A Killing in the Hills

9


Lori Sheets and her two children, Albie and Deanna, lived in a trailer that was permanently marooned on a patch of land right next to the road.

‘Next to’ the road wasn’t quite right. It was virtually in the road. When the state widened Route 6 in the late 1980s, it had tried to buy out the landowners whose lots bordered the road. Most sold willingly, but Curtis Sheets, Lori’s late husband, said no. Actually, he said, ‘Hell, no,’ and then spit out a chaw of Red Man with enough vigor to knock over a tin can perched on a fence post.

So the state widened the road anyway, and their front yard – only a small portion of which was their legal property, but as long as the road had been narrow, that didn’t much matter – vanished. The dirty gray ocean of road now lapped right up to the bottom step of the thin concrete slab that Curtis Sheets had installed as a front porch. When the coal trucks went pounding by, the trailer swayed and bounced like an out-of-balance washing machine. Dishes shimmied off the kitchen table and collectibles popped off the shelves. The family’s mailbox had been repeatedly sacrificed to nasty sideswipes by lurching sixteen-wheelers.

Curtis Sheets had died in 1994 in a single-car crash, leaving his wife Lori to deal with their son Albie. Their daughter Deanna, twenty-two, also lived at home.

On the afternoon of October 14, Tyler Bevins’s mother had checked on the boys in the basement of the Bevins home, which was located in a subdivision about a mile away. Despite the age discrepancy – Tyler was only six – they often played together, building LEGO forts or watching Scooby Doo videos.

Linda Bevins found her son with a bright green garden hose tied around his neck.

Bell parked on the left side of the trailer, pulling the Explorer as far off the road as she possibly could. She hoped that when she returned to it, the vehicle’s rear end would still be attached to the front. Your average coal truck, she knew, lacked a certain subtlety when it came to sucking in its gut and staying inside the white lines on mountain roads.

As Bell opened the car door, she heard a voice calling out. ‘Hey there, Mrs Elkins.’

Up on the porch, Lori Sheets was pulling a brown cloth jacket around her wide shoulders. It was cold up here in the mountains, although it was still early in the fall. The sun, on account of the topography, had a hard job on its hands. And the heavy canopy of twisting trees thwarted the sun’s best intentions.

‘Good morning,’ Bell said, retrieving her briefcase from behind the driver’s seat.

The trailer had once been white, but the dirt flung up by the constant churn of the coal trucks had stained its aluminum sides a brownish yellow. There were red plastic flowerpots set in each corner of the porch, filled with artificial flowers. A dusty film coated each plastic petal, so that what had started out as blue and yellow and pink was now a uniform gray.

Lori smiled a please-like-me smile. She had crossed her plump arms in front of her large bosom. She wore faded Levi’s and heavy black boots. The trousers were too long; the extra material bunched across the tops of her boots in twin blue crinkles.

Lori Sheets drove a school bus for a living. That was difficult work, especially in these mountains. Keeping control of a big vehicle required power and savvy. And many times, the drivers had to perform their own emergency maintenance. Bell had expected Lori Sheets to be a beefy woman, and she was. The only aspect of her appearance that had surprised Bell was the hairdo. The frosting was done well, and the styling was expert; her hair was arranged in soft winsome scallops that added an improbable touch of delicacy to her large face. Where would Lori Sheets find the time or the money for such a high-maintenance hairstyle?

Instead of reaching out to shake Bell’s hand, Lori leaned forward and dipped her head in an odd little gesture that was half nod, half bow. She kept her arms crossed in front of her chest.

‘Mrs Elkins,’ she said, ‘we’re just so grateful you come up to see us like this. We know you didn’t have to.’

‘I wanted to make sure I had all the information I needed. Can we go inside?’

‘Oh, sure. Sure.’

The moment they walked in the front door of the trailer, Bell understood how Lori Sheets kept up her hairstyle. The living room had been tricked up to look like a miniature salon. Three kitchen chairs were arranged side by side along one wall, like seats in a waiting area. Hanging over a fourth chair was a hair dryer with a lime green, hard plastic shell. There was also, on a series of plank shelves that scaled a dark-paneled wall, a variety of plastic containers and aerosol cans that Bell recognized as sample shampoos, conditioners, sprays, and gels, the kind supplied in hotel bathrooms, and in another corner, a wooden crate filled with glossy, oversized magazines, on the covers of which emaciated young women struck poses of complicated physical geometry. The regular furniture – couch, coffee table, TV cabinet – had all been shoved into a sharp-edged conglomeration at the far end of the room to make space for the beauty equipment.

As Bell looked around, Deanna Sheets walked into the room from the kitchen. A dark gold sweatshirt hung from her high, angular shoulders; her sticklike legs were encased in a pair of black tights, and she wore her honey-colored hair in a series of fluffy, tousled layers that artfully framed her small face.

Bell reached out her hand to Deanna. ‘I know this is a really hard time for your family, but I’m here to find out a little bit more about Albie.’

The fingers that Deanna offered back to Bell were limp. Bell had to do all the work of the handshake.

‘So.’ Bell turned around, taking in the room. ‘What’s all this?’

Deanna opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again. Her gaze drifted toward the orange shag carpet.

Lori Sheets stepped forward, patting her daughter’s petite shoulder. Lori hadn’t taken off her jacket and didn’t ask Bell to take off her sweater, either; there didn’t seem to be any heat on in the trailer, and the air was cold.

‘Deanna wants to be a stylist,’ Lori said, ‘and she needs a place to practice. So I let her set up in here. This is all hers, all the things she’s collected and put together.’

‘I see.’

The room was too small for three people plus all of the hairdressing equipment, which made Bell wonder how it had worked when Albie was here, too. Albie was a big man, a tick over six feet tall and at least 275 pounds.

‘Well,’ Bell said. ‘I just wanted to have a brief chat. I’m not going to ask you about the facts of the case, mind you. We won’t be discussing the day it all happened. That’s for the trial. I want to know about Albie.’

Lori nodded.

‘You want to sit down?’ she asked dubiously. The couch was turned sideways and crammed at the other end of the room, definitely a challenge to reach, and if they all chose to sit, they’d be bunched too close together, like helpless siblings in the back of a station wagon on a long car trip.

‘No. This won’t take long.’

Lori was visibly relieved. ‘How about some coffee, then?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ Bell had brought in her briefcase but didn’t really need it. She set it down on the carpet, perched against her left leg. ‘Lori,’ Bell said, ‘Albie never went to school, is that right? You kept him here at home?’

‘That’s right. I knew he wouldn’t fit in. Other kids’d tease him.’

‘How does he spend his time?’

‘Well, he does his chores. He gets the wood for the stove. He can sweep the floors. Dust some, too. It takes him a while sometimes, but he can do it.’

Bell looked at Deanna. ‘It must be hard for you. Having your brother here, when you bring friends home. Needing to explain about him.’

Deanna’s gaze flashed from the carpet to her mother. Then to Bell.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Deanna said.

‘So it’s been hard?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Deanna’s eyes disengaged again. Bell had to fight off the urge to take the young woman’s chin in her hand and force her to keep her head up.

Looking past Deanna into the kitchen, Bell saw a long particleboard shelf slotted onto aluminum brackets on the wall. It was crammed with snow globes. Looks like at least thirty, Bell guessed. I’d sure hate to have dusting duty in this place. The plastic bubbles bumped up against each other, some large, some very tiny; some were round bubbles, others were tall, skinny tubes.

Deanna raised her head and turned it, to see what had caught Bell’s eye.

‘Those’re mine,’ Deanna said. ‘Got a lot of ’em.’

Bell remembered the snow globes she’d seen in truck stops and hotel gift shops, the souvenirs from specific places; a tiny arch for St Louis, a Statue of Liberty for New York, the Alamo for Texas, all doused with white or gold flakes of confetti if you shook the thing back and forth or turned it upside down. Snow globes, Bell found herself musing as she regarded the crowded shelf, were plastic scraps signifying a larger world, the world beyond trailers and coal trucks.

And disabled brothers.

Maybe these weren’t just collectibles. Maybe they were things to hope on.

Most of the snow globes were too small for Bell to be able to make out the figures inside or the labels on the pedestals, but the identity of one of the larger globes was discernible: In big red slanting letters across its base she read VIVA LAS VEGAS!

‘Tell me about Albie,’ Bell said, turning back to Lori. ‘When did you first know he was different?’

‘Right away. It was the look he had. The look in his eyes. A funny look. Like he wasn’t there or nothing. And he never talked. Didn’t walk, neither, until he was five or six years old. Couldn’t figure it out.’

‘What did you do?’ Bell asked. ‘What did the doctor say?’

‘Well, thing is—’ It was Lori’s turn to look down at the carpet. ‘Thing is, we didn’t have no doctor. Albie was born right here at home. Same with Deanna. Curtis had lost his job down at the tire store – weren’t his fault, weren’t their fault, there just weren’t no business coming in – and so we did without. Had my children right here.’

Bell kept her eyes aimed at Lori’s. In her experience, the more difficult the question, the more important it was to look the other person in the eye when you asked it. It showed that you had a respect for their life, for what they’d been through. If you hesitated, if you looked away, you were doing it for yourself, not for them.

‘What happened, Lori? What made Albie different?’

‘When he was bein’ born, he didn’t get no oxygen. That’s what they told me later. Lack of oxygen is what done it. That meant his brain wasn’t right. Wasn’t nobody’s fault. Just happened that way.’ She spoke the last two sentences in a singsong way, as if they were part of a catechism. She’d probably had to tell the story over and over again, Bell figured, to various social workers.

Bell nodded. ‘Okay, Lori. Let me ask you one more thing. And Deanna’ – she turned to include the young woman who was still apparently mesmerized by the carpet fibers – ‘I’d like your input on this, too. Do you think Albie knows right from wrong? When he does something wrong, is he ashamed? Does he understand what he’s done? Does he apologize or try to make it right?’

Deanna flinched as if she’d been poked with a stick. She looked at her mother as she spoke.

‘There was that one time, Mama, ’member that?’ Deanna said, agitation making her words come in a tumbled rush. ‘’Member?’

‘Slow down, sweetie,’ Lori said, ‘so’s Mrs Elkins can understand you.’

Deanna looked at Bell. ‘Once,’ she said, ‘Albie was roughhousing with Tyler here in the living room. I told ’em to stop but they wouldn’t. They was having too much fun. Then Albie knocked over that shelf over there’ – Deanna waved in the appropriate direction – ‘and one of my good shampoo bottles flew off and landed on the floor and got ruint. Albie didn’t pay no attention. Didn’t know what he’d done. Just laughed about it. Him and Tyler.’

Deanna had spoken in what sounded like a single headlong breath. She looked at her mother. Lori, though, was watching Bell, not her daughter.

‘So Albie and Tyler Bevins,’ Bell said, ‘played here at your house, as well? In addition to Tyler’s basement?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Deanna said. ‘Lotsa times.’

‘How did Tyler get here? I mean, he was six years old. And the Bevins house is a good mile or so away.’

Deanna looked at her mother.

‘Tyler’s daddy would drive him up,’ Lori said. ‘Usually, that’s how it was.’

Bell nodded. ‘I see.’

There was a short spell of quiet, broken by the sudden thunder of two coal trucks going by on the road outside, one right after the other. A furious grinding of gears exploded out of ancient overworked engines. The trailer quivered, shimmied.

‘That racket don’t never quit,’ Lori said, ‘even on Sunday mornings. Them coal trucks is always on the go, day or night.’

Deanna was restless. She didn’t want to talk about coal trucks. ‘You gotta understand,’ Deanna said, ‘how Albie never cared if he messed with my stuff. It didn’t bother him none. He never realized how he ruint things.’

‘All right, then,’ Bell said. ‘I thank you both very much.’ She had to be careful. She couldn’t get into the facts of Tyler’s death; that had been her agreement with their attorney. Today’s brief conversation was for background, not to dig out any additional evidence against Albie Sheets.

She picked up her briefcase. At the door of the trailer, she paused.

‘I’m sure this is a difficult and confusing time for both of you,’ Bell said. ‘I should’ve asked earlier, but do you have any questions for me? Any at all?’

Deanna smiled and lifted her right hand shyly, as if she were in a classroom.

‘I got a question,’ she said.

Bell waited.

‘Could I maybe do your hair sometime? No offense, ma’am, but I think I could make it look a lot better. Way it is now, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look kinda like you’re back in olden days.’