Chapter Twenty
TWENTY
AS SOON AS HOLLIS heads back to the office, I take my dish liquid into the bathroom, strip down, and climb into the shower.
Even with the highly concentrated grease-fighting magic of my lemon-scented, sulfate-filled detergent, it takes three sudsy scrubs before I start to feel even close to clean.
When that’s done, I throw my clothes into the tub with another squirt of soap, and fill it up.
As I head back into the room, I’m grateful that—for once—I brought more than one bra.
Having now burned through two pairs of jeans (my best pair eaten up by roadside gravel, and today’s pair soaking in the tub) I pull on my third and final option—a pair of worn-thin but still mostly intact black Levi’s—and a mostly clean black T-shirt, and head out the door to find some grub.
The Cherry Dairy is the busiest I’ve seen it yet and even before I open the double doors, I hear the noise of the crowd from within. When I step inside, several people turn and stare, a hush briefly falling over the room.
“Wow,” Zelda says as she approaches. “You sure know how to turn a place inside out.”
“Guess so,” I say. “Is there a free spot?”
“If you don’t mind sitting beside Camper Van Dave,” she says, and points down to the end of the bar, where an old hippy sits hunched over the counter.
“If you know what you want,” Zelda says. “I’ll get it started for you.”
“Anything,” I say. “I’ll take anything. I’m starving.”
“Word is, you and the chief went down into the Hell Hole,” she says. “I’m surprised you don’t stink.”
“Me too,” I say, marveling at the virulence of the Mount Zion grapevine. As I make my way to the end of the counter I hear snatches of conversations, all of them about Ezra King.
“I thought you said it was a serial killer—” someone whisper-shouts. “But why go and dig someone up after you’ve done gone and serial killed ’em?”
“No, you’re thinking of bats,” a man at another table says. “It’s bats who turn people into vampires. Ezra was bit by one of those snakes he kept. Now, what the hell is a were-snake?”
“It was that private cop lady from Louisville,” a woman says. “I heard she went out there and dug him up so she could get the evidence for herself.”
“You that private investigator everybody’s talking about?” Camper Van Dave asks when I sit down next to him.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s me.”
Camper Van Dave looks me up and down and then nods to himself before going back to his coffee. Empty creamer pods and sugar packets surround the cup.
Soon, Zelda returns with a big chocolate milkshake, a mayo-tomato sandwich, kettle chips, fried okra, and some fresh-cut cucumbers. “I scrounged this up for you,” she says, and hands me the check. Before she can run off, I give her a couple twenties and tell her to keep the change.
I wolf the sandwich down, licking every glob of mayonnaise from both my plate and my fingers, and when I notice Camper Van Dave looking longingly at my fried okra, I push the plate toward him and let him help himself. Hungry as I am, I can’t not share.
“Thanks,” he says. “You know, I heard you were a CIA plant here to turn everyone in town against each other. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I figure you seem all right.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“You gonna finish that shake?” he asks, as my phone buzzes in my bag.
I push the half-drunk shake to Camper Van Dave, fish my phone out, and step away from the counter. “Hey,” Dishman says, as I push through the door back into the parking lot. “You know the footage from Walmart? The security cameras from the night Ezra died?”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking it’s a long shot but maybe whoever killed Ezra—probably Nathaniel Nickels—purchased the new knob and dead bolt there and maybe we can catch him on camera.
“Well,” he says. “It’s here. They just now sent it over.”
“And?”
He heaves an annoyed sigh and says, “There’s a ton of it.”
“And?”
“You gonna make me spell it out for you?”
I swear I can feel him rolling his eyes through the phone.
“I’ll start for you,” I say, and put on my best Chief Dishman voice. “Annie, I sure would appreciate it if…”
“God almighty, you’re a pain in my ass,” he says, but there’s laughter in his voice. “You coming over here or not?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Soon, I’m standing against the back wall of a little conference room, watching as Chief Dishman goes over what we know so far. Officer Gavin sits at a table with another officer I’ve just met, a plump lady probably in her late forties named Jeanine.
Dishman stands beside a whiteboard decked out with photos from the crime scenes and printouts of mug shots, rap sheets, and various other pertinent information.
On the far left side of the board are photos of Ezra King, both alive and dead, along with pictures of his mended door and scratched-up table.
On the far right: Joel Shepherd’s mug shot, an old article about Kentucky’s King of Weed, and a photo from his release.
Between them are photographs of Billy Shepherd, Dean Griffon, and Nathaniel Nickels.
I realize, looking at the board, that it’s exactly the same as the clothesline I’d built in my head, with Ezra King and Joel Shepherd at either end, and three guys between them.
“This is what we’re trying to find out,” Dishman says, pointing at a photo of Ezra’s new dead bolt and doorknob on the board.
“Who was it that bought a new set of hardware and repaired Ezra King’s door on Friday night?
That person was likely trying to cover up whatever really happened to Ezra.
Make it look like an accident. The money’s on Nathaniel Nickels, but we can’t know for sure until we see the footage. ”
I look from Ezra to Billy to Dean to Nathaniel to Joel and, for the first time, realize we’re missing someone.
“What about Bart … Whatshisname?” I ask. “The farmer guy that’s been helping out Joel Shepherd. The guy we saw yesterday bringing him groceries?”
“Yeah,” Dishman says. He opens a file folder and pulls out a mug shot from Bart’s arrest twenty years before. He sticks it to the board with a magnet.
“Bartholomew Casada,” he says. “Looks like a dead end. We’ve checked his alibi for the whole of Memorial Day weekend.
His wife’s family documented the holiday weekend pretty thoroughly on social media.
Bart and his wife got down to Dandridge, Tennessee, on Thursday afternoon—stayed at the lake with his wife’s family over the weekend—and didn’t get back until Tuesday morning, not long before me and Annie here encountered him.
But … he’s still on our watch list. Just because he might not have been present at any of these murders don’t mean he don’t know anything about ’em. ”
Gavin looks from the whiteboard to me and says, “Plus, Chief’s been trying to catch Bart at it for years so … anything you turn up…”
Dishman shoots him a look and then says, “Yeah, all right. I’ve been sure Bart’s been growing for Shepherd ever since he got out of the pen more than a decade ago.”
“I take it you’ve searched his place,” I say. “You said he’s one of these off-the-grid types, right? Some kind of bunker?”
“It’s a concrete house—built into a berm—but yeah, basically.”
Gavin looks at me and says, “We got a call from his wife, about a year back, saying Bart was in the yard, drunk, brandishing a firearm. By the time we arrived, it had all settled down and she claimed what she’d thought was a gun was just a socket wrench, if you can believe it.”
“I cannot,” I say.
“Yeah, well, we didn’t either,” Dishman says. “And we had probable cause to search his place since he’s a felon and felons can’t have guns.”
“But you didn’t find anything?”
“Not a damn thing,” Jeanine says. “Place was squeaky clean.”
“And believe me,” Dishman says. “If the man got tossed out of the car, I’d arrest him for jaywalking.”
Jeanine barks out a sudden laugh and then points at Dishman like he’s said something hilarious. Gavin and I look at each other blankly.
“Jesus, Annie,” Dishman says. “Beverly Hills Cop. You’ve got to watch it.”
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll put it in the queue right after all this Walmart footage.”
He gives me his trademark look of admonishment and then goes back to his notes. “All right, everyone, let’s get to work. It’ll be a long night. We’ve got about twelve hours of footage to go through.”
“Twelve hours?” Gavin says.
“Yes,” I answer. “Will Carpenter says that he last saw Ezra King at the church on Friday evening at about six o’clock. Thelma Worley found Ezra’s body the next morning around eight o’clock, and by then the door had been fixed and the fresh paint on the frame had dried.”
“Okay,” Gavin says, bobbing his head as he jots down the times.
Dishman says, “Walmart’s the only place around here to buy new door hardware and it’s forty-five minutes away, so just to be safe we’re looking at somewhere between seven and seven.”
“How many cameras are there?” Jeanine asks.
Dishman answers, “Three in the parking lot, two on each entrance, one on each self checkout, and five wide shots of the whole store.”
“There’s only three of us,” Gavin says, looking from Dishman to Jeanine.
“Four,” I say. “I’m going to help out.”
Dishman glances over the frames of his glasses at me and says, “That’s right.
Annie Gore was a special investigator in the Air Force before she was a private investigator so I’ve roped her in for this.
Now, we’re looking specifically for Nathaniel Nickels—six foot three, about 175 pounds, long blond hair—usually in a ponytail—buying hardware for a door along with supplies for fixing the frame.
But, you see any of these guys associated with Ezra King and Joel Shepherd or anyone at all buying a set of brass door hardware, you let me know. ”
Dishman sends the picture of Nickels to all our phones and tells us which sections of the footage to take, and then we break up and head back into the main room, where I sit down at an unoccupied desk and try to make myself comfortable.
“You sure about this?” Dishman asks me. “It’s gonna be a slog.”