A Killing in the Hills

51


They found his point of entry. A large hole had been knocked in one of the side windows. Myriad chips of safety glass littered the narrow concrete sill like a casual scattering of gems.

Bell didn’t want to think about how he’d gotten Carla inside, didn’t want to imagine her daughter shoved over this sill, then pushed or rolled or thrown, but in any case forced into a cold, dark, forbidding building by a desperate stranger.

The sheriff waved Bell back. With a gloved hand, he swept the glass confetti off the sill. Then he motioned at her again, his gesture even more emphatic. The meaning was clear: Stay put.

He was going in.

Despite his large frame, Nick Fogelsong was fairly nimble. And what he lacked in flexibility, he made up for in initiative and pluck. He hooked one booted foot over the sill, then he seemed to pause through a silent count of one-two-three, bobbing up and down on the foot that remained on the ground, after which, clamping his big hands on the inside edge of the sill like grappling hooks, he hoisted himself up and launched his big body over and in.

He landed on the floor inside with a muffled two-part thud.

Bell was right behind him, making it over the sill much more quickly than he had. She landed on the floor right next to him. The sheriff was breathing heavily, big shoulder-lifting breaths, but part of that might have been a deep sigh of exasperation directed at Bell.

Like she cared. She was coming along, whether or not Nick approved.

Carefully, they stood up. Darkness made them blind, blundering. Pressed flat against a wall, standing shoulder to shoulder, Nick and Bell found themselves at the edge of a vast blank space swept by deep indigo shadows. The RC had been gutted multiple times. In the last major rehab, the walls of the smaller rooms in the back, the rooms in which Colby Romer and his staff had once hectored coal miners and day laborers to sign up for payments to buy cars they couldn’t afford, had all been ripped out, leaving a single enormous room anchored by a hardwood floor.

It was an immense vista of darkness. Looking out across it from their spot along the wall, Bell realized how many varieties of darkness there could be. There was not just one kind of darkness, a single shade; darkness had different degrees to it, different colors and shapes and intensities. It had edges. Some crisp and sharp, some rounded. And some soft, almost plush-looking.

Bell and Nick inched slowly along, linking up with the shadows. Because the night was so dark, the big windows provided little illumination. Just a ghostly edge of silver, a faint tracing along the floor that hinted now and then of moonlight.

Bell stopped. She’d seen a flicker of motion at the far end of the room. Heard a rustle.

‘Nick,’ she whispered.

The explosion of a gunshot made both of them jerk and drop into tight crouches.

‘Hey!’ the sheriff yelled into the void. ‘Hey, you! We’re here to make a deal. You take another shot at us, buddy, and there won’t be any deals. You hear me?’

The reply came fast. It had the same peeved, wheedling quality to it that Bell had noted before.

‘Where’s my money?’ the man said. His words echoed across the blank space. ‘And my damned car?’

‘Where’s the girl?’ Nick retorted.

Silence.

The next sound Bell heard was mystifying. It was a low rumble, heavy and metallic, like a box of ball bearings dropped on a sharp incline. Or a bevy of roller skaters on a sidewalk. The noise accelerated, intensified.

A chair with casters suddenly sparked out of the shadows, twisting and looping as it skidded toward the center of the room. The moment the chair’s path intersected with the frail and shifting print of moonlight on the floor, the moment Bell had a glimpse of its cargo, she cried out.

Slumped in the chair, chin on her chest, hands tied to the armrests and ankles tied to the chair legs, was her daughter. In the cool bluish wash of what meager moonlight there was, Bell saw the top of her small head, the slump of her narrow shoulders. She looked like a doll. A soft and broken doll.

Carla.

Bell sprang up and rushed forward. The chair was a good thirty yards away from her, twisting and spinning, and Bell aimed for it.

‘Bell!’ Nick yelled. ‘Bell, stop! Get back here, damnit! I can’t cover you – it’s too dark!’

She didn’t stop. She didn’t even consider stopping. She ran across the floor toward the rolling chair, running with a speed she’d forgotten that she’d ever possessed, running with an instinctive agility, a special rhythm. A runner’s rhythm.

Bell caught up with the chair. Grabbed it to stop its twirling. Lunged at the black back and spun it around.

She’s alive, Bell realized, seeing the small bruised face, and the gratitude that washed over her almost made her stagger, almost made her lose her balance.

‘Sweetie,’ Bell said. ‘I’m here. I’m right here.’

Carla was breathing but she was also, Bell saw, fading in and out of consciousness. Her eyelashes trembled, as if she was trying to open her eyes but couldn’t. An ugly crust of dried blood clung to one side of her head. Bruises bloomed from temple to chin. Her lips fluttered.

‘Mom,’ Carla murmured, trying and failing to lift her head from her chest. ‘Mom, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know I was—’

‘Sweetie – shhh, shhh – it’s okay now.’

Bell began pulling frantically at the ropes that yoked Carla’s wrists and ankles to the chair, trying to get both free at once, her daughter’s hands and legs. Bell squatted down and then sprang up, then kneeled again, yanking at the knots, clawing at them, digging and picking.

‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ Bell murmured, trying to sound calm but talking fast, too fast, her words sliding together. ‘You’re gonna be fine gonna be fine fine fine.’

The gunshot screamed past Bell’s ear. She flung away the ropes she was holding and jumped in front of the chair, standing straight up and facing the darkness with her arms spread wide, shielding her daughter.

A man emerged from the shadows at the back of the room. His arm was fully extended, and at the end of it, riding high in his hand like something he wanted the world to see, was a semiautomatic pistol. He lifted the gun, pointed it at the ceiling, and fired a second time. He’s enjoying this, Bell thought. He wants to scare the hell out of us. He’s in the middle of his own goddamned video game.

‘Hey,’ the man shouted.

Bell’s eyes had grown a little more used to the darkness. She saw that the man had small eyes, sweat-moussed hair, skinny legs and arms. He looked young. Too young. Younger than she’d guessed he would be. Barely older than Carla.

‘Hey! You better listen here,’ he went on, still shouting. His voice was hoarser now, roughed-up with bravado. He kept the gun aimed at Bell’s face. ‘You got a choice here, bitch. I can shoot her or I can shoot you. One of you’s gonna die. Simple as that.’ He gave an exaggerated shrug, lifting his bony shoulders and then letting them drop again. Without changing his aim he tilted the gun to one side, and then he put it upright again, as if he was wondering how much damage it could do, depending on how he held it, and he was itching to test it out. ‘Don’t care which. You understand me? Long as I get my cash and my car. Long as I cause enough trouble ’round here so that you keep your f*ckin’ noses out of our business.’

Bell was breathing heavily, too. ‘Let her go,’ she declared. The words came out of her like a growl. ‘You gotta shoot somebody? You gotta do that? Then shoot me. Let her go. Shoot me. Do it. But let her go.’ Bell spread her arms out even wider, to show him that he could do whatever he wanted to do to her. ‘Shoot me now.’

In the ghostly half-light of the vast room she saw his expression change, his forehead bunching as he squinted. The side of his mouth twitched. She couldn’t read his mind, but she could read his face, which was the next best thing: He figured it was a trick. He was trying to sort it all out, to plot his next move. Who puts somebody else ahead of themselves? That’s what he’s thinking, Bell surmised. He’s wondering what I’m up to.

He shifted his hold on the pistol, rewrapping his hand around the grip, the gun jittery in his hand. Bravado couldn’t quite hide his confusion. I’ve had enough of this shit – Bell felt she could read it in his tiny eyes, as if the actual words were printed there – and I’m gonna end it now. Right now.

She saw him line up the gun, double-checking that it was level with her face. She saw him slide his feet just a quarter-inch to the right, getting a better angle for the shot.

Do it quick, she thought. She couldn’t run, because running would leave Carla exposed. Bell hoped – with a desperation so intense that it felt like a physical force inside her, pushing the breath out of her body – that Carla was unconscious again by now, drifting, oblivious. Don’t make her watch her mother die. Not that. Please. God in heaven – not that.

Two gunshots smashed through the big open space, coming so close together that it sounded like a single shot and its amplified echo.

The gun popped out of the young man’s hand as if he’d deliberately flung it straight up in the air. Bell watched as he jerked and spun, his body stuttering from the flat absolute force of twin hits to his narrow chest.

He crashed to his knees. He rocked sideways, swooning briefly, and then he dropped straight back. His head hit the floor with a sound of agonizing finality, a sound you couldn’t hear without wincing.

Bell’s head flicked around frantically, seeking the origin of the shots. Was there more to come? Another shooter?

Nick Fogelsong was striding toward her, moving faster than a man his size had any right to. He’d lowered his sidearm.

‘Bell,’ he said. There was a hitch in his voice, a slight quaver. ‘Bell, I didn’t have a clear shot until he moved. I couldn’t take a chance on maybe hitting—’ He swallowed hard. Shook his head. ‘You okay?’

She couldn’t speak right away. Once again, he’d been there when she needed him.