Last Ragged Breath

by Julia Keller

  They were clustered in the hall outside the entrance to the intensive care unit. Bell saw them as soon as she lunged off the elevator. For a strange moment she wondered who these people were—two of them, a man and a woman, in flat-brimmed hats with gold braid and heavy brown uniforms—and then in seconds she realized, the fog lifting, that she knew them all, and had known them for years now: Sheriff Harrison, Deputy Mathers, Mary Sue Fogelsong, Hickey Leonard, and Carlene Radnor, Nick’s second cousin, a schoolteacher who lived in Toller County. They stood in a ragged half circle, hands at their sides, looking stricken and lost.

  “Bell,” Mary Sue said. She was the only one who spoke. The others just looked at her.

  Bell’s eyes asked the question.

  “No,” Mary Sue replied. “No news. They’re supposed to bring him back up here—to the ICU—after the surgery. It’s been hours and hours but—but they say that doesn’t mean anything. Not really. The doctor will come and talk to me. That’s what I’ve been told.”

  Bell touched Mary Sue’s shoulder. They did not hug. Hugs were something that happened in other people’s lives, not theirs.

  “I’m so sorry,” Bell said. Mary Sue dipped her head to acknowledge the words. She was holding herself in a tight embrace, arms crossed, elbows flush with her body, as if she feared she might lose track of something if she relaxed.

  Carlene Radnor uttered a single sharp sob. The high-pitched sound broke oddly against the silence maintained by the other people here. They stared at her. Not in judgment, but in wonder: So that’s what emotion sounds like when it is released, their expressions seemed to say. When it isn’t locked up inside the body. Held prisoner.

  Bell had met Carlene at several gatherings hosted by Nick and Mary Sue, and she was always struck by how much family members could resemble each other without really sharing any essential features. Carlene was small and dark, while Nick was large and fair, but she had the Fogelsong aura, that admirable sense of not apologizing for the space one takes up in the world. Carlene was thirty-two years old, and had recently gone through a horrendous divorce; her ex-husband, Ollie Radnor, had leveled charges against her of child endangerment that were not even remotely true, but that had caused a splinter of doubt to work its way into the court proceedings. She had been forced to agree to joint custody of their two girls, ages ten and fourteen. Truth was, Ollie was the one who habitually left the girls unsupervised and who called them names—names such as Fat Ass and Beanpole, or Thunder Thighs and Matchstick, as their respective physiques dictated—and Bell remembered the darkness in Nick’s face when he described the man’s emotional abuse of his children. It was all she could do, Bell recalled, to restrain Nick from driving over to Toller County and slugging Ollie Radnor in the mouth.

  “I just can’t—” Carlene was trying to speak. “If something happens to Nick, I swear, I just don’t see how I’m going to—”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Hickey said. He was a comforting presence here, Bell saw. He was perennially and comfortably disheveled, and the small bit of hair he had left was the color and consistency of broom straw. He had been a lawyer in Acker’s Gap for many years before coming to work for her at the prosecutor’s office. His age and his deep, steady voice meant that he was listened to. “But you know as well as I do, Carlene,” Hickey went on, “that he’s as tough as they come. Right? If anybody can survive this, Nick Fogelsong can.” He put a big hand on Carlene’s shoulder.

  Hearing Hickey speak, Bell realized how much she’d missed her colleague. She had assigned him to a complicated spate of prescription drug cases, and he was often on the road, meeting with prosecutors in adjacent counties to work out plea deals and jointly executed search warrants. Drug dealers had little respect for county lines.

  Bell turned to Harrison. “What do we know?”

  “So far, not much. I’ve talked to Sheriff Ives a couple of times today. Collier County’s running down some leads. Doing their best.” The sheriff took off her hat, thrusting it up under her left armpit.

  “He broke up a drug deal, is that still the theory?” Bell said.

  “Yeah. Looks pretty straightforward—Nick was working late, he noticed something suspicious, and he intervened. That’s when they shot him. A store employee saw it on the surveillance camera and came running out, just in time to spot the truck driver getting the hell out of there. Another guy—the shooter, we figure—got away, too. Shooter’d been back in the shadows. Camera only caught the back of him when he hopped in the truck.”

  Harrison went on to describe the footage they’d retrieved from the camera. As she spoke, the scene flared in Bell’s mind, a mute midnight drama: A truck waits at the pumps. A man stands beside it. Nick approaches, engages. The shot comes from somewhere else, a spot not covered by the camera. The force of it flings him against the truck door. He drops. Flat on his back now, he bleeds and he bleeds, the blood running across the concrete, filling the little trench along the small concrete island hosting the gas pumps. His eyes are glassy. Breathing shallow, barely detectable. Face a waxy frozen mask of Not now and Not like this and a plain, plangent No. This being Nick, surely it is Hell, no.

  “The store employee—did he get a plate number from the truck?” Bell said. “Even a partial?”

  Harrison shook her head. “Nope. And the driver knew just where to park to keep the plate clear of the camera. Squad got there real quick, thank goodness.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yeah. The cashier did say one thing. The truck driver was wearing a plaid coat. The video camera’s black and white, so we don’t have a color. Just that—a plaid coat.”

  “Plaid coat.” Bell practically spat the words. “That’s great. That’ll lead us right to the bastard who shot Nick. Terrific clue. Two out of every three adult males in southern West Virginia wears a plaid coat.” In her frustration she wanted to kick an inanimate object—a desk or a chair—but the hall was bare of possibilities, and so she had to settle for salting her words with an extra dose of sarcasm. “That’s a big help.”

  The elevator chimed and two people got off. Strangers. Here to visit someone else in the ICU. Young boy, older woman. A kid and his grandmother, most likely, because the woman’s features—cleft chin, pointy nose, small eyes—were repeated in the boy’s face, but in a soft, unhurried version. A face was waiting for this boy when he grew older; it was the grandmother’s face, and she would be long gone by then, and so people would peer at him and say, “You look so much like her!” and he would smile and shrug, not knowing how to answer, because by that time, he would barely remember her.

  The two of them pushed through the double doors of the ICU and disappeared, swallowed up by the return swing. The Raythune County Medical Center was a small facility, with only eight beds in the ICU; a lot of emergency cases were Life Flighted to bigger hospitals in Beckley or Charleston. When Bell had heatedly inquired about that—why, for God’s sake, hadn’t they loaded Nick into a helicopter first thing and taken him to a better-equipped place?—Sheriff Harrison explained: They’d needed to get Nick into surgery right away. No time for a helicopter ride high over the mountains.

  Bell looked around at the tan-painted walls, the tan-tiled floor. Everything neat, everything clean and bright. Swabbed nightly with a mop. Waxed to a shine. Nothing could be allowed to accumulate. Not germs, God knows, but not emotions, either, because the emotions would be dangerous, combustible. How many people had waited here just as they were waiting here now, filled with questions and dread? Bell envisioned the grief of all of those people over the years, people like the boy and his grandmother, thousands of them, their grief for a sick loved one widening and intensifying, until the hall finally was so crowded that you couldn’t move, you couldn’t raise a hand, you couldn’t breathe. The emotions had to be cleaned out regularly, too, she thought, so that new grief could have its turn.

  This hall, and the ICU unit to which it was attached, were familiar to her. Too familiar. Many times, her cases had brought her here; she needed
a dying declaration from a witness or defendant. She had visited Clay here, after he’d lost his leg. And six months ago, she had spent a long night here with a young woman who had been assaulted and who was struggling to unearth the secret of her family’s history.

  A cell rang. It was Mary Sue’s. She answered. They watched her. “No, I’m afraid not,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes. Yes, thank you. I certainly will.” Mary Sue hung up, and it was all Bell and the others could do—politeness and decorum barely restraining them—not to fling themselves at her and demand to know the content of the call. Was it news about Nick?

  “That was Bud Wright,” Mary Sue said. “He owns the Highway Haven chain. He’s called several times already, wanting updates. He’s offered to do whatever he can. Organize blood donations from employees—anything. He’s a good man.”

  Blood donations. Damn, Bell thought. Hadn’t even occurred to her. She’d been too preoccupied.

  “Was Nick conscious when they got him here?” Carlene asked. She didn’t look at anyone in particular. She’d take an answer from any source.

  Mary Sue shook her head. “No,” she said.

  The elevator dinged again and the door opened, disgorging more people into the hallway. They were here for Nick. Some, like Bell, had had to wait until their workdays were over before they were free to come to the hospital. Others had just heard. There’d been a lull of several hours, while word spread throughout the town, but now the news was everywhere, an unstoppable force. Bell offered grim nods of greeting to Lee Ann Frickie, Rhonda Lovejoy, Sammy Burdette, and Sammy’s sister, Dot Burdette. A few minutes later the elevator arrived once again, bearing another load.

  Some of these people, Bell knew and spoke to; others she didn’t know, and didn’t speak to. They simply exchanged looks of mutual incomprehension: This could not have happened. Not to Nick Fogelsong. He was—that is, he had been for many years—a public man, a man everyone recognized. He was part of the dense everyday weave of life in Acker’s Gap. He would always be here. Nothing serious could ever happen to him. And yet somehow it had.

  Sheriff Harrison looked at Bell. Her eyes were sheathed, unreadable to most people, but Bell understood. They moved to a place down the hall, away from the others, to speak in private.

  “I know how you’re feeling right now—how we’re all feeling,” Harrison said. “But I wanted to ask about the trial. Had to leave the courthouse early. Big pileup out on Route 6. Nobody hurt bad, but a real mess.”

  “We’ll have the jury seated by tomorrow. Next day at the latest. Judge Barbour’s an efficient man.”

  Harrison nodded. For a moment, neither she nor Bell said anything; rising up behind them were the low-pitched conversations of the others, now gathered in groups of two or three. The concern in their voices, the hum of muffled shock, transcended specific words.

  “I had just talked to Nick,” Harrison said. “Yesterday.” Bell didn’t respond, so she went on. “He said he’d made a mistake. A bad mistake.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Quitting as sheriff. It was too soon, he said.”

  Bell had no reply. All beside the point now.

  The sheriff settled her hat back on her head. She felt uncomfortable when it wasn’t in place. Bell sensed that. Already, the outward signifiers of the position—the hat, the boots, the belt—were synchronizing themselves with the inward part, the part that was working its way into Pam Harrison’s soul. You’ll never have another good night’s sleep, Bell wanted to say to her. You know that, right? Not with that job of yours. Might as well wear the uniform to bed. Save you the trouble of getting dressed in the dark when you’re called out at all hours. Bell had seen what it had done to Nick Fogelsong. She knew the job could swallow you whole.

  But she also knew how much he’d loved it. Could you hate a thing and also love it at the same time? Despise it and crave it, with equal passion and ferocity? Of course you could.

  “He told me he wanted to help,” Harrison went on. “Maybe be a deputy himself again. That’s how he started out, you know. As a deputy. Worked under Larry Rucker. Then Rucker had his heart attack and died so sudden-like and—” Harrison wouldn’t finish the sentence out loud. It was too close an echo of what seemed to be happening here, right in front of them, in real time: the death of one sheriff, making way for another.

  And yet: No. That wasn’t the current situation at all, Bell reminded herself. Nick Fogelsong had given up his job voluntarily. And he’s not dead, she thought, suddenly furious with everything and everyone. He’s not dead. I would know that. I’d feel it. If Nick was dead, I would know it in my bones—and I don’t. I don’t know any such thing.

  “Be a deputy again?” she said. “Really?”

  The sheriff frowned, as if Bell had strayed off topic, or hadn’t understood her in the first place. “He’s been struggling. I think he was just throwing some ideas out there. Brainstorming. Trying to find a way to—well, to get some meaning back in his life, maybe. To anchor it.”

  Harrison didn’t know where to look, after uttering a remark that was so wholly out of character for her, and her gaze dropped down to her boots. Bell looked down, too. The boots were black and shiny. Bell had always wondered if Harrison touched them up during the day. Just a quick rub, maybe, with the tip of a rag dipped in black polish, when she was alone in her office. A secret vanity. Everybody had one. How else was she able to keep her boots looking like that, when she spent her days slogging through mud and kicking open trailer doors?

  Harrison was talking again. “I wish you could’ve heard him. When he told me about being on the outside. He wanted to live a different kind of life—that’s why he didn’t run for reelection—but I think he found out real quick that being sheriff was his life. A good part of it, anyway. More than he’d reckoned.” Once again she looked away from Bell, but this time it was to send her eyes around the hallway, the long, antiseptic-looking space interrupted here and there by knots of nervous people. “I know you were plenty ticked off when he didn’t tell you about his decision,” Harrison said. “Never even filed the papers. But you know what? He didn’t tell his wife, either.”

  Another surprise. “Are you—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She came to me about it. She was pretty darned mad. He waited until after the deadline and then he told her.” The sheriff shook her head. It struck Bell that she knew nothing about Pam Harrison’s personal life. She wasn’t married, but had she ever been? Was she in a relationship? Male, female—Bell didn’t know. She hadn’t asked. Lives in small towns could be like parallel lines: close, but never touching.

  “He said he was doing it for her sake,” Harrison said, her words running over the top of Bell’s thoughts. “So he’d be home more often. And you know what she told him? She said, ‘If I need you to make sacrifices for me, mister, I’ll ask. Otherwise, you can take off that martyr’s robe of yours and you can dust the damned furniture with it, for all I care.’ She’s a feisty one, that Mary Sue.”

  Bell let the information settle in her mind. “What did you tell him about coming back?” she finally asked.

  “That I’d think about it.” A pause. “Never had a chance to give him a final answer.”

  The same thought seemed to come to both of them at roughly the same time. They had other duties, too, matters they ought to get back to.

  “Best guess about the length of the trial?” Harrison said.

  “Couple of weeks, tops. Serena can’t refute the physical evidence. I don’t know if she intends to put Dillard on the stand, but if she does, he won’t help himself any.”

  “It’ll be good to have things wrapped up,” the sheriff said. “You think he’ll appeal?”

  Harrison was taking a conviction for granted. “No telling,” Bell said, wishing she could be as certain about things as Pam Harrison was. Maybe if I shine my shoes more often. Maybe that’ll do it.

  A few minutes later a short, heavyset woman in a white lab coat and dark baggy sl
acks appeared in the corridor. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun. There was a preoccupied look to her sharp blue eyes, and as she gradually took in the reality of just how many people were standing in the hallway, she seemed a little taken aback by the sheer volume of humanity in residence here. “Mrs. Fogelsong?” she said to the air, hoping that one of these women was the correct one.

  “I’m here.” Mary Sue stepped forward.

  “I’d like to speak with you, please. I’m Dr. Allison. The cardiothoracic surgeon who operated on your husband. Are there any other family members present?”

  Someone took hold of Carlene’s arm and drew her forward, the crowd parting automatically to enable her to join Mary Sue and the surgeon. All conversation had stopped, and the atmosphere was as tense and strained as a held breath.

  “There’s a private room around the corner,” Allison said. “I think it’s best if we go there.”

  The three of them—Allison, Mary Sue, and Carlene—headed down the hall. Before they rounded the corner, Mary Sue looked back for half a second. She sought and found Bell’s eyes.

  Her expression echoed the very elements prominent in Bell’s mind as well: dread, fear, and a solemn realization that in the next minute or so, depending on what the surgeon said, all of their futures would be changed forevermore. Nick’s was not the only life that hung in the balance.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  He was alive. And he was pissed off, too, which in Nick Fogelsong’s case, was redundant.

  Still woozy from surgery, he tried to sit up. The nurse, a muscular man in sea green scrubs and sturdy black Rockports, restrained him by propping two fingers against his shoulder. That surprised Bell, who was watching from the foot of the bed. It showed how weak he was.