Fast Falls the Night

by Julia Keller

  “And she’d give it to Tammy. Meaning Tammy might be armed and ornery.”

  “Bingo.”

  The next several miles passed in silence. Bell spotted the sign for Charm Lake. She made the turn.

  “I’m still surprised by today,” Bell said. “The OD numbers, I mean.” The apartment complex—a sagging gray square—was visible at the end of the road, past the trailer park and the log cabin with the German shepherd chained to a dead tree in the front yard. The dog had given up; sitting impassively on his skinny haunches, he watched them pass with a resigned look in his kohl-ringed eyes.

  “Really,” Rhonda said.

  “You’re not surprised?”

  Rhonda shrugged. “After it’s all started, it’s too easy to say, ‘I saw this coming.’”

  “But you did.”

  “The way things have been going around here—yeah, I kinda did.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something? So we could’ve stopped it?”

  “Because there is no way to stop it.”

  Bell nodded. Point taken. She parked her Explorer in the dirt lot in front of the complex. The other two cars in the lot were both marooned on cinder blocks, surrounded by a scattering of rusty engine parts and hand-squashed beer cans.

  Before they made it to the metal stairs clamped to one side of the building, Ross Parker drove up in his state-issued white Ford Fiesta. He was a short, frail man with center-parted brown hair and a slight limp. He wore a blue plaid suit jacket, a white shirt, and what looked suspiciously like a clip-on necktie. His black glasses rode too low on his nose. The entire time she was speaking to him, Bell had to fight off the urge to use her index finger to push the glasses up where they belonged.

  “You gals ready?” he said.

  Bell was not overly fond of the word “gals,” but her years in Acker’s Gap had taught her to pick her battles.

  “Yes,” she said. “And just what is it we should be ready for?”

  Parker’s expression was a lofty and superior one. “Well, with Tammy Kincaid, you just never know.”

  “That’s helpful,” Bell murmured. She intended to murmur it too low for him to hear—but if she had miscalculated and he did hear, she didn’t really care.

  Parker led the way, followed by Bell and Rhonda. As they climbed the metal stairway, Rhonda said, “What’s your instinct, Ross? You think she’s dealing again?”

  “Well, with Tammy Kincaid, you just never know.”

  “Any suspicions of any other parole violations?” Bell asked.

  “Well, with Tammy Kincaid, you just never—”

  Bell interrupted him. “Got it. You just never know.” Her irritation with Parker had reached a fine peak.

  The door of apartment A-3 was scuffed and dented. Parker gave it four hard knocks, winced, and then pulled back his fist and cradled it in his other hand.

  The woman who opened the door did not match Bell’s expectations. She wasn’t large or muscular. She was petite, with wide brown eyes and soft features. She didn’t look tough; if anything, there was a daintiness about her. Her brown flannel shirt was tucked into olive khakis. She had raised the collar of the shirt to cover, as best she could, the tattoo on her neck. Alas for that effort, Bell could see that it was a Chinese character, with swirls that reached from the bottom of her ear to her clavicle.

  “Parker,” Tammy said. She gave him a grim little smile. “Another one of your surprise visits.” She seemed more amused than apprehensive. “Come on in. I see you brought some friends with you this time.”

  Parker didn’t respond. Nor did he introduce Bell and Rhonda. Tammy waved them into the small, tidy apartment. It featured thrift-store furniture and a window that framed a distant view of the river.

  In one corner sat a particleboard desk. Seated at the desk was a woman with long dark hair that fell around her face like a thick drape. Her bare feet were stacked on a cardboard box. Three books were open on the desk, next to a can of Diet Sprite. She looked up at them with a slightly foggy expression, a pencil between her teeth.

  “Hi, LaVerne. How’s it going?” Parker said.

  Tammy stood between him and LaVerne.

  “Leave her alone,” Tammy said. “You’re here for me, right? Not her.”

  Parker snickered. He turned to Bell. “Told you. Plenty of sass in this one.”

  Bell ignored him. “Tammy, I’m Belfa Elkins. Raythune County prosecutor.” She waited to see Tammy’s eyes change at the word “prosecutor.” They didn’t. “And this is Rhonda Lovejoy, assistant prosecutor.”

  “Lovejoy,” Tammy said, musing on the name. “I dated a Lovejoy once. Way back in high school. Before I got a clue that boys ain’t my thing. Tommy Lovejoy. You related?” Before Rhonda could answer, Tammy laughed. “Of course you are. You look just like him. Whatever happened to him?”

  “Married with six kids,” Rhonda said. “He’s my cousin’s son. Lives over in Gallipolis. Doing real good.”

  “Well.” Tammy smiled. “Glad to hear it. Nice guy.”

  “You’re right. He is.”

  For a moment Tammy seemed lost in the shadowy thickets of the past. Then she recovered. “What do you all want? Me and LaVerne’re kinda busy.”

  Parker, annoyed at being ignored, folded his arms aggressively. “Busy doing what? I got a right to ask you that.”

  Tammy nodded. “Damn right you do. And I’m happy to tell you. LaVerne’s studying for her GED. I’m helping her. I got mine at Lakin. That’s what those workbooks are for.”

  Parker didn’t say anything. It was not the answer he had expected.

  “How about you?” Tammy said, turning to Bell. “You got some questions for me too, looks like.”

  Time was short. Bell opted for the direct approach.

  “Did you sell heroin today?”

  LaVerne answered first, kicking away the box and popping up from her chair. “Blake told you that, right? It’s a damned lie. We ain’t left this apartment in two and a half days. Been right here studying. Why the hell would you—”

  “Hold on, honey,” Tammy said. “They can ask me whatever they like. But the answer’s no. I don’t do that anymore.” A ruminative expression crossed her face. “Pretty unusual for two prosecutors to come all this way to ask me something that Parker here could’ve handled. What’s going on?”

  “Bad batch of heroin,” Bell said. “It was cut with carfentanil. Know what that is?”

  “I was in prison for fifteen years. Yeah, I know what that is.”

  “So you’re not dealing anymore. Which means you had nothing to do with the heroin sold in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like she already told you,” LaVerne put in, her voice huffy with outrage.

  “So I guess,” Parker said, taking a step forward, “you won’t mind a random drug test. Just to make sure you’re not involved with that life anymore.”

  Tammy shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

  She had called his bluff. He didn’t want to bother today. He would have to make a call, arrange for the test, deal with the paperwork. He gave her a glare. “Any firearms on the premises?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “You got no problem with me searching the place, in case I don’t feel like taking your word for it?”

  “No problem at all.”

  Another bluff. He wanted to go home. Bell could smell the laziness on him. It was like bad aftershave.

  “Anything else?” Tammy said. LaVerne had retaken her seat. She flipped through one of the workbooks with brusque impatience. Translation: I need to get back to my studying. Tammy stood behind her, hand on her shoulder.

  “Any idea who might’ve sold the heroin?” Bell asked.

  Tammy shook her head.

  “Or where they’re getting it these days?”

  Another head shake. “I’ve got nothing to do with that shit anymore. When I first got out—yeah, maybe. Maybe a little. I was pretty mixed up. But you know what I
realized? It wouldn’t do a damned thing for me except put me on the road to a nice long prison sentence. No reason in the world to go back to it. And a real good reason not to.” She moved her hand on LaVerne’s shoulder, rubbing it. LaVerne put a hand on top of Tammy’s hand.

  Bell looked at Rhonda. Over the years they had handled many court cases together. They had perfected their own brand of wordless communication.

  What do you think? Should we believe Tammy when she says she’s not dealing?

  That’s what Bell was asking her assistant. Rhonda’s instincts about people were excellent; she could tell when they were lying or even thinking about lying. She could sniff out a masterful bluff. One look was usually all she needed. She could read the truth right off someone’s face.

  And maybe there was something else going on here, Bell thought. Maybe, just this once, they were actually witnessing a happy ending. Maybe love really had changed Tammy Kincaid. Surely the probabilities of life—even life in Acker’s Gap—meant that, once in a blue moon, somebody changed for the better, cleaned themselves up, took hold, moved forward. Like the statisticians say: If you flip a coin and it comes up heads a hundred times in a row, what are the odds it will come up heads on the hundred-and-first flip?

  Fifty-fifty.

  So there was always hope, no matter what had gone before.

  “I think we’re ready to go here, Bell,” Rhonda said. It was her way of saying: Yeah. Trust her.

  That was good enough for Bell. “Do me a favor, Tammy,” she said. “If you run into any of your old friends, you warn them, okay?”

  “Not likely. I don’t hang out in those circles anymore. But I hear you.”

  Bell didn’t bother to say good-bye to Parker. She and Rhonda headed to their vehicle, he to his. The sun was riding low on the horizon. Darkness was almost here.

  “Okay,” Bell said, as she swung the Explorer back onto the main road. “Raylene Hughes. Where does she live?”

  Rhonda checked her cell. “She moves around a lot, but according to what Jake found out, her last known address is over by the park.”

  Back when Bell and her sister were growing up in Acker’s Gap, that had been a fairly nice area. Houses set back from the street. Big yards. Climbable trees. But not anymore, she knew. Vacant lots outnumbered the houses now. The houses left behind were tumbledown shacks with no curtains on the windows, but with big satellite dishes squatting in the front yards. A lot of the houses had been chopped up into separate apartments.

  “Hell of neighborhood to pick to raise a kid in,” Bell said.

  “Not sure Marla Kay’s much of a priority.”

  Rhonda

  7:42 P.M.

  She had heard a story once about a judge in Manchester, England, and a drunk driver who shows up for sentencing. The judge asks the drunk why he continues to do this to himself. He’s ruining his life. He’s been to jail many times. He’s lost his job, lost his family, lost his self-respect, lost all of his money. So why in heaven’s name do you keep drinking? the judge asks.

  Your honor, the drunk replies, it’s the quickest way out of Manchester.

  The story stuck with her. When she was asked why so many people around here used drugs and alcohol, Rhonda always wanted to say, Well, it’s the quickest way out of Acker’s Gap.

  She thought about the story again while they walked to the front door of the dramatically shabby house in which Raylene Hughes and her daughter lived. The windows were covered in dirty plastic. The aluminum siding was sliding off in horizontal hunks. Leaking bags of trash leaned lazily against one another on the porch. There were four black mailboxes nailed crookedly to a strip by the door. The second one from the left had a Post-it Note with HUGHES scribbled on it, and below that, NO. 2.

  The door was unlocked. They stepped into a grimy foyer with a checkerboard tile floor. It smelled like last night’s supper. Four doors, two on the left, two on the right, led to apartments carved out of what had once been a single-family home.

  Bell knocked at No. 2.

  Nothing.

  She knocked again, harder.

  Still nothing.

  This time Bell used her I-mean-business knock, which always drew Rhonda’s admiration. If you heard it from inside, you’d probably deduce that the house was on fire and a mass rescue was under way.

  When the door finally opened, Rhonda was stunned. And perturbed.

  Raylene Hughes looked just as she had in high school. Didn’t somebody say that you paid for your sins with your face? Raylene had certainly sinned—but her face was beautiful. Creamy skin, plump lips, visible cheekbones, and all of it surrounded by bouncy, shiny hair that was straight out of a shampoo commercial. She wore a white silk robe. The matching silk sash was coming loose at her waist, as if it had been tied in a fumbling hurry. There was a dizzy, drowsy quality to her movements; she’d been roused from sleep, or from something else.

  Dammit, Rhonda thought. She didn’t curse often, not even internally; she tried to save it for a special occasion.

  This was that occasion.

  Would a wrinkle or two have been too much to ask for?

  In addition to her flawless face, Raylene also hadn’t put on a single pound since senior prom. Truth was, Rhonda had not attended that prom; the only guy who asked her was somebody she didn’t much like and even back then, she’d had her pride. So she said no. But she knew how Raylene had looked that night because there was a picture of her in the yearbook. She was stunning.

  Was there no justice in the world?

  Funny thing for an assistant prosecutor to ask, Rhonda thought. The answer was clearly no. No, there was no justice in the world.

  Before Raylene could speak to them, she was bumped out of the way by a brown-bearded lummox of a man who had been standing behind her. He frowned aggressively. He took up all the space in the doorway.

  “The fuck you two want?” he said. He’d clearly put on his flannel shirt in a hurry; it hung open, exposing a hard round belly that was shiny-wet with perspiration. The drawstring of his gray sweats was untied. He was barefoot.

  “We’d like to talk to Raylene,” Bell said.

  “She ain’t got no time,” he said. He started to close the door in their faces.

  “Wait.” Raylene leaned forward. “Hang on, Corby. I know this lady.” She peered at Rhonda. “Acker’s Gap High School, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, yeah. I remember you,” Raylene said. “You hung out with Sandy Blanton, right?”

  Rhonda shook her head. “No. That was Ellie Trainor.” Another overweight girl in their class. To Raylene, they were interchangeable.

  Corby was getting restless. “We got things to do,” he muttered. “You two git on outta here.”

  Bell flashed her ID. “I’m Belfa Elkins, Raythune County prosecutor. This is Rhonda Lovejoy, my assistant. We have an emergency, Miss Hughes, and we’re hoping you can help us save some lives.”

  Raylene had grinned at the “Miss Hughes,” but the grin faded by the end of Bell’s sentence. “Save lives? What the hell?”

  “Look, I don’t have time to be coy here,” Bell said. “Somebody’s selling bad heroin. We’ve had a record number of overdoses and even some deaths. We know you’ve dealt drugs in the past. If it’s you this time—if you sold heroin in Acker’s Gap in the past twenty-four hours—we need to have whatever’s left. And we need to know where you got it. Right away.”

  “Drugs? Drugs?” Raylene said. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about. I’m a mom. I wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up, Raylene,” Corby said, at a volume that was just short of a yell. “You shut your mouth and you keep it shut. You don’t got to say nothing to these bitches.”

  The commotion had an effect. The door to the apartment next door opened. An elderly woman stood warily in the threshold, one hand on the inside knob, the other on her walker. She looked exhausted and alarmed. She was wearing two sweaters and a pair of brown corduroy pants—odd for Aug
ust, Rhonda thought, but maybe not if you were over eighty, which she obviously was.

  “Hey, there,” Raylene said, waving at her neighbor. She addressed Bell again: “That’s Dreama Gaddis. She can tell you.”

  “Tell us what?”

  “Tell you that I’ve been right here at home for the past twenty-hour hours. Me and Marla Kay. And Corby, of course.” She giggled and flinched. Apparently Corby had pinched her rear end, because Raylene reached around behind her back and smacked at his hand. “Corby, behave yourself! You’re a real bad boy!” Back to Bell: “I couldn’t have been selling no drugs. We were right here. All of us.”

  Bell turned to the old woman. “Mrs. Gaddis?”

  “Yes.” Gaddis looked as if she would rather do anything else in the world than supply an alibi for Raylene Hughes, but she was compelled to speak the truth. “Yes,” she repeated glumly. “Walls are thin as paper.” She narrowed her eyes at Raylene and Corby. “You don’t want to know how much I can hear. The two of you—it’s a disgrace.”

  “And nobody stopped by?” Rhonda said. She wanted to keep the old woman focused. Maybe Raylene’s customers came to her, instead of the other way around.

  “No,” Gaddis answered. “And I keep a good watch. Always.” She brightened. “Wait.” She pointed triumphantly at Raylene. “You and the girl left this morning. You were gone for at least two hours.”

  Raylene nodded. “I was getting ready to say that. I did leave. I went over to Lymon’s. Lots of folks saw me there. They can tell you I didn’t sell no drugs.”

  Rhonda felt a renewed sense of frustration at the fundamental injustice of the universe. Raylene’s little scam was getting her off the hook.

  They had no choice but to leave. They had no warrant to search Raylene’s apartment, and no probable cause to get one.

  If it wasn’t Leo Smith and it wasn’t Tammy Kincaid and it wasn’t Raylene Hughes, who was selling the tainted heroin? Somebody new, perhaps. A local dealer they didn’t even know about yet.