by Julia Keller
“—and then you just mash this little button and you’re all set,” she said. “The only thing that’s tricky is remembering to put your cup down there. If you forget, the coffee goes all over the place. Heck of a mess, I’m here to tell you.”
“Got it.”
Next she showed him the computer, the log sheet, the quirks of the phone system. Jake did a lot of nodding. He had liked Bev from the moment he arrived here. She didn’t fuss over him, which was a great relief. She asked about a few friends they might have in common—her ex, Bobby, used to do the oil changes on all the county-issued Blazers, had he ever met Bobby, who was a real sonofabitch when he’d been drinking but was basically good people?—and none of the names sparked a memory in Jake. It was probably better that way, he thought. They could start fresh, the two of them.
When he’d first come to Acker’s Gap he assumed that everybody automatically knew everybody else. Surely that was how it worked in small towns. But no: There were just as many isolated pockets and tucked-away places for various cliques and gangs and posses here as there were in more populated areas. Acker’s Gap was a shrunk-down version of the larger world, with the basics remaining intact; it was not a different world altogether.
He found himself wondering if Bobby was the father of the baby whose arrival seemed worryingly imminent—but again, that wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask about. You had to wait for the information to be offered. And it hadn’t been offered.
Bev had agreed to stay through most of his first shift, but after an hour, he could see how tired she was. They hadn’t had any calls yet.
She plopped down in a metal folding chair across the room from the dispatch desk. She spread her legs—she was wearing black stretch pants and a dark blue sweatshirt with WVU in swirly gold letters across the front—and giggled. “Hope you don’t mind if I’m a little informal here, Jake.” He smiled, shaking his head. She giggled again and then she pulled a Little Debbie Swiss Roll out of her purse and ripped off the cellophane with her front teeth. She offered to break off a piece for him.
“No, I’m good,” he said. “Hey—why don’t you go ahead and take off? You look beat.”
“I am beat.” Bev sighed. She took another bite of the cake roll. “Did you bring a snack?”
“Not this time.”
“You’re gonna want to do that. Trust me. Along about ten, eleven P.M., your stomach’ll commence to growling.”
“I’ll do that.”
“You can get these at the day-old bakery store up on Route 7.” She looked stricken. “Well, I guess you might not have a way to get there. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Sure I do. I can drive myself.”
“Really.” She was truly shocked. He could tell.
“Yeah. I’ve got a van. Needs a new transmission, but soon as that happens, I’ll be all set.”
“I could talk to Bobby. We’re still in touch.”
“Taken care of. But thanks.” He read the next question off her face. “Hand controls—that’s how it’s done.”
“Gotcha.” She rubbed her belly. She looked at the big clock on the wall above the dispatch desk. “Quiet tonight. Don’t get used to it. I’ve had nights when I couldn’t take a bathroom break for hours. Too busy.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Close to ten years.”
“Bet you’ve heard just about every calamity known to man.”
“That I have. That I have.” She chuckled. “I used to see you, you know.”
“See me.” He repeated back the words, with no inflection.
“Yeah,” she said. “Around the courthouse. Late at night. I’d be getting off my shift, heading home, and it’d be midnight, one A.M., and you’d be bringing somebody into the jail. You always had a way about you.”
“A way.” He was still in a repeating mode.
“Oh, yeah. You were kinda—kinda arrogant, I guess I’d say. But not in a bad way. You had a swagger. Like you owned the world and you damned well knew it, too.” She looked down at the wooden floor between her feet. “Bet I passed you in the courthouse at least a dozen times. Probably two dozen. Not surprised that you don’t remember me, though. You were a real hotshot.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say back to her. Everything she was saying was exactly right—he’d thought he was all that. And more.
She was talking again. Still looking at the floor. “I was real sorry when you got hurt, Jake. Real sorry.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Damned shame, that’s what it was.”
The phone sang out before she had finished her sentence.
“Can I get that?” he said.
“Knock yourself out.”
But it was nothing. Kids, playing around, one of them pushing 911 on his cell because the cable had gone out. “Is too an emergency!” the caller yelled back at Jake, when Jake pointed out that they needed to keep the line clear for true emergencies. Jake could hear lots of background noise, the raucous, untethered kind that told him it was a party, the heavy-duty rap music and over-the-top laughter. He further informed the caller that making a false claim to a 911 operator was against the law, and that he had their address from the caller ID and in ten seconds he’d be sending a deputy over there to explain to them why they shouldn’t—
“They hung up,” Jake said, turning to Bev. He lifted the headset over his ears and set it down on the desk.
She laughed. “You’ll do fine at this job, mister.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes. The only sound was the hum from the computer. The windowless room was small but somehow that made it feel cozy, not cramped. Desk, chairs, computer, printer, phone console, two-drawer file cabinet, utility table, coffee fixings, bulletin board, a small fire extinguisher hanging on the wall: If you made a list of the room’s contents, Jake thought, it would be a very short list.
Bev stood up. It was a difficult maneuver, given her condition, and she had to grab the back of the chair, but she made it. “Well, I might take you up on your offer to fly solo tonight. Even though it’s my last shift for a while.” She put a hand on her belly and spread out her fingers. “Pretty soon this little one’ll be here and I can get back to work.”
“You scared?”
Jake hadn’t known he was going to ask her that until he did.
“Scared?” she said. “Of what?”
“Of having a baby.”
A smug smile. “I already have four of ’em. My youngest came too quick and I had to have him at home. That’s why I named him what I named him—Early. Early Epps. But—scared? No way.”
“Not what I meant. I didn’t mean childbirth itself.”
“Well—what, then?” A trifle impatiently. He could see that she didn’t like riddles.
He thought about it. What did he mean?
“I mean—just being responsible for another living creature.”
“Like I said—not my first rodeo. Brought four others into the world.”
“Not this world.”
Now she understood. He watched the understanding spread across her brain the same way he’d watched her fingers spread across her belly. The progression was clear in her features.
This was not the town they knew. Not the town she’d grown up in, and not the town Jake had come to, five years ago. The character of the place had changed. It was dangerous now, in a way it had not been dangerous before. Drugs had eaten a hole in the center of it, like an acid spill. And the damage just kept on growing, going deep and digging in. Everyone knew it, but they didn’t talk about it much because there was no point. It was a knowledge that was shared wordlessly, for the most part, and the only way you could tell that someone was feeling the same thing you were feeling was by finding their eyes and seeing the sadness there, the helpless regret, the sense that they had all lost something precious and irrecoverable before they’d had a fair chance of appreciating it. It was gone forever before they’d found the time or acquired the wisd
om to rightfully acknowledge that it had been there in the first place.
“Didn’t have much choice, tell you the truth,” Bev said. “Let’s put it this way. I’m seriously thinking of naming this little fella ‘Surprise.’”
He laughed, which lightened the moment considerably.
“As long as you don’t name him Jake,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Too many Jakes already. If you throw a stick in this town you’ll hit a dozen Jakes without even trying.”
She waddled over to the utility table. She’d left her purse there.
“You’ve got my number,” Bev said. “Anything comes up tonight that you’ve got a question about—you give me a call.”
“It’s getting pretty late. I’d hate to wake you up.”
Big grin. “Jake, Jake. Weren’t you listening? I got four little ones at home. How much sleep you figure I get on a normal night?”
“Not much, I guess.”
“You guess right. Somebody’s always puking or having a nightmare or trying to sneak back to the TV set to watch something they ought not be watching. Oh—one more thing.”
He waited. He was half-afraid to hear about some burgeoning crisis he needed to be aware of, some imminent threat or likely peril.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” Bev continued, “that I didn’t tell the last guy who held down the fort here when I went on vacation. I didn’t tell the guy before him, either. In fact—I’ve never told anybody.” She cleared her throat. “I’m telling you because I like you, Jake.”
He leaned a little forward in his chair. Dropping her voice to an ominous hush, Bev said, “I keep my Little Debbies in the back of the cabinet over there. Private stash. You help yourself. Take all you want.”
Chapter Fourteen
The massive black Escalade made the same smooth turn it had made so many times since the day Brett Topping purchased it at Doggett Motors. He could’ve gotten a better deal, no doubt, at a larger dealership in Charleston, but Doggett Motors was local, and he was a community banker. He did business with Alton Doggett because Alton Doggett did business with him.
Brett loved the Escalade. It was as big as a tank but it moved like a ballerina—that’s what he told Ellie on the afternoon he brought it home three years ago, having test-driven it and then written a check on the spot to Alton Doggett.
On this Friday night, as he guided the Escalade into his driveway, something reminded him of that special day. He touched the button to turn off the engine, instantly missing its comforting purr. The floodlight attached to the front of the garage was on; it made the car’s black leather interior look almost liquid.
He didn’t engage the garage-door opener just yet. The door had been replaced the very next morning after Deke Foley’s assault upon it, and was once again a seamless sheet of creamy white. Instead Brett simply sat, indulging himself, recalling with pleasure the first time he’d parked the Escalade here. He deserved such a moment, didn’t he?
He wasn’t a show-off. He wasn’t the kind of man who bragged about his wealth. There were lots of ways to brag, he knew, and only some of them involved talking. Buying things was another way. He didn’t like his colleagues who heaped up expensive toys as if trying to achieve a sort of critical mass, tangible proof of their superiority.
The Escalade was his one true indulgence.
He had always had nice cars, large and shiny ones, but this was the pinnacle, the best he’d ever owned. It reminded him of how big his dreams had been. For his family. His son.
He didn’t have those dreams anymore. He didn’t know what was going to happen. Not to him and Ellie—and not, God knows, to Tyler. He could never say so to Ellie, but sometimes he wished the boy was dead.
There: He’d said it. Only in his mind, but still.
He wished his own son was gone. Just gone. All of him: skin, bone, drug habit. He wished the boy was out of their lives for good.
A little peace: That’s what he wanted for Ellie. For himself.
The first time he’d played catch in the yard with Tyler, he noticed the boy’s powerful arm—even at six, the kid had a cannon—and Brett thought: Well, maybe professional sports. Unlikely, but—hey. He was a dad. Dads had dreams.
And then later, when he helped Tyler with his math homework in middle school, he’d thought, Maybe an engineer. Or a physicist. The boy’s got a really good grasp on mathematics. A fine mind. More dreams.
Brett was cold now, sitting there in the Escalade with the engine off. Time to go inside.
He decided to leave the Escalade in the driveway tonight. Not pull it into the garage. He didn’t see any lights on in the house, which might mean Ellie had fallen asleep. If she had, the sound of the opener would awaken her. He didn’t want to do that.
He climbed down out of the vehicle. Had Ellie gotten the mail? Maybe not. She almost never remembered to do that anymore. She lived in a sort of daze. Brett didn’t like to think about it, but it was true.
He walked down the long driveway toward the big black mailbox. TOPPING, the letters spelled out on the side. The front of the mailbox, where he had to stand in order to open the metal flap and reach in to pull out the contents, was just outside the circumference of the floodlight. He stood in darkness.
That was why, when the figure approached him, Brett was so startled. The figure, too, was in darkness. Brett didn’t know where the figure had come from. Nor, at first, could he make out any facial features.
And then the figure reached calmly into the pocket of a hooded coat.
Drew out a handgun.
The front edge of the hood shifted. Now Brett did see the face. He recognized it. He began to sputter, going into bargaining mode: “Wait—hold on—you don’t have to—you know I’d never tell anybody about—”
Three shots—pop pop pop—pinged almost musically against the cold night air. The first two came quickly, followed by a pause, and then a final one.
Brett Topping was still upright when the second shot struck him in the chest. The mail he’d recovered from the box—a National Geographic, a gas bill, two credit-card statements, a flyer from Lymon’s Market that listed the weekly specials—flew out of his hand as if he were tossing confetti in a parade.
He staggered backward into the driveway. By the time the third shot came, also hitting him in the chest, he fell. His head slammed against the concrete. The impact fractured his skull.
At that point the bleeding in his brain was massive and irreversible, and in all likelihood he would have died from that alone, had the bullets not already done the job.
* * *
At fourteen minutes before midnight, Jake was getting ready to flip the big silver toggle switch, the one that would send all subsequent calls over to the regional call center in Blythesburg. It was only his second night on the job but already he had the system down cold.
He’d had only two calls tonight, neither one serious. The first was from a trailer park; a woman who sounded drunk, stoned, or possibly both had complained of “funny business” in a double-wide at the end of her row. She would not be more specific. Jake told her he’d send a deputy when one became available. The second was from a motorist on the interstate who had passed a broken-down pickup with people inside. Jake notified the state police. The interstate was their bailiwick.
He had a few minutes before the end of his shift, and so he decided to follow Molly’s advice. He logged on to his Gmail account and composed a quick email to Sheriff Harrison:
Hey. Just wanted to make sure we’re clear on something. I don’t mind working dispatch but if anything else comes up, any other way I can help out—I’m your guy. Just feels good to be back in the saddle. You know?
Jake
He read it over. Fine. He hit SEND.
It was now two minutes before midnight, the time at which he was required to switch the calls over to Blythesburg. His job would be over for tonight. He could go home.
Six hours from now Tina Lawton, who w
orked the early shift at the Raythune County Sheriff’s Department and who generally arrived at the courthouse between 5:30 and 5:45 A.M. but in any case never later than 5:55 A.M., would flip the switch again, rerouting the calls right back here. And then she would download the list of calls logged by the overnight dispatcher in Blythesburg—usually that dispatcher was Harriet Brandenburg, but if Harriet was ill or on vacation, it was Bradley Simmons, Deputy Simmons’s stepbrother—and print out the file. Sheriff Harrison would find the single sheet of paper—it was never more than one sheet—on her desk by 6:15 each morning, along with a yellow Post-it Note affixed to the top that featured Tina’s bouncy handwriting: Have a great day, Sheriff!!
That was Tina. She was sunny even when the data she was passing along was grim and grindingly ordinary: squad runs for terrible car accidents, drunk and disorderlies, thefts, domestic entanglements that had gone from merely unpleasant to downright deadly. If anything truly horrific had occurred, the sheriff, of course, would already know about it; Pam Harrison was accustomed to being called out at all hours. But usually, the list was made up of predictable calamities, the kind that the night-shift deputies could handle on their own.
Jake had to compile the same kind of list for the sheriff, tracking the calls that had come in during his shift. But he didn’t affix any Post-it Note to the top. No happy, casual greeting. If he had anything to say to Harrison, he’d damned well say it in person.
Or by email, he corrected himself, recalling the note he’d just sent.
At approximately one minute before midnight—to be precise, it was fifty-seven seconds until twelve—he was using a pencil to check off the items on his report. He’d already printed the report for the night. It was a little premature, printing it before his shift was officially over, but what could happen in the final fifty-seven seconds?
His eyes and his pencil-tip traveled down the list of calls. He made a small mark beside the ones that had required a squad dispatch. He paused, using the eraser end of the pencil to scratch the left side of his head.
