A Killing in the Hills

43


Coat buttoned, gloves on, arms crossed to preserve body heat, Bell stood before the courthouse. Darkness was pushing all the light out of the sky. Night had arrived. The cold had come with it.

Sheriff Fogelsong stood beside her. He had dispatched a squad car to the Charleston Airport. When Bob Bevins’s flight arrived from Las Vegas, the deputies would meet him on the tarmac, arrest him, and bring him to the courthouse.

A second squad car, sent to the trailer on Route 6 an hour ago to pick up Deanna Sheets, ought to be getting back here at roughly the same time.

‘She confessed to Charlie Mathers,’ Fogelsong said. He’d just ended a call on his radio, opening his big black wool coat to clip it back on his belt. ‘I sent Deputy Harrison along with him, in case there was any trouble, but it wasn’t necessary. The minute Deanna Sheets saw them, standing at the door of the trailer, she started talking. She almost seemed – hold on to your hat, Bell – she seemed kind of proud, Charlie said. Kind of excited to be in the middle of things.’

The sheriff thrust his hands in the slash pockets of his coat. He lifted his big shoulders and then let them fall again. He’d apologized to Bell for his handling of the case, for arresting Albie in the first place, for not insisting that the state send a forensics team, for failing to look beyond the obvious.

‘Enough blame to go around for all of us,’ she’d replied. ‘Nobody’s covered in glory with this one, Nick. I’m just glad we finally got it right.’

They waited. At this hour, the downtown was virtually deserted. Bell had counted only two cars going by since they’d first come out here to wait. The storefronts, half-drowned in shadows, had a wary, barren feel to them, as if they were protecting themselves from the next blow. Part of that, Bell knew, was caused by the cold. And part of it wasn’t.

She looked down at a troubled little shrub at the edge of the courthouse lawn. By the meager light that remained in the sky she could see, at the base of the scraggly plant, a crooked circle of flattened cigarette butts.

Dot Burdette, Bell thought. You rascal. You know better. Yes, it was a rush to judgment; lots of people smoked. Okay, fine. She’d give Dot the right of appeal.

When Nick spoke, it startled her; she was buried so deep in her own thoughts.

‘You know what really gets me, Bell?’ he said. ‘When Deanna started spilling her guts to my deputies, Lori Sheets tried to shut her up. Can you beat that? Deanna kills a little boy, and still her mama’s trying to protect her. Letting her own son take the rap.’

Bell nodded. She would have to decide whether to charge Lori Sheets with impeding an investigation and making false statements to the police. If she did that, though, and if Lori Sheets went to jail, then who would take care of Albie? Sometimes she wished a prosecutor’s job were as simple as some people thought it was. She longed for a few easy dilemmas. The black-and-white kind.

She stamped her feet against the sidewalk a few times, trying to jump-start her circulation. The fall season in these mountain valleys bred a peculiar species of cold. Not winter’s cold, with its rock-bottom temperatures and ice-bound paralysis of everything that used to be moving, but a sideways kind of cold. A sly cold. No matter how many times Bell had experienced it, the cold in November always took her by surprise.

‘Parents do all kinds of things to protect their children, Nick,’ she said. ‘There’s no way to figure it out. No accounting for it.’

She hadn’t heard from Carla all day. No call. No text. No whining request to pick her up after school so she wouldn’t have to ride the bus – because, as Carla reminded her daily, the suspension of her driver’s license was still in effect.

Carla had probably caught a ride home with Lonnie.

Yes. That made sense. She’d be spending as much time as possible with her friends, now that she’d decided to leave here. Wouldn’t she?

And then Bell’s thoughts were drawn back to the present. Two big black Chevy Blazers had rounded the corner of Main and Thornapple and were heading toward the courthouse, red lights turning importantly on their tops. No sirens. No need to scare the bejesus out of three-quarters of the town.

Inside the vehicles, Bell knew, were the two people responsible for the death of Tyler Bevins.

The sheriff spoke without looking at her.

‘That thing you just said – about parents protecting their children,’ he said. ‘Guess somebody forgot to tell Bob Bevins, huh?’

It began, Deanna Sheets told them, on an afternoon last spring. Bob Bevins came to pick up Tyler at the Sheets trailer. Her mother wasn’t home from work yet. So she and Bob Bevins started talking.

‘That’s all it was at first – just talking. Then it got to be something else,’ Deanna said coyly. She arched her eyebrows, inviting them to let their imaginations go wherever they’d like them to go. Fine by her. ‘My mama didn’t come back till way after dark sometimes. She’s got a long bus route. And I’d get lonely. Up there on the mountain like that – you can understand. And Albie wasn’t much company.’

Deanna had settled herself in a straight-backed metal chair in front of the square metal table. This room, a small gray box, was one of two that the sheriff set aside for interrogations.

Bell sat across the table from her. Hick stood in the corner, hands in the pockets of his rumpled gray trousers, head tilted against the cinder-block wall. They were in Hick’s territory now, Bell knew. This was his kind of villain – not a criminal mastermind, but a petty, attention-starved show-off. Hick Leonard’s private law practice had depended for years on precisely this kind of person: more selfish and opportunistic than evil. The Deannas of this world didn’t go looking for trouble; they slid into it, like a cheap shack built on a muddy hillside that ends up in the creek. When the rain came – and the rain always came – down they went, scooting and sliding and making excuses and telling stupid lies as they rode the ooze to the bottom.

Rhonda was in a chair beside Bell, her face as serious as Bell had ever seen it. She was taking notes, even though the video camera was dutifully memorizing everything from its angled perch near the ceiling.

‘Pretty soon,’ Deanna said, ‘we started going on drives. Whenever Bob could get away. We’d go into Blythesburg. Have lunch.’ She tested out a dirty-minded smile. She seemed to like the feel of it on her lips. So it stayed. ‘Thing is, Bob and his wife just don’t get along no more. So it’s not like a real marriage. And pretty soon, Bob’s gonna buy me my own salon. He promised. So it’s a win-win. If you think about it right.’

‘Tell us about the day Tyler died,’ Bell said. Deanna had waived her right to have an attorney present, but she’d probably change her mind later, and Bell wanted to get as much information as she could right now, while the young woman still wanted to impress them, still wanted them to know how central she was to everything.

Deanna frowned. She used one fingernail to pick at another.

‘Those boys – they weren’t supposed to be there,’ she said, sounding annoyed. ‘Albie and Tyler were playing at the trailer that day. Wasn’t supposed to come over to Bob’s house at all. And Linda was gone to visit her sister up in Morgantown.’ She gave Bell a look that was half plea, half challenge. ‘It wasn’t our fault, you get me? Bob and me, we thought we was alone in that basement. We did. But they come back. The boys come back to the house. Just barged right in through the basement door. They was looking for Tyler’s LEGO set. All the other shit those boys have got to play with – and what do they want right that second? LEGO set.’

‘So they surprised you,’ Bell said. ‘They interrupted you and Bob.’

‘Yeah. And Bob – well, he’s got a temper on him. He does. You can ask anybody. It’s like a fire startin’ up. Once it gets going, he can’t help himself. He has a hard life, you know? You’ve seen that wife of his. Don’t take care of herself at all. Started letting herself go, long time back. Bob told me all about it. He’s had to put up with a lot, believe me. She’s big as a house.’

‘So he got mad.’

‘Oh, yeaaah,’ Deanna answered, drawing out the word, marveling at the memory of her lover’s fierceness. ‘The boys had seen us, caught us, and Bob just blew his top. You don’t want to mess with Bob Bevins when he’s got up a head of steam, believe me. He grabbed Tyler and – well, he didn’t mean to hurt him, I know he didn’t, I’m sure of it, but somehow—

‘I tried to make it right,’ she said, interrupting herself after a pert frown. ‘See, Bob told me to make it look like Albie done it. Because Albie wouldn’t get in no trouble. Because he’s simple. “They’ll just get him some help,” Bob said. “He’ll be in a nice place for a while, a clean place with good meals, and then he’ll come back home.”

‘It was the only way,’ Deanna went on. ‘Bob didn’t mean to hurt his boy. Just lost his temper, is all. If we’d told what happened, Bob woulda been in big trouble. Albie, though – Albie wouldn’t get the same punishment that a real person would. And he’d never tell about what happened. Not if I asked him not to. He’s a good boy. He knows I’m looking out for him.’

Bell felt Rhonda’s hand on her forearm. Her assistant wanted to ask a question. Bell nodded and sat back.

‘Deanna,’ Rhonda said, ‘what happened when Mrs Bevins got home that day? Did you tell her what happened?’

Deanna looked surprised at the question. ‘Well, of course we did.’

‘Her little boy was dead. And she agreed to keep your secret?’

Deanna made a noise that was uncomfortably close to a snicker. ‘Oh, she cried and she screamed and she waved her fat arms over her head like a crazy person, and she was yelling, “Tyler! Tyler! My little boy Tyler!” – but in the end, she wanted to keep Bob happy. She’d do whatever he told her to do. She’s got to hang on to him now. She’ll never get a man like Bob, ever again. I mean, you’ve seen her hair, right? And the size of that butt?’