Sorrow Road

by Julia Keller

  “You all know what you want?” Jackie added. “I’ll tell Martha that, too. So we can get your order going. I know you’re in a hurry, Bell. You always are.” It was a dig, but only a mild one. Jackie had mellowed over the years since she’d first opened the diner, but there was still a coldness at the core of her, Bell thought, a permanent aura of aloofness, and a hint of distance and reserve in her manner. She had known sorrows—some that Bell knew about, and some, Bell was sure, that she did not. It was the same with everyone. But with Jackie, you had the sense that the sorrows were still calling the shots, no matter how automatic her smile.

  “Good to see you, Carla,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah. Same here.” Carla dipped her head. She didn’t know what else to say. Well, maybe she did. “Cheeseburger for me. Mom?”

  “Sounds good. Make it two.”

  “Two cheeseburgers,” Jackie said. “Okeydoke. Well, I better get these lunches to their rightful owners.” She used her chin to indicate the plate and bowl, and then she was off.

  “So I’ll be starting with Raythune County,” Carla said, picking right back up again with the news about her job. “I have a list of people who’ve agreed to be interviewed. I can finish up here by the end of the week. And then get over to Muth County by early next. After that, I move on to Collier. Oh—and one of my stops in Muth County is that new place with the Alzheimer’s patients. Apple-something.”

  “Thornapple Terrace. Darlene’s father was a resident there.” Bell frowned. “Hold on. How do you interview people with Alzheimer’s?”

  “Not the patients, Mom. The staff. Turns out they hire a lot of older folks. Aides, housekeepers, maintenance staff. That’s our target demo—people over sixty-five.”

  “What do you ask them?”

  “Everything. These are people who have lived their whole lives here. The idea is to get a sort of general sense of how and when they made the decision to stay in West Virginia.”

  As if they had a choice, most of them, is what Bell wanted to say. But she didn’t. She had read a few articles about the project in the Acker’s Gap Gazette. Public libraries throughout the state had received grants to record brief autobiographies of longtime residents, after which the videos would be posted to a Web site that anyone could access.

  Who leaves, who stays—that was always the central question around here, Bell thought. It was the question that haunted them all, as if the same ghost lived in every attic.

  Darlene Strayer’s face instantly came into her mind. Darlene Strayer, whose desire to go had been fierce enough to enable her to achieve escape velocity. And then she had died in the very place she’d fought so hard to leave behind.

  “Earth to Mom,” Carla said. “Your coffee’s getting cold. And you don’t like it unless it leaves third-degree burns on the roof of your mouth.”

  Bell looked down. The waitress had apparently come by, filled her cup, and probably traded a few banalities with Carla, all without her noticing.

  Jesus, Bell thought. I’m more affected by Darlene’s death than I realized. Although perhaps it was not only her death, but also Ava Hendricks’s insistence that it was the result of a deliberate act, not of a dark night and a slick road.

  “Oh. Okay.” Bell took a drink. She barely tasted it. Was it hot? She could not have told you, seconds after.

  “You were thinking about Darlene, right?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I didn’t. Just a guess.” Carla took a sip of her own drink, a Diet Dr Pepper in a tall green-tinted glass shaped like an hourglass. “I wonder what your friend would have said. About leaving West Virginia, I mean. Do you think she ever regretted it?”

  Bell was ready to utter an emphatic and definitive “God, no.” But something made her hesitate. Maybe it was the memory of Darlene’s face at the tavern that night, when she talked about her father and how much he meant to her. About how important his belief in her had been, propelling her forward, giving her hope in future dreams that frankly were pretty outlandish, when you considered the distance that had to be traveled, the obstacles overcome. Darlene must have missed her father terribly, once she settled in D.C. And when he became ill, when his capacity for thought began to recede and finally wink out like a star in the dawn sky, her sadness must have been profound.

  “Mom?”

  Bell shook her head. She had always disliked people who could not manage to be present in the moment, and here she was: the worst of the lot. And with her own daughter.

  “I think,” Bell said, “Darlene probably regretted a lot of things. We all do. The trick of it, I guess, is learning how to live with those regrets. Finding a place to store them so that you can get on with things. You know?”

  Carla eyed her glass. She poked at the ice cubes with the tip of her straw, making them bob and spin. “Yeah,” she said. “So what’re you going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “About your friend’s death.”

  “Not much I can do. Pretty open and shut. All the facts say it was an accident.” She had not told Carla about the disturbing call from Ava Hendricks. It hardly mattered; Hendricks would surely be showing up in person any minute to keep tabs on the investigation. “I’ll take a second look at the report,” Bell went on. “Just to be thorough. Have somebody go over the car—make absolutely sure it wasn’t tampered with.”

  “I don’t mean as a prosecutor,” Carla said. She made a face when she pronounced her mother’s job title. “I mean as a human being. I mean as somebody who was her friend. How are you going to deal with it?”

  All at once Bell understood the motivation for the question. Four years ago, Carla had watched a friend—her best friend—die. She had seen him die a savage and horrible death. Given Darlene’s ties to Bell, the news of the fatal accident must have brought back a nasty, swarming gang of memories for Carla, memories that cut and burned. Memories that wounded.

  But then again, Bell asked herself, were there any other kind?

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  * * *

  Lee Ann Frickie had left for the day. Her desk when Bell passed it was tidy, with the tidiness of the buttoned-up and battened-down. There was only one item on the polished oak surface, a piece of ruled notebook paper on which Lee Ann had written a single word: Dark. Bell understood. It was only 3:37 p.m., but given the state of the roads, her secretary wanted to make it home in her less-than-reliable Chevy Impala before the pure, hard darkness of winter overwhelmed the world. Lee Ann had a long drive ahead of her. Dusk had already begun to creep across the landscape, the slow-closing-of-a-coffin-lid blackness of winter that seemed to arrive earlier and earlier, day after day, throughout this meanest of seasons. It was the only time of year that Lee Ann asked for special favors.

  Bell sat down at her desk. She wanted to finish an e-mail to Jim Ardmore. He was a state legislator, and he had asked her for an opinion about his idea for a new program. The goal: getting newly paroled people into drug and alcohol rehab programs. It was a good idea. Like a lot of good ideas, though, it lacked one essential feature: the money to implement it. Bell knew Ardmore was right when he noted that, in the long run, it was much cheaper to pay for treatment than to deal with the inevitable crimes of desperate addicts. But West Virginia was a place that seemed to specialize in the short run.

  Her cell rang.

  “Elkins.”

  “Hey, boss.” It was Rhonda, her voice pitched low and snagged in a nest of static.

  “You’re out at the Terrace, right? How’s it going?”

  “Had to call you right away.” Rhonda spoke quickly. Bell heard what she had missed before: the agitation in her assistant’s tone.

  “Rhonda, what—”

  “There was another death here this afternoon.” She lowered her voice even more. “I’m out in the lobby now. Took forever to get some privacy. They’ve been sticking pretty close to me ever since it was announced. Afraid of the bad publicity, I guess.” She paused. Bell could im
agine Rhonda looking around nervously, making sure no one was listening. “I was sitting in the director’s office when the nurse came in and said an aide had found her. The dead woman’s name was Polly Delaney. Eighty-eight years old. Only been here a week. They think it’s natural causes—but it’s just weird, you know? Three deaths so close together? Even if Harmon Strayer and Delaney were older than dirt—and suffering from Alzheimer’s to boot—it’s still a hell of a coincidence, timing-wise.”

  “You said three.”

  “Yeah. Turns out there was another death here about three weeks ago—a woman named Margaret Jacks. Same deal. She was in her early nineties, she’d been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a long time. No family. Lots and lots of health issues—any one of which could’ve taken her down any minute—but still.”

  Bell did not respond right away. She closed her eyes. An ominous feeling was rising inside her, a dark tide of dread. Maybe it was just this latest news from Rhonda. Maybe it was residual shock over Darlene’s death. Maybe it was the persistent chill of winter, which she never quite managed to shake off until midway through the spring. Maybe it was the darkness that seemed to prowl around just outside her window, nosing the lock, probing the seal.

  Or maybe it was something else.

  Chapter Six

  I don’t have time for this. And it’s none of my business, anyway.

  That’s what Bell had been telling herself since 9 a.m., over and over again, as she drove along the fog-misted two-lane road the next day. After forty minutes she crossed the Muth County line. Ten minutes after that, she pulled into the large parking lot of Thornapple Terrace. By now the fog was beginning to break apart, departing this earth one misty bit at a time, drifting fitfully up toward a white sky that looked as if it might, at any second, unzip into a snow sky.

  Bell did a quick exploratory visual of the scrupulously well-plowed space. She was here for a conversation with Bonita Layman, Thornapple’s executive director, even though—as Bell reminded herself again—this was officially none of her business.

  Which Layman, if she were so inclined, would be fully justified in pointing out to the Raythune County prosecutor, perhaps with umbrage in her voice—again, fully justified: This was not Bell’s jurisdiction. Moreover, even if it were, there was no evidence of any crimes having been perpetrated on the premises, nothing that would give Bell the right—legal or moral—for any sort of inquiry, formal or informal. Rhonda, after delivering the bulletin yesterday about another resident’s death, had added that she’d found nothing unusual or suspicious about Thornapple Terrace. The staff, she said, was somber at the news of Polly Delaney’s passing, but no one had taken her aside to whisper a warning that something untoward was afoot. Delaney, Strayer, and Jacks had been old and sick. Their deaths were perfectly normal. Perfectly plausible.

  Bell had to agree.

  Yet here she was.

  She had engaged in a modicum of professional courtesy at her office that morning before setting out. At her request, Lee Ann had gotten Steve Black, the Muth County prosecutor, on the line. He was in his mid-sixties, and had occupied his office for three and a half decades. His greeting to Bell was effusive and overloud and far too familiar, just as she had expected it to be, because it always was:

  “Belfa Elkins! Lady, it’s been way too long.” His Southern drawl had a cartoonish edge to it, as if he’d learned his accent not from his upbringing down near the Virginia border but from Hee Haw reruns.

  “Hi, Steve. Sorry to interrupt your day.” She had put him on speaker. She needed to twirl a pencil between her fingers as she talked, a way of diverting the surge of distaste she felt at the sound of his voice.

  “Interrupt my day? Lordy, Miss Belfa, you just made my day. What can I do ya for?”

  “I was thinking about heading over to Thornapple Terrace this morning. To have a chat with the director. Just wanted to keep you in the loop, in case I run into anything you need to know about.”

  There was silence on the line. When Black spoke again, his voice was a tick less friendly. “Really. Well, I know I don’t need to tell you this, darlin’, but that place is the first new business we’ve had starting up in this county in—hell, I don’t know how long. Years, for sure. They employ a good number of folks. Pay a nice big tax bill, too, which is a mighty welcome development. I wouldn’t want any trouble stirred up out there for no reason. Wouldn’t want them to regret having located themselves in Muth County.” That was a lot for Black to say all at one time. He stopped, and took a few makeup breaths. “So I’d like a little more detail, if you don’t mind sharing. Whaddaya think you might find?”

  “Probably nothing. But the father of a friend of mine recently passed away there. And I’ve heard about two other recent deaths. I thought I’d take a look around.”

  “This friend of yours. What’s her father’s name?”

  “Harmon Strayer.”

  “Strayer.” He seemed to taste the word as he repeated it. “Lady by that name died over the weekend, yes? Coming too fast down the mountain in that godawful weather on Saturday night—that was a Strayer, too, right?”

  “Yes. Darlene was killed in a one-car accident.”

  “Oh, Lordy. Thoughts and prayers’re with you, Miss Belfa. And with the lady’s family. Thoughts and prayers. Lots of ’em.”

  “Thank you.” Bell let a moment pass. “In our last conversation, she asked me to look into her father’s death. Just thought I’d poke around a bit, ask a few questions. Out of respect for her memory. Nothing official.”

  “Forgive me, darlin’—I hate to even bring this up, but I need you to relieve my mind.” Black really did sound reluctant. “This inquiry of yours—it wouldn’t happen to be a sort of unofficial payback, would it, for the parent company picking Muth County over Raythune? I mean, we won it fair and square. We made a good deal with ’em. Had the perfect spot and all.”

  “Steve. Come on.” It was too outlandish even to prompt a decent amount of ire. “You know better than that.”

  “I do. I do.” He sounded pleased, though, to have her denial on the record. “What’s the coroner say about Harmon Strayer?”

  “Pretty much what you’d expect. An old man died in his sleep. Complications from Alzheimer’s caught up with him.”

  Before Rhonda had ended her workday yesterday, she had faxed Bell the Muth County coroner’s reports for the first two deaths. Early this morning, Rhonda stopped by the coroner’s office in person to pick up the third one, the moment it was ready, and faxed that one, too. It had reached Bell before she asked Lee Ann to dial Black’s office.

  Natural causes. Natural causes. Natural causes.

  “Those folks at the Terrace,” Black said, “are already in pretty bad shape by the time they get there. The fact that a few of ’em pass away from time to time—well, it doesn’t really call for an official investigation, you know what I mean? If we jumped into action every time an old man with Alzheimer’s passes away, we’d have no resources left over to handle the real crimes. Just last month, we had four gas stations held up at gunpoint. Took a boatload of cash. Robbers’re still at large. That’s an actual threat, Belfa. We’re just scrambling here to keep folks safe.”

  “Yes, of course. But you know what, Steve? This is the last thing I can do for my friend. She loved her father deeply. He was old and sick, and she knew that, but she was having trouble getting her head around the fact that he could just—just go like that, you know? After everything else he’d been through?”

  “Gotcha. Makes perfect sense, honey.” Black’s voice was instantly cordial again. Playing the family card had worked. In these parts, Bell knew, sentimentality was as effective as a glue trap used to catch a mouse. “I’m not at all surprised that you’re honoring your poor friend’s memory by granting her final request. You’re that kinda woman. You help folks out.” His voice began to inch toward the lascivious, which is what usually happened at this point in any conversation with him. “Matter of fact, I’ve alway
s hoped you might be willing to—well, to help me out a little bit, you know? I’ve got a few suggestions as to how that might be accomplished, if you ever find yourself feelin’ lonely on one of these here cold winter nights.” He chuckled. He was a man who parlayed his age and his position into a free pass for his sexual harassment and innuendo. If ever called on it, he would claim—while an expression of outraged innocence seized his wobbly, many-chinned face—that he’d been grievously misunderstood.

  The fact that he was married and had six children was just an add-on to the disgust Bell felt after most contacts, on the phone or in person, with Steve Black. But she could not show it. Alienating a fellow prosecutor would only make life harder for her; there was always a fair bit of horse-trading and deal-making and favor-granting between country prosecutors, with goodwill as the necessary emollient.

  And so she had headed on out to the Terrace—not exactly with Black’s blessing, but at least he’d been notified.

  Bell parked her Explorer in the second row of spaces. She backed in, so that she would be facing the facility. There were only three other vehicles in the lot. They probably belonged to staffers, she thought. In this weather, the number of visitors surely suffered a precipitous downturn.

  Arms squared over the steering wheel, she took a moment to appraise the exterior. The main building was a large two-story redbrick box with decorative white shutters framing the second-floor windows, apparently to give it a homey touch. There was a smaller, one-story structure off to one side, also brick. It was linked to the main building by a winding concrete path that had been shovel-cleared; the strokes were still visible in the frosty residue glittering in the muted winter sunshine. A sign indicated it was a skilled nursing and rehab adjunct to Thornapple Terrace. A third structure on the other side, much less grand, appeared to be a maintenance shed.

  Overhanging the main entrance was a dark green awning that jutted out at least two car widths, with the letters TT in swirling white on the front. If anyone was being dropped off or picked up here, they would be protected from the elements. Indeed, protection seemed to be the real cornerstone of the place, Bell decided. The bricks rose in straight rows, the edges met in sharp points, the roof was weather-tight. Quiet calmness prevailed. It was all very tasteful, and orderly, and civilized.