by Julia Keller
The Blazer stopped in front of her house. “Stopped” was a generous interpretation; it really just stalled out and quit. The door flapped open. A man in a thick black overcoat and knee-high black boots jumped out. He shuddered briefly at the cold. He closed the door behind him. Bell took note of what she’d seen before but had willfully chosen to ignore: the round white county seal on the door, encircled by the words RAYTHUNE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.
No question about it. This was official business.
Bell scarcely had time to set her mug on the mantel and pull on a ratty, dignity-preserving bathrobe before the knocks came, a series of three serious-sounding assaults on the ancient oak door. There was a doorbell in plain sight, but for some reason, Deputy Jake Oakes—she’d recognized him as he fought his way up the long front walk, or at least up a path that constituted his best guess as to where the walk might be lurking under the snow, and then struggled up the front porch steps—always preferred to knock, loud and long. He’d been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, he’d told her once, and she wondered if he secretly missed using his fists on a regular basis.
She opened the door. The deputy’s nose and cheeks were bright red from the cold. His blue eyes watered profusely. He seemed slightly stunned by the ordeal of walking just a few yards in this weather. His lips, she saw, were cracked and split.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” he said.
Bell nodded. She didn’t know the details of the situation that had prompted his visit, but she was sure its essence could be summarized in a single word:
Trouble.
* * *
The body of a woman identified as Darlene Strayer had been found just before sunrise. That’s what Oakes told her, his words flat and informational. He knew she preferred to hear it that way: facts arranged in chronological sequence. She didn’t like it when people hemmed and hawed and hedged, trying to pretty things up, temper the blow.
A trucker named Felton Groves had come upon the mangled wreckage off to the side of the road. Darlene had been ejected from her midnight blue Audi when the car hit a pine tree about twenty yards beyond the tight interior curve of the nasty switchback. Groves was negotiating that same help-me-Jesus stretch of the descent when he spotted the carnage, his headlights splashing up on the crusty white snow like a flung bucketful of some glittering substance.
That description, Oakes said, glancing up from his notes, came from Groves himself. The trucker fancied himself a bit of a poet.
Groves had immediately realized what he was looking at: Somebody had missed the curve. The vehicle had sailed clean off the road in a long solemn arc until the tree put a sudden stop to it. He pulled over, yanked on his emergency brake. He approached the scene. A quick glimpse was all he needed. The Audi’s front end was a corrugated mess. The torqued body lay facedown on a mound of snow about ten yards from the drastically foreshortened car.
At that point, he said, all the poetry fled from his mind. He called 911. He didn’t check for a pulse. “Maybe I should have,” he’d murmured uncertainly to Deputy Oakes, once the paramedics had trussed up the driver on a gurney and slotted the gurney in the back and taken off. The light on top of the van spun around and around, draping the landscape in dire pulses of red, but the paramedic behind the wheel had to exercise restraint; the road surface was compromised by the heavy snowfall as yet untouched by any plow, and by at least half an inch of ice under the snow. It was strange, Groves remarked to the deputy, to see an emergency vehicle just creeping along like that, tentative, holding back, moving in cautious fits and starts.
He still had nightmares, Groves had added—unprompted—to Deputy Oakes, from an accident scene he’d come upon near Macon, Georgia, fifteen years ago. Eight kids, two parents, nobody wearing seat belts in a van that for some unknown reason had gone left of center and ended up smashing headfirst into a tractor-trailer rig. He’d stopped his truck that time, too, and jumped out. Once again, it was before the cops had gotten there, and the air was still quivering from the ferocious impact, as if the earth itself still couldn’t believe what had just happened, the violence of it, the terrible surprise. The bodies looked like laundry tossed every which way in a ditch. He’d never forget the sight.
That was why he’d kept his distance when he saw the body in the snow, he told Deputy Oakes. That was why he hadn’t gone closer, hadn’t looked for signs of life, hadn’t called out, “Hey—you okay?” He knew the person wasn’t okay. And frankly, he was worried about his sleep. For the rest of his life, he meant. He couldn’t take on yet another reason for insomnia, another trigger. But it bothered him, just the same. “Maybe she was still alive. Maybe if I’d—”
“No,” Oakes had replied. He was matter-of-fact about it, tapping the top of the little pencil back into his shirt pocket and then rebuttoning his overcoat against the phenomenal cold. You couldn’t use a pen in these temperatures; the ink froze. “Guaranteed—she was dead when she hit the ground. Never had a chance.”
Odd to find that consoling, Oakes would think later, once the shock wore off. Odd that instant death sounded like a blessing.
But it was. Given the condition of the body, it was. Definitely, it was.
* * *
They had found Bell’s name on a handwritten note in the victim’s coat pocket. That was why the deputy was here now. He had written down the words in his notebook; the original was in an evidence bag, stowed in a locked room at the courthouse. This wasn’t a criminal investigation—it was an accident, plain and simple—but they still did things right in Raythune County.
“The paper said, ‘Bell Elkins. 8 pm. Tie Yard Tavern.’ And then your cell number.” Oakes looked up from his notebook to meet Bell’s eye. “Car was registered to an Alice Darlene Strayer. Nobody’s made the formal ID yet—we’re having a hell of a time locating a next of kin—but the body matches the photo on the driver’s license. And on her federal ID. Looks like it was expired—the federal ID, not the license—but she still had it in her purse.”
“Yes,” Bell said. She was too stunned at first to offer more than one word. It was impossible to believe. Just a few hours ago, she’d been sitting with Darlene in the bar. She could remember the way her hand looked when she lifted the whiskey glass. She could remember the sound of her voice, the expression on her face. And now all of it—the hand, the voice, the face—was gone. Darlene Strayer was dead.
Bell realized that she and Oakes were standing in the foyer, facing each other, in radically different states of attire. She wore a pink chenille robe and sweats and slippers. He wore a brown uniform and a black wool greatcoat, and a black toboggan instead of his usual flat-brimmed hat. The snow was melting from his boots onto the wide-plank flooring. Already two pools had formed around his feet.
In other circumstances, the disparity would have amused them. Neither commented upon it now.
“Anyway,” he said. “Just needed to inform you. And get a few basic facts for the timeline.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He sensed her shock and kept his demeanor businesslike. Normally, Jake Oakes was a joker, a scamp, a cutup; he and Bell often clashed over his reliance on the inappropriate wisecrack as his primary communication tool. Not today. He was suitably serious. She appreciated that.
“We met at the Tie Yard,” Bell went on. “I know Darlene from law school. Haven’t seen her in years. She’s originally from Barr County. Lives in D.C. now. But she wanted to get together tonight. She left the bar just a few minutes before I did.” Bell realized she was still in the grip of the present tense. It was too soon to change.
“Right.” He wrote some words in his notebook.
Bell put her left hand on the newel post of the stair railing close to where she stood. She needed to hold on to something. Oakes knew better than to offer assistance.
“What was the cause of the accident, Jake? I mean—yeah, the roads were in bad shape, with the snow and all. That switchback can be a bitch. And it was dark. But Darlene know
s her way around these mountains. Was there anything else? Any other contributing factors?”
Oakes looked at her. “Ma’am?” he said.
Bell waited. She didn’t know what was going on, and waited for him to enlighten her.
“Ma’am,” Oakes repeated. He was tentative now, as if she might be testing him. “We don’t have the toxicology report yet, of course, but it’s an easy guess. There was a strong smell of alcohol on the body. And vomit in the car. She was drunk. That’s how she lost control and hit the tree. She was impaired.”
“No.” Bell’s objection was sharp and quick. “No way. I was with her. She had one drink. That’s it. She was definitely not drunk.”
“Ma’am, I’ve already checked with the bartender at the Tie Yard. He was none too happy to have to answer his door first thing on a Sunday morning, but he remembered her right away. Recognized the picture. He served her four shots in a row. Some guy came in and sat down next to her at the bar, he said. Looked like they hit it off right away. He bought her a few more. By that time, she was slurring her words. Bartender finally had to cut her off.”
Bell was irritated now. “And I’m telling you he’s wrong. I was there, Jake. He’s got her confused with somebody else. Darlene had one drink. And we walked out together—just the two of us. She was fine. Totally sober.”
The deputy flipped a few pages in his notebook, finding the passage he wanted. “What time did you leave the bar?”
“Nine thirty at the latest. I was home by ten forty-five.”
“Well, that’s our problem, right there.” He tapped the page. “Bartender says he came on duty about ten. She was already there, shotgunning her drinks. She didn’t clear out until after one. She was pissed as hell when he told her she’d had enough.”
Bell let the information settle. “She must have gone back. She must have pulled over somewhere and waited for me to pass—and then she returned to the bar.”
“Sounds right.”
“Still doesn’t make sense. Even back in law school, I never saw Darlene touch a beer. I mean—never. And nobody gossiped about her having a problem with alcohol, either. Believe me—if she did, there would’ve been talk.”
Oakes frowned. “Okay, well—there was something in her other coat pocket. A blue coin. About the size of a poker chip.”
“What was it?”
“A sobriety medallion, ma’am. From Alcoholics Anonymous. Represents one year’s sobriety. Looks like your friend might’ve been hiding a secret or two.”
Aren’t we all, Bell thought grimly. Aren’t we all.
About the Author
Photograph by Mike Zajakowski
JULIA KELLER spent twelve years as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune, where she won a Pulitzer Prize. A recipient of a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, she was born in West Virginia and lives in Chicago and Ohio. You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Julia Keller
Summer of the Dead
Bitter River
A Killing in the Hills
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Teaser from Sorrow Road
About the Author
Also by Julia Keller
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
EVENING STREET. Copyright © 2015 by Julia Keller. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by Crystal Ben
Cover photographs: street © Igor Link / Shutterstock; girl © Oliyy / Shutterstock
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e-ISBN 9781466857018
First Edition: December 2015
