by Julia Keller
When they first said it, he thought he was dreaming. He was still a little bit high; traces of what he’d snorted were still moving around in his body, tiny flickers of light. He’d gotten beaten up behind that 7-Eleven, after the guys he sold to said they weren’t going to pay him and he tried to argue with them. Bad mistake: They knocked him down—that punch in the eye was aching again—and kicked him in the ribs and belly, and he’d puked on himself. He went into the 7-Eleven and he swiped a few things and he sold them right down the street—you had to know what to take, what would sell in minutes—and he bought some drugs with the money and that would’ve been fine, except that he got greedy.
He went back into the 7-Eleven again and now they weren’t so busy. They must’ve been watching him this time. When he tried to walk out with another bunch of shit tucked up under his shirt the manager was in his face, and the guy was all Calling the cops and Stay right here and I’m so tired of you fucking junkies.
Fine, Tyler had thought. Call the cops. Do it. Like I care.
And then he was not in jail anymore. He was in the back of the SUV. The words about his dad, when he heard them, weren’t real. They couldn’t be real.
The deputy behind the wheel—Tyler thought he recognized him, but you never knew around here, everybody looked like everybody else, just a big dumb blur—said, “We got some bad news, Tyler.” How did they know his name? Anyway, they did.
The other deputy—it was a woman—said, “Your father was shot to death. Do you know anything about that? Anybody you know who mighta wanted him dead?”
Finally the words sunk in. By the time they put him in the dingy room with just the metal table and two chairs, he was feeling it. Feeling the words.
Your father was shot to death.
His dad’s face swam up in his mind, the big head with the little round chin sunk in a roll of fat. Always in a suit and tie, even when he wasn’t at work. These days, at least. It wasn’t like that when Tyler was a little boy: His dad wore sweatshirts a lot back then. And jeans, sneakers. They’d play catch in the yard. Alex Banville might come by and join in; his dad would smack a pop fly and he and Alex would both try for it, elbowing each other out of the way. Laughing. His dad would laugh, too, because usually they’d end up knocking each other down and neither one would get it.
Take your time, boys, his dad would say. Teamwork. That’s the key.
Alex. He hadn’t seen Alex in a while. But he’d seen Sara Banville, Alex’s sister. She was why he’d gone off like he had, matter of fact.
The look on her face. The appraisal. The judgment. Miss High and Mighty. Like she was better than him. Like he was scum. Like they hadn’t grown up in the same damned neighborhood, with her begging him to let her play with him and Alex.
It stung him, that look in her eye. Snooty bitch. So he’d hitched over to Bretherton County. Might as well get fucked up. Might as well.
His memory jerked forward. It lurched until it hit the moment when they’d yanked him out of the Bretherton jail and then he was bouncing around inside the SUV. The fog lifted and the words started to make sense—“Your father was shot dead”—and Tyler panicked. That’s when he started his chant: DekeFoleyDekeFoleyDekeFoley. He’d kept it up, all through the march down the corridor and then the moment when they put him in here.
He’d warned his dad, right? He’d tried to tell him. You do not mess with the Deke Foleys of this world. You do not do that.
The deputy came in once and said, “We know all about Deke Foley.” But Tyler didn’t believe him. And so he kept saying it:
DekeFoleyDekeFoleyDekeFoley
He didn’t know what time it was but it had to be morning by now. Had to be.
Somebody was coming in. The door opened with a buzz and a scrape and it was another cop in a big hat and a uniform. Another woman. Wow, he was surrounded. Where were all the guys? What was this, anyway—Planet Bitch?
That triggered something in his mind: Mom. He hadn’t even asked about his mom.
“How’s my mom? She’s not—?”
“She’s okay. She’s alive.”
“So Deke didn’t—”
“No. She wasn’t home when it happened. As you can imagine, though, she’s very upset. Doctors had to give her a sedative.” By this point the woman was seated across the table from him. Yellow pad in front of her. A pen on it. “I’m Sheriff Harrison. We’ve met before, Tyler.”
He nodded. Whatever. “My dad—what the hell happened? And you know Deke Foley did it, right? He threatened him. Said he was going to kill my dad. You’ve got to find Deke Foley.”
“Why, Tyler? Why did Foley want to kill your father?”
“The file. My dad had a file.”
“What kind of file?”
“About Foley. His operation.”
“I don’t understand,” the sheriff said. She was infuriatingly calm. Why wasn’t she off chasing Deke Foley? Why was she just sitting there?
“What? What don’t you understand?” Tyler was starting to feel the pinpricks running up and down his arms. His scalp was on fire. His gut churned. He felt like somebody was ripping out his toenails, one by one. He felt like they’d sewn ants under his skin. He needed something. Fast. They didn’t get it. He was going to be sick. Unless. Unless they helped him.
Hell, I need a sedative as much as my mom does. Why aren’t they giving ME a friggin’ sedative?
“I want to know,” the sheriff replied, the calmness oozing out of her, “why your dad would’ve had a file on Deke Foley’s operation.”
Tyler sputtered the words like toothpaste he was spitting into the sink. “Because I work for him, okay? I work for Foley sometimes and my dad knew that. He’d followed me. Taken notes. Wrote some shit down. He said he needed leverage. So Foley would leave us alone. Okay? Okay? Now—would you please just let me out of here and go after Foley? Before he gets away? He killed my dad. Dammit—goddamn all of you, every friggin’ one—go get Deke Foley!”
“Any idea where Foley might be? Other than his trailer, which we’ve already checked?”
“Starliner Motel, maybe. That’s where they drop off the shit he sells. Or maybe Skin U Alive. The tattoo place.”
“We’ve checked those places. Anywhere else?”
“Highway Haven, maybe. Around the back. He does a lot of business there.” Tyler tried to think of the names of the other places, places that everybody didn’t know about already, new places, but his mind wasn’t sharp. He needed that file to jog his memory. The file his dad made. The one that got him killed.
“It’ll be in that file,” Tyler muttered. His eye sockets burned. He started to shake. He was close to being dope sick. Damned close.
“Speaking of the file. Any idea where your dad was hiding it?”
“His computer, maybe? He’s got a big one on the desk in his den. And one at work.”
“Any other possibilities?”
“Hell—I don’t know, lady, okay? Why’re you wasting time? Go find Foley. For Christ’s sake—”
“Okay.” The sheriff pushed the legal pad across the table. She did it slowly, which had a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effect on him. He really, really needed something to take the edge off. His whole body felt like it was cramping up, like somebody was trying to fold him up and make him smaller so that he’d fit in a box. The soles of his feet were starting to ache. His nose was running; he could feel the snot on his upper lip.
Like they couldn’t give him a friggin’ Kleenex?
The sheriff was still talking: “Write down everything you just told me, Tyler.”
“What the hell—it’s Deke Foley you ought be worried about and not—”
“Write.”
Tyler grabbed at the pen. Anything to get this bitch out of here, anything to make sure she started tracking down the bastard who’d killed his father.
Killed his father. Something about that idea bumped up against a concept that was already in Tyler’s head.
He remembered. His mother had said that to him,
many times, her voice heartbroken rather than angry: You’re killing your father. You know that, right? You’re killing your father. The things you do—the drugs, the police, the terrible things you bring into this house—you’re killing him. Killing him.
But that was different, right?
She meant it another way. Not this way. Not for real, like what Deke Foley had done. She meant it—what was the word?—symbolically.
He knew his mother hated him sometimes. He’d seen it in her eyes. She loved him, but she also hated him, too. He could sense it.
And speaking of killing—there were times when he knew she wanted to kill him. She probably thought he didn’t know that, but he did.
“Write,” the sheriff repeated.
Tyler realized he’d been just sitting there, holding the pen, staring at his thoughts. Staring at his mother’s face, the face she wore when she was hating him. Which happened more and more often.
Well, he hated himself, too. That was the thing. After a while you didn’t need anybody to tell you what a worthless SOB you were, what a useless, pathetic sack of shit—because you already knew it.
In fact you knew it better than they knew it.
So why didn’t they just shut up?
The sheriff was talking again. “By the way, you caught a break.”
Tyler waited. He wasn’t aware of any breaks. He wanted to peel off his own skin, starting at the top and working his way down to his toes, the strips curling up like potato peels. Might bring some relief.
“That clerk at the 7-Eleven,” the sheriff went on. “He’s not pressing charges on the shoplifting. Minute he heard that you’d lost your dad, he got real sweet and sentimental. Might even give you a free cherry Slurpee and a Slim Jim, next time you drop by.”
Chapter Twenty
“So I invite you to dinner—and lo and behold, you bring dinner with you,” Bell said. She stepped to one side so that her daughter could come in. Carla needed both hands to wrangle the very large, very flat cardboard box from which spicy smells twined and drifted.
“I suppose,” Bell added, “that’s a pithy commentary on my culinary skills.”
“Just figured you might not have time to stop by Lymon’s Market.”
“You figured right.”
Carla continued on past her into the kitchen. She set the box down on the table. “Might need to be nuked in the microwave. Had to get it before I left Charleston.” The one and only pizza place that had ever existed in Acker’s Gap had been called A Separate Piece—the owner was an English major—and it opened and closed in the same month a decade ago.
A few minutes later they were settled in the living room, plates on their knees, Bell scrunched up in her favorite armchair, Carla stretched out on the couch. Those were the same positions they had always taken in here—for TV watching, for casual chats, for arguments, for revelations, for family councils.
“Bet you have a lot better things to do with your Saturday night,” Bell said, “than hang out with your mother.”
“Actually—no. Brad Pitt called and canceled our date.”
“Probably just as well. He’s still hung up on Angelina. You can tell.”
“And all those kids,” Carla said. She made a face. Then she picked a curled-up piece of pepperoni from her slice and popped it in her mouth. “Too, too complicated.”
Bell smiled. God, she loved this girl. Carla was twenty-five now, all grown up, with a responsible job and a full life, but Bell would always think of her as a little girl: a passionate climber of trees, an all-day bike rider, a feisty kid who cherished reading and running and justice—all the things that had defined Bell, too, when she was that age.
She’d put Carla through so much. The divorce. Moving back to Acker’s Gap. Taking the ferociously demanding job of prosecutor, which meant her daughter was on her own for long stretches of her young life.
But the worst thing she’d done to her, the absolute worst, had happened some three years ago, when Bell confessed to killing her father and asked to be sent to prison for the crime.
Bell would never forget the night she told Carla what she was going to do. It had happened right here, in this very room. Her daughter had instantly shut down, like a circuit that was suddenly overloaded. She didn’t cry. She didn’t get mad. She’d simply stared at her mother, her dark eyes reflecting a shocked incomprehension that went beyond mere surprise.
Carla had visited her at Alderson at least once a week, bringing books and magazines, bringing combs, new toothbrushes—bringing anything Bell requested and a lot of things she didn’t. Their conversations about how Bell had ended up there—the act of violence so many years ago, the act of contrition much more recently—were mostly awkward and halting, filled with silences that seemed to grow longer with each visit.
But somewhere along the way they had reached a fragile sort of equilibrium about things, about Bell’s decision to request prison time and the havoc that decision had wrought upon their lives. When Bell was discharged from Alderson, Carla had helped her get this house back in shape so she could return to it. She came on the weekends, driving down from Charleston. She listened to her mom’s stories about Evening Street.
“Heard about the murder last night,” Carla said. “It was on the morning news. God. How awful.”
Bell nodded. “The sheriff has her hands full. Rhonda, too.”
“Did you know the guy who got shot?”
“A little. He was a VP at the bank. Good guy, from what I remember.” Bell took a bite of her pizza slice.
“They’re thinking the wife did it, right?”
“Why would you say that?”
A droll glance. “Mom. Come on. I’m the daughter of a prosecutor—and I used to watch so many Law & Order reruns back in high school that I named my hamsters Munch and Finn, remember? It’s always the spouse.”
Bell laughed. She’d had another porch-to-porch chat with Sally Ann Turner that afternoon. Garnered more details.
“You’re right,” Bell said. “Usually is. But apparently she has an alibi. So does their son, Tyler. He’s about six years younger than you. Did you know him? A lot of drug problems, I guess.”
“I’d need more than that to go on, Mom. Hardly a distinguishing characteristic around here.” Carla shook her head sadly. She’d finished her slice while Bell talked. “So many of the kids I graduated with—they’re lost. Just lost. The drugs. So many.” She shook off the memory. “Anyway, no. Doesn’t ring a bell. This Tyler guy was too many years behind me. Six years—that’s a lifetime.”
Her mother nodded. “Ready for another piece?”
“In a minute. Any other suspects they’re looking at?”
“Sally Ann Turner says no. And her sources are a lot better than mine.”
Carla laughed. “God. Sally Ann Turner. What a snoop. I remember how she’d watch me from that front window of hers. I’d be coming home late from a date—and I’d look across the street and see that curtain moving. There I was—sixteen years old—and I had the neighborhood FBI on my tail.”
“I have to say, though,” Bell murmured, “that those surveillance tapes she gave me were pretty interesting.”
Carla started to react, then relaxed. “Very funny.”
“I thought so.”
“Anyway,” Carla said, “I bet Rhonda wishes Nick Fogelsong was still in town.”
“Pam Harrison knows what she’s doing.”
“Sure. But she’s not Nick.” Carla studied the crust on her plate. “Do you miss it, Mom?”
Her daughter had tried to make the question seem spontaneous, but Bell knew better. Carla had probably wanted to ask her that from the moment she heard about the murder.
“Do you mean working on a capital case?” Bell asked.
“I mean—being part of the team,” Carla clarified.
No point in pretending. “Yeah. I do.”
Carla seemed to be waiting for her to say something else. Bell changed her position in the armchair, tucking the
other leg beneath her rump. She did have more to say.
But not about the murder.
“You know, sweetie—I’ve been wanting to tell you—we’ve never really discussed—” Deep breath. Full speed ahead. “I never wanted to embarrass you. With my time at Alderson, I mean. With any of this. You or your father.”
“What?”
“That’s one of my big concerns. That I embarrassed you. Both of you.”
“Embarrassed me?” Carla said. “Is that what you think?”
“A mother in prison.” Bell’s voice was matter-of-fact. “For murder. And in Sam’s case—his ex-wife. That can’t have exactly made him proud over there in D.C., with his fancy friends.”
“Oh, Mom.” Carla’s voice was firm. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not embarrassed. I’ve never been embarrassed by anything you’ve done. I’m proud to be your daughter. I’ve always been proud to be your daughter. You know that.”
“I used to.”
Carla put her plate on the coffee table. When she spoke next, it was softly and carefully:
“You know what, Mom? This is going to sound corny but I don’t care. Okay? Listen—you’re my hero. You’re Dad’s hero, too—did you know that? No, you couldn’t possibly know that. Because he’d never tell you. But you are. I’m sure of it. I hear how he talks about you to other people. The things you did—coming back to Acker’s Gap, running for prosecutor. Doing incredible things. Important things. Things nobody else would’ve done.” Carla shook her head. “And then when you found out what really happened with you and Aunt Shirley. And your dad. Mom—I can’t imagine the pain you went through. The pain of the truth. And then after all that—to lose Shirley—”
“Okay, okay,” Bell said. “I hear you, sweetie.”
“You still can’t talk about her, can you? Or have anybody else talk about her when you’re around.” Carla didn’t wait for a reply before pressing on. “So you’re wrong. I’m not embarrassed because you went to prison. I mean—I don’t understand why you had to do it and I never will—but I love you and I trust you. I know you could’ve kept it between you and Shirley. I know everything could’ve gone on pretty much the way it was. You could’ve swept it all under the rug. But you didn’t do that. You couldn’t do that.”