Last Ragged Breath (27 page)

“Royce Enoch Dillard,” the judge said, “you are hereby charged with the first-degree murder of Edward Jerome Hackel. How do you plead?”

A flurry of whispers erupted between Serena Crumpler and her client, who was dressed today in a not-new blue suit, white shirt, and pale gray tie. His hair had been parted on the side and wet-combed into temporary submission. Serena hissed something sharp and admonishing in Dillard's ear, advice he seemed to accept only grudgingly. He stood up straighter, looked down at the defense table, and he said, “I ain't guilty, if that's what you're asking me. But for the record, that Hackel was a lying, no-good sack of—”

“Thank you, Mr. Dillard.” Judge Barbour turned his black eyes to Serena. “Ms. Crumpler, that's the last time I will permit a non-responsive addendum by your client. Are we clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“Good. Mrs. Elkins?”

Bell stood impassively in front of the wooden table, hands clasped, face raised toward Judge Barbour's high bench. She was wearing a black suit with a black blouse, dark stockings, black heels. So self-contained was her demeanor, so blank her expression, that few people would have guessed that on the inside, she was in utter disarray and mad panic, screaming silently at the possibility that Nick Fogelsong was already dead, that he had died in surgery without regaining consciousness, and that she would never see him again in this life. The things that had kept them separated these last few months—his decision to give up the sheriff's job, her pride and her anger—were nothing, less than nothing. And she would never be able to tell him so.

“The county strenuously opposes bail, Your Honor,” she said in a flat voice. “Mr. Dillard is accused of a violent assault that resulted in the death of a husband and father of two children. Mr. Dillard lives alone and has few, if any, ties to the community. Therefore we feel bail should be denied.”

“Ms. Crumpler?”

“Mr. Dillard is not a flight risk. He owns property in Raythune County and he has no prior record of any kind.”

Judge Barbour's gavel was brought down with a clean stroke between his first and second sentences: “Bail is denied. I know you have several motions, Ms. Crumpler, related to suppression of the evidence collected at Mr. Dillard's place of residence. I'll consider those now, and then if there's time today, we'll start jury selection.”

So on it had gone throughout the morning, the motions and counter-motions, the presentations and the objections, as the formal apparatus of a criminal trial creaked and lumbered along like an overloaded wagon, moving in spurts and stops and the occasional surprise turning, covering more distance sideways than forward, or so it seemed. The ancient courtroom with its taupe plaster walls and yellowing pressed-tin ceiling was drafty; cold slipped in through the corners of the old windows. Moisture always gathered on the inside frames of those windows and warped them, leaving long, branching splits in the wood. The frames were painted white every spring but then peeled again the very next winter.

Bell was aware—half-aware, really—of who was there among the spectators, seeing the faces when she turned away from the judge and went back to the prosecutor's table. She saw Diana Hackel—eyes moist, lips pinched, arms wrapped around her torso—and she saw Carolyn Runyon. The two women stayed on opposite sides of the courtroom. She saw three or four strangers, men in dark suits, sitting in the row behind Runyon; she assumed they were associated with Mountain Magic. She saw the retired people who haunted the halls of the courthouse and shuffled into almost every trial, looking for diversion, entertainment.

The ancient radiators under the windows chuckled and sizzled. And on this first day of the proceedings that would determine Royce Dillard's fate, Bell did what she had to do, said what she needed to say, at the time she needed to say it. Her mind was elsewhere. Rhonda Lovejoy was beside her; she understood that her boss was functioning on professional autopilot and if Bell hesitated, if she forgot what came next, Rhonda would hastily whisper a word or two, reminding her, and Bell would nod and go on.

Earlier that morning, just before they walked into the courtroom, Rhonda had offered to handle the proceedings of this first day by herself. That way, Bell could be at the hospital. The answer was no—just as Rhonda had known it would be. This was the prosecutor's job. And Bell Elkins would not, could not, abdicate her responsibilities, despite the fact that the man who had saved her life so many years ago was now fighting for his.

“Bell,” Serena said, approaching her immediately after Judge Barbour announced a brief lunch recess. “I just got a text about Nick Fogelsong. Oh, my God—I'm so sorry. I know how much he means to you. To the whole county. Is there any word from—”

“He's in surgery.” Bell cut her off. She couldn't talk about it. Not if she hoped to get through the afternoon session. She knew she was being unreasonable, but she resented Serena for even bringing it up. This was her crisis, her tragedy—hers and Nick's and Mary Sue's—and she didn't want anyone else touching it or even being close to it. Or commenting on it. She was afraid that the more people discussed it with her, even to express concern and support, the more real it would become.

“I'll agree to a recess for the rest of the day if you want to propose one,” Serena said. She was trying. She didn't know what to say, what to do, but she was trying.

“No. Let's move on.”

“Are you—”

“Yes.” Fiercely. “Totally sure.”

Serena looked at her, sympathy giving way to curiosity. She'd never been able to figure out Bell Elkins. She doubted she ever would. Somehow the courtroom didn't feel quite so chilly anymore; it was downright balmy, compared to what she'd seen in the prosecutor's eyes.

 

Chapter Twenty-five

At last it was over. Judge Barbour's gavel descended with a level bang that left no echo and the atmosphere in the courtroom instantly shifted. It grew slack and disordered, unraveling into separate enclaves of coat-gathering and scarf-knotting and glove-tugging and murmured conversations. Bell rose and reached for the legal pads strewn across the tabletop, but Rhonda, still seated, put a hand on top of her hand and looked up at her, mouthing a single word:
Go
.

She would have no memory of the trip to the hospital. Later, it would occur to her that perhaps she should not have been driving in that state of mind; violently preoccupied, she was probably a danger to herself and others. She did not remember turning into the parking lot or running inside or pushing the elevator button with the heel of her hand, punching at it repeatedly and with such force that she would find a bruise there several hours later, and she would stare at the purplish yellow mark on her skin and wonder where the hell it had come from.

They were clustered in the hall outside the entrance to the intensive care unit. Bell saw them as soon as she lunged off the elevator. For a strange moment she wondered who these people were—two of them, a man and a woman, in flat-brimmed hats with gold braid and heavy brown uniforms—and then in seconds she realized, the fog lifting, that she knew them all, and had known them for years now: Sheriff Harrison, Deputy Mathers, Mary Sue Fogelsong, Hickey Leonard, and Carlene Radnor, Nick's second cousin, a schoolteacher who lived in Toller County. They stood in a ragged half circle, hands at their sides, looking stricken and lost.

“Bell,” Mary Sue said. She was the only one who spoke. The others just looked at her.

Bell's eyes asked the question.

“No,” Mary Sue replied. “No news. They're supposed to bring him back up here—to the ICU—after the surgery. It's been hours and hours but—but they say that doesn't mean anything. Not really. The doctor will come and talk to me. That's what I've been told.”

Bell touched Mary Sue's shoulder. They did not hug. Hugs were something that happened in other people's lives, not theirs.

“I'm so sorry,” Bell said. Mary Sue dipped her head to acknowledge the words. She was holding herself in a tight embrace, arms crossed, elbows flush with her body, as if she feared she might lose track of something if she relaxed.

Carlene Radnor uttered a single sharp sob. The high-pitched sound broke oddly against the silence maintained by the other people here. They stared at her. Not in judgment, but in wonder: So that's what emotion sounds like when it is released, their expressions seemed to say. When it isn't locked up inside the body. Held prisoner.

Bell had met Carlene at several gatherings hosted by Nick and Mary Sue, and she was always struck by how much family members could resemble each other without really sharing any essential features. Carlene was small and dark, while Nick was large and fair, but she had the Fogelsong aura, that admirable sense of not apologizing for the space one takes up in the world. Carlene was thirty-two years old, and had recently gone through a horrendous divorce; her ex-husband, Ollie Radnor, had leveled charges against her of child endangerment that were not even remotely true, but that had caused a splinter of doubt to work its way into the court proceedings. She had been forced to agree to joint custody of their two girls, ages ten and fourteen. Truth was, Ollie was the one who habitually left the girls unsupervised and who called them names—names such as Fat Ass and Beanpole, or Thunder Thighs and Matchstick, as their respective physiques dictated—and Bell remembered the darkness in Nick's face when he described the man's emotional abuse of his children. It was all she could do, Bell recalled, to restrain Nick from driving over to Toller County and slugging Ollie Radnor in the mouth.

“I just can't—” Carlene was trying to speak. “If something happens to Nick, I swear, I just don't see how I'm going to—”

“We don't know anything yet,” Hickey said. He was a comforting presence here, Bell saw. He was perennially and comfortably disheveled, and the small bit of hair he had left was the color and consistency of broom straw. He had been a lawyer in Acker's Gap for many years before coming to work for her at the prosecutor's office. His age and his deep, steady voice meant that he was listened to. “But you know as well as I do, Carlene,” Hickey went on, “that he's as tough as they come. Right? If anybody can survive this, Nick Fogelsong can.” He put a big hand on Carlene's shoulder.

Hearing Hickey speak, Bell realized how much she'd missed her colleague. She had assigned him to a complicated spate of prescription drug cases, and he was often on the road, meeting with prosecutors in adjacent counties to work out plea deals and jointly executed search warrants. Drug dealers had little respect for county lines.

Bell turned to Harrison. “What do we know?”

“So far, not much. I've talked to Sheriff Ives a couple of times today. Collier County's running down some leads. Doing their best.” The sheriff took off her hat, thrusting it up under her left armpit.

“He broke up a drug deal, is that still the theory?” Bell said.

“Yeah. Looks pretty straightforward—Nick was working late, he noticed something suspicious, and he intervened. That's when they shot him. A store employee saw it on the surveillance camera and came running out, just in time to spot the truck driver getting the hell out of there. Another guy—the shooter, we figure—got away, too. Shooter'd been back in the shadows. Camera only caught the back of him when he hopped in the truck.”

Harrison went on to describe the footage they'd retrieved from the camera. As she spoke, the scene flared in Bell's mind, a mute midnight drama: A truck waits at the pumps. A man stands beside it. Nick approaches, engages. The shot comes from somewhere else, a spot not covered by the camera. The force of it flings him against the truck door. He drops. Flat on his back now, he bleeds and he bleeds, the blood running across the concrete, filling the little trench along the small concrete island hosting the gas pumps. His eyes are glassy. Breathing shallow, barely detectable. Face a waxy frozen mask of
Not now
and
Not like this
and a plain, plangent
No
. This being Nick, surely it is
Hell, no
.

“The store employee—did he get a plate number from the truck?” Bell said. “Even a partial?”

Harrison shook her head. “Nope. And the driver knew just where to park to keep the plate clear of the camera. Squad got there real quick, thank goodness.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yeah. The cashier did say one thing. The truck driver was wearing a plaid coat. The video camera's black and white, so we don't have a color. Just that—a plaid coat.”

“Plaid coat.” Bell practically spat the words. “That's great. That'll lead us right to the bastard who shot Nick. Terrific clue. Two out of every three adult males in southern West Virginia wears a plaid coat.” In her frustration she wanted to kick an inanimate object—a desk or a chair—but the hall was bare of possibilities, and so she had to settle for salting her words with an extra dose of sarcasm. “That's a
big
help.”

The elevator chimed and two people got off. Strangers. Here to visit someone else in the ICU. Young boy, older woman. A kid and his grandmother, most likely, because the woman's features—cleft chin, pointy nose, small eyes—were repeated in the boy's face, but in a soft, unhurried version. A face was waiting for this boy when he grew older; it was the grandmother's face, and she would be long gone by then, and so people would peer at him and say, “You look so much like her!” and he would smile and shrug, not knowing how to answer, because by that time, he would barely remember her.

The two of them pushed through the double doors of the ICU and disappeared, swallowed up by the return swing. The Raythune County Medical Center was a small facility, with only eight beds in the ICU; a lot of emergency cases were Life Flighted to bigger hospitals in Beckley or Charleston. When Bell had heatedly inquired about that—why, for God's sake, hadn't they loaded Nick into a helicopter first thing and taken him to a better-equipped place?—Sheriff Harrison explained: They'd needed to get Nick into surgery right away. No time for a helicopter ride high over the mountains.