The Legal Limit Read online

  Gates turned off the car, set the brake and stretched across to the glove compartment. He was quick, efficient, and Mason could see him clearly, the light pouring in from behind them unnatural and loud. Gates removed a gun. Silver, unholstered, a brief barrel, a .38, and before Mason could utter a word—warn his brother not to do something crazy—Gates was standing in the night, the driver’s door swung open, tucking the pistol into his pants at the small of his back.

  “Easy now,” Mason said, stepping from the passenger seat onto the side of the road, but at least the weapon wasn’t pointed at Wayne and with any luck it would stay put, right where it was, no more than a dangerous precaution.

  Peering over the car’s roof, Mason saw Wayne advance on Gates, closing the distance with uneven, choppy steps, a small club, maybe a foot long, at his hip. He halted at the rear of the Corvette and cursed Gates. “You sonofabitch,” he said.

  Gates didn’t respond, simply stood there with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Why were you tryin’ to run me off the road? Wreck me?” Wayne demanded, obviously torturing the truth, ginning up a reason to fight. “Huh?”

  “That’s hardly what happened,” Mason said, his forearm resting on the Corvette’s top. Wayne was far more boisterous than usual; Mason assumed he’d been drinking. “Why don’t you,” Mason continued, “just forget this and drive away before Gates hurts you?”

  “Fuck the both of you.”

  “Wayne,” Gates said, “that pitiful little stick you’re holdin’ ain’t goin’ to help you when I come back there and whip your ass. Either leave right now or take a beatin’.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, you ain’t gonna have to come to me.” He took a step closer, then another, so that he was almost within Gates’s reach. “I damn sure ain’t afraid of you.”

  To Mason, who well knew his brother’s moods and inclinations, Gates seemed irritated but not irrational, anxious in the manner of someone who had the upper hand and was eager to use it, like a sixteen-year-old poised above a yellow jacket nest with matches and a gallon of gasoline at twilight. “This has been a long time in the makin’,” Gates said.

  “You need your baby brother to help you?” It had become clear Wayne wasn’t planning to leave without taking on Gates, who was considerably taller and a hundred pounds heavier. “Think you might could handle somethin’ by yourself for a change?”

  “I won’t need any help with a pissant like you,” Gates told him.

  “You’re so worthless, Gates. Sorry as a dog. How’s it feel to go downhill every single day after high school? Huh?” Wayne still had the club, but it was at his side, flat against his thigh. His voice was shrill, the words rushed. “Big football star, ready to shake up the world and now you’re livin’ with your mommy, probably stealin’ beer money outta her purse.” He bobbed his head up and down in agreement with himself. “Never done nothin’ ’cept sponge off your momma and Denise, and never will do nothin’.”

  Gates licked his lips and started to speak, but the thought was stillborn, arrived dead and gurgled. His mouth remained open, and he took a stride away from Wayne, creating more space between them. The retreat was slightly off kilter, unbalanced, and Mason realized that his brother probably hadn’t slept the night before and was chock-full of dope and alcohol, but still figured he would maul Wayne. And if he couldn’t, Mason would pitch in to make sure Wayne received a good thrashing, fair or not.

  “I want you to think about where I’ve been whenever you’re kissin’ her. You think about that, Gates.”

  “You goin’ to drop that billy club?” Gates’s voice was empty, dull.

  “A loser, that’s what you are. Me, I’d take welfare before I hung myself around my mother’s neck. It’s just a matter of time before Denise sees the truth and dumps your ass. Me and her are goin’ to be together—you know that, don’t you?” The club didn’t stir.

  Mason—concerned with the blackjack—never saw his brother take the gun from his pants and aim it, but he heard the shot, saw a whitish-orange burst at the end of the muzzle. He looked directly at Gates…and the scene stalled right there for an instant, seized up while the report from the pistol took issue with the trees and hills and anything else the least bit solid and doubled back on them. The Corvette’s interior light and the high beams from the Mazda overran Gates’s face, made it seem as if he’d been plugged into a socket and flooded with current, his skin electrified chalk, the artificial glow clinging to his features, turning them out eerie and pronounced: an etched, viperish mouth; a raised, crescent-shaped scar near his temple; a brace of violent lines cutting through his forehead. His eyes, though, remained dark, sequestered, two black gouges in the midst of all the shocking white.

  When Mason glanced away from his brother, Wayne was gone, shot, out of view on the ground, partially hidden by the tail end of the Corvette. Dumbfounded, Mason hurried around to where Wayne lay on the road, his head split and soggy, the awful damage barely skimmed by the bottom of the RX-7’s beams. Mason looked at the dead man, then at his brother, so stunned and unhinged that his first words were trite, lacking, the stale scold of a stick-in-the-mud spinster aunt: “Now you’ve gone and done it, Gates.”

  Gates appeared horrified, was actually holding the gun at arm’s length, examining it as if it had mysteriously arrived and latched on to him. “I…I…damn…I didn’t mean to do it.” He continued to puzzle over the .38.

  I didn’t mean to do it: a peculiar, last-ditch mantra that Mason Hunt would hear many times over the years, from many lips, in many courtrooms, though it rarely, if ever, had any application to the genuine truth of the matter. His brother had stopped the car, reached across to the glove compartment, armed himself, left the vehicle with the pistol, considered his choices, removed the gun from his trousers, aimed, fired—hardly an accident or fluke. No, what he really meant was I wish I hadn’t done it. Peering at his brother’s spooky face and regaining a trace of clarity himself, Mason realized that the violence had issued from Gates in a spasm long in the making, like an accumulation of tinder hit with heat. The shooting was not so much malicious as hardwired and visceral, a copperhead’s strike, a third cousin to the impulse that causes an owner to kick a pet at the end of a crummy week, or a spouse to scream wild threats and slam down a receiver. Feckless, thwarted, angry and left behind, his world gone to naught because of his own weaknesses, Gates Hunt shot and killed a man for no good reason.

  At first, acting on adrenaline and brute instinct, Mason didn’t question what he should do, never really considered anything beyond helping his brother. “Let’s go, Gates. Get in the car, and let’s go before someone drives by.”

  “Damn, Mason. Shit. I can’t believe this.” Gates was anguished, on the verge of tears.

  “Go! Go! Drive.” Mason was scrambling for the door.

  “We…wait…wait…we need to hide him or somethin’.” His voice quavered. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “No way. We can’t move him—the body will be found sooner or later anyway, and we’re in this stupid Corvette with no room, and there’ll be blood and hair and all kinds of evidence if we use his car. And we damn sure don’t want to be seen driving a dead man’s ride.”

  “Then we should take money or his wallet, right, make it seem like a robbery?”

  “Only if you want to get sent to the chair—that would make it a capital crime.” Mason was standing beside the door, about to duck down. “I’m the lawyer, okay? Come the hell on. There’s nothing to tie you to this. Nothing. The more you try to do now, the more you give the cops later on.”

  “You mean just leave him here?” he asked, slowly gaining composure, his voice stabilizing.

  “Exactly. Now come on. Somebody probably heard the shot. And don’t spin the tires when you pull off.”

  Gates glanced at the dead man bleeding out onto the pavement. “Jeez, I can’t believe this.” He dashed into the car, cranked the engine and babied the gas. “Lord, Mason, what’re we goin’ to
do? Huh? I didn’t mean to shoot him…It…it just freakin’ happened.”

  “Listen to me, Gates. There are two people in the world who know the truth. You and me. Don’t ever say anything to anyone about this.” Mason was staring right at his brother. His voice was stern. “No matter how drunk or stoned or mad or boastful you become, never, ever say a word. Not a peep. Never. Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t anyway.”

  “You know you can trust me, right? I’ll take this to my grave for you—you know that. It’s always been you and me, Mason and Gates, taking care of each other.”

  “I’m so sorry to drag you into this,” Gates said. “It just came over me. I swear I barely remember shooting him.” He shifted gears and was clumsy with the clutch, causing the car to lurch.

  “Yeah, well, I only have a toe wet, Gates. You’re the one who fucked up and shot the guy. I’m not into this at all. This is your albatross, not mine.”

  “What about self-defense? We could say he was threatenin’ me with that blackjack. Tell the police—”

  “Sure, great idea. Let’s see: there are two of us, he’s drunk, you’re twice his size, he has a pathetic little stick and you have a gun. Brilliant plan.”

  “It’s better than nothin’.”

  “No, Gates, it’s not,” Mason said emphatically. “Nothing, in this case, is the least shitty choice where you’re concerned. They’ll have a body on the side of the road, no witnesses, no forensic evidence, no leads, no confession. We last saw Wayne hours ago, and you laughed him off, didn’t jump him when you had the chance and all grades of provocation. So what we’re going to do now,” he stated, his voice dropping, “is travel to Martinsville, stop by Peter’s Lounge, get lost in the bar, flirt with the girls, act normal and pay for our drinks with my credit card when we leave. If Claude and those two women aren’t there—and it’s a cinch they won’t be—you’ll call Denise’s collect, to check on them. Short term, you need to find a safe place to stop so I can drive us; it would be nice to get there without wrecking. We’ll take the back roads to the gravel pile, then haul ass to Martinsville.”

  “Claude said they were goin’ to the Dutch Inn, not—”

  Mason interrupted him. “Exactly, Gates. And on the outside chance they’ve shaken themselves free of the Doritos and Pink Floyd, we damn sure don’t want to run into them, now do we? Arrive there after they do?” He shook his head. “I’m positive they said Peter’s.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’m with you.” Gates paused to look at his brother. “Should I go over shit with Denise? Or Claude? Rehearse what happened and so forth when Wayne was there?”

  “Absolutely not. Just let it unfold and act surprised. We don’t need any of them to have suspicions. You and I left, thought about missing a good time with our friends, went to Peter’s Lounge, didn’t see anyone, called to check on Claude and what’shername, stayed till closing, then drove home. That’s the story. It’ll be the truth minus the problem with Wayne. You clear?”

  “We left Denise’s, you mentioned maybe extendin’ the night, I’d been partying right smart, so you drove us to Martinsville, then home.”

  “Correct. Say I started driving at Town and Country Market.” They passed a vehicle, a pickup judging from the lights and silhouette, the first one they’d met since the confrontation with Wayne. They’d traveled four or five miles past the shooting scene. “Maybe it’ll turn before it gets there,” Mason said anxiously. “Buy you some more time and make it harder to establish when he was shot.” He peered over his shoulder, following the truck until it vanished. “Find a pull-off and let’s switch. And then we’re actually going to have the entire conversation, give it a couple run-throughs so we’re consistent about who said what, that sort of thing. Oh—wash your hands and face as soon as we arrive at Peter’s, and we’ll need to check your clothes before we go in, then burn them after we get back to Mom’s, just to be safe.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I will.” Gates seemed distracted.

  Mason rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I’ll take care of the gun. We’ll hide it tonight temporarily, and I’ll carry it with me tomorrow and destroy it as best I can and dump it somewhere.” He sighed. “I hate to do it, but I’m worried you’ll screw it up, and for damn sure it doesn’t need to surface around here. Neither of us is going to be well served if the police discover the gun, you especially.” Even though it entangled him more than he would have preferred, would make him less than passive in Wayne’s killing, Mason concluded that disposing of the pistol himself was his only option if he planned to protect his brother.

  Gates nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Understood?” Mason demanded.

  “Fine with me,” Gates said, still distant.

  “What’s wrong?” Mason asked.

  “You know, that prick pretty much got what was comin’ to him,” Gates remarked, trying to sell himself on the notion, no more than minutes removed from the killing, his fear and conscience already elbowed aside by a scoundrel’s brazen denial. “Hell, he chased us down, called me out, pulled a bat on me, attacked Denise’s character—what’d he expect?” Gates stopped the car.

  The sudden lack of remorse and crude rationalizing pissed Mason off. Before changing seats, he put his hand on Gates’s arm and glared at him in the dark. “Shut your frigging mouth, Gates. There’s no need to make it worse than it already is—quit acting like a punk.” He resisted an urge to punch Gates, to draw back and knock him cockeyed and show him what he thought about his craven, unrepentant behavior, maybe bust his nose or loosen a tooth, punish him for the dreadful mess he’d pinned to them both. Mason formed a fist but kept it in his lap, just squinted and breathed deep, and as he was exiting the Corvette, he took another pass at Gates, spoke with one foot on the floorboard, the other in weeds and unruly grass: “At least he had a job, Gates. And it wouldn’t hurt you to shape up, would it? Mom’s too old for you to be constantly disappointing her. Don’t you dare say another word about how anyone’s to blame except you.”

  He didn’t mention it, but he considered reporting Gates to the police—he could call and leave an anonymous tip, and it was manslaughter and not murder so they wouldn’t jail him and discard the key forever. Besides, Gates was thoroughly guilty, very much deserving of consequences, if not for the shooting, then for living his life as a wastrel and weighing down so many of the people around him.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Gates mumbled as they hustled past each other at the front of the car. To Mason’s ear, he didn’t sound contrite, merely tired, drugged and in a bind, willing to mouth whatever it took.

  “A damn tar baby,” Mason said, more to himself than his brother, as the deed began to tattoo itself into his mind and gut and he imagined the shape of things to come, the pangs and complications that would always companion the poorly lit image of Wayne Thompson lying there with his head bored through.

  Chapter Two

  In a certain fashion, Stuart, Virginia, was the same in 1984 as it was in 1994 or 2004, and the same as it will be into perpetuity.

  The county seat, Stuart is a village of 971 people, and Patrick County itself contains 19,000 or so residents scattered over a chunk of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the spread of flatlands below. It’s a part of the world where people wave as they meet on the highway, take baked goods to a neighbor after a funeral service, organize fire-department fundraisers for families with unexpected afflictions and call firstborn boys by their daddy’s name, always with a “Junior” or “Little” affixed—a five-year-old Harold becomes Little Duane until he grows big enough to make his own mark, a young Terry is Mike Junior until Big Mike passes on and Terry respectfully corrects an elder and asks to be called by his given name. There’s a weekly newspaper, the Enterprise, and a radio station with a signal that doesn’t quite reach the county line. Sixth-generation Rorrers, Heaths, Halls, Beasleys and Turners eat ample portions of fair-priced, straightforward meals at the local cafés and talk about the bo
ard of supervisors or the proper mixture for a hummingbird feeder or deer hunting or gospel singings or kids gone away to college, the parents hoping their children won’t land too far from home when they finish their studies at Radford or Virginia Tech.

  The citizens frequently carry tales and trade rumors, but the gossip is never sneaky or sub rosa in Patrick, instead takes place for all to hear and see at the Coffee Break counter or in the grocery store aisles, as people are fond of blunt speech no matter what the subject. Predictably, the area has always had its fair share of crackpots and mugwumps, the usual naysayers and malcontents who bitch about how LBJ ruined the country and dispatch poorly spelled screeds to the newspaper decrying their high property taxes or the influx of know-it-all newcomers. On balance, though, it is—and has been for decades—a splendid, serene, no-frills spot where the population is satisfied to be on the banks of the mainstream, clear of the current, passed by. Great old customs may have vanished in other communities, but Patrick County merchants still seal agreements with a handshake, and local gents politely touch the bills of their hats when a lady approaches on the sidewalk.

  In this staid place, Wayne Thompson’s murder was extraordinary. His corpse was discovered not long after midnight by a carload of teenagers aimlessly riding the country roads, five kids who stopped simply because they thought the RX-7 might have broken down. WHEO didn’t broadcast the incident until its Monday-morning news program, and the Enterprise ran it as a headline article on Wednesday, but the convenience stores and breakfast tables were abuzz well before that, and the story picked up distortions and colorful speculation during its race through the area early Sunday morning. A deputy’s wife told her Bible study class at Stuart Baptist that marijuana was found in Wayne’s car and the police were exploring the possibility of a drug deal turned sour. Before he learned of the shooting, Claude had recounted—and much embellished—the dispute at Denise’s to his rabbit-hunting buddies, the four of them sipping coffee laced with moonshine at dawn while their beagles yelped and squalled and gleefully chased smells into the bramble. When he contacted them later and swore them to secrecy, it was too late—word was out and Gates Hunt’s name was circulating. Wayne had been drinking at the Old Dominion for several hours on Saturday evening, and he’d raised a ruckus with Allen Roberts about a ten-dollar pool bet, so the cops were knocking on Allen’s door early enough after sunrise that he appeared in his undershorts, half-asleep.