Chapter Twenty-Seven
TWENTY-SEVEN
“THERE WAS NOTHING YOU could do,” Dishman says, turning to me.
It’s only when he rests a steadying hand on my shoulder that I realize I’m shaking.
“I … I could’ve…” I start, my voice croaky and thin.
He turns me toward him, away from Bradley’s corpse lying behind the table.
There’s a difference, after all, between seeing a dead body and seeing a body die.
There’s something uniquely horrifying about witnessing the seething desperation that suddenly envelops a person determined to end their life.
I’d seen it once before. Only once. I’d hoped to never see it again.
“He…” I start again, but my teeth are chattering.
Dishman grasps both my shoulders, holds them tight. His hands are strong and warm and sure. I can’t seem to look at him. I look at my shoes instead. His shoes. The floor.
“Neither of us thought he would take his own life,” Dishman says.
“No,” I whisper. “No, I … I didn’t think … I should’ve…”
“Annie,” Dishman says. “Annie. Look at me. Come on, now.”
He moves my shoulders again until I look up at him, finally look him in the eye. We meet each other’s gaze and, for a moment, everything starts to settle. The world slows back down. My adrenaline levels off and I can breathe again.
“Go outside,” Dishman says. “Get some fresh air. Have a seat. I’ve got to call this in.”
He points me toward the door and gives me a gentle nudge over the threshold. Then he escorts me to the top step of the porch, where I sit down and lean against the banister.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he says. Telling me. Not asking me.
“Yeah,” I say, because maybe agreeing will make it true. “You too.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he disappears back into the house and I hear the low murmur of his voice as he calls the police station, the other funeral home, Officer Jeanine.
I close my eyes and take a few long breaths, listen to my own heart gradually slowing down.
The heat is less oppressive here, up on this mountain, deep in these woods, next to this creek.
I can understand why Roman Bradley came here.
Why he came here to make the choice to live or die.
I open my eyes and watch a hummingbird dart between bright red flowers. Zinnias, I think. The hummingbird’s wings make a buzzing sound.
I’m not sure how long it is before Dishman emerges from the cabin, trudges across the porch, and with a slight groan eases himself down to sit on the step next to me.
Long moments pass with us sitting like this.
Shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing, listening to the forest. There is no silence in a forest, not really.
The creek goes on burbling, the birds go on singing, the cicadas go on humming.
People talk about heading into the forest to experience quiet, but what they’re really looking for is peace.
Humans seek the peace of the trees and the rocks and the water and the endless cycle of little creatures that will endure far shorter lives than ours, but that, generation after short generation, will continue seemingly into eternity while we bumble through our longer lifespans with the disastrous knowledge of our own mortality.
The breeze blows. The canopy rustles. Sweat drips down my back.
“Did he leave a note?” I ask Dishman. “I saw the paper and pen on the table.”
“He’d started,” he says. “But he only got as far as Dear Diana. And then nothing…”
“You couldn’t have known,” I say.
“I think I’m getting too old for this job,” he says.
“You don’t look it,” I tell him, giving him a nudge with my shoulder.
“But it’s true,” he says. “In here—” He taps his head. “And here.” He taps his heart.
“This case…” I start.
But he says, “This case isn’t just a case. Not for me. I’m supposed to protect this town. But here it is, tearing itself apart, right under my nose.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
“I feel like I brought it here,” I tell him. “Like my coming here is the spark that set off the dynamite that blew Mount Zion apart.”
He smiles at me, soft and sad, and says, “You’re more like a hand grenade than a spark, Annie Gore.” Then, when I frown, it’s his turn to nudge me.
“No,” he says. “No, don’t be thinking like that. The dynamite was already here. Just waiting. All you did was ask questions. If folks didn’t like the answers, they shouldn’t have been doing what they were doing.”
I nod and there’s a long silence.
Finally, he says, “You found Nathaniel Nickels. I didn’t see your text until … well, until after everything. I can’t believe he was down in the Hell Hole. God … what the hell was Roman thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I think he must’ve been involved at least since Nickels died on Friday night.
I feel pretty sure he’s the one that bought the door hardware, the one we saw on the security footage.
He’s the one that rushed the autopsy, the one that buried the wrong man, and the one that dug him up.
You remember how neat that grave was? Like it hadn’t been touched. ”
Dishman nods.
“And he must be the one that killed Ezra King this morning,” I continue, thinking about what I’d overheard before I’d opened the door all the way.
He had to go. Ezra had to go and I … I did what I had to do …
I replay the words in my head, over and over, and then say, “He must’ve figured out the same thing I did—that Ezra was getting those people out of the church for a reason—and he must’ve shown up and killed Ezra before it could all come out. I just … I don’t know why. Not yet.”
“And it’s gnawing at you, isn’t it?” Dishman says.
He looks away from me, over the steep steps and into the forest. After a long few moments, he lets out a sigh and his shoulders slump in something like defeat.
“I’m beginning to realize that there are some questions we may never know the answer to. Some things we just have to let go.”
“You mean like Joel Shepherd’s involvement? Whether his operation is still running?”
There’s a long pause and then, finally, he nods solemnly.
“I’d like to help you catch him,” I say.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this,” he says. “It’s beginning to feel like a snipe hunt. And I’m beginning to feel like a fool.”
I start to argue with him, to tell him he’s probably been on the right track this whole time, that he probably just needs to stick it out a little longer. But as I open my mouth, a police cruiser pulls up the drive and parks. Officer Jeanine gets out, frowning, looking past us to Bradley’s cabin.
“I’m going to have to oversee all this,” Dishman says, suddenly all business, as he gets to his feet.
“I’ll have to break the news to Scarlett Nickels.
She acts tough, but she and Nathaniel were together since high school.
Nearly twenty years now. And then … I’ll go see Diana Bradley and let her know what’s happened. ”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve got to deliver some bad news of my own.”
“Oh…” he says, turning his face to the sky, closing his eyes in a pained grimace. “Katie. I forgot. Please, will you give her my condolences? Tell her I’m sorry.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Come back by the station later,” he says. “I’ll need to get your official statement on all this.”
“No problem,” I tell him. “See you then.”
I stand and plod down the porch steps and then start down the steep gravel and wood stairs that lead to the driveway.
“And Annie…” Dishman says behind me. I turn to look up at him. He’s backlit by the sun so I have to squint and can only see his silhouette.
“Yeah?”
“Get some rest.”
“Sure,” I say. “You too.”
I get back in the Bronco and drive straight back to town. I park right in front of my room and dart inside before Hollis can accost me. I take a long drink of water from the sink and then strip down, shower, and throw my Hell Hole–scented clothes in the tub to soak.
I yank on a clean T-shirt and then, leaning against the table in the quiet room with all the curtains pulled, I call Katie. I tell her about her father’s appearance, not at the top of the mountain, but inside the church.
“Wait, so … he wasn’t dead?”
“No,” I say. “He was not. But … I’m so sorry, I wish I’d gotten there sooner.”
There’s a long pause and her voice is calmer than I’d have expected when she says, “What happened? Can you tell?”
“I think someone punched him,” I say. “His nose looked like he’d been punched. But then he fell and hit his head on the altar so—”
“No,” she says. “No, sorry, it’s just—I mean, from the beginning. What happened? You’re saying he was never in the coffin to begin with? It wasn’t his body they found on Saturday morning?”
“That’s right,” I tell her. I breathe in, hold the air in my lungs as I try to assemble the information in my head so I can lay it out for her.
Then, I exhale and explain the theory so far.
That it seems her father was working with Kentucky’s King of Weed, Joel Shepherd.
That Ezra wanted more money and started selling heroin on the side.
That he used his tent revival circuit as a way to move freely all over the Southeast.
“Churches are exempt from taxes,” I say. “And revivals are a cash business. There’d have been no way to track his earnings, and with so many people coming and going, it would’ve been easy to line up sales.”
“Okay…” Katie says.
“I think your father ended up crossing the man who’d been helping him—Dean Griffon—and that led to Joel Shepherd sending a local enforcer to teach Ezra a lesson. But things got out of hand. Nickels—the enforcer—ended up dead.”
“This was Friday night,” Katie says. There’s emotion in her voice, grief and sorrow, but also a frenetic energy.
I’ve seen it before. Even when getting less-than-ideal news, sometimes what we really crave is information.
And when we can suddenly fill in the gaps that have been aching and empty, it feels euphoric, cathartic, or energizing.
“So, then what happened?” she asks.