drink her coffee on the exterior stairs outside her apartment and watch the river make its solemn way southwest toward Cairo, Illinois, where it joined the Mississippi. It reminded her that the outside world was still waiting and that her two-year purgatory here in Niobe—self-inflicted though it might be—would be ending soon. One way or another.
Lea bartended nights at the Toproll, the bar directly below her apartment, which she rented from her boss. So more often than not, “morning” was code for early afternoon. Last call was two a.m., so she usually didn’t crawl into bed until after four. At least it made for a short commute. She rested her coffee on the railing while she stretched and listened to her joints crack. Felt good but did nothing to loosen the golf ball–size knot between her shoulder blades.
A barge tramping upstream toward Pittsburgh passed between the two towers of the old Niobe Bridge, which loomed out of the water like CGI effects in some end-of-the-world summer blockbuster. The center deck had collapsed spectacularly on the Fourth of July, 1977, sending cars and families tumbling into the river as fireworks lit up the night. The state legislature, in a decision that cemented Niobe’s declining stature, deemed the bridge too costly either to repair or demolish. So the spine of the bridge rusted amiably in the sunshine, the unacknowledged symbol of a town on the far side of its heyday.
The citizens of Niobe had more or less adjusted to the inconvenience of driving north for an hour if they needed to cross into Ohio. But truth was, Ohio was an unfamiliar ambition for the many locals who lived within eyeshot of another state but never left West Virginia. Still, every so often, Lea caught Old Charlie, a fixture at the Toproll, in an expansive mood, and, for the price of a drink, he would recount the town’s history and rail against the black mark on their honor.
It made her sad. She imagined that Niobe must have been a beautiful town once, but the money had moved on and left relics like the Niobe Bridge to remind people of their past. The people survived, if you could call it that, in hard-drinking bars like the Toproll, easing the pain of having been left behind as well. Most too young to remember the way things used to be but feeling their obsolescence deep in their bones like toxin absorbed from the groundwater. They were good people but quick to anger and held a grudge until it fossilized. In that way, she fit right in. In all other ways, she was an outsider and always would be if she spent the rest of her life in Niobe.
She pulled the rubber band off yesterday’s mail and stood in the sunshine, sorting it. Mostly junk, but the magazine caught her attention. It was him. On the cover. That wasn’t right.
“UNREPENTANT.”
It was supposed to be only a short profile piece, not a cover story. At least that was what her source inside the prison had told her. Her heart lurched in her chest; Lea studied the photo of Charles Merrick, smiling proudly as if he were wearing a tuxedo instead of a prison jumpsuit. How did he manage to look smug? She tore the cover off, shredded it, and scattered Charles Merrick confetti out over the Toproll’s back parking lot. She had a bad feeling, and coffee suddenly didn’t sound nearly strong enough.
Lea sat at the bar of the Toproll and read Merrick’s interview for the third time. She pushed the magazine away and reached for her beer, trying to decide what it meant. Merrick hadn’t admitted to anything—not straight out—but it was all there, between the lines. If you knew him well, it was impossible to miss. Insane—the only word for it. Others would read it and glean what she already knew. Three years of preparation, and she might already be dead in the water. Everything was predicated on her, and her alone, knowing Merrick’s secret. She wasn’t equipped to fight a war. And it would be a war. They’d be coming now, circling like vultures the day Charles Merrick walked out of Niobe Federal Prison. The hell with taking him quietly at the local airfield. He might not make it ten feet out of the prison gate. He had beaten her. Beaten her without knowing or trying.