Page 110 of Never Flinch

Kate waves her off. “Down the toilet, all right? Down the motherfuckingcommode. Does that work?”

“You might leave out—”

“Motherfucking? Yeah, probably.” Kate tries to keep being mad, but snorts laughter.

“It works,” Corrie says.

“They’re also trying to protect your fans,” Holly says, but Kate ignores this.

“Listen, Corrie.”

“Listening.”

“Tell the press I’m gonna have a major announcement. I want TV. Blogs. All the websites.Politico, Axios, Kos, HuffPo, a fucking TikTok video. The socials. And get me on with a few of those drive-time radio assholes tomorrow morning, the ones who call themselves Bill and the Shark or Will and the Wolfman or whatever. Let people know they should come to Buckeye City because Iwillbe at the Mongo.”

“Mingo,” Holly says. She’s thinking about how a maniac named Brady Hartsfield tried to blow that place up. She doesn’t trust that old saying about lightning never striking twice in the same place, but what can she do? She’s never felt more along for the ride than she does now.

Kate faces Corrie. Holly always thought that stuff about blazing eyes was so much romance novel dookie, but Kate’s actually do seem to blaze. “Get going, Cor. We’re going to spin this motherfucker until it catches fire.”

7

Trig leaves work early, passing a word with Jerry Allison, the building’s elderly janitor, then going to Dingley Park. From the park’s far side, beyond the trees, comes the tink of aluminum bats and the sounds of men yelling and hooting as the cops and firemen practice. He tells himself he’s not there to find another surrogate juror (or possibly a surrogate judge), but only to make sure the druggie girl’s body hasn’t been discovered… but he’s got the Taurus in one pocket of his sportcoat, and a hypo loaded with pentobarbital—purchased by mail for just forty-five dollars—in the other. If someone happens along, he could shoot or OD them and stash the body with that of the druggie girl. If female, he could leave the name of Amy Gottschalk, Juror 4. If male, the name of Judge Irving Witterson, that haughty son of a bitch who first denied Duffrey bail and then sentenced him to the max.

He’s also thinking of games he went to with his father here, how he loved and dreaded them. When the long-gone Buckeye Bullets would score, his father would rub his head and give him a hug. He loved those hugs. After a win, there would be ice cream at Dutchy’s. No ice cream when the Bullets lost, and after those games Trig had to be careful what he said, lest he be slapped, punched, or pushed into the kitchen counter again. Oh, the blood that time! Daddy sopping it up with a dishtowel and saying,Ah, you baby, a few stitches will close that. Tell em that you stumbled over your own clumsy feet, you hear me?And of course that was what he did.

Where was Mom in all of this?Gone.

So said his father on the few occasions when Trig dared to ask (and by the time he was ten, she was at best just a hazy recollection, not a real mother but only the idea of one).She quit the family and we don’t talk about quitters, so why don’t you just go on and shut the fuck up.

Trig gets a Coke at Frankie’s Fabulous Fish Wagon and walks around the Holman Rink, which looks completely deserted. He sniffs for any aroma of decomposing druggie, but there’s nothing. At least so far as he can tell.

Around to the front again, heading for his car, and presto,anotherdruggie girl shows up. In that dirty halter top and tattered jeans, she can be nothing else. It’s as if he’s ordered her! Trig gives her a smile and slides his hand into the pocket of his sportcoat. He can already see himself putting Amy Gottschalk’s name in this loser’s dead hand. But then a young man emerges from the pine grove behind her. He’s as scruffy as she is but wearing an Army shirt with cutoff sleeves, and he’s built like a brick shithouse.

“Wait up, Mary,” he says. Then, to Trig: “Hey, man—you got an extra couple of bucks for a couple of vets? Get us a coffee or something?”

Trig takes his hand off the capped hypodermic, gives him a five, then heads to his car, hoping the scruffy guy won’t close in from behind and mug him. That would be a joke on old Trigger, wouldn’t it?

Chapter 17

1

It’s early Thursday morning—veryearly—but everything is ready to roll. Holly has always considered herself an organized person, but she’s in awe of Corrie Anderson, not least because the woman is so young; her learning curve must have been zero to overdrive in a matter of weeks. Some of the credit has to go to Kate, of course. She picked exactly the right person.

Holly drives her employer around to three local radio stations before the sun is up. Kate drinks coffee in amounts Holly finds frankly terrifying—she herself would be bouncing around the room and climbing the walls.

Because Holly can’t drive a standard shift (Uncle Henry offered to teach her, but as a teenager she was far too anxious to even try), she takes Kate around Toledo in her Chrysler, using her trusty GPS to get her from station to station. At each one, Kate makes the same points: DOOM is obviously bogus, the local powers that be, including the police,knowit’s bogus, but they’ve canceled her event anyway. Why? To shut her up. And if they can do it in Toledo, they can do it anywhere. To anyone.

The morning shows reallyarezoos, but Kate excels at the high-pressure banter these shock jocks specialize in. When one female caller (the morning shows also specialize in callers-in) accuses Kate of putting her own audiences at risk, Kate says, “Maybe they’d rather risk back-alley abortions? Risk their kids getting suspended from school becausethey come in wearing hightop fades or Mohawks? Risk having books the fundamentalist God-botherers don’t like banned? Maybe letthemdecide what’s risky, what do you think, caller?” And when the caller ventures the opinion that Kate is a high-riding bitch, Kate ventures her own opinion that the caller should put on her big-girl underpants and quit making decisions for other people.

In other words, it’s all Kate, all the time.

2

Back at the hotel, Corrie has a list of phone interviews, almost two dozen in all. She suggests that Kate should do the in-depth ones—Huffington Post, NPR, PBS,Slate—before they get on the road to Buckeye City.

“Once we’re rolling,” she says, “you talk while I drive. You should be able to knock off the nine I’ve starred. Ten minutes each, ninety minutesin toto.”

“Are you sure I can do them while we’re on the road? I fucking hate it when the service drops out. You’d think, if we could put a man on the moon—”

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