A Killing in the Hills (41 page)

Working through it again.

Nothing. No one had seen or heard from her.

Now Bell was right beside him as he uncupped the mouthpiece. She didn’t have to stand so close, because Nick had switched the call to speakerphone. She knew that, and still didn’t move away.

‘Go ahead,’ he said.

‘Here you are, Sheriff,’ the operator said.

A click, a blast of static, and then a man’s voice. Bell had never heard it before, but she knew it well. It sounded like a hundred other voices she’d heard while growing up in Acker’s Gap. A thousand. The familiar lilt and curl and twang. A way of drawing out certain syllables and blunting the ends of others. Prideful, prickly.

It was a voice from the hills.

And because she knew this voice, knew it so well, she was more terrified than ever. Now she understood what they were dealing with: a kid. A punk with power – whatever power could be temporarily derived from whatever gun he was fondling in his nervous hands.

He wasn’t wily. Wasn’t a strategist. Didn’t indulge in long-term thinking. He jumped when he was poked. Twitched when he was hit. A creature of pure impulse.

That made him breathtakingly dangerous.

‘Hey there, Sheriff,’ Chill said amiably. ‘Cold ’nuff for ya?’

‘Carla Elkins. Where is she?’

‘First off, doncha wanna know who I am? Since I pulled off the big shootin’ the other day and all?’

‘I don’t give a damn who you are,’ Nick said evenly. ‘I want to know about Carla Elkins.’

Silence.

‘Okay,’ Chill said. ‘Okay, okay.’ He chuckled. ‘Well, yeah, I got her. I’ll give her back, but I want some things first. I’m ready to make a deal.’

‘Good for you,’ Nick said. ‘But I need proof that you actually have the girl. And that she’s safe.’

Another silence.

The next sound in Bell’s kitchen, fuzzy from its mediation through a cell’s speakerphone, was a voice that made her heart jump.

‘M-M-Mom?’

Carla sounded groggy, confused.

‘M – mmm-mom? Are you th-there? I c-c-c-can’t – I – don’t—’

‘Carla,’ Bell said. ‘We’re coming, sweetie. Hang on. We’re—’

She was interrupted by a series of muffled bumps and then a rubbing sound. The man was back on the line again. His hard quick breaths came through the speakerphone with a rasp like a nail scratching a sidewalk.

‘That good enough for ya?’ he said. ‘Sure do hope so, cause that’s all you’re gonna get.’

Bell’s instinct was to scream, to threaten and curse at this man, demanding the return of her daughter. Or to beg, to plead, to be sweet to him, to promise him things, to offer him everything she had. Anything he wanted.
Just don’t hurt her. Just don’t hurt my child. Please
.

It took every bit of self-control Bell possessed to keep quiet. She had to let the sheriff run the show. She had to believe in his expertise.

‘Okay, so she’s alive,’ Nick said. ‘Keep her that way. Now, what do you want?’

‘First thing is, I want you and the bitch to back off.’ For the moment, the man’s voice sounded peeved instead of menacing, like a kid asking for a second cookie. ‘Just let it be, willya? Just mind your own damned business. Quit stirring everything up.’

‘Don’t know what you mean.’ The sheriff’s voice was calm. Bell wondered how he could be so calm.

‘I mean I want you to quit comin’ after us so hard.’

‘Who’s “us”?’ Nick said.

A snort of laughter. ‘You must think I’m the stupidest asshole in the valley. Well, I ain’t. But I’ll tell you this much, I sure don’t plan to—’

‘We want the girl. Now,’ Nick said, cutting him off.

‘Maybe we better talk about it. Maybe we ought to discuss it in person.’

‘Fine. Where and when?’

‘That big-ass brick building on Main. The one with them big windows. Same block as the Salty Dawg. Don’t know what you call it.’

‘The RC.’

‘Whatever. Be there in fifteen minutes.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Huh?’

‘Is that all you want?’

There was a pause.

‘Hell, no, that ain’t all I want.’

The man, Bell sensed, wasn’t ready to make his real demands yet. He hadn’t thought this through. He was winging it.

‘I want a hundred thousand dollars,’ he suddenly said, and he said the number as if he’d plucked it from the air. ‘Yeah. No, wait – make it two. Two hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. And a new car. And a clear way outta there. Plus some guns. And some sandwiches.’

‘Okay.’

‘You got that?’

‘I got that.’ Nick looked at his watch. Now Bell understood. They were trying to trace the call. The sheriff’s aim was to keep the man on the line as long as possible. ‘Anything else?’

‘You better not be shittin’ me,’ the man said. ‘You sure as hell better be takin’ me seriously, fat ass, and writin’ all this down, or you’re gonna be in a world of hurt. You and this girl’s mama. You hear me?’

Bell could feel the sweat crawling down either side of her torso. Her mouth was so dry that swallowing hurt.

‘I hear you,’ the sheriff said. ‘I’m writing it down.’

‘Good. Good deal. Okay, well, I gotta go. Bring the money and the car, okay? Gotta tell you, though – I ain’t waitin’ too long. Twenty minutes. Tops. Any funny business – well, lemme just say that you’re gonna wish you never messed with me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’

‘Okay,’ the sheriff said. ‘Oh, and I got one more thing to say, too.’ He had sounded reasonable up to that point; he’d sported the voice of a man with whom you could do business.

Now, though, just before he signed off, Nick’s voice changed. Steel glinted in it. You could only push him so far. ‘You harm a single hair on that little girl’s head,’ he said, ‘and I’ll hunt you down and I’ll personally cut off your balls with a rusty knife and hand ’em back to you in a paper sack, you hear me?’

50

‘Whatever he wants, Nick – you do it. You get it. You get it for him.’ Bell hardly recognized her own voice. It was husky, agitated, roughed-up with panic, the words half-hysterical as they tumbled out of her. ‘Whatever he wants. Anything. I’ll be responsible. Put it on me. I don’t care, Nick. You understand? I don’t care.’

Trembling, moving too fast, blundering her way toward the kitchen counter, she tried to snatch up the key ring that held the Explorer keys. She miscalculated her grab, knocked the ring on the floor. Picked it up, dropped it again, picked it up again. This time, when she picked it up, she held the key ring in both hands for safekeeping.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go.’

Nick stood between her and the door, deliberately blocking her way. He closed one big hand around both of her clasped hands. With his other hand, he used a series of gentle but systematic tugs to extricate the key ring from her ferocious grip. He set it back down on the counter.

‘I’ll drive,’ he said. ‘Blazer’s right out front.’

‘No, no,
no
– Nick, I’ve got to get us there, we have to go, I’ve got to—’

She stopped. Fetched a deep breath. She closed her eyes for just a fraction of a second, and she nodded. He was right. She was in no shape to drive. Her thoughts were coming too fast, too wild, too formless and furious, a dizzy swarm, and there were too many of them: She needed to move. She needed to hold still. She needed to talk. She needed to be very, very quiet. She needed to scream. She needed to cry.

She needed her little girl.

I oughta call Sam
, Bell thought.
He deserves that. It’s not fair that he doesn’t know
.

Something stopped her. Pride, maybe. Stubbornness, too. She’d contact him later, and she’d reap whatever whirlwind of blame and anger he chose to send her way, knowing that she’d probably deserve it, too, every bit of it.

But right now, no. She’d gotten them into this mess – she’d gone her own way, she hadn’t listened to anybody’s advice, she’d been head-strong and arrogant
I know best I know what I’m doing damnit and I’m not backing down
– and she would get them out of it, too. Her and Carla. She would find a way.

Sheriff Fogelsong cut off his engine. He’d brought the Blazer to an abrupt halt at the curb in the block before the RC.

The night was overcast. Stars stayed hidden, tucked behind the layers of mist and endless distance, and the moon seemed to flit in and out of streaming scarves of clouds.

Fog dawdled low on the ground. With the stores locked up tight, the only light arrived from the thin stalks of streetlights and from the traffic light at the next corner. That stoplight had switched over to a flashing light, as it always did after 8
P.M.
; there wasn’t enough traffic downtown at this hour to justify the constant green-yellow-red-green sequencing. It would change back again at 6 the next morning. For now, though, the flashing yellow light pulsed over the empty intersection like a stern repetitive warning.

Nick swiveled his big body in the car seat, hands on the wide steering wheel, his gaze sweeping across the cold, quiet streets. He moved his head in brief practiced snaps, right and left, forward and backward. For all he knew, the man who’d called him had an accomplice, a look-out. Someone might be watching them now.

The sheriff’s radio spat out a crackle of static. Incoming call. It was Wanda Markell, the dispatcher from over in Collier County. A deputy, she said, had reported in. Turns out he’d stopped a guy a half hour ago who might’ve been their suspect.

And let him go.

‘Let him
go
?’ Nick roared into his radio. ‘He let him go? With all the bulletins out there? Shit.’

‘Well,’ Wanda said, a little defensively, ‘he had his radio off. Just for a minute or so.’

‘Why’d he have his goddamned radio off?’

‘Well,’ she said, this time sheepishly, ‘he needed to relieve hisself. You know how it is.’

Now Nick squinted through the Blazer’s front windshield at the dark structure that dominated the next block, spreading to both ends of it like something that had just kept on expanding until it hit a curb. There were no streetlights on the block.

This was the Acker’s Gap Community Resource Center, a strapping rectangle composed of yellow brick, with huge picture windows on three of its sides. It dated back to 1953, to a hot June afternoon when Colby Romer – squeezed into a blue three-piece suit, surrounded by his wife and his four kids and a crowd of townspeople who’d come for the free hot dogs – had cut the ribbon on his new Ford dealership. Against that wide inviting glass, the people of Acker’s Gap had once pressed their noses to gaze longingly at the snappy new sedans in bright primary colors. The dealership went out of business on another hot June day, this one in 1964 – the same day Colby Romer filed for bankruptcy, owing close to half a million dollars in gambling debts. Two weeks later he was found in the family den by his son, Ricky Romer, with a plastic dry-cleaning bag tied around his head and a typewritten note on the TV tray that read
REAL SORRY
. In subsequent years the big building on Main was, at various times, an evangelical church, a flea market, a suite of medical offices, a rehearsal space for a semiprofessional theater group called the Mountain Stage. There was always talk of tearing it down, but that turned out to be a more expensive proposition than just letting it sit.

Three years ago, the building had been rechristened the Acker’s Gap Community Resource Center. The court-sponsored Teen Anger Management Workshop met here. So did a Boy Scout troop, an AA chapter, a quilting club.

Only one other car was parked on the block. Directly in front of the RC. It was a dark shade, flanks stained with mud, windows clouded by filth. It stuck out at a strange angle, almost perpendicular to the sidewalk, as if the driver hadn’t so much parked as rammed the curb and abandoned ship. The shabby-looking car and the piss-poor parking job sent a stab of fear through Bell, the same fear she’d felt when she heard his voice.

He’s just some dopey kid. He’s just flailing around, doing whatever pops into his head. He’s got nothing to lose. There’s no logic here, nothing to bargain with, nothing to appeal to. He’s winging it
.

Bell sat stiffly in the passenger seat, her body a tight series of sharp angles. Back straight, knees locked, feet flat on the floor. That was how she’d been sitting the whole way over, the hands in her lap opening and closing, opening and closing. She was trying and failing to keep her thoughts from spiraling into panic.

The sheriff clicked off the call with Wanda –
Shit
, he’d said to her one more time, just to make sure his disgust was well documented – and checked in with his deputies. He’d called them before leaving Bell’s house but wanted to make sure they understood.

Stay back
. That was his message.

They didn’t know who they were dealing with. And he had a hostage. The sheriff instructed the units to hold off until he signaled otherwise. It was his show.

He put a hand on Bell’s shoulder. She flinched.

‘You have to promise,’ he said, ‘that you’ll sit tight and let me handle this. Do exactly what I tell you to do – and
only
what I tell you to do. Is that a deal, Bell? If it isn’t, I’ll have Mathers take you straight home when he shows up.’

She didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes straight ahead, her gaze boring through the windshield and, beyond that, through the dark night, through the fog and the uncertainty, through whatever the next several minutes might bring. Her voice was low and soft. If you didn’t know what the words meant, if you only heard the tone, you’d be excused for thinking that she was telling a bedtime story. There was a lilt to her voice.

It was the lilt of rage.

‘Listen,’ Bell said. ‘If Charlie Mathers or anybody else touches me, if anybody tries to take me away from here, I swear to God I’ll kill him. Then I’ll kill the fucking asshole who’s got Carla. I will. You know I will.’

She wasn’t kidding. Nick had no doubt about that.

‘Okay,’ he said. He wanted to argue but there was no time for it now. ‘Let’s go, then. But for God’s sake, Bell, be careful.’

51

They found his point of entry. A large hole had been knocked in one of the side windows. Myriad chips of safety glass littered the narrow concrete sill like a casual scattering of gems.