A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,23

blanket, the one Ruthie had tucked around her shoulders earlier that evening and that now trailed off the couch onto the floor.

‘Well,’ Ruthie said. ‘Your mom’s home, Carla, so I can head out. Oh – before I forget – Bell, you need to know that about a million people dropped by with casseroles. Check your fridge. You’ve got enough mac and cheese in there to last through Christmas. Next Christmas, I mean, not the one coming up.’ She smiled, sending a spray of wrinkles jetting across her tanned face.

Ruthie spent a lot of time outdoors, riding her bike, poking around her garden with a shiny trowel, walking Hoover, her Jack Russell terrier. The breast cancer and the harsh means of fighting it had taken a lot of things away from her – hair, flesh, energy, a still-unknown number of tomorrows – but one of the things it had given back was a capacity for appreciation. She couldn’t get enough of the world, now that she’d been granted more time to enjoy it.

Many mornings, when Bell hurried out the front door and headed for her SUV, she’d see Ruthie Cox, buttoned up in her moss-green quilted jacket, red baseball cap, corduroy trousers, and hiking boots, rounding the corner of Shelton Avenue, while beside her marched the snooty, imperial-looking Hoover, legs scissoring importantly back and forth, his head high, his brown-and-white coat looking polished and handsome in the clear air.

‘You two take it easy tonight,’ Ruthie said. She put a hand on Carla’s shoulder. Carla let it stay there.

‘Carla,’ Ruthie said. And that was all she said.

Carla nodded.

Bell walked Ruthie back to the front door. The moment they crossed the threshold between the living room and the foyer, they heard the TV set. Igniting the aggressive sound level conveyed Carla’s sour, bristling message: Don’t give a damn what you two are talking about. Don’t even care enough to eavesdrop.

‘Any progress in finding the guy who did it?’ Ruthie said. ‘Anything at all?’

‘No.’

Bell was suddenly exhausted. She felt as if her hand were pressed against a wall, and if she dropped her arm, everything would collapse: wall, house, town, world. ‘People are really shaken up,’ she said. ‘And why shouldn’t they be? A terrible killing like this – right out in public. It’s just unthinkable. Might as well be New York or Chicago or D.C. We’re not used to this. Hope to God we never do get used to it.’

‘Well, if anybody can solve this thing, you and Nick can.’ Ruthie paused. ‘I knew one of them, Bell. One of the victims.’

Bell wasn’t surprised. In a small town, the proverbial six degrees of separation was reduced to one or two degrees. Or sometimes, half a degree.

Her ex-husband Sam Elkins had always hated that. It was one of the things that drove him away. Everybody lives in everybody else’s damned pockets, he would say, back when he and Bell were still married and still living in D.C. and he was trying to explain all the reasons why he absolutely could not return to Acker’s Gap. No way in hell.

Bell hated it, too. Except that she also kind of loved it. In fact, that’s how she had responded to Sam: You know what I hate about our hometown? Everybody knows everybody else and always has.

You know what I love about our hometown?

Everybody knows everybody else and always has.

‘Dean Streeter,’ Ruthie went on. ‘Well, truth be told, I didn’t know Dean all that well. Or his wife Marlene. It was their daughter, Cherry. She was in my support group for cancer survivors. She’s the one I knew.’

‘I see.’ Bell was never certain how to react when Ruthie brought up her illness. It had been such a grueling ordeal for her and Tom. Ruthie’s gradual recovery had left Bell almost speechless with gratitude. Her joy at Ruthie’s survival was something that Bell just carried inside; she didn’t even try anymore to express it in words. It had no firm borders. It resisted the limits of language.

‘We lost Cherry six months ago,’ Ruthie said. ‘I can’t imagine what this is going to be like for Marlene. First her daughter – and now her husband.’ She shook her head. ‘The things people have to endure. That’s what astonishes me in my medical practice, Bell. You know what I mean? The challenges people face – terrible grief, grief past all imagining. But they do get over it. I don’t know how exactly, but they do. They go on. I’m sure