Chapter 18 #2
“Jesus Christ, Ron, it’s a baby. What are you doing?”
Ron let out a grunt as he eased onto his feet.
He towered over Seth, like he always did, creating a huge shadow.
Ron’s tartan sleeves were rolled up enough to show the bottom of what Seth assumed was a Celtic cross tattoo.
He held up the kitten—still alive, furry and calico with blurry little eyes. It was so tiny.
“This here is called a mercy killing,” Ron said. “Their mama took off on ’em, and the ones who were strong enough to survive went off on their own, leavin’ these guys to be food for the weasels. Snappin’ the neck’s a humane way to kill, over in a flash and wastes no bullet.”
Seth’s palms grew sweaty as the kitten squirmed in Ron’s massive hand. He got the concept of a mercy killing, like shooting an injured deer after hitting it with your car or something, but this was a kitten. Someone could take it, love it. It could have a life.
“Some people don’t take kindly to the sound of bones crunchin’, so they’d prefer a bullet,” Ron went on. “I’ve had some squeamish farmhands before, but those boys didn’t last long. Tell me somethin’—you ever fire that weapon on your hip?”
“A few times,” Seth said. His nerves increased. Ron held the kitten, absentmindedly stroking its fur, almost tenderly.
“Take a man’s life?” Ron asked, looking him in the eyes.
Seth stiffened. A familiar dread clotted in his veins. “No. But I came close.” Five years ago, when he was a street cop.
“Regret it?”
“I don’t. He had a hostage—I didn’t have a choice. Anyway, the guy survived, and this isn’t the same thing.”
“No, but you get it. You gotta be able to do what’s uncomfortable to make it in this world.”
Ron’s hands shifted around the kitten’s neck.
“Wait, wait—” Seth lunged forward, holding his arms out. Thankfully, Ron stopped. “I’ll take it.”
Ron stared at him, deadpan. “You’ll take it.”
He kept holding out his hands, palms up. “Yeah, I’ll take it. You don’t have to kill it.”
“You really are from the city. Always gotta be the hero, don’t cha, Detective?” Cackling, Ron shoved the kitten, still warm and alive, in Seth’s hands as he passed. “Come on inside the house, Clem’ll grab us some sweet tea. I’ll get a box for your new friend.”
Seth looked down at the mewing ball of fuzz in his hands.
Fuck’s sake. What did he just do?
The kitten scratched around in a box tucked in the corner of the Dyers’ kitchen. Clementine hummed a tune as she poured sweet tea into glasses on the counter, the ice clinking together, her feet bare as she wore a long white sundress.
Seth scanned the wall of photos on the floral wallpaper. Generations of Dyers. The families used to be large—the men were always big and brutish, the women long-haired and stoic.
“My daddy worried this farm would never return to its former glory.” Ron stared at the photos with pride.
“My mother, God rest her soul, only ever had me, not for lack of tryin’.
As for me, I only ever had two girls. Gave me a scare for a moment that the Dyer boys would die with me, till God gifted us with Sullivan. ”
Traditionally, Sullivan would have Marty’s last name, but Marty, as Seth had heard, had taken Clementine’s name when he married her.
Which for all intents and purposes made Sullivan a Dyer.
Now that Seth thought about it, Marty was the one person in the Dyer crew he’d seen in passing, but had never talked to.
Seth’s focus landed on a color photograph of Celine holding a toddler, a little girl with a tuft of blonde hair on her head. Claire, or maybe Clementine. There was a gangly boy beside them, maybe eight years old, staring into the camera with doleful brown eyes.
“Who’s this boy here?” Seth asked.
Ron peeked over his shoulder. “Huh, didn’t know I still had that up. That’s one of the little farmhands who came and went. Some parents like to have their boys learn about work ethic young. Nothin’ too serious, the odd chore around the farm.”
“You’ve had quite a few helpers over the years.”
“When you’ve only got two girls, you’ve gotta look outside for some help.”
“That’s how Marty and me met,” Clementine chimed in, dropping the glasses on the table. “Daddy had him working on the farm when he was a teenager. We didn’t fall in love till I was much older, ’course, but when we did, we fell in love fast. Now we get to raise our son together on the farm.”
Claire had said something similar about her and Dillon. Not that they’d fallen in love fast, but that Dillon worked at the farm as a teen before they became an item. As archaic as it sounded, it almost felt like Ron had hand-picked these men for his daughters.
Clementine plucked a novel off the counter—a romance book with a half-naked man on the cover—and slipped out the sliding door to the backyard, leaving them alone.
Ron eased himself onto one of the chairs, gesturing for Seth to join him.
Everything about the Dyers’ house felt from another era, but not in the way Norm Stanfield’s did.
It felt classic, paying homage to the farmers who’d made this place; some of the décor had changed, modernized, but the foundations stayed the same.
“You like to keep family close,” Seth noted.
“Yep, ain’t no better place for a kid to grow up than where I grew up, right here on this farm,” Ron replied, taking a sip of his sweet tea.
Seth did the same. The light sweetness eased the remnants of his hangover.
“Clemetine loved it here as a girl. Claire, too, though she likes to deny it. She’d be back there, chasin’ ’er sister around in those corn stalks, gigglin’ her little face off. Music to my ears, it was.”
Seth glanced out the kitchen window, topped by curtains with strawberries on them. The cornstalks out back swayed in the wind, golden under the late-afternoon sun. He could picture that memory; Claire must’ve been born with that infectious smile.
“What’s this really about, Detective?” Ron asked. “I know you didn’t come here to grab a barn cat and gab about the farm’s history.”
“Right.” He straightened up. “Full disclosure, Chief Wells advised me not to bring this to you, but at this stage in the investigation, I need to explore every avenue. It’s about your wife, Celine.”
Ron’s cool blue gaze darkened. “Go on.”
“Is it true that people in town have told stories about your wife? Local legends, that type of thing.”
“Sure, I’ve heard that before. Claire and Clementine used to say kids at school would tell ghost stories. Stuff about a woman in blue appearin’ in the woods. Cruel stuff when that’s your actual mama.”
“Right. With that in mind, it’s probably nothing, but we got a strange call on the tip line the other day. It’s most likely a prank, but I wanted to hear what you think.”
On his phone, he readied the recording. Ron nodded, his face unreadable. Seth pressed play.
That calm, reedy voice filled the kitchen. Seth watched Ron’s reaction as the call played out, but he gave him nothing.
When it ended, Ron let out a breath. “I’ve got nothin’ to say about that. Guy sounds like a lunatic, bringin’ my wife’s name up like that.”
Seth put his phone away. “I’ve been trying to figure out why the killer chooses his victims. It seems to be about their appearance, which means there’s a blueprint somewhere. The original person the killer is fantasizing about.”
“And you think that person could be my wife? Son, she died twenty years ago. A little late to drudge up the past now.”
“That’s true, but on the off chance, did she ever have any stalkers?”
“No, she did not have any stalkers. And I know where you’re goin’ with this.
It was your pal, Detective Haylock, who worked that case twenty years ago.
He sat right there where you’re sittin’ and asked me question after question.
He interviewed the whole damn town tryin’ to find who might’ve killed Celine, but in the end, an accident made the most sense.
People are too comfortable in today’s world—they like to forget we’re still in the wild.
Celine was idealistic like that. I’d been tellin’ her for years that trail she went down in the woods was too far from town, but she was convinced the animals were her friends.
They tell you they found bear tracks near her blood out there? ”
Seth nodded. He’d seen the photos; they were real.
“Bears happen to be good at makin’ bones disappear.
No body, no crime, right? Point is, my wife had no enemies.
The thing that got her killed was her bleeding heart.
I loved my wife, Detective. Twenty years she’s been gone, and I never so much as looked at another woman.
If I thought a man was walkin’ among us who’d taken her from me, you and I would not be havin’ this conversation.
Like you said yourself, that phone call was some sort of prank. ”
Seth let Ron’s words settle like dust in the room. He had no reason to disbelieve him, yet something felt off.
Either way, Ron clearly wanted this to be the end of the discussion. Seth stood. “You’re right. Thanks for your time. I’ll let myself out.”
“Don’t forget your goodie bag,” Ron said with a cheeky laugh.
Seth scooped up the box with the kitten in it, pawing around inside. He still had no idea what to do with this thing, but at least he’d saved its life. As he made his way toward the front door, Ron’s voice stopped him.
“Oh, but what about that ‘map’ he mentioned? You ever find anything like that?”
Seth faced Ron, who now leaned against the doorframe to the kitchen, his posture casual, unassuming.
Interesting how that was the part he wanted to follow up on.
“Yeah, I did. It led me to a forest near the Bursells’ cornfield.
” The cornfield Ron’s family used to own.
It’d been the first thing Claire thought of when he’d told her about it.
But Ron simply crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Huh. Find anything there?”
Seth held his gaze for a moment longer. “Like you said, it was a prank.”