Ghost Roll

by Julia Keller

  “Mrs. Elkins,” the man repeated, speaking hastily in case Lee Ann tried to interrupt him, “I’m fully prepared to wait. I’d just like a brief conversation. Whenever it’s convenient.”

  Bell checked her watch. “I have a deposition in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be out of here in ten. My word on that.”

  Now Bell gave him a more searching look. Something in his face seemed familiar to her. Was it the eyes, around which the sun-punished skin bunched in an accordion-like spray of tiny folds? Maybe. His eyes were gray, although they seemed to change color ever so slightly as they picked up the light in the room. A long-healed-over horizontal scar lay across one cheek, a stark white line that stood out against the leathery brown of his lean, hard face.

  “I’ll need a name first,” Bell said.

  “Of course. I’m Quentin Harless. I believe you knew my son. Matt Harless.”

  * * *

  Matt Harless. Yes, she had known him. At one time in her life, she had, in fact, loved him. Had she ever been in love with him? Bell couldn’t really say. She was certainly attracted to him. In the end, though, he had betrayed her trust so profoundly that for more than a year after his death, she found it hard to think about him without an attendant wave of anger; finally, as additional time went by, she gradually let herself begin to recall the good things about him, his sense of humor and his deep thoughtfulness, his patriotism. He was a lot like her; he kept vast sections of his emotional life walled off. No one knew the whole man.

  Well, she corrected herself, one person did. The woman he’d fallen in love with during his work for the CIA in Iraq. Amatullah. Yes. That was the name. Bell didn’t even know she’d remembered it, but there it was, right at her mind’s fingertips: Amatullah. Dead now, just as Matt was dead. Bell sometimes worried that she spent more time thinking about the dead these days than she did the living. But maybe that was bound to happen in a small town with an older, decaying population, a town from which the young seemed to flee just as soon as they were able. Her daughter Carla certainly had.

  She shook her head. Time to return to the present.

  She’d motioned for the man to follow her into her office, and now they sat facing each other, Bell in her chair behind the chipped wooden desk, her visitor on the couch that backed up against the plaster wall. She’d tried her best to make this office slightly warmer and more habitable than it had been when she first moved in, adding drapes to the window to soften the severity of the blinds, insisting on the procurement of the cloth couch along with the two side chairs. She’d paid for the area rug herself. It was necessary, she thought, to counterbalance the creaky wooden floor, whose planks sang of history and rectitude but were faded and gouged.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to Matt,” Bell said. It was hard for her to speak those words; she missed her friend, but he’d brought his death on himself, and he’d also brought sorrow and catastrophe to Acker’s Gap. Matt Harless was a retired CIA agent. She’d known him when she lived in the D.C. area, back when she was married to Sam Elkins. Matt had come here nearly three years ago, ostensibly to relax and to rekindle his friendship with Bell, but in reality, his goal was to lure a terrorist to a remote location so that he could kill him without consequence. The terrorist had murdered Matt’s lover, Amatullah. It was a strange, tangled story, and one that still haunted Bell with its plangent reminder that no place in the world was safe anymore from an epic, transcendent evil, not even a town as small and ordinary as Acker’s Gap.

  How much did Quentin Harless know about the circumstances of his son’s death? Bell had no idea.

  “I appreciate that,” Harless said.

  Now she saw even more of a resemblance between father and son. Like Matt, Quentin Harless was serene and self-contained, with a vast quantity of quietness that seemed to be folded up and safely stowed inside him. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t look nervously around the room. He kept his gray-eyed gaze aimed straight at her.

  “I wasn’t able to go to the memorial service,” Bell finally said. “I don’t get back to D.C. very often these days.” She had waited for Quentin Harless to say something else, after acknowledging her sympathy, but her wait was in vain.

  When he did speak, his voice showed no trace of sorrow. It was settled and even. He might have been delivering a weather report. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I didn’t expect you to come. Matt’s actions nearly destroyed this town. He did some terrible things, Mrs. Elkins. To you—and to your hometown.”

  So he did know. Bell was surprised, but didn’t want to show it. The information about what Matt had done, including details about the disposal of the terrorist’s body, had all been handled discreetly by the FBI and Homeland Security. The cover story was that Matt had died in a hunting accident. Only a few people—Bell and a select number of colleagues—knew the truth. If Quentin Harless knew, that meant he had powerful friends and highly placed sources in the federal government.

  “We’ve moved on,” she said. “We’ve gotten got past it.”

  “Understood. But I haven’t.”

  The silence widened while Bell tried to figure out why he was here. She couldn’t. She had to capitulate.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “There’s a lot I can’t tell you, Mrs. Elkins. I’m sure you understand. Like Matt, I served in the CIA. I’m retired now, but I read his file. I know what he did, what he brought to your town. All those deaths. All the destruction.” He bowed his head. He quickly lifted it again. “And I know why he did it.”

  “Mr. Harless, if you’re here to somehow try to make up for what your son did, I have to tell you—we don’t want that. We’ve come to terms with what happened. Nobody wants to be reminded of that time. Okay? I know you must’ve traveled a long way to get here, and you’re welcome to look around a bit before you leave, but I’m asking you not to talk to people about Matt and his actions. I’m appealing to you, sir. Please. This town has suffered enough.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m not here for anyone else. I’m here for me.” He lowered his head again, but this time, it was to grip his temples with a spread-out hand. He lightly massaged them and then he dropped his hand and raised his face. It looked older and grayer, as if he’d aged more in the last few seconds than in the past several years. “Matt always trusted you, and so I will, too. May I call you Bell?”

  She gave him a single, brief nod.

  “Very well, then,” he continued. “When I said that I knew why Matt had done what he did, I wasn’t referring to his inexcusable actions—luring Rashid Yusef here, waiting for the chance to kill him. I meant it in the larger sense. Because you see, Bell, I’m ultimately responsible for what happened here. I made Matt what he was. I’m the reason he had no personal life, no ties, no softness, no affections—until he met Amatullah. And that was his undoing, you see. It came too late. Most of us fall in love a dozen times before we’re twenty years old. We fall in and out of love like the wind—we’re here, we’re there, we’re on to the next person. We learn how to love. How to temper our love, how to modulate the flame of it, so that it doesn’t burn us up and destroy us. But, Matt—.” He paused, and the pain that came roaring into his eyes was so apparent and so massive that it nearly caused Bell to rock back in her chair, even though she sat a good distance across the room from him.

  “Mr. Harless?” she said. His expression was faraway, transfixed, and it alarmed her.

  “I’m sorry.” He sent out a long sigh. “You see, Bell, I’m the one who prevented Matt from learning that very valuable lesson—the lesson about how to love. To love, period—but also how to love. That is, how to keep love from destroying you.” His voice acquired a bitter edge, tinged with sarcasm. “I taught him to be strong and resilient. I taught him to avoid what I used to call ‘the death trap of love.’ I shaped him. I showed him with my own life how love could slow a man down, be an anchor, be the
thing to be avoided at all costs.” A fleeting, mirthless smile. “Matt’s mother and I had an arrangement. It had nothing to do with affection. It was—.” He paused, careful in his selection of the word. “It was efficient. Yes. Efficient. Nothing more. I spent most of my time overseas. Lots of missions, lots of clandestine operations. She kept things nicely organized at home. Running smoothly. That’s what Matt saw. That’s the idea of love that he grew up with. Love wasn’t about passion or desire. It was about the propagation of the species.”

  The words caused a memory to spark in Bell’s mind. Matt had used that stilted, almost comically formal phrase once, years ago, during one of their early-morning conversations back in D.C. They often met for a run through Rock Creek Park. They didn’t talk much, preferring to revel in the silence broken only by their rhythmic breathing, but when they did, it came during the cooldown phase, while they jogged side by side. Bell had told him the latest news about a mutual friend, a brilliant, driven woman who was giving up law school to join her partner in the Peace Corps. “Why the hell’s she doing that?” Matt had said. And Bell had replied, “Jesus, Matt, they love each other.” And he’d said, “Love? No such thing. It’s just a matter of the propagation of the species.” She’d laughed at that, assuming he was kidding. But maybe he wasn’t.

  Quentin Harless was speaking again. “That’s why, when he finally fell, he fell hard—so hard that he lost all sense of what was right and wrong. It was my fault, Bell. I gave my son a terrific education—all the best schools. I introduced him to all the people who matter—powerful people, people who helped him climb the ladder at the CIA. I groomed him. Trained all the weakness out of him. And so when he was blindsided by love—when he met Amatullah and felt all those things he’d never allowed himself to feel before—he was helpless. He was overwhelmed.” He paused. “I’m responsible for what he did. Just as surely as if I’d brought that terrorist here myself.”

  Parts of Quentin’s story were already familiar to Bell; Matt had described an austere childhood and a rigid, demanding father, but those high expectations, Matt always added, had been set out of love, not cruelty. He admired his father. Yet Bell had sensed as well a sadness in Matt Harless, arising from the conviction that he could never measure up.

  “All right,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. “But I still don’t understand why you came here.”

  “I need to see where my son died. I can’t picture it—I don’t really know this area of the country—and that bothers me. It bothers me a great deal. I’m hoping you’ll tell me how to get there. Not the actual spot—just the general location. So that later on, I can imagine it, and think of him in his final moments. The report said it was in a house in a valley.”

  “It was.”

  “And that there’s a rocky outcropping above it. A place where I can stand and look down upon it.”

  “There is.” She paused. “And what will you do after that?”

  “After that,” he said, “I’ll leave.”

  “Do I have your word? That you’ll leave this town after you’ve seen the spot?”

  “You do. I will.”

  * * *

  Before she departed from the courthouse that afternoon, Bell stopped at the county clerk’s office. She wanted to check and see if the owners of Little Miss ‘n’ Mister had obtained permits to operate a child-care facility, as state law required. Permits cost money, and a lot of new businesses skipped that step and hoped for the best.

  No permit had been issued. No surprise there.

  She headed out to her vehicle, a six-year-old Ford Explorer that handled with aplomb the roller-coaster roads in West Virginia, the ones with their nearly vertical inclines and stomach-shifting drops. She had managed, throughout the long workday, to successfully put aside any emotions about Quentin’s visit. She had told him how to get to Smithson’s Rock, which hung out over the ranch house in which his son had died of multiple gunshot wounds, and she extracted from him, one more time, a promise to make his pilgrimage and then exit the scene.

  Her cooperation had been based on more than just goodwill. It was based, too, on resignation. Because even if she didn’t tell him how to get to Smithson’s Rock, Bell knew, somebody else in town would. The people of Acker’s Gap, like those in most small towns, were always eager to give directions. They might not have much money, but helpfulness didn’t cost a thing.

  It was not yet dusk. The town had sifted down into the weary russet light of a dying afternoon in early fall. Bell passed the last block of downtown, intending to turn right on Sayman Street and then make her way toward the four-way stop at the edge of her neighborhood, a collection of venerable old homes with slate roofs and large square yards, many bordered by wrought iron fences over which a toddler could have climbed with ease; the fences were decorative, not protective. Bell was looking forward to a phone conversation with Carla tonight. Her daughter had started another new job, this one with a web design firm. Carla had decided to put off college for a few years—a state of affairs that didn’t exactly thrill Bell, but she knew better than to push. If she did, she’d most likely push Carla right out of her life.

  Before she turned on Sayman Street, Bell reconsidered. She had at least an hour of daylight left. Why not drop in on the fine folks at the Little Miss ’n’ Mister Day Care? By itself, the pattern of bank deposits didn’t meet the threshold to obtain a search warrant, but maybe she’d spot a clue during a surprise visit. Something small, but telling, that could lead to something more incriminating.

  The long gray building with the red metal roof was located on the left side of the highway, just past a tattoo parlor called Skin in the Game. She almost drove right past it. Her only clue that she’d found the place were the tiny words painted in fresh white paint on the side of the black mailbox: LITTLE MISS ‘N’ MISTER DAY CARE. There was no sign on the building itself. She tried to remember the businesses that had called this place home before the day care did. There was, at one point, a chicken-processing plant—wasn’t that right?—and then a permanent flea market. This stretch of Route 6 was known for the revolving series of small businesses that showed up and then disappeared, sometimes lasting a month or two, sometimes a few years, but never longer than that. The buildings along here had housed puppy mills and auto-parts stores and bait shops and barbeque restaurants and karate clubs. Bell remembered a story that Jesse Jarvis had told her. Years ago, when Jesse was a little girl, a strange man with straw-like orange hair and a bright green suit had passed out free tickets in town one day, inviting families to come to a special show in a lot out on Route 6. When Jesse and her parents and her brothers and sisters arrived, they found a wooden caravan, painted in reds and purples and golds, and lots of other families milling about. Turned out that the free ticket was for the parking. You had to pay for the show. It was a trick, but by that time, the kids were crying and begging; they’d been promised a show. So Jesse’s parents, “who never in their whole lives had more’n two nickels to rub together,” as Jesse put it, paid for Jesse and her brother Clarence to go in. “It was disgusting,” Jesse said. She could recall it all these years later. “There was these big jars with fetuses in them—I didn’t know back then what to call them, and me and Clarence thought they looked like little baby pigs—and there was an old lady with a curly white beard that went all the way down to her waist, and then there was a man who was so fat he couldn’t move or even turn his head, he could only blink.” It was a freak show. Jesse still thought about it, she told Bell, every time she drove along Route 6, and sometimes got a little sick to her stomach at the recollection.

  Bell parked in the dirt lot at the side of the building. There was one other car, an elderly blue-green Impala with Kentucky plates. From here, Bell could see the dusty backyard; the proprietors had flung up a couple of cheap-looking swing sets and deposited a round plastic sandbox. The playground was deserted, but then again, it was after 5 p.m. Any children would’ve already been picked up by their parent
s, yes?

  Before Bell got to the front entrance, the door opened. A beefy-looking man with a red face, a turned-up nose, and a bad comb-over took several steps in her direction. His manner was mild, not menacing.

  “Can I help you?” he said. His khaki pants were a little too short, ending just above his ankle bones, and his crusty work boots lacked laces. His plaid flannel shirt was too tight across the middle. He had the ageless, timeless look of so many of the hill people Bell encountered, meaning that he might have been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty-five, and that he’d looked this way since he was thirteen.

  “Maybe,” Bell said. “I’d like to see the owner.”

  “You found him.” He stuck out a hand. “Trent Emery.”

  She shook it and then a peculiar silence fell on the scene, as if he was waiting for her to say something else.

  “You got some business here?” he finally said.

  “Well, it’s a day care, right?”

  “Yeah.” He scratched at his chin with an index finger, parting the constituent elements of a patchy black-and-white beard. “Yeah. But if you’re here to register your kid, I gotta tell you that we’re all full up. Sorry.” A crooked grin came and went. “Okay, then. Take ’er easy.”

  “Hold on.” Bell kept her county ID handy in her jacket pocket. She held it up for Emery to see. “I’m Belfa Elkins. Prosecuting attorney for Raythune County. Turns out you’ve forgotten to file a permit.”

  “A permit.” He frowned. He paid no attention to the ID, so Bell replaced it.

  “Yes. To run a child-care facility. State requires it. County enforces it.” Telling the truth, she’d found, was generally an effective opening gambit.

  “That so.” He looked bemused. Then he perked up. “Well, okay. I’ll get it tomorrow. At the courthouse, right? Done.”