I remember very distinctly the look on his face as he stepped into the small space of the basement office, nearly filling it with his own massiveness, his gray hat nudged up against the single light bulb that dangled from its low ceiling.
“It’s like a cave in here,” he said.
I pointed to Kelli’s desk. “She worked over there,” I told him.
“Where’d you work?”
“At the other desk.”
His eyes swept over to it, locking on the picture of Kelli I’d taken on Breakheart Hill, now taped to the wall above her desk. He peeled the picture carefully from the wall and stared at it closely for a moment.
“Who took this?” he asked.
“I did.”
“When was that?”
“A few weeks ago.”
He peered at it silently, then his eyes drifted up slowly and settled on me. “Same dress,” he said. “Same place.”
I nodded.
“Had you taken her there often?”
“She took me there,” I answered. “But only that one time.”
He stared at me quietly, from the depths of that thoughtful atmosphere that surrounded him, then said, “Mighty pretty girl.”
“Yes.”
“Strange place for her to be, way up yonder on Breakheart Hill.”
I nodded.
“Got any idea why she might have been up there all by herself?”
“No, sir.”
He shook his great head slowly. “Shame what happened to her.” His eyes returned to the photo, lingered there a moment, then darted toward me with terrific speed. “Would you have any idea who might have done this thing, Ben?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Do you think it might have been Lyle Gates?”
It was the first time I’d heard Lyle’s name mentioned in connection with what had happened to Kelli, and I felt the first wind of that dark, steadily growing maelstrom as it reached out from its swirling eye on Breakheart Hill. “Lyle Gates?” I repeated, my mind suddenly calling up the first of what would become a thousand images of unanticipated wrong.
“That’s right,” Sheriff Stone said. “We know that he was in the vicinity of Breakheart Hill at the same time Kelli was there.” He shrugged. “ ‘Course that wouldn’t mean much in itself, but I understand he had some pretty harsh words for her down at Cuffy’s a while back.”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“And you and Gates had a little tussle over it, I hear,” Sheriff Stone added.
“Yes, we did.”
“Did you ever have any more trouble with Gates?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
“Not that I know of.”
He was silent, staring at me, his ancient, knowing eyes evaluating everything—my voice, my posture, sensing secrets, things withheld, but unsure as to exactly what I might be holding back.
“You got a car, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever been down that old mining road at the bottom of Breakheart Hill?”
I shook my head.
“You know the road I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I found some car tracks down there,” Sheriff Stone said. “And the thing is, Gates was on foot. His car had been repossessed a few days before it happened. So, what I’m getting at, it couldn’t have been his car that made those tracks.”
I said nothing.
Sheriff Stone drew his hat from his head and rolled it slowly in his blunt hands. “So what I’m wondering is, can you think of anybody else that might have wanted to hurt Kelli?”
“No, sir.”
“Besides Gates, I mean,” he added.
“No, sir, I can’t think of anybody else,” I told him firmly.
“Well, don’t say no too fast, son. Dwell on it a minute. Just anybody around town who might have had bad feelings for her.”
“I can’t think of anybody.”
“How about around the school?” Stone asked. “Any of the boys been bothering her?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“How about her boyfriend, what’s his name?”
I felt my heart squeeze together as I pronounced his name. “Todd Jeffries.”
“That’s right. She been having any trouble with him?”
I saw Kelli press her face softly against Todd’s chest, saw his arms enfold her gently. “No, sir,” I said. “They weren’t having any trouble.”
“So as far as you know, nobody else was having a problem with her?” Sheriff Stone asked. “Nobody but Lyle Gates?”
I didn’t answer. In my mind I saw Kelli turn to me as she had in the corridor outside the office, heard her voice again. Ben, did I do something? Are you mad at me?
Sheriff Stone noted my silence, then repeated his question, this time more emphatically. “Just Lyle Gates? He the only fellow that might have had something against Kelli?”
“Yeah, just Lyle Gates,” I said.
He watched me a moment, then said something startling. “What about a girl?”
“A girl?”
“A girl that might have had some reason to hurt Kelli. Girls get bad feelings for each other, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And since there was no rape, or anything like that,” Sheriff Stone added, “we have to look at that possibility.”
I said nothing.
“To tell you the truth, Ben, we don’t quite know what happened up there. The details, I mean. We found a rock, you know, with some blood on it, but it was way down there near the old mining road, pretty far from where we found Kelli herself. And besides, it was way too big for somebody to pick up and hit her with.” He sighed softly. “So we think maybe she fell on it, then tried to run away, back up the hill, something like that.” He eyed me carefully, trying to gauge the effect of his words. “She was blind by then, you know.”
I felt my soul empty. “Blind?”
“That’s what Dr. McCoy thinks,” Sheriff Stone said. “In the last stage, you know, when she was still able to run. Losing strength, of course, but still able to run. Crawling at the end of it.” His eyes drifted down toward the photograph. “At least that’s what we think, from the look of her dress.” He glanced up at me. “One thing’s for sure, she got hit in the face real hard.”
I remained silent.
Sheriff Stone looped his thumbs over his belt. “So, what about it, Ben? Can you think of anybody that might have wanted to hurt Kelli?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know of anybody.”
He seemed distrustful of my answer. “You don’t?”
“No.”
“Well, you were at the play rehearsals, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t notice anything?”
“No.”
Sheriff Stone watched me closely, his eyes narrowing, then said, “What about Mary Diehl?”
I knew then that Miss Carver had told him everything, all that she had seen and heard over the last four weeks while Kelli had rehearsed her Juliet, and Todd his Romeo, and Mary Diehl had sat in the shadowy back corner of the auditorium, chewing her nails and watching helplessly as the only love she’d ever known slipped irrecoverably from her grasp. I remembered seeing her there, a motionless figure in the murky light, silent, staring, curiously grim, her sweetness melting from her face like candle wax.
“I understand that there was quite a bit of bad feeling between the Diehl girl and Kelli,” Sheriff Stone said. “Were you aware of that?”
I nodded mutely, felt the dark finger’s touch again and thought, Mary, too? How far will this go? Where will it end?
“What was all that about,” Sheriff Stone asked, “the trouble between Kelli and Mary Diehl?”