to wait for the words. ‘She’s okay,’ Bell said. ‘She wasn’t hurt. Shaken up, of course, but okay. Now I really do have to go, Dot. Really.’
‘Does she need anything? I can stop by, if it’ll help. Bring some food, maybe.’
Here we go, Bell thought, but not unkindly. A trauma in Acker’s Gap always brought forth an avalanche of casseroles for the affected parties, with each offering – simple, solid dishes such as macaroni and cheese, chicken and rice, baked spaghetti, beans and wieners – delivered in a Tupperware container with the cook’s last name and the reheating instructions carefully printed on an index card taped to the blue plastic lid. The name wasn’t there for the cook to get a pat on the back; it was to ensure the eventual return of the Tupperware.
‘Not right now,’ Bell said. ‘Later, maybe. But thanks.’
Dot leaned in close enough for Bell to smell the gruffly sweet odor of tobacco that lived in the folds of her clothing, no matter how well or how often Dot did her laundry. ‘It was somebody on drugs, right? Trying to rob the place?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘And the guy who did it – he’s still out there somewhere?’
‘Yes.’ Bell couldn’t think of any way to make it sound better, to pretty it up.
‘Those poor old fellas,’ Dot said, shaking her head. ‘Two of them are bank customers. I know them, Bell, real well – I mean I knew them – and I heard it was a terrible scene, just terrible. Sickening, really.’
‘It was.’
Dot waited for Bell to say more, to offer up a fact or two. An insider’s tidbit. When she didn’t, Dot still didn’t step aside. She was wearing her raincoat like a little cape, using her fingers to pinch at the parts of the fabric that peeked over her narrow shoulders. She wasn’t carrying a purse, which meant, Bell knew, that she’d left her office in a hurry, determined to find her friend and get the real story.
‘It’s awful. Just awful,’ Dot said, finally moving over. She wasn’t excited anymore. She was earnest, troubled. ‘What’re we going to do, Bell? What’s happening to this town?’
But Bell had already swept past her and said nothing, either because she didn’t hear the questions or, more likely, because she didn’t have the answers.
In a slow and solemn voice, Sheriff Fogelsong read from a series of rough pencil marks he’d made on the first page of a spiral-bound notebook.
‘Daniel Dean Streeter. Sixty-seven years old. Paul Arnold McClurg, seventy-seven.’ Fogelsong paused. He used the tip of his tongue to moisten the length of his top lip, then his bottom lip, before continuing. ‘Ralph Leroy Rader. Eighty-two years old.’
Bell nodded at the names, like this was all news to her, but naturally it wasn’t. Acker’s Gap was a small town. People – even people who weren’t involved in the justice system – knew within minutes who had died that morning, and they didn’t need any crawl on any TV screen to find out: Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, Lee Rader.
Fogelsong had planted himself in the decrepit-looking swivel chair behind his dented black metal desk, while Bell tried to get comfortable in the straight-backed wooden chair that faced the desk head on. The sheriff had spent the past several hours coordinating searches throughout the county for the gunman, sending his deputies down one unpaved road after another, nosing into abandoned barns, thrashing across fields of waist-high weeds, but he’d finally been forced to hand off supervision of the manhunt and return to what Bell knew was his least-favorite spot in the known universe: sitting behind a desk, performing the tedious bureaucratic chores that always accompanied violent deaths and that, as he’d told her privately, almost made him envy the victims. At least they didn’t have to handle the paperwork necessitated by their demise.
‘Those old guys,’ Fogelsong went on, still staring at the notebook page, as if the scribbles might nip at his fingers if he didn’t keep an eye on them, ‘had been friends for more’n forty years. Been having coffee at the Salty Dawg every Saturday morning for about the last two or three. Before that, they’d meet over at Ike’s Diner. Hell, I’ve sat down with ’em a few times myself – chewed the fat, solved all the world’s problems. Shorty was a hunting buddy of my dad’s. Rader was a county commissioner a while back – maybe fifteen years ago, maybe closer to twenty.’