Sorrow Road (27 page)

Someone
did
want to kill Darlene Strayer. And that someone had gotten away with it.

*   *   *

With Carla gone, the house was too big. Bell felt lost in it. She spent a good portion of the morning in an aimless ramble from room to room, wondering how the front hall had suddenly become longer, the doorways wider, the ceilings taller. She tried to figure out how the entire place had gotten so swollen and echoing and empty.

In a bewilderingly short time—less than a week—Bell had become accustomed all over again to her daughter's presence around the house. Carla was not a large person, but she seemed to take up a lot of space.

After Jake's call, Bell tried to settle down and finish some paperwork. She could not focus. Yet drifting around in search of domestic busywork didn't do the trick, either, because it only reminded her of Carla's absence. The house kept right on expanding, inch by inch, memory by memory.

Maybe a change of scene would help. Shortly after noon she packed up her briefcase with the paperwork she had quit on earlier, wrapped herself in the big down coat, tracked down her car keys, and headed to JP's for lunch.

The drive took twice as long as usual. Each night for the past two weeks had brought an impressive dump of new snow, and the roads were still reeling. This winter, Bell reflected as she angled the Explorer into a cleared-out spot in front of the diner, had a relentless feel to it. A sense that snow would be coming down forever, bit by bit, like some sneaky form of torture.

She was the only customer. She decamped in a booth in the back corner. Jackie came by, and Bell agreed to the daily special: bean soup and a basket of corn bread. Jackie nodded her approval and went off to fetch it.

Bell set a stack of legal pads on one side of the table, leaving the other side free for her food. She was preoccupied by a question:

Should she call Ava Hendricks and tell her about Leroy's discovery?

No. Because it proved nothing. It was speculation, not evidence. Evidence sometimes was discovered as a result of speculation, but speculation itself was useless until it could be backed up by facts, by science—by something hard and ineluctable, not a mushy-soft hunch. In the meantime, the ID of the vehicle that had pushed the Audi would have to come—if it came at all—from the forensics lab in Charleston, and that meant waiting their turn. It meant standing in line behind all of the other requests from all of the other small communities that had their own crimes to worry about, and their own prosecutors with hunches.

Right now, Bell thought, they did not have much. They had a paint chip on a back bumper. And they had the musings of Leroy Perkins, tow-truck driver, salvage hauler, and amateur forensic mechanic. Until she heard back from the lab, it was not enough to justify a call to Ava Hendricks.

She got down to work on the ten thousand other issues—give or take—that constituted a prosecutor's duties. She flipped through the legal pad on the top of the stack. These were the notes she had prepared on the Charlie Vickers case for Hickey Leonard. She would be briefing him early Monday morning. Rhonda Lovejoy's grandmother was still in the ICU at the Raythune County Medical Center, rigged to a ventilator, her brain function summarized by a thin green line on a monitor. Rhonda was at her side. And she would stay there, as long as the line did.

“Excuse me.”

Bell did not look up. She continued to write on the legal pad, wanting to get a thought down in black and white—or black and yellow, in this case—before it eluded her. “Just leave the bowl right there, Jackie,” she said, using her left hand to wave toward the tabletop. “Thanks.”

Nothing.

Bell lifted her head. It wasn't Jackie.

It was Ava Hendricks.

“They told me I'd find you here,” Ava said.

“Who's ‘they'?”

“Everyone I asked.”

It was plausible. Bell hadn't noticed any witnesses to her arrival here, but that did not matter; in a small town, your habits were as well known to your fellow citizens as if they routinely tracked you on a satellite uplink. There were only a limited number of possibilities as to where you could be. In her case, it generally came down to three: the courthouse, home, or JP's.

The courthouse was closed on Saturdays. Ava had probably gone by her house—everybody knew where the prosecutor lived, and nobody was shy about sharing. That left JP's.

“Care to join me for lunch?” Bell said. She was surprised, but wanted to be hospitable.

Ava took off her coat and hat and scarf. She tossed them onto the bench seat. She was wearing dark green corduroy slacks and a gray cashmere sweater. She scooted into the booth, pushing her outerwear along the seat toward the wall to clear out a space.

“It took me an extra two hours to make the drive this morning,” Ava said. There was umbrage in her tone. The look on her face suggested that she blamed Bell for the bad roads, as well as for every other impediment in the known world.

“We've got one snowplow,” Bell said. “And one guy to drive it. And he's pretty swamped.” She flipped shut the legal pad and put it back on the stack. “I won't even ask about coffee. But the bean soup's pretty good.”

“I'm not hungry.”

The woman's coldness was as off-putting as always. Bell attributed it to Ava's profession; doctors in general could be an arrogant lot, with neurosurgeons leading the pack. The long years of training, the life-and-death stakes riding on every flick of the scalpel—the arrogance surely had some justification. Still, though. How could someone as rigid and austere as Ava Hendricks have an intimate life? How could she ever let go of herself long enough to love?

Love.

Well, there you go,
Bell thought.
Look at me—judgmental as hell
. Ava Hendricks had lost her partner. How could she forget that? Maybe this woman's distant attitude was coming as much from grief as it was from the brain surgeon bit. She was a woman in mourning.

And maybe I'm just as narrow-minded as Rhonda
.
Maybe I forgot that because I don't quite think of them as having been a couple—a
real
couple, that is, like a man and a woman. Maybe Acker's Gap is changing me more than I'm changing Acker's Gap.

It was a dismaying possibility. Bell moved past it by speaking quickly.

“So if you didn't drive all this way for Jackie's bean soup, what can I do for you?”

“I found something. Something you need to see.” Before Bell could respond, Ava was talking again. She was more animated now. “Darlene bought a new cell two weeks ago. It was a different model, with a different plan. But she hadn't canceled the other cell yet. It still works. The data's still on it. I came across it last night when I was—I was putting some things away.”

When you were sorting through the belongings of your lost loved one,
Bell thought.
When you were touching the only things you have left of her now.

“What did you find?” she said out loud.

“This.” Ava handed her the cell, which she had retrieved from her trouser pocket. “It's a video. Taken at Thornapple Terrace. According to the date stamp, the first one's from a month ago.”

Bell pressed the spot on the screen that initiated the playback. At first there was only fuzz and static, a large blue shape and a scuffling sound. Then the cell's angle changed. It moved back, and the blue shape was revealed to be a sweater. Harmon Strayer's sweater. Bell had never met him in person, but she knew right away that this was Darlene's father: Even after the ravages of age and illness, the family resemblance was remarkable. Looking at his face was like looking into Darlene's face—as it might have looked from a distance, and through a frosty windowpane.

He was sitting at a round table in what appeared to be a lounge. His hands were placed on the table; they were pale and wizened, and wrenched by arthritis into painful-looking shapes. The view of the room behind him included other tables and chairs, too, and a sofa.

On the table was a checkerboard. The red and black pieces were arranged expectantly on the squares.

A voice could be heard from behind the cell. It was Darlene's voice, softer than Bell had ever heard it: “Hi, Daddy. You look real good today. Real handsome. Are you ready for Alvie's visit? He'll be here soon. I know you like it when Alvie comes by.” There was a pause, and then Darlene spoke again. “I love you, Daddy. I love you so much. I hope you can understand me when I say that. But even if you can't, I hope you can just feel my love. I hope it's like the sun on your face. Even if you don't know what I'm saying, you can feel the warmth of it.”

Harmon Strayer looked at the cell. He raised his arm. Bell assumed he was going to wave.

Instead, the old man suddenly let out a terrible bellow. He leaned forward and smashed at the checkerboard again and again. Then he swept the board and its pieces off the table.

“Daddy—Daddy, what are you doing?” Darlene said. The picture wobbled as she leaned forward to try and stay his hand; her hand was briefly visible. “Daddy, stop. Stop it.”

The video ended.

Bell looked from the screen to Ava's face. “I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing,” she said. “Don't people with Alzheimer's sometimes display inappropriate anger? It's not uncommon, is it?”

“Play the next video. It's two days later.”

Bell touched the screen again. This time, Harmon Strayer was wearing a red turtleneck sweater. He was sitting in the same spot, his twisted hands settled on the table. But the checkerboard was not there. He blinked, and then he appeared to grow more apprehensive; he shifted back and forth in his chair, making a moaning sound. He pulled at his bottom lip.

The checkerboard slid into the scene; an unseen someone had brought it to the table. A pudgy white hand and a pink sleeve came into view, placing the pieces on the squares, one by one.

From behind the camera came Darlene's voice: “Isn't that nice, Daddy? Your friend Marcy is getting the checkerboard ready. They had to move it to dust under it. But now it's back. Maybe somebody's going to play a game later. So it will be all ready for them.”

The look that Harmon Strayer gave to the camera—to his daughter, who held it—was hard for Bell to witness. It was filled with startled panic and a clawing, ravening, bottomless fear. She wanted to reach into the video and pull the old man out of there, protect him, shelter him. The pitch of Darlene's voice revealed that she, too, saw all those things in her father's eyes: “Daddy, what's wrong? Daddy, please don't be upset. What's wrong? I'm here, Daddy. I'll always be here. I won't let anything happen to you. I promise, Daddy.” The video ended.

Bell put the cell down on the tabletop.

Ava said, “There are several more, very similar to those two. Darlene and her father are in the lounge. Something upsets him. It's like a switch being flipped. He goes from quiet and submissive—to this.”

“What do you think it means? Was someone at the Terrace abusing Mr. Strayer? A staff member? Marcy Coates? Is that why he's reacting this way?”

Ava shook her head. “I don't know. But I can't believe that if Darlene knew her father was being physically abused she would have left him there. It has to be something more subtle. And she was trying to figure it out herself. What could be spooking him like that?” She surprised Bell with a baffled, bemused smile. “I mean—like, a haunted checkerboard? Or what?”

The smile completely transformed Ava's face. Her features came alive, and there was a soft sparkle in her dark eyes. And then, a few seconds later, it was all gone; the hard face was back, the closed one, the one that let nothing slip.

“Here you go.” Jackie had arrived at the side of the booth. She set down the bowl of bean soup and the red plastic basket of corn bread. “Bowl's hot,” she said to Bell. “Be careful.” She turned to Ava. “Anything for you?”

“I'm fine.” Ava's voice had a slight but perceptible shudder in it, as if even the contemplation of eating in this place was just a notch below repulsive.

“Give a holler if you change your mind,” Jackie said. Back to Bell: “Plenty more corn bread where that came from. Got another batch in the oven. Just say the word.”

By this time a few more customers had hustled in, stomping the snow off their boots, faces set grimly against the cold. The moment they felt the warmth of the indoors, those faces changed. They relaxed. Jackie left to take their orders.

Ava watched her walk away. When she turned again to Bell, her face was puzzled but still riven with a sort of quasi-disgust. “So how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Put up with this place. I mean, you don't strike me as somebody who's all that crazy about bean soup.”

“You're wrong about that. Nobody makes bean soup like Jackie's.” To back up her words, Bell dipped in her spoon to sample it.

“You know what I mean.” Ava frowned. “I used to ask Darlene the same thing. She actually considered coming back here to live, did you know that? She talked about buying a house and having her dad live with her.”

“You mean ‘live with
us,
' right? You would have come with her, surely.”

Ava looked at Bell for several seconds before replying. “We discussed it. And yes—I suppose that's what I would have done. Move here, but keep my practice in D.C. Live here, work there. Which is the opposite of how most physicians do it. I have colleagues who fly into Charleston once a week, perform back-to-back surgeries for two days, and then fly back home. They live in a big city—a more sophisticated place, frankly—and they work here.”

“And then her father died.”

“Yes.”

“So she never had the chance.”

“That's right.” Restless, Ava picked a piece of corn bread out of the basket. “You mind? Looks pretty good. Fresh.”