A Haunting of the Bones (6 page)

“Not what I came by to talk about, but since you asked—yes, the additional tests have come back. They say they can now confirm their original thesis. The first set of remains is Teresa Dolan. The second set is Hickok. Both of them were the victims of foul play, of violent acts of some kind. With her, it looks like a series of blows to the head. He was struck repeatedly by a vehicle.”

Bell was quiet for a moment. The official phrases—words such as “foul play” and “violent acts”—were familiar to her because she was a prosecutor, but hearing them in relation to her mother was another thing entirely.

“She didn't leave us,” Bell said. She spoke softly, musingly.

“Looks that way.”

Bell changed the subject. She needed to get the thickness out of her throat. “Did you find any next of kin for Hickok?”

“No. No living relatives to notify.”

She didn't speak for a moment. She had successfully fended off her emotions a moment ago, but here they were again.

“Belfa?”

She shook her head. “Nick, I just don't know. I mean, Shirley and I have been living so long with the idea that we'd never know what happened to her. Now that we might …” She let her voice trail off.

“I get you. A confirmation always marks an end point. And maybe there was a part of you hoping that she was still alive somewhere. Might walk back into your lives one day, out of the blue. Wanting to get to know her two little girls all over again. See how you turned out. Now, though, you know for sure that it's never going to happen. There's a sadness there. A relief, maybe, to finally know for sure—but also a loss. Am I right?”

“Close.” He was spot-on correct, but she didn't want to tell him so, afraid that she might choke up when she did.
Damn you, Nick Fogelsong, for knowing me as well as I know myself
, she thought.
Okay, better
. But she didn't really resent him for that. She needed him and his intuition about her—an intuition based on having been acquainted with her since she was ten years old—because she didn't have anyone else. No one else had been there as long and as continuously as he had.

“You've got to let yourself grieve a little bit,” he said.

“No time for that.”

His answer came back so quickly that she knew he'd anticipated her objection and was ready to parry it. “You were three years old when she left, Belfa. Everything was put on hold then. All the emotions, all those feelings of loss. Terror, too, if I'm not mistaken. Would've been hard for anybody—much less a little kid forced to rely on Donnie Dolan.” He shifted his feet. Lowered his voice. Fogelsong wasn't a man given to platitudes, but clearly he'd thought about this long and hard and needed to say it. “You've got thirty-seven years of grieving to get through. I think you can give yourself a day or so to let it all sink in—before you run out and tackle the case.”

“Funny,” Bell said. “That's the same thing I said to Carla. When I called and told her about all of this, she was ready to rush right back here and start investigating. Finally convinced her to settle down. Give it some time. Jesus, Nick—this is her grandmother we're talking about. Even though she never knew her—I don't have a single picture to show her—I can tell that Carla's pretty emotional about it. Even if she doesn't show it too much on the outside.”

“She's not the only one.”

In the brief time they'd been talking, dusk had slipped away and full dark had taken its place. Bell was grateful for that, and grateful as well that she hadn't bothered to turn on the porch light. She didn't want Nick Fogelsong to see her face right now. She could feel the dampness on her cheeks. Her eyes were stinging from the effort—a doomed one—to hold back tears. She waited a moment before speaking. She needed to recover her emotional poise. If she had to be vulnerable in front of anyone, she'd surely choose Nick Fogelsong—but even here with him, she hated to display such weakness.
Hated
it. Toughness was the thing that had enabled her survival. Had she capitulated back then—back when her father was regularly beating the hell out of her and Shirley, and back when he'd threatened to sexually abuse her, too—she would've perished.

She would perish right now, come to that, if she didn't push back against softness and neediness. That's how she felt, anyway.

“I'm going to get to the bottom of this, Nick.” She willed herself to sound firm, unyielding. “Already got some leads. Going to find out what happened to my mother and Hickok.”

She couldn't see his face, but sensed he was frowning. Sensed he would keep trying to dissuade her. “It's been almost forty years,” he said, right on schedule. “What about the idea of giving it some time first?”

“That was your suggestion. I didn't agree to it.”

He took another tack. “What does Shirley say?”

“You and Shirley see eye to eye on this one. She told me to let it be. Fine—so it's two against one. I'm used to being the underdog.”

“It's not a fight, Belfa.”

“Feels that way.” A touch of belligerence had worked its way into her tone.

“Well, I don't know how much help I can be. It's a cold case. We've got so much going on in the here and now, I don't think we can spare the resources to—”

“Not asking for help,” she said, interrupting him. “I'll do it myself. And from now on, it'll be on my own time. Not the county's.”

He took a deep breath, so deep and so long that when he finally let it out, the length of the sigh made it sound as if it had traveled up from the soles of his feet. Then he put a hand on each knee and stood up.

“In thirty years, Belfa Elkins, I don't think I've ever once talked you into something you didn't want to do. Or
out
of something, either, come to that.”

“At least I'm consistent. Right?”

The darkness had grown so thick by now that she could barely see him shaking his big head. But she knew that's what he was doing. It's what he did when he was exasperated.

“You be careful, Belfa. Okay? You watch out. You could get yourself hurt real bad.”

“Oh, come on. Like you said, this is a cold case. All the bad guys are long dead, most likely.”

“I'm not talking about the bad guys.”

* * *

In five more minutes she would arrive at the Salty Dawg in Drummond, a medium-sized town in south central West Virginia about an hour's drive from Acker's Gap. The Salty Dawg was a regional chain that specialized in biscuits piled with a choice of toppings—ham, bacon, cheese, chicken, beef, turkey—after which the greasy edifice was drenched in gravy. There had once been a Salty Dawg in Acker's Gap. In the aftermath of a violent crime on the premises three autumns ago, however, the owner had shut it down for good, and now it was disintegrating day by day, brick by brick. The ground-to-roof windows were covered with plywood. The big black awning across the front had partially ripped off in a rainstorm. High-reaching weeds had overtaken the front walk. Most residents would tell you they barely noticed the place anymore. Bell only wished that the memory of the crime that had occurred therein could be forgotten with similar ease.

The meeting place was Sheila Gilmore's idea. “Don't want you to have to drive all the way over here to Petit County, hon,” she'd said to Bell the night before, during their phone call. She had been very surprised to hear from the Raythune County prosecuting attorney—a surprise that turned to somber reflection when Bell told her what had been found beneath the ground in the shadow of the mountains.

“Oh, my,” Gilmore had said. Bell had the sense she was closing her eyes. “Oh, my goodness, I don't know what to—” She had composed herself. “I never knew what happened to Dave. Or to Teresa. I did know her, but not nearly as well as I knew Dave. He just up and disappeared one day—at least that's what I thought at the time. Anybody else, I would've been mad as hell, but you couldn't be mad too long at Dave Hickok. After that, I had a real fight on my hands, trying to keep the company going. I didn't even try to track him down. I guess I figured he'd pulled up stakes and gone away somewhere. Got a fresh start. He deserved it.”

Bell couldn't wait. She was ravenous for answers. “A fresh start with Teresa Dolan, maybe?”

Gilmore's voice had acquired a peculiar edge. “Oh, hon, you don't think—” She waited. Started again. “Listen, we really do need to talk in person, okay? Dave and your mother weren't lovers. Dave was—well, back then we called it ‘queer.' Nobody said ‘gay.' Well, they said it, but it didn't mean what it means today. Anyway, Dave made the mistake of telling his mother about it back when he was still in high school—and she threw him out. Just like that. Told him he was a terrible disgrace and he'd burn in hell for sure. That mother of his was a real witch, I'm telling you. Dave bounced around for a while. Joined the Army—but the secret took a toll on him there, too. Came back to Acker's Gap. Started drinking too much. Couldn't hold a job. Then he met Teresa. Your mother. He met her at the—” She stopped. Bell wondered if the connection had been lost.

“Well,” Gilmore finally went on, “I guess it doesn't matter now, with both of them gone. It's supposed to be anonymous—says so right in the name—and Dave took that plenty serious, and he only told me because I had a roofing company and he needed a job. Didn't want me finding out about his troubles on my own. But I think even he'd agree that it's okay now. Dave and your mother met at an AA meeting in the basement of the Rising Souls Baptist Church. Dave told me all about it. He always said that Teresa Dolan saved his life. She was his sponsor.”

Bell had tried to ask another question, but Gilmore cut her off. “Can you get to Drummond by ten o'clock tomorrow? I've got a showing near there. The Salty Dawg brews a good cup of coffee.”

The restaurant on Saturday morning was nearly empty. Bell spotted Sheila Gilmore right away, sitting at a table in the corner. She was a large, solid woman who looked to be in her late seventies or early eighties—the kind of person, Bell thought admiringly, for whom the phrase “tough old broad” was invented. Her frosted white hair was pushed into a climbing spiral that had shed spit curls along the top edge and sides of her sagging face. She wore a bright green pantsuit and black shoes that tapered into a torturously narrow toe box. She waved vigorously to Bell: “Over here, hon!”

Bell sat down across from her and realized that Gilmore was staring.

“Sorry,” the older woman said. “It's just—well, I only met Teresa once or twice, and that was almost forty years ago. But your eyes. Your eyes. I have to tell you, Mrs. Elkins—you're Teresa's daughter, all right.”

Bell didn't know what to say. Even if she had, she wasn't certain she'd be able to say it; there was something in her throat, something hard and sharp.

Gilmore seemed to sense that. She rescued her. “Okay,” she said. “Where were we? Right. Dave Hickok. I hired him and we tried to make the company work, but it was pretty hopeless. Folk'd sign up to have us replace a roof, and Dave'd do a real nice job—and then they wouldn't pay. Or they'd pay partial. Happened a lot. Part of it, I truly believe, was the fact that I'm a woman. And they thought they could get by with it. People'll accept women in a lot of professions—but not construction. Not in the 1970s, anyway.”

“Know what you mean,” Bell said. She'd found her voice again. “Not a hell of a lot of female prosecutors around, either. Then or now.”

“Bet not. Anyway, things were already deteriorating when Dave just up and vanished. Didn't show up for work one day. I hired a guy to replace him, but by then I couldn't pay my suppliers and it was just a matter of time before Haney Roofing went belly-up.” She made a face. “Losing a business is no fun, believe me. But I bounced back. Put it all behind me. Met Royce Gilmore and got my Realtor's license and—”

She stopped, smacking a palm on her forehead. “Listen to me! Like it's
my
life story you drove all this way to hear! Mrs. Elkins, I only met your mother a few times. She'd come by our job sites to pick up Dave to take him to AA meetings. But I can tell you that she was a good woman. We started talking once—Dave was finishing up a job and wasn't ready to leave yet—and she told me about her two little girls. Shirley and Belfa. I told her those were real pretty names. She showed me pictures. Lord, but you were a little bitty thing! I said, ‘Oh, my, your husband must be proud, having such a nice family and all.' She got real quiet after that.”

“He was a bastard.”

“I figured it must be so, based on the look she got on her face. She blamed her drinking for all of it. She'd met Donnie Dolan in a bar, she said, and both of them stayed drunk pretty much the whole time. Day after day after day. It was like living underwater, she told me. Seeing everything through a gray haze. Never being able to see anything clearly. When she decided to get sober—it was your sweet little faces that persuaded her, yours and Shirley's—well, she finally had to look at what a rotten sonofabitch she was married to.” Gilmore shook her head. “You need to know this, hon. Your mother was trying to make things right. She really was. Trying with everything she had. That's why she worked so hard at AA, helping people like Dave. Wasn't easy for her. Your daddy was always accusing her of having relations with Dave, which was never true, of course. And she loved you girls and she wanted to get you away from that man—but she never had the chance. She just ran out of time.”

“So who killed them?”

Gilmore's face seemed to crumple a bit. “Lord, hon, I've been asking myself that ever since I got your call and you told me the news. I just don't know.”

“Did Dave Hickok have any enemies? Old lovers—anybody?”

“Not Dave. He was a good guy. A gentle soul. I only think he ever had one partner, a man named Trent Smith, who was killed at a railroad crossing back when Dave and I were still working together. Trent drove a big rig. Missed the signal. Dave was sorrowful about it for months. Terrible, terrible thing. And the only person I know who might've wished harm to your mother was—well, your father.”