Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,58

come into his throat. He was afraid it might show up in his voice.

“You ever wonder?” he said.

“Wonder what?”

“If it’s worth it. Fighting for a long life. Doing everything you can, to last as long as possible. I mean, you either end up like Rhonda’s grandmother—flat on your back in some hospital, rigged up to a bunch of damned machines, or you end up like those folks out at the Terrace, with your memory eaten away like a sweater that the moths have had their way with. Living a kind of death in life. Or you get yourself butchered like those two old women in the woods. Be honest here, Belfa—is it really worth it? Any of it?”

“Don’t ask me that today. I’ve got too much work to do.”

“When can I ask?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And what are you likely to say then?”

She grinned at him. It was a little catechism they went through. He knew what she was going to say—they had been in this place before, the two of them, burdened by duty and sadness and a sense of futility, and sometimes she was the one asking and he was the one answering—but he needed to hear the words from her. Just as, when the roles were reversed, she needed to hear the words from him.

“I’ll say, ‘Ask me tomorrow.’ Best I can do, Nick.”

* * *

Marcy Coates’s granddaughter, Lorilee Coates, sat in the wooden chair in front of Bell’s desk. Or tried to.

She could not hold still. She itched and she fidgeted. She coughed. She sniffled. She rubbed her nose and scratched her skinny arms. Left arm with the right hand, right arm with the left hand, left arm against the back of the chair. It was eight degrees outside, and she was wearing cutoff jeans and a pink tube top. Her outerwear—it lay in a slatternly heap on the floor—was a jean jacket that still had the Goodwill tag affixed to it by a dirty string, the giant number visible in slanting Magic Marker: PRICE $3. Lorilee had aimed for the coat hook on the wall. She missed. She did not seem to notice. She was twenty-six years old. She could have passed for forty.

She asked if she could smoke, and when Bell said no, she scowled and mouthed the word Fuck and then looked around the room with incredulity. Her disgruntled glance was easy to translate: No smoking? Really? In this dump? Like—why’s it even matter?

She crossed and recrossed her legs. She uncrossed them altogether, placed them flat on the floor. The chunky-heeled clogs hit with a thwunk. Then she crossed her legs again, right over left, left over right. She had stringy hair, dyed purple, with a twisting strand of red that looked like drainage from a scalp wound. Her skin was almost reptilian, a carapace of sore and flake and scab. She had a nose ring, and another ring through a piercing in her lower lip. Both holes were infected. The crusty ring of red around each one added a touch of lurid color to her drab complexion.

She was, according to Rhonda, who had heard it from Grandma Lovejoy—back when Grandma Lovejoy could still form sentences—a heroin addict. Grandma Lovejoy had heard it from Connie Dollar, who had heard it from Marcy Coates. Bell really didn’t need the provenance of the information; Lorilee Coates was well-known to law enforcement officials in a three-county area, not because she was a criminal mastermind, but because she was so pathetic, and her story such a familiar and depressing one.

Lorilee had started huffing glue, paint, whatever, at twelve. At thirteen she had her first arrest, for drunk and disorderly. At fourteen she’d been caught in the ladies’ bathroom of the Pizza Parade over on Oak Street, chugging the plastic dispenser of floral-tinged soap, hotly desirous of the alcohol content. In the years to follow she’d been picked up three times for prostitution out at the Highway Haven, and another two times for shoplifting at various locales. She had slept and giggled and mocked her way through two court-ordered stints in rehab.

She was a total wreck of a human being. She was a rapidly disintegrating mess. She was a walking tragedy. And she was the apple of her grandmother’s eye.

Deputy Oakes had found her that morning in a tattoo shop on Route 6, a place called Skin U Alive, begging the owner for a freebie. Oakes had gotten a tip about where she might be. His network of sources was nowhere near