by Julia Keller
Bell sat up straighter in her chair. She’d found herself sliding into a slouch when Hick first began.
‘What else did she say?’
‘Told us that she listened to most of the call. She was working in the kitchen first thing Saturday, just like always. Shorty was sitting right there at the table when his cell went off. He was organizing his fishing lures, even though she’d told him over and over again not to do that at the table, at the place where they ate their meals. Last time she let him do his lures at the table, she said, he took the liberty of hauling his bait bucket right up there on the table, too, and the slimy worms were just—’ Hick grinned at Bell. ‘Just kidding, boss. I’ll get to the point.’
Rhonda giggled. Bell shot her a glare that made her halt in mid-giggle, as if someone had unplugged her power supply.
‘Shorty’s cell rang,’ Hick continued, ‘and Mrs McClurg heard him say, “Hey there, Lee. We meetin’ at the Dawg this a.m.?” And then Shorty paused, his wife said. Paused a long time. Like he was listening hard to something. He was frowning, she said. Frowning and shaking his head back and forth.
‘Finally,’ Hick concluded, ‘her husband said into the phone, “Look, Lee, we’ve gone over this before. You can’t tell a man how to run his life. It’s none of our lookout.” Then he appeared to be listening to another earful from Lee Rader. Last thing she remembers Shorty saying during that call was, “Well, I do agree with that. Always have. It’s harming the town, that’s for damned sure. And if you’ve reached your limit, if you truly don’t care to associate with him anymore, then that’s your right. But maybe we ought to let him have his say. One last time.”’
Bell nodded. ‘So it was Dean Streeter. Not McClurg or Rader. Streeter was the one with the drug connection – the kind of connection that just might have brought about this kind of violence.’ Her expression changed. Her voice slowed and softened. ‘How is Mrs McClurg doing, Hick?’
‘It’s bad, Bell. Real bad. Shorty was her whole life.’
‘Is she a churchgoer?’ Bell asked. The question had nothing to do with Fanny McClurg’s theological beliefs. In these mountain valleys, churches were the primary dispensers of charity – real charity, not the fake charity of government checks and trumped-up work programs. Church members knew their neighbors. They took care of people in need.
‘Yes,’ Hick replied. ‘There were two ladies there from Mountaintop Freewill Baptist when we got there. They’d brought over a casserole – the whole refrigerator was full of casseroles, Bell, you should’ve seen it – and they told us that they’ve been taking turns spending the night with Mrs McClurg, ever since Saturday. And a couple of teenagers from the church’s youth program were raking leaves in her yard.’
Bell was quiet for a moment. She had a powerful recollection of how much she’d relied on the people of the Stoneridge Church of Christ, the church closest to the trailer on Comer Creek, when she was ten years old. In the aftermath, they’d made sure she had skirts, blouses. Notebooks for school. A toothbrush. A comb. Some hope.
Then, once again, Bell was a prosecuting attorney. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘about Marlene Streeter. Did she know what her husband was up to?’
Hick pondered it. ‘Hard to say. Mathers thinks she did. We talked about it on the drive back to the courthouse, and he’s pretty well convinced that Marlene Streeter knew that Dean had done some things he shouldn’t have done. She might’ve been fuzzy on the details, but she was upset about it. Didn’t sleep easy at night, that’s for sure.’
At that point Bell realized there was an untouched mug of coffee idling at her elbow. She’d filled it from the small pot a while back, when her assistants first arrived in her office. In the intensity of her information-seeking, however, she’d forgotten about it. Now it was cold – Bell took an exploratory sip and her stomach rendered its opinion of the bitter tepid stuff – but a bad cup of coffee was better than no cup of coffee at all.
So she took another swallow.
Hick reached for his cell. He kept his notes there, on an app that looked like a yellow legal pad.
He scanned the screen. ‘Mrs Streeter told us, and I quote, “Dean had a lot on his mind. He had a lot going on.”’
‘Like what?’
Hick looked up from his phone. ‘She was a little sketchy on that part. I mean, there was grief, of course. The sadness over their daughter’s death. Just like you’d expect. But she also mentioned medical bills. Those don’t go away, even after somebody dies. According to Marlene Streeter, they still owed a ton of money for hospital stays and prescriptions and all the rest of it. Dean was worried sick over the bills.’
‘Money troubles?’ Bell said dubiously. ‘We know from Lee Rader’s family – and Fanny McClurg confirmed it – that Streeter’s association with drug dealers was the reason Rader was cutting off the friendship. Just doesn’t figure that Streeter was involved in illegal drug sales – and still worried about his bills.’
‘Unless,’ Rhonda said.
Bell and Hick looked at her.
‘Unless what?’ Bell asked.
‘Unless Streeter had decided to quit dealing.’
They waited. Encouraged by their attention, Rhonda went on. ‘Okay. Say you’re Dean Streeter. Your best buddy – the guy you’ve known your whole life, one of the two guys you’ve been having coffee with every Saturday morning since, like, the beginning of time – has figured out that you’re involved in some kind of illegal drug operation. Your buddy is pissed at you. He won’t turn you in, but he’s really pissed at you.
‘He puts up with it for a little while but then he can’t anymore. So he tells you to quit – or he’ll never speak to you again.’ Rhonda took a deep breath. She was doing a lot of talking with her body as well as her words, crossing and recrossing her arms in front of her impressive bosom, tucking her skirt under her thighs, waggling her eyebrows at appropriate moments.
‘And so,’ Rhonda went on, ‘you decide that you just won’t do it anymore. You want out. I mean, the whole reason you started in the first place – your sick kid, helping your sick kid – is not a factor now. She’s gone. You’re looking at the whole thing differently now.
‘So you plan to meet your pals that Saturday morning, just like always. But what they don’t know is that you’ve quit. You’re out. You’ve had it. You’re tired of the life you’ve been living. Tired of the lies. Tired of what you’re doing to your hometown. You’re worried, God knows, about the money you still owe, but you’d rather face a bunch of bill collectors than your own guilty conscience.’
Hick, nodding vigorously, took up the story. ‘So you called the boss – called him late last week, maybe Thursday or Friday – and you did what you had to do. You took your stand. You told him you were quitting. And you were going to turn him in. Blow the whistle on the whole operation. Naturally, he threatens you. Tells you what’s going to happen if you do it. But what do you have to lose? Your daughter’s dead. The only thing left to fight for, at this point, is your integrity. Next thing you know, you’re sitting in the Salty Dawg with your two best friends, and you’re feeling like a new man—’
‘—and a gunman walks in,’ Rhonda said, interrupting him, ‘and—’
‘—three old guys are dead, just like that,’ Hick said, interrupting her right back.
Rhonda nodded. Her expression shifted from triumph to urgency. ‘We’ve got to find the man in charge,’ she said. ‘The guy who ordered the killing. He’s the one we need to get.’
Hick coughed. He scratched the back of his neck. Something was troubling him, something that had kicked in just as he and Rhonda finished their spontaneous collaboration.
‘That’ll be tough,’ he said. ‘Anybody with the balls to order an execution in broad daylight – he’s got power. Real muscle. And he’s bound to be smart. Smart and well organized.’
Bell tapped the tip of her pencil three times against the desktop. Then she tossed the pencil toward a far corner of the desk. It landed on top of a
messy stack of manila folders, rolled off the stack, and then kept going until it slid off the lip of the desk.
Nobody moved to retrieve it from the floor. They were all too focused on the conversation.
‘So what’re you saying, Hick?’ Bell asked. Challenge in her voice. ‘We just give up?’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe we just realize that we can’t always win, boss. We can get rid of a few dealers here and there, scare off the Streeters and guys like him. We can make a dent in the prescription drug trade from time to time. But we’re not going to end up with a state that’s free of drugs. It’s just not possible. Not these days.’
Bell frowned. ‘Sounds an awful lot like giving up, Hick.’
‘Well, it’s not,’ he retorted. ‘More like compromise. Or maybe you want to call it recognition of reality. Listen, Bell, I’m older than you are. And with all due respect, I think I know West Virginia a hell of a lot better than you do. It’s like with the strip mines – I mean, do you tell yourself that they’re completely unacceptable and you won’t tolerate a single one, or do you admit that maybe you have to lose a few mountaintops so that folks can have jobs and feed their families?
‘Thing is,’ Hick continued, ‘you can either knock your head against the wall every damned day of your life, trying to make things perfect – or you can settle for the little victories now and again. And be happy, boss. Not torn up all the time, angry and sick and tired. You can be happy. See what I mean?’
He had made his little speech, and now he had to wait for her reaction. Bell Elkins didn’t like speeches. In fact, she loathed them. ‘Save it for the courtroom’ was typically her irritated response, if Hick or Rhonda let their arguments run on too long during a staff meeting, although that wasn’t right, either, because Bell hated courtroom speeches just as much. She preferred the lively give-and-take of cross-examination, the verbal thrust and parry, to the formal, courtly performance of a summation to the jury.
Hick knew she hated speeches, but he’d delivered one anyway, and now he would find out just how badly he’d pissed her off.
‘It’s like this, Hick,’ Bell said. She had let a beat or so pass before answering him, so that he’d know she had thought about what he said.
Thought about it – and rejected it.
‘I don’t know about your definition of “happy,”’ she said, ‘but mine’s got nothing to do with capitulation. It’s got nothing to do with letting a bunch of drug dealers use West Virginia as a litter box. That doesn’t make me happy, Hick. Doesn’t do a thing for me.’
‘Not what I meant.’
‘Enlighten me, then.’ Bell’s voice was cold. Sometimes – like now – she second-guessed herself about hiring Hick Leonard, too. Sometimes she wasn’t sure about his priorities. Or his loyalties.
‘I just meant,’ he said, ‘that we can’t win ’em all.’
‘Fine. I’ll settle for winning one,’ Bell shot back. ‘This one.’ She turned to Rhonda. Her voice was crisp. Forward march. ‘We need to verify that Dean Streeter was involved in illegal prescription drugs. We heard what Chess Rader had to say, but that’s not proof. And even if Marlene Streeter knew about her husband’s activities, she’s not going to sully his memory by telling us the truth. How can we find out for sure? How can we know what Streeter was up to? Where do we go?’
Rhonda smiled a starburst smile.
‘You go to me,’ Rhonda said, a happy jump in her voice, like a kid skipping along a sidewalk on the first day of summer vacation. ‘You go to me, boss.’
35
A single phone call.
That was all it took. Despite having grown up in Acker’s Gap, Bell did not understand it the way that Rhonda Lovejoy understood it. She didn’t have Rhonda’s connections. She didn’t have her network, that endlessly unfolding blossom of people and relationships radiating from the crucial rooted core that Rhonda Lovejoy had been born and raised here, and her parents had been born and raised here, and their parents, too, and on back, as far as you wanted to look, a reality that sent tentacles reaching out in every direction, branching through time and across geography, picking up aunts and cousins and histories along the way. It came from the essential fact that her family had stayed in one place for a long, long time.
While Rhonda dialed her cell, Hick settled back on the couch, crossing one leg over the other. He linked his hands behind his head and relaxed. He’d lost his argument, but he was good-natured about it; that was one of the qualities that Bell most appreciated about him. He was partially redeeming himself in her eyes.
‘Hey, Doreen,’ Rhonda said into her phone. She was using her cell and not the office phone, she had explained to Bell a minute ago, because she didn’t want RAYTHUNE COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE to pop up on Doreen McAnn’s caller ID.
‘But doesn’t she know where you work?’ Bell had asked.
‘Sure she does,’ Rhonda had replied, scrolling through her cell’s address book with a scarlet thumbnail. ‘But as long as it’s not staring you in the face, you tend to forget the details. To Doreen, I’m still just Ron-Ron, Cecil and Virginie Lovejoy’s little girl. My older brother Earl always called me Ron-Ron, and Doreen’s kids picked it up from him. Oh, and Doreen used to buy butter and eggs from my great-aunt Bessie.’ Rhonda paused, having found the number. She pressed the appropriate space on the screen. Still talking to Bell as she settled the phone beneath the flabby pouch of her jawline, Rhonda added, ‘Doreen McAnn is the retired personnel secretary of the Acker’s Gap Board of Education.’
Once the call connected, Rhonda’s voice suddenly shifted from explanatory to chipper-cheerful.
‘Hey there, you! It’s Ron-Ron.’ Rhonda giggled. ‘We’re all fine, thanks for asking. Earl’s still over in Pittsburgh.’ A pause. ‘I’d love to do that, Doreen. I’ll make a point of stopping by when I’m out that way. I will.’ Another pause. ‘If my mama’s up to it, then I surely will bring her along, too. She’s got that bad hip, you know. Pains her something awful. Hey, listen, Doreen.’ Rhonda’s voice slid into a casual, neighborly, just-between-us tone. ‘I need a favor, sweetie. I know you heard about the terrible thing that happened to Dean Streeter. Now, he used to teach driver’s ed at the high school, didn’t he? Thought so. Well, I’ve heard that he’d got himself into a little bit of trouble. In fact, I heard that maybe he retired sooner than he wanted to, on account of a problem he had there at the school. Something about a side business, maybe.’
As Rhonda listened, she looked intently at Bell. ‘Uh-huh. I see,’ she said into her cell.
A pause. ‘Oh, no, no, I gotcha, Doreen. Those records are confidential. I’m all over that. Won’t say a peep. I know how those things go. You agreed not to press charges and he agreed to leave without a fuss so’s he could hang on to his pension. Everything’s kept quiet. Hush-hush.’ Another pause. ‘Gotta agree with you there, Doreen. It’s a real tragedy. Three old men, just minding their own business.’ Pause. ‘Couldn’t say, Doreen. Maybe we are going straight to hell in a handcart. Sure looks that way sometimes, doesn’t it? You take care of yourself, sweetie.’
Rhonda clicked off her cell.
‘Dean Streeter,’ she said, in a voice that was now all business, ‘was forced to retire from his teaching job at the high school last March. There was considerable evidence that he was selling pills to students. He cut a deal with the school board. He resigns – and they decline to prosecute. Gag orders all around.’
‘You need her, Bell.’
Bell and Hick were sitting across from each other in Ike’s Diner. Rhonda had left for an arraignment – she’d suddenly peeked at her watch, shrieked, slapped her cheeks, squirmed her way off the couch, and dashed out of the office – so the two of them had come for a late breakfast by themselves, sliding into a booth and plucking big plastic menus out from behind the salt and pepper shakers at the end of the table. They didn’t need the menus, having long ago exhausted the culinary possibilities of the diner. It was habit, though. The menu-pluck was gener
ally the prelude to any serious conversation in Ike’s.
Bell was glad for the chance to talk to Hick alone. She still wasn’t sure that Rhonda Lovejoy was worth the aggravation – the missed appointments, the tardy arrivals, the lost files, and the general air of discombobulation that followed the young woman like a skirt hem unraveling behind her.
‘I need her, Hick?’
‘You do. You really do.’
Bell looked hard at Hick. She respected him. She even liked him. Lately, though, when he’d insisted on defending Rhonda, Bell’s regard for Hickey Leonard dropped a notch or two.
‘Tell me why.’ Bell took a slow, appreciative sip of the coffee that Georgette had just set before her. It was worlds better than the crankcase oil she’d been drinking all morning at the office. ‘Because the way I see it, Hick, she was on thin ice before this week – and now there’s no ice there at all, thin or otherwise. I’m about this close to firing her.’ With her left thumb and index finger, Bell indicated a sliver of space. ‘If we weren’t so damned busy around here right now, with the Sheets trial and a killer at large and figuring out Dean Streeter’s secret life and everything else, I swear I’d let her go. I would.’
‘I get that, Bell. I do. But look at what she just did.’
Bell waited. She didn’t say ‘What?’ or ‘Tell me’ or anything else that might make Hick think she was being persuaded. She simply looked at him.
‘Okay. Listen, Bell, you’re a smart woman. I would even go so far as to say you’re brilliant.’
‘Come on, Hick. Don’t try to—’
‘Wait.’ He held up a firm hand, like a crossing guard halting a sixteen-wheeler in a school zone. ‘Before you get all modest on me, hear me out. You’re brilliant. Fine. Great legal mind. Terrific. Brains to spare. Hooray. But that’s not all we do around here. This isn’t the Supreme Court. We don’t hash out the finer points and subtle nuances of constitutional law. We’re prosecutors in a small county in West Virginia. We deal with people. People – not issues. We deal with people and their problems.’