She Talks to Angels Read online

  Praise for James D.F. Hannah

  James D.F. Hannah is the real deal. His fictional PI, Henry Malone, might be working the hardscrabble neighborhoods of West Virginia, but he'd have no trouble holding his own against Spenser and Matthew Scudder, just as Hannah shows with this book he has no trouble holding his own against Robert B. Parker and Lawrence Block.

  Dave Zeltserman, author of Small Crimes and Pariah

  A wicked slice of pulpy, country noir. Like the son of Willeford and Thompson wrapped in the cheap polyester suit of Saul Goodman.

  Joe Clifford, author of the Jay Porter series and The One That Got Away

  Is Appalachian Noir a thing? Because it is now. A tight, sharp story with brutal—and brutally funny—moments. Buckle up.

  S.G. Redling, author of Flowertown

  Praise for James D.F. Hannah

  Atmospheric and genuine, James D.F. Hannah's SHE TALKS TO ANGELS packs a powerful punch.

  J. Carson Black, best-selling author of The Shop and Spectre Black

  James D.F. Hannah just knows to hit every right note when it comes to what I love about the genre: The dry dark wit, the terrible secrets that need to be unlocked, the action ... One of the best traditional PI series out there for fans of guys like Elvis Cole, Spenser, and even Dave Robicheaux.

  Jochem van Der Steen, Son of Spade

  She Talks To Angels

  A Henry Malone Novel

  James D.F. Hannah

  Copyright © 2018 by James D.F. Hannah

  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 written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Created with Vellum

  To Diane. First a boss, then a friend.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  A Note from the Author

  Also by James D.F. Hannah

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  They built Parker County General Hospital in the 1950s. It’s a squat one-story complex on that rare chunk of flat earth in proximity to Serenity. Renovations over the years—more functional than aesthetic—left the place usable but uglier than a blind date on prom night. The nearest other hospital is three counties over, though, and I suppose when your options are few, even the ugly girl looks good.

  Old-timers still call it “the miners’ hospital.” Billy told me about men who were rushed there after mining accidents—where someone lost a limb or was paralyzed after a ceiling collapse. Other times, there’d be a cough that wouldn’t go away and they couldn’t catch their breath anymore, followed by a black lung diagnosis, the by-product of decades spent sucking in coal dust, doing what it took to pay the bills.

  Like most people my age, I traced my origins back to Parker County General. Well, not my origins per se; I didn’t want to know about that shit. But I was born at the hospital.

  “I came off a shift out of Mine 5 and drove straight over and your mother’s already in the delivery room,” Billy had said. “I heard her through the door, screaming and pushing, and the doctor telling her how great she was doing and her telling him to go fuck himself, and then there was this crying noise, and it was the first sound I ever heard you make. They let me come in after a bit, once I’d scrubbed myself up and they put a gown on me so I didn’t get you filthy, and they let me hold you.” He laughed. “You were an ugly baby. Shame you grew up into such an ugly adult, too.”

  No one’s ever accused my father of being a nurturing soul.

  Inside the hospital, signs for the neonatal unit led you past the viewing area for the newborns. A mix of humanity stood at the glass, staring at pink-cheeked infants. Newly minted fathers looked at their just-born children with a blend of pride and fear. Family members contemplated ways to spoil children. Siblings had a dawning recognition of where they now stood in the pecking order. A few wandered over from other parts of the hospital, people in need of a reminder of hopeful beginnings as they waited for inevitable endings.

  The nurse at the unit desk was about forty, with a lot of crispy blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore scrubs and a paint brush’s worth of blue eye shadow. I leaned against the desk as she tapped away on a computer.

  “I’m looking for Katie Dolan,” I said.

  She stopped and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You Henry Malone?”

  “Every day since I can remember.”

  She smiled. “I’m Katie.” She motioned to another woman in scrubs. “Claire, you mind the store for a few?” She snatched cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. “We’ll go outside to talk.”

  The smoking area was in the rear near the delivery entrance and close to a cluster of dumpsters. I suppose the hospital didn’t want to encourage bad habits with a good view.

  Katie lit her cigarette. “I heard you’re kind of a detective,” she said through a cloud of smoke.

  “That’s kind of true,” I said. “I used to be a state trooper. I don’t have a license, so nothing I do could be termed ‘legitimate,’ which means I can’t legally charge you, though I’m not above it if you want to be generous and hand me a few bucks. Nonetheless, I can ask questions and annoy people and tell you whatever I find out.” I pulled a pack of Marlboros out of a front jeans pocket, shook a stick loose, and set the end on fire. “Your brother’s Eddie Dolan.”

  She nodded. The affirmation wasn’t awash with pride. Just acknowledgment of the fact.

  I blew smoke and waited for her to talk.

  If you’ve watched enough true-crime shows—the ones about gruesome deaths in small towns—you’ve heard about ones where it “stunned the community.” That doesn’t do justice to the collective gasp across Parker County when someone found the body of Meadow Charl
es in the local landfill.

  Meadow came from one of those families described as having “storied money,” but no one told those stories because it wasn’t polite to use that sort of language in mixed company. The daughter of Robert Charles—himself the fourth generation to serve as president of Parker Savings and Loan—and the former Parker County homecoming queen, Meadow was one of those girls most people hated on principle. She was smart, she was beautiful, she had money. She should have been playing croquet with Winona Ryder’s head or pushing other girls along toward an eating disorder. But all anyone had to say was how good of a person she was, someone with a kind heart and a sincere smile for the world.

  Her remains were found next to moldering piles of food and stacks of used tires. She had been bludgeoned to death, a copper pipe next to her covered in bits of her hair and skull. The coroner found traces of lubricant and post-mortem vaginal trauma, meaning she’d been raped after being murdered. She was eighteen years old.

  Fingerprints on the pipe led to Eddie Dolan, a thirty-seven-year-old local with a drug issue and a criminal background, a guy pulling social security because a mental disability left him unable to work. When the police came knocking at his door, he told them a story of the friendship that had developed over the past few years between him and Meadow. A friendship blossomed over their shared mutual interest: heroin.

  A few hours with the History Channel tells you how every society has hierarchies—class divides that separate the haves, the have-nots, and the never-wills. Small towns in West Virginia are no different from European monarchies this way. What makes small towns different is a lack of real estate; no matter the social division, it’s tough to keep yourself away from the disreputable when the bad part of town is only two blocks over and everyone has to shop at the same Walmart.

  Meadow started with pills at parties and made an effortless segue into shooting heroin. She stopped wearing sleeveless shirts anymore because she couldn’t hide the needletrack marks. Her grades plummeted like the drop on a roller coaster. The cheerleading squad kicked her off because she couldn’t remember routines. If Parker County had still had a garden club, the ladies of it would have been abuzz with the rumors.

  Eddie Dolan had a reputation as the local dullard. He made it through life on odd jobs like running errands, cutting grass, and clearing kudzu. People handled him with a mix of ridicule and pity. Somehow, he’d gotten a girl knocked up a few years earlier, but the girl had packed the kid up and moved up north somewhere. Eddie sent money and gifts at Christmas time but got nothing back in return.

  For a guy like Eddie, drugs were an easy crutch, and he leaned on them more and more as he had less and less hope. He sent less money to the son he had never seen and spent more money getting high.

  Drugs don’t give a fuck about social standing, either, so long as you keep paying the bill. Meadow and Eddie met while scoring heroin at a local dealer’s place. Something clicked between the two of them. Friendships and empires had been built on less.

  They spent nights and weekends riding around in Meadow’s pickup, listening to AC/DC and Metallica. They would get high and sleep in the woods for hours. People saw them at Tudor’s on weekends, eating pancakes soaked in maple syrup and drinking endless amounts of coffee.

  Meadow’s friends—the few she still had—talked. The class difference, the age difference, the fucking heroin, for Christ’s sake—everything involving Eddie Dolan was met with stern disapproval handled through whispers and text messages. There had to be something else going on, they told her. Meadow said there was never anything physical, that all they ever did was talk.

  “He listens to me,” she said. “He doesn’t just hear me; he’s listening.”

  Rumors swirled, and in a small town, there was little you could do to keep them quiet. Robert Charles’s money couldn’t keep everyone silent for long.

  Then, out of nowhere, Meadow disappeared. “Studying in Europe,” everyone said. “Restarting her education,” they said.

  Uh-huh.

  When she showed back up several months later, she seemed like the old Meadow. Clear-eyed. Focused. Ready to reclaim her title as queen of Parker County High.

  Except that didn’t happen. This Meadow was quieter. Head down, working to regain lost ground. Still friendly. Still always with a smile. But kept to herself more. No more parties. No more wild stories.

  She made plans for after graduation. There was a small private college in Tennessee where Robert Charles had pulled some strings, and Meadow’s academic shortcomings were glossed over, and coincidentally a new scholarship was founded and named for Charles’s grandfather.

  And then, a few weeks before she was to go off, Meadow got pulled over on a traffic charge. She seemed nervous, and the trooper asked to search her truck, and Meadow, ever the obedient young woman, allowed it.

  Pushed up underneath the passenger seat was a shoot-up kit and fifty dollars in heroin.

  That would be it for Meadow. Final fucking straw. The thing Robert Charles couldn’t fix. Rehab hadn’t stuck with her, and those dreams of going off to college were gone, a busted tail light the lit fuse blowing up any dream she had of escaping Parker County.

  Luck, in some form, intervened for Meadow. There happened to be an ongoing investigation into the influx of heroin in Serenity and Parker County. A task force of a half-dozen law enforcement agencies had cultivated a growing list of addicts willing to pick the option behind Door One, testify against the various dealers in Parker County, over what was behind Door Two, go to prison.

  That was the option the state police gave Meadow: the witness stand or jail time. When your father was Robert Charles, there’s not much of a choice.

  And according to the prosecutors who took Eddie Dolan to trial, Meadow’s planned testimony led to her death. Why Eddie met her at the local landfill. Why he clubbed her over the head with a pipe. Because he knew her testimony would put him in jail, they said. Eddie had a rep as a runner for some of the area dealers, a go-between in trade for the occasional hit. Meadow’s testimony would tie Eddie into the local drug tapestry and drop him deep in prison, the prosecutor said. Eddie was just a frightened animal, they said, and like any other creature backed into a corner, he attacked to make his way out.

  No one even seemed surprised Eddie raped Meadow. It was shocking, sure, but with a guy like Eddie Dolan, what could you expect? He was nothing but an animal, taking his opportunities as he could. It was a note the prosecutors struck over and over, talking about the brutality and savagery of the act. Another act that defiled the memory of Meadow Charles. Another knot in the noose around Eddie Dolan’s neck.

  The lead-up to the trial put on display the divide between the haves and the never-haves of Parker County. The contrast between the Charles clan—hair always impeccable, clothes tailored and sharply pressed—and the Dolans—bad tattoos, home perms, not the best dental care—was sharp enough to split a hair or slit a throat. The TV news loved it and played it for all it was worth. Video of Meadow cheerleading and graduating contrasted with pictures of Eddie, who looked like the guy we never want to make eye contact with coming down the street. Flesh-and-blood individuals were reduced to characters in a 24-hour news-cycle drama. TV crews jockeyed for angles on courthouse steps and people posted selfies with cable reporters and running commentaries appeared in every electronic corner available. What became lost were the people mourning the losses of their daughters and sons, a private act played out for millions.

  An hour before the trial was set to start, Eddie took a plea deal. Life in prison with a chance of parole in forty years. If everything went perfect for Eddie, he’d be seventy-seven years old when he got to be a free man again.

  Meadow Charles, though, was still eighteen years old, and she always will be.

  “I see Eddie every Sunday,” Katie Dolan said. “My boss and I have fought a few times—she’s tried to schedule me on those days—but that’s my day to visit. I’ll come straight off a sixteen-hour shift and dri
ve up there so I could see him for an hour.” She shrugged. “Daddy was dying while that whole show was going on. Emphysema. Hauling that oxygen tank into court every day. Eddie going to prison was too much for him, and he passed right after. Momma’s not doing good now. She’s got sugar, and they had to take a leg last year. She can’t leave the house now, and it breaks her heart not being able to see Eddie. They’re saying she’s only got a few months.”

  “How’s Eddie doing?” I said.

  “He’s in prison, Mr. Malone, so how you suppose he’s doing? It’s tougher on him, on account of how he is. So you know, he wasn’t always slow. He was good up until he was about six, and then he got sick, had a bad fever where he ran hot for days, and once he was better, he wasn’t right anymore.” She crushed her cigarette underneath the toe of her white sneaker. “He’s not retarded. That’s the thing, Mr. Malone. Or Henry. Can I call you Henry?”

  “I’d be happier if you did.”

  “He’s not retarded, Henry. He just comes to things slower than most.”