Last Ragged Breath (9 page)

“The body's at the coroner's office,” Bell said. “It's standard procedure. We'll release it just as soon as we possibly can.”

“Oh.” Her gaze strayed back to the floor.

Bell leaned over and touched her shoulder. Diana flinched again. “Can I get you something?” Bell asked her. “A glass of water? Coffee? Maybe a soft drink?”

“Oh, no. No. No, thank you.” She trembled. “I heard that they found him—outdoors, right? Is that right? And that he'd been—he'd been dead for a while.”

“We'll have a complete report for you soon,” Bell said. “We're still investigating.”

“Okay. Okay, then.” She took a deep breath. “But somebody did this to him, right? I mean, he didn't have a heart attack. Which is what I thought must've happened. When they first told me. Because he doesn't take care of himself. He really doesn't. I tell him so all the time. I say, ‘Eddie, listen, you've got to cut down on the burgers and fries. And the drinking. And you need to quit smoking.' He just grins at me. Then he says—I mean, then he
said
—” An arrow of shock struck her as she remembered what had happened. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

Harrison let the woman weep softly for a bit, and then she spoke.

“I was kind of surprised, Mrs. Hackel, to hear that you'd gotten here so soon. It must be—what? A four-hour drive? How did you manage to—”

“I wasn't home,” Diana said quickly. She sniffed, rubbed at her nose. “Wasn't in Falls Church. I was in Charleston. At a hotel. I'm getting ready to start my own business. Had some appointments there. The state police reached me on my cell.” She blinked a few more times. “I was supposed to drive over and have dinner with Ed tonight. He's been spending so much time around here lately that he knows all the restaurants. He's been telling me about this place over in Swanville that has—” Once again, recollection smote her. She gave a small cry and shuddered.

“Your husband worked for Mountain Magic,” Bell said.

“That's right.” By this time Diana had located a Kleenex in her coat pocket and used it to dab at her eyes and her nose. Then she looked up, fixing Bell with a hard stare. “His job is the reason he's dead.” Steel in her voice.

“How so?”

“He's been here for months now. Scouting locations. Taking investors on tours. Checking on logistics for the construction phase. That kind of stuff.” Diana batted a small hand in the air. Disgust had overtaken her. “If it hadn't been for this damned resort—this stupid fucking hotel out in the middle of fucking nowhere—” She stopped herself. Still holding the tissue, she rearranged her folded hands on her lap. Bits of Kleenex peeped out between a couple of knuckles.

“Look,” she said, starting again, “I'm sorry I said that. I don't mean to be insulting. I know this is your home. I'm just upset, okay? I mean, if it hadn't been for this job, Ed would've been back in Falls Church. With me and the kids. But, no. He just never quits. It's always been push, push, push. I swear, he'd build the place with his own two hands, if he could work it out. He's a go-getter. And they need that. Mountain Magic needs everything he's got. Eddie's the spark plug and they're using him up. All the delays. All the problems—my God, the problems.” She gave Bell and Harrison a sharp look, as if assessing their ability to understand the complex intricacies of corporate politics. “They're way behind schedule, did you know that? And they were supposed to be breaking ground by now. Millions of dollars are at stake.
Millions
. The investors are getting pretty skittish. So the management team—you want to talk frantic? They're frantic, all right. And they've been coming down hard on Eddie. They're on his back, day and night. They're—”

Diana broke off her sentence to laugh, a laugh veined with hysteria. The sound startled Bell and Harrison; it was not only sudden but also incongruous, here in a cavernous deserted courthouse that still seemed slightly stupefied by the presence of people at this unlikely hour on a weekend.

And then the grief returned, flooding Diana's face again, distorting her features. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I can't believe I'm talking this way. He's dead. Dead.
Dead
.” Pronouncing the word multiple times undid her even more. She slumped over in her seat, face in her hands. When she looked up again, her eyes were red and wet.

“Are you sure we can't get you anything?” Harrison said.

Diana shook her head.

“Can we drive you to a motel? Or somewhere else?”

She took a few deep breaths. “I'm fine. Really. I've made my own arrangements.” Now she frowned. She'd just remembered something. “Don't I have to identify the body? I mean, isn't there, like, some kind of official procedure for that?”

“It's been done,” Harrison said.

“What? By who?”

“Your husband's boss. Carolyn Runyon. She was in town for some meetings and when we reached her, she was able to go over to the coroner's office and—”

“That bitch. That
bitch
.” Diana had jumped to her feet, eyes wild and darting. “How
dare
she. I can't believe it.” She was choking out the words, practically spitting them. “How
dare
she do that after—” She whirled toward the sheriff. Her hands were bunched into two tiny fists, and she shook them in Harrison's face. “You had
no right
to let that bitch anywhere near my husband's body.
No fucking right.
Do you hear me?”

 

Chapter Ten

Just after 8
A.M
. on Sunday, as Bell was emerging from the sole hour of sleep she'd managed to extract from the long fraught night, her cell rang. She kept it on her bedside table, within easy reach. She fought through a tangled-up quilt—and some tangled-up dreams—to get to it.

“New developments,” Sheriff Harrison said. She didn't bother with preliminaries; there was no “Hello,” no “Good morning” or “How are you?” Just an earnest, straight-ahead voice. A voice with a one-track mind. It was as if no time at all had passed, as if Bell was still at the courthouse, right beside her. As if Bell hadn't finally gone home, exhaustion having gotten the upper hand, letting Harrison and Mathers deal with Diana Hackel's grief and anger.

“Deputy Oakes got back about twenty minutes ago,” the sheriff continued. “Been working all night.” Bell's last official act before leaving the courthouse had been to prepare the request for a search warrant. Once Judge Tolliver signed it, the sheriff had planned to send Jake Oakes out to scour Royce Dillard's cabin and grounds. The county owned a set of freestanding halogen lights that could turn night into day. Speed was imperative; even with Royce Dillard under their watchful eye, she didn't want to take a chance on anyone messing with potential evidence.

“Hit pay dirt,” Harrison said. “Found a bloody shovel in Dillard's barn. State crime lab already took it for analysis, to see if it's Hackel's blood. The state crew's just about finished, too. They've been collecting soil samples. And that's not all.”

Bell waited. She had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, a queasiness she couldn't entirely blame on the lingering effects of the lousy pasta at Luigi's. Some cases were easier to solve than others, but this one—well, this one was shaping up to be
too
easy. If Royce Dillard had killed a man, wouldn't he have taken a little more trouble to hide the murder weapon? She didn't know much about Dillard, but presumably he wasn't a fool.

Yet the sheriff sounded as if they were already in the home stretch. “We got a call from Rusty Blevins,” Harrison was saying, “about an hour after you left the courthouse. Word spreads pretty quick in this town, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bell said dryly. “I noticed.” Rusty Blevins was a retired bricklayer who spent his days shuffling through the streets of Acker's Gap, nosing into other people's business, adding newly acquired information, bit by bit, to the stories he spread, the same way he'd built up course after course of brick during his working days.

“Well,” the sheriff said, “turns out he's one more person who saw Dillard threaten Edward Hackel. And it's not just hearsay. Rusty took out his cell phone camera and filmed one of their arguments. Took place Thursday afternoon. Right in front of Lymon's Market.”

“You saw the video?”

“I did. Mighty wobbly, but it's watchable. Starts out with Dillard yelling at Hackel. Something like, ‘You say that one more time, you sonofabitch, and I'll kill you. Swear I will.' Then Dillard grabs him and pushes him. Now, Hackel was a big man, so it doesn't faze him. He comes right back at Dillard. Then Dillard picks up something—some kind of stick or rod or something, it's hard to tell on the video—and takes a big swing. Barely misses him. That's on top of the other witnesses, who saw them going at it earlier that day in front of the post office. Sounds like Hackel was maybe following him around on his errands, goading him. Dillard had finally had enough.”

By now Bell was sitting up on the side of her bed.

“You say Dillard doesn't have an alibi?” she asked.

“No, ma'am. Lives alone, so nobody saw him from Thursday—when he left Acker's Gap—to Saturday afternoon, when we picked him up at his cabin for questioning. I'll wait for the forensic analysis of the evidence, of course, but I believe we have to seriously consider booking him.”

She seemed to expect a comment from Bell, and so Bell said, “Consider it, yes.”

They were both quiet for a few seconds. It was a moment of immense significance—not just for the man whose fate was now entwined with the criminal justice system, like a shoelace caught in the gears of a mammoth machine, but also for the human beings who administered that system: the sheriff and the deputies who would collect more evidence and interview additional witnesses, and the prosecuting attorney who would take the information and shape it into a timeline, a narrative, a story that would help persuade a jury to find him guilty of murder.

Bell never took the process lightly. One life was already gone—the victim's—and now they were putting another life in play as well.

Did they have the right person?

They would do their best to find out. That's all she knew. And if the evidence supported it, they would charge Royce Dillard with the killing of Edward Hackel and they would do everything in their power to prove his guilt.

Sheriff Harrison was talking again. “Got one little problem.”

“What's that?”

“Royce's dogs. Passel of them out there. Strays he's taken in to raise. If we end up charging him today, and he doesn't make bail, he could sit in a jail cell for weeks. Maybe months. Who's going to take care of—”

“Call the shelter.” Bell had other things to worry about.

“Hate to do that. I really do. I'd handle it myself if I could, but I can't leave the courthouse today. Those neighbors aren't in the running, either. The wife has allergies.” The sheriff paused. “Because if nobody adopts them from the shelter, then…” She let the sentence die a natural death—as if to remind Bell that the dogs wouldn't be so fortunate.

The silence stretched out. Finally Harrison said, “Royce Dillard may or may not be guilty of murder, but those dogs of his haven't done a darned thing to anybody. Seems a shame for them to suffer.”

“Oh, hell.” Bell stood up. Sunshine was pushing seriously into her room by now, straining its way through the many-paned window and leaving printed squares of light on the front of the dresser. “How many dogs?”

“Seven. All shapes and sizes.”

“Seven! Christ, Pam, what am I supposed to—”

“It won't be just you,” Harrison said quickly, interrupting her. “Rhonda Lovejoy volunteered to help round 'em up. Her family's known Royce Dillard for years, much as anybody
can
know the man. She's already started lobbying me—says there's no way a gentle soul like Dillard could've killed anybody. I told her that what I need right now isn't opinions—it's temporary homes for seven dogs.”

Harrison had heard nothing from Bell and so she barreled on, hoping that the lack of a
Hell, no!
was a positive sign. “The forensic team has already gotten what they need from the scene, so it's okay to go on out there. Dillard keeps the bigger dogs in the barn. Smaller dogs are in the house. They're all as nice as can be. Oakes didn't have any problem at all when he was searching the place—except for the risk of being licked to death, he said. State crew said the same thing. Front door's unlocked. I talked to Dillard a few minutes ago and he was mighty grateful. Only thing he really cares about are those dogs.” The sheriff spoke hastily, to drive home the idea that Bell had already agreed. “You're doing the right thing. You know that.”

Bell groaned. “Isn't that what we say to suspects when we want them to confess?” She didn't expect an answer. She didn't get one. “All right, fine,” she said. Resigned to it now. “Any last words of wisdom before I head out there?”

“Better take a roll of paper towels. The old bulldog, I hear, has a major drool issue.”

 

Chapter Eleven

The road wore its battered, end-of-winter face. The two-lane stretch that ran from Acker's Gap into rural Raythune County looked like a boxer who'd refused to stand down despite being seriously overmatched, and so had wobbled under the blows in hopes the referee might finally halt the thing out of pity. Repeated assaults by the ice had left deep slash marks. The constant weight of snow had caused substantial portions to heave and buckle and shred. Time and again Bell had to swerve into the other lane, when her own lane suddenly fell away into a collapsing bowl of road kibble. From the passenger seat, Rhonda Lovejoy resisted the impulse to yell, “Look out!” every quarter mile or so. Above them, the low-hanging ochre sky had a strained, painful look, as if it were holding off a migraine. The sun had retreated behind a bank of haze. Snow-topped mountains brooded in the distance, nursing their own wounds.