A Killing in the Hills

by Julia Keller

  She’d only talked to her father briefly so far about the terrible events at the Salty Dawg. Her mother had insisted she phone him right away, right when she’d gotten home yesterday. First thing. ‘If he hears about it on the news,’ Bell had said, ‘he’ll be frantic.’

  Carla had given him only a few details during that call: I’m fine. Really.

  But she wasn’t fine. She was in a hell of a mess. She could probably help her mom and Sheriff Fogelsong track down a killer. But if she did that, she’d be grounded for life. Her mom would forbid her to see her friends, the friends who’d taken her to a party with drugs.

  She’d be spending every Saturday night from now on right here on this stupid couch watching stupid TV. She’d never get out of the house again.

  Carla reached for her cell on the coffee table and, thumbs flying, quickly texted her dad:

  Need 2 talk

  Maybe her life didn’t have to be over, after all.

  Maybe there was a way out.

  12

  Bell felt the jolt. The gray compact had rammed her rear bumper, backed off, then rammed it again.

  Startled, she slapped the horn three times – not polite little toots, but sustained and angry blasts – and her meaning was clear:

  Cut it out, asshole.

  She couldn’t look over her shoulder to make eye contact with the other driver; she couldn’t risk taking her eyes off the road. Not here. Not now. Even checking the rearview mirror again when she’d felt the first smack had been a bad idea.

  Fleetingly, Bell wondered if this was some kind of a joke, if maybe the mystery driver thought it was funny to kid around on the sharpest curve at the highest point in four counties. But she knew better. Nobody joked like that on mountain roads. The driving was too treacherous, the potential consequences too severe.

  Could it be some jerk she’d pissed off on a recent case? A vengeful family member, maybe, who thought that a black sheep brother-in-law or a renegade cousin had gotten a raw deal from the law? Doubtful. She’d been threatened – every prosecutor had been threatened – but the nastiest threats always came from those least likely to follow through. From swaggering loudmouths who were cowards at the core. Show-off tough guys. All talk and no action.

  The next jolt was harder. So hard that Bell pitched forward in her seat, feeling the vibration travel in a split second from the back of the Explorer up through her pelvis and then branch into her hands, which clutched the steering wheel with growing fervor. The attack had escalated from a nudge to a homicidal punch. This was personal.

  The wicked curve splashed up ahead of her now, a harshly abrupt twist to the left. If you missed it – the road that continued on after the curve was virtually perpendicular to the stretch upon which Bell was traveling – you would fly straight off the edge of the mountain.

  Into wide, airy, endless space.

  After which you would plummet into the gorge.

  If you were lucky, you’d be killed in the fall. Otherwise – if you survived it and stayed conscious – you’d surely know from the smell that your gas tank had ruptured upon impact and your vehicle would shortly be swaddled in flames and you’d burn to death. God bless blunt-force trauma, she thought. Oblivion’s definitely the best-case scenario.

  Bell’s initial response had been to brake and brake hard, fighting him off, letting her speed drop from forty to thirty-five to thirty to twenty. She jammed her foot against the pedal as hard as she could and held it there, leg straight, shoulders reared back, so that when she hit the curve she’d have a chance of maintaining some small bit of control even with the bastard riding her bumper. Each time she’d cut her speed, though, the other car countered by pressing harder and still harder, as if the vehicle itself – not just the driver – wished her ill, wanted to make her miss the curve and jump the road, wanted to fling her off the side of the mountain.

  The slower she went, the harder the other car bored in, its force propelling her toward the curve.

  Who the hell is this guy?

  As the end approached, as her momentum critically escalated, Bell all at once stopped thinking about the road or the curve or the other driver and she thought about Carla, she thought about her sister, she thought about her father, a man dead for three decades now but still in her mind, especially in moments that mattered. So it’s true, Bell mused, astonished that she had time to think, time to picture Carla’s face, when she was just a few seconds away from hurtling headlong into the curve. You really do see your life in front of your eyes, thirty-nine years flashes past, it’s all true. She carved out, deep in the center of her desperate panic, a small niche of calm.

  And in that place she saw Carla, she saw her child, her baby, and Bell thought, She’ll be okay. Everything will be okay now.

  She had an idea. Abruptly she slid her foot from the brake to the gas. Instead of trying to slow down, she shot ahead. Instead of fighting the other car’s force, she suddenly separated herself from it, and the Explorer – Wish I could kiss that big old V8 engine – leaped forward like a panther spotting prey.

  If I’m going down off this mountain, I’m going down fighting. Not riding the goddamned brake. ’Cause I’m not ready for my Thelma and Louise moment.

  A small gap sprang open between the compact and the Explorer.

  The curve roared up in front of her windshield. It’s not even a curve, that doesn’t do it justice, it’s as sharp as a damned T-square. But what the hell. Here goes. Bell yanked the wheel to the left so hard that she felt something pop in her shoulder. The back half of the Explorer whipped sideways in a vicious arc. Her left rear tire – the last thing that could stop her from flying off the top of the mountain – skidded to the edge.

  If she was going over, it would happen in the next one-one-hundredth of a second.

  Like, now.

  The big vehicle teetered. It tipped over the lip of the road, hanging in space, tilting, tilting, and then it righted itself with a savage bounce.

  Abruptly she was back on the road again, still going at an outrageous rate of speed. She wasn’t thinking, wasn’t breathing, just driving. Fast.

  She risked a glimpse in the rearview mirror. The other car was well behind her now. The mystery driver was just rounding the bad-ass curve; he was bright enough to realize that a runty compact couldn’t overtake a Ford Explorer going at top speed. He wasn’t chasing her. His only advantage had been the element of surprise.

  Bell gripped the wheel as if she fully intended to wrench it off the steering column. She was seized by a black desire for vengeance, for payback, and the sudden wild surge of emotion made her tremble worse than had the close call. He’d tried to kill her, for God’s sake. To murder her. She wanted to spin the Explorer around and she wanted to go charging after him, she wanted to chase him and push him off the goddamned mountain, she wanted to see him fly off the side of the road and end up in pieces. She wanted to do to him what he’d tried to do to her.

  You bastard. You fucking fucker, you fucking fucking bastard. When I get you, I’m going to—

  She knew this part of herself – the part that could turn ugly in an instant, the part that had nothing to do with pale blue cardigans and linen slacks and briefcases – and it scared her. It always had. Because she knew where it came from.

  It came from her father, Donnie Dolan. King of all the rat bastards. His temper lived in her. Boiled in her veins.

  Flying downhill, she repeatedly scanned both sides of the road with quick back-and-forth jerks of her head. Searching for a spot for a tight U-turn so that she could flip around and go after him, chase him down.

  The berm was too narrow. If she tried it now and a heavy coal truck lumbered by as the Explorer made its swift pivot, its rear end hanging out as she ripped through the gears – well, she’d seen the results of accidents like that on mountain roads.

  The paramedics would need a Shop-Vac to suck up the body parts.

  So Bell kept driving. Going forward.

  She sneak
ed looks in the rearview mirror every quarter mile or so. There was nothing to see. The sonofabitch was either deliberately hanging back, staying out of sight so she couldn’t get a read on his plate or a better look at his face, or else he’d pulled off the road somewhere, waiting for her to clear out.

  She thought about calling Nick on her cell, but didn’t. By the time anybody got up here, the guy’d be gone.

  She was breathing fast and shallow now, and the hot breaths hurt, they felt like tiny needles, as if she’d inhaled the contents of a pepper shaker somewhere along the way. The blackness inside her, the desire for instant vengeance, gradually began to fade. She relaxed her grip on the wheel.

  Now she was aware of how much her fingers ached, from the pressure of holding on so frantically. Her shoulder throbbed. Her eyes burned. A headache smashed and roiled behind them.

  Home, she thought. Just let me get home.

  Bell slowly mounted the steps to her front porch. Only a few hours before she had left in a brisk professional hurry; she’d been fresh and pressed and focused, intensely preoccupied with the Albie Sheets trial and its precedents in West Virginia case law. Her steps were light and quick.

  Now she covered the same ground in reverse. But there was no quickness. She wasn’t gliding. She was trudging. She was shaky and exhausted. And the reality of what had just occurred – the fact that someone had tried to kill her – kept coming back to her, filling her with rage. It was like a fever spiking over and over again.

  Reaching the top step, she felt better. This old house did the trick. It was settling her down. Steadying her.

  She loved this place, every ancient, crumbling inch of it. On the outside, she loved every mustard-colored stone and every crooked line of mud-hued mortar that anchored those stones, and she loved the gray slate roof that cost a bloody fortune to maintain. Inside, she loved every solid plaster wall and every strip of crown molding and every inch of the wide-planked, wooden-pegged floors.

  At this moment, she had a single goal. It was a simple one. She wanted to lower herself forthwith into the big broken-down armchair in her living room. An itchy dampness bloomed under each arm. She was thinking about how good it was going to feel to shuck off her shoes and close her eyes.

  Bell froze.

  The front door hung open a good inch and a half. Her weariness vanished. Instantly alert once more, a cold panic swept over her. Maybe the lunatic who’d tried to kill her on the mountain had beaten her home – and now waited inside, ready to finish the job.

  She pushed warily at the heavy door, wincing at the tortured, coffinlike shriek. She was ready for anything.

  ‘Carla?’ she called out. ‘Carla? Sweetie?’

  Two figures suddenly appeared in the foyer, one short and one tall.

  The short one was Carla. The tall one was Sam Elkins. Her ex-husband.

  He smiled. Bell didn’t.

  ‘Heard you pull in,’ he said. His smile widened. He specialized in smiles.

  Oh, fabulous. Her fatigue returned in a steep gray wave, almost knocking her over. What a weekend. My daughter witnesses a massacre. Some crazy bastard just about runs me off the road. And now my ex-husband shows up unannounced.

  It’s the freakin’ trifecta.

  13

  Damn, he looked good. She had to admit it.

  She gave Sam Elkins the once-over, not letting her gaze linger too long, because she knew he’d get a kick out of it, and that wasn’t the kind of kick she wanted to administer.

  ‘Jesus, Bell,’ he said. He had a headlong, hectoring way of talking, as if he were always in the midst of a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. ‘Three people gunned down in the middle of town? What the hell’s happening to this place? And what are you and Sheriff Andy doing about it?’

  That was his permanent joke, the old reliable. Acker’s Gap was Mayberry. Nick Fogelsong was slow-moving Andy Taylor, hands in his pockets, whistling a little tune while the bad guys robbed banks and snatched old ladies’ purses.

  It wasn’t funny the first time Sam said it. Hadn’t grown any more amusing since.

  The three of them moved into the living room. Sam was commandeering the space as well as the conversation, just like always. He and Carla sat down on the couch. He’d edged in front of Bell to claim the spot. Everything was a contest with Sam.

  Bell didn’t care. Let him win. She didn’t want the couch, anyway. Just as she’d planned, she fell into the big overstuffed chair in the corner, dumping her briefcase and her sweater on the first horizontal surfaces she passed on the way. Settled herself in the mushy-soft cushions with a delicious little wiggle of her backside. Only two things would’ve made the moment any better:

  The presence of a cold Rolling Rock on the little table beside her, its green glass side pebbled with beautiful condensation.

  And the absence of her ex-husband.

  ‘We called you yesterday, Sam,’ Bell said. ‘Carla’s fine. Fine then, fine now.’

  She didn’t want to tell him about the wild ride down the mountain. She knew he would use it as yet another chance to slam West Virginia. Knew what he’d say: Must’ve been some drunk hillbilly. Stupid reckless redneck. Told ya so. Besides, she was used to keeping secrets. It was second nature.

  ‘Appreciated that,’ Sam declared, ‘but I needed to check on my little girl. Well worth the trip.’ He hooked an arm around Carla’s narrow shoulders. ‘Can’t imagine what it was like. Being so close to that kind of thing. You’re brave, sweetie. I’m proud of you.’

  Bell watched him give their daughter a hug. She wished it weren’t so, but her ex-husband really did look good. He was dressed in a buff-colored V-neck pullover and sleek cuffed khakis and soft tasseled loafers, a vivid contrast to her sweat-matted blouse and rumpled trousers. It was Sam’s casual look. The fact that he even had a look – that he spent so much time fussing over his clothes these days, primarily to appear as if he hadn’t fussed at all – was strange. It was a measure of how much he had changed.

  Bell could remember a time when Sam’s casual clothes consisted entirely of ratty jeans and ripped-up T-shirts, when putting on shoes and socks felt, he’d wail, like a week in jail. When they’d first started dating in high school, he despised having to dress up. Forced to wear a tie, he’d groan and yank at the offensive strip of cloth, pulling it straight up in the air as if his neck were being squeezed in a noose, while he crossed his eyes and let his tongue loll.

  She remembered all of that, and a lot more to boot. And that’s the problem, she thought. When you’d been married to someone for a long time, when you’d shared your life so completely, you were never able to live only in the present. You were perpetually surrounded by the ghosts of all the people that both of you had once been. The room got very crowded, very fast. Every sentence had an echo.

  ‘I was just glad to see that my little girl’s all right,’ Sam said. ‘And we were having a great talk – weren’t we, sweetie? – before we were interrupted.’

  To Bell’s surprise, Carla allowed her father’s hug to go on. She didn’t jerk away. She didn’t roll her eyes or lean forward and make the universal ‘gag me’ sign by sticking her index finger in her mouth, which was her typical reaction to attempts at affectionate gestures by either parent.

  ‘Sure, Dad.’

  Perplexed, Bell rubbed her shoulder while she sized up the situation. She wondered if she’d sprained something while tugging on the wheel, trying to keep from becoming a permanent part of the West Virginia scenery.

  She could feel the sweat cooling on her skin.

  Why hadn’t she seen Sam’s car out front? Oh, right. Her powers of observation had been compromised by the definite possibility of ending up in a heap of smoking chrome and shattered glass and motley ruin at the base of the mountain.

  Sam watched her. ‘What’s with your arm?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She didn’t need his concern. Matter of fact, she didn’t need anything from him.

  He waited for her to say more. W
hen she didn’t, he went on.

  ‘So seriously, Bell. About the investigation. That shooting sounds scary as hell. Any progress finding the guy?’

  ‘Not yet. But Nick’s working hard. And he’s getting a lot of help from the state police.’

  ‘Good. He needs it.’

  ‘Nick knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon find out about that, won’t we?’

  She hated her ex-husband’s tone. ‘You have a problem with how the sheriff does his job, Sam?’

  Nick would’ve told her not to bother defending him. He didn’t care what Sam Elkins thought of him. Didn’t care what almost anybody thought of him. But Sam was pissing her off. What did he know about Raythune County these days?

  Nothing. That’s what.

  ‘Things are different around here now,’ Bell continued. ‘It’s not like it was when you and I were growing up. It’s rougher. The drug gangs are vicious. Extremely well organized. And ruthless.’

  ‘I work in D.C. You’re going to tell me about gangs? About drugs? Please.’

  ‘No comparison.’

  ‘You’re damned right there’s no comparison.’

  ‘This is worse.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ A snort of disdain.

  ‘I am,’ Bell declared. ‘Look, Sam, drugs and drug gangs are a part of big cities – and have been for a long, long time. In D.C., you expect it. You’re not even surprised by it anymore. It’s everywhere. You’ve got junkies stopping cars in intersections, begging for spare change. You’ve got drug deals going down in public parks. But around here, it’s still new. That makes it a whole lot worse. People don’t know how to think about it. They’re seeing their children disappear right before their eyes – sometimes metaphorically, when they get hooked on pain pills or heroin. And sometimes literally. We’ve had a lot more gun violence lately. Because of turf wars, and because of desperate people doing desperate things to get drugs.’