Ghost Roll (2 page)

“Yeah,” Bell replied. “Sure seems that way.”

Dot clearly had something on her mind, and it wasn't the weather. She sat hunched over the desktop, hands linked on the lid of her laptop. A sudden frown aged her face by about a decade, igniting the wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her downturned mouth.

“So,” Dot said. “Real glad you came by. Something I need to mention.”

Bell waited.

“I keep an eye out for patterns of small cash deposits, just like you asked me to,” Dot said. “At the end of the day, I do a quick check. Haven't said a word to the tellers about it.”

“Good.” The turnover in the teller ranks was constant, Bell knew, and you couldn't vet employees as thoroughly as you'd like to.

“Lots of new businesses lately,” Dot went on. She shook her head. It sounded like good news, but it wasn't; few of the new businesses lasted more than a month or two, popping up only because so many people couldn't find jobs and decided to go it alone. They ended up losing what little was left of their savings by investing in dubious franchises or by opening restaurants or T-shirt shops or tattoo parlors, businesses with abysmally high failure rates. The average length of time between the hanging of the GRAND OPENING sign and its replacement by one announcing GOING OUT OF BUSINESS—EVEYRTHING MUST GO had dwindled to mere weeks.

But there was a subset of such establishments that stuck around, and that, too, was often bad news. The trade in illegal prescription narcotics was thriving in the hills of West Virginia and throughout Appalachia; it was the foremost problem that Bell and her fellow prosecutors faced. Drug dealers had to find quick, easy ways to get rid of their cash, hence they often opened up cash-heavy businesses such as tanning salons, convenience stories, tobacco outlets, and drop-in day-care centers. Bars and restaurants didn't work, because their sales receipts were too closely monitored by the state.

“I've noticed that,” Bell said. She had neither the time nor the investigative staff to check out every shady-looking new business in Raythune County to make sure it wasn't a money-laundering portal for drug dealers.

“Had my eye on this one.” Dot pushed a deposit ticket across the desk, turning it around so that it would be right-side-up for Bell.

The preprinted slip read LITTLE MISS ‘N' MISTER DAY CARE, ROUTE 6, ACKER'S GAP WV. On the numbers side, Bell saw, the cash deposits totaled $897.14.

“That was yesterday's deposit,” Dot said. “Usually it's right around three or four hundred bucks. Never been more than five. But for the past several days, the daily total has been close to a thousand dollars. Creeping up a little bit, day by day.”

“Wonder why the place is suddenly so popular? Did they hire Mary Poppins, or what?”

Dot grinned, glad for the relief. “Right. That was my thought, too—it's way, way too much for a day care around here. Raised a red flag.”

“How long have they had the account?” Bell asked.

“Four months.”

“Probably figure you're not watching them too closely anymore. They keep the amounts low at first, and then, when you've moved on to other new accounts, they accelerate things.”

The grin on Dot's face had disappeared seconds after its arrival. She looked haggard again, older than her years. Drug money had changed the banking business, and her job nowadays was less about helping people finance their homes or manage their savings and more about reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement.

“What do you want me to do?” Dot said.

“Nothing, for now. Don't say a word. Just keep taking the deposits. I'll head out there and look around.”

They both stood up. “You be careful, Bell.”

“I will.”

“No—I mean it.” Dot's voice dropped a decibel, even though her office door was closed. “Things have changed around here since the days when we were growing up.”

Bell nodded. She'd had this conversation before with Dot—she'd had it with many people—and she'd have it again, most likely, before the day was out. It was like a secret handshake they all shared, this need to remind each other at regular intervals that the world was different now, that the amiable serenity of the life they'd known was officially over. It was easy to be deluded about small towns, to see them as what they'd been, not what they were now. It was tempting to let yourself get misled by the superficial ambience of a place like Acker's Gap: the sleepy streets, the single stoplight, the stolid brick buildings fronted by metal awnings that looked like a long row of green eyeshades, the familiar faces, the laid-back glaze of peace and sameness. Underneath, however, the ground trembled from the unmistakable vibration of trouble on the way. Trouble was always on the way.

“Can I ask you something?” Dot said.

“Sure.”

“You doing okay? You look a little tired, is all.”

“Not sleeping too well,” Bell said. “Busy days over at the courthouse. Same as always.” She could've deflected Dot's question, brushed it off; for some reason, however, she decided to tell the truth in a general way. She almost confided in Dot about The Dream, too, but stopped short of that. Telling someone your dreams invited a kind of intimacy that Bell didn't want with anyone—and certainly not with Dot Burdette.

“You have to look out for yourself, Belfa,” Dot said.

“Appreciate the concern.” Bell's voice was curt. She already regretted having mentioned her rough nights to Dot. She'd opened herself up to an extra dose of Life Advice.

“Yeah,” Dot replied drolly. “Just bet you do.”

*   *   *

He was waiting for her in her office—in her outer office, more specifically, the small reception area presided over by Lee Ann Frickie, Bell's secretary, a watchful woman who wore her sixty-seven years as tidily as she did her assortment of plaid wool suits. Today's plaid was gray and chalk.

The man sat in one of the green vinyl armchairs along the wall. Shoulders back, arms crossed, feet together, he'd kept an eye on the doorway with the attentiveness of a dog monitoring a gopher hole. When Bell walked in, he sprang to his feet in a single fluid movement. Just as Jesse had said, he was remarkably fit for a man who was clearly past seventy, and perhaps even older than that.

“Mrs. Elkins,” he said.

Lee Ann rose, too, behind her desk across the room. There was irked umbrage in her voice when she addressed the visitor: “I told you she'd be back in just a bit, sir. But you don't have an appointment. The prosecutor has a full schedule today.”

“Mrs. Elkins,” the man repeated, speaking hastily in case Lee Ann tried to interrupt him, “I'm fully prepared to wait. I'd just like a brief conversation. Whenever it's convenient.”

Bell checked her watch. “I have a deposition in twenty minutes.”

“I'll be out of here in ten. My word on that.”

Now Bell gave him a more searching look. Something in his face seemed familiar to her. Was it the eyes, around which the sun-punished skin bunched in an accordion-like spray of tiny folds? Maybe. His eyes were gray, although they seemed to change color ever so slightly as they picked up the light in the room. A long-healed-over horizontal scar lay across one cheek, a stark white line that stood out against the leathery brown of his lean, hard face.

“I'll need a name first,” Bell said.

“Of course. I'm Quentin Harless. I believe you knew my son. Matt Harless.”

*   *   *

Matt Harless. Yes, she had known him. At one time in her life, she had, in fact, loved him. Had she ever been
in
love with him? Bell couldn't really say. She was certainly attracted to him. In the end, though, he had betrayed her trust so profoundly that for more than a year after his death, she found it hard to think about him without an attendant wave of anger; finally, as additional time went by, she gradually let herself begin to recall the good things about him, his sense of humor and his deep thoughtfulness, his patriotism. He was a lot like her; he kept vast sections of his emotional life walled off. No one knew the whole man.

Well,
she corrected herself,
one person did.
The woman he'd fallen in love with during his work for the CIA in Iraq.
Amatullah.
Yes. That was the name. Bell didn't even know she'd remembered it, but there it was, right at her mind's fingertips: Amatullah. Dead now, just as Matt was dead. Bell sometimes worried that she spent more time thinking about the dead these days than she did the living. But maybe that was bound to happen in a small town with an older, decaying population, a town from which the young seemed to flee just as soon as they were able. Her daughter Carla certainly had.

She shook her head. Time to return to the present.

She'd motioned for the man to follow her into her office, and now they sat facing each other, Bell in her chair behind the chipped wooden desk, her visitor on the couch that backed up against the plaster wall. She'd tried her best to make this office slightly warmer and more habitable than it had been when she first moved in, adding drapes to the window to soften the severity of the blinds, insisting on the procurement of the cloth couch along with the two side chairs. She'd paid for the area rug herself. It was necessary, she thought, to counterbalance the creaky wooden floor, whose planks sang of history and rectitude but were faded and gouged.

“I'm sorry about what happened to Matt,” Bell said. It was hard for her to speak those words; she missed her friend, but he'd brought his death on himself, and he'd also brought sorrow and catastrophe to Acker's Gap. Matt Harless was a retired CIA agent. She'd known him when she lived in the D.C. area, back when she was married to Sam Elkins. Matt had come here nearly three years ago, ostensibly to relax and to rekindle his friendship with Bell, but in reality, his goal was to lure a terrorist to a remote location so that he could kill him without consequence. The terrorist had murdered Matt's lover, Amatullah. It was a strange, tangled story, and one that still haunted Bell with its plangent reminder that no place in the world was safe anymore from an epic, transcendent evil, not even a town as small and ordinary as Acker's Gap.

How much did Quentin Harless know about the circumstances of his son's death? Bell had no idea.

“I appreciate that,” Harless said.

Now she saw even more of a resemblance between father and son. Like Matt, Quentin Harless was serene and self-contained, with a vast quantity of quietness that seemed to be folded up and safely stowed inside him. He didn't fidget. He didn't look nervously around the room. He kept his gray-eyed gaze aimed straight at her.

“I wasn't able to go to the memorial service,” Bell finally said. “I don't get back to D.C. very often these days.” She had waited for Quentin Harless to say something else, after acknowledging her sympathy, but her wait was in vain.

When he did speak, his voice showed no trace of sorrow. It was settled and even. He might have been delivering a weather report. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I didn't expect you to come. Matt's actions nearly destroyed this town. He did some terrible things, Mrs. Elkins. To you—and to your hometown.”

So he did know. Bell was surprised, but didn't want to show it. The information about what Matt had done, including details about the disposal of the terrorist's body, had all been handled discreetly by the FBI and Homeland Security. The cover story was that Matt had died in a hunting accident. Only a few people—Bell and a select number of colleagues—knew the truth. If Quentin Harless knew, that meant he had powerful friends and highly placed sources in the federal government.

“We've moved on,” she said. “We've gotten got past it.”

“Understood. But I haven't.”

The silence widened while Bell tried to figure out why he was here. She couldn't. She had to capitulate.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“There's a lot I can't tell you, Mrs. Elkins. I'm sure you understand. Like Matt, I served in the CIA. I'm retired now, but I read his file. I know what he did, what he brought to your town. All those deaths. All the destruction.” He bowed his head. He quickly lifted it again. “And I know why he did it.”

“Mr. Harless, if you're here to somehow try to make up for what your son did, I have to tell you—we don't want that. We've come to terms with what happened. Nobody wants to be reminded of that time. Okay? I know you must've traveled a long way to get here, and you're welcome to look around a bit before you leave, but I'm asking you not to talk to people about Matt and his actions. I'm appealing to you, sir. Please. This town has suffered enough.”

“You're wrong,” he said.

“How's that?”

“I'm not here for anyone else. I'm here for me.” He lowered his head again, but this time, it was to grip his temples with a spread-out hand. He lightly massaged them and then he dropped his hand and raised his face. It looked older and grayer, as if he'd aged more in the last few seconds than in the past several years. “Matt always trusted you, and so I will, too. May I call you Bell?”

She gave him a single, brief nod.

“Very well, then,” he continued. “When I said that I knew why Matt had done what he did, I wasn't referring to his inexcusable actions—luring Rashid Yusef here, waiting for the chance to kill him. I meant it in the larger sense. Because you see, Bell, I'm ultimately responsible for what happened here. I made Matt what he was. I'm the reason he had no personal life, no ties, no softness, no affections—until he met Amatullah. And that was his undoing, you see. It came too late. Most of us fall in love a dozen times before we're twenty years old. We fall in and out of love like the wind—we're here, we're there, we're on to the next person. We learn how to love. How to temper our love, how to modulate the flame of it, so that it doesn't burn us up and destroy us. But, Matt—.” He paused, and the pain that came roaring into his eyes was so apparent and so massive that it nearly caused Bell to rock back in her chair, even though she sat a good distance across the room from him.