A Killing in the Hills (29 page)

Trails grew cold. Memories clouded. Interest faded.

In less than an hour, she’d racked up eight messages. That wasn’t even close to her all-time record of forty-eight calls in a sixty-minute span, which had occurred a year and a half ago, during the controversial prosecution of a woman who’d poisoned her mother-in-law, stashed the body in the attic, and then continued to cash the old lady’s Social Security checks. At least half of Acker’s Gap had regarded it as their solemn duty to let Bell know that the victim had been a mean-spirited, cantankerous old bitch, whereas the alleged murderer was a sweet, gentle soul who attended church regularly. Shouldn’t those facts matter?

Bell never did find an artful way to convey to her endless line of callers that nothing – not even a mother-in-law’s decades-long obnoxiousness – justified murder.

Cell cocked between her right ear and an upraised shoulder, Bell listened to her stacked-up messages as she made her way through the courthouse corridor.

Four were about routine business. A deputy needed paperwork to apply for a warrant. Collier County prosecutor Lance Burwell had a question about the procedure for serving subpoenas in a nursing home. An assistant prosecutor in Richmond needed a ruling on an extradition request from the state of Virginia for a burglary suspect whom Sheriff Fogelsong had in custody. And there was a brief, businesslike greeting from Amanda Silverton, a state legislator who was about to propose a new bill about mandatory sentencing for prescription drug–related offenses and wanted Bell’s input on the wording.

She sat down at her desk to listen to the next batch. One was from a bemused Carla (‘What happened, Mom? You flew out of there like you saw the bat signal or something’) and one was from a man Bell didn’t know.

‘Hey,’ the voice said. ‘This is, uh, Clayton Meckling. I work with my dad. Walter Meckling. We did some electrical work at your house. I understand there’s a problem. I’d like to make it right.’

Bell transferred the name to a notepad. Clayton Meckling.

The next message was from Rhonda Lovejoy.

‘Hey, boss – you’re just gonna
freak
,’ came her assistant’s breathy, excited voice, a voice that sounded like a high school girl who’d just downloaded the latest Lady Gaga song. ‘Got some info for you. Think you’ll find it very, very interesting. See you soon.’ Bell frowned. Rhonda had been due in the office that morning. She was more than just tardy this time. She hadn’t bothered to show up at all.

Where the hell
was
she? And who picked her own days off?

Rhonda Lovejoy, that’s who.

As Bell listened to her final message, she forgot all about Rhonda. She stood up quickly, using her free hand to yank her coat off the back of the chair. She had to go.

It was from Tom Cox.

‘Good morning, Bell. I know you’re incredibly busy, but do you think you could perhaps swing by the house for just a few minutes this morning? To help me with something? I just need—’ He paused in his recitation, and in the background, Bell heard a muted whimper that she recognized as Ruthie’s. Then Tom was back: ‘Just need a quick hand. To help me get Ruthie into the car. She’s kind of – well, kind of under the weather this morning. We need to head over to the hospital, I think, and she won’t let me call an ambulance.’

There was, in Tom’s voice, quiet exasperation. ‘You know how she is about that,’ he added.

Yes, Bell knew. Ruthie Cox was unwilling to cause any sort of fuss or bother.

Bell also knew that Tom wouldn’t have called her unless it was serious.

She took the top piece of paper from the stack of clean white sheets by the printer, their edges lined up crisply and flawlessly like the sharp corners of a hotel bed, and she wrote out a note for Lee Ann, who was on her lunch hour –
Running personal errand. Have my cell if you need me. B
. – and she folded the sheet over one time, then another time, using her fist to press on the crease. Lee Ann didn’t much care for e-mail; she liked to point out that if a power line went down and the electricity failed, or the Wi-Fi crapped out, she’d miss the message altogether, and what then? What was wrong, she’d go on, with just taking the time to put a little bit of writing on a dadburned piece of paper?

Not a thing
, Bell would generally reply, knowing full well that they really weren’t talking about pieces of paper, but about the world and what had become of it. She slid the note under the base of Lee Ann’s desk lamp and hurried out the door.

32

She’d never had many friends. That was what happened when you grew up in foster homes; you told yourself that you were holding back, not wanting to commit to special relationships, because you knew you’d just be moving on down the road in a little while, anyway. You pretended, that is, that it was your choice.

Everyone knew the basic story of Bell’s family: runaway mother, drunken father, a murderer for a sister. Hard to pretty it up. She could tell by their glances – furtive, hurried, followed by the rapid blinks and the sudden interest in whatever was visible in the opposite direction – that they knew, and so she rejected them before they could reject her. While growing up, she was moody, sullen, and rude. About as welcoming as an electric fence.

That was why, Bell sometimes believed, she’d gotten so close to Tom and Ruthie so fast. Friendship tasted dazzlingly fresh to her, like a dish everybody else took for granted because they’d found it on their plate, meal after meal, year after year, but to her was still exotic and thrilling.

She pulled up in front of their house. She angled the Explorer’s tires against the curb, standard practice on any West Virginia street because so much of the state was situated on an incline.

Front door looming before her, Bell had a sudden, unsettling memory of Ruthie Cox on another occasion. A similar one.

A year ago, at the conclusion of one of the last rounds of Ruthie’s chemotherapy treatment, Bell and Tom had also teamed up; that time, it was to help get her home from the hospital. Ruthie had seemed strong enough, but on their way into the house from the garage, with Bell and Tom on either side of her, each gently holding an emaciated arm, she had abruptly slipped from their grasp. Tom was quick enough and strong enough to catch his wife in an iron grip just before she hit the concrete floor of the garage.

‘Whoa!’ Ruthie had said, trying to make light of her unexpected frailty. ‘Guess I’m not quite as steady as I thought I was.’

She’d smiled up at her husband, who continued to hold her securely around the waist. He was breathing heavily – more from fear, Bell speculated, than exertion.

‘My hero,’ Ruthie had added. It was said casually but sincerely. And Bell remembered thinking,
He really is. He really
is
her hero
. But what was it like for Tom, she’d also wonder, to watch the love of his life go through the stretched-out hell of cancer and chemotherapy?

Tom always seemed so steadfast, so firm in his belief that Ruthie would recover – but it must take a toll on him as well, Bell believed. There must’ve been nights when he, too, lifted a window and listened to the sounds of the woods, to the mysterious rustlings in the darkness that were like his own doubts, nestled deep inside the larger forest of his optimism and calm.

Tom and Ruthie had been high school sweethearts in Beckley, and they’d been together through college and then what came after – medical school at Ohio State for Ruthie, vet school for Tom. They had lived in Columbus for many years but as they grew older, they began thinking more and more about their home state. Finally, they returned to West Virginia to help young women and men there who also dreamed of careers in the sciences. Ruthie had initiated a mentoring program at Acker’s Gap High School. Tom donated his services to the Raythune County Animal Shelter.

That was what had drawn Bell to Tom and Ruthie. Because Bell, too, had returned to West Virginia, hoping to change things for the next generation, in whatever small way she could. Few people she knew here seemed to understand. They just wondered why she’d come back.
You made it out
, their expressions declared, if they didn’t say it outright.
You made it out. Why the hell did you come
back?

Ruthie and Tom understood. That helped Bell overcome her natural suspicions of do-gooders – she didn’t consider herself a do-gooder, just a regular person with a contrary streak – a prejudice that had only intensified as she watched Sam Elkins carefully polish his clients’ images with exaggerated lists of their charitable activities. Bell hated what she called PDAs: Public Displays of Altruism. Ruthie and Tom had the same aversion. The three of them had settled in for a long friendship.

And then came Ruthie’s diagnosis.

Bell didn’t knock this time. She went straight in.

Tom was down on one knee in front of Ruthie, who hunched on a chair just inside the door. Her face was gray and drawn. Hoover sat beside the chair, paws placed neatly in front of him, tail quiet. A red leash was attached to his collar. With no one securing its other end, the long expanse of the leash lay in a heap next to him; clearly, it had been dropped in a hurry.

‘Bell,’ Ruthie said. Her voice was weak. She tried to add a smile, but the most she could manage was a slight twitch of one side of her small mouth.

‘Hi, Ruthie,’ Bell said. She moved slowly and deliberately. She didn’t want to seem panicked in front of Ruthie; Ruthie had enough to think about, without having to worry about her friend’s reaction. She didn’t need any more drama in her life.

‘Can I give you all a hand?’ Bell asked.

‘We were going out to walk Hoover,’ Tom said, ‘when Ruthie felt woozy. I just got her into the chair.’ He was addressing Bell but his eyes never left his wife’s face. ‘I think we need to go to the hospital. Just to make sure everything’s okay. But you know how Ruthie here feels about ambulances.’

‘Don’t want—’ Ruthie stopped, waiting for more breath. ‘Don’t want to make a fuss. I don’t want that.’

‘Yes,’ Bell said. ‘Of course.’ She thought about it. ‘Ruthie, let’s wait right here for just another minute.’ She touched Tom’s shoulder. ‘And Tom, why don’t you go start the car and warm it up for us? And take Hoover out, too, while you’re at it? And then come back in, and we’ll all three go to the garage together? Nice and slow.’

Tom nodded. He stood up from his kneeling position in a single supple motion. That would’ve been hard for a lot of men Tom’s age, but he was limber and fit.
Comes from lifting all those Labradors
, he’d explained to Bell once, with a twinkle in his eye.
Wish more of the folks around here believed in pet lizards
. He pulled a brown plaid driving cap out of the side pocket of his coat. He adjusted it on his head. Then he patted his wife’s pale, blue-veined hand and did as Bell had asked.

Nice and slow. Just as he’d done so many, many times before.

‘I’m feeling much better. Really,’ Ruthie said. Her voice was stronger now.

They were driving toward the Raythune County Medical Center. Tom was at the wheel. Ruthie rode beside him, tucked beneath a wool blanket. The day wasn’t that cold – but it was for Ruthie, Bell thought.

She was sitting in the backseat, behind her friend.

Bell had considered asking Tom if she could maybe join them later. She was up to her eyeballs in work – that was how an appalled Ruthie had phrased it once, when Bell described all she had to do on a particular Saturday,
You’re up to your eyeballs, Belfa Elkins
! – and Bell decided she liked the line a lot. It sounded metaphorical, but sometimes it wasn’t; there were times when the piles of folders and files and transcripts on her desk grew so high that she actually
was
up to her eyeballs in work. Or close to it.

As soon as she and Tom had settled Ruthie in the passenger seat of the Escalade, however, Bell realized that she had to come along. She had to make sure Ruthie was all right.

This is what it meant to be a friend, Bell told herself. You don’t just do things that are fun and convenient. You do things that are difficult and irksome, things that require you to readjust schedules and rearrange entire days. Ruthie had certainly done that many, many times for Bell. When Carla was younger, Ruthie was the person Bell could call if she had to work late and needed someone to be at home when Carla returned from school. That was when Carla and Ruthie had really bonded: those weekdays after 4
P.M.
when Bell had to be in court.

Ruthie would bring over drawing paper and watercolors, or a softball and two gloves, or model kits – Carla still talked about the plastic skeleton that she’d assembled, while Ruthie named the bones. Bell grew accustomed to walking in the door of the big old house on Shelton Avenue and finding the two of them at the kitchen table, Carla’s head bent earnestly over the pieces of white plastic representing a ball-and-socket joint, while Ruthie, in a patient but clearly enthralled voice, explained to the girl just what made the human shoulder such a marvelous thing, such a miracle of efficient design.

‘I mean it,’ Ruthie said. ‘I’m really fine, Tommy. I don’t think we need to go to the hos—’ A sharp bolt of pain rocked her. She gasped despite herself.

Tom kept one hand on the wheel while with the other, he reached over and covered Ruthie’s hand. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he steadied her, Bell saw, with that touch, with the physical contact.

‘We’ll be there soon, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Hold on to me. Hold on to my hand.’

And Ruthie did. She lifted her husband’s hand and she placed it against her breast and she covered it with both of her hands and she held it there, head bent, eyes closed, making his hand the focus of her attention, instead of the pain.

Ten minutes later Tom turned onto Ruggles Road, which would lead, after a four-mile stretch, to Route 12. The hospital was just off Route 12.

Ruthie spoke again, breaking the silence. ‘Bell.’

‘Just relax, Ruthie,’ Bell said. ‘You don’t have to talk.’

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘You can tell me later, sweetie.’ Bell reached up over the top of the front seat and briefly stroked her friend’s white hair. It was very, very fine. ‘We’ll have plenty of time later.’