A Killing in the Hills (47 page)

The woman looked down at her clipboard again, raising the bottom corner of the first sheet to look at the sheet beneath it, then looking at the first one again, frowning, concentrating, but the gestures were clearly just for show, just to make the news more palatable.

‘No mistake,’ she said. ‘Shirley Dolan left this morning.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘I don’t know.’

Bell’s voice rose. ‘You don’t
know
? You don’t—’

‘She’s free to go wherever she wants to go, ma’am.’

‘And there’s no note, no message, nothing like that? I’m her sister – she knows I’m coming to pick her up today and—’

‘No, ma’am. No message.’

Running. It was what everyone did when they were confused and overwhelmed. Bell had done it herself. Many, many times. That was why she’d joined the track teams in high school and college: It made the impulse to run – and keep running – seem healthy, seem like part of a plan. Not like animal panic. Not like endless dread.

How could she ever find Shirley again? Where would she start?

Back in the parking lot, Bell stood by the Explorer, hand cupped around the door handle. The metal was still cold. The sun had finally groped its way through the dirty gray rags of clouds, but it had taken all morning for it to do so.

She lifted her eyes to the mountain. If you looked at it long enough and hard enough, you could almost believe that anything was possible. You could almost believe that the mountain itself might move one day, like a ragged black triangle of coal heaped on a barge, a barge that rides the river’s brushed-nickel back on its way to who knows where.