Sorrow Road (5 page)

“Yes,” Bell said.

She was too stunned at first to offer more than one word. It was impossible to believe. Just a few hours ago she had been sitting with her in the bar. She could remember the way Darlene's hand looked when she lifted the whiskey glass. She could remember the sound of her voice, the expression on her face. And now all of it—the hand, the voice, the face—was gone. Darlene Strayer was dead.

Bell realized that she and Oakes were standing in the foyer, facing each other, in radically different states of attire. She wore a pink chenille robe and sweats and slippers. He wore a brown uniform and a black wool greatcoat, and a black toboggan instead of his usual flat-brimmed hat. The snow was melting from his boots onto the wide-plank flooring. Already two pools had formed around his feet.

In other circumstances, the disparity in their appearances would have amused them. Neither commented upon it now. Not even Oakes, who presumably kept a few choice wisecracks on ice just in case he ever encountered a prosecutor in a bathrobe.

“Anyway,” he said, “I needed to notify you ASAP. And get a few basic facts for the timeline.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He sensed her shock and kept his demeanor businesslike. Normally, Jake Oakes was a joker, a scamp, a cutup; he and Bell often clashed over his reliance on the inappropriate quip as his primary communication tool. Not today. He was suitably serious. She appreciated that.

“We met at the Tie Yard last night,” Bell went on. “I know Darlene from law school. Haven't seen her in years. She's originally from Barr County. Lives in D.C. now. But she wanted to get together. She left the bar just a few minutes before I did. And she's a good driver, far as I know.” Bell realized she was still in the grip of the present tense. It was too soon to change.

“Right.” He wrote some words in his notebook.

“And like I said, she left before me. Why didn't I come across the accident? It doesn't make sense.”

“Can't say.”

Bell put her left hand on the newel post of the stair railing close to where she stood. She needed to hold on to something. Oakes knew better than to offer assistance.

“What was the cause, Jake? I mean—yeah, the roads were in bad shape, with the snow and all. That switchback can be a bitch. And it was dark. But Darlene knows her way around these mountains. Was there anything else? Any other contributing factors?”

Oakes looked at her.

“Ma'am?” he said. He seemed slightly perplexed.

Bell waited. She did not know what was going on, and waited for him to enlighten her.

“Ma'am,” Oakes repeated. He was tentative now, as if she might be testing him. “We don't have the toxicology report yet, of course, but it's an easy guess. There was a strong smell of alcohol on the body. And vomit in the car. She was drunk. That's how she lost control and hit the tree. She was impaired.”

“No.” Bell's objection was sharp and quick. “No way. I was with her. She had a few sips from one drink. That's it. She was
definitely
not drunk.”

“Ma'am, I've already checked with the bartender at the Tie Yard. He was none too happy to have to answer his door first thing on a Sunday morning, but he remembered her right away. Recognized the picture. He served her four shots in a row. Some guy came in and sat down next to her at the bar, he said. Looked like they hit it off right away. The guy bought her a few more. By that time, she was slurring her words. Bartender finally had to cut her off.”

Bell was irritated now. “And I'm telling you he's wrong. I was
there
, Jake. He's got her confused with somebody else. Darlene had one drink. And we walked out together—just the two of us. She was
fine
. Totally sober.”

The deputy flipped a few pages in his notebook, finding the passage he wanted. “What time did you leave the bar?”

“Nine thirty at the latest. I was home by ten forty-five.”

“Well, that's our problem, right there.” He tapped the page. “Bartender says he came on duty about ten. She was already there, shotgunning her drinks. She didn't clear out until after one. She was pissed as hell when he told her she'd had enough.”

Bell let the information settle. “She must have gone back. She must have pulled over somewhere and waited for me to pass—and then doubled back. Returned to the bar.”

“Could be.”

“Still doesn't make sense. Even back in law school, I never saw Darlene touch so much as a beer. I mean—
never
. And nobody gossiped about her having a problem with alcohol, either. Believe me—if she did, there would have been talk.”

Oakes frowned. “Okay, well—there was something in her other coat pocket. A blue coin. About the size of a poker chip.”

“What was it?”

“A sobriety medallion. From Alcoholics Anonymous. Represents one year's sobriety. Looks like your friend might have been hiding a secret or two.”

Aren't we all,
Bell thought grimly.
Aren't we all.

Three Boys

1938

Their names were Harmon Strayer, Vic Plumley, and Alvie Sherrill, and they were always together.

If you saw Harm, you knew you'd see Alvie, and if you saw Vic, you could set your watch by the fact that Alvie and Harm would be coming along less than a minute later. They lived on the same block and they were roughly the same age. They had each been born in 1926, and so the milestones of life—first day of school, first paying job, first kiss—came to them at the same time. They were each other's reference points and touchstones of memory. Later, when they were middle-aged men, if one of them blanked on a date or a detail, one of the other two could fill it in for him. So nothing was forgotten.

They lived in Norbitt, West Virginia. It was a small town and a dingy one, the county seat of Barr County. Barr County, too, was small and dingy. Town and county echoed each other's insignificance, like two smudged mirrors set face-to-face, forever reflecting back a third-rate version of eternity.

It was a town that did not matter, in a county nobody cared about, in a state that people overlooked except when they were making jokes about it.

But that was about to change.

There was a darkness gathering in the skies, a darkness that soon would swallow up the world. Places like Norbitt were about to become as important as the great cities—London, Paris, Vienna, Moscow—because the men who rescued the future were born here. They were born in the small towns of West Virginia, and in the small towns of Kentucky and Arkansas and Kansas and Maine and Oklahoma and Montana and Pennsylvania. The fact that most of the world had never heard of these towns would not matter anymore.

These three boys, like boys from other threadbare, soiled towns in threadbare, soiled states, were just a few years away from the great adventure of their lives: saving the world.

Vic Plumley was the restless one. The hungry one. The one with the most potential. He was big and handsome, with thick dark hair and eyes that had started out as pale, almost translucent blue, but by the time he was in junior high school, had turned a deep indigo shade that made the things he said seem earnest and sincere, even profound, if he looked at you a certain way when he was saying them.

His father, Frank Plumley, was a salesman, and he was richer and more successful than the other fathers. His mother, Vivian, was prettier than the other mothers. So Vic had a sense of himself
as
himself—as, that is, a real person, a person with desires and a destiny. And he wanted out. He had been led to believe that he could achieve things in the world, real things. Norbitt would never be big enough for him. Barr County would not be big enough, either. The whole state of West Virginia, as a matter of fact, was too small to hold all of Vic Plumley's aspirations. He once complained to Harm that being born in West Virginia was like buying the wrong-sized suitcase. You got it home and then you looked at everything you needed to fit in there, and you realized you'd made a mistake. You needed something bigger. It was infuriating.

On the day of Vic's twelfth birthday—Alvie had turned twelve the month before, and Harmon would turn twelve in a few months—the three of them sat on the back stoop of Vic's house. It was a Saturday morning in the early spring. The air felt rinsed and clean, which was unusual; typically the air in Norbitt smelled as if it carried flecks of something foul in it. Some of the mothers wouldn't even hang their family's wet clothes outside to dry on the line because, they said, the smell would get in there and stick. You'd have to wash those clothes all over again. And again after that. But today—ah, today was glorious, as if a seine net had been dragged across the sky, catching all the dark particles, separating them out, leaving only the clarity, the sparkle.

In the distance, the mountains were silver-black triangles. The peaks looked as if they had been dusted with confectioner's sugar.

Three boys: Vic, Harm, and Alvie.

Vic was short for Victor. Harmon was commonly known as Harm. Alvie, though, was always Alvie. Some people thought it was a nickname—a diminutive for Albert, say, or Alfred or Alvin—but it was not. The name on his birth certificate was Alvie Sherrill. No middle name. The Sherrills did not believe in middle names. Middle names were too fancy. Too showy. Too sissified. Alvie's father, Leonard Sherrill, was a Baptist minister, and he knew the devil could smell pride on a person, and use it to get his red hooks into that person's soul, the way a wild animal is instantly aware of a garbage can with the lid left off, even if it's miles away.

Vic had already gotten his birthday present from his father: a two-year-old Ford pickup. Vic had been driving since he was nine years old. His father would put a Charleston phone book on the seat so that Vic could see over the dashboard of the family Packard. Frank Plumley rode along, too, on those initial journeys, sitting sideways in the passenger seat so that he could watch his boy at the wheel. Frank kept his right arm thrust straight out, bracing himself against the dash. Just in case. He had a lot of faith in Vic's abilities—the kid had great reflexes and crack eyesight—but still. Nine years old.

Now Vic was twelve, and there would be no stopping him. First thing that morning, as he had just related to his two best friends, his father had come downstairs and sort of burst into the kitchen. He threw something at him. Vic did not know what it was, and so he turned his head, not wanting to get beaned, and the keys landed in his corn flakes. The milk splashed all over the tablecloth.

“You're kidding,” Alvie said. He laughed through his nose, in and out, like a snorting horse rejecting his feed. “What'd your mom say?”

“She was damned upset, tell you that,” Vic replied. The cursing he had always done in private had recently made its debut in public. Harm and Alvie were deeply admiring; they, too, often said damn or hell or shit or cock or fuck or even the most taboo of all—goddamn, notorious for its blasphemy—in conversation with each other, but they still lacked the courage to utter a curse word out in the wide world. At school, for instance. It was an especially high hurdle for Alvie, the preacher's son.

But Vic had done it. He had started a few weeks ago, and now every other sentence was spiced with a damn or a hell. He didn't care who was listening. His foul mouth just added to his legend.

“And then what?” Harm said.

“My old man said, ‘Whaddaya think those keys go to, son?'”

“And what did you say?” The question came from Alvie.

“I said, ‘I don't know. Why don't you tell me, Pop?'”

Alvie squirmed a little in his place on the stoop, half in pleasure, half in apprehension. He knew what would have happened if he had ever talked that way to his own father, and he could not help but picture it. The Reverend Sherrill would have unloaded on him. No question. Alvie had been warned to keep a civil tongue in his head. To speak with respect to his elders. Something as fresh as “Why don't you tell me, Pop?” would have netted him a fist-sized welt on the side of his face, a face so gray and narrow that Alvie had been told more than once that he looked like a rat. And he did, too, but not just because of the color and shape of his face. His front teeth protruded brashly, and he had small eyes and a pointy nose.

“And what did your father say to that?” Harm said. He, too, was enthralled.

Vic leaned back. He was on the second step from the top, and he arched his back against the front edge of the top step and spread his elbows, balancing himself. He stretched out his legs and kicked the back of his sneakers against the wood of the third step down. First one shoe, and then the other shoe. Harm and Alvie sat on the top step, on either side of Vic. They scooted over, to give him room to sprawl. Vic liked to sprawl.

“Pop said, ‘Well sir, I heard a rumor it was somebody's birthday. That true?'”

“And what did you say to
that
?” Harm asked.