Last Ragged Breath

by Julia Keller

  “I wasn’t home,” Diana said quickly. She sniffed, rubbed at her nose. “Wasn’t in Falls Church. I was in Charleston. At a hotel. I’m getting ready to start my own business. Had some appointments there. The state police reached me on my cell.” She blinked a few more times. “I was supposed to drive over and have dinner with Ed tonight. He’s been spending so much time around here lately that he knows all the restaurants. He’s been telling me about this place over in Swanville that has—” Once again, recollection smote her. She gave a small cry and shuddered.

  “Your husband worked for Mountain Magic,” Bell said.

  “That’s right.” By this time Diana had located a Kleenex in her coat pocket and used it to dab at her eyes and her nose. Then she looked up, fixing Bell with a hard stare. “His job is the reason he’s dead.” Steel in her voice.

  “How so?”

  “He’s been here for months now. Scouting locations. Taking investors on tours. Checking on logistics for the construction phase. That kind of stuff.” Diana batted a small hand in the air. Disgust had overtaken her. “If it hadn’t been for this damned resort—this stupid fucking hotel out in the middle of fucking nowhere—” She stopped herself. Still holding the tissue, she rearranged her folded hands on her lap. Bits of Kleenex peeped out between a couple of knuckles.

  “Look,” she said, starting again, “I’m sorry I said that. I don’t mean to be insulting. I know this is your home. I’m just upset, okay? I mean, if it hadn’t been for this job, Ed would’ve been back in Falls Church. With me and the kids. But, no. He just never quits. It’s always been push, push, push. I swear, he’d build the place with his own two hands, if he could work it out. He’s a go-getter. And they need that. Mountain Magic needs everything he’s got. Eddie’s the spark plug and they’re using him up. All the delays. All the problems—my God, the problems.” She gave Bell and Harrison a sharp look, as if assessing their ability to understand the complex intricacies of corporate politics. “They’re way behind schedule, did you know that? And they were supposed to be breaking ground by now. Millions of dollars are at stake. Millions. The investors are getting pretty skittish. So the management team—you want to talk frantic? They’re frantic, all right. And they’ve been coming down hard on Eddie. They’re on his back, day and night. They’re—”

  Diana broke off her sentence to laugh, a laugh veined with hysteria. The sound startled Bell and Harrison; it was not only sudden but also incongruous, here in a cavernous deserted courthouse that still seemed slightly stupefied by the presence of people at this unlikely hour on a weekend.

  And then the grief returned, flooding Diana’s face again, distorting her features. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m talking this way. He’s dead. Dead. Dead.” Pronouncing the word multiple times undid her even more. She slumped over in her seat, face in her hands. When she looked up again, her eyes were red and wet.

  “Are you sure we can’t get you anything?” Harrison said.

  Diana shook her head.

  “Can we drive you to a motel? Or somewhere else?”

  She took a few deep breaths. “I’m fine. Really. I’ve made my own arrangements.” Now she frowned. She’d just remembered something. “Don’t I have to identify the body? I mean, isn’t there, like, some kind of official procedure for that?”

  “It’s been done,” Harrison said.

  “What? By who?”

  “Your husband’s boss. Carolyn Runyon. She was in town for some meetings and when we reached her, she was able to go over to the coroner’s office and—”

  “That bitch. That bitch.” Diana had jumped to her feet, eyes wild and darting. “How dare she. I can’t believe it.” She was choking out the words, practically spitting them. “How dare she do that after—” She whirled toward the sheriff. Her hands were bunched into two tiny fists, and she shook them in Harrison’s face. “You had no right to let that bitch anywhere near my husband’s body. No fucking right. Do you hear me?”

  Chapter Ten

  Just after 8 A.M. on Sunday, as Bell was emerging from the sole hour of sleep she’d managed to extract from the long fraught night, her cell rang. She kept it on her bedside table, within easy reach. She fought through a tangled-up quilt—and some tangled-up dreams—to get to it.

  “New developments,” Sheriff Harrison said. She didn’t bother with preliminaries; there was no “Hello,” no “Good morning” or “How are you?” Just an earnest, straight-ahead voice. A voice with a one-track mind. It was as if no time at all had passed, as if Bell was still at the courthouse, right beside her. As if Bell hadn’t finally gone home, exhaustion having gotten the upper hand, letting Harrison and Mathers deal with Diana Hackel’s grief and anger.

  “Deputy Oakes got back about twenty minutes ago,” the sheriff continued. “Been working all night.” Bell’s last official act before leaving the courthouse had been to prepare the request for a search warrant. Once Judge Tolliver signed it, the sheriff had planned to send Jake Oakes out to scour Royce Dillard’s cabin and grounds. The county owned a set of freestanding halogen lights that could turn night into day. Speed was imperative; even with Royce Dillard under their watchful eye, she didn’t want to take a chance on anyone messing with potential evidence.

  “Hit pay dirt,” Harrison said. “Found a bloody shovel in Dillard’s barn. State crime lab already took it for analysis, to see if it’s Hackel’s blood. The state crew’s just about finished, too. They’ve been collecting soil samples. And that’s not all.”

  Bell waited. She had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, a queasiness she couldn’t entirely blame on the lingering effects of the lousy pasta at Luigi’s. Some cases were easier to solve than others, but this one—well, this one was shaping up to be too easy. If Royce Dillard had killed a man, wouldn’t he have taken a little more trouble to hide the murder weapon? She didn’t know much about Dillard, but presumably he wasn’t a fool.

  Yet the sheriff sounded as if they were already in the home stretch. “We got a call from Rusty Blevins,” Harrison was saying, “about an hour after you left the courthouse. Word spreads pretty quick in this town, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Bell said dryly. “I noticed.” Rusty Blevins was a retired bricklayer who spent his days shuffling through the streets of Acker’s Gap, nosing into other people’s business, adding newly acquired information, bit by bit, to the stories he spread, the same way he’d built up course after course of brick during his working days.

  “Well,” the sheriff said, “turns out he’s one more person who saw Dillard threaten Edward Hackel. And it’s not just hearsay. Rusty took out his cell phone camera and filmed one of their arguments. Took place Thursday afternoon. Right in front of Lymon’s Market.”

  “You saw the video?”

  “I did. Mighty wobbly, but it’s watchable. Starts out with Dillard yelling at Hackel. Something like, ‘You say that one more time, you sonofabitch, and I’ll kill you. Swear I will.’ Then Dillard grabs him and pushes him. Now, Hackel was a big man, so it doesn’t faze him. He comes right back at Dillard. Then Dillard picks up something—some kind of stick or rod or something, it’s hard to tell on the video—and takes a big swing. Barely misses him. That’s on top of the other witnesses, who saw them going at it earlier that day in front of the post office. Sounds like Hackel was maybe following him around on his errands, goading him. Dillard had finally had enough.”

  By now Bell was sitting up on the side of her bed.

  “You say Dillard doesn’t have an alibi?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Lives alone, so nobody saw him from Thursday—when he left Acker’s Gap—to Saturday afternoon, when we picked him up at his cabin for questioning. I’ll wait for the forensic analysis of the evidence, of course, but I believe we have to seriously consider booking him.”

  She seemed to expect a comment from Bell, and so Bell said, “Consider it, yes.”

  They were both quiet for a few seconds. It was a moment of immense significan
ce—not just for the man whose fate was now entwined with the criminal justice system, like a shoelace caught in the gears of a mammoth machine, but also for the human beings who administered that system: the sheriff and the deputies who would collect more evidence and interview additional witnesses, and the prosecuting attorney who would take the information and shape it into a timeline, a narrative, a story that would help persuade a jury to find him guilty of murder.

  Bell never took the process lightly. One life was already gone—the victim’s—and now they were putting another life in play as well.

  Did they have the right person?

  They would do their best to find out. That’s all she knew. And if the evidence supported it, they would charge Royce Dillard with the killing of Edward Hackel and they would do everything in their power to prove his guilt.

  Sheriff Harrison was talking again. “Got one little problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Royce’s dogs. Passel of them out there. Strays he’s taken in to raise. If we end up charging him today, and he doesn’t make bail, he could sit in a jail cell for weeks. Maybe months. Who’s going to take care of—”

  “Call the shelter.” Bell had other things to worry about.

  “Hate to do that. I really do. I’d handle it myself if I could, but I can’t leave the courthouse today. Those neighbors aren’t in the running, either. The wife has allergies.” The sheriff paused. “Because if nobody adopts them from the shelter, then…” She let the sentence die a natural death—as if to remind Bell that the dogs wouldn’t be so fortunate.

  The silence stretched out. Finally Harrison said, “Royce Dillard may or may not be guilty of murder, but those dogs of his haven’t done a darned thing to anybody. Seems a shame for them to suffer.”

  “Oh, hell.” Bell stood up. Sunshine was pushing seriously into her room by now, straining its way through the many-paned window and leaving printed squares of light on the front of the dresser. “How many dogs?”

  “Seven. All shapes and sizes.”

  “Seven! Christ, Pam, what am I supposed to—”

  “It won’t be just you,” Harrison said quickly, interrupting her. “Rhonda Lovejoy volunteered to help round ’em up. Her family’s known Royce Dillard for years, much as anybody can know the man. She’s already started lobbying me—says there’s no way a gentle soul like Dillard could’ve killed anybody. I told her that what I need right now isn’t opinions—it’s temporary homes for seven dogs.”

  Harrison had heard nothing from Bell and so she barreled on, hoping that the lack of a Hell, no! was a positive sign. “The forensic team has already gotten what they need from the scene, so it’s okay to go on out there. Dillard keeps the bigger dogs in the barn. Smaller dogs are in the house. They’re all as nice as can be. Oakes didn’t have any problem at all when he was searching the place—except for the risk of being licked to death, he said. State crew said the same thing. Front door’s unlocked. I talked to Dillard a few minutes ago and he was mighty grateful. Only thing he really cares about are those dogs.” The sheriff spoke hastily, to drive home the idea that Bell had already agreed. “You’re doing the right thing. You know that.”

  Bell groaned. “Isn’t that what we say to suspects when we want them to confess?” She didn’t expect an answer. She didn’t get one. “All right, fine,” she said. Resigned to it now. “Any last words of wisdom before I head out there?”

  “Better take a roll of paper towels. The old bulldog, I hear, has a major drool issue.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The road wore its battered, end-of-winter face. The two-lane stretch that ran from Acker’s Gap into rural Raythune County looked like a boxer who’d refused to stand down despite being seriously overmatched, and so had wobbled under the blows in hopes the referee might finally halt the thing out of pity. Repeated assaults by the ice had left deep slash marks. The constant weight of snow had caused substantial portions to heave and buckle and shred. Time and again Bell had to swerve into the other lane, when her own lane suddenly fell away into a collapsing bowl of road kibble. From the passenger seat, Rhonda Lovejoy resisted the impulse to yell, “Look out!” every quarter mile or so. Above them, the low-hanging ochre sky had a strained, painful look, as if it were holding off a migraine. The sun had retreated behind a bank of haze. Snow-topped mountains brooded in the distance, nursing their own wounds.

  “Another four miles or so and we’re there,” Rhonda said, employing her most cheerful and optimistic voice. She sensed that Bell was wavering. The morning had started out bright and cold but now was just cold, and the chill seemed to press itself against the windows of the vehicle, demanding to be let in.

  “Okay,” Bell said. It was true: She’d considered scrapping the mission at least a dozen times since they’d left her house, and another dozen times once they turned off Route 6 and onto this chunked and rutted road. She’d definitely been tempted to call Sheriff Harrison and say, Come on. I’m the prosecuting attorney, not the friggin’ dogcatcher. SEVEN dogs? What the—?

  Rhonda had arrived at Bell’s house on Shelton Avenue twenty minutes after Bell hung up with the sheriff. She was armed with three dog crates and a red box of Milk-Bone biscuits. Somehow, by virtue of passionate pushing and rhythmic grunting and the sporadic application of curse words, Rhonda had managed to wedge the three large crates in the back of Bell’s Explorer, after which she stepped back and grinned, winded but proud. Rhonda was a heavy woman with generous hips and a regal bosom, and this morning she was dressed in a manner totally out of sync with the weather conditions. For a week now, daytime temperatures had fluctuated between the freezing mark and a notch or two below, and she was decked out in canvas sandals, a diaphanous powder blue skirt with a gauzy pink T-shirt, and a black velour vest. No coat, no hat, no gloves, no boots. No sense, either, Bell wanted to say, but restrained herself. Still, though, if Royce Dillard’s dogs got away from them and went tearing across the winter-clawed countryside, Rhonda would be quite a sight going after them in that getup.

  “Three dog crates,” Bell had said, eyeing the contraptions jammed up inside the rear windshield, “and seven dogs.” She stood on the sidewalk next to her assistant, arms crossed, car keys digging into her fist. She was in a bad mood, the bad mood that generally descended after she’d granted a favor under duress and then felt the opening pangs of severe regret. “I’m no math whiz, Rhonda, but I can tell you that—”

  “Not a problem,” Rhonda said, cutting her off. “I stopped by the jail this morning and talked to Royce about his dogs, so I’d know who’s who. The crates’ll hold the bigger ones—Goldie, Ned, and Utley—and Connie and Elvis can ride in the backseat. They’re real well behaved.”

  “Which still leaves two more.”

  “I can hold PeeWee and Bruno on my lap up front. They’re Shih Tzus. Well—Shih Tzu mixes, anyhow. Maybe Pekinese. Maybe something else. Hard to say. They’re pretty small—that’s all I know. Anyway, I’ve already lined up temporary homes for just about everybody. We can deliver ’em on our way back into town. Like toys from Santa.”

  “Christmas is over.”

  “Treats from the Easter bunny, then,” Rhonda countered with a game grin. “Coming a little early this year.”

  Off they went, the cages jangling and rattling in the back of the Explorer despite the snug fit. The commotion would’ve given Bell a headache, if she hadn’t already had one. As the Explorer headed toward Royce Dillard’s property, the height and density of the woods increased. They were in the least inhabited part of Raythune County now, on land that was generally left to do whatever it wanted, and what it wanted was to host trees and other varieties of vegetation that twined and looped until they created a nearly impenetrable living filigree. There was a wildness here, a wildness that started at the edges of the road and grew heavier and more menacing as it progressed toward the mountains, like a mild preoccupation that grows into a dark obsession.

  The bleakness of rural Raythune County somet
imes got to Bell, working its fingers deep into her mood. This was the territory of her childhood—not this specific road or batch of woods, but land so like it that the longitude and latitude didn’t much matter. This was territory she felt as much as saw. It kindled in her a certain melancholy, reminding her of an abusive father, of a dirty trailer in which she and her older sister Shirley had struggled daily for their very lives, and finally, of the night when Shirley murdered their father and burned down the trailer. Bell was ten years old at the time. Sometimes she could swear she still smelled it: not the odor of a trailer turning to ash, but of the past itself changing shape, becoming heat and smoke. She had escaped, yes. So had Shirley. But for both, escape cost them dearly.

  Six years ago, Bell had come back to Raythune County. No one forced her to. Quite the contrary: Everyone in her life at the time called it the worst idea in the world. The phrase “career suicide” appeared in more than one startled, admonishing e-mail from her Georgetown friends. She’d shaken her head. Told them—in her thoughts, at least—to mind their own damned business. And did it anyway. Once back here, she had decided to run for prosecutor, a job that often entailed trips back into the very landscape over which her memories rose like the charred arch of a ruined cathedral.

  Landscape like this. Tangled woods, a disintegrating road, a sense of isolation and despair that drifted in and out of the reaching branches and trailing vines and rotting stumps like an insinuating whisper. The whisper of a story told over and over again, until even the rocks and trees seemed to have it memorized.

  “Turn here,” Rhonda said. First words she’d spoken in at least ten minutes. She, too, had settled into silence as they made their way beneath the gray-black valance of the day.

  Bell braked. There was nobody behind them—they’d not seen another car since leaving the county road—so she didn’t bother with a turn signal. “Where?”