Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
WHEN I GET TO the station, Dishman is standing behind Gavin’s computer as he scrubs through the checkout footage.
“Find him?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Gavin says. “Oh … okay. Here … it’s this guy. You can see the paint.”
I go around the desk and stand beside Dishman so we’re both looking over Gavin’s shoulder.
The view is from a camera about two aisles away so the man in the footage is small and grainy, but I can just make out the stuff on the conveyor belt: a dead bolt and doorknob kit, a can of what I assume is paint, and a little tub that could be wood putty.
I look from the stuff on the checkout line to the guy buying it.
“It’s not Nathaniel Nickels,” I say, leaning closer to the footage. “Is it?”
Nickels was tall with a lean build and a long blond ponytail.
But the guy on camera is average height with a softer body.
He’s wearing a tan boonie hat with a wide, floppy brim and sunglasses so most of his face and all of his hair is obscured.
He also wears a baggy long-sleeved T-shirt in navy blue, and dark work pants.
When he turns completely away from the camera to face the cashier, I see he’s wearing a necklace, some kind of braided gold chain.
When he turns again—side-on to the camera—I look for a watch or wedding ring or even tattoos on his neck or hands, but I can’t see anything.
“No,” Dishman says, shaking his head. “It’s hard to say for sure how tall this guy is with the angle of the camera, but he doesn’t look tall enough.”
“Or lean enough,” I say. “Unless Nathaniel Nickels has put on thirty or more pounds since posting that last photo on Facebook.”
“And there’s no ponytail,” Gavin says, obviously disappointed.
I return to the desk I’d been using the night before, open the Walmart door camera footage, then scrub it up to 10:20 PM. I scrub forward, waiting and watching, until finally the guy in the hat and blue shirt exits the store carrying his plastic bag.
“There he is,” I say. “This is him leaving.”
But I can see even less of him in this video than the other. His head is tilted down, away from the camera, so the brim of his hat almost completely obscures his face. I run the footage back until I find him entering, his face still obstructed, twenty-two minutes earlier.
Dishman goes to another desk, finds the same man outside on the parking lot camera, just walking away in a side view. He disappears between a big old truck and a horse trailer and then he’s gone, out of the camera’s range.
We spend another twenty minutes going through the rest of the security footage for the duration of time the guy spent there, but never catch sight of his face.
“So, we’re not looking for Nathaniel Nickels?” Gavin asks. “If he didn’t buy the stuff then…”
“No,” Dishman says. “We definitely are still looking for Nickels. It’s just, now we’re also looking for a completely separate and unknown accomplice.”
“Could it have been Dean Griffon?” Gavin asks, racking back to the guy checking out, taking a wad of cash from his pocket, handing it over.
“I think Dean was too short,” I say. “He was basically my height and this guy looks more average. What about Billy Shepherd? Could this have been him on a shopping trip before the fire?”
Dishman pulls his reading glasses up in front of his eyes and stares at the footage again before shaking his head.
“Maybe,” he says at last. “It could be. We’ll send the footage to Frankfort, see if they can get any details from this that we can’t. They have a backlog, but I’ll do what I can to push them.”
He stands and stretches and looks from the footage to Gavin to me.
He looks like he’s about to say something when Melissa Charles hollers at us from the front of the station, “Chief! Sounds like some kids from that church camp are driving golf carts out on Route 9 again. By the sound of it, they’re raising hell on the old McGinley property. ”
Dishman nods. There are dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks are sunken.
“I’ll take care of it,” Gavin says, getting to his feet.
“Once you’re done with that, Gavin,” Dishman says, “go straight home. Get some rest. I’ve got a feeling tomorrow might be a long day.”
“What are you gonna do?” I ask him, as Gavin heads out.
“What I spend most of my time doing,” he says with an exhausted smile. “Paperwork.”
I tell him briefly about my interview with Crystal.
“You think she’s being straight with you? She really had some vision?”
“I think she’s just a sad kid,” I say. “She wants to be special and her subconscious is trying to make it happen for her.”
“How many psych classes did you take to get to that diagnosis?” he asks.
“None,” I say with a snort. “But as someone with a tricksy subconscious, I speak from experience. Anyway, are you going up there tomorrow? To see Ezra King return from the dead?”
Dishman smirks at me and says, “I’ve got better things to do that wait around at the butt crack of dawn for something that ain’t gonna happen.”
I turn to go and then stop, turn back, and say, “Forgive me for saying so—”
“Here we go,” he says, crossing his arms but still smirking. “What is it?”
Exhaling a little, I say, “When I got here, it seemed like you believed in Ezra. In the power of his faith, if nothing else. It seemed like you admired him. Has all this … everything we’ve found out or, I guess, sort of half found out, changed that?”
Dishman’s arms drop in an expression of giving up and he shrugs his big shoulders and says, “I suppose it has. At the end of the day, I’m a cop. I have to follow the evidence. Even if that means … Even if sometimes that leads to embarrassing realizations.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” I tell him, as I tug my bag onto my shoulder. “First of all, until we find his body, we won’t know for sure how much he was really involved in a drug operation that may or may not have even existed…”
Dishman throws me a look and I continue, “Seriously. We don’t know. We can suspect based on evidence, but we don’t know.”
“True,” he says. And then, walking me to the door, he asks, “Are you going up to the mountain tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” I say. “After all, if Ezra suddenly materializes in front of everyone, I can forget all this tedious footage scrubbing and fingerprint gathering and just ask him what the hell happened and go home.”
He laughs and I pull open the door. As I’m walking through, he says, “Stay out of trouble.”
I shoot him a thumbs-up before sliding out into the evening. I check my watch. It’s almost 9 PM.
“I wonder if Coroner Bradley would take a visitor at this hour?” I ask myself as I walk back to the Bronco.
I drive up Main Street and around to the top of the hill where Bradley Funeral Home is situated.
The coroner van isn’t there, but a light shines in the upper story. I take my chances and knock.
After a few moments, the door to the adjoining flower shop opens with a jangle of bells. A woman steps out onto the walkway and asks, “Can I help you?” She’s thin, with chestnut hair, and the well-manicured look of someone who has all their clothes dry-cleaned.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I tell her. “I was just looking for the coroner. I keep missing him.”
“Oh,” she says, taking a step closer as she studies me. “You’re the private investigator, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Diana Bradley,” she says, offering a long-fingered, firm hand for me to shake. “I’ve been hearing about you all over town. I’m sorry you missed Roman. He mentioned that you needed to talk to him.”
“He seems very busy,” I tell her.
Her head tilts to the side, glossy hair swishing, as she smiles apologetically.
“It’s always like this around holidays. Fourth of July and New Year’s are the worst, but Memorial Day is always bad.
The start of the summer season and all that.
And this year—with the heat—seems like it’s been even worse than usual.
I’m so sorry you missed him, though. You’re investigating Ezra King, right? ”
“That’s right.”
She shakes her head and comes another step closer, speaking in soft tones. “I cannot believe that coffin was empty. Honestly, what is this world coming to? Taking a dead body out of its grave in the middle of the night? It’s beyond the pale.”
“You don’t believe the Lord called him to heaven?” I ask.
“Do you?” she says, with a cocked eyebrow.
“No, I always thought Ezra King was bad news. You learn a lot about death in this job and you learn what kind of person gets a charge from brushing up against it. I can’t tell you how many thrill seekers Roman’s had downstairs on the slab.
I don’t think Ezra was any different from any of the rest. He just—”
A phone rings in the shop behind her.
“I’ll let him know you came by,” she says quickly. I watch as she turns and disappears into the shop, beyond the windows crowded with lilies and roses.
Back at the motel, I let myself into my room, pull on my running clothes, and head back out the door. Mile after mile, my feet thump the cracked Mount Zion sidewalks. In and out of the beams of old streetlights, I go through the case in my head, trying to put everything into order.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
In all my attempts to connect Ezra King to Joel Shepherd—with Dean Griffon, Billy Shepherd, and Nathaniel Nickels between them—I never thought it possible that Ezra’s body would be missing.
And he’s supposed to make his miraculous return in a matter of hours, on a mountaintop?
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Like Jesus, I think, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
I think back to that tent revival, the way the preacher had pushed me over, the way I’d been so desperate for food and security and comfort. I’d needed guidance, assurance. How disappointed I’d been. How afraid.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
The miles pour out behind me.
I need to understand him, Katie had said. So I can understand myself.
I think about the hand she’d seen, writing on the wall.
The king has been judged. His kingdom is no more.
And I think about the Bible story Will had relayed to me. The story of Daniel, brought amongst the most powerful men in the kingdom, translating the message on the wall. Telling the truth despite what it might cost him.
And I think about Crystal’s vision. Her prophecy, her message for the people of Mount Zion. The way goose bumps crawled up her arms and tears fell down her cheeks as she told me about Ezra King appearing to her with the revelation that he would return.
And what, exactly, had she actually seen? A dream? A hallucination?
He told me that I needed to carry a message to the church. Brother Ezra will return and minister to his flock at dawn.
I push harder, pumping my legs, swinging my arms. Taking the last stretch at a sprint. Giving it everything. Wearing myself out.
Thump thump thumpthumpthump!
In the hot air, my breath scrapes its way out of my lungs, and before I know it I find myself back at the motel. I take a long shower and go through my case notes again. I write up everything that’s happened so far, everything I know about the case.
Katie’s hunch had been right, I think. What I’d told Dishman was true.
We can’t know for sure what Ezra King had been wrapped up in until we find his body.
Or Nathaniel Nickels. Or both. But, either way, Ezra King must have been wrapped up in something.
Something bad enough that it led to Dean Griffon filing down my brake line and Nathaniel Nickels killing Dean Griffon and, finally, the theft of Ezra King’s body.
And, almost certainly related somehow, Billy Shepherd was beaten and burned nearly to death while his finger went missing.
Sometime around two o’clock, with these thoughts still spinning in my head like a carousel, I drift off sitting up on the bed, my notebook still in my lap.
“Annie-Girl,” a voice says. “Annie-Girl, wake up.”
I open my eyes.
In the predawn gloam, with the curtains mostly closed, I can only barely see his outline. Tall and skinny with raven-sheen hair and a black suit, his pale skin is bright in contrast.
Ezra King is standing at the edge of my bed.