IT TOOK CAPTAIN SUGARMAN twenty minutes to get to us, and when he arrived, he was frazzled.
“You gotta get your cuffs off that kid, P.T.” He leaned into me.
“He’s in violation of Georgia state law,” I said, pointing at the semiautomatic. “On top of it, he’s pulling this militia rank and serial number shit. Won’t tell me his name.”
Sugarman steered me away from where the kid was cuffed. “His name is Tyler Windall,” he said. “Hell, P.T., I know the militia he’s part of. Y’ever heard of Talmadge Hester?”
“As in Hester Peaches?”
Sugarman nodded. “They own about ten farms here. Half the real estate in downtown Shonus. And the land you’re standing on. Dumbshit over there is one of their peckerwood security patrols.”
I smiled. “I was fifty feet from a public highway.”
Sugarman shook his head at me. “And those sumbitches own that fifty feet.”
I looked to Sugarman. What the hell did I care about some redneck kid? I wanted to meet with the family of the kid who died in ’93. Pissing off Sugarman wouldn’t do me any favors.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
Sugarman looked back at Tyler. “We can’t release him. He’ll go around bragging about bestin’ some out-of-town cop.”
Sugarman walked over to Tyler. He replaced my cuffs with his and stuck Tyler in his black and white. “Why don’t you come with me, P.T. We’ll run him up to the Hesters.”
Another squad car came by and grabbed Beaudin, the M.E.
After that, I followed Sugarman up a winding road. The moon was full, and it lit up a plantation house in the distance. As we got closer, I stared at the tall white columns that made up the front of the place. They were hung from top to bottom with sparkling white Christmas lights, and cars were parked along the roadside for a good five hundred yards from the house.
We parked in front, and I looked up at the mansion. The place was giant—ten bedrooms probably—and gorgeous. Orchestral music was playing in the distance. A holiday party underway.
A beefy woman in a maid’s uniform let us in, and Sugarman asked me to wait in a parlor room while he went with her down the hallway.
The inside of the room was decorated in what locals called the antebellum style, with chunky ornate moldings running the perimeter of the ceiling and walls covered in paintings of Confederate soldiers.
A few minutes later, Sugarman walked back in with a man in his seventies.
“You must be Detective Marsh,” the old man said. He had thick gray hair parted on the right, and he wore a white suit with a white tie and shirt. “Talmadge Hester,” he introduced himself. His voice was soft and encouraging, like an actor in a commercial telling you to retire to Georgia to golf.
“Mr. Hester,” I said. “My apologies for showing up unannounced and at this hour during the holidays.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I ignored it.
“Not at all,” the old man said, motioning me into a den across the hall. We passed a woman in a blue Victorian gown with puffy sleeves and a low neckline. “We throw a little costume party every year at this time,” he said. “So no one’s asleep just yet.”
The den was similar in style to the parlor room, except it had a large oak desk at the far end. Confederate officers probably drank whisky here with debutantes. Back before they were called debutantes.
Leaning against the desk was a man in his early forties. He was stocky and tan, and he wore an outfit I can only describe as the casual wear of an 1860s soldier. The family resemblance to the old man was uncanny.
“Mr. Marsh, this is my son Wade.” The old man motioned. “Mr. Marsh is a detective from Mason Falls and had a run-in with an overzealous employee of ours.”
Wade put out his hand, and I shook it. “Can I guess which one?” Wade smiled. “Was it Tyler?”
“Sugar’s got him out in the car,” I said, trying to use the shorthand of Sugarman’s name, to make it seem like we were all buddies.
“Tyler attached an AR-15 to his 4Runner,” Sugarman said. “P.T. bumped into him along Highway 908. He announced he was a cop, and Tyler didn’t seem to care much.”
In the distance, I could hear a full orchestra, most likely on the back lawn. They were playing “Dixie,” and I got the feeling we had slid back in time.
“Was there something you were looking for out there?” Wade asked. “Along the highway?”
My phone vibrated. “Just some background,” I said. “I’m investigating a crime from twenty-five years ago.”
The older Hester looked impressed. He pointed at the thick packet of files that I carried with me, rubber-banded together. “This is like one of those cold case shows on TV?”
“Something like that.” I smiled.
I noticed a frame on the antique credenza beside me. The picture had been taken at a golf course and showed Wade and Talmadge Hester, between them Governor Toby Monroe. The same guy my boss had met with this morning.
“Well, we have a great respect for local law enforcement,” Talmadge Hester said. “So anything we can do to help . . .”
“Were you here twenty-five years ago?” I asked.
“We were here two hundred years ago,” the younger Hester said, pointing at a painting of a general above the fireplace.
“Do you remember the boy whose body was found in ’93?”
“Of course,” Wade said. “We went to the same high school. It was a tragedy.”
“Were you friends?”
Wade smiled. “We didn’t exactly . . . run in the same circles. But that boy could sure shoot a basket.”
“So you remembered he was an athlete?”
Wade shrugged. “Shonus was favored for state that year. Lucky thing was—our boys still won somehow. Had some kind of magical run without him.”
My phone buzzed again.
“Do you need to get that?” Wade asked.
“Do you mind?” I said.
“Not at all.” Wade opened a side door for me, and I stepped into a walled-in garden. The phone had gone to voicemail by now, and I checked my messages.
“P.T.,” the voicemail said, and I recognized a deputy’s voice. “This is Fin McRae. We got your father-in-law at MotorMouth off SR-902. He had a couple drinks and got into a bar fight.”
“Jesus,” I said aloud. I turned on the flashlight on my phone to jot down the patrolman’s cell number, and the brightness lit up the garden.
An ornate sculptural piece was welded to the far wall, its curved rusty filigree spelling out a single word:
RISE.
The same word that had been written in Sharpie on the hundred dollar bill I’d found in the matchbox at Virgil Rowe’s.
I turned my phone on to illuminate it even more.
“Everything okay?” Wade asked, stepping out into the garden.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just admiring this.”
“That old thing.” He snickered. “It’s been hung there since before I was born. I’ve caught my shirt on it. Tore my pants. When my daddy passes, I’ma rip it off the damn wall.”
He leaned closer, twirling his index finger around at the house. “The facade looks good, Detective, but underneath, the place is falling apart.”
I walked back in with Wade and looked around, taking in the details more slowly this time.
My eyes moved across each framed photo that lined the desk.
There were ground-breakings. Deal signings. The Hesters holding up giant checks for charity.
One picture piqued my interest.
It was a church service at Sediment Rock, the same place that Tripp Unger had gone the morning Kendrick was burned on his farm.
Behind the group in the picture, a sign read First Son of God, Easter 2015.
First Son of God. Remy had asked Unger what church he went to. It was the same name.
If I believed the local M.E. instead of the guy from the state, then the two cases had the elbows in common. A black teenager. The same accelerant. And now two farm owners, forty minutes away from each other, both who attend the same church?
I remembered what the crop duster had said of people who’d know the law on when a plane could be up in the sky. Farmers and pilots.
“Well, you certainly have a beautiful home here, gentlemen.” I smiled.
“That’s nice to hear,” the older Hester said.
Two thoughts flew through my head. The first was that the Hesters had some interesting connections to the two cases—now and in ’93. The second was that they had juice and a lot of it. If I came at them, it had better be with proof.
I turned, holding up my phone. “Unfortunately, gentlemen, I’ve got an emergency to attend to. Maybe it’s best we just let Tyler go with a warning. And get that weapon off his truck.”
“Consider it done,” Wade said. As he moved closer, he looked to see what picture I’d been staring at. Then he glanced at my stack of files, trying to read the tabs on the side of them.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said. “With Junius.”
“Appreciate that,” I said.
Outside, Sugarman and I walked down the curving driveway. “You all right?” he asked.
I nodded. A man was piling equipment into the trunk of a sedan parked behind my truck. I couldn’t make him out, but I heard the word “spelunking.” It’s a funny word, and it made me think about the word “Rise” from the sculpture.
Was it possible there was some connection—between the word “Rise” on the money and “Rise” on this old metal sculpture?
“My father-in-law is having some problems,” I said to Sugarman. “I gotta hightail it back home. Thanks for your help tonight.”
I got in my truck. Heard the trunk slam down on the sedan behind me.
I pulled around Sugarman’s patrol car to speed out, but hit the brakes.
A man crossed in front of my F-150 and glared at me. He was the type of guy we call a “big’un” down south. Nearly seven feet tall, I guessed, and three hundred pounds.
I pulled past him and sped back toward Mason Falls.