Sorrow Road

by Julia Keller

  “So does he know her? His daughter, I mean? Does he know who’s visiting him?”

  Arlene shrugged. Then she grinned. “My medical degree’s a little outdated, hon, but okay, here goes. Based on what I see around here, the older memories stick. It’s the newer ones that don’t get stored. The older stuff—that’s generally all they do remember. With old Bill—well, I can’t say. But he’s not that far along. It’s weird that he can seem to remember stuff from forty, fifty years ago. I mean, ask him to tell you today’s date, and he’ll look at you like you told him to speak French. That’s understandable. But the older things—he ought to remember them. Then again, like I said, memory’s a tricky thing.”

  Carla needed to wind this up. She had three other interviews to do before she left the Terrace. But she had one more question. She’d been trying to figure out a way to ask Arlene about Travis Womack without arousing the woman’s suspicions. “A friend of mine went to school with a guy who works here,” Carla said. “Or at least he did work here, last time she checked. She was hoping to get in touch. Guy named—wait, was it, I don’t know, maybe Tom? No—it was Travis.”

  “Travis Womack.”

  “Yeah. That’s it.” Carla was terrified that she might be blushing. Her face did feel a little hot. But then again, Thornapple Terrace was overheated, like every old folks’ home, right?

  Arlene gave her a listen, sister look. “Honey,” she said, “I’d put you at about twenty-one, twenty-two years old, if you’re a day. Travis Womack has got to be pushing fifty. How could a friend of yours—somebody your age—have gone to school with him?”

  Carla was too embarrassed to answer, so Arlene patted her knee. “Had a crush on him myself a while back, hon. Don’t blame you a bit. It’s those eyes. Deep as a river.”

  * * *

  Bell sat at her desk. The courthouse was busier today than it had been for almost two weeks. Along with the slightly better weather had come an influx of people with business to conduct here, business they had put off because of the bad roads but could put off no longer. Property tax bills were due; the grumblers with jury duty summonses were entitled to a fair shot at wheedling their way out of it; parking tickets had to be argued over. As Bell had learned when she first undertook this job seven years ago, a county courthouse in a small town was a sort of secular sanctuary, a place where everyone eventually came to plead their case to a higher authority.

  Arranged across her desk were the three pages of the coroner’s report for Harmon Strayer. At the bottom of the first page, on the right-hand side, was the requisite sketch of the front and back view of a human body. Typically the coroner would have marked what he found on the body he was analyzing, and where: entrance or exit points for bullets or knife wounds, bruises, any sort of abnormalities.

  On this report, the sketch was bare. Nothing at all had been marked.

  In the general summary at the top of the page, under the heading Strayer, Harmon Arthur, aged 89 years, in the box labeled Cause of death, was this: Complications from late-stage Alzheimer’s.

  Next she shuffled through a stack of papers at her left elbow. She drew out the coroner’s reports for the deaths of Polly Delaney and Margaret Jacks. She found the same omission: The front- and side-view sketches of a human body had not been filled out. And the cause of death was listed as late-stage Alzheimer’s.

  She called out to Lee Ann, who sat at her desk in the outer office: “Can you get me Buster Crutchfield on the phone?”

  Crutchfield, the Raythune County coroner, sounded jovial. “Ever since they invented those dang fax machines, I don’t get as many visitors as I used to,” he said. “You oughta come by and see me now and again, Miss Belfa. Pick up the paperwork in person, instead of relying on those fancy boxes of yours.” Crutchfield was seventy-two, and he liked to play the curmudgeonly Luddite. Truth was, he kept up with the latest advances in pathology, and his lab was as up-to-date technologically as his budget would allow. “How’re you doin’?”

  “Fine, Buster. Hey, I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How well do you know the Muth County coroner?”

  “Ernie Burson. Well, lemme see. I guess he’s doing a mite better. Still at the rehab place, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ernie had a stroke about four months ago. Not back to work yet, but he’s hopeful.”

  “So who’s been doing his job?”

  “The load’s shared. County calls upon any physicians in the area who have a free moment or two and are willing to pitch in.”

  Securing the phone between her ear and an upraised shoulder, she turned to the final page of each coroner’s report. She had not noticed it before, but each one had a different scrawled signature—and none of those signatures read: Ernest T. Burson, MD.

  “Those helpful physicians might very well have been rushed, then,” Bell said. “Busy with their own practices. And maybe inclined to wrap up a case as quickly as possible.”

  “I suppose so, yes. Although I can’t imagine that any reputable physician would do shoddy work just because—”

  “It happens, Buster,” she said, cutting him off. “You and I both know that. A big caseload, a lot of extra work—and the next thing you know, you’re not quite as rigorous as you ought to be. It’s not incompetence. It’s fatigue and expediency.” And it happens to prosecutors, she reminded herself, as often as it does to physicians. It happens to everybody.

  “Is there something I can review for you?” Buster said.

  “I’d appreciate it. I can fax over the paperwork in a few minutes. If, that is, you don’t mind the use of newfangled technology.” Buster, she knew, expected to be teased. If you did not tease him, he would think you were mad at him.

  “I’ll overlook it this once.” He chuckled. Then he was serious again. “Give me a quick sense of what I’m looking for.” He and Bell had worked together for many years, and they had learned to shuttle quickly from jocular to grim as the situation required.

  “Three elderly people, all with late-stage Alzheimer’s as well as other significant health issues—diabetes, cardiac and respiratory issues. All died at a care facility over in Muth County within the last few months. Given those circumstances, how diligent would a coroner be about searching for evidence of foul play?”

  Buster slowly took in a long breath of air and then expelled it, even more slowly.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Belfa. But if you quote me in public, I’ll deny it. If word got out that I was casting aspersions on the professionalism of my colleagues—”

  “Not asking you to testify in open court, Buster,” she said, interrupting him. “I’m just asking for your opinion. Off the record.”

  “Okay, then. You’re right. They wouldn’t be looking. Now, if it was something big and obvious—ligature marks on the neck or any evidence of physical assault—sure, they’d see that and write it down. But overall, no. No, they wouldn’t be quite as attentive as they might be if the deceased were young and healthy.”

  “What would slip through the cracks?”

  Buster paused. He was thinking about it. “Well, with a helpless older person, I’d probably be looking for evidence of suffocation. Mucus at the back of the mouth. Trace fibers around the nose and mouth area, from whatever was used to restrict the airway—a pillow, say, or a scarf.”

  “To look for those things, though, you’d first have to suspect that a crime had occurred.”

  “Yes. But it’s too late, Belfa. If you’re trying to build a case, that kind of evidence would have to be collected at the original autopsy. Once the body is released to the funeral home, you’re screwed. And if the deceased was cremated, then you’re doubly screwed. And even if the body wasn’t cremated, you can’t go back and—”

  “I know, Buster. I know.”

  “Does this mean a murderer got away with it?”

  “No,” Bell said. Her next words would confuse him, but so be it. “She didn’t.”
/>   * * *

  Carla had just settled into her Kia. The car was very cold—not surprising, because it had been sitting in the Thornapple Terrace parking lot for the past three hours. Before she left, however, she took a few seconds to savor the day.

  She was still excited from the interviews she’d completed this afternoon. Her mind was busy with ways to organize the material. Sure, they could just post transcripts of the individual interviews, one by one, but she also hoped to create other ways to search the archive: train stories, say. Or courtship stories. Stories about the land itself—rugged land that had nourished the people here for hundreds of years. Yet the very things that made that land beautiful were also the things that doomed those same people to poverty and despair. These mountains protected you, but they also isolated you.

  The people she’d interviewed knew that—knew it in their bones, because the mountains were their bones, the strong framework that underlay all that they did, all that they might do. And yet when outsiders wrote about Appalachia, they assumed that the people here were oblivious to the tragic ironies of the place, to the fact that its major industries—coal mining, and chemical plants that damaged fragile rivers—provided a living, but not a life. Only a half-life. The shadow of a life. The truth was, of course, that the residents knew that very well. They did not just know it—they lived it.

  Those were just a few of the things that Carla had learned in the course of her work thus far. She looked out the windshield at Thornapple Terrace. It was a graveyard for the past. At times today, she’d had to turn away from the specter of blank-eyed residents who seemed to float slightly above the corridors, helpless and hapless, borne aloft by all the memories that had fallen out of their minds but still followed them, murmuring elusive hints about things they used to know. But the interviews with staff members had rescued Carla, reminding her of why she was doing this: So that even if the individual person lost her memory, there would still be a place for those memories to live.

  No Travis sighting. That was the single dark spot on the day. She had really, really hoped to come across him. She still did not understand why she was so drawn to the guy, and maybe the mystery was part of it—she did not even know what kind of music he liked or how he took his coffee—but she wanted to talk to him again. See that lean face and its contemplative expression as he thought about what she’d just said. And then he’d say something, too, something wise but not pretentious.

  The ding! of an incoming text brought her back to the fact that she was sitting in a freezing car in a quasi-deserted parking lot at dusk. First she turned on the engine, and then she checked her text.

  It was from Brad: U sure u got the name right? Travis Womack?

  She texted back a thumbs-up emoji.

  His next text sort of annoyed her: Double-check name, K?

  Her return text started out with a red-faced, frowning emoji, followed by this: Right name. What’s up?

  There was a small delay. Brad, she imagined, was staring at his tiny keyboard, thumbs curled protectively around it, before he typed his message:

  Only 1 Travis Womack in any database: Dead 2010. Motorcycle crash

  Three Boys

  1950

  Harmon Strayer sat in a booth at the Double-D Diner on the main thoroughfare that ran through Norbitt, West Virginia. He sipped at his coffee, trying to make it last. She was late. He did not want to order another cup—he had hoped to have this over and done with in minutes, and if she came and they talked and he’d ordered a second cup, he would have to wait until it was brought to him before he could leave. If the talk was not going well, if he needed to leave, those extra few minutes might be awkward.

  He did not look appreciably different from the way he had looked five years ago, when he came home from the war. He was still handsome. He had not put on weight, the way Vic had. Vic was always pledging to lose it. He’d pat his belly, rub it with a satisfaction that made Harm wonder why he wanted to get rid of it. The belly seemed to bestow on him a certain confidence as he walked through the world. Ballast. And it did not affect his overall looks, either. He was still Vic Plumley, dark and dashing and nonchalant.

  “Hi.” A woman’s voice.

  He looked up. She stood next to the booth. She’d dressed up for him. She was wearing a white dress with red polka dots—a summer dress, and this was February. But she knew how much he liked her in this dress, because he had told her so; her breasts looked as if they would be spilling out of the top of it any minute. She had put on makeup, fixed herself up. He felt a pang from this evidence of her efforts. Her eagerness. And in the middle of the afternoon, too. Just because he had called.

  “Hi,” he said back. He gestured toward the seat across from him. “Take a load off.”

  She slid in, folding her body neatly to do so, tucking the back of her dress under her bottom. He could not help it: He pictured her ass naked, the way it looked when she was walking away from the bed to get dressed, and he was still lying there, raised up on one elbow, savoring the sight of her round, saucy ass. A bit of a bounce to it when she walked.

  He shook his head, hoping the memory would slide out of there and leave him alone. Not a good way to begin this kind of conversation.

  “Glad you were free today,” he said. “To meet me.”

  “You could’ve come by the house,” she said, and they both knew what that meant. “Frank’s out of town all week. Some kind of a sales conference. Somewhere. I don’t care, really. As long as he’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” Harm said, because he could not, in the moment, think of anything else to say. The picture of her, bare-assed naked, would not leave. He did not think he could get through this unless he got rid of the image. “Look, Vivian—”

  “Oh, I don’t like any sentence that begins like that!’ she said, with a merry, twitchy, nervous little laugh. “That can’t be good! ‘Look, Vivian’ sounds like one of my teachers back in grade school.” She flashed him a naughty smile. “Have I been a bad girl, Mr. Strayer? Have I been a bad, bad girl? Are you going to have to take me over your knee and—”

  “Stop it, okay?”

  The irritation in his voice startled her. Her eyes widened. He thought, for a terrifying moment, that she was going to cry.

  But it was the opposite: She was annoyed. She had gone from flirtatious to angry, just like that. Her rapid-fire mood changes had, once upon a time, intrigued him, aroused him. She was like her own little weather system, compact and self-contained; you never knew what you would be dealing with, from minute to minute, and the need to react to that, to turn on a dime, had excited him.

  “Okay, then,” she said. Neutral now. “What’s up?”

  What’s up? That was her way of saying: Two can play at this game. She sounded like a bored gas station attendant leaning in the driver’s window. Check your oil, too, bub?

  “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” There. He’d said it.

  She did not blink. She did not shriek. She said, “Well, that’ll be tough. This is a small town. We’re bound to ‘see each other,’ as you put it, every now and again.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She looked out the window. It was a gray February day. February was not a good month for Norbitt; the dingy color of the sky seemed to leak into the town itself, into the old buildings and the streets.

  “Yeah.” She turned back to look at him. “I know what you mean.”

  The waitress showed up. Harm waved her away. “Still making up our minds,” he said to her, and he smiled, not wanting her to get the idea that he was in the midst of any kind of confrontation here, because news of that would be all over town in an hour. The waitress smiled back. More importantly, she left.

  “So,” Vivian said pertly. “How do you want to do this?”

  He was not prepared for that. “I don’t know what you—”

  “I mean,” she said, “do we just say good-bye right here and now, or do I get some sort of explanation? Did I do somethi
ng wrong, Harm? Did I pester you, ask you for a lot of expensive gifts? Demand too much of your precious, precious time? Was that it? Or was it something else? Was it—” She stopped. She snapped her fingers. “Is this about that time you couldn’t perform, poor baby, and I was a bit on the needy side, and so maybe I said something that you found a little demeaning, a little insulting and belittling, you big, strong war hero, you…”

  “Vivian.” He knew about this side of her, the cruelty, the shallowness. He had seen her unsheathe it in front of other people. And when he saw that, he had known it was only a matter of time until she turned on him, too. He understood how selfish she was. In the beginning, it had fascinated him, that selfishness. She was completely devoted to her own pleasure. Single-minded. She would straddle him sometimes, furious with desire, clenching the hair on both sides of his head, moving forward and back with glassy-eyed abandon. The memory of those times could drive him mad.

  They had started up before he left for the war. He was fifteen. “I could go to jail for this,” she’d whispered to him, at exactly the right moment, and that functioned as a kind of aphrodisiac for both of them, all she was risking. It was just a few times. During his years away, they did not keep in touch. There was too much at stake, with Vic right there beside him, in close quarters.

  When he returned, they had resumed it. Harm was now engaged to Dixie Chambers, a girl he’d dated in high school, but that did not matter. That had not changed things one bit. Dixie was a nice girl. She occupied one section of his life, a small, solid, high-walled space that he had carefully prepared for just such a thing: the nice girl he would marry. Vivian Plumley was not a nice girl, and the space she occupied was big and flimsy and makeshift.

  Did Vic ever know? Harm was not sure. Sometimes, Harm thought, yes, yes, he knows. He must know. But other times, he thought: no, absolutely not. Vic did not have much to do with his parents these days. He was out of their house. He ran his life as he saw fit. The idea of Frank Plumley laying an angry hand on Vic now—Vic was six feet, three inches tall and, even with his newfound gut, powerful and intimidating—was laughable. More like the other way around. You could easily envision Vic Plumley knocking the crap out of his old man.