A Killing in the Hills (34 page)

It turned out, Carla discovered from Lonnie as soon as she slid in the car, that the guy who hosted that party – the one she’d been asking him about – might know the guy she was looking for. It wasn’t a for-sure thing, but maybe. They ought to drive back out there, Lonnie suggested, back out to Eddie’s, and check it out.

Like, today. Now, even.

Why the hell not?
Carla had thought. There wasn’t much else to do.

It was a chilly, overcast day. The sky was white. It was the kind of sky that could easily unzip into a snow sky.

Carla leaned her head back against the car seat. She knew how much Lonnie cared for her. He showed it all the time, even though he wouldn’t name it, wouldn’t push it, because he had a good idea that she wasn’t into him – not in ‘that way,’ anyway. She’d made that clear. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could ever be confused about. Still, he hung around.

Lonnie was a puzzle. He did plenty of bad stuff, all right. Hell, he was no saint. She knew that. There was a lot of smallness in Lonnie Prince, a lot of pettiness and laziness and spite and drift, but there was something else as well. Something bigger. Something she’d sensed about him. Lonnie himself probably didn’t know the extent of it.

And neither did she. Not really.

38

Lonnie twisted the wheel of the Sebring, forcing it to head down a dinky, unpaved lane.

‘Eddie lives here,’ he said. ‘Last one on the right.’

A bunch of scrubby one-story houses in various stages of disrepair were scattered up and down the street. The houses looked to Carla as if they’d landed here by crazy accident, after being picked up and flung around by a storm in some other part of the county. It made her think of that scene in
The Wizard of Oz
, when the farmhouse goes flying and lands with a disgusting splat on a pair of legs in funky shoes.

If another storm came along tomorrow, she guessed, these same houses would be scrambled all over again. Because in this kind of place, nothing lasted. Everything was tentative, temporary. You couldn’t count on anything. Not even more of the same.

As Lonnie drove slowly down the road – the pace was a must, because the potholes were humongous – Carla looked left and right. Gutters dangled at crazy angles off the front edges of these houses, looking like broken arms. Two of the houses were dark wood, while the rest were swallowed up by dirty aluminum siding. The wood-sided ones needed a paint job. None of them had any grass in the front yards. There were no sidewalks.

Even though it was cold, Carla pushed the button to roll down her window.

She didn’t see any people. Only two of the houses even had mailboxes. She could hear, coming from the backyard of one of the houses, the constant barking of a dog. The animal just kept barking, with no variation in frequency or tone. And no letup.
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
. She thought it just might be the loneliest sound she’d ever heard.

This, she knew, was what most of Raythune County – and surrounding counties, too – looked like. This was what her mother was talking about when she said that parts of West Virginia were so depressing that you couldn’t think about them too much.
Unless you’re planning to do something about it
, her mother always added.
Unless you’re going to help
.

If you just stare, her mother told her, it becomes another kind of pornography. Poverty porn.

‘This is where we were? This is where that party was?’ Carla said.

She peered at the last house on the road, a small brown one squared off by a rusty chain-link fence. The house had a peculiar tilt to it, almost as if somebody had tried to shove it over but quit halfway through the chore, out of boredom. Most of the windows were covered with newspapers. The top half of the front door was taken up by a storebought
NO TRESPASSING
sign, black with orange fluorescent letters. A black car with no rear fender and a smashed back window was parked in the side yard.

‘Yeah.’

Lonnie switched off the engine. It shuddered and shimmied and then emitted a final fart-like
pop!
like it always did when he shut down the Sebring. Carla had long thought it was pretty weird that, as much as Lonnie knew about cars, as many hours as he spent fiddling with other people’s cars, he drove such a rattletrap mess himself. He wouldn’t take the time to fix it up.

‘I don’t remember it being this – well, you know, this crappy,’ Carla said.

‘Hey,’ Lonnie said. ‘It was, like, one
A.M.
when we got here that night. Pitch black. You couldn’t see the neighborhood or nothing. But, hell, Eddie’s okay. He’s good people. Don’t matter what his zip code is, ain’t that right?’

Lonnie checked his face in the rearview mirror – that was the last thing he did before he left his car, every time – and then he wiped at both sides of his head, licked his lips, and opened his door.

‘Let’s go, girl,’ he said, calling to her through the driver’s-side window. ‘Come on, now.’

It was Lonnie’s fake-casual voice. She knew it well. Like when he called her sometimes and asked if she wanted to hang out, and when she said no, he acted as if it didn’t matter, as if it had just been a whim, anyway, when the truth was, she knew, he’d been counting on it. Had planned his whole night around it.

‘Eddie’s waiting for us,’ Lonnie went on, still in his fake-casual voice. ‘If anybody knows who that guy is, the one you’re so hot to find, it’s Eddie Briscoe. You can tell Eddie what he looks like. Maybe draw a picture of his face or something, like them police sketch artists. You know. Anyway, Eddie’ll fix you right up.’

Carla hesitated, her hand on the knob. She was starting to feel funny about this. Not scared, just a little funny. Tingly, even.

Like this was a place she’d been destined to see just one more time, before she left West Virginia for good. Like in some strange way it had been waiting for her to return, this house that sort of heaved to one side, this house that was all pinched-looking and half-pushed-over and dilapidated.

It was a dump. No question. But she’d spent time here, according to Lonnie. She’d been to a party here. She’d danced here. Hell, she’d probably thrown up in the woods over there, in that crooked mess of stumps and brush she’d just noticed, off to the side.

‘Come
on
,’ Lonnie said. The fake-casual thing was gone now. ‘Let’s go, okay? Can we, like, go inside now? Since we’re here and all?’

She had a thought that made her feel a little softer toward Lonnie, but also made her pity him even more: He wanted to help. He got off on the idea that he was helping her. They were, like, partners. Solving mysteries. Like Sherlock Holmes and that other guy. The Jude Law guy.

Her cell rang. Carla rooted through her skirt pocket, pulled it out, looked at the caller ID.

Not now, Mom
.

She stuffed it back in her pocket.

The weather had been warm the night of the party, almost sultry, and Carla also seemed to remember that she and her friends – drunk, laughing, happy,
God I love you guys you’re the best I really really mean it
– had stumbled out of the house when they got so woozy from dancing that they knew they were going to hurl.

Her cell rang again, interrupting her memories of party night.
Mom
, Carla thought with a wince,
there’s a
reason
they invented voice mail, okay? Kinda busy right now
.

When her mother found out why she was here, she’d forgive Carla for every single lame thing she’d ever done.

Once again, she let the call go.

If things worked out today, if this Eddie guy talked to her, told her how to find the guy, the guy who might be the killer, then she’d be helping her mom big-time. She’d get that name. Her mom and Sheriff Fogelsong would track him down. Arrest him.

And Carla wouldn’t feel like such a loser, such a flake.

Everything would be okay again. She’d make it okay.

She opened the car door.

Part Three

39

When Bell returned from her late breakfast at Ike’s, Lee Ann Frickie was waiting in the hall outside her office. Bell could tell by how she looked – eyebrows arched expectantly, one tiny fist perched on the narrow hip of her wool skirt – that her secretary wanted a private word before Bell went into the office.

‘You have a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘Deanna Sheets.’

Because the door between their offices was almost always left open, Lee Ann knew what Rhonda Lovejoy had reported that morning. About Deanna Sheets and Bob Bevins.

‘Been here about fifteen minutes,’ Lee Ann said. ‘I told her you’d be right back.’

‘She just showed up?’

Lee Ann nodded. She was wearing a white sweater with pink piping along the collar and cuffs and a plaid navy skirt. Dangling between her small breasts was a dime-sized silver pendant hanging on a silver chain. Lee Ann touched the chain, sliding her thumb and index finger up and down the tiny linked segments.

There was something she wanted to say.

‘Lee Ann,’ Bell said, ‘what’s going on?’

The secretary glanced around with scrupulous care, to make sure no passersby were close enough to overhear. She had a habit of looking at the world across the top of her silver-rimmed glasses, imbuing her gaze with an air of judgment, along with a faint air of droll amusement. While she fingered the necklace, her eyes continued to rove up and down the short corridor.

‘What is it?’ Bell repeated. She tried to keep the push out of her tone, but she had a lot to do today. She had a lot to do every day – and Lee Ann, of all people, knew that.

‘Well,’ Lee Ann said, ‘she’s pretty wrought up. That’s all.’

‘Did she say what she wanted?’

‘No. Except to talk to you.’ Lee Ann stopped looking around the courthouse corridor and swung her gaze back over to Bell. ‘Something’s not right.’

Bell knew what she meant, but she wanted to hear it from Lee Ann. Her secretary had superb instincts about people – about their motives, their moods, their secrets. About when they were telling the truth. And when they weren’t.

‘Can’t quite define it,’ Lee Ann added, ‘but this whole Sheets case, start to finish, just bothers me. All this conversation about knowing right from wrong. About actions and consequences and such.’

‘You don’t think Albie Sheets should stand trial for murder?’

‘That’s not the part that bothers me.’

Bell waited.

Lee Ann shook her head and waved her hand in front of her face, as if the gesture might clear away the troubling thoughts that had stalled there like a wad of fog. ‘Oh, heavens. Ignore me. I’m just an old busybody.’

‘No, you’re not. You’ve been working in a county prosecutor’s office for a hell of a long time. You know when things feel right – and when they don’t.’

‘I appreciate that, Belfa.’ Her secretary was one of only a few people who could call Bell by her given name and not receive a scowl in return. The scowl was so severe that most people probably would’ve preferred a slap.

‘Okay, then,’ Bell said. ‘Let’s go see what’s on Deanna’s mind.’

Deanna had perched herself on the edge of the couch, knees locked, long-fingered hands clasped on top of those knees, purse tucked at her side. She wore a powder blue cotton sweater and black polyester trousers, and even in those ordinary clothes, she was a knockout.

The sweater stretched across the swell of her substantial breasts. Her face had a startling beauty to it, a combination of pale delicate skin and vivid features – full lips, high cheekbones, and deep-set, dark blue eyes – and it brimmed with a kind of energy, like an interesting substance in a glass vase you might hold in your hand, turning it slowly, slowly, so that it catches the light at different angles.

Back in the trailer, Deanna’s beauty had not been so readily apparent. Her beauty first had to detach itself from its surroundings, work its way forward. It had a journey to make. Here, though, Deanna Sheets looked luminous.

What is it like
, Bell wondered as she sat down behind her desk,
to possess this kind of beauty and to live in a trailer in Raythune County, West Virginia?
Did Deanna Sheets ever feel as if she was trapped inside one of those snow globes she collected, separated from the real world by a scrap of plastic on a tiny red pedestal, stuck in a scene that never changed?

‘This is highly unusual,’ Bell said. ‘I assume you know that, Ms Sheets. I’m prosecuting the case against your brother. Nothing you say to me is privileged – that is, unlike your conversations with your brother’s attorney, Ms Crumpler, whatever you say to me is not necessarily confidential. I can’t guarantee that I won’t—’

‘No, Mrs Elkins.’ Deanna shook her head. ‘That’s not it. No lawyer stuff. That’s not why I’m here.’

Bell waited. She had decided not to bring up Bob Bevins just yet. She didn’t want Deanna to know what they knew.

‘I was wondering—’ Deanna faltered. She turned her head to the side, toward the big window. The drapes were closed, however, so there was nothing to see.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want nothing bad to happen to Albie.’ Deanna added a few kittenish sniffles. Her chin trembled.

Bell handed her a tissue. Then she sat back in her chair again. She was careful not to be too consoling, too soon; when people felt better, they stopped talking.

‘Something bad
is
going to happen to Albie,’ Bell said. ‘Chances are, he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life.’ She paused. ‘Does that seem unfair to you?’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Elkins?’

Deanna blew her nose. Bell waited until she’d finished to reply.

‘I mean, is there some aspect of this case – some fact about what happened that day in the basement of the Bevins home, when Tyler was killed – that you want to talk about?’

Deanna looked surprised. She blinked and shook her head.

‘You know all about it,’ Deanna said. ‘Albie was just playing around. Him and Tyler. It was an accident. Two boys in the basement.’

‘Is that the truth, Deanna? Is that what really happened?’

‘Why’d you say that?’ Deanna said, her voice rising. ‘What are you talking about? We told you! We did! Over and over again! It was Albie and Tyler. Albie and Tyler, playing in that basement.’ The young woman stared at Bell with big eyes. ‘You know what happened that day.’