by Julia Keller
She held up the piece of lined notebook paper and read from it. “‘My dearest Darlene, I’ve been having those spells again. Times when I can’t. I don’t know the word there I was trying to write. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to worry. I am so proud of you! So glad that. So glad. Darlene, I am losing my mind. I have already lost it, I think, and only find it again from time to time. Darlene, I. When I find it, I try to do all that I need to do, before it. Darlene. We did something bad. Vic and Alvie and me, too. We were all. Darlene, I was eleven years old and about to be twelve. Vic was twelve. Alvie. The car. Nobody meant for it to happen. Nobody. Nobody’s fault. Everybody’s fault. It was. Oh, Darlene.’” She set down the paper. “It runs off into a sort of gibberish after that.”
“What happened?” Jake asked. “What do you think the three of them did?”
“I wondered the same thing,” Bell said. “And whether it might be relevant to what’s happening at the Terrace. Harmon Strayer was born in 1926. The year he’s talking about would have been 1937 or 1938. So Rhonda checked the archives of the weekly newspaper that’s been published in Norbitt since 1878. Rhonda?”
“Finding the details of a car accident within a two-year window wasn’t as hard as you’d think,” Rhonda said. “Not a lot of cars back then, period. At least not in Norbitt.” She took a deep breath. “So I found it. An elderly woman and her granddaughter—Gertrude and Betty Driscoll—were killed by a Ford pickup and buried in the Silent Home Cemetery near Caneytown. A man named Frank Plumley was cited for reckless driving. No criminal charges. He paid a fine.”
“Frank Plumley,” Bell said, picking up the story, “was the father of Vic Plumley. And according to what I was told at the Terrace, Vic Plumley sometimes visited Harmon Strayer. Vic was killed last year by a hit-and-run driver. That driver is still at large.”
Ava was relatching her briefcase. “What does any of this have to do with Darlene’s death?”
“We don’t know for sure yet,” Bell said. “But it looks likely that Felton Groves and Marcy Coates were hired to get rid of people that somebody else wanted out of the way. Groves and Coates both needed money. They had access to Darlene and her father. That access made them valuable. Groves was bribed to run Darlene off the road. He needed money to pay off his settlement.
“And Marcy Coates,” Bell went on, “needed money to pay for her granddaughter’s drug rehab. Lots of it. She traded shifts to make sure she’d be taking care of Harmon. The earlier death—Margaret Jacks—was a trial run. A way to see just how meticulous the coroner was going to be with bodies that came from the Terrace. Once the answer came back—not meticulous in the least—then Marcy was free to go after Harmon. And she killed Polly Delaney to divert attention from Harmon Strayer’s death.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Marcy Coates my grandmother told me about,” said a clearly dismayed Rhonda. “She didn’t know Marcy as well as Connie Dollar did, but still. A murderer? That sweet old lady?”
Jake spoke up. “I don’t think Marcy Coates would’ve considered it murder. It was something else. Yes, it benefited her. But would she have gone out on her own and, say, killed somebody just for the hell of it? No. Never. This was different. These were sick old people who didn’t have a lot of time left, anyway. Who were suffering.”
“So we’re supposed to cut her slack?” Rhonda said. Her tone included a good deal of incredulity.
“Think of it however you have to,” Jake answered. “I’m just saying that the context is crucial. You can’t judge every action by a single standard of right and wrong.”
“Funny thing for a deputy sheriff to say,” Rhonda shot back.
“You got my job title right,” he said. “But I’m a human being first and a deputy second, okay? And it seems to me that—”
“Okay, you two,” Bell said, interrupting him. “Cut it out.” Lately she had begun to see their mild quarreling as a sort of mutual flirtation. Usually it amused her, but not now. This wasn’t an episode of The Bachelor. It was a murder investigation. “I had Buster Crutchfield look over the coroner’s reports for the three deaths at the Terrace. They were pretty superficial and slapdash, he said. A lot of things could easily have been missed. There’s no way to go back and confirm those specific details now, of course—it’s way too late—but it does round out the picture of what might have happened.”
Ava looked as if she was processing a million pieces of information in a nanosecond, like a supercomputer in a charcoal-gray cardigan. She raised a finger, ready to ask a question, but before she could start, Rhonda’s cell rang. She listened and nodded. When she ended the call and turned to the group, her eyes were bright.
“That was Kirk Avery.” Her voice bounced with excitement. “The bartender at the Tie Yard. The one who was working on the same Saturday, Bell, when you and Darlene were there. I asked him to keep an eye out for the man who was drinking with Darlene that night—the night she doubled back to the bar.”
“And?”
“And the guy just showed up again. Got the kind of face you don’t forget, Kirk says, even though nobody knows his name. Semi-regular. But this is his first time back since the accident.”
Bell moved so quickly that she startled Deputy Oakes, typically a fast mover himself.
“Come on, Rhonda,” Bell said. “I’ll drive.”
“Hold on, hold on.” Oakes stood up, affecting his best I’m a deputy and you’re not pose. “You two aren’t going anywhere. We’ve been getting reports all afternoon. Storm’s a lot worse. They’re shutting down the interstate in both directions.”
“Not taking the interstate,” Bell said.
“Not my point.” Oakes glared at her.
Bell glared right back. “Jake, you know as well as I do that most of our so-called ‘evidence’ so far is pretty skimpy. It’s all theory and conjecture. Rhonda’s filing for a warrant to pull Groves’s financials, to track the payoff, but that’s going to take a while. Unless we can get somebody to confess, or we dig up some actual evidence, we’re shut down. This could be our chance. And there’s no telling how long that guy will stay at the Tie Yard tonight. We’ve got to get out there.”
Oakes grunted. She was right, but he did not like it. “I’d come if I could. But with these roads the way they are, and with the number of accidents that we’ll surely have, I don’t see how I can—”
“You’re needed in Acker’s Gap,” Bell said. “Sheriff Harrison would have my head if we took you out of commission right now.”
Oakes grunted again. “You stay in touch.”
Bell nodded. She turned to Ava. “Make yourself comfortable here. I insist you spend the night. Plenty of room.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Ava said. “This is the man who had a hand in killing Darlene, isn’t that right? I think I should be there.”
Bell smiled. “If our intention was to go out there and string him up like a piñata, I’d say, ‘Sure.’ I’d even let you have the first whack. But that’s not how it works. We’re going to talk to him. That’s all. You need to stay here.” She indicated the staircase. “Spare room’s the first one on your left. Sheets and towels in the linen closet at the end of the hall. My daughter, Carla, will be home soon. I’ll text her and let her know you’re here.”
Ava nodded. While the other three people in the room put on their boots and heavy coats, she appeared to be waiting to speak. Finally, when Bell, Rhonda, and Deputy Oakes were ready to go, she took her opportunity.
“Darlene never had a lot of friends. She had too many secrets. Her alcoholism, our relationship—she felt like she had to keep the world at arm’s length, so that it wouldn’t judge her. And once her father died, she felt more alone than ever. Yes, she had me—but that was all. She was the loneliest person I’ve ever known.” It was a difficult thing to say, and Ava needed a few seconds to recover her poise after she said it. “If she could see this right now—see the three of you, moving heaven and earth to find out what happened to her and her dad—I
think she’d be surprised. I think she’d be moved. And I know she’d be grateful.”
* * *
Carla parked the Kia in the side lot. The snow was really picking up now. Her drive had included a few slides that might have ended disastrously but did not, and so in addition to her relief at arriving here she felt a certain perverse pride: I made it, dammit.
This was crazy. Even Kayleigh Crocker thought it was crazy, and Kayleigh was usually the passionate cheerleader for any sort of wild, outlandish behavior. “I don’t know, Carla,” Kayleigh had said, as Carla was leaving the apartment. “I’m not sure you should do that.”
Carla had given her friend a brief, highly edited rundown on the situation: older guy (she did not say how old), who had given her a fake name (she did not mention that he had taken the name of someone who had died in a motorcycle accident), and who she had not known very long (she skipped over the fact that it was a single twenty-minute conversation in her car in the Driftwood parking lot). And now, Carla explained, she was compelled to find out what the hell was going on. Why did he lie to her? To his employers?
Her plan was to drive out to Thornapple Terrace and find him. She would simply ask him why he was hiding who he really was. It was only four p.m. Even with the heavy snowfall and the slickening of the roads, she would be back in Acker’s Gap by dinnertime. No problem.
The mission reminded Carla just a little bit of her quest for a can of Diet Dr Pepper on the snow-laden day she had driven back to Acker’s Gap: It sounded silly on the face of it. Nobody else in the world could possibly understand. But she understood. She got it. She had to do this. She had to know who he really was. And then she could let it be. She didn’t want anything from him—just an explanation.
She would not go to the reception desk this time. She had learned her lesson. She would go to the maintenance building. If Travis—or whoever he was—was not there now, he would be there shortly. All she needed was a few minutes with him. Just long enough to get an answer. She would assure him that she had no intention of ratting him out—she would never do that—but he had helped her, and if he was in some kind of trouble himself and needed help, she could return the favor.
She had a new text. It was from her mother. Carla read it quickly: Working 2 nite. Houseguest in spare room FYI. She didn’t reply to it. She had more important things on her mind right now.
The door to the building was unlocked. It was a large, square, aluminum structure and its insides had the feel of an airplane hangar: no windows, pristine concrete floor. It was filled with items carefully segregated into specific areas: spare bed frames, extra dressers, and rocking chairs; electrical cables wound tightly on wooden spools; shovels, ladders, buckets, and hoses; a long tool bench with an array of serious-looking tools, from jigsaws to miter boxes; a riding lawn mower and two snowblowers.
Carla did not see him at first. And then she did: He was over by the tool bench, his back to her, working on something. He had not heard the door open because he was making noise himself, pounding nails into the end of a board.
Without even seeing his face, and even though he was dressed in ubiquitous light gray coveralls, she knew it was him.
Before she could speak, he finished with what he was doing, and he turned. He took off his goggles. She would never forget the look on his face—surprise, mingled with a happiness he could not hide, and then the dissolving of that happiness into annoyance.
“Hey,” Carla said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said. His voice wasn’t nearly as harsh as the words were.
“Needed to talk. You’re not Travis Womack.” She did not say it accusingly. She said it with a sort of bemused wonderment. “So who are you?”
“You need to get out of here,” he said. “Now.”
“Just tell me who you really are. And why you lied about it. Are you in some kind of trouble? Because if you are, I can help. My mom’s the Raythune County prosecutor. We can go talk to her, and if there’s a way to get you out of—”
“Listen to me,” he said. He walked several steps toward her. The building, she realized, was not heated. He must be freezing in only the coveralls.
When he got close enough to reach out and take her arm, he did. He did it gently, and then let it go again. “Carla, I really need you to go. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Just tell me what’s going on and I will,” she said. “I’ll turn right around and leave. I know it’s none of my business. But the other night—you saved my life, okay? That’s what it felt like. I don’t mean because of that asshole who wouldn’t leave me alone. I mean because of our talk. The things you said—and the things you didn’t say, too, like: ‘Hey, Carla, grow up.’” She smiled. “And so I want to repay you—if I can, I mean. If there’s anything at all I can do.” She took a deep breath. She had been talking very fast, making her case. “So just tell me why you’re using somebody else’s name. And after that, if you still want me to go away, I will. I promise. And I’ll never tell anybody about this.”
There was such compassion in his eyes, and such bottomless sadness. She wished he would touch her again, take her arm.
He had not answered, and so she spoke again. “You’re a good man. I know that.”
That seemed to snap him back to the here and now. “Really.” His voice was sarcastic and sharp. “Really—that’s what you know. You know that for sure.”
“I do.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, what do you think I’m about to do? This ‘good man’ you think you know? Listen, Carla. I stole a guy’s name from a headstone I saw in a cemetery. Everything I’ve done was for this. To be here, right now. I’ve waited for the perfect moment and it’s time. If the storm gets as bad as they say it will, this place’ll be cut off for at least a day or two. Nobody going in or out. So this is it.”
“I don’t—”
“Now that I’ve told you, Carla, I can’t let you go. I don’t want to hurt you—but you have to stay out of the way. I have to do this.”
“Travis.” She had forgotten all about the fact that the name was a fake. She wanted desperately to reach him. “Travis, please, I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand.” His voice shook a little. “You weren’t raised by a monster. A monster who brought strangers home to have sex with you and your sister—while he sat back and counted the money. A monster who locked you in the closet for days—lying in your own pee and shit after you couldn’t hold it anymore. And then when he opened that door and he smelled what you’d done, he dragged you out by your hair and he held you down on the floor and he lit a cigarette and put it out on your arm. And then he lit another cigarette and did the same thing. And another and another. And then he switched to the other arm. Now he’s here—and he doesn’t remember it. He has Alzheimer’s. So what can I do? He doesn’t remember, so it’s like it never happened.
“And that, Carla,” he said, bitterness giving way to anguish, “is the worst part of all. He’s forgotten all about it. I can’t even get in his face and tell him what he is—a monster. A fucking monster. Janie has been trying that for months now. Trying to get him to say what he did. So that our lives are real. So that our suffering matters.” He shuddered. “She doesn’t know that I work here. She hasn’t seen me in years. I keep a lookout for her car, and when I see it, I disappear. Last week, when I spotted her car, I had to pretend to get sick and slip out the back. And a few days before that, I saw a strange car in the lot and I thought it might be hers. It wasn’t—it was your mother’s.” He shook his head. “The staff tells me what Janie does in there with him, yelling at him, over and over again. It’s her way. It’s just not my way. And this…” He lifted the board, the one he had just embellished with nails. “I don’t want Janie to know about this. I don’t want her involved. I’ll take the consequences. She’s suffered enough.”
He rolled up his sleeve. His arm looked like uncooked meat riven with fissures and divots. The scars from burns a
nd infections and neglect raged from his wrist to his shoulder.
“My name is Nelson Ferris,” he said, “and I’m going to kill that bastard.”
Three Boys
2014
Alvie had brought the checkerboard again. The stiff cardboard was folded in half, and so after pulling it out of the paper shopping bag he opened it. He set it in the middle of the table. He did this with a bit of a flourish, the unfolding and the placement. Then he reached into the bag again and pulled out the little round pieces, one by one. Each time he thrust his arm down into the bottom of the bag to retrieve a piece, the paper bag rattled.
At each rattle, Harm twitched and blinked. He hated the sound.
Alvie saw that, of course. It made him go slower, making the noise last even longer. Milking it. He liked the power he now had over Harm Strayer. He would reach into the bag, ostensibly to dig around for another round piece, but it was really for his own deep satisfaction: seeing Harm react with that twitch, that blink. Fear and confusion in his cloudy eyes. It was a small, exquisite torture that Alvie could inflict on his old pal. And it left no marks. No one would ever know. It was just Alvie and Harm in here, two old friends.
Harm had gotten all the breaks. Well, no—Vic had gotten lots more breaks than Harm, more breaks than anybody, but Vic was so far out of Alvie’s league that Alvie did not think of Vic in relation to his own life. Vic was not a standard against which Alvie could measure himself. The differential was too great.
But Harm—well, Harm, was still on Alvie’s level. So he could compare. They were two boys. Two boys from Norbitt, West Virginia. And Harm, everybody liked. Everybody looked up to. Why? For years, Alvie had tormented himself with the question. It was like biting down on a sore tooth, over and over again, just to feel the pain: Why did people like Harm so much? He was a fucking factory worker. Blue collar, all the way. Never did anything else, never dreamed of doing anything else.
Whereas he had actually read some books. Studied. Not in a formal way, because the church did not care about any of that when hiring a pastor. They did not ask about degrees—only about whether you were married and had a family. They wanted you stable. But he still read books. Books about motivating yourself to work harder, to size up your enemy and defeat him. How to succeed, in other words. How to be a winner.