A Killing in the Hills Read online

  No soft-rock oldies played over the sound system.

  A Salty Dawg was not supposed to be like this. A Salty Dawg was supposed to be a noisy, chaotic circus, bathed in the good-bad smell of frying meat, syncopated by the sporadic rattle of ice cubes falling into cardboard cups at the self-serve drink dispenser.

  The restaurant had been sealed since the shooting. But now the state police forensics team had finished its work, and Bell wanted another look at the scene. In solitude.

  It was the morning after Bell had helped Ruthie and Tom Cox. Ruthie, they’d learned at the hospital, had contracted a serious infection, probably because of her low white-cell count. The infection had caused the dizziness, the fatigue. She was back home now, with a heavy regimen of antibiotics. And strict instructions to take it easy.

  Not bloody likely, Bell thought, when she heard about the latter.

  Wednesday had dawned bright and frigid. Bell had headed over here without telling anyone – not Lee Ann, not Hick or Rhonda or even the sheriff – where she was going. They’d ask her why. And Bell was not sure she could explain it.

  She had picked up the restaurant key late Tuesday night from Ralph Purcell, the man who owned the Salty Dawg franchise in Acker’s Gap. After unlocking the side door and walking in, Bell stood at the threshold.

  She didn’t turn on any lights. She didn’t need them. It was a few minutes past 11 A.M., and the expansive room was fully illuminated by the sunlight that tumbled in through the high glass walls.

  Spread out across the floor were small uniform chunks of yellow plastic – they looked like tiny party hats with black numbers on them – and several had been placed on the tables as well. These, Bell knew, indicated where pieces of evidence had been located: blood droplets, bits of brain tissue, clothing, food scraps that had spilled in the wake of the shooting. Everything had been pinpointed and cataloged.

  The little yellow hats also indicated where the witnesses had been sitting.

  She allowed herself to be distracted momentarily. Which marker, she wondered, represents Carla’s location?

  The question made her slightly sick to her stomach.

  Ralph Purcell, who also owned two other Salty Dawgs, one in Bluefield and one in Chester, along with a KFC in Swanville, wasn’t sure if he would ever reopen this location. ‘Seems wrong, somehow,’ he’d said to Bell on the phone the day before, when she called to make the arrangements to pick up the key. ‘Kind of sacrilegious, maybe. Three people killed. Hell of a thing. Might be – oh, disrespectful, guess I’d call it.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Course, then again,’ Purcell added, ‘I gotta make a living. You know? And folks’ll forget. Won’t they?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  She didn’t know. She didn’t care.

  She only cared about what had happened here four days ago, and about finding out who had done it and why.

  Standing in the silent restaurant, Bell felt a gust of dizziness. She steadied herself, leaning her right hand briefly against the counter that held the napkin dispensers, the bristling tub of paper-covered straws, the tiny salt and pepper packets, the jumbo plastic jugs of ketchup with the little pump spouts.

  Deep breath.

  Again.

  She wanted to be here – it was part of her job – but she knew that such a place could never be neutral for her. And it would never be safe. She knew about the feel of a crime scene, no matter how much time has passed since the crime. She knew that the silence was an illusion, a thin skin easily pierced by echoes that waited hungrily for the chance to reemerge, to stab the air with shrieks and cries and warnings audible only to an unlucky few.

  Bell was one of the few.

  She knew that haunted houses had nothing to do with Halloween. Any house where a violent act had occurred was haunted.

  She glanced at the front counter. She saw the darkness beyond it. During a typical lunch rush, that area would be bright and busy with employees rushing around, sometimes bumping into each other, giggling, apologizing, as they whipped up milk shakes and filled cups with Diet Coke and Sprite and iced tea, as they angled wrapped-up biscuits into open-mouthed paper sacks. Cash registers would be beeping, dinging. Customers would be laughing and talking.

  Not like now, when it was quiet and empty.

  Bell turned back around and looked at the door through which the killer had entered, and through which she, too, had come in just a few minutes ago.

  She envisioned the door being flung open. In her mind’s eye, she saw a man advancing into the restaurant, arm hanging straight down at his side, gun in his hand. Two witnesses had corroborated that: When he came in, his arm was down.

  The man in her imagination had no face. He wasn’t tall or short. He wasn’t black or white. The only sharp image in her scenario, the only absolutely clear and solid thing, was the gun.

  No one notices the man. No one reacts to him at all.

  He’s taking advantage of the cheerful mayhem of a busy restaurant, knowing that no one will pay the least heed to the arrival of one more customer. People have been coming in all morning long, singly or in bunches of two and three, families, knots of giggling friends, colleagues.

  He takes two steps inside the door. Lifts his arm.

  Aims.

  Fires.

  Hits three people. Turns and goes back out again, before anyone gets a good look at him, before anyone sees a thing – and this time, it’s because of what he has wrought, the blood and chaos he has caused. Everyone is focused on the victims. On the three old men.

  Why? Why did he want to kill three old men?

  Maybe he didn’t.

  Maybe he didn’t want to kill three old men.

  Maybe he wanted to kill one old man. He just didn’t know which old man he wanted to kill.

  Maybe his instructions had been too general: Old man. Black jacket. And when he came into the Salty Dawg that Saturday morning, he saw three old men. Sitting together. All in black jackets.

  Could be any one of them.

  The solution was easy: Take out all three.

  What kind of killer wouldn’t know his own target?

  A killer who had been employed by, paid by, somebody else. A killer who had no relationship with the victim. A killer who was just doing his job.

  So even if they found Henry Fleming – or whatever the hell his real name was – they still wouldn’t have the man behind the murders. They would only have the hired help.

  The mastermind would be still at large. Still out there. Up in the hills, maybe, biding his time, waiting to order another killing. And another.

  34

  Rhonda Lovejoy didn’t apologize for disappearing on a workday. In fact, she seemed sincerely oblivious to the fact that there might be anything for which she needed to apologize.

  She and Hick Leonard sat at either end of the couch in the prosecuting attorney’s office. It was just past 8 A.M. on Thursday, a sunless, bleak-seeming day of densely packed clouds the color of slate, the kind of day when the mountains looked aloof and sinister. The weather had been cold all week, with a frisky, biting wind. Winter waited right behind that wind.

  Bell sat at her desk. She was looking at her staff, but she was seeing something else as well. She was picturing the photo of Tyler Bevins that had run with all the news accounts of his murder: Plump cheeks. Big grin, with a couple of teeth missing – missing in the usual way, nature’s way, not the West Virginia way – and round ears that stuck straight out from the sides of his head. Orangey-red hair. Looked like he’d need a haircut soon.

  Except there wouldn’t be any more haircuts for Tyler Bevins. Or birthdays. Or Christmas mornings.

  The image of Tyler Bevins was part of what darkened her mood this morning. The other part was the sight of Rhonda Lovejoy.

  Bell didn’t want to be a hard-ass. She didn’t like to be a hard-ass. She prided herself on being a reasonable boss, one who made her expectations clear and consistent, one who wasn’t moody – Bell had had
some moody bosses, and despised them – and one who was humane. Understanding of personal problems and the occasional foible.

  But Rhonda Lovejoy had tested Bell’s patience from the get-go. She was scattered and irresponsible and unreliable. In the middle of two major cases, she’d gone missing. Messages, to Bell’s way of thinking, did not replace actual contact.

  Using her index fingers, Bell rolled a pencil back and forth on the desk in front of her. It was the only space that wasn’t swamped by stacks of papers and massive law books. From each of those dark closed volumes bristled multiple bookmarks – yellow pencils, pink and green Post-It notes, tan emery boards, silver gum wrappers, whatever small item was within snatching reach when Bell needed to save her place in the text – which made the otherwise grim, stately books look as if they had whimsically donned festive headgear, as if they were temporarily tricked-up like Supreme Court justices letting loose in a Mardi Gras parade.

  ‘Missed you the other day, Rhonda.’ Bell tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  ‘Oh, I had a ton of stuff on my to-do list, and since there weren’t any court appearances on the schedule, I thought I’d go for it,’ Rhonda said. ‘And anyway, once I tell you what I’ve got, you’re going to freak.’

  Hick winced. He knew how the word ‘freak’ would register with Bell.

  Bell caught the wince. She knew that Hick would be able to read the glance she shot back at him: Rhonda Lovejoy is yours, buddy. You’re the one who told me to hire her. Argued for it. Twisted my arm. Remember? You vouched for her. Big time.

  Happy now?

  Bell kept her eyes aimed at Hick Leonard, willing him to read her thoughts. He was dressed like the respectable, middle-aged assistant prosecutor he was – dark suit, white shirt, red tie, dark loafers – but Rhonda was dressed like . . . something else, Bell told herself, employing decorum even in her thoughts. The young woman was wearing a bright red dress with a plunging neckline and punishingly tight bodice. Her hair – clearly a spanking-new ’do, so flamboyant that even Bell, who was generally oblivious to such nuances in her employees, noticed it – had been whipped into a frenzy of large ringlets and finished off with a zesty array of tiny sprigs of spit curls. Her nails, too, had recently been attended to; there was a perky dash of scarlet at the end of each pale pudgy finger. Her makeup was more pronounced than usual, with a thick ridge of sparkly blue eye shadow and a dramatic swoop of mascara applied with a generous hand.

  ‘Anyway,’ Rhonda went on, in a relentlessly buoyant voice, ‘I’ve got some dynamite stuff, boss.’

  ‘Really.’ Bell’s index fingers continued to twitch as she played with the pencil. She rolled it first in one direction, then the other.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Rhonda said with relish, missing the ominous note in Bell’s voice. She leaned back on the couch, her clasped hands rooted in the center of her wide lap, settling into full storytelling mode. ‘I was over in Blythesburg most of the day. My sister-in-law’s got a new salon out that way – it’s called Polly’s Paradise, because she’s fixed it all up like it’s Hawaii, with these big plastic palm trees and these grass floor mats and they serve you pineapple juice if you want it, and they do hair and nails and makeup and bikini waxes and all kinds of stuff, and by the way, I can get you a discount coupon if you like – well, I was over there, because it was the grand opening and all.’ Rhonda broke off her narrative to look expectantly at both Bell and Hick. ‘I got what they call the Island Package. Cut and color, plus manicure and makeover.’

  When neither Bell nor Hick commented, she went on. ‘Anyhoo, there were two mighty interesting things that happened that will just knock your socks off, Bell.’ Rhonda scooted her rear end closer to the front of the couch, tugging at both sides of her skirt as she did so. She had short legs, and when she sat too far back on the couch, her feet lost contact with the floor.

  ‘And what,’ Bell said dryly, ‘might those be, Rhonda?’

  She had already made up her mind to fire Rhonda Lovejoy. She’d have to check with the county personnel office and make sure the paperwork was in order – Bell didn’t want any lawsuits over wrongful termination or biases or whatever – but she’d had enough of Rhonda. Plenty more than enough, in fact. Rhonda held an important post in an office that dealt daily with life-or-death issues. An office that was grappling, just now, with a half-dozen felony cases and the murder of a six-year-old and a triple homicide.

  And Rhonda’s contribution?

  An offer of a discount on the Island Package at Polly’s Paradise in Blythesburg. Which, in addition to being unsolicited and unwanted, also would represent – if accepted – an obvious breach of the ethical standards for a public employee and officer of the court.

  ‘Well – first of all,’ Rhonda said, ‘Polly wanted to know all about the Sheets case. I mean, who doesn’t? The shooting on Saturday has got folks scared, you bet, and everybody feels real bad for the families of those three old men, and kinda worried, with a killer out there and all – but it might’ve just been some dirtball passing through, you know? So even if people are kind of shaky, they’re basically okay. Now they’re all back to focusing on the Sheets case.’

  Bell fired off another glance in Hick’s direction. He licked his top lip. Then he closed his mouth and looked down at the floor.

  ‘And so I told Polly,’ Rhonda continued, ‘that my job was to find out more about Bob and Linda Bevins and about that poor little boy, and she said – I’d just gone under the hair dryer, so I had to ask her to repeat it, because I couldn’t hear her with all that racket – she said she knew all about Bob Bevins. I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “Oh, I know Bobby Bevins, that’s for sure,” and she said it in that way people say things when they’re saying more than they’re saying. You know? Like they’re insinuating something.’

  Bell stopped rolling her pencil.

  ‘And so,’ Rhonda went on, ‘I just yanked off that hair dryer and I said, “Polly Ann Purvis, you tell me right now what you mean, because if you have some information that will help us with this case, you better say so, because my boss doesn’t fool around and if people have things they’re not telling, she doesn’t take too kindly to it.” Well, Polly got all red in the face and she said, “Blythesburg is just far enough away from Raythune County.” And I said back to her, “What do you mean, just far enough away?”

  ‘And Polly said, “Just far enough away for folks who live over there to come over here if they don’t want to be seen.” And I said, “What folks? What are you talking about, Polly?” Polly is married to my brother Harold, he’s a whole lot older than me, and we don’t have a lot in common, tell you the truth, but when he married Polly I could tell right away that she and me were going to be close. Real close. So I can talk to her honestly. I can look her in the eye and really talk to her – I don’t have to worry about hurting her feelings, because she knows we’re friends and whatever I say, I mean well – and that’s what I did. I said, “What are you talking about, Polly?”’

  Bell was about to jump out of her skin with impatience. She considered flinging the pencil at Rhonda’s broad forehead to knock the digressions clean out of her and get her to stick to the basic narrative, but she knew better. Rhonda told stories in a distinctive – and distinctively infuriating – way.

  ‘And so Polly said to me, “Bob Bevins and that Sheets girl. Deanna Sheets. I see ’em here in Blythesburg.” And I said, “Huh?” And Polly – she’s not a gossipy person, Bell, nobody in my family is a gossip, we just notice a few more things than other people do – Polly said, “I see ’em having lunch over at the Chimney Corner and they sit real close together. This town is far enough away from Acker’s Gap, I guess, that they think they’re okay. I mean, they’re probably not talking about the weather, you know what I’m sayin’?”’

  Rhonda paused. ‘That’s how Polly is. She’s not mean. She just adds something quiet like that – “I don’t think they’re talking about the weather” – and leaves it at that. Th
en I changed the subject. I made her think I was just letting it go. I figured you could decide if it was important, Bell, and follow up on it if you wanted to.’

  Bell nodded. ‘Nice work, Rhonda.’ She couldn’t believe she was saying it, but she was impressed. ‘Good job, all the way around – listening, asking a few questions, but not too many, and then not pushing anymore. We need to be discreet here. And it sounds as if you were.’

  Hick reached over and patted Rhonda’s forearm. Then he looked back at Bell. ‘Do you think it’s relevant?’

  ‘Could be. I’ll make a few inquiries myself. Does make you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Deanna Sheets never indicated that she knew Tyler’s father well enough to – well, let’s take a lesson from Polly and just refer to it as meeting him for lunch to discuss the weather. And Bob Bevins hasn’t mentioned, either, in any of our victim assessment interviews, that he and Deanna were such close pals. I wonder,’ Bell added, picking up the pencil and tapping the pointy tip on her desk, ‘if that little friendship might account for just how forgiving Bob Bevins was toward the man who killed his son.’

  Then it was Hick’s turn.

  ‘The McClurgs live way the hell out in Blaney Creek,’ he said, naming a ramshackle community on the remote eastern edge of Raythune County. ‘I can’t think of the last positive thing that came out of Blaney Creek. Oh, and how about that Charlie Mathers? Lord, Bell, that man can talk a blue streak. The whole way out there and the whole way back, all he did was yammer on about the seven habits of highly effective assholes. Or something like that. “Plan your work and work your plan. Winners never quit and quitters never win. If you fail to prepare then you’re preparing to fail. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”’ Hick groaned. ‘I’m tellin’ you, Bell, that deputy is really annoying if you’re trying to focus on something and he just keeps—’ He paused, picking up on the pained look that crossed his boss’s face. Was he turning into Rhonda?

  ‘So,’ Hick said, after clearing his throat. ‘We talked to Mrs McClurg for about an hour. Her husband definitely was the person Lee Rader called on Saturday morning. She remembers the call very well.’