Chapter Fourteen
FOURTEEN
ON THE WAY BACK toward Mount Zion, I think about the information I’ve managed to scrape together so far.
Dean Griffon—who almost certainly interfered with my car—is now dead.
He worked for Ezra King and stored Ezra’s RV—complete with traces of drugs—in his garage.
Nathaniel Nickels, a local tough guy for hire, seems the likeliest suspect for Dean’s murder.
But why would he do it? What was his motive?
Where is he now? And how are either of them connected to Billy Shepherd, who burned alive with his finger cut off, the same night Ezra died?
“Goddammit!” I slam on the brakes as a coyote darts out in front of the Bronco. I gasp, heart racing, my foot still hard down on the brake pedal. My palms are slick with sweat and I let go of the wheel and shakily wipe them on my jeans.
“What the hell, man!” I shout at the animal, now stopped in the middle of the road. He stares at me, golden eyes glinting, and shakes his shaggy gray coat.
I’m glad the Bronco’s brakes are in good working order, but I realize I’m even more torn up over Honey’s wreck than I’d thought. I take three deep breaths and watch as the coyote licks its chops, and then, panting from the heat, lopes off into the opposite tree line.
With one more slow exhale through pursed lips, I push the throttle again, and at the next opportunity, pull into a gas station.
While the tank fills, I lean against the fender and close my eyes.
I try to clear my head but, almost immediately, the image of Ezra’s parsonage materializes.
I think about that house, now empty of its owner.
I think about the total absence of evidence that Ezra had once been a husband and father. No photos, no framed certificates, no memories. Instead, all I’d found were snakes in tanks, a closet full of black clothing, and the brand-new key to a freshly repaired door.
“Well,” I say to myself as I replace the gas nozzle. “It’s not much. But a lead’s a lead.”
Forty-five minutes later, I pull into the nearest Walmart. After a bit of a runaround I’m introduced to the assistant manager, a big guy in his fifties who looks harried and underpaid. When I ask to see the security footage from Friday night, he turns bright red.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. But absolutely not—”
“Listen, if I could just—”
“No, ma’am,” he says. “You need to come back with an officer of the law or a court order. We had trouble a couple years back with a private investigator and we ended up getting sued. No, if my boss comes back from her trip and finds out I’ve given our footage to a private eye, she’ll tan my hide.”
“Thanks anyway,” I say. I can recognize a wall (and a wasted trip) when I see one.
This guy’s not going to budge unless I can get what he’s asking for and there’s no way Chief Dishman will to agree to give me one of his officers to chase down what he thinks is an unrelated lead.
Still, I hand the guy my card in case he changes his mind.
Then I walk back to the parking lot, get back into the Bronco, and drive back to Mount Zion.
I stop in town at the police station and find that almost everyone—including Chief Dishman—is out. Officer Gavin stands alone, behind his desk, fielding a call about kids running amok on golf carts.
When he hangs up, I ask, “Hey, I understand you have Ezra King’s personal effects. Is that right?”
“I believe so,” he says. “We’re holding them for next of kin.”
“Well,” I say. “I’m employed by his next of kin. I’d like to see the contents of his pockets.”
I pull out my tablet, open the contract, and hand it across to him. Still, it’s a long, involved phone call to Chief Dishman before Gavin finally disappears down the hall and returns with a big plastic bag of Ezra’s personal effects.
“Chief says you can’t leave with it.”
“Okay,” I say. “That’s fine.”
I sit at one of the empty desks and go through the bag one item at a time.
There’s a grocery list with mundane items, all crossed out.
A wallet with his driver’s license, bank card, and credit card, and a little less than a hundred dollars in cash.
The keychain has several older keys and, shining among them, one that’s brand new.
It looks exactly like the one Will showed me this morning.
“You were the one who attended the scene, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. “It was … pretty ugly.”
“Was it you who went through his pockets?”
“No, ma’am, that’d be the coroner. I just went to the house, took photos and logged the scene, and I made sure the coroner came and did all his duties before taking the body away.”
“Did anything occur to you about the scene? Anything odd?”
“No, ma’am. No sign of struggle or anything like that.
No furniture knocked over. No valuables missing.
When I saw the bites, I was worried there might be a snake loose in the house, but Will Carpenter checked and said they were all accounted for.
It looked like he’d been bit and then put the snake back and sat down to wait it out.
And, when it looked like he wouldn’t make it, he wrote up that note beside him.
I asked both Will and Mrs. Worley if it was in his hand and they agreed it was. ”
The kid is good, I think to myself. If he missed the door, it’s only because there was nothing wrong with it. Nothing to make it stand out unless you were looking really hard. Maybe too hard. Maybe seeing what you want to see.
“Hmm,” I say to myself, turning the key over in my hand. It looks more and more like Ezra just replaced the hardware recently and forgot to give Thelma the receipt.
I pick up the last item, an older-model phone, and power it on.
There’s no code, no biometric security. And when I get inside it, I see why.
Ezra King used his phone as it if were a landline.
There are no apps besides what comes pre-installed, no photos.
There are a few old voicemails and several texts back and forth with Will or Thelma Worley or other members of his congregation about church-related things, but nothing else.
His email inbox is almost all junk aside from a few missives back and forth with the lab he sold the venom to.
I spend a few more fruitless minutes going through his stuff but find nothing else.
“Did you know him?” I ask Gavin, who’s standing off to the side drinking from a huge stainless-steel water bottle.
He wipes his mouth and says, “No, ma’am. I saw him around town from time to time but, to be honest, I was afraid of him.”
“Because of the snakes?”
“Yes, ma’am. Me and snakes do not get along. Spiders neither. One’s got too few legs and the other’s got too many.”
“Thanks for your help,” I tell him.
BACK AT THE MOTEL, I tug off my boots, crank up the air, and change into a pair of shorts.
I open my laptop and log in to my preferred PI database, search for Joel Shepherd.
I find news articles from his arrest, indeed labeling him as Kentucky’s King of Weed.
I also find his two-decades-old mug shot and a more recent photo from his prison record.
Small and wiry, Joel Shepherd looks the part of a cunning farmer turned drug dealer.
His bald head is spotted with age, but his white eyebrows and deep crow’s- feet frame keen, shining brown eyes.
I picture a clothesline. Ezra King stands at one end. Joel Shepherd stands at the other. Between them is a thin cord on which Dean Griffon and Nathaniel Nickels hang.
I find Joel Shepherd’s home address, but when I glance at the clock, I see it’s almost nine PM, and I doubt the almost octogenarian King of Weed would grant me an audience at this hour, if at all.
While I’m contemplating it, a loud rapping suddenly batters my door.
I reach around my back for my gun and then I hear, “It’s your landlord! You want some pizza?”
The man’s known me two days and he’s already found the way to my heart.
I open the door and let Hollis in, taking the offered pizza and bottle of beer. I use the opener in my Swiss Army knife to pop the top.
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m guessing you’re not just here out of the goodness of your heart.”
Hollis snorts and says, “You got me there. I was hoping for some dang inside information. Word in town is there’s a serial killer running rampant in Mount Zion.”
I almost spit out my beer.
“Come on, Hollis. Seriously?”
He takes a little bite of his supreme pizza slice while I eat my first slice almost whole and then he says, “And you didn’t tell me Billy Shepherd went and died with his finger lopped off! I had to hear about it from the boys down at the pool hall.”
“Chief Dishman asked me to keep quiet about it,” I say and watch as Hollis rolls his eyes. As if the idea of anything staying secret in this town is about as likely as a unicorn prancing down the street.
“And I heard you found drugs in Ezra King’s RV?” he says.
“I guess nobody could keep that quiet either,” I say. Hollis chuckles and I go back to my pizza. It’s from a local chain, still piping hot, and the grease drips down my hand as I eat.
Hollis asks, “So what are you working on now? Did you find Nickels?”
“No,” I tell him. “I’m trying to find a connection between all of them.”
“All of who?”
I picture my mental clothesline again. On one end, Ezra King. On the other, Joel Shepherd. Between them, Dean Griffon. Nathaniel Nickels. Billy Shepherd.
A driver. A leg breaker. A dealer.
The line sags with the weight.
“I think Ezra King and Joel Shepherd might’ve been connected,” I say. “But it’s just a hunch. I’ve got nothing solid to prove it.”
“What do you have?” Hollis asks, finishing his slice and neatly dabbing at his mouth with one of the paper napkins he’s brought along.