Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories by Sharyn McCrumb Page A

copy. But I managed. I wanted to stay assigned to the story.
    I didn’t see the new Mrs. Budrell for the next two weeks, but I kept track of her. She went to Washington and gave a couple of speeches about the injustices of the American penal system. She tried to get in to see the Vice President and a couple of Supreme Court justices, but that didn’t pan out. She managed to get plenty of newspaper space, though, and even made the cover of a supermarket newspaper. They ran a picture of her with the caption COURAGEOUS BRIDE FIGHTS FOR HUSBAND’S LIFE .
    Because of the tearjerker angle, her efforts on Kenny’sbehalf received far more publicity than those of the court-appointed attorney assigned to his case. Allen Linden, a quiet, plodding type just out of law school, had been filing stacks of appeals and doing everything he could do, but nobody paid any attention. He wasn’t newsworthy, and he shied away from the media blitz. He hadn’t attended Budrell’s wedding and he declined all interviews to discuss the newlyweds. I know, because I tried to talk with him three times—the last time he’d brushed past me in the hall outside his office, murmuring, “I’m doing the best I can for him, which is more than I can say for—”
    He swallowed the rest but I knew what he had been about to say. Varnee wasn’t doing a thing to really help her husband’s case, although she’d been on two national talk shows and a campus lecture tour, and there was talk of a major book contract. Varnee was doing just fine—for herself.
    The whole sideshow was due to end on April third, the date of Kenny’s execution. The editor was sending Rudy Carr to cover that and I was going along to do a sidebar on the widow-to-be. I wondered how she was going to play her part: grieving bride or impassioned activist?
    “I’m glad to see it’s raining,” said Tracer, hunched down in the backseat with his camera equipment. “That ought to keep the demonstrators away.”
    Rudy, at the wheel, glanced at him in the rearview mirror and scowled. He had hardly spoken since we started.
    I watched the windshield wipers slapping the rain. “It won’t keep
her
away,” I said, feeling the chill, glad I’d worn my sheepskin coat.
    “You’ve got to give the woman credit, though,” Tracer said. “She’s been using this case to say a lot of things that need saying about capital punishment.”
    I sighed. If you gave Tracer a sack of manure, he’d spend two hours looking for the pony.
    “She’s getting rich off this,” I pointed out. “Did you know that Kenny Budrell has a mother and sisters?”
    “And so did two of the victims,” added Rudy with such quiet intensity that it shut both Tracer and me up for the rest of the trip.
    The prison reception room was far more crowded for the execution than it had been for the wedding. By now Varnee had received so much publicity she was a national news item, and when we arrived she was three-deep in reporters. She was wearing a black designer suit and the same hat she’d worn for the wedding. I knew she wouldn’t give me the time of day with all the bigger fish waving microphones and cameras in her face, but I did get a photocopy of her speech on capital punishment from a stack of copies she’d brought with her.
    “You’d better talk to her now,” Tracer said. “In a few minutes they’re taking the witnesses in to view the execution and you’re not cleared for that.”
    I stared at him. “You mean she’s going to watch?”
    “Oh, yeah. They agreed on that from the start.”
    I might have gone over and talked with her then, but I noticed Allen Linden, Kenny’s attorney, sitting on a bench by himself, sipping coffee. He looked tired, and his gray suit might have been slept in for all its wrinkles.
    He looked up warily as I approached.
    “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want,” I said.
    He managed a wan smile. “Have I seen you somewhere before?”
    I introduced myself. “You’ve