A Killing in the Hills - By Julia Keller Page 0,51
The intensity in her tone was escalating, slowly but surely. ‘Second, if you don’t agree with the priorities of this office, if you’re not fully committed to the work we’re doing here, you’re free to leave. Anytime. Pack up your desk and get out. Today. This goddamned minute. Have I made myself sufficiently clear to you? Is there any part of this about which you’re confused?’
Hick chuckled.
Bell gripped the phone tighter. ‘What the hell are you laughing at? What’s so damned funny?’
‘Nothing, boss. Nothing at all. I’m behind you one thousand percent. Always will be. Just had to find out, though, if you were still in this thing. Still in the fight. Had to challenge you. Had to smoke you out.’ He paused. The jocularity vanished. ‘Some people were kind of wondering. After what happened yesterday, with Carla being there and all – sorry, boss, I had to bring her up – and with what happened when you were a kid, well, they worried that maybe you were thinking about backing off, maybe you wouldn’t want to—’
‘Understood.’ She cut him off. She didn’t want to talk about this.
Not with him. Not with anyone.
‘I know Acker’s Gap,’ Hick went on, unwilling to let it go, as his boss plainly wanted him to. He didn’t care what she wanted right now. He needed to speak. ‘Plenty of good people here, Bell. You know that, too. Good, decent, law-abiding people. Just like us, they want to get rid of the drugs and all the trouble you get with that filthy crap. Absolutely, they do. They can see what it’s doing to this place. But it’s hard, Bell. Once there’s violence involved, it gets real hard. The shooting – well, it’s got everybody jumping at their own shadow. Most folks around here are scared shitless. They need somebody to lead ’em. Somebody like you. If you’re in, they’re in.’
Bell didn’t answer right away. She needed a minute to absorb the compliment – she didn’t do well with compliments – and she used the lull to stand up. She was tired of sitting down.
She was also tired of conversation. She needed action. She wanted progress, not speeches.
‘Keep me posted on Albie Sheets’s medical condition.’ She knew Hick would take her meaning: Let’s get back to work.
She cut off the call. Then she initiated another one. With a light flick of her thumbnail, she touched No. 2 on her speed dial. No. 1 was Carla’s cell.
‘Yeah,’ said the answering voice.
‘Nick, can you meet me at Ike’s?’
‘You bet.’
‘An hour from now?’
‘Fine.’
‘Nick?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Pie rule’s still in force, right?’
‘Far as I’m concerned.’
They had made the pact long ago – almost three decades ago, in fact – during the very first time they’d ever talked. They had sat across a booth from each other at Ike’s. It was the worst night of Bell’s life. It would always be the worst night of her life, no matter what else happened to her. In a flash of violence, she had lost everything. She’d been left with no home, no family, nothing.
All she had was the young deputy she’d met for the very first time that night, a man named Nick Fogelsong, who had insisted on driving her over to Ike’s after the state police had finished taking her statement, while they waited for the social worker to show up and fill out the paperwork that would dump her in the foster care system. That deputy had sat across the chipped red table from her and said, We’re going to be friends, okay? You and me. For a good long time. This’ll be our special meeting place. So here’s the rule. From now on, whoever gets here second has to buy the pie. Agreed?
Bell, restored to the present, had one more thing to say to him before she shut off her cell. In case he beat her there, she didn’t want any misunderstanding.
‘Apple, if they have it. And coffee.’
18
Her ex-husband missed West Virginia. Bell was sure of it. He just didn’t want anyone to know that he did. He thought that looking back showed weakness. Strong people, he always said, looked forward.
When their marriage was still fresh and filled with promise, and Sam Elkins had taken a job in Washington, D.C., straight out of law school, he had referred to their move as a ‘clean break.’ He’d never let the phrase be. Wouldn’t give it a rest. He’d hauled it out at intervals during the drive east, all those years ago.