The Killing Hills Read online

  Mick nodded. It was about like the state to start a school in a building with no windows, no grounds, and no private bathrooms. One of the local mandates was to educate ex-cons but he couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to take classes in the same building where they’d served time.

  “Why are the Feds working your case?” he said.

  “I don’t know. It’s one guy, temporarily assigned. Johnny Boy can’t stand him already.”

  “Who you got in jail?”

  “The Dopted Boy.”

  “Tanner Curtis?”

  She nodded.

  For twelve years Tanner’s parents had tried to get pregnant, then adopted him from an agency in Lexington. His arrival made the paper as the first adoption in county history. Shy and quiet, Tanner was personally liked but never accepted. In a culture that elevated blood family above all, the community never trusted Tanner. Throughout the county he was referred to as the “Dopted Boy.”

  “On the phone,” Mick said, “you said something wasn’t right.”

  “The FBI was here less than two days and brought him in. The one guy nobody in the county cares about.”

  “What’s Tanner say?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Not word one. That’s why I want you to talk to him.”

  “All right. But I do it alone.”

  “I have to be in there or it’s not official.”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anything I find out,” Mick said, “I’ll tell you. Then you can go in. Don’t worry, he’ll fold like a bobby pin.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  A jet’s contrail appeared above the nearest hill, slicing a white line across the blue. It was too far for sound. Mick wondered if animals noticed it, if birds were wary. The end of the contrail began to disintegrate into ragged vapor that drifted toward the lush green tree line.

  “All right,” she said. “Fuck it.”

  “That’s the spirit, Sis.”

  They entered the jail and passed through security that included a full-body scan. A guard led them to an interrogation room where Linda gave Mick a final look of disapproval. He stepped inside and closed the door. The box was the same in every facility—designed to intimidate a suspect—small with stale air, a table screwed to the floor, a ringbolt in the table for cuffs, and two chairs. Though new, the room already smelled of sweat.

  Tanner was in his mid-to-late twenties. His hair was trimmed to a style copied from TV—a slight side fade with a loose crop on top. His shirt was tucked in and his belt was shiny. Mick regarded his attire as the habit of an adored only child. He had the large features that photographed well—strong jaw, big eyes, and high cheekbones. His hands were cuffed.

  Mick sat and offered the Ale-8 and snacks. Tanner reached for them then hesitated like a pup who feared he might be struck for violating rules he didn’t know existed.

  “It’s all right,” Mick said. “I done ate.”

  Mick left the room and found his sister watching a live video feed of the interrogation. A separate unit recorded audio playable in court. Reluctantly, she arranged for a guard to unlock Tanner’s handcuffs. Mick returned and watched Tanner finish the Twinkie, then drink half the pop. He waited for the sugar and caffeine to hit, lifting Tanner’s posture slightly, widening his eyes.

  “I ain’t law,” Mick said. “Nothing you say to me goes anywhere.”

  In a slow, deliberate motion he pressed a button on the audio console to halt the recording. He leaned back and placed his hands behind his head, opening his body.

  “Funny thing about Twinkies,” Mick said. “They last longer than any other food. Up in Maine they got one that’s forty-five years old.”

  “In the wrapper?” Tanner said.

  “Nope, that’s what I thought, too. It’s just laying loose. They don’t know what to do with it.”

  Tanner licked the cream filling from his fingers.

  “You know why they got you in here, right?” Mick said. “It ain’t good.”

  Tanner frowned then glanced at the wall-mounted video camera.

  “That’s for your protection,” Mick said. “Keeps cops from getting out of hand. Don’t worry, I ain’t that way.”

  Tanner seemed anxious and wary, natural responses to incarceration. His expression held no defiance and his limbs were loose, not crossed in defense. Mick waited, watching for a nervous tic or hand gesture. Nothing about Tanner said he was a killer which meant he could be a sociopath or innocent. Or both. His eyes glittered with a buried intelligence, a trait Mick had as well. People in the hills learned early to conceal how smart they were.

  “Tanner,” he said. “Not talking makes you look guilty. It gives the impression you’re hiding something. The cops think it’s murder. Most people, in your situation, are pretty quick to deny it. Or they confess because they feel bad. But not talking is worse.”

  Tanner stared at the video camera mounted on the wall and shook his head. Mick stood and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a T-shirt. He lifted it to show he wasn’t wearing an audio wire then moved close to the camera. Staring into the lens, knowing his sister was watching, he removed his shirt and tossed it to drape the camera. He sat back at the table and let Tanner think about the offer of privacy for two minutes. Long enough for its meaning to sink in before he began wondering if it was a trick. Tanner lifted his hand to mimic talking on a phone.

  “No cell phone,” Mick said. “I don’t like them.”

  Tanner’s expression shifted to the disdain of disbelief. Mick stood and emptied his pockets—nothing but his wallet and a receipt for lunch.

  “I keep it in the truck,” Mick said. “Folks get mad if you don’t answer and madder if you don’t call back. Plus, there’s some kind of etiquette about calling or texting that I can’t figure out.”

  “You ever carry one?” Tanner said.

  “Yeah, for work. Boss made me, but I’m not on the job no more.”

  “What was your work?”

  “Army.”

  “You out?”

  “Yes and no,” Mick said. “Technically I’m six days AWOL right now. I’d appreciate if you kept that to yourself.”

  Mick looked away quickly as if concerned that he’d said too much. The initial tension had eased. Mick had revealed personal information to establish rapport. Now they were two men occupying the same small space, not equals, but less distant than before. Due to the acoustic panels which amplified sound, Mick pitched his voice low and quiet.

  “Three nights ago, a woman got killed on Choctaw. The FBI has made you for it. Those guys don’t mess around. I can help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I guess I’m really helping my sister. She’s the sheriff. She don’t like the Feds trying to take over. Did you know Nonnie Johnson?”

  “I knew who she was. I went to school with her kin.”

  “Were you up on Choctaw the other night?”

  “No.”

  “Way it works, you need to tell me where you were.”

  “I can’t. I won’t.”

  “Okay,” Mick said. “Then how about telling me why you can’t. I’m sure there’s a good reason.”

  “There is.”

  “You’re a single man, right?”

  Tanner nodded, squinting his eyes in a way Mick interpreted as increased wariness. The question had hit a vulnerable spot.

  “Reason I ask,” Mick said. “I don’t care, really. But married women don’t want their husbands to know if they were cheating. Is that what you were up to? Out tomcatting around with somebody’s wife? The only thing you have to worry about is if she’s married to the man you’re talking to. But my wife, well, she might be pregnant by another fellow right now. So I reckon you’re off the hook there.”

  “What?”

  “I said, my wife is—”

  “I heard you. Why are you telling me that?”

  “Do you want the truth?” Mick said.

 
Tanner nodded.

  “So you’ll trust me,” Mick said.

  “That why you gave me food?”

  “Partly. Plus I know what jail chow’s like. Salty crap.”

  A long silence ensued during which Tanner stared into space and made a series of faces as he thought. Twice he began to speak then halted as if an invisible rope clamped his jaws shut. He shook his head. He fidgeted and popped his knuckles. When he sighed and leaned forward, Mick knew Tanner had convinced himself to talk.

  Five minutes later Mick left the interrogation room. Linda met him in the hall, not quite bent out of shape, but well on the way. Her shoulders were so tense she could have been wearing pads beneath her uniform.

  “Anything?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Best be worth it,” she said. “I got the jailer up my butt like a rocket.”

  “Nice.”

  “Don’t get smart. You in there alone, no recording. He’s on his high horse with this new facility and protocol. Way he spoke got on my last nerve: ‘pro-toe-call,’ like a kid with a word he just learned.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mick said. “I got plenty to brief you on. And not in your office.”

  “I ain’t going up to Papaw’s cabin.”

  “Your house, then.”

  He walked away before she could argue, hearing her shout his name in exasperation. Outside he got in his truck and drove.

  Chapter Eleven

  Linda lived in the house she’d grown up in, having inherited it from their mother several years ago. It was in the middle of town at the dead end of Lyons Avenue. Mick parked on the street and waited. As a kid he went there occasionally but had always felt resentment emanating from his mother like a low-grade fever. Having no brothers and only married-in uncles, she regarded males as mysterious creatures who were loud and disruptive. Mick had confirmed all her beliefs. Her focus remained on Linda in the hopes that she would spurn family tradition, marry above her status, and move to Lexington. His sister had defied everything, disappointing her mother to an early grave.

  Linda drove the SUV cruiser into the driveway and stopped before reaching the spindly carport. The vehicle was too wide to allow her to disembark easily. After navigating garbage cans, three rusty rakes, and a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, she opened the aluminum screen door and unlocked the wooden door to the kitchen. Mick followed her in. They’d always entered the house this way. The front was reserved for the preacher, formal company, and kids on Halloween.

  The kitchen retained its original cabinetry—knotty pine with long, tapered hinges. The counters were formica, white with pale yellow boomerang shapes in an interlocking pattern. The old linoleum still lay on the floor, faded by footsteps in a path—sink, stove, refrigerator. A nail held a five-year-old calendar on top of several earlier calendars, a habit of their mother’s. With age she’d developed a preoccupation with time—the house contained nine clocks, eleven calendars, and three egg timers. Outside each window was a thermometer, evidence of her other obsession. Mick recalled phone calls in which she’d periodically interrupt herself to relate an update on the time and temperature. He refrained from pointing out the obvious—what difference did either one make to a woman who hadn’t left the house in four years?

  He followed Linda into the front room. A gigantic smart TV dominated the space. The rest was unchanged—same ratty couch, easy chair, bulky end tables, and gigantic ugly lamps. Mick recalled driving a toy car along the perimeter of the rug. It was originally trimmed with white fringe but their mother had cut it off.

  “I like what you’ve done here,” he said, sprawling on the end of the couch.

  “I figured I’d get married and sell it, or my husband would have furniture. Sometimes I don’t think I have any home style.”

  “Sure you do. Mom’s.”

  They laughed together, the years falling away. They could have been children giggling over a private joke.

  “She was always so judgmental about other people’s decor,” Linda said. “‘All their taste is in their mouth.’ I heard her say that a thousand times.”

  “Mainly about people with stuff in their yards— flamingos, plastic sunflowers, and garden gnomes.”

  “But holiday decorations were okay. I didn’t throw those out. Eleven boxes for Christmas, five for Easter, and twelve for everything else. Flag Day, Thanksgiving, and Fourth of July.”

  “What about Groundhog Day?” he said.

  “You and your animals,” she said. “How’s that mule bite?”

  “I should change the dressing, but it’s all right.”

  A silence slid between them, broken by the ticking of numerous clocks. Mick wondered what his life might have been if his father had lived, if he’d grown up here. He’d probably run a car lot or manage the IGA and wind up resenting his entire life—job, town, wife, and his own thwarted ambition to get the hell out. Now he resented most of it anyway.

  “Okay,” she said. “What’s the story on the Dopted Boy?”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He’s got an alibi. But he won’t talk and neither will I. I’ll tell you off the record only.”

  “This is not what I had in mind.”

  “You gave me a free hand.”

  “Is his alibi legal?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re safe there.”

  “Can you verify the alibi?”

  “Maybe. It’ll take a little work.”

  She went to the kitchen, poured tap water into a pair of glasses, and brought them back. Mick’s was frosted with a faded imprint of the state of Kentucky featuring notable landmarks. The only ones in the hills were Carter Caves and the Breaks of Big Sandy.

  “Okay,” Linda said. “We’re off the record and I won’t tell anyone. My word on it.”

  “The night Nonnie died, Tanner was in Lexington at a gay bar.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “He left work early, went home, and took a shower. Changed clothes and drove up there. Sat outside for two hours getting his nerve up to go in. Stayed an hour and a half. Left and went to Arby’s, then a gas station. Got home around midnight.”

  “You believe him?” she said. “I don’t. Nothing gay about him.”

  “He didn’t know for sure but thought he was. Tried Grindr twice. First time the guy didn’t show. Second time he drove to Flemingsburg and got robbed. That was a year ago. Last Saturday he went to Lexington.”

  “Did he find out?”

  “Not exactly. Not for sure anyhow. And that’s why I believe him. The whole time, he felt like an outsider. They were Lexington people. Big city guys. He didn’t belong and he knew it. He met three men and they snobbed him off. Said he felt worse than ever. Drove home depressed.”

  Mick drank half his glass of water.

  “Here in Rocksalt,” he said, “Tanner can’t let anyone know who he is. Up there, he was excluded because he’s from here. As an alibi, it’s too personal to invent. Too painful to admit. I believe him.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Saturday night.”

  “I thought of that. He bought gas and Arby’s with a credit card. Easy to check. But that’s about all we can verify. No security cameras at the club. The staff won’t talk about clients. If you think the cops’ Blue Wall is tough, wait till you hit the Queer Wall. Bigger stakes.”

  “Fuck a duck,” Linda said. “Fuck a big fat fucking downy duck.”

  Mick nodded, glancing around the room again. His mother’s heavy drapes ran to the floor, topped by a thick valance that concealed the armature and rod. The room had always felt small, crowded by fabric.

  “How’d you get all that?” Linda said.

  “Interrogation 101. Food and drink, then my own secrets. You search his house?”

  “Yes, not a damn thing. He’s got a little narrow table just inside the door with six magazines on it. The top one was Playboy, then Maxim. Even a couple of old Penthouses on the bottom. I thought it was stra
nge. Now it’s just sad as hell.”

  “Could be worse,” Mick said. “At least he’s not living with his mother’s clocks.”

  “Hardy-har-har. I took the cuckoo out of the cuckoo clock. Door opens and nothing comes out.”

  “Story of my life.”

  She laughed and he felt pleased with himself, like he was a kid entertaining her at the cabin. The old men didn’t know how to talk to a girl, only give her things. Mick supposed he’d learned that, too. He’d married Peggy in part because she never asked for much. As a result he’d given her everything.

  “I talked to Nonnie’s family,” he said. “They know more than they’re letting on.”

  “Like what.”

  “Nonnie was mixed up with a man.”

  “They won’t say who?”

  “They won’t even confirm that she was.”

  “But you think so.”

  “It was all over their faces. Classic obfuscation and displacement activity. No flat-out denials. I think they know who killed her. They’re trying to get her boy to do something about it.”

  “Frankie?” she said. “He wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake.”

  “I believe he’s clinically depressed. He’s more likely to shoot himself than anyone else.”

  “Where’s that leave us?”

  “You said old Mr. Tucker found the body?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “hunting ginseng.”

  “I’ll go see him next.”

  “What about Fuckin’ Barney?”

  “Maybe he did it, maybe that’s why he’s hiding.”

  Linda stood and paced a tight little circle, a habit from childhood when frustrated. Mick knew that next she’d straighten something off-kilter, visible only to her. Sure enough, she adjusted the drapes, producing a cloud of dust that drifted to the floor.

  “I guess I need to release Tanner,” she said. “That’ll piss off the FBI guy.”

  “Do you care?”

  “Not really but maybe I should. That damn Murvil Knox is wanting to give me election money.”

  “Are you going to run?”

  “I don’t know. I like the job.”

  Mick nodded, wondering how they’d both wound up in law enforcement. No one else in their family ever had. Maybe it was a desire for order after their fractured childhood.