Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [66]
“We didn’t stop to wonder,” Carol said, “why Otis didn’t kill us. I close my eyes and I see him hurrying, he must’ve been afraid, but now he couldn’t back down. He began firing . . .” She paused and said, “There’s no possible way you can link Boyd to the old man’s death, other than obvious self-defense. The man fired a gun at us and somehow he missed, didn’t he?”
Raylan said, “That’s what you told the sheriff’s people and they took your word for it.”
“I think it’s obvious,” Carol said, “the old guy didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Except old boys I’ve talked to, hunted with Otis, said he don’t miss with his shotgun.”
“Well, he did that night,” Carol said and told him, “No one’s perfect, Raylan. Not you or Otis or his buddies. Otis is in heaven, with his old pals from the deep mines. Coal miners get old and die from being coal miners.”
“But while they’re alive,” Raylan said, “they have a right to be alive.”
The only conversation in the elevator was Boyd saying, “The man won’t let go of it, will he?”
They were out of the building, crossing to the parking lot before Carol spoke. “There’s simply no way he can prove you shot Otis.”
Boyd said, “I didn’t shoot Otis. You did.”
She said, “What’s the difference? You’re standing there watching.”
Boyd paid for parking and got behind the wheel, surprised to see Carol in back. Coming here she’d sat next to him, less she was reaming somebody out as Miss Company, but never raising her voice. She still hadn’t given him nothin to do in his new job, head of Disagreements.
Boyd said, “You afraid I caught leprosy from bein in the marshals’ office?”
“I’m trying to recall,” Carol said, “when I told you to empty the shotgun, where you fired.”
“In the air. You saw me. I didn’t hear you tell me to hit the trailer.”
She couldn’t deny it. After a few moments she said, “I’m not going to any more interrogations. You know we were being recorded? No, you didn’t. They have all your stammering. You can act surprised and stammer a little, but only when you know what you’re going to say.”
“You happen to notice,” Boyd said, “I put the spent shells by Otis, for realism?”
Boyd saw her smile in the mirror. He believed she liked his carefree attitude, long as he didn’t take it too far. She was almost a nice person when things pleased her. When they didn’t, he’d see her gettin pissed off at him for some picayune thing and come near firing him. He didn’t think she’d try to blame Otis on him, knowing he’d turn around and drag her in. She’d be busy in court instead of doin her regular job, makin people’s lives miserable.
What he needed was a threat to hang over her head. Keep her from doing something nasty to him.
Boyd was wondering, Could he get Raylan to side with him without snitchin on Carol? Remind him of walking picket lines together, seein eye to eye when it came to coal companies fuckin over miners? Say to Raylan it was getting hard to work for Carol. Hell, it was like working for Duke Power again. Remember those days we stood up together? Say this working for Carol was tearing him apart.
Something along those lines.
He started the car and said to the mirror, “Where we goin?”
“The office,” Carol said. “You’re on your own the rest of the day, unless I need you.”
“So I should wait in the car.”
“You can’t help being a smart-ass, can you?” Now she told him, “What I’ve wanted to do all week is get Otis’s widow off my back, Marion Culpepper. Since you’re head of Disagreements you have her sign our agreement, where we pay her five hundred a month. Tell her we’ll get her Social Security bumped up and give her the deed to her new trailer home in Benham. Even has a hot water tank.”
“I have to go all the way down to Harlan?”
“She’s here in Lexington, in a nursing home we’re paying for. So we don’t have to drive to Sleepy Holler. Get her to sign and tell her I’ll stop