Chapter Ten
TEN
THE MOUNT ZION TOWN square is blocked off, but I park as near to the picnic as I can and then get out and start pushing my way through the crowd to look for Chief Dishman.
I pass booths selling hot dogs, funnel cakes, and all kinds of cold drinks, alongside a few local shops who’ve set out tables selling everything from gemstones to vintage hot pants.
On the other side of the square, there’s a bluegrass band playing under a big white canopy.
Despite the shade provided, they’re sheening with sweat like the rest of us.
I grab a flyer from someone hawking rappelling tours and use it to fan myself while I keep looking until I find Thelma setting out her hand pies.
“Have you seen Chief Dishman, by chance?” I ask her.
“He was just right here,” she says. “Well, who in the world…?”
She squints, shielding her eyes from the sun, looking far past me. On the other side of the square, I see Tina pulling up in her borrowed wrecker, edging the nose of the giant truck all the way up to the roadblock. Behind her, held tight to the wrecker, is Honey.
I start in Tina’s direction, but it takes some effort, reluctant as I am to see the scale of Honey’s damage. When I finally get through the crowd and emerge beyond, next to the wrecker, I wince. Honey’s body is all caved in and the gorgeous amber paint is gouged and scratched to hell.
“Tina,” I say as she comes around the front of the truck. “I’m so glad you got her out.”
“It was a time,” Tina starts. “I had to—”
“Just what the hell is going on here?” I hear behind me. “You can’t just pull up here like this. This is a town function, Miss Gore, and—”
“This guy the police chief?” Tina asks me.
“Yes,” Dishman says. “I goddamn well am the police chief. What’s going on?”
“Chief Dishman, someone in your pretty little town here tried to kill Annie yesterday.”
He looks from her to me, startled. “What? What are you talking about?”
Tina pulls her penlight from her coveralls pocket and gestures for us to follow her.
She leads us to Honey’s front half—raised with a big cable—and shines the light under the engine.
The metal is beat up from its slide down the hill and lumps of dirt stick in some of the grooves.
To direct our attention, she uses the beam to trace the path of a metal tube that winds around under the car.
“That’s the brake line,” she says.
“Okay,” Dishman says.
“You were right to call me, Annie,” she says. “I’m not sure anyone else would’ve noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“That line’s been tampered with,” she says. “That’s why you went off the road last night.”
“You went off the road?” Dishman says, turning to me. His voice is intense but layered with concern. “Why didn’t you report it?”
“I’m reporting it now,” I say. “I had no cell service last night and had to walk back to the motel. This morning, I called Tina because she’s the best I know. I’m sorry, but I just didn’t trust anyone else to look at it.”
“Goddammit,” he says, pressing his hand to his forehead. He takes a deep breath and then uses the light from his phone to have another look for himself. When he’s done, he says, “It’s an old car. The line’s probably just rusted.”
“The hell it is,” Tina says, her quiet voice a whole lot more menacing than her loud one.
“This car might be vintage, but her engine sure isn’t.
I put that brake line in myself six years ago and I gave the whole thing a tune-up last week.
Trust me—No, don’t trust me. Look for yourself.
Climb up there and look at the bends in the line.
They’ve been filed, Chief. Just a little, just here and there.
But somebody who knew what they were doing crawled under the engine and filed away at the bends in the line. ”
A few people from the picnic have stopped what they’re doing to watch us. If Dishman notices the gathering crowd, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he climbs up onto the wrecker and uses his light to more closely inspect the lines.
When he comes back down, he says, “Why would someone mess with your car?”
“Why else?” I say. “The only reason I’m here is to investigate Ezra King’s death.”
He shakes his head and says, “The man died of a snakebite! Nobody killed him.”
“Then why is someone trying to stop me looking into it?”
He breathes out a low groan and walks away from me and Tina, down Honey’s battered passenger side.
“Look,” I say, going after him and shoving my phone in his face. “I saw this guy last night after my wreck. He sped past me on the road.”
“Dean Griffon?” he mutters, as he takes my phone from my hand and flicks through everything Leo sent me. He’s still looking at Griffon’s old rap sheet when he says, “He might not have even seen you.”
“Oh, he saw me,” I say, yanking my phone back. I look down at the phone, the pictures, and suddenly realize why Griffon looks so familiar.
“I saw him at the Cherry Dairy last night,” I say, picturing the guy in the camo cap with the spit bottle. “He sat down next to me.”
“So?”
“So, he knew I was investigating Ezra King’s death!
Frankie—the waitress at the Dairy—recognized my name from some podcast. I told her what I was doing in town and that I was headed out to Ezra’s church.
Griffon was sitting right there. Listen, he has a record.
He’s a mechanic so he’d know how to do this and he drove the tent revival truck. He and Ezra are connected!”
“This is a small town. Everyone’s connected.” His voice stays level, but the emphasis is still clear.
“Fine,” I say. “Fine. Look, I only called you because Tina said we should.”
“So we could report the tampering,” Tina says, crossing her arms and looking perturbed. “And so you—an officer of the law—can take evidence. Prints. Photos. Cop stuff. Or do you not have that in Mount Zion?”
Dishman raises an eyebrow at her and opens his mouth to say something, but I break in between them, as calm as I can manage, and say, “Just send someone to collect prints and take photos. I’m going to go track down Dean Griffon and question him.”
By now, several people have scooted closer to the wrecker, whispering. I can’t believe Tina pulled the truck all the way up to the picnic. The story of me going off the road is going to be all over Mount Zion. If it isn’t already.
“You’re not going to have to track down anyone,” Dishman says with an irritatingly casual air. “Dean’s here. I just saw him setting up chairs for the lunch.”
“Great,” I say. “Lead the way.”
Dishman’s mouth pushes up into a smirk. He shakes his head with an attitude I confess I’m not unfamiliar with. One that silently, reluctantly says, The balls on this woman.
“Fine,” he says. He turns and clears his throat and the crowd disperses as he starts back into the square.
Tina and I follow along behind him through the whispering throng, where we hear my name, Dishman’s name, and Dean’s name all blended together in a simmering, gossipy soup.
We ignore them and march over to a clot of people setting up tables and chairs for lunch.
My borrowed Bronco is sitting just beyond the roadblock on the other side of them and I glance at it to make sure it’s still okay.
After seeing the damage to Honey, I’m suddenly feeling protective and edgy.
“Where is he?” I ask Dishman when he turns away from the group and back to me.
“Shit,” Dishman says, confused. “I know I just saw him.”
I notice Will Carpenter carrying two chairs past and grab him by the arm. He jumps like a startled cat and then breathes out a phew when he registers that it’s me.
“Sorry,” he says. “I said I’d help set up for lunch but—”
“Have you seen Dean Griffon?” Dishman asks him, cutting in.
“Mr. Griffon?” Will says. “He was just here. He got a text and said he had to go. I didn’t think he meant right now. But I don’t see him or his truck anywhere. Must’ve been some kind of emergency.”
“Seriously?” I say, glaring at Dishman. “The guy probably heard we were coming to talk to him and split. He could be leaving town. Come on, we need to question him.”
Dishman’s jaw clenches and unclenches and then finally he says, “Fine. All right, we can walk up to the station and I’ll get a cruiser.”
“No,” I say. “My car’s closer. Well, the car I’m borrowing. Come on.”
I think I’m about to get another bullheaded argument, but instead, he just shrugs, apparently defeated.
“I’m gonna hang around here,” Tina says. “Get some funnel cake, maybe jump in the sack race.” She leans closer to me and whispers, “I’m not leaving town until we’ve talked.”
“I’ll send an officer to check for prints on the underside of your car,” Dishman says, more to Tina than me.
She grins at him and then I turn and scythe through the crowd to the old Bronco, while Dishman trails me, already calling the station. We both hop in and I maneuver away from the square, heading north according to Dishman’s directions.
“So what’s your plan here?” Dishman asks. “You’re just gonna march up to his door and ask if he monkeyed with your brakes last night?”
“Pretty much,” I say, as he points me onto an old two-lane highway.
“Look, I’m only in town to find out what happened to Ezra King.
I was only here a few hours before someone cut my brakes, which tells me that Katie wasn’t wrong.
Something was squirrelly about her dad’s death, and me asking questions stirred someone to action.
Right now it looks like Dean is probably that someone so—”
“So, you’re just gonna corner him—a guy who might’ve tried to get you killed or at least scared off last night—and ask him what?”
“I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
He exhales sharply through his nose and shakes his head. After a couple of minutes, he points me onto another road. As I whip the Bronco around a curve, he tugs at his seat belt.
“Damn,” he says suddenly, looking around at the interior of the car. “This is Hollis Patton’s old Bronco, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m staying at his motel. He loaned it to me this morning.”
Dishman whistles.
“What?” I ask.
“He loves this thing. I can’t believe he let someone else drive it.”
“Really?” I say with a surprised laugh. “He played it off like this was some old clunker he didn’t care about.”
Dishman’s silent for a few moments and, when I glance at him, he’s grinning at me.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
He chuckles, shaking his head, and watches the road ahead while he says, “I’m just getting the feeling you know how to bully folks into getting what you want.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe I’m just so charming as to be irresistible.”
“Nah,” Dishman says flatly. “That’s not it.”
I crack a smile at that and Dishman says, “I somehow doubt it was your charm that got you recruited into Special Investigations.”
“You looked me up.”
“I was in the Navy,” he says quietly. “First Gulf War. It’s been a while, but I still know people who know people. The team you were on was elite, to say the least. I’m surprised you didn’t go career.”
“I didn’t like taking orders,” I say.
He snorts. “Well, now, that’s no surprise. Turn in here.”
I pull onto the next road, winding between a soybean field on one side and a hilly subdivision on the other.
The houses all look like they were built in the seventies, all of a kind, split-level boxes with deadly-looking blind driveways that cut onto the road.
Without AC, we both have our windows rolled all the way down and the air whips in.
It smells like sunshine and sounds like bugs.
I remember, suddenly, riding in the passenger seat. My dad at the wheel. Both of us laughing, squealing, screaming. He drove an old hatchback and he always drove fast. As fast as he could get away with.
“Come on, Annie-Girl!” he’d shout over the wind thundering in through the windows. “You think we can catch air?”
He’d take the hills at full speed so—for just a second—the tires would leave the road and we’d feel the sudden weightlessness of being airborne and then the abrupt, lurching drop as we touched back down.
“This is the road, here,” Dishman says, bringing me back to the present.
I turn into the subdivision and Dishman directs me to the last house on the left.
It’s a little brick ranch with a big RV garage next to it.
The Ford F-150 is parked just in front of the RV garage, the doors of which are shut.
The truck’s bed is still half full of the folding chairs Dean Griffon had been unloading before he took off from the picnic.
I grab my bag and slide out as Dishman starts toward the house. He stomps up onto the porch and knocks. Nothing. I walk around the big truck, to the passenger side. Down the back fender is the same deep scratch I’d seen in the middle of the night.
“This was definitely him,” I say.
“Dean?” Dishman hollers. “You there? Just need a quick word.”
I look around. There’re a couple of old metal rockers on the porch and a table that doesn’t match.
The place looks a little run-down but mostly clean.
I turn toward the garage and notice that while the big bay doors are closed, the little side door is standing ajar.
Cautiously, I crunch across the gravel toward it.
The doorknob and plate are scuffed, the wood splintered.
I push the toe of my boot against the bottom of the door and give it a nudge.
Behind me, I hear Dishman’s footsteps and then he says, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t just barge into people’s personal property.”
“The door was open when we got here,” I say. “Look at the lock.”
“Miss Gore—” he starts.
I ignore him and push the door the rest of the way open.
The sun shines in through the doorway, sparsely illuminating a big RV, a concrete floor—and, lying in a pool of blood, Dean Griffon.
There’s a stab wound in the side of his neck and his eyes are wide open and empty.
He’s lying on his side and his hand is slick and shiny with blood, likely from his trying to staunch his own wound.
The floor near where he lies is streaked with red lines made by his outstretched bloody fingers.
The marks, though only evidence of the last flailing twitches of a dying man, look like some horrible, indecipherable writing. A message written in blood.
Dishman steps past me, over the threshold, and approaches the body. I watch as he carefully kneels and checks Griffon’s wrist for a pulse. After a few moments he shakes his head. He heaves a sigh and says, “Nobody’s questioning him today.”