by Julia Keller
He nodded. He believed her. He couldn’t find the words, but he knew she understood what he was thinking and feeling.
“So what’re you so upset about?” he said. “Give me a hint.”
Darlene sighed a long, tormented sigh. “It’s—”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, hell,” Lenny said. He started to get up from the overturned paint bucket he was sitting on.
“Wait,” Darlene said.
He waited.
“It’s just that,” she said, “I think I’m in love with Stephanie.”
He repeated the name, but he put a question mark in his voice: “Stephanie? From school? That Stephanie?”
“Yeah.”
“But she’s a girl.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
* * *
When Darlene got home that afternoon, she went straight out onto the rickety back porch. Her father was sitting there, on an old rocker. He did shift work at Cray-Loc Plastics and he was working nights now. He was usually home in the afternoons when Darlene banged into the house from school, dumping her jacket and her books, hunting food.
Today she wasn’t thinking about food.
Now that she had told Lenny Sherrill, she had to tell her dad. But she was terrified: How would he respond?
She sat down in the lawn chair next to him. The chair was old, and the fraying white plastic strips that constituted the seat were so worn out that they turned mere sitting into high adventure: Would this be the moment they gave way?
Darlene wiggled a bit in the chair, testing her luck. So far, so good.
And then she told him. She told him about how she cared so much for Stephanie that it hurt sometimes.
“If you’re wondering what I’m thinking, sweetheart,” her father said, “it doesn’t bother me one little bit. You’re the smartest person I know. You know your own mind. Better than anybody else does, that’s for damned sure.” A few more trips back and forth in the rocker. “I’m not saying you’ll have an easy time of it. Especially not here in Norbitt. But you know what? To hell with Norbitt. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, you do what you’re called to do. And you do it proudly.”
She wanted to cry from relief and joy, but that would have been embarrassing, so she didn’t. She was quiet for a moment, savoring his words. She had heard stories over the years about how her dad had been a nasty guy in his youth, a thief and a brawler and a bully. Selfish and mean. Back then, people said, Harm Strayer was the kind of boy you never turned your back on, if you knew what was good for you. So what had changed him? The war, maybe. That’s what some people said. Others said, No, it was after that. Marriage and fatherhood: Those were the things that tamed him.
Darlene did not know about any of that. All she knew about was the man who sat in the rocking chair beside her right now, his big hands on the hand rests, his scuffed work boots set flat against the floorboards of the old back porch. All she knew was that he loved her and believed in her. The sun was just starting to go down, and as it left this world, it flung a strange shadowy beauty across their tiny backyard. Even the shed out by the alley, pieced together by her dad from cast-off lumber and picked-up nails, looked, in this light, mysterious and radiant.
She told him about the grade she had gotten on her English essay: A-plus-plus. The teacher, she proudly added, had called her essay “exceptionally argued, worthy of a legal scholar.”
“So maybe you’ll be a lawyer,” Harm said.
“Maybe I will.”
And then they talked about all manner of things, from football to politics to whether or not it was possible to outrun a bear to her father’s long-standing plans for adding a bathroom to the first floor of the house. It had always been this way with Darlene and her father. Hours would go by, and they’d still be talking. Their only awareness of the passing of time was the gradual darkening of the sky, and sometimes they missed that clue, too.
At one point Harm’s voice grew soft and thoughtful. He said, “Do me a favor.”
“Sure, Dad. What?”
“Remember.”
“Remember what?”
“This moment. This. You and me being here. Together.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” He paused. “That’s everything.”
Chapter Thirteen
There was always a period of stunned silence in the hours before a major snowstorm came ripping across the mountains, as if the sky itself was shocked to be reminded of its power—the power to make life on the ground a misery. The silence was like a held breath. Everything was suspended in expectation.
This morning was one of those times.
Bell took note of the ominous quiet. She had an uneasy feeling about the day ahead. She had been up and dressed since four, and now she stood on her porch, breathing in the cold, cold air. The sun was somewhere behind the eastern sweep of the mountains, deciding if it really wanted to make the effort today.
Her neighbors’ houses were gray lumps set against the slightly lighter gray of the horizon. Snow had been cleared repeatedly from the street and the sidewalks, but never went away entirely, because modest snowfalls had arrived continually on the heels of the major ones. Snow defined the world at this time of year, outlining the contours, keeping a hand in.
She had not slept well. In her head she had assembled some of the puzzle pieces, but that only meant she now knew more profoundly than ever just where the blank spaces were, the places where knowledge ran out and she had to rely on intuition—or as Nick Fogelsong liked to call it, on guesswork. And intuition was not the same thing as knowledge. Having to rely on it was like switching to an auxiliary gas tank during a flight emergency, and discovering that the second tank was dry.
She needed help, and she knew it. So she had called the people she trusted most in the world—well, two of them, anyway, because Nick was off the list, given his civilian status—along with Ava Hendricks. Bell asked them to come by her house today. She promised two things: a lot of coffee and a lot of questions. The time the meeting would commence depended on how soon Ava could make it to Acker’s Gap from Washington, D.C. A colleague of Ava’s had agreed to take over her most pressing cases for the next few weeks, leaving her free to travel to West Virginia at will.
The silence this morning was a bit unnerving, Bell thought. Usually she relished this kind of natural pause in the world’s busyness; usually it was excessive noise that made her anxious. But today, as faint white shoots of almost-daylight slowly materialized in the sky, she was struck by how long this winter had lingered, and how tired she was of snow and ice and cold.
And the questions: She was tired of those, too. Damned tired.
* * *
Carla was not sure what she ought to be feeling. Hurt? Duh. Betrayal? Well, that was a tricky one. Could you be betrayed by someone who had never made any sort of promise to you in the first place?
Finding out that Travis Womack was not Travis Womack had jolted her, to be sure. But after thinking about it a while, she decided that maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world—somebody giving her a phony ID. How many phony IDs had she handed out when she was sixteen or seventeen years old, to gain admittance to some bar that Kayleigh Crocker insisted would be so much fun? Or to buy a hard pack of Marlboros, so that she could cough her lungs out and look cool while doing it? Plenty, that’s how many.
In a sense, then, Travis-or-Whoever-You-Are had done what she’d done, only for different reasons. Maybe he had a few drug arrests under his real name. That was always a possibility. She wanted to know. No: She had to know. Because if he needed help, she wanted to be there.
And so she had green-lighted the plot.
It had started with spending the night at Kayleigh Crocker’s apartment. Carla had her mother’s blessing—well, not exactly her blessing, and not exactly her permission, either, because she did not really need that, given the fact that Carla was twenty-one. What she had was
Bell’s reluctant-sounding “okay” on the phone. What she had was her mother’s toneless acknowledgment that Carla had informed her of her plans.
It was a practical choice, though. Logistics-wise. Kayleigh lived with her father—her parents had been divorced a long time, and her mom was always either going into rehab or just coming out, so Kayleigh’s dad had been the custodial parent since Kayleigh and Carla were in middle school—in an apartment in Wyatt Heights, a small town between Swanville and Acker’s Gap. Last night, Carla had her first appointment with a new therapist, one whose office was in Swanville. The therapist’s name was Blake Eiler. Her dad had set it up, just as he’d promised the court he would. For the first week, Eiler told her, they would be meeting daily.
Daily. Carla could not believe what she had just heard. But apparently the man was serious, because when she said, “What!?” in a voice that combined outraged disbelief with you can’t make me rebelliousness, he had ignored that altogether and handed her a slip of paper with the next several appointment times.
One session a day, for the next seven days. Including Saturday and Sunday.
Carla had explained to Bell, during their somewhat tense call, that Kayleigh’s apartment was a lot closer to Swanville. So it made sense that Carla could go there after her appointment, and then, the next morning, return to Swanville to hear more words of wisdom from Dr. Eiler, who, Carla further informed her mother, possessed eyes that seemed to pop out of his head on little springs and a speaking voice that sounded like a car engine with a belt going bad.
Spending last night at Kayleigh’s had worked out fine. They were not really friends anymore, not like they’d been in high school, and that made it easier. The intensity was gone. They were just people, not best friends with so much at stake in every revelation.
But the proximity of Wyatt Heights to Swanville was not the only reason Carla had cooked up the plan to stay with Kayleigh.
Wyatt Heights was just up the road from Thornapple Terrace. If Carla was spending the night with Kayleigh, her mom would not know her timetable. And would not know that, after leaving her therapist’s office, she would be driving back out to the Terrace. She was determined to track down Travis-Whoever and find out what he was hiding—and why.
* * *
“The truth doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean?” said Ava Hendricks. She was clearly disturbed by what Bell had just said to the people assembled in her living room. In addition to Ava, there was Rhonda Lovejoy and Deputy Jake Oakes.
“I mean,” Bell said, “that it’s irrelevant. Every person in this room will back me up on this, Ava. It doesn’t matter what we know—even if we know beyond any doubt that it’s true. All that matters is what we can prove.”
Ava did not look at all satisfied with the explanation. She sat back against the chair that Bell had brought in from the kitchen to supplement the furniture in her living room. Deputy Oakes had offered her his spot on the couch, but Ava refused. Bell was not surprised. Ava Hendricks was the human equivalent of a hard-backed chair: reliable but rigid.
It was just after 3 p.m. The snow had continued to fall with an almost machine-like relentlessness, but it arrived so gracefully—on soft, lovely flakes that wafted to earth like feathers—that it was hard to take it seriously. Local weather reports were using phrases like “total accumulation may top twenty-six inches or more,” but it was hard to associate blunt numbers with the delicate white ballet outside Bell’s living room window.
“That’s why I wanted everybody to come over—away from the courthouse, away from all the distractions,” Bell said. “I want to go over what we know so far—what we know, not what we suspect or what we hope for. And then, Ava, I’d like you to give us a summary of the letters you brought. Darlene’s letters. I know they’re very personal, but I’d never ask you to share them unless I thought they were significant to our work here today. And I assure you that my staff is discreet.”
As she said the word “discreet,” Bell shot a quick meaningful look at Rhonda. Rhonda would be able to translate that look as skillfully as a simultaneous interpreter at the United Nations: Nothing said here could join the pile of gossip that Rhonda routinely assembled throughout the day, which she then sorted into categories and shipped out to interested parties.
Rhonda nodded, but she did not have to. Bell knew she would respect the request.
It was good to have Rhonda back. Last night Grandma Lovejoy’s vital signs had improved. She was removed from the ventilator and was now breathing on her own; she would start physical therapy soon. It would be a long, slow road, but as Rhonda noted, her grandmother was stubborn and prideful, traits that usually presaged a successful rehabilitation. Her first complete sentence to her granddaughter had been about her friend Connie and Marcy Coates: Any progress? Rhonda knew she was referring to the investigation into their deaths. She squeezed her hand and said, “You bet.” The old woman smiled.
Rhonda did not waste the days at Grandma Lovejoy’s bedside. She had made calls, scribbled down information, kept in touch with Jake Oakes. She had tapped her network of sources. She was ready to contribute.
First, though, she looked around the living room. “Where’s Carla?”
“She’s with a friend,” Bell said. “She’ll be home later. Okay, let’s get started. Jake, what do we have?”
Deputy Oakes looked down at the clipboard on his lap. “Got the results back on that paint chip from the state crime lab. That paint has only ever been used on one model—a 1998 Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler. I checked, and there are one thousand, four hundred and twenty-seven of them still traceable.”
“That’s going to be a hell of a search,” Rhonda muttered.
“We don’t have to go door-to-door,” Jake shot back. The two of them had turned fact-gathering into a competitive sport, and Rhonda’s comment was the equivalent of trash talk. “Or garage-to-garage, in this case. I put every single name associated with the accident—the paramedics who responded at the scene, the staff at the Tie Yard Tavern, the employees of the gas station that sold the deceased her gas that day—into a database to see if there were any hits. Any link between anyone associated with the deceased and a name on a title or lease for an eighteen-wheeler.”
When she heard the phrase “the deceased” repeated twice, Bell looked at Ava. No reaction.
“And?” Rhonda said.
“I got one.” Jake thumped the clipboard twice with a flat hand, like someone giving a head-pat to a spelling bee champion. “Felton Groves.”
“The trucker who found Darlene,” Bell said. “Who called the cops to the scene.”
“You got it.” Jake did not look triumphant. “I should have checked into him more thoroughly at the time. But he was helpful and cooperative—and you know what happens when somebody’s friendly. You skip things. You don’t mean to, but you do. It’s the nasty ones who make us meticulous. Good thing the bad guys don’t know a surefire method of fooling cops—be nice.”
“What’s the connection?” Bell said.
“That’s where I come in,” Rhonda said. “Jake asked me to do a background search on Felton Groves. Because—and I’m quoting you accurately here, right, Jake?—Jake’s about as good in front of a computer as I would be in the driver’s seat of an eighteen-wheeler.”
“Connection,” Bell said.
“Groves is broke,” Rhonda replied. “That accident he told us about, down in Georgia? The one where he says he came across a van in the ditch and a bunch of dead kids scattered around? He didn’t ‘come across’ it. He caused it. Went left of center. Served twenty-four months for involuntary vehicular manslaughter in Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. Once he was out, that’s when his troubles really began. He was sued by relatives of the dead family. He’s paying off a four-million-dollar settlement for wrongful death. The only jobs he can get now are short-hop hauls in undesirable locations—like, say, the mountains around Blythesburg.”
“So this tells us,” Bell sai
d, “that Groves was an ideal candidate for recruitment—by somebody who wanted to make sure Darlene didn’t make it down that mountain. Groves needed money. And he had the kind of vehicle that could easily run a smaller one off the road. Having Groves be the one who found the body was a nice touch—it threw us off the trail.” She pointed at Deputy Oakes. “Jake? Anything else?”
“Plenty.” He went back to his clipboard. “Got that warrant and pulled Lenny Sherrill’s cell records. He’s made ten calls over the past three months to the number you told me to check.”
Bell looked at Ava. “It was your home number in D.C.”
“So Lenny Sherrill,” Ava said, “was the one making the threatening calls to Darlene. Her old friend from Norbitt.”
“Looks that way. He had his number blocked so it wouldn’t show up on your caller ID. And he must have used a voice changer.”
“But why would he threaten her in the first place?”
“Still working it out,” Bell replied. She gestured toward the briefcase Ava had set on the floor next to her chair. “Would you mind sharing with the others what you found in Darlene’s letters?”
Ava shuffled through several before she came to the right ones.
“Harmon wrote to her constantly,” she said. “College, law school, her first years as a federal prosecutor—all through that time, he’d write these wonderful notes. When she was lonely or sad or scared, she’d read them. Over and over again. And she kept them all.” Ava paused. “She told me once that if it weren’t for her father’s letters, she would never have gotten sober. He never knew about her struggles with alcohol—she was very careful to keep that from him—but his letters saved her life.”
She tapped the top letter on the stack.
“This is one of the last letters that made any kind of sense,” she said, “By this time, Harmon was suffering fairly significant symptoms of Alzheimer’s. I explained to Darlene what would be happening. How things were going to progress.” Ava paused again. Her pauses had a kind of gravity to them, as if, even when she was not speaking, important concepts were being conveyed.
