“You had some sort of run-in with her at Riley’s Pub last night.”
Richie shook his head miserably. “She was putting on a show for them.”
“Who’s ‘them’?”
“The customers.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She was into all kinds of power shit. You know, proving to you that she was smarter and tougher than you were.”
“She accused you of getting her pregnant?”
Richie smirked. “If she was pregnant, then it would’ve been a virgin birth, man. I never fucked her. I’ll admit I kissed her some and we did some messing around, but I never fucked her. Man. I’m not crazy.”
“State law says you could be charged even for kissing her. Her father could certainly press the point if he wanted to.”
“Well, I guess I didn’t know that. I just made very sure that I never fucked her. All right?”
“Where’d you go after Riley s?”
“Home.”
“Can you prove that?”
“How would I prove it?”
“You call anybody from here?”
“No.”
“Anybody stop over?”
“No.”
“Anybody see you pulling in last night?”
“Who’d see me? Nobody lives around here — except Jimmy.”
“You see Jimmy last night?”
“No.”
“You’re bullshitting me, aren’t you, Richie?”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t remember anything at all about last night, do you?”
“I remember I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you mean.”
“What route did you take home from Riley’s?”
“Up over the bridge.”
“Which bridge?”
“Hartson Creek Bridge.”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re saying I didn’t take Hartson Bridge home?”
“The rain washed it out around eight o’clock last night. According to the people in Riley’s, you didn’t leave until around eight-thirty.”
Richie sighed. He looked miserable, scared and frantic. “What the hell’s the big deal about the bridge, anyway?”
“The big deal is that you don’t remember anything at all about last night. You don’t even remember the route you took getting home.”
“And that means I killed her?”
“That means you may have killed her and not even know it.”
“Nobody forgets stuff like that.”
“There’re a lot of guys in prison who don’t remember doing what put them there, Richie.”
The bluster left Richie for a moment. He looked like a plain scared kid. “I thought you said you wanted to help me.”
“The only way I can help you, Richie, is if I know the truth.”
Richie stared up at Sam with a sad, baffled expression on his face. He was still trying to put last night together again in his mind.
“The truth is, Sam,” he said quietly, “I didn’t kill her. I really didn’t.”
There was a knock on the door.
Sam went over to open it.
Amy stood there.
She looked just as sad and frantic as her brother.
“Hi, Sam,” she said. “I thought maybe I’d stop by and see how things were going.”
He knew in that moment that he was going to lose her again, and all because of her brother — lose her forever this time.
5
They came with broken bones and broken dreams, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares.
For many, this was a place of last resort. If the man and his staff couldn’t help you, then you might well be beyond the help of anybody.
There was the woman trying to secure help for the operation her blind son needed. There was the man who felt he was being unduly hounded by the IRS. There was the farmer who believed that the bank was not being cooperative in giving him a loan for farm equipment. There was the grandmother who insisted that her nephew had been sentenced to prison even though he was innocent. There was the owner of a small business who was trying to get some business from the federal government.
They were sick, poor, desperate, bitter, angry. They were white, black, brown, yellow, red. Some were rich, most were poor. They were of all ages and creeds, and both sexes. A lot of them didn’t even belong to the proper political party.
But day after day, they filled Senator Cummings’s home office here in Crystal Falls.
Upon occasion, the waiting area resembled a doctor’s office, especially in the cold and flu months of January and February, the waiting area crawling with germs from sneezing, hacking, sniffling, snuffling citizens.
Senator Cummings tried to come back for at least three days a month. This was his home base and needed to be protected. There were more votes in this part of the state than any other. Cummings didn’t bring home staffers. Usually he and Helen came home alone.
They longed to see him and hear him and touch him, just the way people had longed to see and hear and touch Jesus of Nazareth, Lenin, FDR, and Elvis — longed to give him their problems and have him resolve them.
This particular morning was no different.
Just ask the fidgety little woman with the crippled grandson. Or the unemployed Vietnam veteran whose health insurance is running out. Or the twitching man with the nervous disorder who was injured in the workplace but can’t get his workers’ compensation.
You can see the hope in their eyes.
A United States senator is an important man. He can pick up the telephone and kiss a few asses or make a few threats and your problem is taken care of.
And that was particularly true about this United States senator.
There was virtually no one in this valley who had not been helped in some way large or small by this man. As he liked to tell you whenever he helped you, that’s why he wanted to be a senator in the first place: so he could improve the lot of the common man... the man who wasn’t rich, who didn’t have important connections, the man who needed a powerful friend from time to time.
So they reelected him.
They knew he was vain, they knew that his sister was actually the brains, they knew that he liked to bottle and liked to lady even more, they knew that he would not be remembered for any great contribution to a better national government... They knew all these things and they didn’t give a damn about them.
When you need a meal, when your kid is sick, when you can’t find a job... it doesn’t matter if the guy isn’t exactly Thomas Jefferson. Just as long as he can deliver.
And delivering was what Senator Cummings had long been known for. Not that there wasn’t the occasional excess. But one had to keep it in perspective. They were doing the will of the people, the men and women of the Congress, and so they could not be expected to live ordinary lives. As one senator had drunkenly explained at a dinner recently, the little people wanted their leaders to live enviable lives. The limo, the lobbyist Learjet, the junket to the South Seas... this was evidence that the men and women of the Congress were a special breed... The drunken senator had even argued that perhaps divine intervention played a role in elections... that God himself had chosen a small handful of the nation’s people to inspire and lead the millions... and to live and to indulge themselves in a few harmless and well-earned luxuries once their hard daily work was done. Helen had said that she thought this particular senator was a “psychotic bullshit artist,” but David had been quite taken with his words... with his notion that God had personally selected every man and woman in the Congress... and that every junket, every under-the-table bribe, every girlfriend (or boyfriend) put on the payroll, every piece of inside-trader stock market information was only something that this august body deserved. So even though Helen hadn’t bought the senator’s speech, David found himself secretly admiring the man for taking what some of the little people might take to be an unpopular stand.