A Killing in the Hills

by Julia Keller

  Three years ago, the building had been rechristened the Acker’s Gap Community Resource Center. The court-sponsored Teen Anger Management Workshop met here. So did a Boy Scout troop, an AA chapter, a quilting club.

  Only one other car was parked on the block. Directly in front of the RC. It was a dark shade, flanks stained with mud, windows clouded by filth. It stuck out at a strange angle, almost perpendicular to the sidewalk, as if the driver hadn’t so much parked as rammed the curb and abandoned ship. The shabby-looking car and the piss-poor parking job sent a stab of fear through Bell, the same fear she’d felt when she heard his voice.

  He’s just some dopey kid. He’s just flailing around, doing whatever pops into his head. He’s got nothing to lose. There’s no logic here, nothing to bargain with, nothing to appeal to. He’s winging it.

  Bell sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her body a tight series of sharp angles. Back straight, knees locked, feet flat on the floor. That was how she’d been sitting the whole way over, the hands in her lap opening and closing, opening and closing. She was trying and failing to keep her thoughts from spiraling into panic.

  The sheriff clicked off the call with Wanda – Shit, he’d said to her one more time, just to make sure his disgust was well documented – and checked in with his deputies. He’d called them before leaving Bell’s house but wanted to make sure they understood.

  Stay back. That was his message.

  They didn’t know who they were dealing with. And he had a hostage. The sheriff instructed the units to hold off until he signaled otherwise. It was his show.

  He put a hand on Bell’s shoulder. She flinched.

  ‘You have to promise,’ he said, ‘that you’ll sit tight and let me handle this. Do exactly what I tell you to do – and only what I tell you to do. Is that a deal, Bell? If it isn’t, I’ll have Mathers take you straight home when he shows up.’

  She didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes straight ahead, her gaze boring through the windshield and, beyond that, through the dark night, through the fog and the uncertainty, through whatever the next several minutes might bring. Her voice was low and soft. If you didn’t know what the words meant, if you only heard the tone, you’d be excused for thinking that she was telling a bedtime story. There was a lilt to her voice.

  It was the lilt of rage.

  ‘Listen,’ Bell said. ‘If Charlie Mathers or anybody else touches me, if anybody tries to take me away from here, I swear to God I’ll kill him. Then I’ll kill the fucking asshole who’s got Carla. I will. You know I will.’

  She wasn’t kidding. Nick had no doubt about that.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He wanted to argue but there was no time for it now. ‘Let’s go, then. But for God’s sake, Bell, be careful.’

  51

  They found his point of entry. A large hole had been knocked in one of the side windows. Myriad chips of safety glass littered the narrow concrete sill like a casual scattering of gems.

  Bell didn’t want to think about how he’d gotten Carla inside, didn’t want to imagine her daughter shoved over this sill, then pushed or rolled or thrown, but in any case forced into a cold, dark, forbidding building by a desperate stranger.

  The sheriff waved Bell back. With a gloved hand, he swept the glass confetti off the sill. Then he motioned at her again, his gesture even more emphatic. The meaning was clear: Stay put.

  He was going in.

  Despite his large frame, Nick Fogelsong was fairly nimble. And what he lacked in flexibility, he made up for in initiative and pluck. He hooked one booted foot over the sill, then he seemed to pause through a silent count of one-two-three, bobbing up and down on the foot that remained on the ground, after which, clamping his big hands on the inside edge of the sill like grappling hooks, he hoisted himself up and launched his big body over and in.

  He landed on the floor inside with a muffled two-part thud.

  Bell was right behind him, making it over the sill much more quickly than he had. She landed on the floor right next to him. The sheriff was breathing heavily, big shoulder-lifting breaths, but part of that might have been a deep sigh of exasperation directed at Bell.

  Like she cared. She was coming along, whether or not Nick approved.

  Carefully, they stood up. Darkness made them blind, blundering. Pressed flat against a wall, standing shoulder to shoulder, Nick and Bell found themselves at the edge of a vast blank space swept by deep indigo shadows. The RC had been gutted multiple times. In the last major rehab, the walls of the smaller rooms in the back, the rooms in which Colby Romer and his staff had once hectored coal miners and day laborers to sign up for payments to buy cars they couldn’t afford, had all been ripped out, leaving a single enormous room anchored by a hardwood floor.

  It was an immense vista of darkness. Looking out across it from their spot along the wall, Bell realized how many varieties of darkness there could be. There was not just one kind of darkness, a single shade; darkness had different degrees to it, different colors and shapes and intensities. It had edges. Some crisp and sharp, some rounded. And some soft, almost plush-looking.

  Bell and Nick inched slowly along, linking up with the shadows. Because the night was so dark, the big windows provided little illumination. Just a ghostly edge of silver, a faint tracing along the floor that hinted now and then of moonlight.

  Bell stopped. She’d seen a flicker of motion at the far end of the room. Heard a rustle.

  ‘Nick,’ she whispered.

  The explosion of a gunshot made both of them jerk and drop into tight crouches.

  ‘Hey!’ the sheriff yelled into the void. ‘Hey, you! We’re here to make a deal. You take another shot at us, buddy, and there won’t be any deals. You hear me?’

  The reply came fast. It had the same peeved, wheedling quality to it that Bell had noted before.

  ‘Where’s my money?’ the man said. His words echoed across the blank space. ‘And my damned car?’

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ Nick retorted.

  Silence.

  The next sound Bell heard was mystifying. It was a low rumble, heavy and metallic, like a box of ball bearings dropped on a sharp incline. Or a bevy of roller skaters on a sidewalk. The noise accelerated, intensified.

  A chair with casters suddenly sparked out of the shadows, twisting and looping as it skidded toward the center of the room. The moment the chair’s path intersected with the frail and shifting print of moonlight on the floor, the moment Bell had a glimpse of its cargo, she cried out.

  Slumped in the chair, chin on her chest, hands tied to the armrests and ankles tied to the chair legs, was her daughter. In the cool bluish wash of what meager moonlight there was, Bell saw the top of her small head, the slump of her narrow shoulders. She looked like a doll. A soft and broken doll.

  Carla.

  Bell sprang up and rushed forward. The chair was a good thirty yards away from her, twisting and spinning, and Bell aimed for it.

  ‘Bell!’ Nick yelled. ‘Bell, stop! Get back here, damnit! I can’t cover you – it’s too dark!’

  She didn’t stop. She didn’t even consider stopping. She ran across the floor toward the rolling chair, running with a speed she’d forgotten that she’d ever possessed, running with an instinctive agility, a special rhythm. A runner’s rhythm.

  Bell caught up with the chair. Grabbed it to stop its twirling. Lunged at the black back and spun it around.

  She’s alive, Bell realized, seeing the small bruised face, and the gratitude that washed over her almost made her stagger, almost made her lose her balance.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Bell said. ‘I’m here. I’m right here.’

  Carla was breathing but she was also, Bell saw, fading in and out of consciousness. Her eyelashes trembled, as if she was trying to open her eyes but couldn’t. An ugly crust of dried blood clung to one side of her head. Bruises bloomed from temple to chin. Her lips fluttered.

  ‘Mom,’ Carla murmured, trying and failing to lift her head from her chest. ‘
Mom, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know I was—’

  ‘Sweetie – shhh, shhh – it’s okay now.’

  Bell began pulling frantically at the ropes that yoked Carla’s wrists and ankles to the chair, trying to get both free at once, her daughter’s hands and legs. Bell squatted down and then sprang up, then kneeled again, yanking at the knots, clawing at them, digging and picking.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ Bell murmured, trying to sound calm but talking fast, too fast, her words sliding together. ‘You’re gonna be fine gonna be fine fine fine.’

  The gunshot screamed past Bell’s ear. She flung away the ropes she was holding and jumped in front of the chair, standing straight up and facing the darkness with her arms spread wide, shielding her daughter.

  A man emerged from the shadows at the back of the room. His arm was fully extended, and at the end of it, riding high in his hand like something he wanted the world to see, was a semiautomatic pistol. He lifted the gun, pointed it at the ceiling, and fired a second time. He’s enjoying this, Bell thought. He wants to scare the hell out of us. He’s in the middle of his own goddamned video game.

  ‘Hey,’ the man shouted.

  Bell’s eyes had grown a little more used to the darkness. She saw that the man had small eyes, sweat-moussed hair, skinny legs and arms. He looked young. Too young. Younger than she’d guessed he would be. Barely older than Carla.

  ‘Hey! You better listen here,’ he went on, still shouting. His voice was hoarser now, roughed-up with bravado. He kept the gun aimed at Bell’s face. ‘You got a choice here, bitch. I can shoot her or I can shoot you. One of you’s gonna die. Simple as that.’ He gave an exaggerated shrug, lifting his bony shoulders and then letting them drop again. Without changing his aim he tilted the gun to one side, and then he put it upright again, as if he was wondering how much damage it could do, depending on how he held it, and he was itching to test it out. ‘Don’t care which. You understand me? Long as I get my cash and my car. Long as I cause enough trouble ’round here so that you keep your fuckin’ noses out of our business.’

  Bell was breathing heavily, too. ‘Let her go,’ she declared. The words came out of her like a growl. ‘You gotta shoot somebody? You gotta do that? Then shoot me. Let her go. Shoot me. Do it. But let her go.’ Bell spread her arms out even wider, to show him that he could do whatever he wanted to do to her. ‘Shoot me now.’

  In the ghostly half-light of the vast room she saw his expression change, his forehead bunching as he squinted. The side of his mouth twitched. She couldn’t read his mind, but she could read his face, which was the next best thing: He figured it was a trick. He was trying to sort it all out, to plot his next move. Who puts somebody else ahead of themselves? That’s what he’s thinking, Bell surmised. He’s wondering what I’m up to.

  He shifted his hold on the pistol, rewrapping his hand around the grip, the gun jittery in his hand. Bravado couldn’t quite hide his confusion. I’ve had enough of this shit – Bell felt she could read it in his tiny eyes, as if the actual words were printed there – and I’m gonna end it now. Right now.

  She saw him line up the gun, double-checking that it was level with her face. She saw him slide his feet just a quarter-inch to the right, getting a better angle for the shot.

  Do it quick, she thought. She couldn’t run, because running would leave Carla exposed. Bell hoped – with a desperation so intense that it felt like a physical force inside her, pushing the breath out of her body – that Carla was unconscious again by now, drifting, oblivious. Don’t make her watch her mother die. Not that. Please. God in heaven – not that.

  Two gunshots smashed through the big open space, coming so close together that it sounded like a single shot and its amplified echo.

  The gun popped out of the young man’s hand as if he’d deliberately flung it straight up in the air. Bell watched as he jerked and spun, his body stuttering from the flat absolute force of twin hits to his narrow chest.

  He crashed to his knees. He rocked sideways, swooning briefly, and then he dropped straight back. His head hit the floor with a sound of agonizing finality, a sound you couldn’t hear without wincing.

  Bell’s head flicked around frantically, seeking the origin of the shots. Was there more to come? Another shooter?

  Nick Fogelsong was striding toward her, moving faster than a man his size had any right to. He’d lowered his sidearm.

  ‘Bell,’ he said. There was a hitch in his voice, a slight quaver. ‘Bell, I didn’t have a clear shot until he moved. I couldn’t take a chance on maybe hitting—’ He swallowed hard. Shook his head. ‘You okay?’

  She couldn’t speak right away. Once again, he’d been there when she needed him.

  52

  Bell kneeled down beside the dying man.

  The first team of paramedics had taken care of Carla, scooping her up and then pushing the gurney rapidly toward the door. ‘She’ll be okay, Mrs Elkins,’ one of the paramedics had called to her, sending the words over his blue-jacketed shoulder, giving her a thumbs-up sign.

  She’d follow the ambulance in Nick’s Blazer – but there was something she needed to do first.

  She leaned over the fallen body.

  Dirty T-shirt, jeans, steel-toed boots. He smelled like sweat and blood and something else, too, something she couldn’t name, something darker. The hands at his sides made plucking motions, as if he were reaching for something, and then it was as if he’d given up on it, as if he’d decided he didn’t need it anyway, whatever it was.

  His eyes found Bell’s face. Stopped there. His own face had relaxed. Gone was the frantic stamp of someone fighting for life, pressing and reaching, hanging on at all costs. His features had smoothed out. He was letting go.

  He was so young. She remembered what he’d said: Keep your fuckin’ noses out of our business. It had to be drugs. It was always drugs. That was the business people like him meant when they talked about business.

  But this kid wasn’t in charge of anything. This kid was an employee.

  She touched his cheek. It was greasy with sweat. She saw the chicken-scratch of acne scars on his cheeks. She’d never seen him before, but she felt like she knew his life story, start to finish. She’d seen a lot of kids just like him.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked him softly. ‘Who hired you? Tell me.’

  There was a gurgling sound. It came not from his mouth but from the wound in his chest, from the blood that popped and sucked in and out of the hole when he tried to breathe. It was a matter of a minute or two now. Maybe not even that.

  His small squinty eyes were still open but they had stopped moving, stopped reacting to light.

  ‘You can do this,’ Bell said. ‘I know you can.’

  She had no idea if he could understand her, or if he would be able to respond, even if he wanted to.

  ‘Just tell me. Your boss – who is it? A name. Give me a name.’

  His lips twitched. He opened his mouth. He was trying. She could see how bad his teeth were, brown and broken off.

  She lowered her head and turned it sideways, so that her ear would be close to his mouth. She felt his breath, smelled its sourness, felt the faint puffs of air tickling the fine hairs along her jawline. Leaning down so close to him, she could smell the hot ammonia stink of urine; his body was sinking, relaxing in a mortal languor, everything was spreading out, letting go. His body was weeping, even if his eyes weren’t.

  She listened. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. She leaned in closer. Her ear was touching his mouth now. His lips were so dry and cracked that they felt like steel wool against the delicate skin of her ear.

  ‘Easy,’ she whispered to him. ‘Slow and easy. Just a name.’

  He tried again.

  She still couldn’t understand what he was saying. There was so little time left. Bell slowly began to lift her head. He had tried. She would always remember that he had tried. In the years to come, she told herself, she would remember that this young m
an – whom she’d started out hating, because of what he’d done to Carla, wishing he were dead, hoping he would suffer horribly – had ended up trying to help. He had failed, but that didn’t matter. He had tried, and she wouldn’t forget him. It was all she could do for him now: promise to remember.

  The paramedics had held back, letting her work, but they were restless. They needed to do their job. She could feel them moving in behind her. She, too, was running out of time.

  The young man’s lips, after falling still, were twitching again. His tongue was moving. What was he doing? It looked, Bell thought, as if he was using the tip of it to touch the places in his mouth where his teeth should be. And trying to speak.

  Once more, one last time, Bell turned her head and lowered it to his mouth, listening. He made a final attempt to say words she could understand. She strained to make out the meaning. And this time – perhaps because she expected nothing, because she’d reconciled herself to the fact that he would die with the secret – she was able to catch the rhythm of his gasps, she could interpret the brief hurried syllables as he hissed them.

  It took less than a second for him to say the name, whispering it so softly that only she could hear it.

  At the sound of it, at the identity of the person who had masterminded all of this sorrow, Bell suddenly felt sick. A black hole opened up in the center of her mind, vaster than this room, larger and darker, overwhelming her with the endless rippling shock of what she now knew, with the immensity of the betrayal.