I WAS IN MY TRUCK and heading back to Mason Falls when my phone buzzed. A number I didn’t recognize.
“There’s a girl,” a woman’s voice said.
It took me a second to realize it was Dathel Mackey, the old woman from First Baptist. Behind her I heard some odd noises.
“Ms. Mackey,” I said. “Where are you?”
“In the woods,” she said. “I was having trouble sleeping, so I went for a walk. Now it’s done gone all rainy.”
I heard what sounded like thunder. A growling noise that I associated with the expansion of air. Of someone being too close to lightning.
“Why don’t you get home, and I’ll come by,” I said. “I’ve been fixin’ to show you a photo of a man. See if he’s the bearded fella you mentioned.”
“They grabbed a girl now.”
“What?” I said. “Who?”
“They’re taking a lamb and burning it—”
“Did you say a lamb?” I hollered. I wondered if maybe she was seeing the past again. Maybe the girl who’d gone missing in ’93. The girl with the bloody nose.
“The bearded one. And his friend, the big fella.”
I heard thunder again, and the phone went dead.
“Shit,” I said. I pulled over and checked my reception.
Full bars.
I tried the number, but it rang out. No voicemail set up.
I needed to find Donnie Meadows, and I called Abe, knowing that he was on desk duty after the shooting.
After a minute of small talk, I could tell that no one had connected me to the sketch yet. I wasn’t dead in the water.
I told Abe I was following up on an open lead. Asked if he could look up past addresses for Donnie Meadows.
Finding none, Abe looked up the big’un’s mother and father. Oddly, the only address listed was the Hesters’ plantation house.
“No shit,” I said to Abe.
“Yeah,” he said, reading it back to me. The same house where I’d seen women and men in Confederate gear yesterday.
I changed the direction I was driving in and pointed my truck east, along a state highway that led through the backwoods. Toward the Hester estate.
“Listen, P.T.,” Abe said. “I was about to call you on something else. You coming back here?”
My pulse sped up. “I wasn’t counting on it. Why?”
“You remember Corinne Stables?”
“Sure, the stripper,” I said.
“Well, I got an alert she used her credit card at the bus station. Looks like she’s about to leave town.”
“I’ll come back,” I said. “Pick her up myself.”
“No need,” Abe said. “Patrol’s five minutes away. You keep heading to the Hesters’. The blue-suiters are bringing her to me. I just wanted you to know.”
I hung up and exhaled. At the first crime scene, everything seemed to be pointing toward me.
I put my foot on the accelerator, and the truck moved past eighty. On to the Hesters, I thought. Make something happen, P.T.
The afternoon sun was dropping in the sky, and peach trees covered each side of the road. I wondered if they all belonged to the Hesters.
When I got to their mansion, I left Purvis in the truck sleeping and went inside. The maid quickly found Wade. He was dressed in the latest country club wear, an aqua polo tucked neatly into seersucker pants. A blue canvas belt with illustrations of whales and clipper ships held it all together.
“Well, normally the police don’t come by to say ‘Happy Christmas,’” he said. “But I bet my daddy two hundred dollars last night. I told him—we’re gonna see more of that Marsh fella.”
I smiled. Wade moved like a chicken thief. He slid when others walked. “Maybe you go double or nothing, and I’ll come back tomorrow,” I said.
Wade chuckled, leading me into the same room we’d talked in the night before. “What can I help you with, Detective?”
“Donnie Meadows,” I said, holding up a photo. “Does he work for you, Mr. Hester?”
“It’s a big operation, Detective Marsh. For any employee, I’d have to check with Human Resources.”
“He’s an unusually large man, Mr. Hester. Seven foot one. Weighs over three bills. I think you’d remember him.”
Wade glanced at the picture a bit longer this time. Handed it back to me as he sat down on a small couch.
“Cigar?” he said. He took a Cuban from a nearby box and cut the end off of it. “What’s your interest in him, Detective? Does Mr. Meadows have a Bushmaster mounted on his truck too?”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said. “He is an ex-con, though. Been arrested multiple times.”
Wade lit the cigar. Began puckering and puffing. “Well, we’re a tolerant people. Give folks second chances.”
“Mr. Meadows has a tattoo of a neo-Nazi group called StormCloud on his arm,” I said. “The same tattoo is on a man associated with our open murder in Mason Falls.”
Wade’s forehead wrinkled. “I heard on the news that you solved that murder.”
“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear on TV,” I said.
“What exactly are you after, Detective Marsh?”
“I think Mr. Meadows can clear up some holes in our case. Get some justice for a boy’s parents.”
Wade pointed his cigar at me. “So I’m gonna hazard a guess here, Marsh. I’m betting you saw Mr. Meadows while you were pulling out last night.”
I nodded.
“So your question of whether I knew him was of the rhetorical variety?”
“Last night I didn’t know who he was,” I said. “Is he an employee? A friend?”
“He’s a friend of a friend,” Wade said.
“And is he here now?” I asked. “I just have a couple questions. Five minutes, max.”
Wade suddenly shrugged. “And that’ll settle things for you? To talk to him?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Wait here then,” he said, and left the room.
I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes for a moment. I was exhausted and didn’t know where to go next.
Purvis chirped. You don’t think he’s actually gonna drag the seven-footer in here, do you?
I pictured Corinne, back at the precinct.
Abe liked to sweat suspects. Even witnesses. He’d leave them in a box for an hour before he said a word.
But he wouldn’t wait on Corinne. He’d book her for conspiracy to commit murder, cuff her to an interrogation table, and she’d sing like a squeaky hinge.
The maid who let me into the house came into the room, holding a brass platter with a kettle.
“Coffee?” she said. She was a big woman and taller than me, with olive skin and meaty arms.
My hands were shaking from lack of sleep, and I threw back a cupful, knowing I needed a shot of caffeine.
After about ten minutes, Wade returned, but he told me that Mr. Meadows was not on the property.
I changed my tack. I was tired of exchanging softballs with this guy. “Is it your brother Matthew that Donnie Meadows knows?” I said. “You said he was a friend of a friend.”
Wade walked toward the entrance to the study, where the maid had laid down the kettle. He closed the door and poured himself a cup.
“I heard about your wife and son,” he said to me. “After you left last night, Daddy and I looked it up.”
I hated when strangers brought this up.
“I’m sure losing his family can push a man to desperation. To a place where everyone looks like a suspect.”
I stared at him. I wanted to hit him, hard.
“Does Captain Sugarman know you’re here?” Wade asked. “Harassing good folks on the Lord’s birthday?”
“No.”
“And what about your own chief of police. Is it Miles Dooger?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” I said.
“Well, we haven’t done anything except be good friends to the community. And helpful to the police and governor. So I think it’s time you left the neighborhood.”
Wade walked over and opened the entrance to the hallway. I moved ahead of him, toward the front door.
“Some things aren’t worth looking into, Mr. Marsh,” he said. “The cost is greater than the investment.”
“I guess I’m just one of those people,” I said. “Stubborn.”
“Nothing to lose?” Wade asked.
The way he said it, it was like a knife he was sticking into my side.
“Guess so,” I said.
Then he almost laughed. “Well, that’s where you’ve got it wrong, Marsh. Everyone’s got something to lose.”