A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,16

of their trailers and in the bathrooms of truck stops out on the interstate. But he’d been rethinking things. And today’s violence had rattled him. He was feeling helpless, overwhelmed.

He had stated it plainly to her just the other day. Even before the shooting: Maybe if we took a little break, Bell, maybe if you quit making so many speeches that identified drugs as the single greatest threat to the future of West Virginia, maybe if you stopped prosecuting drug-related crimes with quite so much fervor – maybe we’d have some peace again.

He’d seen what they were up against: multiple generations of the same families addicted to prescription painkillers. Kids as young as twelve or thirteen trying the stuff, underestimating its quicksilver grip. He paid close attention to the reports from the regional medical clinics, from the state police. He knew about the drug operations – audacious, increasingly well organized and, in many cases, well armed – that now had a major financial stake here, spreading their distribution networks, pushing deeper and deeper into West Virginia, wrapping their greasy little tentacles around its heart.

And squeezing.

‘So how long?’ he asked her. They had strayed off topic, far from the morning’s shootings. Or maybe they hadn’t.

‘How long what?’

‘How long can we hold out against what’s coming?’

‘One case at a time, Nick,’ Bell said. ‘That’s how we do it. Bottom line, though, is that we have to keep fighting.’

The sheriff was getting tired of the fight. He had other fights to worry about these days.

His wife, Mary Sue, a sweet-faced and fragile-natured woman, a former third-grade teacher at Acker’s Gap Elementary, had begun to be tormented by major episodes of clinical depression. She suffered through long days of sitting by windows, staring at air, while tears slid down her pale cheeks and the pink tissue in her lap was separated into tiny pieces, and those pieces into tinier pieces still. She’d been hospitalized three times in two years.

In the first frightening hours after Mary Sue’s initial breakdown, Bell had helped Nick arrange for her care at the hospital in Charleston. On the middle-of-the-night drive over, he was at the wheel, shoulders hunched, jaw moving slowly back and forth, glaring meanly at the small notch of twisting road made visible by his headlights, while Bell sat in the backseat with Mary Sue.

Bell hadn’t said a word on the way. No false cheer, no phony reassurance. No hand pats. No ‘There, there.’ Bell, Nick knew, would go anywhere he told her to go, she’d do whatever he asked of her, but she wouldn’t lie. Neither of them had any idea how things were going to turn out for Mary Sue Fogelsong, and Bell wouldn’t sugarcoat it.

All Nick knew – all anyone knew – was that Mary Sue would require a great deal of care over a very long period of time. By professionals. Even the people who loved her best weren’t enough for her anymore. It might break their hearts to think so, but their love was now largely beside the point.

If ever there was a time for the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney to take a step back – only one, and only for a little while – and not go after prescription drug abusers with such single-minded passion, this was it.

Wasn’t it?

Nick looked into Bell’s eyes. He knew what he’d see there, he didn’t have the slightest doubt about it, but he had to check, anyway. Just in case.

He saw the same resolve that was always present. If anything, it looked even tougher. Firmer. More entrenched. This woman, he thought, is so goddamned stubborn.

When he thought it, though, he smiled.

‘That white horse of yours,’ the sheriff said. His tone was lighter now. Bemused. ‘The one you’re always riding when you go tearing after those windmills. You ever give him a day off?’

‘Tried to once,’ Bell said. She’d found another tiny thread to pick. This one was on her left sleeve. Her voice, like his, had turned playful – sort of. ‘Really tried. He got restless. Damn near kicked down the barn.’

5

Charlie Sowards loved cheap motel rooms. He knew them well, and the cheaper they were, the more comfortable he felt. At home.

He finished rinsing his face at the small sink in the drab little bathroom. Eyes still shut, so as not to get water in them, he groped blindly for the hand towel he’d dropped on the counter just a few seconds before.

When he dragged the cloth across his face, he relished the