Free Evening Street by Julia Keller Page B

lives.
    â€œI suppose I thought things had improved a little bit,” Darlene said.
    â€œReally. That’s what you thought.” Bell didn’t even try to keep the skepticism out of her tone. Darlene, she knew, had access to more and better crime statistics than any county prosecutor could ever hope to obtain. Those stats were grim and getting grimmer.
    â€œWell, maybe it’s what I hoped,” Darlene said. “Let’s put it that way.” She started to bend her fingers around the glass one more time, preparatory to another pointless lift.
    But Bell had had enough. She reached across the table and stopped her hand. “Hey,” Bell said. “Let’s cut the small talk, okay? You’re busy. I’m busy. You drove a long way in some pretty shitty weather to get here tonight. So come on—why am I here? What do you really want?”
    â€œFine.” Darlene slipped her fingers out from under Bell’s grip. They didn’t like each other. They never had. They were cordial, but just. Two social encounters in twenty years—one in D.C. four years ago, at a class reunion, and now this—strained the outermost limits of each woman’s politeness allocation.
    â€œTruth is,” Darlene went on, “I need your help.”
    â€œForgive me, but I’m trying to imagine how a federal prosecutor who routinely takes on special assignments from the attorney general of the United States could possibly need any assistance from a small-town DA in West Virginia.”
    â€œI’m not a federal prosecutor anymore. I resigned last month.”
    â€œReally.”
    â€œI’m taking a little time off, and then I’ll be heading the litigation department of a D.C. law firm.” Darlene told her the name of the firm, but she didn’t have to; it was exactly the sort of practice that Bell would’ve expected her to join. It rivaled the snooty splendor and cool exclusivity of the law firm at which Bell’s ex-husband was a partner. Darlene and Sam Elkins would be like bought-and-paid-for bookends: two very talented attorneys who spent their time massaging the egos of millionaires.
    It wasn’t Bell’s idea of a satisfied life, but it didn’t have to be. Free country, she reminded herself. To each her own.
    Bell waited for Darlene to say more. When she didn’t, Bell started to speak.
    â€œListen, I’ve got to wind this up pretty soon because—”
    â€œ Jesus, Bell. Give me a minute, okay? Just hold on.” An exasperated Darlene shook her head. Her soft dark hair was cut so stylishly short—it looked like a velvet bathing cap, Bell had thought when she first spotted her across the crowded expanse of the Tie Yard Tavern—that not a strand moved. “Jesus,” Darlene repeated.
    She took a brief sip of her drink. She coughed. She shook her head. Her shoulders rose and fell. She seemed to be recalibrating herself. “Look, Bell. This is about my father. Harmon Strayer.” She coughed again. Bell remained silent. Whatever it was that her former classmate needed to say to her, she’d say it when she was good and ready.
    In the back of Bell’s mind there stirred a vague recollection of a story she’d been told a few years ago by another Georgetown alum. A story about Darlene Strayer’s father, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, and the long, lightless road to nowhere that the disease brought about.
    â€œHe died last week,” Darlene finally said.
    â€œSorry to hear that. Always hard to lose a family member.”
    â€œYeah. Ninety-one years old. It was rough toward the end. Hell—it was rough all the way through. He was living in Thornapple Terrace. Do you know it? An Alzheimer’s-care place over in Muth County. Pretty close to his home—although why the hell that even mattered, I don’t know, because he didn’t have a friggin’ clue where he was. He’d been there