Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,10

hair. The set of her chin. The sound of her voice. Carla had a lot of Bell in her, but she had a lot of her father in her, too. She had Bell’s stubbornness and grit but she had Sam’s analytical skills. And his sense of humor. And his charm—that golden charm that accounted for so much of his success. Carla had her mother’s eyes and she had her father’s chin. She had parts of both of them. The combination was mysterious and wonderful and slightly daffy and mildly exasperating and—well, it just was. It was.

Her love for Carla was like an underground river, sweeping along so fast and so deep inside her that she took the slight humming sound in the background of her life for granted. It was always, always running.

Another swallow of coffee. Her throat, she hoped, had built up enough scar tissue in the last minute or so to handle the heat. Bell realized that she had been looking at the snow without actually seeing it. Now she squinted out the window, exploring the particulars.

She gauged the snow’s depth to be about fifteen to eighteen inches. Not impenetrable, especially not for the heavy-duty, all-wheel-drive vehicles favored by people who lived in the midst of mountains—but something you had to consider, to factor into your plans, before leaving your house. Not a single tire track had yet marred the street’s frozen perfection. A county road crew would come along eventually. The slowpoke snowplow would do what it could. But the crew, quite rightly, would focus on the main arteries first. They might not reach the residential streets until late this afternoon.

Now there was activity. Bell watched as a black Chevy Blazer fought its way through the thick drifts that striped Shelton Avenue like nature’s speed bumps. Every few feet the Blazer stalled out and fell back, stymied by ridge after ridge of stubborn snow. The driver was forced to put it briefly in reverse and then attack the street from another angle. The sound of the engine—the chopped-up vrrrr vrrrr vrrrr of its constant revving—had a kind of seething frustration embedded in it, and an Are you freakin’ kidding me? weariness, too. Bell assumed it was just channeling the feelings of the driver.

The Blazer stopped in front of her house. “Stopped” was a generous interpretation; it really just stalled and then quit. The door flapped open. A man in a thick black overcoat and knee-high black boots fought his way out. He shuddered briefly at the cold. He closed the door behind him. Bell took note of what she’d seen a second ago but had willfully chosen to ignore: the round white county seal on the door, encircled by the words RAYTHUNE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.

No question about it. This was official business.

Bell scarcely had time to set her mug on the mantel and pull on a ratty, dignity-preserving bathrobe before the knocks came, a bluster of four serious-sounding assaults on the ancient oak door. There was a doorbell in plain sight, but for some reason, Deputy Jake Oakes—she’d recognized him as he lurched and plunged up the long front walk, or at least in the general vicinity of what constituted his best guess as to where the walk might be lurking under the snow, and then struggled up the porch steps—always preferred to knock, loud and long. He had been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, he’d told her once, and she wondered if he secretly missed using his fists on a regular basis.

She opened the door. The deputy’s nose and cheeks were cherry-red from the cold. His blue eyes watered profusely. He seemed slightly stunned by the ordeal of having traveled on foot just a few yards in this weather. His lips, she saw, were cracked and flaking.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” he said.

Bell nodded. She did not know the details of the situation that had prompted his visit, but she was sure its essence could be summarized in a single word:

Trouble.

* * *

Darlene Strayer’s body had been found just before sunrise. That’s what Oakes told her, his words flat and informational. He knew she preferred to hear it that way: cold facts arranged in chronological sequence. She didn’t appreciate hesitation. She didn’t like it when people hemmed and hawed and hedged, trying to pretty things up, temper the blow.

A trucker named Felton Groves had come upon the mangled wreckage off to the side of the road. Darlene had been ejected from