by Julia Keller
“I’m Ellie. And this is Henry Combs. My brother.”
“Hello, Henry.” Bell shook his hand. Now that she was closer, she saw that the man with the pale blue eyes wasn’t as old as she had thought he was; illness, not age, had carved the lines on his face and rubbed the flesh off his bones. “I guess you don’t live in Acker’s Gap, like your sister here.”
He shook his head back and forth, very slowly. It cost him a great deal, Bell saw. It was as if every expenditure of energy had to be measured out by the teaspoonful.
“No, I live I Charleston,” he said. “But I grew up in Briney Hollow. Same as Ellie.”
Ellie started to say something to Bell. She hesitated, and then pushed ahead. “Are you being treated here? Are you—?”
“It’s my sister,” Bell said. “Lung cancer.” There. She could say it out loud now without feeling a sharp wedge of pain push through her chest.
Ellie touched Henry’s arm. “They’re taking great care of my brother.” When she said “brother,” Henry smiled. Hearing his sister say the word seemed to bring him an instant, simple pleasure.
And then there was nothing more to talk about, because they did not know each other, and the only bond was the accident of being from the same small town. Running into someone from home wasn’t such a remarkable coincidence, Bell realized; many people from West Virginia with serious illnesses went to university medical centers in relatively close big cities like Columbus and Pittsburgh.
Ellie said she would give Bell’s regards to Brett. Bell wished Henry good luck with his treatment.
Only later did it strike Bell: She doesn’t know. Ellie Topping didn’t show any signs of having heard the news. She probably had no idea what was happening to Bell—the resignation and the pending trial, the gossip and the drama. Bell had seen, in Ellie’s eyes, no curiosity, no appraisal.
Nothing but anxiety for her brother.
Maybe it was still too new to have worked through the layers of townspeople, the way a bad burn moves through layers of skin. Or maybe—more likely—it just didn’t matter to her. Ellie was wrapped up in Henry’s mortal illness and so the fate of her local county prosecutor—one who had murdered her father when she was ten years old, and then blocked it out and let her sister suffer the punishment—was irrelevant.
Each of them was locked inside her own private universe of pain. That was how it seemed to Bell. They could look out and the see the world, but people in the world could not look in, could never really know what was going on behind the smile and the brave, patient words.
PART TWO
Chapter Fifteen
Rhonda Lovejoy looked around the room.
Present in the prosecutor’s office at 2:14 A.M., roughly two hours after Brett Topping had expired in his driveway, was the prosecutor (check), the sheriff (check), the assistant prosecutor (check), the on-call deputy (check), and an additional deputy summoned out of a sound sleep to help out (check).
Everything looked slightly blurry and fuzzed to her at this hour, the walls and the furniture as well as the faces. There was a middle-of-the-night mistiness that clung to it all, softening the edges: the chestnut paneling, the pressed-tin ceiling, the chunky wooden desk, the small sofa, the mismatched chairs.
In the corner, the ancient drip coffeemaker fussed and harrumphed, preparatory to disgorging its bitter bounty into a shifting series of grimy mugs.
It was just like the old days, just like the meetings Bell Elkins used to convene in the first fraught hours after a major incident.
Except, Rhonda reminded herself, it really wasn’t like the old days at all. The first major difference: the prosecutor wasn’t Bell Elkins.
It’s me.
The thought did not give her confidence. Or fill her with any sort of satisfaction.
The second major difference was the fact that the sheriff wasn’t Nick Fogelsong. It was Pam Harrison. Pam was smart and tough and courageous and efficient—but she wasn’t Nick. There were things Nick knew that Pam didn’t know.
And one of the things Pam didn’t know, Rhonda reminded herself ruefully, was the fact that she didn’t know everything.
Nick was well aware of his limitations. He’d often say, “Well, we’ve swiftly come to the end of my expertise. Here on out, we’re dealing in rank speculation, and that’s worth about as much as it costs you on the open market.”
Harrison wasn’t like that. A sheriff, she’d lectured Rhonda on many occasions—and “lectured” was the only word that fit—had to be confident. Self-assured. Hard as nails. Had to maintain an air of infallibility. No second-guessing any decision. Admitting a mistake was the biggest mistake you could make. Harrison had definite rules about how to do the job.
But then again, she had never really been tested yet. Neither had Rhonda.
In three years, they had not faced a homicide with significant implications. There had been violent deaths, of course, but nothing like this. Nothing that interacted with the town at so many different points of contact.
Brett Topping was a bank vice president (check), a quasi-kingmaker in local politics (check), a husband (check), a father (check), a friend to other prominent local citizens (check). He was—in the parlance of Rhonda’s childhood—Somebody, a word that was pronounced around here with the stress on the second syllable: Somebody.
Translation: He mattered. Theoretically, of course, every human being mattered, but you didn’t grow to adulthood without learning the cynical but inarguable truth that Some People Matter More Than Others.
Thus the murder of Brett Topping constituted Rhonda’s first real challenge as prosecutor, and Harrison’s first as sheriff.
Domestic disputes, drug deals that backfired amid profane accusations of double-crossing and shortchanging—those homicides had all fallen well below the level of long-term consequence. Rhonda could’ve prosecuted them in her sleep.
She and assistant prosecutor Hickey Leonard, a rangy, rumpled old man who had worked with Bell, too, and who had encouraged Rhonda to run for the top spot after Bell’s resignation, had mastered their jobs. They saw the same general sorts of offenses, committed by the same general sorts of people, with the same general sorts of outcomes, repeatedly.
This was different.
“Who secured the scene?” Rhonda asked. She coughed. Her voice didn’t sound quite right to her. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour.
Or maybe it was something else.
“I did, ma’am.” Sawyer Simmons took a single step forward, chin up, arms tight at her sides.
She and her colleague, Deputy Steve Brinksneader, had positioned themselves against the wall by the door. Sheriff Harrison and Hickey Leonard had, by virtue of rank in the former case and age in the latter, naturally gravitated to the two chairs across from Rhonda’s desk.
Simmons was a thirty-five-year-old former bodybuilder from Moundsville. She’d been told one too many times that she ought to put those biceps of hers to better use than just winning trophies to spread across her mantel to gather dust. And so when an opening came up—former deputy Jake Oakes’s injury in the line of duty—here came Simmons. She’d proven to be a quick study. Excellent markswoman.
Best of all, she had the temperament for the job, possessing two out of three essential qualities thereof: She was slow to anger. She didn’t mind hard work at all hours.
And now, Rhonda thought, they would find out if she possessed the third: keeping her poise—even when forced to deal with a shocking trauma, such as finding the body of a prominent local citizen at the foot of his driveway, his life having ended abruptly on account of three bullet holes and a traumatic brain injury.
“I arrived just after the EMTs,” Simmons went on. She was breathing a little too fast. She took off her hat. The color of her straight blond hair—Rhonda recognized the shade—came courtesy of L’Oréal. Simmons wore it trimmed short, parted in the middle. “The wife of the victim—Ellie Topping—was standing in the driveway. She was hysterical, but I got her settl
ed down enough to ask her a few questions. Said she’d come home, found her husband in the driveway, called 911.”
“Where’d she been?” Rhonda asked.
“At a cemetery. Took a basket of flowers to her brother’s grave.”
“Pretty late for a cemetery visit.”
“He’s buried in Charleston. She ran into traffic on the way back.”
“Describe the scene.” Rhonda was making notes on a legal pad. “I’ll read your full report, but just give me your general impressions now. What sticks in your mind.” She’d heard the excitement in Simmons’s voice and wanted to slow her down, keep her focused on the facts at hand.
Simmons fetched a deep breath.
“Mrs. Topping’s car was in the middle of the lawn,” she said. “It was—”
“What kind of car?”
Simmons looked peeved at the interruption. Does that matter? her expression said.
Rhonda could’ve explained, but didn’t want to take the time: Details. The key to the case will be in the details, not in generalities. She’d learned that from Bell Elkins.
“Audi,” the deputy said. “Silver. Nice.”
“Okay. Go on.”
Simmons nodded. She was still slightly miffed. “Car was running when I got there. Driver’s door hanging open. Mrs. Topping was standing in the driveway, about ten feet from the body. She said that she’d turned the corner, come up the street, saw it was her husband. There’s a big floodlight that lights up the driveway. Her first thought was that he’d had a heart attack. At that point, being so upset and all, she lost control of her vehicle. It jumped the curb. Plowed right up into the yard. She got out, called 911.”
“Did you see a weapon?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Back to Mrs. Topping. Had she touched the body?”
“No. Too scared. That’s what she said, anyway.”
Plausible, Rhonda thought. Most people, when spotting a body on the ground—even when it was a loved one who might need assistance—didn’t want to go anywhere near it. Something primitive took over. Something that made a live human body recoil from the blunt reality of a dead one.
“But she knew something was wrong,” Simmons added. “Didn’t look right.”
“Forensics will settle it. If she touched the body, we’ll know when we get their report.”
Communities as small as Acker’s Gap didn’t have their own scene-of-crime units; they had to request a team from the state crime lab. That sometimes meant a long wait.
“Speaking of forensics,” Rhonda went on, “when did the state folks get there?”
“Pretty quick this time. They’d been just up the interstate on another case. Roped off the scene and got to work. We’re supposed to have some results—type of bullets used, distance between the shooter and the victim, any footprints or other evidence—real soon.”
“Good.” Rhonda flipped to a new page of the legal pad. “So where did Brett Topping go tonight?”
“Business meeting. His wife didn’t know where.”
“She say anything else?”
“She was hard to understand, being so upset and all, but basically she kept saying a name over and over again. Took me a minute to figure out what she was saying—it was Deke Foley. Said we need to find him. Claimed he’d threatened her husband earlier this week. Has to be him. She’s sure of it.”
“Deke Foley,” Rhonda said, letting the name bob around in her brain. “Drug dealer, right?”
“Yeah,” Sheriff Harrison answered, taking over for her deputy. “We’ve already sent out an alert to nearby counties. They’re looking for him. Frankly, I wasn’t too surprised to hear Foley’s name in connection with this. I’m familiar with the Topping family and their … situation. A situation that would put them on a collision course with a Deke Foley.” She paused again. “I’ve arrested Tyler Topping on multiple occasions over the past two years or so. At first it was for things like public intoxication and selling pot. Lately it’s been possession of narcotics without a valid prescription. Twice for domestic issues, when Tyler assaulted his father. Mr. Topping had attempted to keep Tyler from stealing household items.”
“Jesus.” Rhonda shook her head. “I knew Brett just to say hello to—and I’d heard some rumors about his son’s problems. But I didn’t know it had gotten out of hand like that.”
“Happens quick,” the sheriff said.
Hickey lifted a gnarled index finger. “I dealt with those cases,” he said, his voice gravelly with fatigue. “The fights between father and son—well, Mrs. Topping always talked her husband out of pressing charges.”
“Where’s Tyler now?” Rhonda asked.
“He got lucky,” the sheriff replied. It was an odd thing to say, given the fact that the boy’s father was dead. The room fell heavily silent. Harrison, too, realized, that it was a peculiar comment to make and so spoke quickly to augment it. “He was picked up yesterday afternoon over in Bretherton County. Trying to sell pills in a 7-Eleven parking lot. He was sitting in a jail cell at the time his father was shot. Best alibi on the planet.”
Rhonda nodded. She took a swig of her coffee. Awful stuff. She hadn’t paid attention to measurements. If she’d been by herself, she would’ve spit it right back into the cup. But with witnesses, it didn’t seem ladylike.
“What’s the condition of the house?” she asked, after a painful swallow.
“I did a run-through,” the sheriff answered. “Front door lock was busted. The place had been ransacked. Furniture overturned, cupboards emptied out onto the floor. A real mess, top to bottom.”
Rhonda frowned. “No security system?”
Simmons took the question. “Ellie Topping didn’t set it when she left for the cemetery. Said she just forgot. Got a lot on her mind these days. That’s why she went to her brother’s grave. It’s where she goes when she gets upset. Settles her down.”
“Okay,” Rhonda said. She tapped her pen against the legal pad. “Let’s go with the obvious thing first. A burglary? That got interrupted? Maybe Brett Topping pulls in the driveway, the burglar hears him, comes out, shoots him to cover the theft.”
“Maybe.” The sheriff scratched her cheek. “It’s a theory, anyway.” The cheek-scratch was her tell, Rhonda recalled. She didn’t think that was it. But she didn’t have a good enough reason to dismiss it yet.
Rhonda looked down at her notes. “So—to summarize. Mrs. Topping arrives home a few minutes after midnight. Finds her husband lying at the end of the driveway. He’s dead—from what will later be established were three gunshot wounds to the chest.” She looked up. “Nobody else in the neighborhood called the cops? Three gunshots in the middle of the night and—what? They turn up the volume on Jimmy Kimmel?”
Deputy Brinksneader arched his back against the wall, trying to stretch out the kinks. He was three decades younger than Hickey, and so the lateness of the hour shouldn’t have affected him quite as drastically, but he, too, seemed slightly dazed with weariness, same as the old man was.
“I did a preliminary canvas of the surrounding houses,” he said. “Most said they either didn’t hear—or they thought it was a car backfiring. Or something else. I got the idea, ma’am, that the whole neighborhood’s pretty well used to trouble at the Topping house. They’ve learned to ignore it. They just don’t get involved anymore.”
“They’re used to gunshots?” Rhonda’s voice was incredulous.
“Well, maybe not that, but everything else.” The deputy pulled a small spiral notebook out of the breast pocket of his shirt. “The guy across the street—name of Ed Coverdell—did say that there’d been an incident a few nights ago. Somebody pounding on the Toppings’ garage door. A lot of shouting, he said. Garage door got beat all to shit.”
“And Coverdell didn’t call the sheriff’s office?” Rhonda asked.
Brinksneader shrugged. “Same story up and down the block. The Toppings didn’t want any interference. They wouldn’t even acknowledge there was a problem, even
though it was obvious. Wouldn’t answer questions. If anybody tried to help—Brett and Ellie Topping would just smile and shut ’em right down. They were handling it themselves.”
Rhonda leaned forward in her seat. She sifted through the crime-scene photos that Sheriff Harrison had deposited on her desk just before they’d gotten started. The pictures were stark and gruesome.
Brett Topping’s large body had been flung backward onto the smooth concrete of the wide driveway. His stumpy legs had ended up angled in different directions; one was tucked up under him, the other was hyperextended sideways from the knee in a way that was excruciating to look at. His shirtfront had popped out of his trousers and was twisted up around his neck and shoulders, revealing the massive ring of white fat around his middle. His bare belly looked gelatinous in the blinding glare of the floodlight.
His chest had three bloody tears in the vicinity of his heart. Blood had run out of his mouth and dried on his chin and neck. On the pavement behind his head was another circle of blood.
Rhonda did not react to the photos. Her eyes flicked over to Sheriff Harrison. “Where’s Ellie Topping now?”
“The hospital. EMTs transported her, right after they dealt with the body. It was their call. They said she was hysterical, might need sedation. A neighbor rode along.”
“Who?”
The sheriff consulted her own tiny notebook. It was identical to Brinksneader’s. Rhonda wondered if the sheriff’s department ordered them by the gross. “Sandy Banville,” Harrison said. “Apparently she and her husband, Rex, are old friends of the Toppings.”
“Okay,” Rhonda said. “I’ll go over there and talk to Mrs. Topping while her recollection’s still fresh. Looks like Deke Foley is our man, but let’s cover all the bases before we go headlong down that road. Which means, Sheriff, that you and your deputies need to poke around in Brett Topping’s life. Get a list going of anybody who might’ve wanted him dead. Assuming it was deliberate.”
Simmons nodded toward the photos. She snickered. “Looks pretty damned deliberate to me.”
