Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
HALF AN HOUR LATER, I’m outside Mount Zion Church of the Healing Redeemer, leaning against the Bronco.
The sun is fresh-risen and shines on my face, warming me up as I watch Chief Dishman—in his cruiser—pulling up the gravel drive and, behind him, an old gray station wagon trundling along, Will Carpenter at the wheel.
“What’s going on?” Will asks when he gets out of the car. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here looking for you,” I say, a bald-faced lie. I put on my winningest up-and-at-’em smile to go with it. “You said first thing in the morning.”
He looks dumbfounded, his mouth slowly falling open slightly. I take the opportunity to keep going. “Anyway, I figured you might be in the church and so I went up and looked in the window just in case and—”
“Why did you think I’d be in the church?” Will asks, his voice edged with annoyance and suspicion. “My car wasn’t even here.”
“I don’t know how you get to work,” I say, with a big shrug. “Maybe you walk.”
Dishman barely conceals an eye roll and says, “Annie, just tell me what I’m doing here at the ass crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, the day after a holiday that I did not get to take off, when I’ve got an entire day of yet more work to do.”
“Can you please let us into the church?” I ask Will.
He grumbles but pulls out his keys and leads the way. Soon, we’re all standing at the bulletin board. I point to the photo and say, “You wanted proof that Ezra had criminal connections. Well, here it is. Looks like he and Joel Shepherd were pals.”
Dishman leans forward, staring at the photo, scratching at the stubble on his chin.
“I’ll be damned,” he says softly.
Will gets closer to the photo wall and says, “That’s from Brother Ezra’s prison ministry.”
“His prison ministry, huh?” Dishman says. “Big Sandy. Did he visit other prisons?”
Will says, “I don’t know. Brother Ezra did … well, he did a lot of things.”
“Will—” I start, but Will interrupts, looking from the bulletin board to the window, and says, “How’d you even see that from outside?”
Dishman turns from the photo and looks from Will to me and then to the kitchen window. A puff of laughter escapes him and he shakes his head, understanding pulling his mouth into a sudden smile.
He says, “She saw it in the reflection of the coffeepot. Didn’t you, Miss Gore?”
“Um,” I say, turning. The silver coffeepot is, indeed, polished to a mirror shine. Thelma Worley’s doing, I assume.
“Yes,” I say. “Yep. That’s correct.”
Dishman gives me another knowing look and then pulls the newsletter page from the wall and starts back outside, gesturing for me to follow him.
“Wait a second—” Will says, his voice pitched into a panic as he follows us outside. “Wait. Why are you so interested in Brother Ezra’s outreach work? It was a special pride to him! He was saving souls at Big Sandy.”
“Will,” Dishman says, gently. “We’re just doing our job.”
I don’t know if it’s Dishman’s calm tone of voice or his demeanor or the words themselves, but Will sighs and all the tension drains from his body. Apparently defeated, he nods and says, “I’ve got some work to do. If you need me, I’ll be in the office.”
We watch him go and then Dishman turns to me and whisper-yells, “That’s quite a stunt you pulled. Burgling a place in the middle of the night? You know everybody around here’s armed, right?”
“It’s a church!” I whisper-yell back at him.
“Annie, we’ve got a BOLO out on Nathaniel Nickels, but nobody’s seen him yet. I can’t keep constantly worrying about you stumbling right into a killer.”
“This isn’t some cozy murder story,” I say. “And I’m not an amateur. I know what I’m doing.”
But, when he meets my eyes, I see something besides worry and annoyance there. Something deeper, older. Sorrow, I realize. An aching, draining sorrow. He looks away from me and back toward the church. He turns away, raking both hands through his hair.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“I’m thinking Big Sandy—Joel Shepherd’s residence until recently—is nearly a two-hour drive from here. If that was Ezra King’s only jail outreach…”
He pulls out his phone and, after a moment, says, “Gavin, I need you to call around to all the jails and prisons around here. Say, within a hundred miles. Find out if Ezra King had a ministry at any of them. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome to thank me as well,” I say.
“For burgling a church and then getting me to cover for you with that lame coffeepot story? Not a chance.”
I scoff, “I don’t recall getting you to do anything. Again, I think you’re underestimating my charm.”
He rolls his eyes and then, frowning into the early morning sun, he says, “All right, you might as well get in your truck and follow me to Joel Shepherd’s house. Save you the trouble of tracking down his address and showing up ten minutes later.”
I grin at him, get back behind the wheel of the Bronco, and follow him away from the church, through Brimstone Hollow, and back toward town.
On the other side of Mount Zion, Dishman maneuvers onto a long stretch of highway and then, eventually, past a sign that says WILLOW’S BEND.
The land is split between hillsides too steep to farm, and wide swaths of bottomland all planted with soybeans.
I follow behind as Dishman pulls onto a narrow gravel drive that winds past a stretch of maples.
Joel Shepherd’s place is an old two-story farmhouse in dire need of fresh paint.
There’s a flower garden out front, overgrown with weeds, and on the porch are a couple of rocking chairs, faded and cracked.
If I squint, I can see how—at one time—this place was beautiful.
The home of a successful farmer and his flourishing family, it now sits in ruin, a shadow of its former self.
There’s a croaky “Who is it!” when Dishman knocks.
“Police,” Dishman says. “Just need a quick word.”
We wait through a series of loud, raspy coughs and then: “Door’s open!”
I follow close behind Dishman into a high-ceilinged living room.
Dust motes swim in the early-morning light amid antique furniture and stacks of cardboard boxes.
Slumped in an ancient leather easy chair in the corner of the room is Joel Shepherd.
A tube runs to his nose from an oxygen tank at his side, and above his slippered left foot a neon-yellow light pulses slowly from within his ankle monitor.
“The hell do you want?” he asks when he sees Dishman. “Come to pay your respects?”
“For Billy?” Dishman asks.
“For my whole goddamn family,” the old man says. “Just about every Shepherd in Mount Zion passed while I was locked up.”
“I heard about Belinda,” Dishman says. “I’m sorry.”
Shepherd’s mouth twists off to the right. He jerks his trembling chin away from us and toward the window.
“She was a good woman,” Shepherd says, still staring out the window. “A fine wife and a hell of a mother. I never deserved a woman like her to begin with, but I missed what should’ve been the best part. Retirement. Grandkids. All of it. Stomach cancer’s an ugly way to go.”
“I know,” Dishman says. “I’m sorry.”
“I should’ve been there for her,” Shepherd says.
Seconds pass. In the kitchen, the fridge hums. The walls creak from the rising heat.
“Joel…” Dishman says.
“And who the hell’s this?” Shepherd croaks, his gaze falling on me. “I thought for a minute it must be Janey-Beth. Then I remembered—”
“No,” Dishman says, his cheeks coloring suddenly.
There’s more raw emotion in that single syllable than I’ve heard from him the entire time I’ve been in Mount Zion.
My reaction must be obvious. He stares at me and back at Joel and swallows whatever he might’ve said, clears his throat and—his regular calm mostly returned—says, “This here’s a private investigator down from Louisville. ”
“Annie Gore,” I say, offering my hand to shake. Shepherd takes it. His fingers are thin and paper dry but strong. His eyes, when he meets mine, are clear and hawk-like, giving the impression that he doesn’t miss a thing.
“What you doing here, Miss Gore?” he asks, as I step away.
“I’m investigating Ezra King,” I say.
Dishman says, “We understand he visited Big Sandy as part of some kind of prison ministry.”
Shepherd’s eyes sparkle with amusement as he looks from me to Dishman. He waits for one of us to elaborate, and when neither of us does, he says, “So?”
“Well, I never knew you to be a God-fearing man, Joel,” Dishman says.
Shepherd shrugs, sits back deeper into his huge, ancient chair.
“Sometimes,” he says, “a man ain’t got nobody to turn to but Jesus. You know how that is, don’t you, Matthew?”
I try to keep my eyes on Shepherd but can’t help noticing, in my periphery, the subtle shift in Dishman’s posture, the strain of stress, the edgy agitation.
“Can I see your Bible?” I ask Shepherd.
The question seems to catch both of them off guard. Shepherd’s gaze shifts back to mine and his eyes narrow.
“Over there,” he finally says, pointing to the far side of the room.
I tread across the creaky floorboards, cutting a path through the tension between the two men.
On an old end table is a stack of books, including a Bible.
It’s the old-fashioned, ornate kind I recognize as a family Bible, not the type for personal use.
It’s also at the bottom of the stack, which is itself covered in dust. This Bible hasn’t been opened in years.
“No,” I say, turning back to him. “I mean the one you kept in prison.”
“I was never much for reading,” he says, with a smirk. “And once my eyes went, I liked to have the stories told to me.”
Dishman scoffs and says, “And that’s what Ezra did? Drove all the way over to Big Sandy to tell you Bible stories?”
“Ezra came to the prison and talked about Jesus. Eventually, I got around to listening. That’s it.
Why can’t you leave a poor grieving man in peace?
You think I ain’t got enough trouble as it is?
My wife and brother are dead. My son’s in jail for life and my grandson’s dead.
Now, come to find out, my grandnephew’s also kicked the bucket.
And you waltz in here asking questions about—”
He stops, his words drowning in a wheezing, wet cough. I go into the kitchen, find a clean cup, and fill it from the tap. When I return, I hand the cup to Shepherd and he takes slow, careful sips.
“Thank you,” Shepherd says finally, in a rattling whisper. Then: “Get the hell out of here.”
He doesn’t look at either of us.
“I’ll have more questions later,” Dishman says.
He turns to leave and I follow him out, casting one last glance back at the old man. He’s still not looking at us. His eyes seem fixed on some invisible point in space.
As we approach the vehicles, another truck pulls up. This one’s a nearly new green Silverado that bounces as a huge man inside steps out, hauling bags of groceries with him.
“Morning, Bart,” Dishman says as the man comes toward us.
“Chief,” Bart says with a nod. “What you doing up here? Who’s this?”
“Bart, this is Annie Gore, a PI from Louisville. She’s assisting with an investigation. Annie, this is Bartholomew Casada. He—”
“Just Bart,” the man says.
“Bart’s a local farmer and he’s at Joel Shepherd’s house because…” Dishman rolls his hands, prompting Bart to explain his presence there. Bart spits on the gravel and then says, “Old man can’t leave the house. So, I’ve been helping him out.”
“Well,” Dishman says. “That’s mighty kind of you.”
“Just doing my Christian duty.”
Dishman snorts. “Your Christian duty?”
“There’s a lot of that going around lately,” I say.
“I’d better get these bags inside,” Bart says, and pushes past us toward the house.
Just as he gets to the porch Dishman says, “Hey, Bart, where were you on Friday night?”
Bart laughs. “Down in Dandridge, Tennessee, visiting Bella’s family. We just got back this morning. You can call down there yourself, ask ’em.”
“Thanks,” Dishman says. “I’ll do that.”
Dishman walks with me the rest of the way toward the cars.
“Who is he really?” I ask, nodding in Bart’s direction as he disappears into the house. “Besides a local farmer doing his Christian duty.”
Dishman crosses his arms over his chest and says, “He used to grow weed for Shepherd. When we shut down the operation, Bart went with the rest of the crew. He spent five years inside, and when he got out, he went off the grid.”
“Like … full time?”
“Just about,” he says, frowning. “He set up a whole hillside of solar panels and he lives out on nearly two hundred acres. Lives in a half-underground bunker, grows his own food, keeps his own livestock.”
“You think Bart’s still working for Shepherd,” I say. “More than just errands.”
“Bart was Shepherd’s best grower back in the day,” he says. “The man’s a genius with plants, has a degree in plant biology or some such. But … I’ve been looking for years. Never found a trace of marijuana around the man. Nothing. I just don’t believe it’s over.” He shakes his head.
“I heard about what Shepherd did,” I say gently. “How he ran through that roadblock.”
I leave off the rest of it. The consequences. The fallout. Dishman losing both a friend and his mentor. This isn’t just about catching some wily old weed farmer. It’s personal.
Dishman says, “I hope to find the operation—whatever’s left of it—before I retire.
I always had the feeling, between the way Joel acted on the stand and the way his family acted, that we never got it all.
I was sure the power went from Joel to his son to his grandson and then to Billy, and now that Billy’s dead and Joel’s back, I can’t help thinking—”
He pauses as his phone rings, and he answers. I dig out the Bronco’s keys while he mostly just listens to Gavin and then gives new orders to check Bart Casada’s alibi.
When he hangs up, he says, “Gavin called around and couldn’t find a single other jail or prison Ezra visited.”
“So, only Big Sandy,” I say. “Only the place where Joel Shepherd was locked up?”
He nods and looks over my head, back toward the house. I follow his gaze. The light glints off the windows. There’s no sound from within.
“You said something about the hardware on Ezra’s door…” he says, softly. “I’d like to see that for myself.”