A Killing in the Hills

41


Three days a week, Charlie Mathers was required to take a morning shift at the Raythune County Jail, just like every other deputy. But it bothered Charlie a lot more than it did his colleagues. He wasn’t some lard-ass prison guard, brushing away the doughnut crumbs piling up on his shirtfront, smacking the inmates’ knuckles when they sassed him, smuggling in cigarettes and copies of Maxim in exchange for greasy twenty-dollar bills. He was a law enforcement professional. Wasn’t fair that Charlie had to fill a slot at the jail on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, just like the others.

Because he wasn’t like the others.

But here he sat, regardless. Pointing to the logbook. Reciting the spiel he was forced to recite, even though Bell knew it by heart, just as well as he did.

‘Every visitor has to sign in,’ Charlie said in a bored, robotic voice that he hoped was able to convey his disgust with this tedious ritual. ‘Name. Time of day. And the prisoner you wish to see.’

He was sitting behind the black metal desk in the outer office of the jail. The logbook and a ballpoint pen were the only items on the top of the desk. The office was austere, stripped down to the essentials, because Sheriff Fogelsong believed that jails shouldn’t be warm and homey. They ought to be what they were: holding pens for people whose screwups were now costing the taxpayers money, minute by minute, for the troublemakers’ upkeep. Three meals a day, plus heat and light.

Bell bent over the logbook to put in her signature and 4:30 p.m. Beside that, she wrote, Albie Sheets.

Serena Crumpler would be arriving in a few minutes. Bell had called her with an unusual proposition: Let me talk to Albie, and we’ll consider lessening the charge against him.

What Bell didn’t say – but could have said – was, ‘Actually, we’re considering dropping the charges altogether.’ Serena would’ve assumed she was playing a game.

And maybe she was.

Earlier that afternoon, Bell had made the trip out to the Bevins home. She didn’t go alone.

Just before leaving the courthouse, she’d pushed aside a stack of long-held doubts and lingering reservations and piled-up irritations and called Rhonda, asking her to come along.

The assistant prosecutors shared a tiny office in the medieval catacomb known as the courthouse basement. It was a dank, grimy space just off the boiler room. It featured a couple of desks shoved together, a single rotary-dial phone, a battered fax machine of such ancient vintage that Hick swore it had once been used by Honest Abe to send messages to General Raythune on the battlefield, and one wobbly, half-broken-legged chair for visitors. If any of those visitors weighed in excess of about sixty-five pounds, Hick warned, they were taking their lives in their hands if they parked their backsides on its frayed cloth seat.

The cramped cubbyhole was almost as cold and bare and ugly as Fogelsong’s jail. And it was, at most, a four-minute walk from there to the prosecuting attorney’s office on the first floor.

Rhonda didn’t show up for twenty.

Bell was waiting in front of her desk, coat buttoned, briefcase dangling from her rigid grip.

‘How long does it take to climb a flight of stairs?’ Bell said icily.

‘Oh, shucks. Didn’t realize we were in that big of a hurry, boss. I had to call my cousin Aldora. Her boy Cody got his teeth knocked out at football practice yesterday. Needed to hear how he was doing, the poor thing.’ She sighed. ‘Just got his braces off, too. Shame.’

Rhonda was punching her fists into the armholes of her down coat, scurrying to keep up with Bell as she whisked out the front door of the courthouse, moving rapidly toward the Explorer. By the time Bell spoke again, they were halfway to the Bevins home.

‘You’ve got great instincts about people.’ Bell kept her eyes locked on the road, her voice flat. This wasn’t conversation. It was strategy. ‘You’re much better at reading them than I could ever be. So I want you to do what you do best. I want you to watch Linda Bevins while I talk to her. I want you to figure out what’s really going on there. I think she’s hiding something. I think, in fact, that a lot of the people in this case have been hiding things, starting with Lori and Deanna Sheets. And Bob Bevins too, of course.’

They were quiet for a moment, as the gray-and-gold-flecked scenery of rural Raythune County fled past them. Late fall was a stunning season in West Virginia, except that it also wasn’t. The paradox, Bell thought, smacked you in the face whenever you became too dreamy-eyed and hopeful about the place. Yes, the bright shouts of color that came in the form of dying leaves – the crazy reds and headlong yellows and rich liquid browns – were gorgeous to behold. The shades were transporting, almost voluptuous. And the mountain had its own grave, austere loveliness. But all of that natural beauty was undercut by the plight of the human beings forced to live in the midst of it. By the persistent poverty.

By the squalid shacks that showed up in empty spots in the woods.

By the roadside stands hawking hubcaps and homemade pies and trail bologna and plaster lawn ornaments, from birdbaths to praying angels.

By the boarded-up entrances to the used-up mines, mines that had meant mortal danger and dire health risks – and good-paying jobs, jobs that would never come back.

The paradox is always within arm’s reach around here, Bell told herself as she drove, fighting the mild depression that lingered in the air like a gas leak. She felt it every time she looked at West Virginia too long and too hard.

She tried to call Carla on her cell, to see how her day was going. There was no answer. Bell didn’t leave a message.

Then she wished she had, so once again she pressed No. 1 on her speed dial, listened through four rings and Carla’s brief digital greeting, and said, ‘Hi, sweetie, it’s Mom. Just checking in. Call me if you get a sec. Love you.’

‘It’s right over there,’ Rhonda said, pointing, alert as a bird dog.

The Bevins family lived in a housing development in the mountain’s wide shadow, one of several such clusters of homes that had been built in the mid-nineties during a brief misleading spell of prosperity. Bell had taken the Explorer through a winding series of streets until Rhonda spotted the address: 564 Stonewall Jackson Lane.

They parked and walked toward the house. It was a split-level brick with a small tree in the front yard. Attached to one side was a two-car garage. Both doors were closed. Along the edge of the driveway was a skinny pole featuring a basketball backboard and its orange metal hoop. The white nylon net was being bullied by the cold breeze. It twisted and wrapped itself around the hoop until it was pinned there, and then, when the wind shifted, tore itself away again.

Bell could imagine Tyler and Albie shooting baskets out here: Tyler dribbling furiously, circling his big friend’s clumsy feet, then hoisting up a shot – and Albie blocking that shot with one lazy swat of his massive hand. She imagined Tyler, running for the rebound. The boys – and they were both boys, no matter how old Albie was – had probably giggled their way through hundreds of games out here, hundreds of early-morning, mid-afternoon, and after-dinner games, hundreds of heaved-up shots and lazy blocks and wild scrambles for the rebounds.

Hundreds of games of H-O-R-S-E.

‘Bell?’ Rhonda said.

They stood on the front porch. Rhonda’s knuckles were poised to knock, but she wanted to make sure Bell was ready.

‘Let’s go,’ Bell said.

A few minutes later Linda Bevins was escorting them into her kitchen. She’d been surprised, when answering the knock, to find the prosecuting attorney and her assistant on her doorstep. There was a moment when it seemed to Bell as if Linda seriously considered simply closing the door again, right in their faces. Then she’d shrugged and opened it wider, a passive way of inviting them in.

Bell looked around as they walked through the living room. A picture of Tyler hung on the wall next to the arched doorway leading into the kitchen. He was wearing a bow tie and a navy blazer and a red pinstriped shirt. His reddish hair, shiny-wet with gel, was combed straight back from his forehead. His earnest smile was slightly goofy-looking, endearingly so. Kids, Bell thought, held nothing back when they smiled. You got everything they had. Kids weren’t cautious and self-conscious, the way adults believed they had to be when they were getting their pictures taken.

Bell remembered Carla at six years old, when her smile was just like Tyler’s: eager, guileless, trusting.

Carla.

Bell’s thoughts drifted for an instant away from the case. She wished Carla would check in; even a quick text would do. But her daughter, she knew, had a lot on her mind these days. And Bell didn’t want to pry. They’d talk about it that night, she decided. They’d make a casual pact: Just give me a general idea once a day about where you are. No big deal.

‘Coffee?’ asked Linda. The word was stripped bare of any genuine hospitality.

She was a short, heavyset woman whose chin was a mere bump in an upsurging sea of flesh. She wore a brown velour track suit. Each time she raised her pink hands to fuss at her mahogany-tinted hair, fluffing it up, flipping it off her shoulders and letting it fall again, two turquoise bracelets shivered and clanked on each wrist. Despite her bulk she seemed fragile to Bell. Skittish. Her gestures and her words were like steps in a recipe: Do this. Now do this. And then, this. There was nothing spontaneous about Linda Bevins, nothing joyful.

Grief can do that, Bell thought. Grief – and maybe something else, too.

The three women settled into straight-backed seats in the breakfast nook. Linda Bevins on one side, Bell and Rhonda on the other. The yellow-walled kitchen was cold, Bell noted, in ways that went beyond temperature, and unnaturally spotless. It was like someone dressed up for church: stiff, formal, and fake. The countertops were scrubbed and empty. The stove looked as if it had never hosted a bubbling saucepan or a greasy skillet.

Bell remembered a snapshot she’d seen in the case file. Photos were as crucial as notarized documents in nailing down histories, in understanding people’s lives. She always pushed Rhonda and Hick to scan copies of every family photo they could get their hands on in the course of an investigation.

The one Bell recalled now was a picture of Bob and Linda Bevins on their wedding day. Linda had looked about sixty pounds lighter – and a great deal happier – than she was now.

‘No, thank you,’ Bell said. ‘We just had a few more questions.’

‘Questions? I’ve answered plenty of questions,’ Linda snapped back. ‘That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing these days, in fact. That’s the sum total of my life now. Answering questions. Do you know what kinds of questions I answered this morning? Do you?’

When neither Bell nor Rhonda replied, Linda went on. ‘I had a call from the man at the place that does the headstones. A Mister Perkins. And he asked me what I wanted on my son’s marker. Those are the questions I was answering this morning from Mister Perkins. Pink granite, I said. Pink. Not gray. And do you know what it’s going to say?’

Bell and Rhonda continued to look at her without speaking.

‘It’s going to say—’ Linda put a hand across her mouth to stop a sob. Composing herself, she went on. ‘It’s going to say “Tyler Taggart Bevins. Beloved son of Robert and Linda Bevins. The angels have taken him home.” Taggart was my maiden name, you see.’ A pause. ‘That was my answer to Mister Perkins. He had questions for me, too. Plenty of questions. Because that’s what I do now. That’s all I do. I answer questions. Questions, questions, questions.’

Bell lifted a notebook out of her purse. ‘Mrs Bevins,’ she said, ‘I know you loved your son. And I can’t imagine the enormity of your loss.’

Linda eyed her. ‘You bet your ass you can’t.’

‘As you’re well aware, however, Albie Sheets has been accused of the crime. And we just need to get a few more de—’

Linda interrupted her. ‘What do you mean, “has been accused”? What are you saying? Albie Sheets killed my boy.’ Indignation rose in her voice. ‘He killed my Tyler.’

‘That’s certainly how it looks. And if he does indeed plead guilty, a judge will help determine his sentence. In the meantime, I’d like to ask you about—’

‘No,’ Linda cut in, her voice low and hard. ‘No, no, no, no, no. There’s no doubt about it. Albie Sheets killed my boy. I never liked it when Tyler played with him. Never. He was too big. Too rough. But Tyler liked him a lot, and Bob said I had to—’ She stopped.

‘Had to what, Mrs Bevins? What did your husband say you had to do?’

‘Nothing.’ She folded her arms across her heavy breasts and looked away from them. Her gaze roved restlessly around the kitchen. ‘Nothing. Albie Sheets killed my boy. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe he did. Not for me to decide. But he killed my boy. That’s all I want to say.’

‘Yes, Mrs Bevins, I know that’s how you feel. And we feel that way, too. That’s why the state has filed charges against Albie. But I wonder if we have the whole story.’

Linda’s head whipped back around.

‘What do you mean – the “whole story”?’

‘It’s my understanding that Tyler and Albie played at both homes. Sometimes they played here and sometimes they played at the Sheets trailer.’

‘Yeah.’ Linda’s voice was hard now, hard in a let’s-get-this-over-with way. ‘So?’

‘So how far of a walk is it from here to the Sheets home?’

‘Don’t know. Never walked it. Never drove it, either. In fact, I’ve never been there.’

‘You haven’t?’

‘Never.’ Linda’s face, twisted with disgust, supplied a silent addendum: Wouldn’t go anywhere near that trailer-full of white trash. Not if you paid me to.

‘And so who,’ Bell continued, ‘picked up Tyler over there when it was too dark for him to walk home? Who went to get him?’

‘Bob. My husband. He always went.’

‘I see.’

Something moved in Linda’s face.

‘Anyway,’ she said brusquely, ‘that doesn’t matter. Albie Sheets killed my little boy. Any other questions for me, Mrs Elkins? Anything else I can do for you and your assistant? Or is it okay with you two if I get back to what I was doing? And do you know what that was?’

She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I was just sitting here and missing my little boy. My Tyler. He’s all I had. He’s all I ever had.’ She leaned toward them. The vastness of her grief, barely held at bay during their conversation, seemed to rush back into the room. ‘He’s the only thing in the world I ever really cared about. And I was missing him something awful, missing him so much that I—’

She groped for a way to describe it.

‘I miss him so much that right now, right now, right this goddamned minute and every single minute since he left me and probably every minute for the rest of my life, I dearly wish I could walk right out of this goddamned house and climb that big goddamned mountain out there and then jump right off, jump right off the edge of it, so’s I could be with my Tyler. With my precious little baby boy. You got any questions for me about that, Mrs Elkins?’

The last thing they did was look at the basement.

It wasn’t that Bell expected to find something the deputies had missed; it was, rather, her desire to stand quietly in the presence of the aftermath of a violent act. After all the evidence had been collected and all the facts catalogued, she liked to see what remained, what essence moved in the air. Bell was usually practical and logical, relentlessly so, but this was the one realm in which she wasn’t.

She needed to stand at the threshold of a crime scene and . . . listen. Listen for the echoes.

The ones that still moved in the air, fitting themselves into a tight spiral that linked the past with the present. These echoes were composed not of sounds, but of emotions: terror, anger, passion, loss.

Linda did not accompany them. To Bell’s request to see the basement, she responded with a heavy shrug. She gestured toward a door at the other end of the kitchen; her bracelets shifted and clanked. She remained sitting at the breakfast nook, eyes staring straight ahead, while Bell and Rhonda descended the steep wooden staircase, slowly and cautiously.

They stood at the bottom.

The walk-out basement was carpeted in a mossy green shag. The walls had been hung with Sheetrock and painted a lemony yellow. In one corner, Bell saw a small crack in the drywall about two feet up from the floor. A pool table took up another corner. In the middle of the room, a long leather couch faced a big-screen TV. Along the south wall, Bell spotted a sliding door that led to the backyard. At the other end of the room, arranged on a concrete pad, were a washer and dryer. Sitting on top of the dryer was a stack of garments, some in bright solid colors such as green and red and blue, some striped, others tie-dyed.

These were Tyler’s T-shirts. Linda had yet to dispose of her son’s belongings.

Sometimes, grieving people took a long time to do that. Months. Years, even. Indeed, Bell had known of relatives of crime victims who never let go of the tangible evidence of a loved one’s existence, the shoes and wristwatch and comb and socks and toothbrush that proved beyond any doubt that the person had once been here, had walked on the earth. And she’d also known people who got rid of those items before the sun went down on the day of the death. Grief was as specific and individual as a fingerprint.

‘So,’ Rhonda said, just to have something to say.

‘Let’s go,’ Bell said.

Bell and Rhonda stepped out onto the porch.

A light snow was falling. The flakes melted the instant they hit the ground, but the frail skittish curtain of white still was mesmerizing. It imbued the mountain in the near distance with an air of intrigue, as if the mountain were pulling a cloak around itself, trying to disappear behind the flakes. Erasing itself. The mountain reminded Bell of a child who puts a blanket over her head and believes she’s invisible.

‘What do you think?’ she said.

‘I think Mrs Bevins made herself a bargain,’ Rhonda answered. Her voice was flat and sad but also certain. ‘And it put her in hell. She’ll say and do whatever she has to. Whatever she’s told to.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning she’s already lost her child. She doesn’t want to lose her husband, too.’