A Killing in the Hills

7


Charlie Sowards stared at the picture. It had been ripped out of the newspaper, folded over, folded again. Still, he got the idea. He could recognize her. Pick her out of a crowd. No problem.

He stuffed the photo back in the front pocket of his jeans, not bothering to fold it this time. The edge tore a little bit, but he didn’t care.

He wished the whole process was a little bit slicker, more techno, like the things he saw in James Bond movies. Why couldn’t he be issued a sleek black laptop, say, or one of those iPads, and why couldn’t the picture be sent to him in some kind of encrypted file – he loved the word ‘encrypted’ – instead of this stupid, candy-ass way?

A small picture torn out of a newspaper. Christ. A head shot, no less. Faded, wavy, grainy. Black-and-white. And from that he was supposed to know her, follow her, complete the assignment?

The boss treated him like crap. Totally took him for granted. Chill knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He’d tried. He’d gotten nowhere. The boss had cut him off before he said three words, and Chill immediately sensed that you didn’t mess with this guy. If you pushed, he’d push back. Harder.

Chill shifted his leg. He was sitting in his car at one end of Shelton Avenue. He was separated from her line of sight – if she looked down this way, which wasn’t likely – by four SUVs and an overgrown motor home parked along the curb. It was 5:45 A.M. the morning after the shooting. There was just enough light now to see a picture by, courtesy of a shy pink blush in the eastern sky. Chill had long legs, and his knees were crammed uncomfortably under the steering wheel. He hated compact cars. When he drove, it wasn’t so bad; he could stretch out his legs. But sitting here on a cold Sunday morning, engine off, calves cramping, watching an old house down the block, was not what he’d signed up for.

He’d started working for the boss about six months ago. ‘You?’ Chill had said, when the boss first asked him about it. This was not what he’d expected. ‘You?’ he repeated.

‘Yeah. Me.’

‘I thought—’

‘You thought what?’

‘Nothing.’

What could he say? That he’d expected somebody badder, somebody meaner? He’d expected, frankly, that the head of a major prescription drug operation, one that covered most of southern West Virginia and southeastern Ohio and Kentucky and was growing every day would be – bigger, somehow.

‘There a problem?’ the boss had said that first time, pressing him.

‘No problem.’

‘Good. ’Cause there’s a lot of guys who want to work for us, you know? Hell of a lot. You know what the unemployment rate is around here, right? Plus, this is good money. And no heavy lifting, understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘And so,’ the man went on, as if Chill hadn’t spoken, ‘if you have any doubts, if you’re conflicted, if you think you can do better someplace else—’

‘No, I don’t think that.’

‘—then by all means, Charles, you go. You go seek your fortune elsewhere.’

‘It’s “Chill.” I go by “Chill.”’

The man had already turned away from him, busy with a stack of merchandise, getting the packages ready. He liked to keep everything neat, orderly.

In a short time they’d gone from selling pills here and there, catch as catch can, to running a regular network, with deliveries coming in every few days, then going back out again. Clockwork. And there was no end in sight, no limit; they owned these valleys, they’d taken over dozens of small-time operations, one by one, yet the boss wasn’t satisfied. Chill could tell. The money was rolling in – sometimes it made Chill want to giggle, the stacks of fives and tens and twenties, nothing larger, it looked like the cash register in a goddamned candy store, all those small grubby bills, pulled out of kids’ sweaty backpacks or old ladies’ purses, one at a time – and still the boss was restless, agitated. He was never satisfied. He wanted more. Chill hadn’t been doing this long, but he knew a lot about appetite, and he recognized it in the boss: hunger. Nose in the air, sniffing. The more he got, the more he wanted. Anything that stood in his way, he quickly took care of – well, sometimes he told Chill to take care of it. And Chill did.

He pulled the picture back out of his jeans pocket, tearing it a little more. She was good-looking for an old lady, no doubt about it. She had to be close to forty. Close to his mama’s age. Chill, pondering, tucked in his bottom lip. He didn’t like that thought.

He needed a cigarette, but the boss had told him not to smoke on a stakeout – that was Chill’s word. The boss had used the word ‘assignment.’

People noticed smokers these days, remembered them, the boss said. Plus, you might have to peel out in a hurry, and you’d have to ditch the cigarette, and if you fling it out the window, it’s evidence.

So Chill sat in the car, irked, uncomfortable, knees jammed up under the steering wheel, fingering the small creased picture torn out of the Acker’s Gap Gazette. ELKINS SWORN IN FOR SECOND TERM, the caption read, and below that, in smaller type, was another line: Belfa Elkins, Raythune County prosecuting attorney, vows to fight illegal prescription drug trade in West Virginia ‘with every resource this office can bring to bear upon the tragic, multigenerational epidemic,’ she says.

Chill squinted harder at the photo. She had a pretty face. Nice bouncy hair. She was thin, with a decent smile. She wore a strand of pearls around her neck and, in each earlobe, he recognized the small white dot of a pearl earring.

Classy. That was the word, Chill decided. She was a classy lady. She wasn’t like his mama at all, he saw. In fact, she sort of reminded him of a teacher he’d had back in middle school. This teacher had taken an interest in him. Tried to talk to him, get him to study, to choose ‘better companions.’ He liked her. He enjoyed their conversations. But she didn’t know anything about his life.

He had to get that teacher off his back. Had to do it harshly, too, so she’d stay away and leave him alone. So he’d turned to her one day, in the middle of one of their little after-school chats, and he’d said, ‘You got the hots for me, baby, that it? That what you got in mind? You heard I got a nice big dick, right, and you want some?’

He could still remember the shock in her eyes, the hurt, the terrible wounded surprise. She looked as if he’d flung acid in her face. They’d been talking about The Red Badge of Courage. Or at least she’d been talking about it. And suddenly he just couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t handle her ‘interest’ and her ‘concern’ for his ‘potential.’ Couldn’t deal with her belief in him. He knew he’d never live up to it. So he’d fixed things. He’d shown her what was really inside him.

‘I got what you need, bay-beeee,’ he’d continued, cackling, slapping his crotch, rubbing it. ‘Mmm, mmm. Got just what you need right here, hot ’n’ fresh.’

In a quavering voice, she told him to leave. She never talked to him again. Had him transferred out of her class. That was that.

A year later, he started selling pot. He worked for a small-time dealer who then passed him on to another guy, who sent him down to Raythune County, and then the second guy ended up in the river with four bullets in his head, and for a while, Chill drifted. He just drove around. He did some odd jobs: He helped a guy dig a footer for a garage, swept out cages at an animal shelter, took care of the landscaping for an old folks’ home. Once, he stopped in at the public library in Bluefield and asked if they had a copy of The Red Badge of Courage. They did.

Chill opened it, turned a few pages, and then he closed it again and put it down on the big wooden table and walked out.

This woman, this Belfa Elkins, looked a little like that middle school teacher of his. Chill stuffed the tattered piece of paper back in his pocket. He knew why the boss wanted this lady gone. She was making a lot of trouble. Affecting business. Costing the boss money.

He perked up.

Yep.

It was her. He peered out through the windshield, down the long street, and he had to squint, but he was sure of it. She was coming out of her house. Walking fast. Wearing a blue sweater and carrying a black briefcase. Just like the boss had said: She won’t quit. She works seven days a week. You be there tomorrow morning, keep out of sight, you watch her house, she’ll show herself. She’ll go to work, even the day after a shooting like that. Follow her, and if you get the chance—

Chill understood.

If she stopped somewhere along the way, if he caught her away from a crowd, if there was nobody else around, he’d be ready. No guns this time, the boss had told him. Guns are messy. Bullets, the boss always reminded him, are evidence.

So how the hell was he supposed to—?

Be creative, the boss said.

Chill lowered his knees. Leaned forward. He put the tip of his tongue in the space where a tooth was supposed to be. Then two more spaces. Helped calm him down.

He started the car.

Showtime.