Sorrow Road (3 page)

“You're sure of that, are you?” Darlene shot back. Her tone was cold, belligerent.

Bell had a flash of recollection about this woman, from back in their Georgetown days. Darlene Strayer hated bullshit. She brutally dismissed well-meant clichés and platitudes like a soldier waving around a saber at a batch of flies. Trying to console her was a dangerous business. You might very well come away with flesh wounds.

“From the little I know of you, Darlene,” Bell said carefully, “you're a woman who would do right by her father. That's all I meant.”

“Yeah. Sure.” The sarcasm in her voice was heavy and dark. She rearranged her elbows on the wooden tabletop. There was a restlessness in her movements, an ill-concealed frustration.

“What's really going on?” Bell said.

Darlene did not look at her. Instead she dropped her eyes and studied the tabletop. It was the color of mud, and it was shiny from repeated coats of shellac, which only served to preserve the undesirable, like a fly trapped in an ice cube. The surface had been roughed up over the years by the assorted shitheads and their assorted girlfriends who had occupied this booth, and used it as a scratch pad for their switchblades. It had absorbed their spilled beer and sopped up their unused dreams.

The tabletop, Bell thought as she watched her, did not belong anywhere near Darlene's present life—a life defined by the sleek haircut, the elegant wool suit, the pressed white silk blouse, the necklace of tiny pearls. Yet it was still a part of her, too, still a part of her deep and abiding past. Darlene, like Bell, had tumbled out of a scuffed-up, stripped-down childhood. She had risen above all that—far, far above it, and good for her—but when Darlene glanced down at the creased and greasy-looking tabletop, Bell guessed, it probably came back to her, all of it, just for a moment. And a moment was long enough.

“When we were in law school,” Darlene said.

Bell waited.

“When we were in law school,” Darlene repeated, needing to start again, “I didn't like you very much. I'm sure you figured that out.” She lifted her head and looked at Bell with a solemn, unblinking stare.

Bell shrugged. “If there was one seat left in the Williams Law Library, and that seat was next to me, you'd leave the building. Find somewhere else to study.”

“Was I really that bad?”

“I'm exaggerating. But, yeah—I picked up on your attitude and just steered clear.”

“We come from the same place. And
I
wanted to be the Appalachian success story, you know?
I
wanted to be that woman. I didn't care to share any of it with you. Plus, I was jealous.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I mean it. You had a handsome husband and a cute little baby girl and a life—a real life. You know what I had? I had a studio apartment and a rusty bike and a debt total that was rising so high and so fast I couldn't see over it anymore.” Her voice shifted, lightened, lost its load of bitterness. “And my dad. I had my dad.” She smiled. The smile chased the bleakness out of her face. “He believed in me, Bell. As little as he had, he gave it to me. So that I could make something of myself. And not just money. He'd send me these amazing letters twice, three times a week. That's what kept me going—seeing that West Virginia postmark. I'd run home after class and I'd tear open those letters and I'd read every word. Just standing there, holding my books. I was hungry and tired—it didn't matter. I'd still stand there, reading every damned word. I couldn't wait. I craved those letters. Needed them. Turns out
that's
what I was really hungry for.”

“Just takes one.”

“One what?”

“One person who believes in you,” Bell said. “The rest of the world can go to hell—as long as you've got one person in your corner.” Darlene did not ask, but if she had, Bell would have told her that for her, the one person had been Nick Fogelsong, former sheriff of Raythune County. He'd known her since she was ten years old. He'd seen her through all the major phases of her life, good and bad. Without him, her life would have been … Well, she did not want to finish that sentence. “Your dad must have been pretty special.”

“He was. He really was. Anyone who knew him will tell you that. He'd never been out of Barr County in his life and then—
boom
. Right after Pearl Harbor, he runs down and he enlists. Him and his two best friends. He was only fifteen, so he had to lie about his age. Served in the Navy. He was part of the D-Day landing. Never talked about it, but I got the story from other people over the years. He was a great man. A truly great man.” Darlene swallowed hard. “Which is why you're going to be surprised at what I came here to tell you tonight.”

“What's that?”

Darlene leaned across the table. Her face had changed. The look in her eye was unsettling.

“I killed him,” she said.

“You—”

“I didn't pull a trigger. But I saw there was something going on. I should have
forced
that director to get to the bottom of it. I'll regret that for the rest of my life. Because now my father is dead. He trusted me to take care of him, and I let him down.” Her jaw tightened. When she spoke again, her voice had a lost and pleading quality to it. “If you don't help me—someone's going to get away with murder.”

*   *   *

Bell stood alongside her Ford Explorer in the dark parking lot. She watched the snow come down in a furious, wind-driven swirl, the millions of bits briefly illuminated as they intersected with the thin triangle of light provided by the single bulb fastened to a pole alongside the lot.

By now the snow completely covered the gravel. It piled up in sugary peaks and tufts against the tires of the cars. It smothered windshields like grave blankets.

Back in the bar, she had listened to the rest of Darlene's story. It was long on accusation, short on evidence. They had discussed options, strategies, possibilities. Then Darlene settled the bill. They looped thick scarves around their necks and buttoned up their heavy coats and tugged on gloves and left the low-slung, cinder block building, exchanging the crunch of peanut shells for the crunch of snow in the parking lot.

Because they had arrived here almost simultaneously, their vehicles were parked side by side. Darlene paused at the driver's door of her midnight-blue Audi. She brushed the snow off the shoulders of her coat, and then she opened the door, slid in, and pulled it shut. Bell waved. She said the thing she always said when anyone departed in winter, when snow added yet another treacherous element to mountain roads that were pretty damned perilous to begin with: “Be careful.”

Darlene's window was rolled up, so she could not hear the words, but Bell hadn't really meant them for her. The words were aimed at the universe, at whatever distant, brooding force controlled the destinies of people forced to live in dangerous circumstances. “Be careful” meant: Be careful with the souls in your care. They had suffered enough, most of them.

Hell. All of them.

As Bell watched, Darlene backed the Audi out of its spot and then pulled forward, leaving the lot in a wide, slow, wary turn. The snow was thickening so quickly that her tire tracks disappeared almost instantly.

Bell was consoled by the fact that Darlene knew these roads as well as she did, including the switchback halfway down that had caused more deaths than a serial killer. Yes, Darlene had moved away a long time ago—but some things, you never forgot. Mountain roads in winter definitely made the list.

She continued to stand by the Explorer. She didn't want to leave right away. As cold and dark as it was, as furiously as the snow was falling, Bell wanted to wait here for just a few minutes more and contemplate what Darlene had told her. She needed to figure out what—if anything—she should do in response to it. The snow boxed in her thoughts, sealing them off. It temporarily kept distractions at bay. Soon, of course, the snow would be its own distraction; Bell would have to negotiate the switchback, too, and trust the Explorer to get her safely down the mountain.

But for the next few minutes, she wanted to watch the snow as it faithfully coated every object, obscuring edges and differences, making everything look the same. Simplifying the world. She felt the flakes melting in her hair.

Darlene was still grieving her father's death. Bell did not know her well, but she did not need to know her well to understand that. Darlene was stunned, angry, turned inside out with the kind of despair for which there was no antidote. Grief was something you simply had to get through, howsoever you could. Grief was brutal, and it was cruel, and it lasted as long as it lasted. Grief could turn even the calmest, most poised and rational person into an emotional mess. And when grief was mixed with guilt—the guilt that burned and surged and twisted inside you because you so futilely wished you'd done more for your loved one, wished you'd stopped in more often and paid better attention when you did, wished you'd hugged him just once more during that last visit, and told him just one more time that you loved him, although, God help you, you did not
know
it was going to be your final chance to do that, to do anything—then you were in for trouble.

Bell had listened to Darlene. She had heard the pain in her voice. She had nodded. But she'd made no promises to her old acquaintance, beyond an agreement to look into the matter. Informally. Discreetly.

In some ways—and Bell knew she didn't have to explain this to Darlene—a prosecutor had less power than an average citizen, not more. When a prosecutor made a casual inquiry, it wasn't casual anymore. It couldn't be. A clanking, wheezing, cumbersome bureaucracy always came along for the ride. Unless she was prepared to initiate a formal investigation on the basis of what seemed to Bell to be fairly skimpy evidence—or, more accurately, to persuade Muth County Prosecutor Steve Black to do so, being as how Thornapple Terrace was on his patch—she had to tread very, very lightly. She'd probably have to let a surrogate do the gentle probing.

“Surrogate” was a euphemism for Rhonda Lovejoy, her assistant prosecutor, who specialized in just this sort of sideways, not-quite-official errand. Rhonda's roots in the region ran so deep that when she asked questions, people just assumed she was collecting contact information for a family reunion. It was easy to forget that she worked in the Raythune County prosecutor's office.

Didn't Rhonda have a cousin or two up in Muth County? Bell was almost sure of it. She recalled Rhonda talking about a branch of the Lovejoy clan that had shifted northward, following a rumor of jobs, as prospects in Acker's Gap had steadily dwindled. Maybe Rhonda could, under the guise of visiting her relatives, stop in at Thornapple Terrace and have a look around. Nothing overt. No big deal. And then maybe, if the opportunity presented itself, Rhonda could find a chatty employee and hang out long enough to ask about Harmon Strayer's fate.

A cell ring tone sliced into Bell's thoughts. It was the ring assigned to her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Carla—Adele's “Hello”—and so, with fingers that felt paralyzed with cold despite the protection of gloves, Bell fished the phone out of her purse with extra urgency.

“Sweetie?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Is everything all—”

“Fine. It's
fine
. Why do you always ask me that, first thing? It's like you're expecting to hear that I've screwed up.”

“No, I…” The conversation needed a reset. Bell changed directions. “It's snowing like crazy here.”

“Here, too. Has been for hours. CNN says they might shut down Reagan National. Dulles, too.”

Carla lived with five roommates—and an untold number of mice and other anonymous freeloaders—in a tilting, fraying three-story house in Arlington, Virginia. Before that, she had lived with her father, Bell's ex-husband, Sam Elkins, in a condo in Alexandria. She'd spent her senior year at a private school, transferring from Acker's Gap High School after the terrifying night when she almost died at the hands of a killer whose real target was Bell. Carla had decided to postpone college for a few years, a decision that Bell found keenly disappointing, but she capitulated after sensing Carla's resolve.
Pick your battles,
was the advice everyone had given her. Made sense—for moms as well as for prosecutors.

“Are you home?” Bell asked.

“Yeah. Just watching the snow from my bedroom window. Can't even see the pavement anymore. How about you?”

“Actually, I'm standing in the parking lot of a bar in Blythesburg. Getting ready to head home. Met an old friend for a drink.”

“Mom,
come on
—hang up and start driving. That's what you'd be saying to me.”

“You're right. I would.” Bell turned around and opened the Explorer's door. “Kind of nice, though. Being out in it. Peaceful.” She scooted in and pulled the door shut.

“Peaceful, my ass. Go home, Mom. It's a long way from there back to Acker's Gap. With the snow, you're looking at an hour or more.”

“Surprised you remember.” Bell started the engine, wanting to warm it up before she headed out. She'd have to wait, anyway, for the wipers to shove aside the snow that had congregated on the windshield.

“Oh, I remember all right. And I also remember almost skidding down the mountain when I was driving back home once with Kayleigh Crocker,” Carla said, naming one of her best friends from Acker's Gap High School, a young woman whose wildness had continued into adulthood. Bell knew that because, as a prosecutor, she'd had several encounters in court with Kayleigh Crocker and a revolving cast of worthless boyfriends clearly bound for much more significant trouble. “Trash magnet” was the category in which Bell placed Kayleigh Crocker.

“We went to a party in Blythesburg,” Carla added. “Winter of junior year.”