Last Ragged Breath

by Julia Keller

  This, though, was the first case that was unusual, compelling. Nick instantly felt a familiar zip of adrenaline, and a slight fizz across the top of his brain, as if someone had doused it with ginger ale and then wiped it dry again, all within seconds. He said good-bye to Vince Dobbs and heard the man on the other end of the line hang up, but Nick still held the phone, aware of a faint tremor in his hand. There arose within him the old fire. He felt a poke in the back, prodding him. That force had a voice, and the voice was his own, and it said, What the hell happened to Ed Hackel?, and after that he automatically began to assess, recollect, calculate, speculate. He couldn’t stop himself. He took the known facts and he spread them out like the greasy parts of an engine, the tiny levers and gears and washers and springs and bolts, and then he started to put the thing back together again, reverse-engineering it, trying to figure out how the pieces all worked together, how the crime had been committed, and why.

  The resort was the biggest new project around here in a long, long time. Tens of millions of dollars were on the line, and Hackel had been right at the center of it. And Royce Dillard—he was an unusual character, you bet, strange as all get-out, but capable of murder? Or maybe it was an accident. Tempers flare, angry words are hurled back and forth, Dillard grabs a weapon—a sledgehammer, maybe, or a post hole digger—and, blinded by hurt and fury, he takes a wild swing, and …

  “Nick?”

  He looked over at his wife. But he didn’t see her.

  Chapter Eight

  The Raythune County Courthouse at night was a different place from what it was during the day. In daylight, it was a haggard, benign-looking building where forms were filled out, licenses applied for, parking tickets either paid or argued over, and copies of birth certificates issued, a place at which people also tended to congregate even when they didn’t have specific business there, just because they might run into somebody they liked talking to. At night, though, it was a cold, forbidding Gothic pile that exhaled the sour breath of its buried secrets: a multitude of criminal trials and the systematic passing of judgment on overlapping waves of human souls. The ground-floor windows at the rear—where the booking office of the jail was located—were illuminated all night long, as if the courthouse itself suffered from bad dreams and needed a nightlight.

  “Sheriff’s waiting for you in her office,” Mathers said.

  Bell had gone to the side entrance, the one that led directly to the interrogation rooms, in case Harrison was still in there with Royce Dillard. Deputy Mathers met her. He was a large, dark-haired man with a gut that tormented the bottom two buttons on his brown uniform shirt. He was a reassuring presence in the courthouse. He’d been doing this job a good long while and even if all hell was breaking loose, chances were that Charlie Mathers had been through worse and was happy to tell you about it; he could make you feel as if the present crisis maybe wasn’t so bad by comparison.

  “You just missed the guy who found the body,” Mathers added. “He and his wife finally went home. Wanted to make sure we didn’t go all CIA on Royce Dillard, I guess. Victim’s boss just got here. The head of Mountain Magic.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “She’s a piece of work, lemme tell you.”

  The halls were dim and empty at this hour on a Saturday. The office doors were shut and locked, with no lights behind the frosted glass fronts, no rise and fall of voices—except for the sheriff’s office, where the thick door was propped open, its strong orange light spilling out into the corridor like treats from an upended candy jar.

  “Bell. Hey,” Harrison said, the moment Bell arrived there.

  The sheriff was seated at her desk. By now, she’d taken her hat off. There was someone else present, too, but Bell kept her attention on Harrison for the first instant after entering, as she adjusted to the reality of seeing someone other than Nick Fogelsong behind that desk, the same way her eyes might adjust to the level of light before she could see clearly.

  Truth was, Pam Harrison looked as if she’d been destined to occupy this spot from the day she was born, or shortly thereafter. Inscribed on a small gold-plated bar that held down the flap of her left breast pocket was her name and her title. Her forehead was creased by a horizontal red band, the mark where the hat’s inside brim had pinched throughout a long day and what was shaping up to be an even longer night.

  The first few times Bell had come here after Nick’s defection, she was struck by the oddity of it all, by the sense of this office as a drastically altered place—but these days, the shock passed away in less than a second. There was too much work to do to indulge that kind of pointless nostalgia. Bell might chafe at the sight of Nick in civilian clothes, driving his own car and not a county vehicle—but here in the courthouse, she’d accepted the new reality. Pam Harrison now ran the sheriff’s department. Her stoic demeanor was a perfect fit with the battered black desk, a desk that, over the years, had endured kicks and body-slams from outraged defendants, innumerable spills from overfilled coffee mugs, and quarter-moon gouges across the top from having Nick Fogelsong’s big black boots piled restlessly on it during countless conferences with his deputies.

  Right now a very angry woman stood in front of that desk. She exuded a livid hostility. She had wavy brown hair with expensive-looking blond highlights, a black suit, a red scarf draped expertly around her neck, and complicated earrings that shivered and bobbed each time she leaned forward and pointed a finger at Sheriff Harrison. Bell had never formally met the woman, but recognized her from her appearances at county commission meetings. She was Carolyn Runyon, founder and CEO of Mountain Magic. She had a solid-gold CV: Yale undergrad, University of Chicago MBA, ten years as CFO of an international hotel chain, three years as a deputy to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. She’s got more connections than a junction box, was how Rhonda Lovejoy put it back in September, when she and Bell were having a cup of coffee after the commission meeting at which Runyon had introduced herself and pitched the resort project.

  This was a different woman from the one who had charmed and flirted with county officials that night. She didn’t acknowledge Bell. Instead she continued hectoring the sheriff, her voice haughty and cold.

  “—and I demand to have Ed’s body removed immediately to a reputable medical facility for an independent autopsy. This minute, do you hear? These primitive facilities are absolutely and totally unacceptable.” She shivered in disgust, as if she’d spotted a bowl of squirming leeches or a long row of patent-medicine bottles with fading labels. “It’s my understanding that you currently have an individual in custody for this unspeakably brutal and vicious crime. I want your personal guarantee, Sheriff, that this man will remain under lock and key until the trial. We simply will not tolerate any mistakes or delays. Frankly, it’s a question of peace of mind for the rest of my employees as they go about their business here in Raythune County.”

  Harrison ignored the insults. She gestured toward Bell. “Ms. Runyon, I’d like you to meet our prosecuting attorney, Belfa Elkins. Bell, this is Carolyn Runyon. She just returned from the coroner’s office, where she formally identified the body of the homicide victim. It’s Edward Hackel. Vice president and marketing director of Ms. Runyon’s firm.”

  Bell looked closer at Runyon and felt a strange, unwanted flash of recognition: Another life, another time—could be me. This woman, whose obvious contempt for Raythune County in general and Sheriff Harrison in particular was as sharp as her heels, was what she, Bell, might have become if she had stayed in the Washington, D.C., area and practiced law there, using her Georgetown law degree the way it was intended to be used: to make a lot of money for somebody else, which in turn would make a lot of money for her. She’d be wearing a black suit, sleek as a seal’s pelt, just like the one Carolyn Runyon was wearing. And she’d be having her hair trimmed at someplace a bit more expensive than Betty’s Kut ’n’ Kurl out on Route 6. She and Runyon were approximately the same age, Bell surmised, and there was an eerie, funhouse-mirror aspect to looking at this tw
isted—that is to say, better-dressed and beautifully coiffed—version of herself.

  “So—do I have your assurance, Sheriff?” Runyon said. She had yet to acknowledge Bell’s presence. Her next sentence sported a canny edge. “I really hate to bring this up, but my firm has a great many friends in Charleston. Perhaps I should call the governor and ask him to personally monitor the murder investigation here in Raythune County. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to oblige, given what this resort is going to mean to your state’s economy.”

  Sheriff Harrison looked at Runyon for a few seconds before she spoke.

  “You know what, ma’am?” the sheriff said. Polite, but barely. “This isn’t the first time we’ve undertaken a homicide investigation. We know what we’re doing. But if you’re determined to hang around the courthouse this evening, making suggestions about how we might do our jobs, we’ll take full advantage of your presence. I’ll get Deputy Mathers over here right away. He’s handling the initial interviews. We’ve got some questions for you, too, ma’am. Starting with—where were you Thursday and Friday? Last time anyone saw Edward Hackel alive was Thursday afternoon.”

  Runyon’s face contorted in an expression of outrage. “I don’t believe this. I’m a suspect?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect.” Harrison stood up. When she did, Runyon reflexively backed up a step, as if she weren’t quite certain what the sheriff’s next move might be. Harrison was a small woman, but a thoroughly imposing presence. Bell wasn’t sure how she pulled it off—it might have been the boots or the uniform or the rigid facial expression, which kept you guessing about her mood. Might have been a lot of things. But whatever it was, it worked.

  Harrison reached for the big brown hat on the desktop and settled it on her head. She wasn’t happy with how the fit felt, and so she lifted it and settled it again. Better.

  “I’ll let you think about your answer,” the sheriff said, “while Bell and I go get Deputy Mathers.”

  If Runyon were a cartoon, Bell thought, smoke would be jetting out of each ear like the steam whistle on a locomotive.

  “What about the governor?” Runyon snapped.

  “What about him?”

  “Maybe I’ll just give him a call.”

  “Be my guest.” The sheriff gestured toward the phone on the desktop. “Dial nine for an outside line.”

  Chapter Nine

  On the infrequent occasions when Bell got together with friends from law school back in the D.C. area, they always begged her for details about her professional life. Most of them were either academics, like Ginnie Prentice up at WVU School of Law, or corporate attorneys, and they had no firsthand knowledge of the grubbier, seamier side of things—of the guts of the law, as Bell called it—and they would nod at the description, enjoying the tough, raw sound of the phrase, even though, to them, it was an abstraction. They’d never dealt with drunk or stoned defendants who threatened to dig out their eyeballs with a rusty spoon and then pee in the empty sockets, or with the relatives of convicted felons who left shoeboxes filled with dog shit in Bell’s home mailbox. Really? Dog shit? her friends would say, shaking their heads, half-amused, half-appalled. Yeah, Bell would reply. Dog shit. Although come to think of it, I suppose it might’ve been human shit or horse manure—I mean, I didn’t get it officially tested. Hard to say. The shit part—that’s all I’m really certain of.

  The get-togethers with her classmates would happen in some fancy bar in Georgetown or Adams Morgan, during one of Bell’s trips to see Carla. Amid the clink of glasses and the sudden uprushes of laughter from nearby tables, against a background of pop songs banging endlessly out of the sound system, Bell would tell her stories to these people, people she had known very well for a brief, intense period in her life—Ginnie, Ron, Pam, Kim, Trevor, Steve, Paula, and Jeremy—but who now listened to her description of a prosecutor’s job in a small, poor rural county as if she were telling them about an expedition to Mars: Everything was exotic and unfamiliar. People with degrees such as theirs didn’t become prosecutors. And prosecutors aren’t cops, Kim would say, challenging Bell. This moment generally came after Kim had finished her third lime margarita and had fluffed up her tawny mane of hair for the fifth or sixth time, hoping to catch the eye of Trevor, whom she’d had a crush on throughout law school and continued to pine for, even though he was now married and had three children.

  I don’t get it, Kim would continue. She’d never liked Bell, and liked her even less now that Bell held the group’s attention, including, gallingly, Trevor’s. You talk about running around and interviewing suspects, Kim said, but that’s not your job. The cops’re supposed to do that. And then they’re supposed to bring you the suspects and the evidence and then you take it to trial. What the hell?

  Bell would smile a small, knowing smile. Yeah, she’d reply. That’s how it’s supposed to work, all right. In theory. In reality, she explained, the county was poor, the caseload was out of control, and the sheriff’s office was short-handed, and thus she ended up participating in the gathering of facts and the interviewing of witnesses and the culling of suspects. She could, she supposed, say something like, That’s not my job, but she would only be making more work for herself in the long run. Moreover, those people—the sheriff, the deputies, the coroner—were her friends. Better friends, she was tempted to say to her classmates, than any of you. Which was not a slam against the witty, well-dressed, highly successful people gathered around the table in this very nice bar, ordering another round of expensive drinks. It was, rather, an indication of how far away from all of them that Bell had traveled—in terms of physical distance, yes, but in other ways, too. More important ways.

  “She’s right in here,” Deputy Mathers said.

  At the sound of his voice, Bell’s mind snapped back to the present. Mathers stepped to one side. He’d walked with Bell and Sheriff Harrison to the lobby of the courthouse. Mathers had taken the lead, flipping on row after row of lights in successive corridors as they passed through them. The lights had all been turned off on Friday afternoon and, minus this incident, would’ve stayed that way until early Monday morning. In the sudden swoop of illumination, the ancient building with its water-stained plaster walls and well-scuffed floors reminded Bell of an old man abruptly awakened from a deep sleep. She could’ve sworn she heard a groan or two.

  “Thanks, Charlie,” the sheriff said. She leaned toward him, giving her deputy a brief set of murmured instructions regarding Carolyn Runyon. He nodded and headed back to her office. Except for the lobby area, he turned off the lights again behind him.

  The sheriff took advantage of their last second of privacy. “You don’t have to do this,” she said to Bell. “It’s not your lookout. Not yet, anyway. You can head home.”

  “I know.”

  “Hated to call you away from your dinner.”

  “Wasn’t much of a dinner.”

  Harrison nodded. They advanced into the lobby waiting area, where two lines of green vinyl armchairs faced each other across a wooden square. The sole occupant hadn’t noticed them yet. She was staring at the floor. She was about the same age as Carolyn Runyon, Bell guessed.

  “Mrs. Hackel,” Harrison said.

  The woman flinched, raised her head. Her body looked as if it had been drawn in to make a smaller target, the hands locked together in her lap, the tiny feet crossed at the ankles and tucked under the chair. She had a pink, heart-shaped face that just missed being pretty. Her brown curly hair featured a few streaks of a lighter shade, and was pulled back and corralled by a red scrunchie. Her eyes were dry, her cheeks unmarked by tears, but there was a strained and anxious look to her, a sense that she was readying herself for the next blow.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry for your loss, Mrs. Hackel,” Harrison said. “I’m Pam Harrison. Raythune County Sheriff. And this is Belfa Elkins—our prosecuting attorney.”

  “Thank you.” She blinked at them, as if uncertain about what was expected of her. “I got a call and d
rove right over. I came to the front door and I just—I pounded and pounded. It was dark and—and I thought there might be nobody here, nobody to talk to me, to tell me what happened. Then the deputy came and he told me to wait here. I didn’t know—I wasn’t sure—” She shook her head. Her eyes made a quick assessment of her surroundings. The courthouse corridors were long and dark, looking as if they led to places nobody wanted to go. “Ed—is he—?”

  “The body’s at the coroner’s office,” Bell said. “It’s standard procedure. We’ll release it just as soon as we possibly can.”

  “Oh.” Her gaze strayed back to the floor.

  Bell leaned over and touched her shoulder. Diana flinched again. “Can I get you something?” Bell asked her. “A glass of water? Coffee? Maybe a soft drink?”

  “Oh, no. No. No, thank you.” She trembled. “I heard that they found him—outdoors, right? Is that right? And that he’d been—he’d been dead for a while.”

  “We’ll have a complete report for you soon,” Bell said. “We’re still investigating.”

  “Okay. Okay, then.” She took a deep breath. “But somebody did this to him, right? I mean, he didn’t have a heart attack. Which is what I thought must’ve happened. When they first told me. Because he doesn’t take care of himself. He really doesn’t. I tell him so all the time. I say, ‘Eddie, listen, you’ve got to cut down on the burgers and fries. And the drinking. And you need to quit smoking.’ He just grins at me. Then he says—I mean, then he said—” An arrow of shock struck her as she remembered what had happened. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  Harrison let the woman weep softly for a bit, and then she spoke.

  “I was kind of surprised, Mrs. Hackel, to hear that you’d gotten here so soon. It must be—what? A four-hour drive? How did you manage to—”