Chapter Twenty #3
“Damn,” he says, after a long whistle. “You know if you’d come and work for me you wouldn’t have to do the boring shit anymore. I pay analysts for that.”
“I know,” I say. “But this is where I belong. This town, this case. Who else is gonna do this? Who else is gonna get the answers Katie needs?”
I pull on my running shorts and sports bra and think about whether or not to strap on my running holster, finally deciding that it’s better to be safe than sorry. I slide the gun into the holster and check it’s secure.
“How are the nightmares?” he asks.
“Not great,” I say.
I sigh and sit down on the bed to tie my sneakers. “I felt like I was about to wrap this up. Open Ezra’s casket, find evidence of a struggle…”
“And instead,” he says, “somebody’s run off with the damn body.”
“Yeah,” I say. “The people in town here … I wouldn’t say everyone loved Ezra King. But they respected him. Or they were awed by him. Awed by the power he seemed to have.”
“And it’s bothering you,” Leo says.
“It is, yeah. It bothers me that he cared more about his snake handling and his faith healing and his pulpit than he ever seemed to care about his wife and kid. There wasn’t a single picture of Katie in his house.
It’s like she didn’t even exist to him. Like Maggie left and took Katie and that was it.
He just acted like his whole marriage, fatherhood, it never existed.
If your faith is the most important thing to you, then …
fine, I guess. But I feel like that’s not really what was happening here.
I feel like … maybe it was all a show. A spectacle.
This guy everyone adored—I mean, you ask anyone in Mount Zion about Ezra King and maybe they were creeped out by the snakes but everybody respected his strength of faith to the point that when that coffin came up empty yesterday, the first assumption wasn’t that his body had been snatched but that he’d risen to heaven. ”
Leo snorts.
“You’ll get there,” he says, so reassuring I actually believe him. “Your client sent you to that town to find out what happened to her father, right?”
“Yes.”
“And to find out who he was, who he really was.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you haven’t stopped doing that. You just had some roadblocks in the way.”
“Right,” I say. “My brakes being cut, a dead body, drugs, a missing body, a missing finger…”
A surprised breath of a laugh escapes him and he says, “Yeah, that place is crazy. But you’ll get there. This girl wants to know who her daddy really was and you’re gonna find out for her because you’re right, ain’t nobody better for this job than you. You’ll get there.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You got your gun?”
“After everything I’ve seen here?” I say. “Hell, I’m sleeping with my gun.”
“Good,” he says. I listen to him take a long breath and then he says, “Watch your six.”
“You too,” I say.
We hang up and I grab my phone and keys and—fully armed—head out the door.
I barely run a couple of miles before I feel too tired to continue.
My days and nights have gotten mixed up and my body is used to running before a day’s work, not at the end of it.
Still, I push through until I’m three miles in and, conveniently, standing in front of the Cherry Dairy.
I’m surprised to find Will in the take-out line, trying to juggle two to-go trays of coffee and staring at the big bags still on the pick-up counter.
“You need a hand?” I ask.
“Oh! Thank you!” Will says, relieved. I pick up the heavy, greasy bags of food.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Why all the grub?”
“It’s the miracle,” he says with a soft, hopeful smile.
“Most of the congregation have elected to stay and keep vigil near Brother Ezra’s grave site.
Not only that, some people have come from out of town!
It really is such a wonderful outpouring of faith.
It’s beautiful to see after so much … after so much death. ”
He seems truly optimistic, his eyes glittering with a mixture of anxious relief and hope.
“Brother Ezra’s ministry meant so much to so many people,” he says, his voice breaking. “I just … I want to believe that something good can come from all the evil this community has witnessed.”
I help Will load everything into his car and watch him drive away before I trudge back to the take-out window and order a country ham biscuit and iced coffee.
Neither Frankie, nor Crystal, nor Zelda are in sight so I eat while leaning against the exterior wall of the Dairy, the sun-warmed brick against my back.
Standing there, in the sun, lulled into a calm by the warm light and the buzz of cicadas and the hum of business in the Dairy, my eyelids droop.
“Shit,” I say, my head snapping up. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”
I walk back to the motel, drinking the iced coffee on the way, and by the time I get there I’m zombie walking, barely shuffling one foot in front of the other.
I lock all the locks behind me, push a chair against the door, and fall straight onto the bed, running clothes, gun, and all. I don’t even take off my shoes.