A Killing in the Hills

Part Three





39


When Bell returned from her late breakfast at Ike’s, Lee Ann Frickie was waiting in the hall outside her office. Bell could tell by how she looked – eyebrows arched expectantly, one tiny fist perched on the narrow hip of her wool skirt – that her secretary wanted a private word before Bell went into the office.

‘You have a visitor.’

‘Who?’

‘Deanna Sheets.’

Because the door between their offices was almost always left open, Lee Ann knew what Rhonda Lovejoy had reported that morning. About Deanna Sheets and Bob Bevins.

‘Been here about fifteen minutes,’ Lee Ann said. ‘I told her you’d be right back.’

‘She just showed up?’

Lee Ann nodded. She was wearing a white sweater with pink piping along the collar and cuffs and a plaid navy skirt. Dangling between her small breasts was a dime-sized silver pendant hanging on a silver chain. Lee Ann touched the chain, sliding her thumb and index finger up and down the tiny linked segments.

There was something she wanted to say.

‘Lee Ann,’ Bell said, ‘what’s going on?’

The secretary glanced around with scrupulous care, to make sure no passersby were close enough to overhear. She had a habit of looking at the world across the top of her silver-rimmed glasses, imbuing her gaze with an air of judgment, along with a faint air of droll amusement. While she fingered the necklace, her eyes continued to rove up and down the short corridor.

‘What is it?’ Bell repeated. She tried to keep the push out of her tone, but she had a lot to do today. She had a lot to do every day – and Lee Ann, of all people, knew that.

‘Well,’ Lee Ann said, ‘she’s pretty wrought up. That’s all.’

‘Did she say what she wanted?’

‘No. Except to talk to you.’ Lee Ann stopped looking around the courthouse corridor and swung her gaze back over to Bell. ‘Something’s not right.’

Bell knew what she meant, but she wanted to hear it from Lee Ann. Her secretary had superb instincts about people – about their motives, their moods, their secrets. About when they were telling the truth. And when they weren’t.

‘Can’t quite define it,’ Lee Ann added, ‘but this whole Sheets case, start to finish, just bothers me. All this conversation about knowing right from wrong. About actions and consequences and such.’

‘You don’t think Albie Sheets should stand trial for murder?’

‘That’s not the part that bothers me.’

Bell waited.

Lee Ann shook her head and waved her hand in front of her face, as if the gesture might clear away the troubling thoughts that had stalled there like a wad of fog. ‘Oh, heavens. Ignore me. I’m just an old busybody.’

‘No, you’re not. You’ve been working in a county prosecutor’s office for a hell of a long time. You know when things feel right – and when they don’t.’

‘I appreciate that, Belfa.’ Her secretary was one of only a few people who could call Bell by her given name and not receive a scowl in return. The scowl was so severe that most people probably would’ve preferred a slap.

‘Okay, then,’ Bell said. ‘Let’s go see what’s on Deanna’s mind.’

Deanna had perched herself on the edge of the couch, knees locked, long-fingered hands clasped on top of those knees, purse tucked at her side. She wore a powder blue cotton sweater and black polyester trousers, and even in those ordinary clothes, she was a knockout.

The sweater stretched across the swell of her substantial breasts. Her face had a startling beauty to it, a combination of pale delicate skin and vivid features – full lips, high cheekbones, and deep-set, dark blue eyes – and it brimmed with a kind of energy, like an interesting substance in a glass vase you might hold in your hand, turning it slowly, slowly, so that it catches the light at different angles.

Back in the trailer, Deanna’s beauty had not been so readily apparent. Her beauty first had to detach itself from its surroundings, work its way forward. It had a journey to make. Here, though, Deanna Sheets looked luminous.

What is it like, Bell wondered as she sat down behind her desk, to possess this kind of beauty and to live in a trailer in Raythune County, West Virginia? Did Deanna Sheets ever feel as if she was trapped inside one of those snow globes she collected, separated from the real world by a scrap of plastic on a tiny red pedestal, stuck in a scene that never changed?

‘This is highly unusual,’ Bell said. ‘I assume you know that, Ms Sheets. I’m prosecuting the case against your brother. Nothing you say to me is privileged – that is, unlike your conversations with your brother’s attorney, Ms Crumpler, whatever you say to me is not necessarily confidential. I can’t guarantee that I won’t—’

‘No, Mrs Elkins.’ Deanna shook her head. ‘That’s not it. No lawyer stuff. That’s not why I’m here.’

Bell waited. She had decided not to bring up Bob Bevins just yet. She didn’t want Deanna to know what they knew.

‘I was wondering—’ Deanna faltered. She turned her head to the side, toward the big window. The drapes were closed, however, so there was nothing to see.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want nothing bad to happen to Albie.’ Deanna added a few kittenish sniffles. Her chin trembled.

Bell handed her a tissue. Then she sat back in her chair again. She was careful not to be too consoling, too soon; when people felt better, they stopped talking.

‘Something bad is going to happen to Albie,’ Bell said. ‘Chances are, he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life.’ She paused. ‘Does that seem unfair to you?’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Elkins?’

Deanna blew her nose. Bell waited until she’d finished to reply.

‘I mean, is there some aspect of this case – some fact about what happened that day in the basement of the Bevins home, when Tyler was killed – that you want to talk about?’

Deanna looked surprised. She blinked and shook her head.

‘You know all about it,’ Deanna said. ‘Albie was just playing around. Him and Tyler. It was an accident. Two boys in the basement.’

‘Is that the truth, Deanna? Is that what really happened?’

‘Why’d you say that?’ Deanna said, her voice rising. ‘What are you talking about? We told you! We did! Over and over again! It was Albie and Tyler. Albie and Tyler, playing in that basement.’ The young woman stared at Bell with big eyes. ‘You know what happened that day.’

Bell didn’t hand her another tissue. She had no desire to be reassuring. Her question had been a shot in the dark. A hunch. She and Lee Ann had been thinking along the same lines.

‘I know what we were told,’ Bell said.

Deanna’s delicate jaw muscles twitched, ever so slightly.

‘Mrs Elkins,’ she said, after a pause during which she seemed to compose herself, ‘let me tell you. I never thought it would come to this. Never thought Albie would still be in jail. They said it wouldn’t happen that way. Because Albie was simple. They said he wouldn’t be punished. They said folks’d understand.’

‘Who gave you that information?’ Bell said.

Deanna shook her head. She lowered her face.

When she raised it again, Bell saw, to her dismay, that a stubbornness had set in. Bell knew what that meant. She wouldn’t get any more information out of Deanna Sheets right now. The door had closed.

‘Deanna, why did you come here today?’

‘To ask you not to hurt my big brother.’ The reply was quick. ‘Albie didn’t know what he was doing. He wouldn’t know when he was going too far. He and Tyler always played rough-like. They’d wrestle around like that. Albie just got too rough that day. That’s what everybody’s told you and it’s the truth, Mrs Elkins. It’s the God’s honest truth.’

When there was no response from Bell, Deanna reached for her purse. ‘Well, okay, then. I gotta go. I was just downtown to pick up some things for my mama. Thought I’d stop in and talk to you about Albie. He’s a good boy. He didn’t mean to hurt nobody.’

Bell decided to make one last try.

‘Deanna, we’re going to find out what happened in that basement. I promise you that we will. Whoever you think you’re protecting – it’s not worth it.’

Something flashed in Deanna’s eyes – whether fear, guilt, apprehension, or confusion, Bell couldn’t tell – but then the bravado reasserted itself. The defiance. Deanna stood up and arranged her purse strap on her shoulder.

‘Only person I’m trying to protect, Mrs Elkins, is my brother Albie. I just want him to get a fair shake. I gotta look out for Albie.’

‘Is that why you and your mother made him eat soap the other day? So we’d have to postpone the trial? Is that the kind of protection you mean?’

That one stung. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Deanna snapped. ‘Nobody made Albie do nothin’ like that. That’s crazy. That’s just—’

‘Never mind, Deanna.’ Bell began dividing files on her desk, turning two tall stacks into four shorter ones. ‘Thanks for stopping by. When it comes to delaying tactics, I suppose this is better than feeding Albie another bar of soap.’

In a mellower tone, Deanna said, ‘I love my brother, Mrs Elkins. He’s like a little baby. And babies need to be looked out for, don’t they? They need somebody on their side?’

‘We all do,’ Bell said, but her eyes stayed on her files. She was finished with Deanna Sheets. For now.