Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,39

“God, no.” But something made her hesitate. Maybe it was the memory of Darlene’s face at the tavern that night, when she talked about her father and how much he meant to her. About how important his belief in her had been, propelling her forward, giving her hope in future dreams that frankly were pretty outlandish, when you considered the distance that had to be traveled, the obstacles overcome. Darlene must have missed her father terribly, once she settled in D.C. And when he became ill, when his capacity for thought began to recede and finally wink out like a star in the dawn sky, her sadness must have been profound.

“Mom?”

Bell shook her head. She had always disliked people who could not manage to be present in the moment, and here she was: the worst of the lot. And with her own daughter.

“I think,” Bell said, “Darlene probably regretted a lot of things. We all do. The trick of it, I guess, is learning how to live with those regrets. Finding a place to store them so that you can get on with things. You know?”

Carla eyed her glass. She poked at the ice cubes with the tip of her straw, making them bob and spin. “Yeah,” she said. “So what’re you going to do?”

“About what?”

“About your friend’s death.”

“Not much I can do. Pretty open and shut. All the facts say it was an accident.” She had not told Carla about the disturbing call from Ava Hendricks. It hardly mattered; Hendricks would surely be showing up in person any minute to keep tabs on the investigation. “I’ll take a second look at the report,” Bell went on. “Just to be thorough. Have somebody go over the car—make absolutely sure it wasn’t tampered with.”

“I don’t mean as a prosecutor,” Carla said. She made a face when she pronounced her mother’s job title. “I mean as a human being. I mean as somebody who was her friend. How are you going to deal with it?”

All at once Bell understood the motivation for the question. Four years ago, Carla had watched a friend—her best friend—die. She had seen him die a savage and horrible death. Given Darlene’s ties to Bell, the news of the fatal accident must have brought back a nasty, swarming gang of memories for Carla, memories that cut and burned. Memories that wounded.

But then again, Bell asked herself, were there any other kind?

“I don’t know,” she said.

* * *

Lee Ann Frickie had left for the day. Her desk when Bell passed it was tidy, with the tidiness of the buttoned-up and battened-down. There was only one item on the polished oak surface, a piece of ruled notebook paper on which Lee Ann had written a single word: Dark. Bell understood. It was only 3:37 p.m., but given the state of the roads, her secretary wanted to make it home in her less-than-reliable Chevy Impala before the pure, hard darkness of winter overwhelmed the world. Lee Ann had a long drive ahead of her. Dusk had already begun to creep across the landscape, the slow-closing-of-a-coffin-lid blackness of winter that seemed to arrive earlier and earlier, day after day, throughout this meanest of seasons. It was the only time of year that Lee Ann asked for special favors.

Bell sat down at her desk. She wanted to finish an e-mail to Jim Ardmore. He was a state legislator, and he had asked her for an opinion about his idea for a new program. The goal: getting newly paroled people into drug and alcohol rehab programs. It was a good idea. Like a lot of good ideas, though, it lacked one essential feature: the money to implement it. Bell knew Ardmore was right when he noted that, in the long run, it was much cheaper to pay for treatment than to deal with the inevitable crimes of desperate addicts. But West Virginia was a place that seemed to specialize in the short run.

Her cell rang.

“Elkins.”

“Hey, boss.” It was Rhonda, her voice pitched low and snagged in a nest of static.

“You’re out at the Terrace, right? How’s it going?”

“Had to call you right away.” Rhonda spoke quickly. Bell heard what she had missed before: the agitation in her assistant’s tone.

“Rhonda, what—”

“There was another death here this afternoon.” She lowered her voice even more. “I’m out in the lobby now. Took forever to get some privacy. They’ve been sticking pretty close to me ever since it was announced. Afraid of the bad publicity, I guess.” She