A Killing in the Hills

32


She’d never had many friends. That was what happened when you grew up in foster homes; you told yourself that you were holding back, not wanting to commit to special relationships, because you knew you’d just be moving on down the road in a little while, anyway. You pretended, that is, that it was your choice.

Everyone knew the basic story of Bell’s family: runaway mother, drunken father, a murderer for a sister. Hard to pretty it up. She could tell by their glances – furtive, hurried, followed by the rapid blinks and the sudden interest in whatever was visible in the opposite direction – that they knew, and so she rejected them before they could reject her. While growing up, she was moody, sullen, and rude. About as welcoming as an electric fence.

That was why, Bell sometimes believed, she’d gotten so close to Tom and Ruthie so fast. Friendship tasted dazzlingly fresh to her, like a dish everybody else took for granted because they’d found it on their plate, meal after meal, year after year, but to her was still exotic and thrilling.

She pulled up in front of their house. She angled the Explorer’s tires against the curb, standard practice on any West Virginia street because so much of the state was situated on an incline.

Front door looming before her, Bell had a sudden, unsettling memory of Ruthie Cox on another occasion. A similar one.

A year ago, at the conclusion of one of the last rounds of Ruthie’s chemotherapy treatment, Bell and Tom had also teamed up; that time, it was to help get her home from the hospital. Ruthie had seemed strong enough, but on their way into the house from the garage, with Bell and Tom on either side of her, each gently holding an emaciated arm, she had abruptly slipped from their grasp. Tom was quick enough and strong enough to catch his wife in an iron grip just before she hit the concrete floor of the garage.

‘Whoa!’ Ruthie had said, trying to make light of her unexpected frailty. ‘Guess I’m not quite as steady as I thought I was.’

She’d smiled up at her husband, who continued to hold her securely around the waist. He was breathing heavily – more from fear, Bell speculated, than exertion.

‘My hero,’ Ruthie had added. It was said casually but sincerely. And Bell remembered thinking, He really is. He really is her hero. But what was it like for Tom, she’d also wonder, to watch the love of his life go through the stretched-out hell of cancer and chemotherapy?

Tom always seemed so steadfast, so firm in his belief that Ruthie would recover – but it must take a toll on him as well, Bell believed. There must’ve been nights when he, too, lifted a window and listened to the sounds of the woods, to the mysterious rustlings in the darkness that were like his own doubts, nestled deep inside the larger forest of his optimism and calm.

Tom and Ruthie had been high school sweethearts in Beckley, and they’d been together through college and then what came after – medical school at Ohio State for Ruthie, vet school for Tom. They had lived in Columbus for many years but as they grew older, they began thinking more and more about their home state. Finally, they returned to West Virginia to help young women and men there who also dreamed of careers in the sciences. Ruthie had initiated a mentoring program at Acker’s Gap High School. Tom donated his services to the Raythune County Animal Shelter.

That was what had drawn Bell to Tom and Ruthie. Because Bell, too, had returned to West Virginia, hoping to change things for the next generation, in whatever small way she could. Few people she knew here seemed to understand. They just wondered why she’d come back. You made it out, their expressions declared, if they didn’t say it outright. You made it out. Why the hell did you come back?

Ruthie and Tom understood. That helped Bell overcome her natural suspicions of do-gooders – she didn’t consider herself a do-gooder, just a regular person with a contrary streak – a prejudice that had only intensified as she watched Sam Elkins carefully polish his clients’ images with exaggerated lists of their charitable activities. Bell hated what she called PDAs: Public Displays of Altruism. Ruthie and Tom had the same aversion. The three of them had settled in for a long friendship.

And then came Ruthie’s diagnosis.

Bell didn’t knock this time. She went straight in.

Tom was down on one knee in front of Ruthie, who hunched on a chair just inside the door. Her face was gray and drawn. Hoover sat beside the chair, paws placed neatly in front of him, tail quiet. A red leash was attached to his collar. With no one securing its other end, the long expanse of the leash lay in a heap next to him; clearly, it had been dropped in a hurry.

‘Bell,’ Ruthie said. Her voice was weak. She tried to add a smile, but the most she could manage was a slight twitch of one side of her small mouth.

‘Hi, Ruthie,’ Bell said. She moved slowly and deliberately. She didn’t want to seem panicked in front of Ruthie; Ruthie had enough to think about, without having to worry about her friend’s reaction. She didn’t need any more drama in her life.

‘Can I give you all a hand?’ Bell asked.

‘We were going out to walk Hoover,’ Tom said, ‘when Ruthie felt woozy. I just got her into the chair.’ He was addressing Bell but his eyes never left his wife’s face. ‘I think we need to go to the hospital. Just to make sure everything’s okay. But you know how Ruthie here feels about ambulances.’

‘Don’t want—’ Ruthie stopped, waiting for more breath. ‘Don’t want to make a fuss. I don’t want that.’

‘Yes,’ Bell said. ‘Of course.’ She thought about it. ‘Ruthie, let’s wait right here for just another minute.’ She touched Tom’s shoulder. ‘And Tom, why don’t you go start the car and warm it up for us? And take Hoover out, too, while you’re at it? And then come back in, and we’ll all three go to the garage together? Nice and slow.’

Tom nodded. He stood up from his kneeling position in a single supple motion. That would’ve been hard for a lot of men Tom’s age, but he was limber and fit. Comes from lifting all those Labradors, he’d explained to Bell once, with a twinkle in his eye. Wish more of the folks around here believed in pet lizards. He pulled a brown plaid driving cap out of the side pocket of his coat. He adjusted it on his head. Then he patted his wife’s pale, blue-veined hand and did as Bell had asked.

Nice and slow. Just as he’d done so many, many times before.

‘I’m feeling much better. Really,’ Ruthie said. Her voice was stronger now.

They were driving toward the Raythune County Medical Center. Tom was at the wheel. Ruthie rode beside him, tucked beneath a wool blanket. The day wasn’t that cold – but it was for Ruthie, Bell thought.

She was sitting in the backseat, behind her friend.

Bell had considered asking Tom if she could maybe join them later. She was up to her eyeballs in work – that was how an appalled Ruthie had phrased it once, when Bell described all she had to do on a particular Saturday, You’re up to your eyeballs, Belfa Elkins! – and Bell decided she liked the line a lot. It sounded metaphorical, but sometimes it wasn’t; there were times when the piles of folders and files and transcripts on her desk grew so high that she actually was up to her eyeballs in work. Or close to it.

As soon as she and Tom had settled Ruthie in the passenger seat of the Escalade, however, Bell realized that she had to come along. She had to make sure Ruthie was all right.

This is what it meant to be a friend, Bell told herself. You don’t just do things that are fun and convenient. You do things that are difficult and irksome, things that require you to readjust schedules and rearrange entire days. Ruthie had certainly done that many, many times for Bell. When Carla was younger, Ruthie was the person Bell could call if she had to work late and needed someone to be at home when Carla returned from school. That was when Carla and Ruthie had really bonded: those weekdays after 4 P.M. when Bell had to be in court.

Ruthie would bring over drawing paper and watercolors, or a softball and two gloves, or model kits – Carla still talked about the plastic skeleton that she’d assembled, while Ruthie named the bones. Bell grew accustomed to walking in the door of the big old house on Shelton Avenue and finding the two of them at the kitchen table, Carla’s head bent earnestly over the pieces of white plastic representing a ball-and-socket joint, while Ruthie, in a patient but clearly enthralled voice, explained to the girl just what made the human shoulder such a marvelous thing, such a miracle of efficient design.

‘I mean it,’ Ruthie said. ‘I’m really fine, Tommy. I don’t think we need to go to the hos—’ A sharp bolt of pain rocked her. She gasped despite herself.

Tom kept one hand on the wheel while with the other, he reached over and covered Ruthie’s hand. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he steadied her, Bell saw, with that touch, with the physical contact.

‘We’ll be there soon, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Hold on to me. Hold on to my hand.’

And Ruthie did. She lifted her husband’s hand and she placed it against her breast and she covered it with both of her hands and she held it there, head bent, eyes closed, making his hand the focus of her attention, instead of the pain.

Ten minutes later Tom turned onto Ruggles Road, which would lead, after a four-mile stretch, to Route 12. The hospital was just off Route 12.

Ruthie spoke again, breaking the silence. ‘Bell.’

‘Just relax, Ruthie,’ Bell said. ‘You don’t have to talk.’

‘I need to tell you something.’

‘You can tell me later, sweetie.’ Bell reached up over the top of the front seat and briefly stroked her friend’s white hair. It was very, very fine. ‘We’ll have plenty of time later.’

‘Yes, Ruthie,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s just be quiet now, okay? We’re almost there.’

He sounded impatient, Bell thought. Slightly scolding. How many times had they been forced to do this, during the long course of Ruthie’s treatment? Too many times. Even saints, Bell told herself, must get pissed off every now and again.

Ruthie shook her head. She had opened her eyes again, and her voice was soft but determined.

‘Bell, listen to me. I’ve been thinking about Marlene Streeter. About how hard this whole thing must be for her. After everything else she’s been through. Losing a loved one is hard no matter how it happens, but murder—’ Ruthie paused. ‘Bell, there was something I wanted to mention to you. It occurred to me yesterday, when I thought about the Streeters.’

Bell waited. Ruthie took a few rejuvenating breaths and then resumed.

‘Cherry Streeter was in my support group for about a year. She was terribly ill by the time she joined, so I never got to know her very well. But Cherry did tell us a lot about her father. Talked about him all the time, in fact,’ Ruthie said. ‘He’d been a driver’s ed teacher at the high school for almost fifty years. He was there until he retired last year. Taught nine-tenths of the people in this valley how to drive, Cherry said. Never made much money, but loved what he did. Just loved it. Loved working with the kids.

‘When Cherry was diagnosed,’ Ruthie continued, after a pause to catch her breath, ‘she’d been out of work for more than three years. She didn’t have any health insurance. She was forty-eight years old, so there wasn’t much chance she’d be able to get it, either. Her savings were gone. So she moved back in with her parents, with Dean and Marlene, even though it was a very small place. There wasn’t even a second bedroom. Cherry slept on the couch in the living room. She felt just awful about it – she thought she was in the way, crowding them – but she was so sick that she had no choice.

‘You remember this, don’t you, Tom?’ Ruthie said, looking over at her husband for confirmation. ‘After Cherry joined, I would come back from those support group meetings, week after week, and I’d just be so sad for that poor family.’

Tom nodded. He was squinting through the windshield, looking for the hospital entrance off Route 12.

‘But then something odd happened, Bell,’ Ruthie went on. ‘Cherry showed up at a meeting one night – this was about a month or so later – and she was very excited. She said they were going to move into a bigger house. A new one.’

‘A new house?’ Bell said.

‘Yes,’ Ruthie answered. ‘It was strange, because all we’d heard about was how poor the family was, how Cherry could barely afford her medication. And then there’s the announcement that things are better.’

‘Better.’

‘Yes.’

Tom was turning the Escalade into the hospital lane marked EMERGENCY ROOM ENTRANCE. He had taken his hand back from Ruthie by now; he needed it to handle the big steering wheel.

‘I’d never seen Cherry so excited,’ Ruthie went on. ‘And you know, Bell, I was so glad that she didn’t have to fret about money while she was going through everything else.’ Ruthie lowered her head, then raised it again. ‘I went to her memorial service, and I met her parents. They were absolutely devastated. I’ve never seen grief like that. Never. It was like a hurricane had blown straight through their lives and there was nothing left – only rags, tatters. Only scraps. That’s all.’

Tom had pulled in front of the emergency room door.

‘If I help get Ruthie inside,’ he said to Bell, ‘can you park the car and meet us in there?’

‘You got it.’

Tom climbed out of the Escalade and hurried around to his wife’s door. By the time he got there, however, Ruthie had opened it on her own and slid out of the vehicle.

‘I’m fine, Tommy,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

He let his arms – the arms he’d been reaching out to her – drop. Shook his head. Bell understood. Sometimes Ruthie’s independence could be vexing; occasionally Ruthie had setbacks from trying to do too much, too fast.

But Bell also knew something else: That same stubborn spirit was one of the chief reasons Ruthie was still alive. ‘I’m just too ornery to let this cancer get the best of me,’ Ruthie liked to declare.

Bell slipped behind the wheel and watched them as they moved slowly through the glass double doors that opened with a discreet automatic swish, the tall man in the brown cap and the frail, slightly stooped woman in the down jacket who hung from his arm, and she thought, not for the first time, that not all love stories have happy endings.

Hell. Maybe none of them did.