The Killing Hills

  Also by Chris Offutt

  Kentucky Straight

  The Same River Twice

  The Good Brother

  Out of the Woods

  No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

  My Father, the Pornographer

  Country Dark

  THE KILLING HILLS

  CHRIS OFFUTT

  Grove Press

  New York

  Copyright © 2021 by Chris Offutt

  Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler

  Jacket photograph © Ian Howorth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

  The quotation on the epigraph page is from the poem “In Kentucky” by James Hilary Mulligan.

  FIRST EDITION

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  This book was set in 12-pt. Bembo by Alpha Design & Compoistion of Pittsfield, NH

  First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: June 2021

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-5841-3

  eISBN 978-0-8021-5842-0

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  For Jane Offutt Burns

  The moonlight falls the softest in Kentucky

  The summer days come oft’est in Kentucky

  Friendship is the strongest

  Love’s light grows the longest

  Yet wrong is always wrongest in Kentucky

  —James Hilary Mulligan

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  The old man walked the hill with a long stick, pushing aside mayapple and horseweed, seeking ginseng. It grew low to the earth obscured by the undergrowth. Last year he’d found several plants in this vicinity, an ideal habitat due to slopes that faced east, away from the hard sun of afternoon. The remnants of a rotting elm lay nearby, another good sign. He stopped to catch his breath. He was eighty-one years old, the oldest man in the community, the only old man he knew.

  The ground was damp with dew, and tendrils of mist laced the upper branches. The rise and fall of morning birds filled the air. There were mostly hardwoods in here, trees he liked for their size and bounty of nuts. Cut and split, two trees were enough to keep a family warm all winter.

  He moved upslope from the bottom of a narrow holler covered in ferns. Strapped to his belt was a pouch that contained ginseng plants with forked roots. One was large and sprouted three distinct prongs, each worth a pretty penny. He’d found several smaller plants but left them unbothered in the earth. They needed another year or two to grow unless a rival found them first. He carried a .38 snub-nose pistol. The accuracy fell away drastically after a few yards but it made one heck of a noise, and he kept it visible in his belt. The sight was usually enough to frighten any lowlife ginseng-poacher away.

  He climbed to a narrow ridge, pushed aside a clump of horseweed, and saw a cluster of bright red berries. A quick jolt ran through him, the joyous sense of discovery he’d first experienced as a boy hunting ginseng with his brothers. He crouched and dug gently to protect the delicate root in case it was too small for harvest, which it was. Disappointed, he memorized the precise location for next year, noting the landmarks—a hundred-year-old oak and a rock cliff with a velvety moss, green and rusty red. Something caught his vision, a color or a shape that shouldn’t have been there. He stopped moving and sniffed the air. It wasn’t motion, which ruled out a snake. It might have been light glinting off an old shell casing or a beer can. Either one was no good—it meant someone else had been up this isolated holler.

  Curious and unafraid, he moved through the woods, hunched over slightly, sweeping his vision back and forth as if looking for game sign. The land appeared undisturbed. He stood upright to stretch his back and saw a woman lying in an ungainly fashion, her body against a tree, head lolling downhill, face tilted away from him. She wore a tasteful dress. Her legs were exposed and one shoe was missing from her foot. The lack of underpants made him doubt an accidental fall. He moved closer and recognized her features well enough to know her family name.

  He returned to the ginseng plant and knelt in the loam. He pierced the dirt with his old army knife and rocked the blade until he could lift the young plant free. Ginseng didn’t transplant well but it was better than leaving it here to get trampled by all the people who’d arrive to remove the body. It was a pretty place to die.

  Chapter Two

  Mick Hardin awoke in sections, aware of each body part separate from the rest as if he’d been dismantled. He lay on his arm, dull and tingling from hours of pressure against the earth. He shifted his legs to make sure they worked, then allowed his mind to drift away. A few birds had begun their chorus in the glow of dawn. At least it hadn’t been a bad dream that woke him. Just birds with nothing to do yet.

  Later he awakened again, aware of a terrible thirst. The sun had risen high enough to clear the tree line and hurt his eyes. The effort to roll over required a strength that eluded him. He was outside, had slept in the woods, with any luck not too far from his grandfather’s cabin. He pushed himself to a sitting position and groaned at the fierce pain in his skull. His face felt tight as if stretched over a rack. Beside him, three rocks formed a small firepit beside two empty bottles of whiskey. Better the woods than town, he told himself. Better the hills than the desert. Better clay dirt than sand.

  He walked slowly to a cistern at the corner of the old split-log cabin and brushed aside a skim of dead insects from the surface of the water. Cupping his hands, he drank from it, the cold liquid numbing his mouth. He’d read about a scientist who talked to water then froze it and examined the crystals, which changed depending on what was said. Kind words uttered in a gentle tone made for prettier crystals. The idea sounded far-fetched but maybe it was true. Humans were about sixty percent water and Mick figured it couldn’t hurt to try. Nothing could hurt much worse than his head anyhow. He plunged his head into the water and talked.

  When he needed
to breathe, he lifted his head to gulp the air, then shoved his head back in the barrel and spoke. He’d spent the evening telling himself terrible stories about his past, his present, and his future—a circular system that confirmed his wretched sense of self, requiring alcohol for escape, which fueled further rumination. Now he struggled to find generous things to say about himself. As he spoke, bubbles rose to the surface and he tasted dirt.

  The third time Mick came up for air, he saw a vehicle at the edge of his vision and assumed it was something he’d imagined. He wiped water from his eyes. The big car was still there, and worse, there appeared to be a human coming toward him. Worst of all, it was his sister wearing her official sheriff’s uniform. To top it off, she was laughing.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Oh,” Linda said, “checking on your hygiene in general. Looks like you’re bathing regular. Taking a bug bath, that’s what Papaw called it. How you doing?”

  “Feel like I been shot at and missed, shit at and hit.”

  “At least your head is clean.”

  Mick nodded, the movement sending stabs of pain along his body. His head felt like the top of a drum tightened bolt-by-bolt until any pressure might rip his flesh. He’d overdone it, all right.

  “Coffee,” he said. “Want some?”

  He went in the house, water streaming along his torso and light blue chambray workshirt. He filled a blackened four-cup espresso pot with grounds and set it on a camp stove—a propane tank with stabilizing fins—and ignited the flame. Linda inspected a tin pitcher of water for bugs.

  “Where’s this from?” she said.

  “Papaw’s well.”

  “How long you aiming to live out here?”

  “I need to change clothes.”

  Linda nodded once, a single curt movement of her head she used with most men. Everyone had their little ways, their routines. Mick’s were odd, a product of living with their grandfather in this cabin as a child followed by fourteen years in the army. He’d been a paratrooper then joined the Criminal Investigation Division, specializing in homicide.

  Linda moved languidly about the main room as if the space itself rendered time obsolete and slowed her motion. A homemade shelf bolted to a wall held the treasures of Mick’s childhood—a trilobite, the striped feather of a barred owl, a mummified bullfrog he’d found in a shallow cave. A rock with three horizontal sections that resembled half a hamburger. Her grandfather had tucked blankets around her and pretended to take a bite—a moonlight ration, he called it. Linda grinned at the memory.

  She went outside and followed a path to a wooden footbridge that crossed the creek to the next hillside. As children, she and Mick had built elaborate structures from sticks and leaves beside the creek, imagining it as a river town with a mill, rich families, wide streets, a hotel, and a movie house. Then they sat on the bridge and destroyed everything from above with rocks, delighting at a direct hit. The game was among her favorite memories but as she sat there now she realized that it marked a distinct difference between Mick and her. She’d liked creating the town while her brother had enjoyed its destruction.

  He joined her with coffee and they sat with their legs dangling off the edge of the bridge. As usual, he waited for her to speak, aware that it wouldn’t be long.

  “That creek looked further away when we were kids,” she said.

  “We probably added another two feet of creek bed with the rocks we threw.”

  “I was just thinking about that.”

  “I know.”

  “So you can read my mind?” she said.

  “Nothing else to do but sit out here and remember.”

  “You like the past that much?”

  “Not lately,” he said.

  “What is this, some PTSD thing?”

  “Right now it’s a bad hangover.”

  “You think you’ve got PTSD?” she said.

  “Probably. Dad did. Papaw, too.” He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “Don’t worry, I don’t exhibit any sign of PTSD.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like denial for starts.”

  She glanced at him, a sidelong shot of eyeball, trying to be circumspect but knowing he didn’t miss a thing, not one damn thing, even hungover. His preternatural alertness made life hard for everyone, especially himself. She decided not to bring up his pregnant wife.

  “You thinking about Peggy?” he said.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “It’s logical is all. But she ain’t why you’re here, is it?”

  “No, it’s not. Since you’re so good at knowing things, you tell me why I’m visiting you.”

  “That’s easy, Sis. You came up here in uniform, driving the county vehicle, then waited around. You want something.”

  “Damn it.”

  Mick nodded, amused. He loved his sister, particularly her foul language. She’d been the first girl in the county to play Little League baseball, the first woman deputy, now she was the sheriff.

  “I’ve got a dead body,” she said.

  “Bury it.”

  “They want me out.”

  “Who wants you out of what?”

  “All the big shots in town,” she said. “The mayor wants the Rocksalt police to take over so he can get credit at election time. The County Judge said he didn’t like anybody in our family going back fifty years. He wants the State Police to investigate. It’s jurisdictional bullshit. Pisses me off. The real reason is they don’t like a woman being sheriff.”

  “So what. They don’t have authority over you.”

  “No, but they answer to Murvil Knox, a big coal operator. He’s slippery as chopped watermelon. Funds both sides in every election so he’s owed no matter who wins. I had the awfullest meeting with them first thing this morning. About like three roosters in fancy clothes. I hate how men act around each other.”

  “To hell with them.”

  They stared at the creek. A breeze rustled the poplar, its leaves the size of hands turning their palms to the wind.

  “This kind of murder,” she said. “It never happened here before.”

  “What do you mean, Sis?”

  “There never was a body in Eldridge County that most folks didn’t already know who did it. Usually a neighbor, a family, or drugs. Maybe two drunks who argued over a dog. This is different. Everybody liked her. She lived clean, didn’t have enemies, and didn’t get mixed up with bad people.”

  “Odds are a man did it.”

  “I agree. You’re a homicide investigator. You know the hills better than I do. People will talk to you.”

  “You asking for help?”

  “Hell, no,” she said.

  He nodded, grinning.

  “What have you got?” he said.

  “A forty-three-year-old widow up on Choctaw Ridge. Off the fire road past Clack Mountain. Veronica Johnson, went by Nonnie. She was a Turner before she got married. Her husband died. Nonnie and her boy moved in with her sister-in-law. They both married Johnsons who died young.”

  “Go talk to them. Find out what the son knows.”

  “Done did. He’s a wreck. Somebody took his mom up in the woods and threw her over the hill like trash.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Three days ago,” she said.

  “It rained yesterday and half the night. There’s nothing to see at the scene. Rain washed all the tracks away. That’s why I was outside.”

  “You like drinking whiskey in the rain and sleeping in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t do it in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria. No whiskey. No rain.”

  Linda walked to her car and returned carrying a manila envelope stamped with the official insignia of the county. Mick nodded, a habit she recognized from their grandfather. With the two of them in the same room—Papaw and Mick—they nodded more than those little bobble-headed dogs that people put in the back window of their cars. She hated being
stuck at a red light behind one.

  Linda handed him the envelope.

  “Crime scene photos,” she said.

  “Who found the body?”

  “Mr. Tucker. You know him.”

  “Grade school janitor? I figured he was dead.”

  “He’s getting up there. His wife is sick. Taking care of her is what keeps him going.”

  Mick studied the photographs one by one, staring at each for a long time. After going through them, he set aside those of the body and gathered the photos from the dirt road. He spread them out on the mossy bridge and began moving them around as if seeking a sequence. Linda liked this side of him, the concentration he brought to bear, an intensity of focus. She’d seen it in pool players, bow hunters, and computer coders.

  “What can you tell me?” she said.

  When he spoke, his voice held a different tone, slower and at a remove, as if talking through glass.

  “There’s seven different sets of tracks. First car was his and the others drove over them. Who was up there?”

  “Me. A deputy. Ambulance. County medical examiner. A Fish and Wildlife guy. A neighbor man who came to see what the fuss was.”

  “Who?”

  “Fuckin’ Barney.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “No, I’ve been in court all week. A real mess. Couple of meth-heads had their granny living in a shed while they cooked in her house. I ain’t had time to track down Fuckin’ Barney yet. He’s supposed to be living with his mother. I called her and she didn’t answer.”

  “I’ll go see her.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said.

  “I’m not doing it for you.”

  “Then who? Nonnie?”

  “No, for the guy who killed her.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “You know what Nonnie’s family will do. Some old boy will take a shot at the killer, then get locked up.”

  “You’re trying to keep a stranger out of prison?”

  He looked at the creek bed below, watching a katydid nibble a blade of grass. His voice took on the distant tone again, like a church bell ringing down a long holler.