Sorrow Road (11 page)

“Yeah. Well. About that. Jake Oakes said that when he finally reached her—apparently you have to go through about twenty-eleven layers of hospital bureaucracy to even get her on the phone—she was, like, ‘Okay, thanks.' Pretty weird, he said. For somebody whose whole life just changed.”

“People grieve in their own way.”

Rhonda put a funny squint on her face. “I do sort of wonder about them.”

“Wonder what?”

“About—well, you know.”

“Not a clue. Wonder what?”

“I mean…” Rhonda discovered a phantom speck of lint on the sleeve of her sweater that she needed to remove. The gesture took a very long time. Too long. She was stalling.

“What are you getting at?” Bell said. Her voice was brusque. She had a full schedule today. And she had asked Carla to meet her for lunch at JP's, the diner down the block from the courthouse, after her job interview. The list of things Bell had to accomplish between now and the moment she slid into a booth at JP's, clamping her hands around a mug of hot coffee, was dauntingly long.

“Well,” Rhonda said, “I just mean that—well, usually you think that women who are—well,
together,
you know, in that way, you just assume it's because…” She was struggling.

At this point Bell understood perfectly well what Rhonda was trying to say, and was determined not to help her out. She was surprised at her assistant's attitude, but then again, except for Rhonda's time at West Virginia University and then its College of Law, she had lived all thirty-three years of her life within a stone's throw of the Raythune County Courthouse, in the shadow of which diversity did not exactly flourish.

Still, Rhonda was a bright woman, and usually an open-minded, wide-souled one, and Bell was disappointed in her. Bell consoled herself with the thought that everyone had to start somewhere.

“Explain,” Bell said curtly.

“You just naturally assume,” Rhonda said, starting again, but haltingly, “that it's because they can't get a boyfriend or a husband, right? And so they finally just give up and get involved with each other as a kind of—well, I mean—”

“As a kind of what?”

“As a kind of substitute. Next best thing. But your friend—she was really pretty. And this woman…” Rhonda gestured toward the stack of printouts she'd left on Bell's desk. “This woman's a
brain surgeon,
for heaven's sake. And she's attractive, too, if those photos got it right. Bet she doesn't have a lick of trouble finding men who want to go out with her. But somehow the both of them ended up…” She didn't know how to finish the sentence.

Bell did it for her. “They ended up with each other. By conscious choice. Not desperation.”

“Totally.” Rhonda looked relieved. “So you
do
get what I mean.”

“No, I don't.”

“Come on, Bell. You know the point I'm trying to make.”

“Maybe you'd better enlighten me.”

Her assistant looked around the room dismally. She was clearly regretting the topic she had introduced. Major blunder. She'd just remembered that Bell, despite being born and raised in Acker's Gap, was not really One of Them. Bell had started out that way—but then she left. When she came back, she wasn't anymore. That was how it worked.

Bell read the sentiment right off Rhonda's distressed face. And waited.

“Okay, fine,” Rhonda said, peeved at being put on the spot. “But would
you
ever want to be in a relationship with a woman?”

Bell smiled. “Sorry, but I'm already spoken for. Anyway, I don't believe in workplace romances.”

“No—wait—I didn't mean…”

Bell let her sputter and blush for a few seconds. Then she reached for a file folder on the far side of her desk. She opened it. “Let's get back to work.”

For the next hour they went over the latest developments in the county's case against a man named Charles Leroy Vickers. The charge was aggravated assault. There was a simpler phrase for the fancy label “aggravated assault,” Bell had learned after her first few years as a prosecutor in these parts: using a broken-off beer bottle during a bar fight. The trial had been postponed several times. First Vickers grabbed his gut in his jail cell one day, claiming illness; his attorney demanded that he be hospitalized. After several weeks of tests and Jell-O, Vickers decided that he was feeling much better, thanks. Next came a string of frivolous motions by the defense. “It's like they think we'll just get frustrated and give up and go away,” Rhonda had said last week, as she and Bell went over strategy. The Vickers case was the first one that Rhonda had been assigned to handle all on her own—not as second chair to Bell or Hick Leonard.

Now there was a new trial date—a week from today in Judge Tolliver's courtroom. “Unless,” Rhonda said, as she accepted the transcript of a deposition that Bell was handing her, “Charlie-boy gets a toenail fungus and we have to wait for him to heal up.” She had read this transcript multiple times already. She had made notes about her notes. And then more notes about
those
notes.

“Pretty good chance you'll actually be starting next week,” Bell said. “You feel ready, right?”

“I've been ready for three months.”

“Good.” Bell set aside the legal pad that contained her prosecutorial to-do list on the Vickers case. “So you'll have some time this week.”

“Absolutely. And I'd appreciate another assignment. Take my mind off things while I wait for the trial.”

“Glad to hear it.” Bell gripped the arms of her chair and leaned back. She let her gaze wander around her office for a moment, taking in the glass-fronted bookcases and their brood of maroon law books, the painted plaster walls that always looked scabby and slightly damp, and finally the tall leaded window that looked out on the snow-beleaguered streets of Acker's Gap. Few people strolled those streets today. It was too cold. Fronds of bright white frost were printed across each pane, a curt reminder of the outside temperature and the perils of poorly caulked windows. “You up for taking a little drive this afternoon? By yourself, I mean? I can't promise it'll be easy. Some of those county roads haven't been cleared off yet.”

“Let me at 'em,” Rhonda said eagerly. “I've been using my cousin Rodney's truck to get around in. He's got a brand-new Silverado. The tires alone are higher than any of those snow piles out there. Where am I going?”

“The place where Darlene Strayer's father died. That new Alzheimer's care facility over in Muth County.”

“Thornapple Terrace.”

“So you know it?”

“My grandmother's best friend, Connie Dollar, is the assistant head of housekeeping.”

And that, Bell reminded herself with satisfaction, was the great glory and verified value of Rhonda Lovejoy: She either knew or was related to a good four-fifths of Raythune County and the counties adjacent to it, which meant she could slide with ease into places and conversations without disturbing the surface area.

She was a good assistant prosecutor, now that Bell had cured her of unfortunate habits such as procrastination and a tendency toward verbosity when nervous—but she was a great investigator. And every prosecutor needed a great investigator. Not every prosecutor could afford one—but every prosecutor needed one. In an office as small and as poor as this one, the fact that Bell could rely on Rhonda to do the digging—and to do it discreetly and reliably and effectively—was a blessing beyond measure.

Bell was still disappointed by Rhonda's bigotry toward lifestyles that did not look like those she saw all around her every day—but she could teach Rhonda to be more tolerant. That would come. What she
couldn't
teach—to anybody, including herself—was the subtle art that made Rhonda a dogged bloodhound of an investigator. It was a gift.

“Excellent,” Bell said. “I'd like you to poke around a bit. Talk to the staff about Harmon Strayer's death. If there's any blowback, you can reassure the director that it's just a routine inquiry—because, quite frankly, that's what it is.”

“Do you remember the news stories about that Alzheimer's place back East? Couple of years ago? Turns out this crazy nurse wanted to put the patients out of their misery. So she added a little something—a
lethal
something—to their morning orange juice. Her motives were pure. But she still went to jail.”

Bell shook her head. “As a friend of mine used to say, there's only room for one God. And the job's already taken.” She moved the stack of papers. It was a signal to Rhonda that the meeting was almost over. “Strayer's death certificate said natural causes. Nothing suspicious. So this is probably a waste of time. But I'll still feel better if we go through the motions. Maybe we can help Darlene's partner find some peace—once she knows that both deaths were accidental. So just gather up any details you can find about the old man's passing. And anything else that's going on out there.”

Rhonda used a thumb and a finger to flash a small round
O
of acknowledgment. “If it happens at the Terrace,” she said, “you'll know about it.” She turned at the door. “Oh, and I meant to ask—how's Carla doing? She's back, right?”

Bell had not said a word to her about Carla's return. Rhonda just knew it, the way she knew about everything. Sometimes a gift could be a nuisance, too.

*   *   *

It took Carla a good five minutes to shed all the winter gear in which she'd wrapped herself in a futile defense against the cold. She lifted off her earmuffs, pulled her knit cap off sideways, unwound her scarf, struggled out of her long wool coat, peeled off her mittens, and untucked her trouser cuffs from the tops of her sopping-wet boots. It felt to her like the slowest and least-sexy striptease in the history of the world as she removed one heavy item after another and then hung it on the coat tree next to Sally McArdle's desk.

“I think,” Carla said, “I'm melting on your carpet.” The snow sliding off her boots was steadily darkening the beige.

“Don't worry about it. Winter's winter.”

McArdle hadn't gotten up when Carla came in. Carla knew why. She knew because she'd grown up in this town, for the most part, and when you'd grown up here, you knew things like the fact that Sally McArdle had had her left leg amputated on account of her diabetes on the day after her fifty-eighth birthday, which was ten years ago. Getting up and down was difficult for her.

Wow. I know two different people who've had a leg amputated,
Carla suddenly realized. The other was Clay Meckling, her mother's boyfriend. He had been trapped beneath a heavy beam after an explosion. Two people: What were the odds? Infinitesimal, probably. Well, maybe not in Acker's Gap.

Why hadn't it struck her before? Maybe because she never thought of either one of them—not Clay, and not this old woman—in terms of lack. They were strong, both of them. You did not focus on what wasn't there. You focused on what was.

Or maybe it wasn't as noble as all that. Maybe she was just obtuse. Inattentive. Preoccupied with her own problems—such as the fact that, while she'd slept better last night than at any time in the past six months, she'd still woken up with a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, like something dark and greasy that hadn't gotten washed down the drain when it should have.

“Have a seat,” McArdle said. Her voice was gruff, but it was an abstract, professional-grade gruffness. It didn't mean that she didn't like you. Carla knew that, too. She had spent a lot of her Saturday mornings here when she was in middle school and the first two years of high school, rooting through the stacks, searching for a book for a class assignment—or, more desperately, for a book that would verify that there really
was
a world beyond this one, a world beyond the narrow streets and throwback attitudes of a small mountain town.

McArdle used a stubby finger to point to the gray folding chair alongside her desk. “Sit,” she said, repeating the order.

Feeling a bit like a cocker spaniel in an obedience class, Carla sat.

The Raythune County Public Library consisted of a single room in an old brick building across the street and down the block from the courthouse. The last three library levies had failed by large margins, which surprised nobody; it was hard to argue on behalf of books when half the county roads were crumbling to mush. The library, though, somehow hung on, battered but unbowed. The interior walls were dull brown sheets of trash-picked paneling, the bookshelves had been donated a decade ago by the Lowe's up on the interstate, and the carpet had been salvaged from a tobacco warehouse torn down in the 1950s. Water stains spread out across the drop ceiling like a child's drawing of pumpkin-colored clouds.

Right now the room was deserted except for the two of them. You could hear the ticking of the large round clock on the south wall—it was white with thick black numbers—as it went about its business, each bundle of ticks synched up with a faint forward tremor of the minute hand. Carla knew that clock, and she knew that ticking, and she knew the movement of that minute hand. She and the clock were old friends. Well—acquaintances, maybe. The clock had never done what she'd asked it to do: speed up when she was waiting for her mom to pick her up, or slow down when a guy from her biology class happened to come in and Carla hoped he'd notice her and say hi. No: That damned clock always played it straight, dispensing its rough justice minute by carefully measured minute. It never cut any corners. Never did you any favors.

Carla was surprised that no one else was here yet. Almost always there were at least a few other people in the library, reading a book or a magazine at one of the three long metal tables or poking at the keyboard of the single public computer on a card table in the corner. Sometimes the older people in town would actually hang out in front of the building before 9 a.m., waiting for Sally McArdle to come limping along with her Snoopy key ring.