Sorrow Road (42 page)

“Lenny,” Rhonda said. “You had some trouble that night, didn't you? There was another woman there. Marcy's best friend, Connie. They ran. You had to chase them out of the house—after you'd killed the dog. You chased them into the snow. You got them—but you made a mistake.”

“I don't know what you—”

“We found your shoes, Lenny,” Rhonda said, interrupting him, but doing it gently, almost reluctantly. “The ones with blood on them. From when you walked over to the bodies to make sure Marcy and Connie were dead.” It was a long shot, but she had seen much longer ones pay off, so why not?

A tremor ran through Lenny Sherrill's body, top to bottom. “You
couldn't
have found them,” he said, his words rushed and bunched. “I buried 'em. I buried 'em that very night. Only pair I had. Nobody knows where I put 'em.
Nobody
. So there's no freakin' way you could've—”

He stopped.

Rhonda was silent. She leaned away from his ear and put her hands on the bar, as if she had to steady herself in the wake of this revelation, to deal with the momentousness of what he had just revealed.

Lenny changed. He seemed to droop. It was as if he was letting go of something he had been holding onto so tightly for so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to not be holding it. Now that he was free, he realized it felt pretty damned good.

He looked first at Rhonda, then at Bell. He touched a couple of fingers to his chin, where the stubble had to fight for room to sprout between the acne scars. He knew what he'd done. He knew.

And instead of getting mad, or backtracking on his story, or claiming they had not heard him right, or threatening them in the way he was used to doing when things went against him, he nodded. His voice sounded thoughtful. And a little relieved.

“You didn't really find my shoes, did you?”

Bell shook her head.

Lenny nodded again. He sat up a little straighter. “Got it,” he said. He slapped a hand on the wood. The impact made a funny sound as flesh hit the gathered wetness of a bar at this time of night, when the sloshed beer and the spilled whiskey were so abundant that desperate drinkers down to their last dollar had sometimes been known to take a quick lick.

Lenny had made his decision. “None of this was my idea,” he said. “I've been doing what that old bastard tells me to do for my whole damned life.” He finished off the beer they had bought for him with a long, soulful slug, head thrown back, Adam's apple bobbing. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You tell me where I need to sign and I'll sign. I'll do whatever I have to do.”

Bell recited his Miranda rights. She asked if he wanted to keep talking to them. He did. She asked if he wanted an attorney. He didn't. He started to say something else when his chair was bumped hard by a passing customer, a man with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. Lenny tipped forward on his stool.

“Sorry, bro,” the man said, his voice a slurry mumble. “Sorry 'bout that. Oh, hey, Lenny—didn't see it was you. How you doin'?”

“Hey there, Jeff,” Lenny answered. “How you doin'?”

By way of reply the man lifted his empty glass, which he handed over to Kirk for a refill. “Better soon,” he said, winking at Lenny. They both laughed and then the man moved on to wait for his drink at a spot farther down the bar.

Bell leaned back on her stool so that she could see Rhonda. She nodded. Rhonda nodded back and began texting Deputy Oakes. She was asking him to come pick up Lenny Sherrill.

Lenny hunched over the bar, shoulders raised high, head sunk between them. He was lost in his own world now. Bell wondered if he even heard the raucous music overhead, the punchy bass notes so powerful that they could serve as unofficial defibrillators, the electric guitars rolling out in fuzzy bursts of static.

“A few more questions,” Bell said.

“Fire away,” Lenny said. “Got nothing to hide no more.” He took a deep breath. “First good clear breath of air I've had in forever. Feels better already, you know? Being out from under my old man. Free of that SOB.”

He cocked an elbow on the counter and faced Bell. He knew his life was about to change immensely—he knew what he had done, and knew he would be called to account for it—but there was satisfaction in that as well as anxiety, because the old life was hateful and painful and nothing he had ever chosen. And the new one—well, no one knew what the new one might bring, least of all Lenny Sherrill. Only that it would be different.

That day at the church, Bell had sensed this about Lenny: Out of all the things he wanted to be—tough, cool, strong, a player—the one thing he
didn't
want to be was anything like his father, Alvie Sherrill. It was Lenny's single redeeming feature. Bell had counted on it. But she also knew that Lenny could not escape that fate on his own. He needed a hand.

“Where did you get the money to bribe Groves and Marcy Coates?” Bell asked.

Lenny shrugged. He was an explorer at the mouth of a cave, deciding how far to proceed. Checking his flashlight. Calculating odds. Okay: Just go.

“Me and some buddies, we been holding up gas stations all over the county. Works real good. Saved every penny of my share for this—to get those folks to do what my dad wanted 'em to. That church—it don't pay him shit. So I had to help.”

“How did you know Darlene would be here that night?”

“She told me.”

“She told you?”

“Yeah. We'd been getting together to talk sometimes, when she was back in Muth County to visit her dad. Like in the old days.” He looked down. He did not like this part. “My dad told me to keep in touch with her. Then she told me that she was coming to the Tie Yard on Saturday night to meet an old friend. She meant you, I guess.” He changed his position on the bar stool, shifting his bony butt in a doomed attempt to find some comfort. “So I got here, too. Stayed out of sight. Watched you two from over there.” He jerked his head in the direction of a booth in the corner, across the room from the one in which Bell and Darlene had sat.

“And after that,” Bell said. “Once she'd left at the same time I did—how did you get her to drive back?”

“I called her. She'd given me her cell number when her dad was first getting sick. Asked me to keep an eye on him when she couldn't be there.” His mouth twitched. “She was driving down the mountain. I told her I was real bad off. Told her I was thinking about killing myself. Just getting a shotgun and doing it. I knew that would get her back here. She was softhearted that way. When she got my call she pulled over into a patch of woods. Turned off her lights and waited for you to go by. She told me about all that, once she'd gotten back. We sat at the other end of the bar. Right over there.” He scooted the empty bottle around on the soaked coaster. Bits of wet cardboard were tearing off. “She always felt guilty about leaving Norbitt.”

“Darlene was your friend, Lenny,” Bell said. She said it quietly, forcing Lenny to lean in to hear her. She needed him close for the next few questions. “So why did you want her to die?”

“I didn't. It was my dad.”

“But you went along with it.”

“My dad—he runs the show, okay? You don't go against him. Not if you know what's good for you. He said Darlene was asking too many questions at that Thornapple place. Things that oughta just be left alone.”

Bell shook her head. “I don't buy it. You do a lot for your dad—but causing the death of your best friend? No. What's the real reason, Lenny?”

“I told you.”

“And I said I don't believe you.”

The standoff wasn't much of a standoff. A petulant Lenny shoved away the empty bottle that he'd been playing with. It nearly capsized.

“The bitch
left,
” he said. His voice was bitter. He kept his eyes on the bottle. “Just up and left. Went away to college—but promised to come back. Went to law school—and did it again. Swore she'd be coming back. But she never did.” He nodded grimly to himself. “What happened to her—she
deserved
it.”

“Because she left you.”

“No.” Lenny shook his head. “Because she left me alone with
him
.”

Bell was just about finished. She would have to do this all over again at the courthouse, and by that time, Lenny might very well have changed his mind about that lawyer. She had a few more things she wanted to know before Deputy Oakes arrived.

“And the drinking binge? Darlene had been doing so well. Carried her sobriety chip with her.” Bell wanted to add:
And so not only did you kill her, but you also made sure her last moments were filled with shame and self-loathing.

Lenny looked away. It was as if he had heard the addendum.

“Wasn't too hard,” he said. “I knew how to do it, because I knew her better'n anybody else. All I had to do was start talking about our dads. And about the old days. The days that ain't coming back. That kind of thing, it liked to tear her to pieces. Thinking about the past can open up a hole in some people that's so damned big they can't find nothing to fill it. They try, though. They try and they try. That's how they get to be drunks.”

*   *   *

Bell received Carla's text about twenty minutes after Deputy Oakes arrived and began the familiar ritual with Lenny Sherrill: cuffs, another Miranda, perp walk through a thickening haze of determined snow that was already ankle-high. Jake did not want any trouble from the bar crowd—liquid courage and the current epidemic of anti-cop sentiment being a troublesome mix—and so he handled everything through the back door, discreetly. He draped Lenny's coat over his shackled hands and led him out to the Blazer. Most of the clientele in the Tie Yard Tavern did not even realize what was happening.

By now Bell and Rhonda were outside, too, standing beside the Explorer. The snow was falling even faster now. The wind had a spiteful streak. They waved at the Blazer as it went by, Jake hunched over in his seat like a ship's captain lashed to the wheel, Lenny Sherrill in the back, his face unreadable behind the glass in the brief flash of visibility afforded by the sole light in the parking lot. Jake's intense focus was necessary; he had a long drive back to the Raythune County Courthouse. Most of Lenny's crimes had occurred in Muth County, and Bell would have to sort it all out with Steve Black, but that was down the road. Right now, they had their man—or one of their men, because she was already contemplating ways to charge Alvie Sherrill as well as his son. For a moment, all was well in the world.

And then she read Carla's text:

Hey, mom. I'm at TT. All fine. C U later

“Problem,” Bell said.

“What?”

Bell held up her cell and waggled it. “This isn't okay. Carla's trying to tell me something.”

Rhonda leaned over and read the text. “Sounds pretty straightforward to me. She says she's fine.”

“Right. That's the problem. ‘All fine' is not something Carla would text if everything
was
fine.”

“Because?”

“Because she's the daughter of two lawyers. And whether she was at Sam's house or here with me in Acker's Gap, she grew up hearing both of us say the same thing, over and over again: ‘Never answer a question that hasn't been asked.' I didn't text her and ask if she was fine. She volunteered the information. Something is definitely amiss.”

Rhonda tucked a gloved hand up under its opposite armpit. She was shivering. “Could we maybe discuss this
inside
the car?”

The heater took a while to warm up. While it fought the good fight, Bell read the text several more times. She texted back:
What's going on??

In five minutes, when there had been no reply, she called Jake Oakes.

“We're driving out to Thornapple Terrace,” she said. “Just wanted you to be aware in case we need backup.”

“You can't do that.” Jake was adamant. “Can't get out there. Not now. Roads're totally covered. You can't even see where there
was
a road anymore.”

Bell did not care what he said. She was going. All she could think about were the similarities between this night and the one four years ago, when Carla had been kidnapped by a man who called himself Chill. He was a pathetic, two-bit hoodlum, but he was a pathetic, two-bit hoodlum with a gun—and that changed everything.

It was all happening again. Carla was in trouble, and Bell was trying desperately to get to her. No, not trying: She
would
get to her.

“Bell? Did you hear me? Don't do it,” Jake barked at her. “I've got a buddy who's a deputy in Muth County. I'll call and get him to go by the Terrace. Check things out. But you can't go. You'll never make it.”

“Watch me,” she said. She ended the call. The bravado was less about convincing Jake Oakes than it was about convincing herself.

She turned to Rhonda: “You don't have to go. I can drop you off somewhere on the way. At a relative's house, maybe. I know you've got 'em everywhere.”

Rhonda rubbed her hands in front of the dash heater. “Maybe it's a measure of the basically nonexistent social life I've had lately,” she said, “but right now, I can't think of anything I'd rather do than drive through a blinding snowstorm to get to an old folks' home. Let's go.”

*   *   *

It was the hardest trek Bell had ever attempted. She had driven through snow before, and she had driven over ice, and she had nearly rolled an SUV once when tornado-force winds gripped the vehicle like a gang of hooligans trying to upend it, but this was different, by several orders of magnitude.

As Jake had warned her, the road had simply vanished. No magician could have done a better job of it. In lieu of a road, there was a minefield of white across which the Explorer churned, and the trick was to go fast enough not to get stuck in the rising snow but slow enough to keep from spinning out. At one point, Bell was suddenly going sideways; she had tapped the brake and her rear wheels took offense. They skidded dramatically to the right in a lively swoop, producing just the kind of feeling, she thought, that people pay good money for in amusement parks. Had any other cars been present, they would have been doomed. She had no functional control of the Explorer, except to will it to go in the right direction.