Winston Waymore Bell and his wife of forty-one years were lifetime residents of McFalls County. The main township at the foot of Bull Mountain had been named after his grandfather, James Waymore Bell, and the family owned just about every business in town. They started by opening the county’s first and only bookstore back in the early sixties, just a few blocks over from the municipal building that at the time housed the sheriff’s office, the jail, City Hall, the clerk of court, and the fire department. Over the next several years, the Bells invested in several other businesses around the small downtown area, and most of them were still owned and operated by the surviving members of the Bell family themselves. Some opened Waymore Valley’s first and only coffee shop, adjacent to the old bookstore. Suzanna Bell, the couple’s youngest daughter, ran a children’s clothing consignment shop and a rustic-styled bakery and sandwich shop that boasted the best blackberry cobbler in the state. Burnside Bell, Suzanna’s younger brother, once told Dane that the secret to his sister’s award-winning cobbler wasn’t in the locally farmed berries, but in the hefty dose of fresh butter that he churned himself every morning before sunup. The question of cobbler credit was always a hot point of contention between the siblings.
Although the sandwich shop was the most popular attraction McFalls County had to offer for travelers and tourists of the Blue Ridge foothills, by far the most lucrative Bell-owned operation was one they ran from behind the scenes. Lucky’s Diner was the only bar in the county, and the Bells had made an arrangement with a couple of brothers from New York—looking for, let’s say, a less frantic life in the Georgia foothills—to run it for them. A bar was something the Bell family believed didn’t suit their family-friendly reputation, but the money those two Yankee brothers generated from it on a nightly basis seemed to suit them just fine, so they remained silent partners and allowed Harold and Harvey Polanski, along with Harold’s daughter Nicole, to be the public face for Lucky’s, while the Bells put all that unsavory money into other ventures.
Burnside and Cynthia Bell’s son, Keith, had worked at Lucky’s as a barback almost every night since he was eighteen, and in return, his parents paid his bills, kept his bank account flush, and allowed him to live rent-free in the spacious loft directly above the diner. The Bells were rich and thought themselves to be of a higher stature then most of the residents of McFalls County, but they were still good people—good country people—especially Keith. He and Dane had known each other their whole lives. They’d grown up together. Same hospital. Same school. Same trouble. Same blues. They had one of those friendships that didn’t need constant nurturing to maintain. Five days or five years might pass since they’d seen each other, and they could pick up a conversation from where it left off. Dane also knew if there was one place he could show up unannounced with a federal agent from Florida and a malnourished Ned Lemon in need of a hot shower and some clothes—it was Keith’s. Dane also knew Keith was a creature of habit, so at this time of the morning, Keith would be home.
Keith finally woke up after the third knock, and he opened the door wearing only a pair of buffalo-plaid boxers. Keith was about six foot one and fit, outside of the small lump of belly that alcohol had built on his midriff. No expression at all crossed his boyish, handsome face when he saw Dane standing on the flimsy wrought-iron landing between the short, put-together build of Roselita and the tall, lanky frame of Ned. Keith just scratched at something behind his ear. No words passed. He rubbed the crumble of sleep from his eyes, then moved aside to make way for them all to come in.
“Sup, Dane,” Keith said under a yawn as they entered the loft.
“Sup, Keith. Sorry to wake you.”
“No, you’re not. But it’s cool. I’ll make some coffee as soon as I put some pants on.” The itch behind Keith’s ear had moved to his ass, and he worked at it under his boxers as he disappeared behind an accordion-style divider wall that separated where he slept from the rest of the wide-open loft.
“You’ve got quite the roster of friends, Agent Kirby,” Roselita said as she took off her sunglasses and cased the apartment.
“Well, I can’t imagine you’ve got any, Agent Velasquez,” Ned said as he pushed past her in the doorway. It was the first thing he’d said to Roselita since he’d come out of the holding cell.
Roselita didn’t answer, and Dane smiled. “He’s got a point there, Roselita.” Dane passed her, too, and walked into the loft. Roselita followed and closed the door.
The loft looked more like a day room in a college frat house than a full-grown man’s home. Sixties and seventies horror-film posters hung haphazardly on the walls with thumbtacks, and thrift-store bookshelves were filled with graphic novels, ragged and well-read pulp paperbacks, and VHS cassette tapes of even more old-school horror movies. The top shelf of a tall bookcase to the far right, close to the kitchen area, held a massive blown-glass hookah, green with specks of white and blue at the base. Six leather-wrapped pipes fell down the sides of the rectangular unit like the tendrils of an octopus. The steel grating on top of the liquid-filled pipe was pristine and shiny and looked unused. The loft smelled of incense and hippie. “Why are we here, Kirby?”
“I was fixing to ask you the same thing, Dane,” Keith said as he appeared from behind the divider. He was now wearing a pair of loose-fitting Levi’s and a Day of the Dead T-shirt that used to be black three hundred washings ago and was now more of a light gray.
“Keith, you remember this guy?”
Ned tipped his chin and cocked a half smile.
“Of course, man—Ned fuckin’ Lemon. It’s been a hot minute.” They shook hands in a way that turned into a shoulder bump—a man hug. “I heard you were back, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Well, you can now. You got any real cigarettes?” Ned shot a sideways glance at Dane.
“Uh, no,” Keith said. “I don’t smoke. Not anymore. It’s been almost three years now. Second-hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Ned scowled. “When did everyone in Waymore get so goddamn healthy?” He walked toward the kitchen and opened the fridge as if it belonged to him, and Keith mouthed the words “What the hell?” at Dane.
Dane held out a palm as if to tell him that all would be revealed in due time. Keith nodded.
“This is Special Agent Roselita Velasquez with the FBI,” Dane said. Roselita tipped her chin. Keith worked at the itch on his ass a little more. Neither of them spoke. Keith didn’t have to be told Roselita was police. She reeked of it.
Dane sighed and began to explain. “Listen, Keith, Ned needs a shower and maybe some clean clothes. As bad as this may sound, his pants are now being held as evidence in a crime scene, and he can’t be walking around in those sweats on loan from the sheriff’s office.”
Keith scratched and watched Ned close the fridge and lean heavily against the kitchen counter, letting his long, unwashed hair fall into his face.
“Yeah,” Keith said. “Cool. Whatever y’all need.”
“And that coffee you mentioned wouldn’t be a bad idea, either, if you’re still offering.”
“Yeah, no worries.” When Ned turned to face his friends, he looked exhausted and filthy. Keith pointed over to the divider. “Ned, the bathroom is over there on the other side of that wall and the bed.”
Ned pushed himself off the counter, nodded as if it was a struggle just to keep his head up, and disappeared behind the portable wall without a word.
“There are clean towels under the sink, too,” Keith shouted. “And as far as clothes go, grab whatever fits—mi casa, su casa. Oh, but don’t take anything from the pile at the foot of the bed. That’s all dirty. No telling what’s in there. Otherwise, take whatever you need.”
Ned still didn’t answer—no thank-you, no okay, no nothing—but Keith didn’t seem bothered by it. He gave the itch on his ass a break, walked into the kitchen, scooped some coffee from a can in the cabinet, filled the plastic machine with a tumbler of tap water, and flipped the switch on. It lit up, and he pulled out a chair to take a seat at the kitchen table, where Dane and Roselita had already settled in. Roselita nodded and Keith nodded back. He noticed Roselita staring at the hookah. “It’s never been used. I just thought it looked cool.”
“It does,” Roselita said before adding, “and I don’t care if it’s been used. None of my business.”
“Right on, then,” Keith said. It was clear, though, that he felt uneasy around Dane’s new friend.
Once they could all hear the water running in the shower, Keith broke the uncomfortable silence in a whisper. “Holy shit, Dane, where the hell did he come from?”
“I’m not quite sure yet. I just found out he was back the day before yesterday.”
“Jenkins and Boner told me he was back, but I didn’t believe it was him. They said they found him in the woods. They said you were there, too, and Darby Ellis had him locked up down at the station for shooting some old-timer up the mountain. Seriously, though, I didn’t even think to call you or go down and ask Darby himself because I really didn’t think it was him. And because, I mean, Jenkins and Boner are full of shit most of the time.”
“Well, it’s him.”
“Did he really kill somebody?”
“No.” Dane shook his head as if the notion of it were preposterous. “But I can’t prove it one way or another—not yet, anyway.”
“Dane—it’s been what? Ten years since he disappeared?”
“Coming up on nine.”
“And you don’t believe he did it? Boner said he was stone-cold drunk, still holding the damn gun.”
“It’s circumstantial, Keith. You know Ned as well as I do. He would never shoot anybody. He doesn’t have it in him.”
“I don’t know, Dane. He looks like shit. And people change, man. And who knows what the hell he’s been up to since he left.”
“You’re right, Keith. People change, but not like that they don’t, and not Ned. I don’t believe it for a second. Neither should you. And once you hear everything other than what you heard from Jenkins and Boner you’ll understand. Everything about it stinks; I just can’t tell you why. He might’ve been set up.”
Keith leaned back enough to tip the front two chair legs from the ground. “Who the hell would want to set up Ned Lemon for murder? As if the poor bastard hasn’t been through enough already—and where’s he been? Why did he come back?”
“I’ve got my suspicions, but to be honest, Ned’s problem is not my main focus here. We’re actually here running down a lead that could help us find a missing child—an eleven-year-old boy named William Blackwell. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Keith didn’t hesitate with his answer. “No, but you think Ned knows something about him?”
“How about we wait on him to get out here so I don’t have to tell this story twice.”
Roselita’s antsy leg bounced up and down under the table. She kept looking at her phone while Dane and Keith had their conversation. She felt like they were wasting time again, and now this Ned guy and his predicament seemed to be part of her new partner’s angle. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. They had been tasked with finding a child, not with proving the innocence of one of Kirby’s childhood buddies, and once again she was sitting in a chair instead of moving. She hated the whole idea of heading out to this damn farm with one lowlife to smooth over talking to another lowlife. And she wasn’t happy about O’Barr allowing it to happen, either. The old man was taking too many liberties here, and lives were at stake. Lives had already been lost. Innocent lives. This was not at all what she’d signed up for. Roselita felt she’d be better off up here on her own, but for now she was going to keep her mouth shut and ride it out.
The coffee maker burped and Keith got up to pour three mismatched mugs of joe from the carafe. He set the mugs on the table along with a thin carton of milk that he sniffed at first before setting down. He retook his seat. “I knew you were working for the GBI now, Dane, but I thought you were a glorified secretary or something. I thought you didn’t do shit like this anymore—you know, like real cop shit.”
“He doesn’t.” Roselita blew at the steam coming off of her mug and then sipped her coffee. She scowled. “And I gotta ask. Did I hear you say you know a man named Boner? As in hard-on?”
Dane sighed and Keith sipped his coffee. “As in, that’s his last name, yeah.”
Roselita shook her head. “Wow.”
“And who are you again, exactly?”
“Oh, allow me,” Dane said. “Keith Bell, Agent Roselita—don’t call her Rose—Velasquez here, as of yesterday, is my new partner.”
“We are not partners.”
“And as you can see, we’re already besties.”
Roselita shook her head and lifted her mug as a sarcastic toast to her and Dane’s newfound partnership. Keith did the same. “Okay, then,” he said, and then stuck out his hand. Roselita met it with a firm shake. Keith wasn’t expecting it. His arms were cut and vascular, and cluttered with tattoos. He hadn’t had all his work done at once, like a sleeve, but had big colorful pieces of old-school traditional art that looked like they came right off the wall of Sailor Jerry’s tattoo parlor. On his left forearm, a blue anchor wrapped in a red and yellow ribbon that displayed the date 3-13-10 took up most of the bare skin. The piece was prominent, and Roselita assumed the date must’ve held some significance for Keith, but she didn’t care enough to ask what it was. He also had some sort of branding or scarification on his upper biceps, but it was mostly covered by his T-shirt. Roselita was indifferent about tattoos. She herself didn’t have any, but she did find two of Keith’s worthy of her interest. They were matching circular symbols on the insides of both of his lower arms, right under the creases in his elbows. Both tattoos, each about the size of a half-dollar, were rings with triangles in the middle. She’d seen the symbols before.
“You’re an alcoholic?” Roselita said, still keeping her grip on Keith’s hand.
Dane’s chin dropped to his chest. “C’mon, Velasquez. Do you have to be this charming everywhere we go?”
“No, Dane,” Keith said. “It’s cool. And it’s a legit question. I’m not ashamed of it. But can I have my hand back first?” He looked down at his arms and Roselita let go of his hand. “Yeah, I am,” he said. “But I’ve been sober five years this coming October.”
Roselita leaned back and crossed her arms. “But Kirby told me on the way over here that you were the bartender for the place downstairs?”
“I’m the backup. Nicole is the main bartender. But yeah, I fill in sometimes. Mostly I do the books now that Harold is getting up there in age. His sight ain’t so good anymore.”
“And that’s not a problem for you?”
“What?”
“Being around booze all the time.”
“It actually helps, believe it or not.” Keith smiled. He had a good one. “Keep your demons close, you know? Shit like that.”
Roselita lost interest as quickly as she found it. “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Keith rubbed at the circles tattooed on his arms and gave his attention back to Dane. “Is she always like this?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s a real peach. She loves to be called darling, too. Try it out.”
“Um, I’ll pass,” he said, and Roselita took a big swig from her coffee cup, nearly draining it. She set it back down on the table.
“Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch here. I’m glad to meet you, Keith. Congrats on your five-year chip. That’s a long haul. My father was an alcoholic, abusive piece of shit who never made it through one of the twelve steps, so good on you. I’m not judging, but you have to forgive me. Me and your homeboy here are supposed to be working a multiple homicide and a missing person’s case that might—and that’s a strong might—have something to do with a place up here called the Farm.”
“The Farm,” Keith repeated, and looked at Dane. “You’re heading out to the Farm?”
Dane said nothing and Roselita ignored the interruption. “So I’m sorry for being curt, but that’s where we should be right now. Not playing nursemaid to a guy”—Roselita pointed a thumb over her shoulder toward the bathroom—“who may or may not have killed someone who has nothing to do with our case. We are nowhere close to the scene of any of the crimes under our charge, or out there interviewing people who might know something, or pursuing suspects involved, you know, real police work—instead we’re here drinking stale Maxwell House above a bar in Mayberry four hours away from where our original dead body dropped, chasing down a lead that has something to do with chickens and boners.”
Keith listened to Roselita rant, slightly impressed.
“So to sum up: People are dead. A lot of people. And more people are likely to end up dead while we sit here gabbing. And the longer this little high-school reunion takes, the less likely we are to find out who’s responsible for any of it—or find this kid Kirby mentioned, if he isn’t dead already. But it’s cool. We can wait for that asshole to take a bath—and you have to admit, that guy is an asshole.”
Keith leaned back even further in the unfinished pine chair and studied Roselita’s tight, impatient expression. “She doesn’t know, does she?” he asked Dane.
“No, I haven’t told her anything. You got any sugar?”
“Yeah, it’s in the cabinet above the coffee maker.”
“Told me what?” Roselita said.
Dane got up and opened the cabinet. He took out the small sack of Dixie Crystal sugar and grabbed a spoon from the drawer beneath him. On a whim, he turned the can of coffee in the cabinet so he could see the logo—Maxwell House. He tipped the can to look at the date printed on the lid and it read: BEST IF USED BY APRIL 2010.
He closed the cabinet and smiled before returning to the table and refilling Roselita’s cup of stale Maxwell House. “As you might’ve already guessed, Ned and I used to be pretty close—Keith, too, but Ned dropped off the radar coming up on a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine why.”
“No, you can’t. You see, Ned used to be the one guy everybody knew was going to amount to something. We were all a bunch of losers growing up in a small town that didn’t leave a lot of options open for advancement, but Ned was smart, funny, driven, all that. He knew about computers and stuff like that before most of us even knew what the Internet was. He was college bound with an academic scholarship, and that doesn’t happen all that often up here. You’re born here. You stay here. You end up working in the granite quarries your whole life, you drink yourself to death, or you cook crank for the Burroughs up on Bull Mountain. But whatever road you take, it’s normally a shit life and in the end, you die here. As an adult looking back, that isn’t really true. In fact, being from a place like this is something you tend to be proud of once you get some sense about you, but when you’re a dumbass kid, all you want to do is get high and get out. Ned was getting out, and we all knew it. He’d be the one to put Waymore on the map—North Georgia’s first legal claim to fame. He was going to be the next Steve Jobs or some shit. Maybe the first Steve Jobs before Steve Jobs became Steve Jobs—or whatever. You hear what I’m saying.”
Roselita still looked bored and antsy. “So, I’m guessing something terrible happened and all that changed?”
“Yeah. Something did,” Keith said. “A few things did. The first one happened during our last year of high school. Dane and me were seniors. Ned was a year younger. There was a car wreck out by the Slater Street Bridge.” Keith told the rest of the story while staring into his coffee cup. Roselita noticed Dane doing the same thing. “Some dumb kids were acting the fool, dropping cinder blocks off the bridge in front of cars. A woman died.”
“Some dumbass kids, huh?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point. Ned was there, too. He didn’t do anything, but he was there. He was trying to help. The deputies who arrived on the scene saw a longhaired kid trying to yank open a car door, and instead of trying to help him, they tossed him on the ground. When they searched him, he had an ounce of weed in his pocket. A woman died that night, but instead of trying to find out who did it, they focused on Ned—who got arrested. He ended up being charged as an adult for possession with intent to distribute and was sent to Tobacco Road Prison in Augusta. He did four years of a ten-year sentence. No one ever found out who really caused the accident or why, and since the case went cold, it seemed like the whole town turned on Ned just for being there. In a small town like this one, when no one is to blame, folks tend to start pointing fingers at whoever they want. In this case, Ned was painted as a drug dealer who was most likely responsible for the accident in some way when all he was trying to do that night was help. He got four years’ hard time and a scarlet letter for his trouble.”
“So Ned’s fast track out of McFalls came to a screeching halt.”
“Yeah, it did. He went to prison. He was seventeen, man. It’s fair to say he has a right to be bitter.”
“Tough break.”
Keith was getting edgy, but Roselita didn’t care. She’d heard these sad-sack stories her whole life. Most of the time the sucker in those stories was their own worst enemy. No one ever took accountability for their actions. He was holding. He got caught. The rest is superficial. She sipped her coffee. It still tasted like shit.
“Everything about that night—what happened, what happened to Ned—was fucked. He had nothing to do with it, but he took the wrath of the county—all of it—all the same.” Keith kept staring into his coffee cup. He rubbed at the circular tattoos on his arms.
Dane put a hand on Keith’s shoulder and took over. “Anyway, after that, nothing was the same anymore. Ned eventually got out and started working in the quarries. Not quite the life he had imagined for himself.” Dane sipped his coffee. “Anyway, fast-forward a few years. I had become a fireman and eventually the fire chief here. One of the first things I did after I got the job was call Ned. I told him to go down to Forsyth, Georgia, and get all the training he could so I could get him a job working for me—to help get his life back. I owed him that much.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you owe him?” Dane stared at Roselita until she put it together on her own. “Because it was your weed he was holding, wasn’t it?”
Dane just stared back into his coffee mug.
“His and mine,” Keith said, not wanting Dane to carry the weight of his omission by himself.
Roselita shook her head dismissively. She didn’t care but understood the guilt. “Okay. I’m tracking. So then what?”
“He did it,” Dane said without looking up. “He went and got certified in Forsyth and came to work for me running the county fire department. We worked together every day and he did the job better than anyone I knew. He found a place not far from where we’re sitting right now, and I think it’s fair to say that he was pretty happy. It was a good time overall.”
“And so then what happened? He started eating dickhead pills?”
“No,” Dane said. “That’s when the other shoe dropped.”
Keith excused himself and stepped outside on the landing for some air. It was obvious that he’d heard this story enough not to want to hear it again.
Dane waited until Keith closed the door to start talking again. “Every year the county used to throw a big shindig on the Fourth of July. Keith’s parents funded the fireworks show. They’d get this huge outfit over from South Carolina to come in and light the place up. Everyone alive and breathing from here to Fannin all the way to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, would come to downtown Waymore. It was a big deal. The Fourth around here was bigger than Christmas—no joke. It was something to see.”
“You said was. What happened?”
Dane stared at his reflection in the coffee cup. Suddenly he didn’t feel like talking.
“The last Fourth of July celebration in McFalls County was in 2010. We stopped doing it because of what happened. Too many people around here were opposed to it after that.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Something went wrong—right from the start. Something in the mechanics of the machine that handled the fireworks malfunctioned. Two of our guys from the FD—two volunteers—and one of the guys from the Carolina outfit who owned the fireworks rig were burned really badly. All three of them died a few weeks later at the Burn Center in Augusta.” Dane drank some coffee and Roselita could see the memory age Dane’s face like a time lapse.
“That’s terrible, Dane, really, but what’s it got to do with Lemon?”
Dane slid his coffee cup away from him. “They were Ned’s guys. He hired them. He trained them. He was supposed to be in charge of the whole operation. The kid who died was nineteen. When the whole thing happened, Ned took it pretty hard. He blamed himself.”
“Accidents happen, Dane. That’s life. People get hurt in that line of work. I can understand the concept of losing people under your command, but if I’m not mistaken, weren’t you the head honcho around here? I mean, you were the Fire Chief, right?”
Dane’s stare got a little more distant. “I was.”
“Then don’t take this the wrong way, but wouldn’t that make all of that something that happened under your watch? No disrespect, but where were you?”
“I wasn’t there.”
Dane’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he just glared into his cup at nothing. It rang again. He still didn’t move.
“Dane?” Roselita said. “Your phone? Could be August.”
Dane stayed distant.
“Dane,” Roselita said again. “Are you okay?”
Dane snapped back to the moment, reached into his pocket, and took out his phone. He tapped it to read the number on the display. “It’s my girlfriend. I’ve got to take this.” He actually didn’t need to nor did he want to. But he didn’t want to talk about the Fourth of July anymore, either. He stood and answered the phone. He walked out onto the landing and passed Keith on the way in.
“Hello?” Dane closed the door behind him. Keith poured himself another cup of coffee and sat back down at the table. Roselita wasn’t positive, but she was pretty sure she’d just gotten blown off. “Keith, right? Listen. When we were back at Sheriff Ellis’s office, Dane mentioned having to go see a fella named Eddie—”
“Eddie Rockdale?”
“Yeah,” Roselita said, and leaned forward on the table. “And the sheriff got all bug-eyed about it, kind of like you just did a few minutes ago when I mentioned the Farm. Why all the trepidation about Dane going out to see this guy Eddie?”
“Why all the what?”
Roselita rolled her eyes and clarified. “What’s the story with those two?”
Keith blew at his coffee, though it was already cold, and thought about the best way to put it. “That’s his story to tell, Agent Velasquez. And if he hasn’t told you, then I guess he doesn’t want you to know. You’re his partner; maybe you should ask him.”
“Well, at least tell me why the Fourth of July is so hard for him to talk about. He was telling me about the malfunction and how Ned carried it like it was his fault, but what about Kirby? What happened to him?”
Keith took a long, slow breath before he answered. “Agent Velasquez, that was the day his whole family died.”