The teal Grand Prix was parked in front of the crumbling shack where Sissy Brewer lived. Dwayne had driven his brother’s car home. The car’s faded paint was a strangely bright juxtaposition to the whitewashed boards that curled away from the home’s crudely framed bones. Dwayne was around back grabbing a can of mixed gas he’d let Carol borrow that summer. He could hear someone banging on the front door.
“Jackson County Sheriff’s Office,” they yelled. “Mr. Brewer, I need to speak with you. Jackson County Sherriff’s Office. I need you to come to the door.”
Dwayne Brewer peered around the side of the house, a dwelling on the verge of collapse. Stillwell stood on the porch with his right hand resting on the handle of his sidearm. Forest-green paint on the front door was aged to little more than stain, the grain of the wood raised on the surface like braille. He was beating the door with his fist till it shook loosely on bent hinges against the rotten jamb.
“Jackson County Sheriff’s Office,” Stillwell yelled. He stood there in a pair of olive drab 5.11 cargo pants and a black polo with a badge embroidered on the left breast. His hair was parted neatly. His face was clean-shaven.
A dried leaf scratched its way across the porch and a wood hen screeched somewhere off in the timbers. There was a window to the left of the door. A small bench sat in front of the windowsill with a chipped terra-cotta pot holding gray dirt and a gnarled dead plant. Stillwell knelt with his hand shading his eyes and leaned close to the glass to peer inside. The windowpanes were wavy glass clouded with grime, and as he rapped on the glass with his knuckle, the pane rattled against the grilles.
“Mr. Brewer. Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. If you’re inside, I need you to come to the door.”
“He ain’t here,” Dwayne said as he stepped around the side of the house into the open.
Stillwell jumped at the sound of Dwayne Brewer’s voice, his strong hand gripping his pistol. “Where is he?”
“Beats me,” Dwayne said. He wore a pair of muddied blue jeans and a yellow-tinged wifebeater that hung loosely over his barrel chest. Dwayne Brewer looked almost simian, like something from a carnival that might make a living eating glass. “Ain’t seen him.”
“That’s his car, ain’t it?” Stillwell nodded to the Grand Prix.
“Yeah.”
“So his car’s here, but he ain’t?”
“Looks that way.”
“Well, where is he?”
“How the hell I’m supposed to know that?” Dwayne canted his head to the side and waited for an answer, a red can of gas in his right hand.
“You don’t find it strange his car’s here and he’s not?”
“Of course it’s strange, but Sissy’s queer as a football bat. Besides, it’s the tail end of ginseng season. He’s got honey holes down in Oconee where the berries ain’t even dropped. Hell, he might have run down there or on over into Georgia, for all I know. Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“And how would he have gotten there?”
“Might’ve hopped a goddamn train for all I know.”
Stillwell came off the porch and walked to where the two of them were within arm’s reach of one another. He was nothing standing next to a brute like Dwayne, Stillwell barely reaching his shoulders and Dwayne having him by a good hundred pounds. I bet you I could stretch you out like a rabbit, Dwayne thought. I could take you by the legs, stretch you right fast, and break your neck like a rabbit’s.
Seeing Stillwell standing there lit Dwayne afire inside. While his brother rotted into nothing through those trees, the law was beating his door off the hinges. No one wanted to let a sleeping dog lie. No one wanted to give them a lick of peace.
“What you sniffing around here for anyways? Thought you was supposed to be figuring out what happened to that Moody boy?”
“I am.”
“Then like I said, why you sniffing around here?”
“Trying to talk to your brother about anything he might’ve seen while he was stealing Mr. Coward’s ginseng. That’s what you said he was doing, right?”
“And what the hell’s ginseng got to do with what happened to that Moody boy?”
“Nothing necessarily.”
“So why’s a homicide detective worried about an old man’s ginseng patch?”
“We ain’t lucky enough to have a homicide division,” Stillwell said. “I’ve got a dozen open cases piled on my desk right now. Poaching ginseng lands on my plate the same as missing persons or murder.”
“A man’s got to prioritize.”
“What you doing with that gas can?”
Dwayne Brewer looked down like he’d forgotten what was in his hand. “Needed mixed gas for the chainsaw. Forgot I’d let Sissy borrow it for a weed-eating job a couple months ago.” He looked at Stillwell with an expression caught between boredom and disgust. “Think I’ll be getting on to the house.”
Stillwell held tight as Dwayne glided past him and headed across the yellowed yard. “Where’s your car?”
“Down at the house,” Dwayne shouted without turning.
“How you getting home?”
Finally, Dwayne stopped and spun back. “House is right through the woods a ways. Kitchens Branch is right over those hills.” Dwayne nodded into the trees. The sunlight hit him just so, his eyes lit black as onyx.
“Want a ride?”
“No,” Dwayne said, and turned.
“You see your brother, you tell him to call me,” Stillwell shouted.
Dwayne lifted the gas can high as if to sign that he’d heard him, but he didn’t turn back and he didn’t answer, he merely wandered farther into the thicket of saplings and brush, the woods closing in around him.