Free First Family by David Baldacci Page B

of early 1960s rural Alabama.
    He’d pulled the old car into the barn, cut the engine, and grabbed a shovel. He’d dug a grave for his father close to where he’d buried the Patriot. He’d walked back to the barn. On the way he’dcontemplated how best to kill his old man. He had access to all the guns at Atlee, and there were a lot of them, and he could fire every single one of them with skill. But he figured a blow to the head would be far quieter than a gunshot. He certainly wanted to murder the old adulterer, but he was smart enough not to want to trade his life for the privilege either.
    He’d dragged his father out of the car and laid him facedown on the barn’s straw-covered floor. His plan was to deliver the killing blow to the base of the neck, like you would an animal you were planning to do in. As he was readying the sledgehammer to strike his father had abruptly sat up.
    “What the hell’s going on, Junior?” he’d slurred, staring at his son through the blur of drunken eye slits.
    “Nothing much,” Quarry had said back, his courage fading. He might’ve been as tall as a full-grown man, but he was still only a boy. One look from his daddy was all it took to remind him of that.
    “I’m hungry as all get out,” said his father.
    Quarry had put down his murder weapon and helped his old man up, supporting him as they made their way to the house. He fed his father and then half carried him upstairs. He kept the light off in the bedroom, undressed the man, and laid him in bed.
    When the man woke up the next morning next to his cold, dead wife, Quarry could hear the screams all the way to the milking barn where he sat pulling cow teats for all he was worth. He had laughed so hard, he’d cried.
    Quarry walked back to Atlee after burying the gun. It was a fine evening, the sun ending its stay in the sky with a glorious burn right down into the foothills of the Sand Mountain plateau on the southern big toe of the Appalachians. Alabama, he thought, was just about the prettiest place on earth, and Atlee was the finest part of it.
    He went to his study and lit a fire though the day had been hot and the night was muggy with the predator mosquitoes already on the prowl for blood.
    Blood.
He had lots of blood in those coolers. He’d locked them up in the big safe his granddaddy had kept for important documents. It was in the basement next to the old clattering furnace that was rarelyneeded in this part of the country. The safe had a spin dial that as a child he’d whirled as hard as he could, hoping it would land on the right numbers and reveal its contents. It never had. His father’s last will and testament had finally given Quarry the proper numerical sequence. The thrill just hadn’t been the same.
    The fire building up fine, he took the poker, dipped it into the flames, and got it good and hot. He sat back in his chair, rolled up his sleeve, and placed the reddened metal against his skin. He did not cry out, but just about bit through his lower lip. He dropped the poker and looked down at his throbbing arm. Gasping with the pain, he bent his mind to studying the mark the heated metal had left behind. He had made one line with it, a long one. He had three more to go.
    He unscrewed a bottle of gin he kept on his desk and drank from it. He poured some on the mark. The blistered skin seemed to swell more with the bite of the alcohol. It looked like a tiny mountain ridge forming after a million-years-ago hiccup of the earth’s bowels. The gin was cheap, all he drank anymore, mostly grain with other crap piled in, locally bottled. That’s all he did anymore: local.
    He hadn’t been lying to poor Kurt. There
was
madness in his family. His daddy clearly had it, and his daddy before him too. Both men had ended up in the state mental hospital where’d they’d finished their days babbling about stuff nobody wanted to hear. The last time Quarry had seen his father alive the man was sitting naked on the dirty