Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
I TRY TO INSIST ON sticking around while the local police comb through Ezra’s house, but once I doze off on the parsonage’s front porch, Dishman gently shaking me awake, I begin to realize I might not be of use to anyone.
“Go back to your room,” Dishman says. “You need to get some sleep.”
“No,” I yawn. “I’m okay. I don’t want—”
“Listen, nobody’s gonna dig up Ezra’s body without you,” Dishman says. “I promise. I’ll let you know when we get the order. Go get some sleep, kid. You’re dead on your feet.”
Before I leave, I tell Dishman about the ledger I’d been looking for and he promises to keep an eye out for it. Then, he shoos me away. Grumpily, I get into the Bronco and drive off.
The scent of sulfur in Brimstone Hollow invigorates me just enough that I think I don’t actually need any sleep.
That I think I should maybe go back to Joel Shepherd’s and question him some more, or maybe drive out to Billy Shepherd’s burned-out house and look for clues, or go talk to Scarlett Nickels again.
But as I approach the motel parking lot, the lure of sleep is too strong.
I park in the first spot I see and stumble into my room.
I don’t even kick my boots off before falling into bed.
I think I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment, but within seconds, I’m dead to the world.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die …
The song comes from all around me. A congregation of voices.
I’m in a big white tent. There are folding chairs out but we’re all standing, all singing.
The scent of perfume, sweat, and summer grass fills my nose.
I feel a hot, horrible hope well up inside my heart. It rushes like a river through my body, dangerous in its beauty.
“Lord Jesus, please won’t you help this child?” a voice says.
And then I’m pushed. There’s nothing I can do. I’m falling backward.
Before I hit the ground, I jolt awake.
I groan, stretch, smack my lips. My mouth tastes terrible. There’s drool on my cheek.
I sit up and swing my feet out of bed and—Kkkksshhhhhhhh.
“Shit,” I breathe.
Two beads of jet stare up at me from a coiled brown-and-black-banded body. A forked tongue flicks at the air.
Kkkkssshhhhhhhh.
My revolver is in my hand, my fingers wrapped tight around the cold metal grip. I cock the hammer back.
CLICK.
The rattle vibrates.
Kkkksshhhhhhhh.
My heart is thumping, my blood screaming in my ears.
And then my phone rings.
I blink. Only blink.
And the snake is gone.
“Jesus,” I exhale. “It wasn’t real.”
I’d been so exhausted, so wound up, I’d fallen into a post-sleep hallucination, exactly like the kind I suspected Katie of experiencing when she saw the floating hand.
My phone rings again. I pick it up from the nightstand and check the screen.
“Hey, Chief,” I answer.
“You okay?” Dishman asks, genuinely concerned. I must sound terrible.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just, um … just got in from a run. Did you get the exhumation order?”
I hear the noise of his cruiser’s engine in the background. The ticktock of his turn signal.
“Sure did. I’d like to have gone ahead and got it over with today, but Coroner Bradley’s stuck in Frankfort. He drove the bodies of Dean Griffon and Billy Shepherd over and his van had engine trouble on the way back.”
“Can’t we just get someone else to open the grave?”
“Well, I offered to do that,” Dishman says, “I said I’d call the new funeral home in town and he bit my head off, said they have no official jurisdiction.
Honestly, I think this being an election year has him jittery.
He doesn’t want someone else there digging up his work.
But he’s not really wrong. As county coroner, he should be the one to do it, but he won’t get back till later tonight. ”
“Okay,” I say. “So, what does that mean?”
“Means I’ll see you tomorrow. Eight o’clock, at the Church of the Healing Redeemer cemetery.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” I say.
“Sure you will.”
We hang up and I pull myself out of bed and go into the bathroom and take a long drink of water. I check the clock and see that it’s nearly evening.
I take a deep breath, pick up my phone, and call Katie.
“An exhumation?” she asks, when I fill her in. “Is that something I … Should I be there for that?” Her voice is strained with exhaustion, stress, and emotion.
“I don’t think it’s necessary for you to be here,” I say. “You don’t need to sign any paperwork or anything and … well, to be honest, it’s not likely to be all that pleasant.”
She breathes out a sigh that sounds both relieved and anxious.
Now, with solid evidence suggesting that her father’s death was not as innocent and accidental as it had seemed, I explain everything I’ve found so far: Dean Griffon’s murder, the RV, the hiding place, Joel Shepherd’s history, Billy Shepherd’s death and missing finger, and finally Nathaniel Nickels’s prints on a bloody, scarred-up table in her father’s house.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I say. “I just didn’t want to alarm you until I felt sure he was wrapped up in something criminal.”
“It’s … I suppose this is what I suspected, why I hired you,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “But I think we both hoped you were wrong.”
She exhales a long breath and then says, “And you think—if there were drugs involved—they were using my father and his tent circuit to get around? I mean, do you think he was ignorant of it or do you think he was working with them?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s still completely possible that your father may have met Joel Shepherd in the course of his prison ministry and Shepherd may have had nothing to do with his death.
Ezra may have kept a separate ledger only because he really didn’t want to give the church secretary extra work.
And, while Nathaniel Nickels might have visited the parsonage at some point, left some fingerprints there, it might have been weeks ago, months even.
What I’m saying is, it may be that what it looks like is exactly what it was: Your father handled a venomous snake and it bit him and he refused to seek treatment and died. ”
“Do you think it’s more than that?” Katie asks. “Now that you’ve spent time there? Do you think my father was involved in selling drugs?”
I move my phone from one ear to the other and say, “I … Yes. I think it’s something you might need to prepare yourself for.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice only a little shaky. “Okay, so … what’s next? Can you stay and keep working now that the police are involved?”
“Yes, I think so. At least for now. The police chief is playing ball for the moment, but if it turns out your father’s autopsy features anything out of the ordinary, then it could become a murder investigation.
At that point, I’d pretty much have to take a step back or else risk contaminating the case.
Until we see the body, though, we won’t know what we’re dealing with.
So, as long as it’s okay with you, I’m going to follow up on some more leads.
See if there’s anything else I can turn up in the meantime. ”
“Thank you,” Katie says. “And you’ll let me know how the exhumation goes?”
I tell her I will and we hang up. Realizing how funky I smell, I head back into the bathroom, take a long shower, and then blow dry my hair.
I dress in my last clean T-shirt and grab my keys.
The sun lies red on the horizon as I pull onto the driveway of Scarlett and Nathaniel Nickels’s trailer.
On the porch, I knock and wait, listening while Scarlett turns the music off inside and stomps toward the door.
“What do you want? Another pad?” Scarlett says, before I can get a word out. “I’m not CVS. And you’re not the cops. You’re that private investigator lady I’ve been hearing about.”
“I’d just like to ask you some questions,’ I say.
“The hell you would!”
“Scarlett—”
“No, I haven’t seen Nathaniel. No, I have no idea where he is. No, I haven’t heard from him since Friday night. Now, get off my goddamn property and don’t come back without some real cops and a warrant.”
She slams the door in my face and I head back to the Bronco.
I look up Billy Shepherd’s address and drive, once again, through Brimstone Hollow and then beyond the church, all the way out to what had probably been a nice barndominium before it burned completely to the ground.
The perimeter is wrapped in police tape, but I realize before I even get out of the Bronco that my coming here was wasted effort.
The propellant, combined with the stick-built structure, the hot dry air, and the amount of time it likely took before the fire department arrived meant that Billy Shepherd’s residence is nothing now but a low pile of char.
Chief Dishman had been right when he said that if Billy hadn’t made it out before the place burned down, they never would’ve discovered the finger missing from his hand.
Defeated, I climb into the Bronco and head back to town in the gathering darkness.
On the way, I grab some fries and a Frosty from a Wendy’s drive-thru and eat it all before I even get back to the motel.
I spend the rest of the night scrounging through old news articles and databases, hoping to come across some key piece of information I’ve missed.
I read old news articles about Ezra’s tent revivals and find the circuit exactly as Will had described, visiting towns all over Southern Appalachia.
But there’s nothing else. Nothing solid linking Katie’s father to any kind of crime besides what I’ve already found in Mount Zion: a tenuous connection to Kentucky’s King of Weed, two murdered men, traces of drugs, and a leg breaker who’s slipped the net.
As I’d told Katie, we would simply have to wait until the coffin was opened to know more. And, with that thought in my head, I crawl into bed and fall into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER my call with Leo during a breakfast of vending-machine pretzels and motel-room coffee, I drive to the church, and at exactly seven forty-five, I’m standing at the graveside behind Chief Dishman and Coroner Bradley.
The sod has been carefully removed and set aside and a man with a digger scrapes away layer after layer of freshly packed earth.
A half dozen of Ezra King’s congregation members and a few townspeople stand off to the side displaying every emotion from angry disapproval to fear to morbid curiosity.
Thelma Worley, the church secretary, sits in a camp chair. Her hands wrapped tight around a thermos of coffee, she stares at the progressively bigger hole in the ground. Her face is impassable, unreadable.
Will Carpenter—stationed at the foot of the grave, as close as the gravediggers will allow—holds his Bible with white-knuckled hands. Ashen-faced and red-eyed, with tear-streaked cheeks, he moves his lips in silent prayer.
“You know this is a waste of time,” Coroner Bradley says to Dishman. His voice is barely audible, but I can hear the underlying anger and frustration in it. “I put him in the ground myself.”
“We need to know for sure,” Dishman says. “Now that all this has been stirred up, we can’t just let it rest. With everything that’s happened this week, talk’s getting out of hand. I’ve heard everything from serial killers to devil worshipers to trained rattlesnakes.”
Turning slightly away from the grave so he can meet Dishman’s eyes, Bradley says, “You’re kidding me. You can’t train a snake. That’s impossible … isn’t it?”
Dishman crosses his arms over his chest and says, “Impossible don’t seem to be something folks are all that concerned with at the moment.
I had a call this morning telling me the local chapter of the Masons are sacrificing people in secret rituals.
I had to talk the man down from getting a posse together. ”
“Hell,” Bradley says, directing his attention back to the grave.
The digger has finished his work and backs away.
In the silence that falls after the back-up beeping, a couple of guys ease down into the grave and attach straps to the coffin so another machine can pull it up.
Coroner Bradley moves away from Dishman, stepping up beside Will.
Will sniffs, his face twisting into a pained grimace, and Bradley puts a hand on his shoulder, whispers some message of condolence in Will’s ear.
Will jerks away from him, goes on staring at the grave, wallowing in his own private grief.
“Thanks for doing this,” I tell Dishman quietly, as I step up next to him.
“It’s got to be done,” he says.
“Did you find the ledger?” I ask. “When you searched Ezra’s house?”
“Nope,” he says. “I did call down to the Walmart, though. Thinking about that door hardware. I asked for the security footage and the manager had to send the request through corporate, if you can believe that. All the usual CYA. Sorry, that means—”
“I was in the military, remember,” I say. “I know what it means: Cover your ass.”
“So, we’ll get the footage when we get it. But I did mention it was part of an ongoing investigation and they wouldn’t want to hold us up. I also asked for the receipts from Friday night and they told me I needed a court order. So, that’s in progress. Hopefully soon.”
I nod.
There’s a long pause as we watch the coffin emerge from the ground.
“You get any sleep last night?” he asks.
“A little,” I say. “You?”
“Barely any. Digging up a body is just about that last thing I’d like to be doing this morning. But I need to be able to calm everybody down. I don’t know what we’re gonna find, but whatever it is, I hope it puts an end to all the crazy talk.”
I watch as Coroner Bradley pulls a hanky out of his back pocket and holds it over his mouth while two men approach the coffin.
Others around the grave site do the same.
The stench of an un-embalmed body, in the ground for three days in the middle of a heat wave, is not going to be pleasant and everyone knows it.
We all listen as Will recites the Lord’s Prayer and then the men pull the lid back.
Thelma gasps. Sitting right in front of the open coffin, she’s the first to react.
Pushing past Dishman and Bradley, I look into the cheap pine coffin, the lid pulled all the way off. Bradley inhales sharply as he moves to stand beside me, his face drained of color.
“What…?” he breathes.
“My God…” a voice whispers.
I take a deep breath. The scent of death still clings to the untreated wood. The tang of rot burns my nose. I look past the coffin. Into the grave.
“Empty,” I say. “It’s empty.”
I look from the grave to the bare coffin to Chief Dishman and our eyes lock in a mutual expression that says What the hell is going on in Mount Zion?