Sorrow Road

by Julia Keller

  McArdle used a stubby finger to point to the gray folding chair alongside her desk. “Sit,” she said, repeating the order.

  Feeling a bit like a cocker spaniel in an obedience class, Carla sat.

  The Raythune County Public Library consisted of a single room in an old brick building across the street and down the block from the courthouse. The last three library levies had failed by large margins, which surprised nobody; it was hard to argue on behalf of books when half the county roads were crumbling to mush. The library, though, somehow hung on, battered but unbowed. The interior walls were dull brown sheets of trash-picked paneling, the bookshelves had been donated a decade ago by the Lowe’s up on the interstate, and the carpet had been salvaged from a tobacco warehouse torn down in the 1950s. Water stains spread out across the drop ceiling like a child’s drawing of pumpkin-colored clouds.

  Right now the room was deserted except for the two of them. You could hear the ticking of the large round clock on the south wall—it was white with thick black numbers—as it went about its business, each bundle of ticks synched up with a faint forward tremor of the minute hand. Carla knew that clock, and she knew that ticking, and she knew the movement of that minute hand. She and the clock were old friends. Well—acquaintances, maybe. The clock had never done what she’d asked it to do: speed up when she was waiting for her mom to pick her up, or slow down when a guy from her biology class happened to come in and Carla hoped he’d notice her and say hi. No: That damned clock always played it straight, dispensing its rough justice minute by carefully measured minute. It never cut any corners. Never did you any favors.

  Carla was surprised that no one else was here yet. Almost always there were at least a few other people in the library, reading a book or a magazine at one of the three long metal tables or poking at the keyboard of the single public computer on a card table in the corner. Sometimes the older people in town would actually hang out in front of the building before 9 a.m., waiting for Sally McArdle to come limping along with her Snoopy key ring.

  Not this morning. Must be the weather, Carla thought.

  “So,” McAdrdle said. “You want to apply for the job.” Her desk doubled as the circulation desk. She was the sole paid employee.

  “Yeah.”

  McArdle looked down at the sheet of paper that Carla had handed her. It was her résumé. Carla had updated it on her laptop that morning.

  With McArdle’s head bent like that, Carla had a perfect view of the Z-shaped part in her yellowish-white hair. She wondered why old ladies like McArdle kept their hair so long. Why not just whack it off, instead of letting it dribble over her rounded shoulders like bleached-out moss draped across a rock? McArdle must have been young once, but Carla could not envision her any way other than this: dumpy, wrinkled, suspicious, her heavy black-framed glasses sliding down her blobby nose. She’d probably looked the same way at nine. She’d probably look the same way at ninety.

  “I have several other applicants,” McArdle said. She lifted her eyes from the paper. She glared at Carla. “And I don’t play favorites. You know that. Doesn’t matter to me who your mother is.”

  “Of course.”

  McArdle peered at her for a few more seconds, and then went back to reading the résumé. Carla waited. The clock hand moved.

  It moved again.

  “And you know,” McArdle said, looking up once more, “the position is temporary. It’s grant money. For a single project. A onetime thing. That means that when the job’s finished, that’s it. I couldn’t keep you on even if I wanted to. There’s no budget for that. So we’re talking maybe a few weeks. A month, tops. An hourly rate—not a salary. No benefits. Are you sure you understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  The old woman returned to the résumé. Carla sneaked another glimpse at the minute hand.

  McArdle’s face popped up again. “You’ll be going,” she said, “into some pretty remote areas. The grant covers five counties. Not only private homes, but hospitals, too. Trailer parks. Apartments. And nursing homes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll have to input your notes at the end of every day. Keep good records. That means a lot of nighttime work. No putting it off.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’ll be boring. Repetitious. Asking different folks the same questions, over and over again. Getting them to answer those questions when they’re too shy to do it.”

  “No problem.”

  “And it’s old people. People who talk slow and don’t hear so well. People who’ll repeat themselves. Go off on tangents. Pause a lot.”

  “Sure.”

  “You still think you’re right for this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I know the area.”

  “So does everybody else who’s applied.”

  “Yeah, but I know it from both sides.” Carla had not thought about this before, but now that she had said it, she realized she actually believed it. “That’s what sets me apart. I’ve lived here, yes—but I’ve lived away from here, too. It’ll make a difference. To how I do the job.”

  She felt the sweat inching down the center of her back, gluing her sweater to the metal folding chair. She was perspiring not because she was nervous—well, not only because she was nervous—but also because this was winter. That was the thing about the season: You were freezing cold, but you had to wear so many damned layers that you were also burning hot and sweaty-gross under your clothes.

  She really, really wanted this job. She had been cavalier about it until just a few minutes ago—it had sounded like a nice stopgap, a way to pass the time while she hid out from the complications of her life back in D.C.—but now she realized just how intensely she wanted it. She wanted to talk to people about how they had done it: How they had handled their lives. How they had made decisions and then stuck to those decisions. And it had to be strangers. She could not talk to her mom about it. Or her dad. Because they loved her. That tainted everything they said.

  Carla leaned forward. “I can handle this, Mrs. McArdle. Better than anybody else. I’ve done some canvassing for nonprofit groups in D.C., so I know how to engage people. Get them to talk. And I know how to listen. I’m really good with computers, too—I worked for a year and a half in Web design—and so when I’m not out in the field, I can also be a sort of informal tech support for the computer over there in the corner. When people have problems.” She saw the gleam in McArdle’s eye. Patrons were always having problems with the computer, Carla knew, and when they did, they clogged up the area around the circulation desk with their agitated inquiries about control-alt-delete and all the rest of what Sally McArdle considered to be rank nonsense. A No. 2 pencil, a fresh notebook, and a 1968 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia were still the best research tools around: Carla had heard the old woman make that point on numerous occasions. Things that had happened after 1968 were just variations on a theme.

  “That,” McArdle said mildly, and Carla could tell she did not want to betray her delight at the idea of somebody else handling computer issues, “would be a big help.”

  Now McArdle frowned. She worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She stared hard at her, as if Carla was the last line on the eye chart. “I need to know something,” McArdle said. “You left. Now you’re back. Why? I mean, you went through a rough time four years ago. We all know that. That horrible man who kidnapped you—it must have been terrifying. Everybody understood why you wanted to go away. But here you are. And I need an explanation. Because I can’t hire you and then have you change your mind and leave again. I have to make sure you will finish the project.”

  Carla had assumed this question would be coming. It was a natural one. It was a fair one. She wasn’t ready to talk about the extent of her struggles—if she were, she would have confided in her mother. But Sally McArdle deserved at least a partial explanation. A few broad strokes. She was an intelligent woman, Carla knew, despite her aversion to
new technologies, and she would be able to fill in around those details on her own.

  “When I first left,” Carla said, “I wasn’t thinking about what happened that night. I couldn’t. I just blocked it out. It was the only way I could function. And it worked. For years.”

  McArdle nodded. Unlike most people, she did not smile encouragingly and get all warm and gushy when Carla alluded to the kidnapping, or to the reality that she had witnessed the violent death of her best friend. McArdle remained silent. She continued to look at Carla without blinking. It felt like a compliment.

  “Anyway,” Carla went on, “they’re sort of bothering me again. The memories, I mean. I guess I’m tired of running away from them. I want to deal with them straight up. Head-on. Full force.” Sort of like the way you’re staring at me right now, Carla was tempted to say. But she didn’t, because it might have come across as smart-ass, and the only thing that annoyed Sally McArdle more than the mindless worship of computers was the smart-ass quip. Carla had seen her throw people out of the library for the unforgivable sin of replying to her with a wisecrack.

  “Understood,” McArdle said. She rearranged her large bottom on the chair. She always had trouble sitting comfortably. The clock’s minute hand moved before she spoke again. “Want to know what I hear when you tell me those things?”

  Carla nodded. She had no choice.

  “This,” McArdle said, “is your home.”

  * * *

  Four hours, five meetings, nine phone calls, and three cups of coffee later, Bell stood up. She crossed the room to retrieve her boots for the walk to JP’s. It was only a block and a half away, but the sidewalk surfaces were choppy and rutted with snow and topped off by a thin pernicious layer of ice. Even with last night’s no-show by a second major storm, the effects of the first one still had to be reckoned with.

  She was leaning over, one boot on and the other one just sliding up over her toes, when Lee Ann came in.

  “Before you go—you have a visitor,” Lee Ann said. She was almost seventy, but only diabolical and sustained torture would ever have gotten her to reveal it. Lithe, white-haired, and wool-suited, she had been a secretary in this office going back through five prosecutors; her domain was just outside Bell’s, a spot that enabled her to screen people as well as calls.

  She stepped to one side. Deputy Oakes ambled into Bell’s office. His cheeks were less red than they had been yesterday morning, but not by much. He had wadded up his toboggan and pushed it under his arm for safekeeping. His black hair stood straight up from his head in multiple spots, the tufts frozen in place. He smelled of cold and wood smoke and something else, too, something ineffably male, with gasoline and a trailing hint of tobacco as the rich bass notes.

  “Was just about to return your call from this morning, but had to come back to the courthouse, anyway,” he said. “Thought I’d stop by. Looks like you’re on your way out, though.”

  “I have time. Hold on.” She finished with the second boot and stood up. “How’re things going out there?”

  He knew she meant the county back roads, the territory he patrolled every day.

  “Spent most of my time so far this morning just pushing stuck cars out of ditches,” Oakes said. He slapped at his chest, where the wool was marked with mud and damp. “Oughta see what happens when those wheels get to spinning and grinding—and me behind a car, rocking it back and forth while I’m hollering, ‘Gun it! Come on, you sonofabitch!’ Driver always assumes I’m talking to the car when I yell that.” He laughed. Oakes had a deep genuine laugh. “Only good thing you can say about a big snow is that it cuts down on crime. It’s enough of a chore just getting from place to place. Folks’re not much inclined to act up.”

  She nodded. “Sounds about right.” She reached for her coat. “Quick question. Where did they tow Darlene Strayer’s car?”

  “Impound lot over behind Leroy’s place. Same as always. All four counties—us, Collier, Steppe, and Muth—use that lot. Until there’s been a final determination by the coroner, that’s where it’ll stay.”

  “Good.” She knew about that lot, but the knowledge had been shoved to another part of her mind after new things came in and commandeered the space.

  He waited. She had more to say. He had worked with her long enough now to know that. He could sense the intensity of her thinking.

  “Jake,” she said. “I know we’ve already gone over this, but I have to ask again. Any possibility at all of foul play? Even a hint?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Like I told you. Worst curve on the whole mountain. Bad weather. Evidence of driver impairment. Nothing at all to suggest anything but an accident. Tragic—but there it is.”

  “Okay. Just needed to double-check. I’ve heard from the family. Apparently Darlene thought somebody wanted to kill her.”

  The deputy’s eyes widened. “She’d been a federal prosecutor—was it maybe related to that? Some kind of retaliation?”

  “No idea. I only had a single conversation with Darlene’s partner. A neurosurgeon named Ava Hendricks. She’s convinced that someone wanted Darlene dead.”

  Oakes had no reaction to the gender of Strayer’s partner. That pleased Bell. It was unexpected. In a choice between Rhonda Lovejoy and Jake Oakes as to who would be automatically accepting of people and who they were, she would have easily picked the kindhearted, salt-of-the-earth assistant prosecutor, and not the flashy, flirty, good-ole-boy deputy.

  That’ll teach me, Bell thought.

  “I can ask Leroy to take a look at the Audi,” Oakes said. Leroy Perkins ran a towing and salvage business as well as leasing the land to the counties for the vehicle storage site. He was also the best mechanic in the southern half of the state, Bell believed. Because of his expertise with anything that had an engine attached, he had performed some forensic work for her on previous occasions. And he had testified in several trials.

  “Appreciate it.”

  “Right away.” He started to reapply the black cap, squashing his ears in the process. “Can I give you a lift somewhere? I’m headed back out to the Blazer.”

  “Thanks, but I’m just walking over to JP’s. Meeting somebody for lunch.”

  He waited for her to identify her lunch date. She didn’t. He gave her a lazy smile and then a two-fingered salute, and he walked out ahead of her. His smile was easy enough to translate: Okay, fine—don’t tell me who you’re meeting. Doesn’t matter. I’ll know in about ten minutes, anyway. Word’ll get ’round. This is Acker’s Gap, remember?

  * * *

  “I got the job.” Carla had promised herself that she would be blasé about it when she told her mother, impassive, but she could not keep the pride out of her voice.

  “Hey—that’s wonderful, sweetie. Oh, and I’m sorry I’m late. Had to take care of a few things before I could leave the office.”

  “That’s okay.” Carla never expected her mother to be on time. Which was a good thing, because she never was. “Anyway,” Carla added, “I start tomorrow.”

  The small diner was crowded and lusty with noise, but Carla appreciated that; the racket conferred a jury-rigged privacy on the booth that she had staked out an hour ago and defended against the glares of other people who were forced to settle for seats at the counter. Carla felt a little guilty about hogging a booth—the most desirable locations in the place—but then she remembered how loyal her mother had always been to JP’s, and how she just about single-handedly kept it in business during rough patches in the beginning, and the guilt disappeared. While she waited, she had gone over the paperwork that Sally McArdle had given her, the details of the oral history project.

  Each time the door had opened and a customer came in, a punch of frigid air came in with her. One of those times, the new arrival was Bell. Seeing her mother’s face, seeing the light in her eyes when she spotted Carla and waved, Carla felt a brief needle of guilt. She considered telling her everything—such as the
real reason she had fled her life in D.C. The thing she had done. The crime she had committed.

  And what she was going through, from the unbearable headaches to the gut-churning panic to the constant anxiety.

  No. She couldn’t tell her. Her mother would try to fix everything—including Carla—and Carla did not want that.

  So instead she broke the news about the job, and about how she would be starting right away.

  Bell tossed her coat on the far side of the bench seat and slid in. Carla had hung up her own coat on one of the wooden pegs over by the cash register, but Bell knew better than to risk it; by now those pegs were thoroughly overloaded and tilting dangerously downward. Any second now, the jumbled hump of parkas and hats and long scarves would end up on the wet floor.

  “Tomorrow seems kind of soon, don’t you think?” Bell said. “I mean, you just got here.”

  “It’s not like I need to ask directions. I grew up in Acker’s Gap, Mom.”

  Before Bell could muster a counterargument, she had to say hello to Jackie LeFevre, who had stopped by the booth. Jackie had a plate of fried eggs in one hand and a bowl of white beans in the other. She was delivering the food to the next booth over. The owner of JP’s was a tall, rawboned woman with a sharp angular face and thick black hair kept under tight control by a blue bandana. She wore a red-checked apron over her sweater and jeans. She also wore Birkenstocks, her footgear of choice no matter what the weather was. The Birkenstocks had provoked intense whispered conversations when Jackie first opened the diner five years ago. Now, nobody cared.

  She frowned at Bell’s empty coffee cup.

  “I’ll send Martha over with the pot,” Jackie said. “Some things are sacred.” At JP’s, there was a facedown coffee cup on every place mat in every booth and table. If you did not want coffee, you moved the cup to one side. If you did, you flipped it over and tried to catch the waitress’s eye to give her a hopeful grin.