Last Ragged Breath (3 page)

“Kids're required to drive you crazy at regular intervals,” Nick said. “There's actually a law on the books to that effect.”

They were quiet for a run of seconds. The catch-up question had been necessary; not only had Bell generally avoided the place since Nick started his new job, but their paths didn't cross elsewhere, either. She didn't buy her gas here. The Lester station was closer to Acker's Gap. Bell didn't like the crowds that normally thronged the Highway Haven. And there was the other thing, too. There was the fact that driving out this way meant getting just a small, tantalizing taste of what she'd had before on a regular basis, and maybe had taken for granted: Nick Fogelsong's company and counsel. Sometimes it was better, she thought, to move on. Try to forget.

When she'd called him the night before and requested a meeting today on official business, he said, “Sure, come on by.” She had started to make a counter-proposal—maybe he could head into town and save her a seat at JP's?—but realized, just in time, that that would be even worse: Sitting across the table from him at the place they'd met almost daily would be borderline unbearable. She preferred to drive out to the interstate and see him here. In new surroundings. In a place where she didn't have to bump into memories every other second.

“So what can I do for you?” he said.

“Had a briefing from the state police. Wanted to make sure you were aware of what's going on.” She'd found a paper clip on his desktop and proceeded to take it apart while she talked, twisting and bending it. “Major new distributor of oxy. Need to be on the lookout.” Oxy meant oxycodone, one of the prescription drugs that had drastically increased the crime rate in the area.

Only Nick Fogelsong had ever seemed to understand, in the same visceral way that Bell did, just how prescription drug abuse had gotten a deadly purchase on the region. Recreational drugs, by contrast, were easy to deal with. Pot, cocaine, even methamphetamines—those were familiar blights, the users easy to spot, the dealers bottom-feeding louts whom deputies could scoop up like excrement in a public park. But prescription drugs were different. They were legally supplied, in many cases, by physicians, physicians who either didn't know—or didn't care—that the pills were ferociously addictive. After only a few weeks, people who had sought relief for a torqued back or an infected tooth found themselves dependent on the pills, with no way to pay for them—except criminal activity. And by that time, they'd moved on from doctors to dealers.

These were people who never before in their lives would have contemplated an illegal act—but who, when confronted with a clawing, ravening need for the golden ooze of contentment that slid through your gut when you swallowed a pain pill, would do anything to feel that settle-you-down sensation, just one more time. And then one more time after that.
Just once more. Swear
. They weren't looking for a way to get high. They were looking for a way to feel okay again.

“Shit,” Fogelsong said, putting as much frustration into a single syllable as it could hold. He and Bell hated the drugs, but they hated, too, the circumstances that sent people hurtling toward them.

By what right could you tell a family from back in the hollows that things would ever get better? That if they worked hard and got an education and avoided traps like alcohol and drugs, they'd be able to find a good job and know a different kind of life? It wasn't true. The mines were dead. The pay at the shiny fast-food places along the interstate was laughably low, not even close to being enough to live on, much less raise a family on. The real enemy was an invisible one, a force that trapped people even more definitively than the mountains did. It was an attitude, a default setting of defeat. You could always leave; but if you stayed, you faced long odds and, more than likely, a short life.

“So that's all we know so far,” Bell said. She twisted the paper clip back and forth until it was no longer a paper clip, but a short straight piece of steel. She didn't have to tell him what he already knew: Truck stops were notoriously common distribution points for the pills—and for the heroin that was, perversely, cheaper than pills and thus had begun an entirely new spiral of addiction in these hills, an auxiliary misery. “The state police are being extra attentive,” she added. “Notifying local law enforcement, prosecutors, school authorities—everyone who understands the drug trade and has a stake in stopping it.”

He fingered his tie gingerly, as if he'd just discovered it was there. “Not a good time for the bad publicity,” he said. “What with the new resort coming, I mean.”

A Virginia-based firm that called itself Mountain Magic had recently purchased a twelve-hundred-acre parcel stretching across portions of Raythune, Collier, and Steppe counties. The plan was to build a resort to rival The Greenbrier, the historic and palatial facility in White Sulphur Springs that had hosted kings, queens, senators, presidents, and CEOs. Because no matter what else was going on with the people of West Virginia—poverty, addiction, despair—the landscape was a thing apart, a separate and unassailable fact. In the spring to come, like all the springs before it, the mountains would rise into a seamless blue sky, the massed interlocking trees on the sides of those mountains would make a solid block of spectacularly vivid green that drifted its way into your dreams, and the brown rivers would move so fast that their supple surfaces resembled the sleek back of a muscular animal in a stretch run.

“Oh, come on.” Bell's response to his point was sharp and dismissive. “Won't matter a damn. The billionaires who're putting up money for that thing don't care about local crime stats. They hire their own armies. Once the resort's up and running, the place'll be crawling with private security.” Too late, she remembered that Nick was now private security himself; her remark could be construed as a dig.

Well, hell. He was a big boy. He could take it.

“Might cut down on their bookings, though,” he said. There was no indication he'd felt insulted. “The negative press, I mean.”

Bell shook her head. “No way. That resort won't be connected at all with what's going on locally. The guests'll come and go and never set foot beyond the tennis court or the golf course or the sauna or whatever the hell else they build.”

“You don't sound too happy about it.”

She shrugged. “If it means new jobs—good-paying ones—I'll be over the moon. But there's been no word yet about how many local people they intend to hire. If they're going to use our land, the least they can do is put our people to work.” She was getting wound up, despite herself. “This state's been exploited long enough, don't you think? We've suffered for years from absentee landlords and all of their promises. Maybe it's time we just told them to go away and leave us alone. Go use up somebody else's natural resources. These are our mountains. Ought to be our decision about what happens to them.”

Nick created a crooked arch with both sets of fingertips. He waited a few seconds to let some of her anger burn off, and then he said, “It's progress, Bell. Progress and change.”

“And you think I'm against all that.” She was irritated. What did he take her for—some barefoot granny back in Briney Hollow who still reminisced about the superiority of horse-pulled wagons and outdoor privies?

“No,” he said. “I just think you're anticipating the extra aggravation that strangers always bring—even strangers who're investing money in the region. Can't say you're wrong about that. I've met the company's marketing guy. Name's Ed Hackel. Not exactly the shy, retiring type, that's for sure. Slicker'n goose grease. After he shakes your hand, you feel like you oughta check for your watch and your wallet. But then again—that kind of job, you've got to be a hustler.” He let the arch collapse and put his palms flat on the desktop. Scooted his chair in closer. “Heard any timetable yet for breaking ground?”

“They've run into a snag.” She watched as the news altered his posture, causing him to sit up straighter. “That marketing guy you mentioned—Hackel—has been calling the county commissioners about twice an hour all month long and raising nine kinds of hell. There's a thin strip of land on the southern border of the acreage that the company's already purchased. They've got to have it. Provides their best access to the interstate.”

Fogelsong nodded. This was old news. “Belongs to Royce Dillard. They're giving him a pile of money for it.”

“Yeah. Trouble is, he changed his mind. Doesn't want to sell.”

“Lord,” he said. “That's Royce for you.” Dillard was a recluse, a man who lived in rural Raythune County in a cabin he'd built with his own hands, amidst a silence broken only by the barks and howls of a retinue of old dogs—mutts and castoffs, mostly, dogs whose homelessness had destined them, before Dillard's intervention, for legally sanctioned elimination by an animal control officer. Dillard was only seen in Acker's Gap every few months or so, when he walked into town pulling an old wagon and bought his supplies. He stopped as well at the post office, where he'd sweep the accumulated mail out of his post office box into a plastic grocery sack.

“It's not like they're asking him to give up his home,” Nick mused. “His cabin's on a little sliver of land over by Old Man's Creek. They've got their eye on a bigger chunk he bought back in the eighties. With the settlement money given to Buffalo Creek survivors. Way I hear it, he's always planned to open some kind of animal sanctuary on the spot. Dogs, I believe, are about the only living creatures Royce has any use for. The parcel's just been sitting there, though, all these years.”

“Company's got to have it. No land—no resort.”

Nick nodded. “Predictable, I guess, that he's making a fuss. Royce is an odd bird. But he's got his reasons for being a bit peculiar. Had more than his share of tragedy, that's for damned sure.” He thought about it. “When he was five, six, seven years old, there'd be a TV crew here every February twenty-sixth, on the anniversary of the flood. Wanting to do an update. Wanting to know how much he remembered about that day. Then it tapered off. Folks forgot.” Nick rubbed his chin. “Don't imagine Royce ever forgets. Not for a day, maybe not even for an hour.”

Bell stood up. Time to go. She could have handled this errand by phone, and right now, very much wished she'd done so. What did she hope to gain by seeing Nick in person? Their relationship had changed too much, too fast.

Restless, not sure if she ought to shake his hand—they'd never followed social rituals like that before, but things were different now—she fingered the uncoiled paper clip and then used one of the sharp edges to scratch at a spot on the back of her other hand. “I'm sure the whole mess will somehow find its way into a courtroom,” she said. “And at the end of the day, the only people who profit will be the lawyers.”

“Funny way for a lawyer to talk.” He was ribbing her, just like in the old days. “Takes one to know one, huh?”

“I guess.” She wasn't in the mood. “Getting back to the business at hand—keep an eye out, will you? Hate to see another pill mill get a foothold around here. If you see anything suspicious, give Sheriff Harrison a ring.”

“That's what I'm here for.” Nick stood up as well, indicating with a sweep of his big hand the monitors stacked neatly along the wall and their shifting stream of gray-and-white images, recording what went on at the cash registers and in the corridor leading to the showers. Another set of monitors displayed the scenes from the area around the pumps and from the perimeter of the store. “Had to update everything. Top to bottom. Damn near every piece of surveillance equipment we have. I can't quite figure what Walter Albright was thinking—letting it deteriorate the way he did. Half of the security cameras weren't in working order. Management told me to spend whatever it took to bring us into the twenty-first century. All I needed to hear. By the way,” he said, shifting his tone as he shifted his topic, “I mentioned to Mary Sue that you were coming by. She made me promise to ask you over for dinner tonight. Nothing fancy—probably venison chili—but it's been way too long. I know it's short notice and all, but—”

“Can't. Tell her thanks, though.”

“Okay. Another time.” He waited. Usually Bell would explain a turn-down. But she didn't, so he had to pry. “Better offer?”

“As a matter of fact, I have a date.”

“Well. Well, now.” His face broke open into a smile. “Do I know the lucky fella?”

“No.”

Once again, he waited for more details. Her expression informed him that none would be forthcoming. The silence lengthened, thickened. Many things occurred to her within that silence, and Bell noted them, one by one: Nick was now on the outside of her life, looking in, and even though she'd acknowledged that leaving the sheriff's job was his decision, that he had to do what was best for himself and for Mary Sue, she still wasn't reconciled to the change. She missed him. She knew he missed her, too. But if she acted as if they were still close—if she talked with him about her life, the way she'd always done before—then she would be letting him off the hook too easily. He had abandoned her, dammit. He had to face the consequences of that.

Finally, Nick said, “Guess both of us had better start our day's work.”

She put the straightened-out paper clip in her pocket and lifted her jacket from the back of the folding chair. Once it was on, she picked up her purse and her coffee cup.

“Hey,” Nick said. She paused at the threshold. “We offer free refills on the coffee,” he said lightly. “Make sure you take advantage. For the drive home.”

Bell didn't know what she'd wanted him to say right then, but it sure as hell wasn't about coffee. She was hit by a fusillade of unsolicited memories: cases they'd worked; long afternoons they'd spent together, going over evidence or interviewing witnesses; meals they'd shared while they laughed and swapped stories and demonstrated the kind of support for each other that didn't require words. Just a steady accumulation of days in each other's company.