Last Ragged Breath

by Julia Keller

  She smiled at him, but the answering look on his face told her that he didn’t want to talk about soup anymore. Or pie. Or coal mines, either. He put down his spoon.

  “Look, Bell,” Gage said. “I like you. I like you a lot. Everything Ginnie Prentice said about you was right—you’re smart. And sexy.” She felt herself blushing. He kept on talking. “You’re a hell of a challenge, and I like that. But I’m getting the distinct impression that you’re not really into dating right now. Are you?”

  Do we have to do this here? Bell wanted to say, but in a way, she admired his directness, his efficiency: If there was no future, why waste his time, and hers?

  “I don’t know.” Which was true.

  “You went out with me Saturday night,” he said, “because of Ginnie. I’m aware of that. She’d been talking for months about this friend of hers down in Raythune County, this amazing woman. So I kept after her until she gave me your number and suggested I call you.” He tilted his head, as if he wanted to see her from another angle. “But today—today was all my idea. I took a chance. And you know what? I’m getting the sense that maybe it’s not something you really want.” He looked away. “Somebody else in the picture?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Not really,” he repeated, returning his gaze to her face, a new buoyancy in his voice. “So I’ve still got a shot?”

  Two platters, each adorned with a grilled cheese sandwich cut on the diagonal and surrounded by a ring of French fries stacked up like greasy kindling, arrived on the table. Jackie, hands on her hips, simmered impatiently until Bell said, “Nothing else for now. Thanks.” Jackie tucked the check under a water glass.

  It was just the two of them again. Gage waited for her to say something. Bell could feel the urgency of his inquiry, not so much the words of it but the deeper meaning—was she available for a relationship, or not?—almost as if it were being communicated to her in a medium other than language. She liked David Gage. She really did. He was—and here she went for the same descriptors he had used about her, because they really did fit—smart and sexy. If she didn’t feel, even at this early stage, anything close to the same degree of passion that she’d instantly felt for Clay Meckling—well, so what? Passion came and went. Didn’t it? Maybe, after a few years, she wouldn’t have responded to Clay that way, either; maybe the heat she felt each time Clay touched her—hell, she felt it each time he walked in a room—eventually would diminish. And finally disappear.

  Maybe. She would never know. He was gone, and she’d done nothing to stop him from going. How could she? Raythune County was a place people left, not a place people stayed. She couldn’t blame him for going. He’d had a small taste of what lay on the other side of those mountains, and it was the kind of taste that only stoked, rather than satisfied, a hunger.

  And besides, Bell herself went through the same private catechism every few months or so: Why am I here? Leading to the reply: Because I’m doing some good. Because I’m not finished. One day I might be, but I’m not. Yet.

  Only seconds had passed. She forced her mind back to David Gage, who was still looking at her across the table, his expression serious but not impatient, because he wasn’t pressuring her, not at all, but only indulging in a thoroughly justifiable curiosity: Could she see herself caring about him, or not?

  God, there were so many things he didn’t know about her. Things that would surely have sent him running out into the streets of Acker’s Gap, then hightailing it back to Blythesburg and then Morgantown, without a backward glance. You don’t want any part of this pain, is the thing she wanted to say to him, the phrase that tolled in her head. She wanted to warn him. Another man, after a brief relationship with her, an affair that left him mildly but constantly frustrated at her elusiveness, had noted that her heart ought to be cordoned off with yellow police tape, the kind with the words CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS repeated over and over again. It was only a joke, he said.

  Sure it was.

  She didn’t want to hurt David, and that was the one thing she seemed very good at doing: hurting people. Or misleading them. Or disappointing them. She was glad, all at once, that JP’s was crowded, because the presence of others seemed to cushion this crucial moment, to keep it from becoming sharp and painful.

  Gage’s face relaxed into a smile. Apparently he didn’t mind that she had not yet answered him directly. Another point in his favor. As was the fact that he didn’t pester her about the murder case. He’d readily picked up on her signals that it wasn’t a preferred topic. He’d asked about it—displaying interest in her work—and then let it go.

  “So,” Gage said, “I propose that we spend some time together, now and again. Just hang out. Coal mines, diners—doesn’t matter. We’ll take it slow. See how it feels. If that sounds okay.”

  She nodded, because it did sound okay, and in fact it sounded fine. He was about to say something else when all at once there was a skirmish on the other side of the room that distracted them: a shriek, then laughter and scuffling and a few hoots. A woman, gesturing to make a point, had knocked over a full glass of water, sending the liquid clear across the wide table. The three other occupants of the booth had jumped up as if it were a fire drill. Two old women stood and dabbed with napkins at the laps of their skirts, while a man—his name was Grover Fink and he was seventy-seven years old—frowned at the front of his trousers, knowing what people out on the street would think when they observed the damp spot, knowing how they’d point and giggle behind his back. This town being the way it was, the erroneous news that Grover Fink had soiled himself would, by midafternoon, have spread in all directions, just like the contents of that water glass.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Twenty minutes ago she’d been sitting in JP’s. Now Bell was sitting behind the desk in her office. At times it astonished her, the speed with which she was required to go from human being to prosecutor, from flawed woman to authority figure whose decisions could cost people their freedom, their future. If she thought about it too often, it got in her head and refused to vacate the premises. It was an impossible job. You did your best, which was all you could do—and you tried not to obsess over the times you’d been too lenient, and not prosecuted someone who then had gone out and committed another crime, or too harsh, and ended up crushing the spirit of someone for whom a lesser punishment might have left a sliver of light under the closed door.

  “Appreciate your taking the time for this today, Mrs. Elkins,” Serena Crumpler said.

  Serena sat in one of the two straight-backed wooden chairs across from Bell’s desk. In the other chair was Royce Dillard, looking even paler and pastier than he’d looked when Bell saw him the day before. His right hand was handcuffed to the arm of the chair, and shackles were wound around his ankles in a jangling figure eight. The restraints were a formality, and probably not necessary, but Bell abided by the regulation; holding this conference in her office and not in one of the interrogation rooms was a privilege, and every privilege had its price.

  Bell acknowledged Serena’s comment with a nod. Her pen was poised above a yellow legal pad upon which she had outlined her plans for the meeting. The outline took up less than half the page. This was business; no matter what assessment she might have made about Royce Dillard’s character, this conference was a matter of facts and protocol. Not opinion.

  Bell addressed Dillard. “So you’ve got yourself a lawyer now.”

  “No, I don’t,” he muttered, aiming his reply at the front of her desk.

  Serena glared at him. “Yes, you do,” she snapped. Obviously frustrated, she leaned forward and continued to look hard at the side of his face.

  “Nope,” he said.

  Bell tapped the tip of the pen on the legal pad. “Make up your mind, Mr. Dillard. Either you have legal representation or you don’t. If you decide that you want to represent yourself, I can’t promise the judge will go along with it. But even if the judge does approve, it’s a bad idea.”

  “Hol
d on, Bell. Just hold on,” Serena said. She scooted herself around in her chair, trying to make it harder for him to avoid looking at her. “Come on, Royce. We talked about this. Hours and hours. Back in your cell, remember? And you agreed.”

  “Changed my mind. Didn’t do nothing, so I don’t need no lawyer.” His eyes explored the floor.

  “Yes, you do.” Serena’s voice was earnest and determined. She would have made a lousy saleswoman, Bell thought; she was entirely too sincere and transparent. Serena was only in her late twenties, but her extreme thinness made her look even younger. Her straight black hair seemed to polish her knobby shoulders each time she turned her head; watching her nervous movements, you could almost believe that the constant shifting of that hair was the reason her shoulders were so bony—it had worn away the flesh. Sometimes she tied her hair back in a ponytail, but not today. She was wearing an olive green wool suit that made Bell itch just looking at it.

  “Serena,” Bell said, “I think we’d better—”

  “Wait. Please.” Serena held up a thin hand, fingers spread, in Bell’s direction. To Dillard, she said, “Do you like to walk in the woods, Royce?”

  He snorted. “’Course I do.”

  “Okay, then. If you ever want to see the woods again—if you ever want to feel the sun on your face in any way except through a window with bars on it—then by God, you need to stop this foolishness right now and listen to me.” She took a deep breath. “You’re facing a charge of first-degree murder for the death of Edward Hackel.” At the mention of Hackel’s name, Dillard scrunched up his face as if he’d suddenly smelled sour milk. Serena ignored him and went on. “Now, Mrs. Elkins and I are here today to discuss that charge. I think it’s the wrong one. I think Mr. Hackel probably showed up at your property last Thursday and he badgered you, just as he’d been badgering you for some time now, because he wanted your land. He was desperate for it. And I think you felt your life was in danger—and that he might harm your dogs—and so you lost control of yourself. When he turned around to go, you struck him repeatedly with a shovel. You saw what you’d done and you panicked. You hauled the body down to the creek in your wagon.

  “I think the charge ought to be reduced,” Serena continued. At this point, her speech was as much for Bell’s benefit as it was for Dillard’s. Bell understood that, and made notes. “I think the proper charge would reflect the fact that you were frightened and you needed to protect your dogs. You acted in self-defense. Now, if we show the prosecutor that we’re willing to cooperate and tell her exactly what happened out at your cabin that day and why, she might decide to reduce the charge against you. We may not even have to go to trial. She and the judge could work out an appropriate punishment—maybe twenty years, with a chance of parole at that point—but however long they decide it should be, it won’t be for the rest of your life. You’ll go to prison, Royce, but not forever. You will walk in the woods again. See the change of the seasons.

  “But I can’t do any of that unless you authorize me, here and now, to represent you. With no going back on it. None of that nonsense.” She reached out and put a hand on Dillard’s forearm. Startled, he shifted it out of her grip. “People have gone to an awful lot of trouble on your behalf, Royce,” she declared. “You owe it to those people—the ones who’ve taken in your dogs—to do what’s right for yourself. We’ve found good, safe homes for Utley and Ned and Goldie and Connie and Elvis and Bruno.” Bell was impressed; Serena had memorized the names of his dogs.

  “PeeWee,” Dillard murmured.

  “What?” Serena said.

  “You forgot PeeWee.” A grin and a nod. “His feelings’d be hurt if he knew. Has a hard enough time already, that one—got his ear chopped off a few years back. Spoiled his good looks.”

  “Fine. Okay. PeeWee, too, then.” Serena’s face lost none of its hardness. “This isn’t a joke, Royce. And it’s not going to end well for you—unless you give me your consent to be your lawyer.”

  He looked at his hands, one of which had a tight metal band encircling the wrist, linking him to the arm of the chair. “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay, what?” Serena said, nailing it down.

  “Okay, you’re my lawyer. Can’t pay you nothing, though.”

  Serena’s face relaxed. “A fact that doesn’t distinguish you from the majority of my clients.” She turned to Bell. “We’re ready.”

  Bell nodded. She made more notes on her legal pad.

  “Can we discuss a plea deal now?” Serena asked.

  Bell rubbed her index finger along the side of the pen. “I assume that means Mr. Dillard is ready to admit he was responsible for the death of Edward Hackel.”

  “I believe,” Serena said, “that we’re heading that way. Royce? What do you think? Maybe it’s time to face some facts here. The evidence against you is pretty overwhelming. They found the shovel in your barn—the one that was used to kill Hackel. They found the trail through the woods on your property, where you’d dragged him down to the creek in your wagon. And you had a motive—he was pushing you to sell your land. Land you wanted to hold on to. He threatened you. So you defended yourself. Is that correct?”

  Dillard moved his jaw around. Shuffled his feet, even though he couldn’t move them more than half an inch or so, forward or back, on account of the shackles.

  “This is the only way I’ll ever see daylight again, right?” he finally said. “No other way?”

  Serena’s expression was solemn. “We could take a chance and go to trial, but frankly, Royce, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I advised you to take that route. I believe the evidence is just too strong. I think we’d lose. And you’d be looking at a life sentence.”

  “A life sentence,” he said, repeating the phrase with a kind of wonderment in his voice. “That’s about the size of it, huh?”

  Serena nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. He was looking out the window now, as if he’d heard a noise or seen a flash of something he needed to check out. Anything to keep from having to look at the two other human beings in this room. “Okay, I done it. I killed the rat bastard, all right. Happened just the way you guessed it did—I hit him and then I took the body down to Old Man’s Creek.”

  He’d said his piece in an offhand way that surprised Bell. In her career as prosecutor she had dealt with only one or two truly evil people, people who had committed unthinkably savage acts and then gone home to eat a peanut butter sandwich or finish wrapping a kid’s birthday present. People who could admit to horrific crimes with nonchalance, and with no remorse. Sociopaths, the formal term would be.

  Royce Dillard was not that kind of person. She’d bet her house on it. And yet he had just casually confessed to a lethal assault on another human being. Moreover, his motivation for so doing still seemed to Bell to be mysteriously inadequate.

  Something was wrong here. And while a guilty plea and a sentencing deal might save the county a good deal of money, and the prosecutor’s office a good deal of time and trouble, Bell was still unsettled.

  She argued with herself, remembering a bit of prosecutorial wisdom that her favorite law school professor, Annabel Jethcoat, had imparted: You don’t have to be certain that an accused person is guilty. You just have to be certain that you can prove he is. Anything else—determining true innocence or absolute guilt—is way above your pay grade, Professor Jethcoat would add. We leave that up to God. And He doesn’t have to worry about being reversed on appeal.

  Fine. So maybe she should ignore her doubts, her questions—right? But a judge would have to approve any plea deal made by the prosecutor’s office. And if Bell herself couldn’t fathom why a man like Royce Dillard had suddenly snapped and committed murder—and had no plausible story to explain it—then a judge might very well notice the same thing, and wonder if Dillard’s confession meant he was covering for someone else. The judge could reject any deal to which Bell agreed.

  “Mr. Dillard,” Bell said. “I need to know why.”

  “Why
what?”

  “You have no history of violence. There’s no record of your having an uncontrollable temper. No suggestion of drug or alcohol abuse. You’ve never been in serious trouble before. So why, out of the blue, did you get so angry at Edward Hackel that you ended up killing him? Even if he insulted you or threatened you—I’m finding it hard to believe that you would have lost your head so completely that you’d attack him that way. What was it, Mr. Dillard? What did Hackel say to you?”

  “Said he wanted to buy my land. I didn’t want to sell.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “No other threats? Nothing he was going to do if you didn’t sell? He had a lot of powerful friends. And a lot of them have important positions. There’s big money behind that resort—and you’ve been holding it hostage. Millions of dollars are at stake. What did he threaten you with, Mr. Dillard? A lawsuit? An IRS audit? A bogus lien on the rest of your property?” Even as she listed the possibilities, Bell knew they weren’t right. Royce Dillard wouldn’t have cared about any of those things. “Maybe,” she added, “he threatened your dogs. Was that it?”

  Dillard’s face congealed into a sneer, a sneer he showed to his own hands. “You think that me and my dogs were afraid of Ed Hackel? Why, even the little ones made him nervous. They’d give him one bark and he’d be shivering and shaking. Ready to run all the way back to town. Probably peed his pants. The man was a first-class, ring-tailed fraidycat.”

  So that wasn’t it. But how had Hackel gotten under his skin? What leverage did he have?

  “I also need to know,” Bell said, “how the victim got out to your property. He didn’t take his own car. Did someone drive him? Who dropped him off?”

  Dillard moved his jaw. He closed his mouth, turning it into a tight slit.

  “Mrs. Elkins,” Serena said, “maybe we can move things along by—”

  “No.” Bell set down her pen. She folded her hands together and placed them on top of the legal pad. “Not until I’m satisfied that Mr. Dillard here is telling the truth. And the only way I can be sure of that is if he explains to my satisfaction how Hackel got there—and why he killed him.”