A Killing in the Hills

11


I gotta tell her. I gotta tell her.

The sentence rode around in Carla’s head all morning long, like a rock in her shoe, annoying her no end. But it wasn’t just a matter of reaching down and digging it out. It was a lot more complicated than that.

She hadn’t deliberately lied. Not at first, anyway. When she told the deputies and then her mom that she didn’t recognize the shooter, she was telling the truth. It was only later, when she started putting certain things together – when she thought about being at that party a while back with Lonnie, and about how this weird guy had shown up, a friend of a friend of Lonnie’s, or something like that, and about how the guy had drugs, some pills and stuff, and he was giving the stuff away, and everybody was real happy – that Carla realized: That guy was the shooter.

The guy at the party.

Piggy eyes. Turned-up nose. He didn’t go to Acker’s Gap High School. Carla was sure of that. She’d only seen him for, like, minutes at the party. That’s why she hadn’t made the connection right away. The party was crazy-crowded. And sticky with sweaty, pressed-together people. Too many people, shoved too close, and music that was way, way too loud, so you couldn’t really think or focus. The guy was in the center of a mob, with people pushing to get at him, to get what he was handing out, the pills, because they were free.

Everything was so different that morning at the Salty Dawg. And it happened so fast, and nobody knew what was going on, and the lighting was totally different, it was bright, and there was the screaming, and all the blood.

‘No, sir,’ she’d said to the deputy, just like the other witnesses had. ‘Never saw him before.’ And she believed it.

Until she remembered.

But how could she tell her mom? If she told her mom that maybe she recognized the guy, Bell would want to know how and from where – her mother always had questions, God, it’s like a regular courtroom around here, Mom, it’s cross-examination time 24/7 – and Carla would be forced to confess she’d been at a party with drugs.

And that would be it.

No more parties. No more social life. No more life, period. Her mother would probably restrict her after-school activities to, like, the chess club. Or, God forbid, 4-H. She couldn’t hang out with her friends anymore.

She’d already lost her car. Now she’d lose everything else.

Carla checked the clock on the mantel. Almost noon, but she had barely moved from the couch. She was mired here, stalled here, pinned here, by the thought of what a freakin’ mess her life had suddenly become. She’d gotten up once to pee, but that was it; that was the only move she’d made. All of her energy was fueling the desperation of her thinking.

I gotta tell her. I mean, it’s the right thing to do. I gotta tell my mom about that guy.

Don’t I?

Carla pulled at the cuff of her long-sleeved T-shirt. She yanked restlessly at the blankets that were bunched around her hips. God, she thought. I hate my life. Hate it, hate it, HATE it. She wondered, as she always did when things got complicated, about maybe going to live with her dad in D.C. He’d made the offer. He repeated it in just about every phone call: You know, honey, Sam Elkins had said, this is a big city. A big, beautiful, exciting city. If you come and live here, you’ve seen your last plate of biscuits and gravy. Promise. Carla had laughed at his little dig against West Virginia, as he had intended her to, and then she’d felt guilty about laughing.

Truth was, her father had grown up here, too. So when he made his cracks, his jokes, Carla always wondered how you could make fun of where you’d come from, and she wondered if she’d end up doing that, too, one day, and if people would see through her as easily as she saw through him. Maybe he picked on West Virginia not because he was certain he’d left it behind – but because he was afraid he hadn’t.

When her parents had divorced five years ago, Carla returned with her mom to live in Acker’s Gap. She had no choice. She was only twelve. But her mom had promised her that once she turned sixteen, the decision would be hers. Carla could stay in West Virginia with Bell, or she could go back to live with her father in D.C.

The summer before, when she was visiting him, Sam Elkins had pressed her. The spare room in his condo? It could be her bedroom. And his latest girlfriend, Glenna St Pierre, would be like a big sister, he explained, not like a mom who’d be nagging her all the time, telling her what time she had to come home at night or which friends she could hang out with. And he could probably get Carla a great summer job before she went off to college, he added, at his lobbying firm. All you gotta do, honey, he’d said, smiling, waggling his eyebrows, is figure out how the CEO likes her Starbucks every morning. Then you’re a rock star around that place.

She’d only talked to her father briefly so far about the terrible events at the Salty Dawg. Her mother had insisted she phone him right away, right when she’d gotten home yesterday. First thing. ‘If he hears about it on the news,’ Bell had said, ‘he’ll be frantic.’

Carla had given him only a few details during that call: I’m fine. Really.

But she wasn’t fine. She was in a hell of a mess. She could probably help her mom and Sheriff Fogelsong track down a killer. But if she did that, she’d be grounded for life. Her mom would forbid her to see her friends, the friends who’d taken her to a party with drugs.

She’d be spending every Saturday night from now on right here on this stupid couch watching stupid TV. She’d never get out of the house again.

Carla reached for her cell on the coffee table and, thumbs flying, quickly texted her dad:

Need 2 talk

Maybe her life didn’t have to be over, after all.

Maybe there was a way out.