A Killing in the Hills

by Julia Keller

  All Bell knew – and cared about – was the fact that Georgette had a generous hand with the coffeepot. ‘I’ll have coffee,’ Bell said. ‘Any apple pie left?’

  Georgette thought about it. Joyce baked her own pies. Generally you had to get there early in the day if pie was your passion; pie was the top menu item at Ike’s. ‘Apple’s all gone,’ she said. ‘Still got a couple of slices of cherry. We do have pecan and banana cream this afternoon, though. Interested?’

  ‘Had my heart set on apple. Tell you what, Georgette. Just bring me the coffee and I’ll make up my mind later about the pie.’ Bell was secretly glad about the absence of apple pie; the thought of food held no appeal for her right now. When people asked her how she’d managed to remain slim into her late thirties, she’d just smile and shrug, but the truth was that the moment she hit a rough patch in her life, her appetite vanished. In her own mind, Bell referred to this as the ‘crisis diet.’ She wouldn’t recommend it.

  Georgette nodded. She turned to Sheriff Fogelsong.

  ‘Same goes for me,’ he said. ‘Just coffee for now.’

  The waitress gave a low whistle and stowed the pad in her apron pocket. ‘If we had to rely on you two, this place’d go broke in a month,’ she muttered.

  She was teasing them. Nick and Bell were excellent customers. Like a lot of people who worked in the courthouse, they ate here two or three times a week, at a minimum. To be sure, the Salty Dawg had pulled away a portion of Ike’s business; truckers, especially, followed the sign on the interstate and drove into Acker’s Gap only because they craved the sameness of a chain restaurant. But enough folks stayed loyal to Ike’s, to its daily specials, to the history that lived in its brown-paneled walls and painted concrete floor.

  ‘Oh, you’d manage,’ Nick said.

  Georgette looked at Bell. The tease vanished from her voice. ‘You doin’ okay, hon? And that girl of yours – how’s she?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ she said. ‘Thanks for asking.’

  ‘Can’t believe that something like that could happen here,’ Georgette said. ‘You think nothing’s ever gonna change, you think you’ll be saying howdy to the same folks at the same time of day, every day, and then – well, you know.’ She narrowed her eyes. Pointed a painted fingernail at Nick Fogelsong. ‘You make sure you get whoever did this, okay? You track ’em down and you put ’em away for a long, long time. You got me?’

  The sheriff, Bell knew, had been hearing a version of that speech ever since the shooting, everywhere he went. Yet he managed to look as if he were hearing it for the first time right then.

  ‘Gonna try, Georgette,’ he said.

  The waitress put her left hand on Fogelsong’s shoulder. Then she moved away. A customer across the room had called her name.

  ‘Okay,’ Bell said, once Georgette had gone. ‘First of all, anybody report a crazy driver up on Route 6?’

  ‘They’re all crazy.’

  ‘I know. I mean extra-crazy.’

  ‘Don’t think so, but I can check with the dispatcher. See if there’ve been any calls.’

  ‘Good. Bastard damn near ran me over the side this morning.’

  Nick looked concerned. ‘Jesus, Bell. You’re just telling me this now?’

  ‘Case you didn’t notice,’ she said, ‘I lived.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He was still miffed. ‘Next time, you call me right away. While we still have a chance to apprehend him. You think it was personal? One of the drug dealers, maybe, who doesn’t appreciate your efforts to wipe him off the face of the earth?’

  ‘Could be. Or maybe just some drunk fool,’ Bell said. She leaned back to signal that she’d finished with the topic. ‘How’re we doing with linking the victims? What do we know?’

  ‘Not much.’

  The sheriff slapped his notebook down on the table. He licked the tip of his thumb and pushed the corners of several pages before he found the one he wanted. ‘Did preliminary interviews with the victims’ families last night and this morning. Most of it was information I already knew, of course, but we verified it, anyway. Let’s see.’

  He nodded toward the exposed page. ‘Shorty McClurg’s wife,’ he said, ‘is such a mess that she’s still not coherent. They’d been married sixty-one years, Bell. High school sweethearts. Matter of fact, they were still in high school when they married. Hadn’t spent a single night apart since they were eighteen years old. That’s the only thing that Fanny McClurg told me that I could make out. The rest was just sobbing. She’s in a bad, bad way.’ He paused, letting all that sink in. Then he went on. ‘Lee Rader’s wife died a couple of years ago. He lived with his daughter, Eloise. And Dean Streeter’s wife, Marlene, wasn’t up to much questioning, either. She was a basket case, like Fanny McClurg. She and Dean had lived pretty quietly, I gather, ever since Streeter retired from the high school. They lost a daughter pretty recently. I got the idea, talking to Marlene, that their lives had just sort of shut down after that. No more forward progress.’

  The mention of children flipped a switch in Bell’s thoughts. ‘Rader’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Eloise, right? She have any kids?’

  Fogelsong checked his notes. ‘Yeah. A boy and a girl. Late twenties. Why?’

  ‘Right age.’

  ‘To be in some kind of trouble, you mean. The kind that brings people with guns around to get your attention.’

  ‘Exactly. We can probably rule out the spouses and the children of our victims as being the source of any problems. The ages just aren’t right. They’re too old. Too settled. But the grandkids – well, it’s a possibility.’

  ‘And you’re thinking the shooting was payback? Drug deal gone sour?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Not some kind of personal issue?’ Fogelsong was probing, searching. Playing devil’s advocate. ‘A bad divorce or something?’

  ‘No. If you’ve got a private beef with somebody, you don’t waltz into the Salty Dawg when it’s full of customers and open fire. You do it quietly. You make your point in the most unobtrusive way possible. The people back in those hollows – you know how they operate, Nick, same as I do. They don’t leave a mess. They’d never be interested in this kind of thing. This was way, way too public. Too splashy. This was a message. A billboard. Not a private feud.’

  ‘I think I agree with you, Bell.’

  ‘And what about Streeter? Probably had a lot of interaction with young people while he was teaching.’ She paused. She was thinking about something. ‘Speaking of that,’ Bell said, ‘I know that Streeter only retired from the high school a year ago. How’s that? I mean, he’s past retirement age.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, when he turned sixty-five, he asked the board of education if he could stick around. It was driver’s ed and nobody much cared, way I hear it.’

  ‘But he finally retired last year?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why’d he suddenly decide to retire?’

  ‘Maybe he was just worn out, after caring for his daughter,’ Fogelsong said. ‘Or maybe he got on somebody’s bad side and they wanted him gone. Happens.’

  ‘Speaking of the high school, any reason you know for Deputy Mathers to be hanging out over there?’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Yeah. Just a tip I got. About Mathers maybe spending a little too much time eyeballing the place.’

  ‘I can ask him about it. Lord knows, Charlie’s got his quirks – he owns every self-help book and tape series you can order off late-night TV, and I sometimes wonder if all that peppy optimism is gonna start leaking out of him one day. Like antifreeze on the floor of the garage. Stuff’ll kill you.’

  ‘All the same to you, I’d rather you didn’t bring it up to him. Just be aware of it, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  The sheriff moved his big hands out of the way. Georgette had just brought their coffee, setting the thick-handled white ceramic mugs in front of them. Steam writhed from the top of the mugs in fussy little tendrils.

  ‘Change your mind ab
out that pie,’ Georgette said, ‘you two let me know.’

  ‘Guaranteed,’ Nick answered. He watched her walk away, then took a sip. ‘Carla still doing okay?’

  Bell shrugged. Not right now, her shrug said.

  She’d tell Nick about Carla’s plans to move in with Sam – but she’d do it later. Now that she’d informed Tom and Ruthie, she felt as if she’d done what she needed to do for the time being; she’d gotten it out of her own head and into the world. It was becoming real to her. She didn’t have to bring in the overworked sheriff. Didn’t have to burden him, too. He had enough burdens already.

  She couldn’t imagine what it was like for him to live with Mary Sue, to look at that sad face, day after day. It was almost as if Nick had disappointed Mary Sue in some profound yet inscrutable way, had failed to live up to some golden ideal of him she’d carried around like a trophy, and now the whole world was tainted, unbearable.

  Bell knew it wasn’t that simple. Couldn’t be. But the thought still haunted her.

  ‘The good news,’ Bell said, leaning forward, ‘is that the Sheets trial’s been postponed. So I’ll have some time to run down any leads you get on Rader’s grandkids. Or anything else.’

  The sheriff took another drink of his coffee.

  ‘Nick?’ Bell said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Typically, Nick would be eager to plot strategy with her, happy to have her freed from another case to work on his priority one, if only temporarily. But he just sat there, holding the coffee mug a few inches above the tabletop, a big index finger curled around the thick handle. The flat palm of his other hand supported the mug’s squatty bottom. The sheriff’s jaw moved back and forth.

  ‘Bell,’ he finally said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Might be something else you have to do, too.’

  She looked at him, half amused, half apprehensive. ‘What’s going on, Nick? Don’t be so damned cryptic. What’s this mysterious thing you say I have to do?’

  The sheriff set down his mug. He pushed it to one side, so that he could reach across the table and cover Bell’s hands with his hands. That startled her, but she didn’t show it.

  Nick’s hands were twice as big as hers were. And they were cold, too, even though he’d just been in close proximity to a mug of hot coffee. If he’d intended to warm her up, his plan wasn’t working.

  She waited. Fogelsong continued to slide his jaw back and forth, as if he were trying out certain words in his mind, rehearsing particular phrases and imagining what it might feel like to utter them, before he committed himself to actual speech.

  ‘Good Lord, Nick,’ she said, gently indignant, her voice deliberately light and playful, ‘you’re scaring the hell out of me here. What’s going on?’

  ‘Bell.’ He looked down at the table, then back up into her eyes. ‘No easy way to put this, so I’ll just do it.’ Another pause. ‘It’s your sister. It’s Shirley. She’s up for parole again and—’

  ‘No.’ Bell cut him off. ‘No. No, you’re wrong.’ She tried to jerk her hands out of Nick’s hands, pull away from him, but he held on tight.

  Because she couldn’t free her hands, she did the next best thing: She turned her head to one side so that she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  ‘It’s true, Bell.’ Nick’s voice was soft but firm, purposeful. She couldn’t see him – with her head turned, all she could see was the gray metal counter at which a few of the hardcore Ike’s customers sat in humpbacked faux-solitude, and beyond that, the blackened griddle and the big wooden cutting board and two waist-high stainless-steel coolers – but she could tell the sheriff was still looking at her. She could feel it.

  A different song was playing. Sounded like Garth Brooks.

  The whole world loved Garth Brooks, but Bell didn’t. She was desperate for her mind to be somewhere else right now, she didn’t want to think about what the sheriff had just said, so she fastened on the most trivial thing she could find at the moment. Never did like Garth Brooks. Big phony, if you ask me. I’ll take Hank Jr any day, or Willie or Waylon. You can take your Garth Brooks and you can—

  ‘No mistake,’ Fogelsong said. And in the few seconds before he spoke again, Bell began to feel a little ashamed of herself. She was making Nick do this alone. She wasn’t helping him.

  She turned her head back around, so that she was looking at him once more. She owed him that.

  The lines around his eyes looked deeper these days. Dug in. They didn’t go away anymore when he relaxed his expression. They were there to stay.

  She had known this man a long, long time. And he knew her. He knew her past, her story, all of her secrets. Every last one of them.

  At least he thinks he does, she corrected herself, like always.

  ‘I got the fax this morning,’ Nick said. Neither one of them blinked. ‘I know you weren’t expecting this, Bell, I know it’s way sooner than they said it would be, after the last time. Way sooner. But that’s how it is. Something about an expedited schedule on parole hearings. A backlog, they say. Prison overcrowding and all of that. They don’t want federal mandates to kick in. So they’re working through the list faster these days. Your sister’s name came up.’

  He’d let go of Bell’s hands by now and leaned back against the booth seat. He made a fist with his right hand and briefly tucked it up under his chin, bumping a knuckle against the scar. Bell thought about that scar. She didn’t know where it had come from. She didn’t know which unruly prisoner had given it to him, which drunken fool or escaping dirtball.

  All she knew was that it was a crooked thread whiter than the skin around it. Long healed over. Nick, she was sure, knew its origin. Because you never forget the violence you’ve seen, the violence you’ve felt. The violence you’ve been a part of.

  ‘I’ve tried before to help her,’ Bell said. ‘Tried and tried. For Christ’s sake, Nick, I’ve done the best I can to reach her.’

  But had she? Yes, she’d shown up at the prison twice, three times a year and asked to see her sister. She was always rebuffed. And yet hadn’t it become easier, year after year, to count on the fact that she’d be turned down? To expect it?

  She’d come to rely on the ‘No.’ It was comfortable. It was safe. Maybe Bell didn’t push quite so hard anymore.

  ‘She refuses all contact with me,’ Bell said. She hoped her voice didn’t sound as defensive as she was afraid it did. ‘Won’t take my calls. Doesn’t answer my letters. She never has. Twenty-nine years, Nick. Not one reply. Not one request for me to call her or come see her. Nothing.’

  ‘I know that.’ He undid his fist. He put his palm flat against the tabletop. ‘Turns out that the parole board’s going to be meeting in a couple of days.’

  ‘You remember what happened the last time.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘She wouldn’t even come in the room. She heard I was there and she refused to appear. They just went on to the next case. She turned down her chance at parole – because she didn’t want to see me.’

  ‘Trying to protect you. Still.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll never know.’ Bell, restless, rubbed her hands together, then separated them again. ‘Don’t know why you’re telling me this. Waste of time. She doesn’t want anything to do with me – parole or no parole.’

  ‘Whole new day, Bell.’ Nick looked away when he spoke the next sentence. ‘Maybe your sister’s changed too.’

  Before Bell could respond, the sheriff was talking again. ‘Anyway, like always, they want a family member to come and speak. Give an opinion. Some background. Context, they call it. I told them—’

  Nick paused. Once again, he covered over Bell’s hand with his own hand, as if he hoped he could block the chill of the powerful wind that blew out of the past.

  He knew Bell wasn’t weak or fragile. He knew she’d resent the hell out of being considered so. But he’d known her as a kid. And time had a funny way of getting stalled in a mountain valley, caught up in the crosswinds, so that some days he c
ould look at Belfa Elkins across a table and see not a thirty-nine-year-old prosecuting attorney with a child of her own, but a child.

  A helpless, confused child.

  A trembling ten-year-old, standing at the edge of a burning trailer in the middle of the night, sobbing and cold.

  Everything lost. Everything gone.

  ‘I told them,’ the sheriff said, trying again, ‘that you were the only family member left. And then I told them that I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come this time. Try all over again. Open up all those old wounds. I just didn’t know. I said I’d give you the information, and then you’d do what you thought best.’

  Bell nodded. Her mind was riding on that mountain road again, the one that looped and doubled back, the one that, no matter where you wanted to go, always seemed to take you by way of the past.

  22

  The trailer was small and dirty. The two girls, Shirley and Belfa, tried to keep it clean, but they didn’t know what to do. They’d never been taught. Their father didn’t care about how the place looked or smelled, and their mother, who might have cared – it was a good bet, because that’s what mothers did, wasn’t it? – had been gone a long time.

  This was 1981. She’d left in 1976. They weren’t sure what the word ‘left’ meant, exactly; it was their father’s word. ‘Goddamned bitch left,’ was what he said, when her name came up. Left. It could mean anything.

  Their mother was a blur. A faint smell. A good smell. It was the soap she used, Shirley always said, because Shirley remembered. Shirley was sixteen, six years older than Belfa, and she could remember things like that.

  Shirley took care of Belfa. Kept her clean. She made sure that Belfa washed her face and her neck, especially after they’d been playing in the mud down by Comer Creek, and when there wasn’t any more soap in the house, Shirley rummaged around and found other things. She made do.

  One day, Shirley kneeled down and reached way back in the gross, junked-up cabinet under the kitchen sink and she pulled out an old container of dish soap, long forgotten, a plastic bottle with an inch of blue gunk congealed in the bottom. The soap wouldn’t pour. It wouldn’t come out. The spout was crusted over with dried-up soap, hard as a rock. How could they get it out? Then Shirley found a small paring knife under a pile of newspapers and a smelly old pizza box on the countertop and she started to cut off the top half of the plastic bottle, sawing and sawing – Be careful! Belfa had said, nervous, watchful, trembling, because Shirley’s hands were small, even though she was a lot older than Belfa, and the knife was really, really sharp and it kept slipping out of Shirley’s hands. Belfa knew how sharp that knife was. Belfa had seen their daddy use it to carve the plantar warts off the bottom of his horrible gnarled feet, grunting as he did it, and she knew how well it could cut, that cold gray blade – but Shirley did fine. It worked. She cut through enough of the plastic so that she could twist off the top half of the bottle. They scooped out the gunk and added some hot water to soften it and they used that to wash themselves that day. Their face and their hands and their necks and their hair. Then Shirley said they could brush their teeth with plain water. That would work, Shirley said. That would work just fine.