A Killing in the Hills

by Julia Keller

  Ruthie gave her a quick hug. It wasn’t an answer, but it would have to do for now. Even through Ruthie’s jacket Bell could feel how thin she was, how sharp and prominent the bones were.

  ‘Let me know if there’s news,’ Ruthie said. ‘And listen, Bell.’

  She leaned close to her friend and dropped her voice, although the volume on the TV set in the next room was plenty loud enough to ensure privacy. ‘Carla’s going to be okay. She’s really just a scared little girl right now. She can’t show you that, though.’

  Bell nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to her. But it didn’t. Not really.

  The door closed.

  She turned and walked slowly back into the living room. Carla stood in front of the couch, blanket foaming around her feet, arms folded across her small chest, head bowed, breathing deeply. She wasn’t watching the TV set. The noise pouring out of it was ludicrously loud. Bell knew better, though, than to reach for the remote control to shush it. That would be a declaration of war.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to talk a little bit about today?’ Bell said.

  She timed her question to arrive in the space between the braying honks of a sitcom laugh track. Bell didn’t recognize the show. They all seemed alike to her these days. Big oily vats of dumb jokes, mostly about sex.

  Carla lifted her head and gave her mother a savage sideways glare that mingled contempt and incredulity. ‘Talk about it? You want me to talk about it.’ She snorted. ‘I watched people get their freakin’ heads blown off today, Mom. Is it okay with you if I try to, like, forget about it for just a little while?’

  Bell wanted to embrace her daughter, same as she’d done earlier that day, wanted to pull her close, to kiss her and tell her how much she loved her, cherished her. But she also knew that such gestures would be, under the circumstances, exactly the wrong moves to make.

  ‘Okay,’ Bell said. ‘Sometimes talking helps, though.’

  Carla’s eyes blazed. ‘Really.’ She cocked her head to one side. Deciding. Yeah, she’d do it. ‘So why,’ she said, challenge in her voice, ‘don’t we ever talk about Shirley? She’s your sister. Your only sister. But you don’t even bring her up, Mom. We’ve never discussed it. Not ever. All I know is that she’s in prison. I know what she did – and I only know that because Dad told me – but I don’t know why she did it. Or why we don’t ever go visit her. If talking is so all-fired great, Mom, how come we never talk about Aunt Shirley?’

  In her head, Bell counted off ten seconds.

  She added another five.

  ‘That has nothing to do with what happened to you today,’ Bell said quietly. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Fine.’ Carla spat the word.

  Bell moved toward the staircase. ‘See you in the morning,’ she said neutrally. She couldn’t risk any more conversation. Not now. Not after the topic Carla had introduced.

  Both of their bedrooms were on the second floor, but Carla sometimes slept on the couch on weekend nights, falling asleep in front of the TV. This was going to be one of those nights.

  Carla listened to her mother’s steps on the stairs.

  She knew the sounds well, and could hear them even through the firehose blast of noise from the TV set. The old house creaked and sighed and moaned at the slightest touch, signaling the discontents of its age and its state of disrepair. They were updating it, but had to proceed gradually, bit by expensive bit, as they could afford it. The new wiring installed last month had carved a significant hole in her mom’s savings – for all the good it had done.

  Carla clicked off the TV set. She needed to focus. The sounds grew fainter as Bell reached the second floor. Carla was aware of her mother’s movements overhead as she stopped in at the bathroom – there was a strangled mini-swoosh as water forced its way through a tottering series of old rusty pipes, the brief scream of ancient faucets being turned on and off – and then Carla could hear her walk into her bedroom. An old house was better than a GPS tracker.

  She listened.

  Silence.

  Good. Her mother was in bed now. Or at least not bothering her anymore.

  Carla fell back onto the couch. She drew up her bony knees until they were close to her face. She thrust that face into the small crook of her arm, trying to muffle her sobs in the soft cotton of her longsleeved pink T-shirt. She’d been determined not to reveal – not to her mom, not even to Ruthie – what she was feeling. The panic. And the confusion. And cold dread.

  She’d decided to stuff it all behind the anger her mother had come to expect from her. To hide it. To use that anger as a shield. Anger was the best protection. Absolutely.

  The first thing everyone had wanted to know was: Did you get a good look at him? Recognize him? Did you know the shooter?

  And Carla, like all of the other witnesses, had said, No, no, never saw him before. Don’t know him.

  But she did.

  7

  Charlie Sowards stared at the picture. It had been ripped out of the newspaper, folded over, folded again. Still, he got the idea. He could recognize her. Pick her out of a crowd. No problem.

  He stuffed the photo back in the front pocket of his jeans, not bothering to fold it this time. The edge tore a little bit, but he didn’t care.

  He wished the whole process was a little bit slicker, more techno, like the things he saw in James Bond movies. Why couldn’t he be issued a sleek black laptop, say, or one of those iPads, and why couldn’t the picture be sent to him in some kind of encrypted file – he loved the word ‘encrypted’ – instead of this stupid, candy-ass way?

  A small picture torn out of a newspaper. Christ. A head shot, no less. Faded, wavy, grainy. Black-and-white. And from that he was supposed to know her, follow her, complete the assignment?

  The boss treated him like crap. Totally took him for granted. Chill knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He’d tried. He’d gotten nowhere. The boss had cut him off before he said three words, and Chill immediately sensed that you didn’t mess with this guy. If you pushed, he’d push back. Harder.

  Chill shifted his leg. He was sitting in his car at one end of Shelton Avenue. He was separated from her line of sight – if she looked down this way, which wasn’t likely – by four SUVs and an overgrown motor home parked along the curb. It was 5:45 A.M. the morning after the shooting. There was just enough light now to see a picture by, courtesy of a shy pink blush in the eastern sky. Chill had long legs, and his knees were crammed uncomfortably under the steering wheel. He hated compact cars. When he drove, it wasn’t so bad; he could stretch out his legs. But sitting here on a cold Sunday morning, engine off, calves cramping, watching an old house down the block, was not what he’d signed up for.

  He’d started working for the boss about six months ago. ‘You?’ Chill had said, when the boss first asked him about it. This was not what he’d expected. ‘You?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yeah. Me.’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘You thought what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  What could he say? That he’d expected somebody badder, somebody meaner? He’d expected, frankly, that the head of a major prescription drug operation, one that covered most of southern West Virginia and southeastern Ohio and Kentucky and was growing every day would be – bigger, somehow.

  ‘There a problem?’ the boss had said that first time, pressing him.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Good. ’Cause there’s a lot of guys who want to work for us, you know? Hell of a lot. You know what the unemployment rate is around here, right? Plus, this is good money. And no heavy lifting, understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And so,’ the man went on, as if Chill hadn’t spoken, ‘if you have any doubts, if you’re conflicted, if you think you can do better someplace else—’

  ‘No, I don’t think that.’

  ‘—then by all means, Charles, you go. You go seek your fortune elsewhere.’

  ‘It’s “Chill.” I go by “Ch
ill.”’

  The man had already turned away from him, busy with a stack of merchandise, getting the packages ready. He liked to keep everything neat, orderly.

  In a short time they’d gone from selling pills here and there, catch as catch can, to running a regular network, with deliveries coming in every few days, then going back out again. Clockwork. And there was no end in sight, no limit; they owned these valleys, they’d taken over dozens of small-time operations, one by one, yet the boss wasn’t satisfied. Chill could tell. The money was rolling in – sometimes it made Chill want to giggle, the stacks of fives and tens and twenties, nothing larger, it looked like the cash register in a goddamned candy store, all those small grubby bills, pulled out of kids’ sweaty backpacks or old ladies’ purses, one at a time – and still the boss was restless, agitated. He was never satisfied. He wanted more. Chill hadn’t been doing this long, but he knew a lot about appetite, and he recognized it in the boss: hunger. Nose in the air, sniffing. The more he got, the more he wanted. Anything that stood in his way, he quickly took care of – well, sometimes he told Chill to take care of it. And Chill did.

  He pulled the picture back out of his jeans pocket, tearing it a little more. She was good-looking for an old lady, no doubt about it. She had to be close to forty. Close to his mama’s age. Chill, pondering, tucked in his bottom lip. He didn’t like that thought.

  He needed a cigarette, but the boss had told him not to smoke on a stakeout – that was Chill’s word. The boss had used the word ‘assignment.’

  People noticed smokers these days, remembered them, the boss said. Plus, you might have to peel out in a hurry, and you’d have to ditch the cigarette, and if you fling it out the window, it’s evidence.

  So Chill sat in the car, irked, uncomfortable, knees jammed up under the steering wheel, fingering the small creased picture torn out of the Acker’s Gap Gazette. ELKINS SWORN IN FOR SECOND TERM, the caption read, and below that, in smaller type, was another line: Belfa Elkins, Raythune County prosecuting attorney, vows to fight illegal prescription drug trade in West Virginia ‘with every resource this office can bring to bear upon the tragic, multigenerational epidemic,’ she says.

  Chill squinted harder at the photo. She had a pretty face. Nice bouncy hair. She was thin, with a decent smile. She wore a strand of pearls around her neck and, in each earlobe, he recognized the small white dot of a pearl earring.

  Classy. That was the word, Chill decided. She was a classy lady. She wasn’t like his mama at all, he saw. In fact, she sort of reminded him of a teacher he’d had back in middle school. This teacher had taken an interest in him. Tried to talk to him, get him to study, to choose ‘better companions.’ He liked her. He enjoyed their conversations. But she didn’t know anything about his life.

  He had to get that teacher off his back. Had to do it harshly, too, so she’d stay away and leave him alone. So he’d turned to her one day, in the middle of one of their little after-school chats, and he’d said, ‘You got the hots for me, baby, that it? That what you got in mind? You heard I got a nice big dick, right, and you want some?’

  He could still remember the shock in her eyes, the hurt, the terrible wounded surprise. She looked as if he’d flung acid in her face. They’d been talking about The Red Badge of Courage. Or at least she’d been talking about it. And suddenly he just couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t handle her ‘interest’ and her ‘concern’ for his ‘potential.’ Couldn’t deal with her belief in him. He knew he’d never live up to it. So he’d fixed things. He’d shown her what was really inside him.

  ‘I got what you need, bay-beeee,’ he’d continued, cackling, slapping his crotch, rubbing it. ‘Mmm, mmm. Got just what you need right here, hot ’n’ fresh.’

  In a quavering voice, she told him to leave. She never talked to him again. Had him transferred out of her class. That was that.

  A year later, he started selling pot. He worked for a small-time dealer who then passed him on to another guy, who sent him down to Raythune County, and then the second guy ended up in the river with four bullets in his head, and for a while, Chill drifted. He just drove around. He did some odd jobs: He helped a guy dig a footer for a garage, swept out cages at an animal shelter, took care of the landscaping for an old folks’ home. Once, he stopped in at the public library in Bluefield and asked if they had a copy of The Red Badge of Courage. They did.

  Chill opened it, turned a few pages, and then he closed it again and put it down on the big wooden table and walked out.

  This woman, this Belfa Elkins, looked a little like that middle school teacher of his. Chill stuffed the tattered piece of paper back in his pocket. He knew why the boss wanted this lady gone. She was making a lot of trouble. Affecting business. Costing the boss money.

  He perked up.

  Yep.

  It was her. He peered out through the windshield, down the long street, and he had to squint, but he was sure of it. She was coming out of her house. Walking fast. Wearing a blue sweater and carrying a black briefcase. Just like the boss had said: She won’t quit. She works seven days a week. You be there tomorrow morning, keep out of sight, you watch her house, she’ll show herself. She’ll go to work, even the day after a shooting like that. Follow her, and if you get the chance—

  Chill understood.

  If she stopped somewhere along the way, if he caught her away from a crowd, if there was nobody else around, he’d be ready. No guns this time, the boss had told him. Guns are messy. Bullets, the boss always reminded him, are evidence.

  So how the hell was he supposed to—?

  Be creative, the boss said.

  Chill lowered his knees. Leaned forward. He put the tip of his tongue in the space where a tooth was supposed to be. Then two more spaces. Helped calm him down.

  He started the car.

  Showtime.

  8

  The morning was milky-gray and cold.

  Head turned to peer out the back window, right arm stretched across the top of the passenger seat, Bell backed the Explorer out of her driveway. Once in the street, she gave a quick look around to make sure Shelton Avenue was clear – no kids, dogs, cats, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, or snapping turtles, all of which, at one time or another, she’d had to swerve to avoid when she squirted out of her driveway in a hurry – and then shifted from reverse into drive. All systems go.

  In ten minutes she’d be on Route 6, climbing the side of the mountain, which meant accelerating her way into a series of dizzy, lurching turns of legendary peril. Route 6 was the kind of road that required you to grip the wheel until your fingers ached and your palms were rubbed raw, while hoping that prayer could outmaneuver gravity.

  She remembered the old joke. There are only good drivers in West Virginia, the joke went, because all the bad drivers are dead. With the steep drop-offs and hairpin turns, with the winding roads and the sudden plunges that awaited you down either side, if you weren’t a good driver, then you – followed by your next of kin – found out pretty quickly.

  Lori Sheets lived near the top of the mountain. Bell had met her twice before, both times briefly: at the time of her son’s arrest three weeks ago and then again at his arraignment a day later. Bell’s impression of Lori Sheets was tentative, incomplete, composed of quickly glimpsed fragments, a makeshift mosaic. She could recall short frosted hair; a square, chunky, decidedly middle-aged build; circular face; and anxiety. Lots of please and thank you and excuse me. That was Lori Sheets: excruciatingly polite, exceedingly nervous. The kind of nervous that went with being poor and powerless.

  Bell wanted to have one last talk with the woman before deciding whether or not to try her son Albie for the murder of six-year-old Tyler Bevins.

  Albie was twenty-eight, but profoundly mentally retarded. Albie and Tyler had been playing together in the Bevins’ basement when things somehow went catastrophically wrong. Tyler, limp, pulse-less, was found propped against a wall, a garden hose wrapped tightly around his small neck. Albie’s ten
nis shoe was close beside him. Paramedics discovered Albie in the Bevins’ backyard, kneeling behind a tree, shaking and sobbing.

  ‘Done a bad thing,’ he had said. When Albie pulled his big hands away from his face, the officers told Bell, shining strings of snot connected his nose and his fingertips. His regret, they said, seemed genuine. ‘Done a bad thing,’ he mumbled. ‘Albie bad. Bad. Bad.’

  Bell could charge him with first-degree murder, or she could argue for diminished capacity. She could insist to the judge that he belonged in prison for the rest of his life, or she could say he ought to be detained in a forensic facility and evaluated regularly, until he could be released into his family’s care.

  She had to make up her mind by the next day. So she’d called Lori Sheets, in between her conversations with Sheriff Fogelsong about the shooting, and she asked for permission to stop by early Sunday morning. Albie was in jail, and would stay there throughout the trial, but Bell wanted to get a sense of his family. To see them in their home, the home where Albie had lived, too.

  She wanted every speck of information she could get before making her decision about Albie’s fate.

  Lori Sheets had been instantly obliging. ‘That’s no problem at all, Mrs Elkins,’ she had said, and her voice on the phone was perky, hopeful. ‘No problem at all. We’ll put on the coffeepot. You come on by. And thank you. We’re much obliged. Thank you.’ She knew what the stakes were. Her attorney, Serena Crumpler, had explained it all to her. The prosecutor’s decision about what Albie would be charged with – first-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter with mitigating circumstances – could make all the difference.

  The Sheets case was the kind Bell craved. It was complex and it was multilayered, and it required her to locate the fine line between justice and mercy. It was the kind of case that validated her decision to uproot her life and move herself and her child back to a hometown that – unlike Washington, D.C., unlike anywhere else in the world – knew her, knew every knot and twist and nuance.