The Cold Way Home by Julia Keller

Author:Julia Keller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter Twenty-five

Rain made the night a dreary, chilly mess. Wet leaves were doing their part, too, to induce a sodden misery; the roads were dark, slick tunnels where skidding after a quick stop or a sudden turn was a given. The windows of Bell’s Explorer misted up as she drove. She had to keep the defroster on high during the entire trip out to Roberts Ridge.

On the way, she called Sheriff Harrison and asked if she was cleared to poke around the attic. “Suit yourself,” Harrison replied.

The sheriff added that Barbara Masters and the coroner had filed their reports: Not surprisingly, cause of death was exsanguination from blunt force trauma to the head. No weapon had been found, but it had to have been something with a sharp blade such as a machete, ax, or hatchet. “Something with a handle, that is,” the sheriff added, “instead of a knife, because of the shape of the wound and the required force of the blow. The killer would’ve needed considerable leverage to drive the blade in so deep.” Very little usable evidence had been retrieved at the scene; there were too many footprints in the ruins of Wellwood. And too much crap to sort through, Bell knew.

“Any defensive wounds?” she asked.

“No. Looks as if she had her back turned. Never saw it coming.”

We can only hope, Bell thought with a shudder.

The big farmhouse loomed large in her headlights, rearing up out of the slimy darkness. It was the only house for many miles. The porch circled it like a lariat. At some point in the past the sides of this old, proud house had been sheathed in vinyl siding, and the choice of the color white was a grave mistake; it looked irretrievably gray and grimy now, like something the ground was constantly trying to reclaim, and soon would. White was a hard color to maintain, Bell thought. It was lost as quickly as the innocence it signified.

Getting out of the Explorer, lifting her head even though it exposed her face to the rain, she found the small window at the very top; that had to be the attic. It was a dark oval. She imagined Darla Gilley up there on a night like this one, looking out, having just settled back into the family home, her marriage over and her life in limbo. What would she have seen? Waves of wet darkness, perhaps, the kind that seemed to spiral back into her family’s long history on the ridge.

Brenda was not especially welcoming. Bell had called first, but that didn’t matter.

“I hope you don’t expect me to stay up here with you,” Brenda said, crisp dismissal in her tone. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.” She had just led Bell up the narrow staircase into the attic. The ceiling joists and rafters made the space feel close and constricted. A good four-fifths of it was stuffed full of boxes, plastic storage bins, and brooding, old-fashioned furniture such as armoires and chifforobes.

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