A Killing in the Hills

48


Teddy Wolford had been a deputy with the Collier County Sheriff’s Department for less than a month. Law enforcement was not the career he had dreamed about; that distinction belonged to NASCAR. Not as a driver, but as somebody working in the pits. He’d been told he had good hands. He was strong and he knew cars, so he figured he had a shot.

Never worked out. Nothing ever did, right? Not like you plan it. So here he was, nineteen years old, with a two-month-old baby, Danielle Marie, and he was married to Patty Weeks because there was no other choice. He didn’t follow NASCAR much on TV anymore. No point to it.

He’d heard that the sheriff’s department was hiring and so here he was, Deputy Teddy Wolford. He had to patrol the back roads on the overnight shift – the shit shift is what they called it – and he couldn’t complain because he was new, he was low man on the totem pole.

He was supposed to keep his radio on at all times, but nobody did. The other guys had wised him up. If you had your radio on and you got a call, you had to respond, and while that was okay most of the time, there were nights when you needed a break. So you turned it off for a little bit and if they asked you about it, you said you’d been taking a piss in the woods. That crackling static could get on your nerves. And he liked the quiet up in these mountains, liked to drive on the dark mountain roads and think about nothing.

Deputy Wolford, then, had not been privy to the initial bulletins requesting extra vigilance because a man suspected of felony kidnapping was at large, somewhere between Alesburg and Acker’s Gap.

‘Where you headin’?’ he asked.

The driver was a kid, even younger than Teddy was. Bad skin, toothless grin. Tiny eyes, turned-up nose. He looked like a pig.

Good thing he was a skinny guy, Teddy thought, or the nickname ‘Porky’ would’ve been hung around his neck in third grade and never taken off again. The passenger seat looked like somebody had dumped a trash can on it. The car smelled like cigarettes and sweat. Had it been cleaner, better-looking, Teddy would’ve been more suspicious. This guy, though, was like everybody else he knew. Hell, he was like Teddy himself.

‘Oh, just driving around.’ Chill kept his hands on the wheel, where the guy could see them. He knew that was important.

‘Just driving around.’

‘Yep.’

‘Well, you were swerving a little bit back there. But you don’t look or sound like you’ve been drinking.’

‘No, sir. I leave that to my girlfriend.’ Chill used a head-tilt to indicate the backseat. It was better, he figured, to mention her first, before the officer saw her. Make it clear he had nothing to hide. ‘Got herself shit-faced tonight. Again. Out with her girlfriends. They called and asked me, could I come pick her up? Before she did some real damage to herself.’

Teddy leaned to his right. Squinted at the window. He saw a lump. Heard a moan.

‘She don’t look so good.’

‘Well, officer,’ Chill said, ‘she don’t smell so good, neither.’

They both laughed.

‘Been there,’ Teddy said.

Chill waited. He felt sweat crawling down his neck. Felt like ants.

His fingers twitched. Gun could be in his hand real quick. He thought about the cop’s head, about how it would look when it blew up, the blood and bone and brain, and he thought about how it would all happen so fast that the cop’s face wouldn’t even get a chance to look surprised. Wouldn’t be time for that.

Chill could play it either way.

He could shoot or not shoot. He didn’t really care.

A second passed.

Another.

Officer Wolford smiled. Stood up straight again, after bending over to look in the back window. Two taps on the roof of the car. That was a habit with Teddy Wolford, his way of saying good-bye. Just like the guys in the pit did it, when they’d finished their work and were sending the car back out onto the track, tank topped off, lug nuts tightened.

Tap tap. Take care. Good luck.

‘Okay, buddy,’ he said. ‘You get that gal of yours to a safe place, soon as you can. And watch yourself on the road. You hear me? Don’t want no accidents.’

‘No, sir.’

‘You have a good night.’

‘You, too.’

And so because Teddy Wolford was new, because he was tired and bored, because he didn’t follow protocol and challenge the sweaty man in the compact car – because of all those things, and other things, too, unknown and unknowable things – Danielle Marie would end up having herself a daddy, a daddy she knew, a daddy who played with her and took care of her, surprising himself again and again over the years with how much he loved her, surprising everybody. She had a daddy, instead of what might have happened. Instead of her having to grow up with just the stories, just pictures of a man in a deputy’s uniform who’d been murdered on a mountain road on a cold November night when she was barely two months old.

Chill passed the peppy little sign on the right-hand side of the road, the white one with green letters and green piping around the edges, that said WELCOME TO ACKER’S GAP. GLAD YOU STOPPED BY. HOPE YOU CAN STAY AWHILE.

He passed the post office. The storefront public library. A payday loan place.

The street seemed empty, hollowed out, as if some lumbering piece of heavy equipment had come along earlier that day and pushed everything except the buildings into a big pile and then bumped over the pile, smashing it down. The reason it looked that way, Chill knew, was the cold. It was just too damned cold for most people to be walking around after dark tonight.

He slowed down even more. He saw a man hurrying to a Dodge pickup parked in a No Parking zone, crossing the street in front of Chill’s vehicle, shoulder-length hair swinging every which way in the wind, preoccupied, head down, steps quick but careful, one hand holding his coat closed at the throat. The man didn’t even look up. He arrived at his truck, ripped open the door, slid inside. The truck jumped away from the curb and was gone, engine screaming at the effort needed to get going so quickly in this crazy cold.

A thin layer of frost was smeared across the sidewalks. In the patches where the streetlights reached, the glittering made them look almost magical. Almost like stars, Chill thought; it was as if stars were trapped in the sidewalk. They kind of twinkled.

You stupid-ass.

Twinkled. Yeah, right.

He drove slowly past the courthouse. The downtown was a dead place.

Past the Walgreens.

Past a bank, and then a coin laundry.

Past a thrift store called Second Time Around.

Past a bar. Its big front window was dark, covered by a thick rumpled drape, but you could tell what it was by the neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hanging by two wires.

Past Cappy’s Shoe Repair and Custom-Fit Orthotics. Past a store that sold comic books and video games. The next couple of storefronts were empty, with FOR LEASE sloppily whitewashed on their big front windows.

Past the Salty Dawg. Parking lot still blocked off, which pleased him. Yellow tape wound around black barrels, one set in each corner.

Then he spotted it. The square hulking place just down the block from the Salty Dawg. He remembered it from Saturday, remembered flying past the place when he peeled out, trigger hand still trembling a little bit, still vibrating, body so jazzed up and jangling that there’d been a crazy part of him that thought he maybe didn’t need the car at all, that maybe he could fly like a bird or even make himself invisible.

He’d been through Acker’s Gap lots of times, he’d noticed this building, but never cared enough to ask what the hell it was. Big windows on all sides. Biggest one in front. Like a big dead eye.

Perfect.

Just what he was looking for.

He picked up his cell.

His thumb was so greasy with sweat that it kept sliding off the numbers. Finally he got it right.

911.