A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,34

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.’

10

When she stepped off the front stoop of the Sheets trailer, Bell was relieved to see that her Explorer was intact. It hadn’t been sideswiped by a coal truck. Hadn’t rolled off the edge of the mountain. The side mirrors had survived.

She slid in behind the wheel and slung her briefcase onto the seat beside her. Backing slowly onto the road, looking anxiously and repeatedly over her right and left shoulders to check and double-check for any lurking coal trucks, she finally was able to straighten the wheels and tackle Route 6 again, heading for home.

Alone at last, and grateful for it, Bell reviewed the final few minutes of her time with Deanna and Lori Sheets. Bell had politely declined Deanna’s request to give her a makeover. But when Lori scolded her daughter – Deanna, honey, you just don’t say such things to people, you’re hurting Mrs Elkins’ feelings, and by the way, Mrs Elkins, Deanna didn’t mean that she’d ask you to pay, it’s all free, ’cause she don’t have no license yet and by law she can’t charge for her services – Bell had assured Lori that she wasn’t offended. Not in the least.

The answer, though, was still no. She was happy with her hairstyle just the way it was.

As Bell drove down the mountain, the trees on both sides of the road seemed to do what they’d done on her way up, which was to close in slowly over the top of her SUV, leaning in, branches intersecting. Creating a dark and solemn arch. She loved these mountains, loved their raw beauty, but it was a wary, cautious love, the kind of love you might have for a large animal with a vicious streak. You could love it all you liked, but you couldn’t ever turn your back on it. You had to respect the fact of its wildness. It was a wildness that would outlast your love.

The steep grade made the Explorer’s brakes work harder than they wanted to.