Sorrow Road (19 page)

He was all wrong for her in a hundred different ways. He was too young, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to stay in Acker's Gap long-term. They did not have any of the same friends. They had very few shared life experiences. Their relationship over the past four years had been up and down. On and off.

But she loved him, she loved him passionately, and his absence from her life for the past couple of weeks—her idea, not his—had made everything on her prosecutorial plate harder, from the violent deaths of Darlene Strayer and the two old ladies, to the less urgent but still perplexing deaths of three residents of the Terrace.

Damn,
Bell thought.
I wish …

What? What did she wish, when it came to her and Clay?

She did not really know.

Nick read her mind. Or at least it seemed that he had, because he said, “Things aren't great, I take it, with Clay. Something happened.” Before she could get mad at him, tell him it was none of his damned business—she was just about to do just that, and he knew it—he held up a hand to head off her wrath. “You don't have to confirm or deny. Don't like to pry into your personal life, Belfa. You know that. All I want to say is that Clay Meckling's a fine man. Never known a finer one. Whatever you two are going through—work it out. He's worth it. And you're worth it.”

Bell gave him a hard, steady glare, like a Buick with its high beams on. She hoped he would keep up his little mind-reading trick for just a few more seconds and pick up on what she was thinking with all her might:

You don't know. You don't know what it is that he did.

She did not say anything, though. They had strayed too far off the topic of what she had come here to talk about. They both sensed it.

“So,” he said. “You'll keep on asking questions out at the Terrace.”

“Yes. I've got a hunch that somehow it all starts there. Somebody knows something. So I have to pry it loose. A little bit at a time, if I have to.”

“Depressing place. Went there once myself. Mary Sue's great uncle needed a ride to go see an old Army buddy who'd just moved in. We sat in that visitors' lounge for about an hour. Felt like about eight hours, you know? All those sad folks, shuffling along. Asking the same questions over and over again. ‘What day is it?' You'd tell 'em, and then a minute later, you would get it again: ‘What day is it?' Skin and bones, a lot of 'em. They forget how to eat, is how it was explained to me. They waste away, not remembering the names of their children or the year they were born or where the hell they are. Sure you're ready for that on a regular basis?”

“Of course not. Who could be ready for that?”

“Point taken.”

“If those three old people died of natural causes—which is what it looks like—I'll be able to ascertain that quickly and then move on. Get the hell out.” Bell smiled a rueful smile. “Until the day they finally stick
me
in a little room over there. For keeps. Or you. Or any of us. No telling what the future holds, Nick. That's the hell of it.”

He used his thumbnail to pick at a spot he saw on the table. There may or may not have been an actual spot. Truth was, he did not want to look Bell in the eye right now, because a thickness had come into his throat. He was afraid it might show up in his voice.

“You ever wonder?” he said.

“Wonder what?”

“If it's worth it. Fighting for a long life. Doing everything you can, to last as long as possible. I mean, you either end up like Rhonda's grandmother—flat on your back in some hospital, rigged up to a bunch of damned machines, or you end up like those folks out at the Terrace, with your memory eaten away like a sweater that the moths have had their way with. Living a kind of death in life. Or you get yourself butchered like those two old women in the woods. Be honest here, Belfa—is it really worth it? Any of it?”

“Don't ask me that today. I've got too much work to do.”

“When can I ask?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And what are you likely to say then?”

She grinned at him. It was a little catechism they went through. He knew what she was going to say—they had been in this place before, the two of them, burdened by duty and sadness and a sense of futility, and sometimes she was the one asking and he was the one answering—but he needed to hear the words from her. Just as, when the roles were reversed, she needed to hear the words from him.

“I'll say, ‘Ask me tomorrow.' Best I can do, Nick.”

*   *   *

Marcy Coates's granddaughter, Lorilee Coates, sat in the wooden chair in front of Bell's desk. Or tried to.

She could not hold still. She itched and she fidgeted. She coughed. She sniffled. She rubbed her nose and scratched her skinny arms. Left arm with the right hand, right arm with the left hand, left arm against the back of the chair. It was eight degrees outside, and she was wearing cutoff jeans and a pink tube top. Her outerwear—it lay in a slatternly heap on the floor—was a jean jacket that still had the Goodwill tag affixed to it by a dirty string, the giant number visible in slanting Magic Marker: P
RICE $3.
Lorilee had aimed for the coat hook on the wall. She missed. She did not seem to notice. She was twenty-six years old. She could have passed for forty.

She asked if she could smoke, and when Bell said no, she scowled and mouthed the word
Fuck
and then looked around the room with incredulity. Her disgruntled glance was easy to translate:
No smoking? Really? In
this
dump? Like—why's it even matter?

She crossed and recrossed her legs. She uncrossed them altogether, placed them flat on the floor. The chunky-heeled clogs hit with a
thwunk
. Then she crossed her legs again, right over left, left over right. She had stringy hair, dyed purple, with a twisting strand of red that looked like drainage from a scalp wound. Her skin was almost reptilian, a carapace of sore and flake and scab. She had a nose ring, and another ring through a piercing in her lower lip. Both holes were infected. The crusty ring of red around each one added a touch of lurid color to her drab complexion.

She was, according to Rhonda, who had heard it from Grandma Lovejoy—back when Grandma Lovejoy could still form sentences—a heroin addict. Grandma Lovejoy had heard it from Connie Dollar, who had heard it from Marcy Coates. Bell really didn't need the provenance of the information; Lorilee Coates was well-known to law enforcement officials in a three-county area, not because she was a criminal mastermind, but because she was so pathetic, and her story such a familiar and depressing one.

Lorilee had started huffing glue, paint, whatever, at twelve. At thirteen she had her first arrest, for drunk and disorderly. At fourteen she'd been caught in the ladies' bathroom of the Pizza Parade over on Oak Street, chugging the plastic dispenser of floral-tinged soap, hotly desirous of the alcohol content. In the years to follow she'd been picked up three times for prostitution out at the Highway Haven, and another two times for shoplifting at various locales. She had slept and giggled and mocked her way through two court-ordered stints in rehab.

She was a total wreck of a human being. She was a rapidly disintegrating mess. She was a walking tragedy. And she was the apple of her grandmother's eye.

Deputy Oakes had found her that morning in a tattoo shop on Route 6, a place called Skin U Alive, begging the owner for a freebie. Oakes had gotten a tip about where she might be. His network of sources was nowhere near as extensive as Rhonda's, but as he often said, “Give me time.” He had only been living and working in Acker's Gap for three years. Moreover, his informants were more likely to be from the sleazy side of the line—pimps, addicts, dealers, prostitutes—whereas Rhonda's people were churchgoers and old folks. Different universes. Both important to a prosecutor's office.

“So. Lorilee. Appreciate you coming by,” Bell said.

“No choice. Damned deputy made me.” Lorilee's voice sounded like she'd been gargling with Clorox. “What the fuck's going on?”

“Your grandmother was murdered two nights ago.”

“Like I don't know
that
. I know, okay? They told me.” Lorilee sneered. The expression necessitated the flexing of a nostril, the one with the infected piercing, and she winced. “Why'm I here? What's the deal? Ain't done nothing wrong.”

“I'm hoping you can help us.” Bell knew there was absolutely no point in lecturing Lorilee Coates, in trying to inspire her to lead another kind of life. Her grandmother, Rhonda said, had tried to do that, over and over again, year after year. It never worked. Nothing worked. And so Bell understood that there was no percentage in threatening Lorilee, or cajoling her, or bargaining with her, or reminding her that she was still young enough to change everything. That she could get clean. That she could, once again, see things as they really were, see a panorama of crisp edges and depth of field—not a pinched-off, woozy haze, viewed through a constant stupor.

If Lorilee Coates had not responded to the sweet grandmother who loved her, she sure as hell was not going to respond to the meddlesome prosecutor who most assuredly did
not
love her.

All the young woman could do for them right now was to provide information. Maybe. If she had it, and if she was inclined to share.

“Help you do what?” Loriliee said, her voice chipped and gravelly with
I suspect a trap
tension.

“Figure out why someone would have wanted to murder your grandmother.”

Lorilee narrowed her eyes. “Look, if you're trying to say that I had something to do with that—you are
fucked up,
lady. Wasn't even in Raythune County that night.”

“I know.” Bell had already ascertained Lorilee's whereabouts at the time of the killings so that she could rule her out as the perpetrator. Deputy Oakes had located several witnesses that put her in Room 27 at the Sundowner Motel in Chester with four other people—using her wiles, such as they were, to obtain enough black tar heroin to get her through until morning.

“So if you
know,
” said a newly peeved Lorilee, “then why the hell you asking?”

“Because you occasionally stayed at your grandmother's house, right? For a few days, sometimes a week? When you didn't have anywhere else to go?”

“Yeah. She was good to me, Granny was. Real good. Loved me. After my folks threw me out, she was the only one in the family who'd speak to me.” Lorilee looked as if she was going to cry. “The
only
one.” Now she did cry, loud, snot-laden tears that surged up out of nowhere. Emotional incontinence, Bell knew, was one of the more common and harmless side effects of chronic drug use. “Nobody else gave a rat's ass,” Lorilee went on. “Only Granny. And now she's gone.”

Bell handed her a tissue. Instead of using it, Lorilee wadded it up and stuck it in the pocket of her cutoffs. Maybe she thought she could resell it later for cash.

“Did your grandmother keep money or valuables in her home?” Bell asked.

Lorilee snorted. A bubble of snot escaped her left nostril. “Hell, no. She used to—but then she and me had ourselves a misunderstanding, and she didn't do that no more. Didn't keep no money in the house. Little bit she had, she put in a savings account.”

The misunderstanding was that Lorilee had robbed her too many times. Bell knew that without having to ask for particulars. She was just about to ask another question when Lorilee spoke again.

“And the thing is, she didn't really
have
no more. Even her savings account was down to nothing. That's what she said. And Granny never lied. See, she wanted to send me to another place. To get me some help. Talked about it all the damned time. But she couldn't. 'Cause she didn't have no more money. She'd heard about this new place out in California. Better, she said, than the lame-ass places 'round here that they're always sending me to.” Lorilee nodded, agreeing with herself, her movement as loose and wobbly as that of a bobblehead doll.

“So she needed money.”

“Yeah. Real bad. That's how come she was working double shifts out at that place. That place where she worked.”

“Thornapple Terrace.”

“Whatever. Said that as soon as she got the cash, she'd send me out there. To California. Had her heart set on it. Those places—shit, they cost a ton. Ten, twenty thousand. Just to get you started. More and more after that.”

Bell made a note on the pad in front of her. When she raised her head, Lorilee was looking at her expectantly.

“So,” Lorilee said. Big smile, revealing infrequent teeth. “We're friends now, right? I mean, I helped you. So maybe you can help me out a little bit? To honor my Granny? With maybe, like, reward money or something like that? For telling you whatever it was that you wrote down there just now?”

“I can have a deputy take you where you'd like go. It's cold outside. Hard day to walk anywhere. Best I can do.”

“Fuck you.” There was no passion in the curse. Passion required energy. Lorilee tried to stand, tumbled back in the chair. Her long bony legs reminded Bell of a colt's legs, stick-thin and unreliable. Lorilee tried again. This time, she made it up and stayed that way. “Fuck you. Fuck you, okay?”

“Little advice,” Bell said mildly. “You really need to brush up on your people skills.”

She watched the young woman scrabble for and finally hoist up her jacket from the floor and then stumble away. Bell's mind had already moved past the moment. She was pondering the new information about Marcy Coates: No, the old woman apparently did not have enough money to make her a target. But she had a good reason to
want
money, and lots of it.

*   *   *

Carla did something colossally dumb: She listened to her voice mail.