A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,42

had first gotten together.

That was a very long time ago.

‘So things are pretty bad around here?’ he asked.

‘Terrible. It’s a fight, Sam. Every day.’

‘Too bad. But in that case,’ he said, his smile now broad enough to concern her, the smile of a man springing a trap, ‘you won’t mind the fact that Carla wants to come live with me in D.C. Right after the first of the year. That’s what we were talking about when you walked in.’

Confused, Bell looked at Carla.

‘Sweetie?’

Carla wouldn’t meet her mother’s eyes.

Sam pulled Carla closer and again kissed the top of her head. Again, she didn’t pull away. Okay, Bell thought. So that’s where we are. It’s two against one.

Carla’s attitude toward her father varied from week to week, day to day, Bell knew. Occasionally, hour to hour. Sometimes Carla seemed to resent the hell out of him, sneering at his attempts to keep her up to date on his life or his ladyfriend du jour. Other times, though, Carla adored him. Daddy’s little girl could pop up from out of nowhere. And the Mustang had been a master stroke. A seventeen-year-old couldn’t resist that kind of blatant bribery.

Hell. Nobody could.

But go live with Sam? Leave her, leave Acker’s Gap, and go live with him?

Bell felt sucker-punched.

‘She told me right after I got here today,’ Sam said. Affable voice, as if it wasn’t a big deal. He knew better. ‘She doesn’t feel safe anymore in this town, Bell – which is understandable, I think, under the circumstances – and she misses her dad. She’d like to give it a try, living with me.

‘And as I recall,’ he went on, lifting his hand from Carla’s shoulder and placing it on the top of her head, ‘we agreed that it was her choice, once she turned sixteen.’

Bell didn’t take her eyes off her daughter. She ignored Sam. Let him feel victorious, let him score his little points. She didn’t care about him.

She cared about Carla.

‘Honey?’ Bell said again. ‘What’s going on?’

Carla wouldn’t look at her.

Bell didn’t understand anything, but she understood everything. She didn’t know the particulars of what was bothering Carla, but she knew something was. She knew it because she’d been a little like Carla – no, a lot like Carla – when she was younger. She, too, had felt fury and longing and frustration, as well as a conviction that things would be better somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

‘Carla,’ Bell said gently. She would talk, even if her daughter didn’t. ‘You can move in with your dad if you want to, I won’t stand in your way, but I’d like to know what’s really going on.’

Carla bit her bottom lip. She sniffed. With the back of her small hand, she vigorously rubbed her nose. ‘The thing is—’ She paused, tried again. ‘I think that maybe I—’

The ping! of a text.

Bell and Sam frowned, looking at Carla in unison. Had to be her cell.

Carla shook her head. Her cell was on the coffee table, propped up against her calculus book, a red silo of Pringles, and two Diet Coke cans.

‘Wasn’t me,’ she said.

Bell touched the lump in her pocket, which she now realized was vibrating. She pulled out her cell and scanned the message.

It was from Hick Leonard, one of her assistants: AS ill. trial start postponed min. 1 week. HL

Bell texted back: K.

Staring at the tiny screen, Bell wondered what had happened to Albie Sheets. How serious it was. Trial postponements weren’t terribly rare, but the last time she’d seen Albie, he looked fine. Then her thoughts moved on to Sheriff Fogelsong and the investigation of the shooting. With the Sheets trial briefly on hold, she now would have time to help Nick. They needed to find out a lot more about the three victims and why somebody wanted them dead.

Three harmless old men. It didn’t make sense. Crimes, even crimes of passion, had a logic to them, a rationale, even if it was a murky one. They had to find it. Dig it out from the forest of facts already in evidence. I’ll call Nick, pick a time to meet for a strategy session and then . . .

She looked up.

Her daughter and her ex-husband were staring at her. Briefly, Bell felt as if she were the seventeen-year-old, the troublemaker, the rule-breaker, and they were the authority figures. Explanations began to form in her head, justifications, rationalizations: Look, we’re getting ready to go to trial in the Sheets case, and I told my staff