Chapter 6 #2
Martin had never been one for small talk. The tension in her shoulders lessened when he didn’t bring up her brother. Perhaps these types of interviews wouldn't be as difficult as she'd anticipated.
“So, you didn’t hear anything odd that night?”
“My hearing isn’t what it used to be,” Martin replied, tapping his right ear. “I turn the volume of the TV up to hear the voices, but it drowns out everything else. Not that it mattered much. The Threshing Man is said to take his victims quietly.”
Hadley wasn’t going to get drawn into a conversation about whether or not there was any truth to the Threshing Man. She had accepted long ago that some of the locals truly believed in the disturbing tale. Martin was clearly one of those believers.
“When were you notified that Missy had gone missing?”
“The following morning, when the sheriff came knocking on my door,” Martin responded with a disapproving shake of his head. “Sheriff Turner had a search warrant for my property, not that he needed it. I left him and his deputies to it while joining Reed and the search party he put together.”
“You were the one who found her cell phone.” Hadley followed up her statement with a question that could potentially prompt Martin to ask her to leave. “Why did you pick up the phone when you were instructed not to touch anything found during the search?”
Martin lifted one side of his mouth, but fortunately, not in contempt.
He’d softened in his old age.
“I wasn’t on site for the initial instructions.
You see, I joined an hour later. I called Reed, who instructed me to start canvassing the area from my side of the treeline.
” Martin shrugged, as if he couldn’t fathom the problem.
“I picked up the phone, brought it back to the house, and turned it over to Turner.”
It was no wonder that Sheriff Turner’s paperwork strongly suggested Martin Cox as his lead suspect. And while Hadley had her own doubts about Martin’s innocence, as she’d pointed out to Reed, she couldn’t fathom Martin voluntarily presenting evidence to a law enforcement officer.
“No one wants to talk about it, you know,” Martin said after taking another drink of his coffee. The angle of his chair allowed him to gaze out the door’s window. “Well, the media, but they just want to sensationalize him.”
“Him being the Threshing Man?” Hadley did her best to keep her skepticism from lacing her tone.
“Every harvest season, same thing happens,” Martin continued while still staring out the window.
“About a week before the first frost, the air changes.
Gets this smell to it—like something rotting in the soil.
Sarah used to say it was just the natural cycle of things, plants dying back for winter. But it's more than that."
His belief in the folklore was practically etched into the lines around his eyes.
“Been on this land seventy-one years," Martin replied, his voice dropping slightly as if sharing a confidence.
"Some things you just come to know. Like when the noises start.
Not every night, mind you. But often enough.
As if something is moving through the cornfields, but not quite touching the stalks. Like something gliding between them."
Martin's fingers tightened around his mug.
“Sarah kept journals of it all. Said it helped her make sense of things.” Martin shifted in his seat, finally turning his attention to Hadley. He studied her for a moment before lifting the corner of his thin mouth. “You think I’m an old fool, don’t you?”
“No, Mr. Cox,” Hadley replied gently, not wanting him to cut this discussion short. “I think sometimes it’s easier to believe something…anything…other than a human could be behind such evil deeds.”
“What I believe is that there are things in this world we aren't meant to understand fully. Did you ever consider the story about the Threshing Man—about him taking what's owed—well, maybe there's truth buried in there somewhere. This land remembers things we try to forget, Hadley.”
Hadley fought to maintain her professional composure. It was difficult not to think he was referencing her brother, and she wasn’t about to have that discussion with him.
“Mr. Cox, during your search for Missy, did you notice anything unusual about your property? Any signs that someone might have crossed through your land?”
“The sheriff's men had trampled everything pretty good during their search,” Martin replied with a slight shrug. “But no, nothing stood out to me. Kids go into those woods all the time. There’s no fence on the west side near the county land used for the festival. They never would pay to have one put in, and I sure as hell ain’t footing the bill. ”
Hadley asked a few more standard questions until she brought the subject back around to something he’d revealed earlier in their talk.
“You mentioned that your wife wrote in journals. What did she write in them?”
“You know how you ladies like to write stuff down,” Martin said offhandedly, the statement landing somewhere between observation and dismissal.
“My Sarah, she kept track of everything. It stemmed from when we tried to start a family. She had trouble conceiving in the first few years of our marriage. Of course, she began to mark everything down. From what she ate, drank…you name it. When the doctor finally told us it was never going to happen, she began to write down other things. Day-to-day life.”
“And that included weather patterns?” Hadley asked with genuine curiosity. Given that Martin hadn’t touched a single doily in the house, she was hoping the same could be said for his wife’s personal items. “Daily events that happened on the farm?”
“Every day after we decided to give up the idea of a large family and grow old together.” Martin’s gaze dropped to his left hand, and he stared at the gold wedding band in sadness.
“She’d mark down when the air smelled wrong.
The nights when the corn would rustle without wind.
And all the times when the animals went quiet for no reason. ”
“Do you, by chance, still have those journals?” Hadley inquired, leaning both arms on the table. “Her notes might contain valuable information that could help us understand what happened on specific dates.”
“My Sarah wasn’t around when Missy Claymont went missing.” Martin's eyebrows drew together, wariness settling over his features. "Her journals won’t help you. Besides, those are private. Sarah's thoughts and dreams.”
“I understand that, Mr. Cox,” Hadley assured him, softening her tone.
"And I wouldn't ask if I didn't think they could be important.
Sometimes, an outside perspective can identify patterns that aren't immediately obvious. There might be something in those journals that connects to other cases—something no one has pieced together yet.”
The mention of other investigations hung between them, though she hadn’t been explicitly referring to her brother.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t rule out Emily Esten from the list of eight potentially linked victims. Not yet.
After a long moment, Martin pushed his chair back, the legs scraping against the linoleum floor.
“Wait here,” Martin said reluctantly, rising with the careful movements of a man whose joints protested sudden changes.
He disappeared down a hallway, his footsteps fading.
Hadley used the brief respite to drain her coffee down the sink.
She had made it a rule very early on in her career that she would never drink a beverage in someone’s house when working on an investigation.
She rinsed out the coffee mug and set it in the sink before returning to her seat.
Minutes passed before Martin reentered the kitchen, carrying two floral cardboard boxes. He set them on the table with reverent care, removing the lid to the top one. Inside were at least a dozen leather-bound journals, each one labeled with a year in neat handwriting.
“I promise to bring them safely back.” Hadley placed her hand gently over his. “I give you my word that no harm will come to Sarah’s writings.”
Martin simply nodded, seeming to accept her pledge. He quietly replaced the lid on the box, his fingertips lingering on the faded floral pattern.
“There's one more thing,” Hadley said as she picked up the boxes before walking from the kitchen into the living room. “I'd like to walk your property, particularly the area that borders the festival grounds. Would that be all right?”
“Sure, but you’ll need to be mindful of the sinkholes in the back fields if you go over that far.” Martin stepped in front of her, opening the screen door for her to step out on the porch. “Just be careful, Hadley. It is harvesting season.”
Hadley walked down the steps, the wind chimes covering the sound of the creaks. She’d heard his warning, but it brought to mind a question that had formed many, many years ago.
“Mr. Cox?” Hadley turned around, holding the two boxes close to her midsection. He had let the screen door close behind him before coming to stand at the top of the steps. “I am curious about something.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“If you and the locals truly believe there is something to the Threshing Man, why would he take those young women from the woods? Wouldn’t he wait to take them from the fields?” Hadley tilted her head to the side as she studied him. “After all, isn’t that part of the story?”
“What makes you think that he didn’t lure them there? When the fields go quiet…well, that’s when you need to worry. Besides, it’s not like anyone ever found their bodies in those woods, is it?”
Hadley had never thought about it in that context. Not so much in the folklore sense, but the fact that whoever had abducted those young women had to have a place to dispose of their bodies. Maybe they had gone about the previous investigations the wrong way.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Cox,” Hadley said before lifting the boxes slightly to emphasize her next point. “I’ll get these back to you as soon as I can.”
Martin’s gaze drifted past her shoulder toward the single planted cornfield.
His expression shifted, becoming unreadable yet unmistakably troubled.
For a moment, he seemed to be searching for something specific, though when Hadley followed his line of sight, she saw nothing but rows of corn swaying gently in the breeze.
The golden-tinged sunlight caught the side of his face, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. In that moment, he looked older than his years, as if the land itself had extracted some vital essence from him over the decades of working its soil.
“Be careful out there, Hadley,” Martin warned softly. “Some things in this world don't care about badges or guns.”