by Julia Keller
‘You two,’ Bell said, trying again, ‘are the closest thing to family that Carla and I have now. These past few years, I’m not sure what I would’ve done without your help. Not sure I would’ve made it, frankly.’
Tom smiled. ‘Oh, you’re pretty tough, young lady.’
‘You already said that.’
‘I did?’
‘You did.’
‘Well, next time I’ll say “tenacious.” Or “relentless.” How’s that?’
He gently stroked the top of Ruthie’s head. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t know whether to bring this up, but now that you’re here, Bell, I feel I ought to.’
Bell waited.
‘It’s that deputy,’ Tom said. ‘You know – the overweight one. With the hair. The hair with all the gel on it.’
‘Charlie Mathers.’
‘Yes. Well, I saw him out by the high school the other day. Just sitting in his car. And it occurred to me that I’ve seen him out there before.’
‘In his patrol car, you mean,’ she said. ‘In his uniform. On duty. Probably helping the buses get out of the lot.’
‘No, he was in a regular car.’ Tom turned and kissed the side of Ruthie’s head.
‘And he was just sitting there?’
Tom nodded.
‘I’ll mention it to Nick.’
‘Might be nothing.’ Tom touched the place on Ruthie’s scalp that he had just kissed. The chemo had left her hair soft and fuzzy in some spots, and coarse in others.
He rose to walk her to the door. Ruthie kept her seat on the couch.
That told Bell that her friend was having a hard day. Ruthie would never say so out loud. With Ruthie, you had to pick up on stray clues.
‘Sure you won’t change your mind about the soup?’ Tom said. They stood in front of the door. ‘I could pack it up. A snap to reheat.’
‘Thanks, Tom, but we’re all set. You wouldn’t believe the stack of casseroles in the fridge. Might open my own diner.’
He reached past her to open the door. She admired his hands, as she always did; he had long, slender fingers that looked delicate until you realized how strong they were, how capable. Bell had seen Tom Cox single-handedly subdue large terrified animals – a Labrador named Lucy who had a bow hunter’s errant arrow stuck through her left hip, and another time, a stray who looked to be a Doberman-shepherd mix, just after the dog was hit by a truck out on Route 6 and was found limping in desperate pain-crazed circles, growling and lunging at anyone trying to help – and hold them still until he could sedate them for treatment.
‘Bell,’ he said. ‘I know Ruthie must’ve asked you, but I’ve been wondering. Any progress on finding out who killed those three poor fellows? And why?’
‘No.’ Bell turned back around on the doorstep to face him. ‘And you know what, Tom? I’m not sure we ever will. I mean, it might’ve been random. And if there’s no connection between the victims and the shooter – we may never find him. No matter how hard Sheriff Fogelsong and his deputies work at it.’
She tilted her head, indicating the line of mountains visible in the distance, rising like gray sentinels until they gradually merged with the darkening sky. ‘Somebody,’ she said, ‘could hide up in those hills forever.’
‘Sounds pretty hopeless. So how do you know when to give up?’
‘You don’t.’
‘You don’t know when to give up?’
Bell buttoned the top button of her coat. It was chillier now than just a little while ago when she’d arrived.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t give up.’
20
He didn’t get his money’s worth, not by a long shot. But who could you complain to? Was there a Better Business Bureau that dealt with whores?
Chill snickered at his own little joke. He’d zipped up his pants and now he was sitting on the side of the bed, feeling a faint edge of satisfaction. Not full satisfaction, but close enough. It was as if his fingers had just touched the fringe of satisfaction. Just ruffled it a little bit. Not like he’d grabbed it and held it.
Turtle Girl was sitting on the floor, leaning against his left leg. Her legs were sticking straight out. Her hands were dumped in her lap, as if her arms didn’t have any bones in them.
She looked, Chill thought, like a doll somebody had propped there. A broken doll from the Goodwill store, like the kind his little sister always ended up with. She’d never had a new doll in her whole life.
He lit a cigarette. He started to ask Turtle Girl if she wanted one, too, but he didn’t, because he was afraid she might say yes. And then they might have to have a conversation, or something close to it.
She still hadn’t said a word to him, beyond asking for the money. Which pleased him. When he’d given her the money over by the door, she’d folded the twenty-dollar bill and folded it over again and pushed it into the front pocket of her jeans. Then she’d followed him over to the bed. He sat down. She’d started to sit down on the bed too, right next to him, assuming that that’s what he wanted her to do, but Chill said, ‘No you don’t, girlie,’ and he’d grabbed her wrists and pulled her down until her knees hit the floor. He didn’t have to pull hard. She gave way instantly. She wilted. She was flaccid, her bones like water.
Once she was on her knees, he arranged her greasy head in front of him just so, and he worked at the zipper of his trousers. He had a job to do, getting himself where he needed to be. She didn’t help. That was the part that irritated him: She didn’t even try to help, goddamn her. What – she was too good for him, maybe? Some skanky whore was too good for him? Finally he was there, and he made her do what he’d paid her for, and once he was finished he wished he could shove her dirty face into the carpet and step on the back of her head, grinding it in, grinding her face until it ended up even uglier than how it started out, which was pretty damned ugly.
She was lucky he’d let her touch him. Anywhere. She was lucky that he hadn’t just slammed the door when she first showed up. You’re lucky. Lorene, he thought. Hell. It probably wasn’t her real name. Or maybe it was. He’d known a lot of Lorenes while he was growing up. It was a popular name.
His first girlfriend’s name was Cheryl. She would do all kinds of things to him, crazy things, but she didn’t kiss him. That drove him up the wall: Like, you’ll suck me off but you won’t kiss me, bitch? Kissing on the mouth was, like, personal, he figured. Kissing was what you did when you were in love. Like in the movies. Cheryl’d had a friend named Lorene. Or was it Lorrie? Or Laura? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. Everybody was the same. Everybody he knew was all the same. Appetites. It was all about appetites. Everybody had the same appetites. That’s what made them all the same.
‘Hey,’ Chill said. He shifted his leg.
She still didn’t move. She’d fallen asleep, which made him mad. He got to fall asleep, damnit. Not her.
‘Hey,’ he said again. He reached down and jiggled her shoulder.
Nothing.
She slumped over even farther. One more nudge and she’d be flat out on the floor. And then what would he do with her?
He twisted around so that he could kick her with his other leg. Hard, with the tip of his steel-toed boot. Right in her stomach. That did the trick. She jerked like a dog would, and her cry of pain was sharp but it was also like a kitten’s mew, kind of gooey and spread out, helpless-sounding, and it was enough to get him going again. He wanted more. He’d paid twenty bucks, hadn’t he? So he put the cigarette in the side of his mouth and he secured it with his teeth, so that he’d have both hands free, and with one hand he started fiddling with his zipper again, while with the other, he grabbed a hunk of her hair and tried to pull up her head, to get her to participate.
‘Come on,’ Chill said. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
She wouldn’t do it. He tried to angle her head the right way but she wasn’t playing along this time. She leaned away from him.
Now he was mad. ‘Hey,’ he said, hoping she’d pick up on th
e dark note in his voice. Fact was, he was getting seriously pissed off.
‘Hey,’ Chill said again. ‘Listen, Lorene, twenty bucks is twenty bucks. We ain’t done here, bitch.’
Her eyes were closed. It was as if she wasn’t in the world anymore, as if she’d left a while ago and had just forgotten to take her body along.
He was a bad-ass. Didn’t she know that? He’d killed three old men, yessir, and in a day or so, he’d get the prosecuting attorney as well. This time, he’d do it right. No farting around. And the boss had pretty much warned him that after he killed the Elkins lady, there wouldn’t be a hell of a lot for him to do anymore. Chill wasn’t stupid. He knew you only got so much use out of one employee. He was just about used up. So he was reckless. Couldn’t this bitch smell the recklessness on him?
Lorene moaned again, and again it excited him. But she was back to being the busted doll. She wouldn’t respond, not even when he shook her head, wringing it back and forth like a worn-out old mop. Who was she to reject him? Goddamnit. She was a drug addict and a whore – and she was saying no to him? This motel was the kind of place, he knew, where nobody called the cops, no matter what they heard. Nobody wanted to get involved. Also, nobody gave a rat’s ass about what was happening to anybody else. You could do what you wanted to do. The mess he’d make? Well, shit. He was going to be checking out in a couple of hours anyway. So sue me.
He let go of her hair. She flopped back against the side of the bed.
Chill reached over to the nightstand by the shitty little bed in the shitty little room, which made a deluxe matched set, he thought, with his shitty little life, and he yanked open the top drawer and he pulled out the Steyr SPP. It was the one thing he possessed that wasn’t shitty. It was gorgeous. When he’d first seen this pistol, a semiautomatic version of a submachine gun made by the same company – he’d looked it up, he’d read about it, he’d done his homework – Chill knew it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Just a foot long, barely three pounds, fifteen-round magazine packed in the short grip, but Jesus, the damage it could do.
With his free hand, Chill grabbed another handful of her hair and he jerked up her head and he pressed the muzzle against the center of her forehead. It would, he knew, leave a mark, an indentation in the shape of a little O, even if he did nothing at all. Even if he put the gun away now. For the first time, he looked in her eyes. They were blue.
Blue. Who’da thought? Chill wondered if her mama had ever looked into these blue eyes when she was a little girl and sang her a song. What would your mama think of you now? Now that you’re a whore?
He might not have done it, after all, he might not have shot her dead, except that he saw something in those washed-out eyes, something that said: Go on. Please. I want you to.
So he did.
He knew what he’d do with the body, how he’d get rid of it. And shortly after that, his nerves still jangling and jazzed up, his head ringing, it came to him: I know how to get Belfa Elkins. I got it now. Yeah.
21
Mary Sue Fogelsong still made the best venison chili in the county. Before her illness, she had won the Raythune County Fair chili cook-off for five straight years. She hadn’t entered in a while. Nick claimed it was because she was exercising the mercy rule, like a baseball team that leaps ahead by so many runs that it agrees to call it a day. No use for folks to waste their time competing; the odds are just too overwhelming.
The real reason was her depression. But sometimes, when the gray fog lifted for a day or so, she’d ask Nick to pick up a few things on his way home – beans, tomato paste – and she’d go down to the freezer in the basement and lift out a white-wrapped, twine-tied package of deer meat, the bounty from the good hunting season Nick routinely enjoyed, and she’d cook.
When Nick showed up at Ike’s and handed Bell a big round plastic container with a blue snap-on lid, she didn’t have to ask. She could name it with certainty.
‘Venison chili.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Nice of Mary Sue to do that. Thoughtful. You’ll tell her so.’
‘I will.’
‘How is she, Nick? How’s she doing?’
‘She’s fine.’ He spoke quickly. ‘Just fine.’
He was no fonder of talking about personal things than Bell was.
She tucked the Tupperware container next to her folded-over coat. The sheriff fit himself into the other side of the booth, scooting across the dusky red Naugahyde that had been polished by innumerable bottoms before his. It was an aspect of an older establishment that you tried not to think about too often.
‘She figures you and Carla won’t be cooking much these days,’ he said. ‘And she told me to mention that there’s plenty more where that came from. Oh, and by the way,’ Nick added, ‘my wife’s not the only one trying to fatten you up. Melinda called me from home today. Said she’d made you a casserole. Plans to bring it to the courthouse tomorrow. Some kind of beef and noodle thing.’
Bell grinned. ‘Is all this chitchat designed to distract me from the essential fact that you’re on the hook to buy the pie?’
‘Dang. You figured me out.’ Nick removed his big sheriff’s hat and set it down on the seat beside him. He ran a hand over the top of his head, frowning at the bristles. ‘Ordered yet?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just got here myself.’
He looked around the restaurant. He saw a smattering of familiar faces, faces toward which he nodded and offered modest half waves. Ike’s on a late Sunday afternoon was not packed full, as it might’ve been on a Monday morning during breakfast rush, but there was a steady churn of customers: families who’d dawdled after church services to visit with friends and now wanted a bite before heading up the mountain toward home; second-shift workers seeking a little sustenance before starting the eight-hour haul; and the usual singles, the people who sat by themselves at the smaller tables, in many cases looking pinched and defensive, as if daring anyone to draw conclusions from the fact that they were here alone, brooding over a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup, concentrating fiercely on a paperback propped up against the salt and pepper shakers.
There was no Ike anymore. A man named Eisenhower Jones – his father had served in World War II, and his mother was enamored of the courtly, owl-faced general – had opened the place on Thornapple Avenue in the early 1970s, but died of a brain aneurysm shortly thereafter. The place had sat empty for several years. When storms blew in and the wind got hold of the rusty IKE’S sign that hung from a horizontal pole jutting out from the brick storefront, that sign would swing wildly and sing with an eerie scraping noise, which sounded for all the world like a pissed-off ghost trying to scratch his way out of a coffin. In those days, if you wanted a hot breakfast in the vicinity of Acker’s Gap, you could try your luck at the Greyhound bus station or you could drive for thirty-five minutes along the interstate until you came to the Bob Evans.
In 1980, Joyce LeFevre and her husband, Troy, bought the restaurant and fixed it up. They kept the name – not out of sentimentality, but because it was cheaper to spruce up the old sign than to buy a new one. Kept the place open twenty-four hours a day.
By now, Troy was long gone. He’d taken up with a woman in Weirton and the crazy-in-love couple had moved to Roanoke. Joyce, though, still ran it. She was a large blond woman with biceps that rivaled the sheriff’s, and the kind of blustery, sardonic attitude that was necessary in any business featuring constant interaction with the general public.
The sheriff turned back around to face Bell. Placed his big hands on the table in front of him. Interlocked his thick fingers as if he had plans to pray, which he didn’t. It was just a comfortable position in which to arrange them. A song from a hidden CD player moved across the room. The music wasn’t loud – in fact, you had to work to figure out who the sweet-voiced singer even was – which was another point in favor of Ike’s. The music didn’t drown out conversation.
Wynona Judd, Fogelsong thought, pleased at his ab
ility to identify it. That’s who. Something about a girls’ night out. He liked Wynona Judd, liked the way her voice could slide from a growl to a purr. She was feisty.
The same could be said, the sheriff reminded himself, of the woman who sat across from him.
‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Tell me you’ve been relaxing at home with Carla, taking it easy. Just like you promised me.’
‘Never promised any such thing.’ Bell reached over and lightly smacked the sheriff’s wrist.
‘Better watch yourself. Assaulting an officer of the law is a serious offense in this county, ma’am.’
‘Duly noted. I’ll make sure that I inform the prosecuting attorney. Way I hear it, she’s got nothing much on her plate these days. I’m sure she’ll be happy to pursue the case.’
Fogelsong grinned. Shook his head. ‘Okay, so I won’t press charges. I was just bluffing, anyway.’
‘Good. Me too.’ Bell grinned back. She let the grin linger, liking the feel of it on her face, liking the feel of anything other than a tight frown of apprehension.
She finally let it go, knowing she had to get down to business. ‘Couple of things I need to go over with you, Nick.’
‘Same here, Bell. That’s why I was glad you called. There’s something that I—’
The sheriff stopped talking, because at that moment the waitress, Georgette Akers, appeared alongside their booth, flipping to a new page on her tiny order pad. Her reddish blond hair was piled high and secured with an assortment of shiny barrettes and bobby pins. Georgette had worked for Joyce ever since the place reopened. She and Joyce were roughly the same age – late forties, early fifties, although nobody knew for sure or had the nerve to ask – and they’d begun to look alike, too, with the same roomy proportions and a similar tendency to wear excessive amounts of pink lipstick and green eye shadow. They spent most of their time together, working and non-working hours, and so naturally there were rumors that perhaps Joyce and Georgette were a bit closer than boss and employee. Closer, even, than best friends.
