A Killing in the Hills

31


‘Name on the register,’ Fogelsong said, ‘was Fleming. Henry Fleming.’

‘Credit card?’

‘No credit card. Paid cash.’

Bell frowned. It figured. Of course he’d paid cash.

‘Anything else?’ she said. ‘Does the manager remember anything about him? Race? Height and weight? Accent? Make and model of car? Anything left in the room?’

Fogelsong flipped through the pages of his notebook, even though he already knew the answer.

‘Nope.’

They were sitting in the sheriff’s office. That is, Fogelsong was sitting. Bell and two deputies, Pam Harrison and Greg Greenough, were standing. The meeting had convened five minutes ago, when Bell arrived from the high school.

She’d apologized to the students, promising to return soon to finish her speech.

Harrison and the sheriff had just returned from the motel in Atherton, where they’d had a mostly fruitless interview with the mostly clueless manager. Greenough was holding a two-page printout of the preliminary ballistics report.

‘Manager got curious when the guy checked out early,’ Harrison said. She was a thin, serious-faced young woman in her mid-twenties, with a pointy nose and a bright red birthmark that covered the right side of her neck. ‘He was a stranger, but that’s not unusual. They get truckers through there all the time. Paid for a week. Left after three days. Maid goes in. Finds a hell of a mess.’

‘Meaning what?’ Bell said.

‘Meaning blood and brain tissue on the carpet. Also on the bed, the nightstand, a lampshade,’ Harrison replied, her words coming in a quick-step march. ‘No body. Just big hints of a killing. Recent. Real recent.’

Bell looked to the sheriff. ‘How’d they get the idea to look out back for the victim? To check the Dumpster?’

‘They didn’t.’ Nick’s face was dark. His answers didn’t arrive the way Deputy Harrison’s did. He spoke slowly. ‘Dogs got in there. Lid was left open. Manager heard the ruckus – if you’ve ever seen hungry dogs fighting for their supper, you’ll know how that manager heard it over the noise of his TV show – and went out back to have himself a look-see. Found the body. Called us.’

Bell nodded. ‘What do we know about the victim?’

Harrison took over again. ‘We know enough to know there’s nothing to know.’

Bell hated riddles. She scowled at Harrison. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s nobody,’ Harrison said. ‘Just some drug addict. We’ll probably have a positive ID pretty soon, but it won’t tell us much. We’re searching other databases. Even if she doesn’t have a criminal record, we can send the description around to the rehab centers. Most of those people are in and out of court-ordered rehab a dozen times before they turn twenty-five. Frankly, Ms Elkins, she appears to have been a prostitute. Probably trading sex for drugs. Upset the wrong customer. That customer apparently was our shooter.’ Harrison shrugged. ‘Blowing off steam, I guess.’

Bell looked down at the sheriff.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Looks like our man is still at it. This Henry Fleming – or whatever the hell his name really is – isn’t through with killing.’

‘And so now,’ Bell said, ‘we have to find a link between a prostitute and drug addict and three old men. A reason why somebody would want those four people dead. Drugs? Sex? What’s the connection?’

Harrison suddenly snapped her fingers.

‘That name,’ she said. ‘The name the guy was registered under. Fleming.’

Bell turned. ‘What about it?’

‘I know that name. English class. Middle school.’ Harrison closed her eyes, to help herself think. ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ She opened her eyes again. ‘I’m sure of it. Might be just a coincidence, but Henry Fleming is the main character in The Red Badge of Courage.’

Greenough, a heavyset, middle-aged man with rust-colored hair that he wore in a curly perm, nodded. ‘The novel about the Civil War.’

‘That’s the one.’ Harrison folded her arms across her chest.

Fogelsong spoke next, and Bell was surprised by the sarcasm that snaked through his tone. Nick wasn’t prone to sarcasm. At least not when things were going well.

‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘That’s just great. I always prefer my killers to be up on their American literature.’

Walking through the corridor back to her office, Bell checked her cell. She’d let the phone go to voice mail while she conferred with Fogelsong and his deputies. She was willing to be interrupted while giving a speech, but not while being debriefed by Nick and his staff.

Speeches could be repeated, postponed, rescheduled. Murder cases, by contrast, had a ticking clock at their core. Bell knew the statistics. Hell, anybody who’d been in law enforcement more than ten minutes knew the statistics: If a case wasn’t solved in the first few days – a week, tops – the odds of it ever being solved went way, way down.

Trails grew cold. Memories clouded. Interest faded.

In less than an hour, she’d racked up eight messages. That wasn’t even close to her all-time record of forty-eight calls in a sixty-minute span, which had occurred a year and a half ago, during the controversial prosecution of a woman who’d poisoned her mother-in-law, stashed the body in the attic, and then continued to cash the old lady’s Social Security checks. At least half of Acker’s Gap had regarded it as their solemn duty to let Bell know that the victim had been a mean-spirited, cantankerous old bitch, whereas the alleged murderer was a sweet, gentle soul who attended church regularly. Shouldn’t those facts matter?

Bell never did find an artful way to convey to her endless line of callers that nothing – not even a mother-in-law’s decades-long obnoxiousness – justified murder.

Cell cocked between her right ear and an upraised shoulder, Bell listened to her stacked-up messages as she made her way through the courthouse corridor.

Four were about routine business. A deputy needed paperwork to apply for a warrant. Collier County prosecutor Lance Burwell had a question about the procedure for serving subpoenas in a nursing home. An assistant prosecutor in Richmond needed a ruling on an extradition request from the state of Virginia for a burglary suspect whom Sheriff Fogelsong had in custody. And there was a brief, businesslike greeting from Amanda Silverton, a state legislator who was about to propose a new bill about mandatory sentencing for prescription drug–related offenses and wanted Bell’s input on the wording.

She sat down at her desk to listen to the next batch. One was from a bemused Carla (‘What happened, Mom? You flew out of there like you saw the bat signal or something’) and one was from a man Bell didn’t know.

‘Hey,’ the voice said. ‘This is, uh, Clayton Meckling. I work with my dad. Walter Meckling. We did some electrical work at your house. I understand there’s a problem. I’d like to make it right.’

Bell transferred the name to a notepad. Clayton Meckling.

The next message was from Rhonda Lovejoy.

‘Hey, boss – you’re just gonna freak,’ came her assistant’s breathy, excited voice, a voice that sounded like a high school girl who’d just downloaded the latest Lady Gaga song. ‘Got some info for you. Think you’ll find it very, very interesting. See you soon.’ Bell frowned. Rhonda had been due in the office that morning. She was more than just tardy this time. She hadn’t bothered to show up at all.

Where the hell was she? And who picked her own days off?

Rhonda Lovejoy, that’s who.

As Bell listened to her final message, she forgot all about Rhonda. She stood up quickly, using her free hand to yank her coat off the back of the chair. She had to go.

It was from Tom Cox.

‘Good morning, Bell. I know you’re incredibly busy, but do you think you could perhaps swing by the house for just a few minutes this morning? To help me with something? I just need—’ He paused in his recitation, and in the background, Bell heard a muted whimper that she recognized as Ruthie’s. Then Tom was back: ‘Just need a quick hand. To help me get Ruthie into the car. She’s kind of – well, kind of under the weather this morning. We need to head over to the hospital, I think, and she won’t let me call an ambulance.’

There was, in Tom’s voice, quiet exasperation. ‘You know how she is about that,’ he added.

Yes, Bell knew. Ruthie Cox was unwilling to cause any sort of fuss or bother.

Bell also knew that Tom wouldn’t have called her unless it was serious.

She took the top piece of paper from the stack of clean white sheets by the printer, their edges lined up crisply and flawlessly like the sharp corners of a hotel bed, and she wrote out a note for Lee Ann, who was on her lunch hour – Running personal errand. Have my cell if you need me. B. – and she folded the sheet over one time, then another time, using her fist to press on the crease. Lee Ann didn’t much care for e-mail; she liked to point out that if a power line went down and the electricity failed, or the Wi-Fi crapped out, she’d miss the message altogether, and what then? What was wrong, she’d go on, with just taking the time to put a little bit of writing on a dadburned piece of paper?

Not a thing, Bell would generally reply, knowing full well that they really weren’t talking about pieces of paper, but about the world and what had become of it. She slid the note under the base of Lee Ann’s desk lamp and hurried out the door.