Last Ragged Breath (38 page)

Bell sat at the prosecution table. She was, for the moment, alone in the courtroom; the day's trial session would begin in ten minutes. She'd come here after releasing Rhonda to go wrangle her hair in the women's bathroom.

Despite all the good news lately—the arrest of Nick's assailant, Rhonda's success in finding the woman who'd witnessed Royce Dillard's rescue all those years ago—Bell was still feeling sad and frustrated, a way it was all too easy to feel in Acker's Gap. If she wasn't careful, if she didn't keep a watch on herself, she could end up feeling this way all the damned time. Frustration was the default emotion around here. A sense that things would never change.

Well, things had changed, all right. Clay was gone. Nick was flat on his back with a wounded heart, in more ways than one. And Royce Dillard was on his way to prison for killing a man who had pushed him to the brink by threatening to tell an unbearable lie.

Once the defense finished with its side of the story, closing arguments would begin. Bell had been contemplating what she'd say to the jury. Yes, Royce Dillard committed murder. But he had his reasons. Dillard must be made to pay for his crime. Yet justice tempered with mercy was still justice. She wouldn't ask for a life sentence. A long one, yes—but not life.

She heard the groan and scrape of the big double doors as they swung open. The flat crash of loafers on old wood. Someone was coming up the center aisle. Bell rose and turned.

“Morning,” Serena said. She clutched notebooks, file folders, and legal pads to her chest. Her black hair was raked back so severely that her face looked even leaner and more pinched than usual. Serena had once told Bell and Rhonda that she lost at least fifteen pounds during every trial.
And I find them,
Rhonda had noted ruefully.

“Morning,” Bell replied.

The two women stood in the narrow chasm between the prosecutor's table and the defense attorney's table. In a few minutes, spectators would begin to fill in the rows behind them, murmuring hellos, shucking off coats, scooting over to accommodate latecomers. A deputy would lead in a shuffling, blank-faced Dillard from his cell. Judge Barbour would enter and seat himself amidst his baggy black robe. With the drop of his gavel, the trial would resume.

For now, though, it was just the two of them. Bell and Serena. Prosecutor and defense attorney. Here in the courtroom they were adversaries, enemies, but in another way, an overarching way, they were sisters. At the start of this case, Bell had seen herself in Carolyn Runyon, and had imagined that by now she might be indistinguishable from the Mountain Magic CEO—if she'd stayed in D.C., that is, and had taken the job offer from a posh legal firm. But—no. No, now she saw herself in Serena Crumpler. Serena was younger, taller, thinner; her hair was black instead of brown, and straight while Bell's had a slight wave, just enough to be hard to comb on humid days. Those things didn't really matter. The two women were here. Right here. They had choices, and here was where they'd chosen to live their lives. Here was where they worked, and dreamed of better days. Here—in a place most people left just as soon as they were able. Leaving was easy; staying was hard.

The radiator spat out a wheezy curse. It broke the spell. Serena moved away and sat down at the defense table, anxious to review her witness list for today's session. First up: Opal Lymon.

Opal was seventy-eight years old. For well over a century, her family had run the only supermarket in Acker's Gap. In the 1930s the store almost closed, stomped flat by the Depression, as so many other businesses were, but in the 1940s it sprang to life again, like a newly opened page in a pop-up book. Opal and her brothers and sisters all started working in the store when they were still too small to reach the counter. Their father put a stepstool behind the cash register to accommodate them.

“Miss Lymon,” Serena said. “How long have you known Royce Dillard?”

Opal was so thin that she looked like a wire sculpture. She had sporadic hair the color and consistency of milkweed. But she still worked twelve hours a day at the store, seven days a week, and she answered in a clear, firm voice.

“Known him since he was a child. His great-aunt Bessie used to bring him in with her when she shopped. Once he graduated high school, he come to work for me.”

“What sort of person is he, Miss Lymon?”

“Royce has his problems. Nobody can say otherwise and be speaking the truth. Went through a lot as a child. Can't forget that. He's what I call crippled-shy—he can't even look you in the eye. Can't speak sometimes. It's held him back, no question. But I'll say this. He's honest and he's true.”

“Did he have any friends while he worked for you?”

“Friends? Royce? No, no. I only ever saw him talk to one other employee. Real pretty gal named Brenda Smith. But only for a little while. Then he quit.”

“Did you ever see him commit a violent act? Or threaten to?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Never. Gentle as they come.” She pointed a bony finger at Serena. “You know about his dogs and how he coddles them. Everybody does. Well, that tells you all you need to know about a person. He'd never raise a hand to man nor beast.”

Bell's cross-examination was brief.

“When did Royce Dillard last work for you?”

“Oh, must've been—let's say 2003.”

“And how often have you seen him since that time?”

The wrinkles around Opal's mouth tightened as she frowned. She knew what Bell was getting at. Opal would forgive her—she understood what Bell's job was, and appreciated it when a job was done well—but she didn't have to like it.

“Three, maybe four times a year,” she said. “Comes in for supplies. Puts 'em in a little wagon. Drags it back home again.”

“Four times a year,” Bell repeated. “Once every three months—if then. So you really don't have any idea what Royce Dillard is like now, do you? For all you know, he could've changed a great deal.”

Opal shook her head. “Nobody changes that much.”

“Thank you, Miss Lymon,” Bell said. “That's all.”

Serena's next witness was Stanley Baker, a lanky young veterinarian. One day last year, Baker recounted, Royce Dillard brought a desperately injured dog into his office. The animal had been hit by a truck out on Route 6 and was in agony from a shattered spine; Dillard had found him by the side of the road, scooped him up and carried him on foot the two and a half miles to the vet's office. Baker, alas, had not been able to save the dog.

“Having observed Mr. Dillard in a moment of intense stress,” Serena asked, “would you think him capable of violence?”

“Absolutely not,” Baker said. “He's a fine man, from everything I've seen. Decent and peace-loving. A little peculiar—no doubt about it—but violent? No.”

Baker pushed up his glasses on his bony nose and added, “By the way, he asked for the ashes. Of the dog he'd never even known. He told me that the dog must've loved to run in the woods, and probably just burst out onto the road one night, coming out of the woods too fast for that trucker to stop. So Royce wanted to scatter his ashes in Old Man's Creek. Because, Royce said, when you're lying down for the last time, you have the right to lie down next to what you love.”

*   *   *

The old couple had come to court every day. They sat in the far outside corner of the very last row, bundled up in their thick coats and their muddy boots, muffled by their clothing and by a kind of force-field of reticence that seemed to grip them like frost on a pair of fence posts. Early in the prosecution's case, Bell had called Andy Stegner briefly to the stand to give his account of finding the body in Old Man's Creek; after that he would, she'd assumed, go back to his farm and his isolated life. Yet he never missed a day of the trial. Nor did his wife. They paid close attention to the proceedings, but they spoke to no one. Occasionally, as the spectators filed in for another day, someone would nod hello to the couple; the Stegners would nod back, but they seemed locked in their own lives, not unfriendly but simply distant, their minds on other things.

After Baker's testimony, the defense rested, and the trial was adjourned for the day. Royce Dillard would not be taking the stand. Bell understood Serena's decision. Given his odd behavior, his tics and his quirks, Dillard was a risk. His peculiarities might be off-putting to the jury.
A little too Boo Radley,
was how Rhonda had described him. She wasn't being unkind. Just accurate.

The trial was nearing its end. In just a few more days it would all be over, Dillard's fate decided, and the people in attendance today seemed to carry that solemn awareness in their expressions as they departed. The occupants of each row rose in unison, as if their names had been called by some invisible authority, and then waited until the people in the row behind them had made their way into the aisle, whereupon they followed. All were funneled toward the big double doors at the back of the courtroom. The low murmur of talk mingled with coughs, the occasional explosive sneeze, the audible rub of slick parkas against wood as big-hipped people negotiated the narrow aisles.

Bell was one of the last to leave. She crossed the threshold and moved into the hall outside. She heard her name.

“Belfa Elkins.” It was Opal Lymon. The old woman stood next to the wall across from the double doors, a red flannel coat draped across her clasped hands. Next to her were Andy and Brenda Stegner. The three of them had stationed themselves out of the flow of the departing people.

“Hey, there,” Opal called again. She shifted the coat so that she could lift a bony hand. “Come on over.” She used her chin as a pointer. “Did you know that Brenda here used to work for me, about a thousand years ago? She was Brenda Smith back then, but I still remember what a good hard worker she was. Best I ever had. She and Royce used to be friends, back in the day. Haven't seen her in ages.”

“That so.”

Bell needed to get back to her office. She'd sent Rhonda on ahead, to start the coffee and line up the legal pads for the first draft of their closing argument, and she still wanted to speak to Dillard in his cell tonight. But she obliged Opal's summons. A few minutes of cordiality wouldn't kill her, would it? Regarding the three old people, the names swam forward in her mind.

Brenda Smith.

Now, Brenda Stegner.

Royce Dillard's neighbor had known him from long before. They had worked together, when they were young. She'd been his only friend, according to Opal's testimony.

And so,
Bell thought, her brain working so quickly now that she wouldn't have been at all surprised if it had generated a whirring sound and perhaps a burning smell as the gears and sprockets overheated,
maybe she walks over to Royce's place by herself that Thursday afternoon for a visit, but Royce isn't home—he's still in town. Ed Hackel shows up, ready to resume his hectoring. She's surely heard about Hackel's treatment of Royce. Everybody knows how he's hounded Royce, trying to persuade him to sell his land. Now's her chance to stick up for Royce. She tells Hackel to leave him alone. Hackel laughs at her. Tells her to go to hell. Turns around. Enraged, determined to get him to leave Royce alone, she picks up a shovel …

Bell did a quick appraisal of Brenda Stegner's body. She was a heavy woman, solid and strong. A farm woman. Biceps as big as a man's. Would she be able to deliver a death blow with a shovel?

Yes. Yes, she would.

And when her husband came home that Saturday morning and told her what he'd found in Old Man's Creek—what sorts of emotions had run through her? Panic, guilt, fear, shame—what? Had she confessed to Andy Stegner? If not then, maybe later?

As she stood there in the hall, gripped by the images generated by her suspicions, Bell realized she was grasping at remote possibilities, at something, at
anything,
that might change Dillard's fate. Maybe she was doing it as much for Rhonda—and her belief in the man—as she was for Royce.

“Hello again,” Andy Stegner said. He shook Bell's hand. His hand was big, hard, thickened by scabs and calluses. A workingman's hand. His face was a simple one, rumpled with age, the eyes steady and stoic. “I have to tell you, ma'am—we still don't believe it, me and Brenda. We come here every day and we've listened to everything and we ain't changed our minds one whit. Royce is a good man. No way he'd ever—”

“Now, Andy,” Opal said, wagging a finger at him. “Bell's the prosecutor. She's doing her job.”

“True. True.” He touched his forehead, and spent a few seconds rubbing at a scaly patch of skin. “Sorry. Just got carried away. Hard to see this happenin' to him. Felt we oughta be here, as often as we could. For support. But the farm's always callin', you know.” He turned to his wife. “Probably ought to use the facilities, honey, before we head home. Long drive.”

This is it,
Bell thought, trying to control the excitement that was rising in her.
This is my chance to speak alone with Brenda Stegner
. If she was lucky—and if Brenda was as remorseful as Bell hoped she'd be—this could be wrapped up quickly.

Bell said good-bye to Opal and the Stegners. Wished them all a pleasant evening. She rounded the corner of the long courthouse corridor. She let several minutes go by. Then she slipped back toward the wooden door marked
LADIES
. The entrance was in a small recessed area, out of the line of sight of people waiting in the lobby.

Brenda shuffled by. She was a lumpy figure, gray head aimed at the floor, shoulders hunched. Her life seemed to press down on her like a crossbeam she'd been tasked with lifting into place.

Bell put a hand on the woman's well-patched coat. She drew her back into the recessed area. There was no one else in the vicinity.