Chapter 29
Burton Scott — Evening
The headlights of Grant’s truck cut a lonely path through the dust of Scott Valley Road. It was only a mile and a half from Bridlepath to the elder Scott’s place, but tonight it felt like a hundred miles of bad road.
Grant gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white in the glow of the dashboard. Beside him, Burke sat low in the seat, his eyes fixed on the dark silhouettes of the hemlocks passing by.
“Grant,” Burke said, his voice quiet.
“Yeah.”
“When we get there… let me handle the talking. At least at first.”
Grant cut a sharp look toward his brother. “Why? You think I can’t handle it?”
“I think you and Pop are cut from the same piece of jagged stone,” Burke said, finally looking over. “You’re both stubborn; you both have a temper like a dry forest in July, and right now, we need answers, not a fistfight. Just… let me set the scene.”
“Fine. But if he starts stonewalling us, Burke, I’m not sitting there.”
“He won’t stonewall us. Not if we show him what’s actually happening.”
They pulled up to the fence line where Burton’s old truck was parked. The elder Scott was out by the wire, his back to them, silhouetted against the fading purple of the sky.
Grant killed the engine. The stillness that followed was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic clink-clink of Burton working the wire.
They stepped out, the gravel crunching under their boots. Burton didn’t look up. He didn’t even pause.
“Pop,” Burke said, keeping his voice level as they reached the fence. “We need a minute.”
Burton worked a pair of pliers against a loose staple, the metal screeching in the quiet. “Sun’s down, Burke. I’m finishing this line.”
“It’s about the Talley place,” Burke pressed, stepping closer to the barbed wire.
“Someone broke in today. Not kids, Pop. Professional. They were searching for something specific, and they knew right where to look. They hit that cabin less than an hour after Izzy Moreno told Wade Hollis she’d found Clara Vale’s paintings. ”
That got him.
The pliers stopped. Burton’s shoulders shifted, a slow, deliberate movement. He tested the wire with his palm, then finally straightened. He turned, looking at both of them like he’d been expecting a storm he’d hoped would pass.
“Didn’t figure I’d get both of you at once,” he said.
Burke tried to maintain the lead.
“You got something you want to say?” Burton said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous rumble. “You better go ahead and say it plain.”
Grant didn’t hesitate. “Someone is covering their tracks now, which means there were tracks to cover back then. Did you protect him? Did you bend that badge for Wade Hollis?”
Grant felt the air go cold.
Burton stared at Grant. Not angry. Deadly still.
“You’d better think real hard about what you just asked me,” Burton said.
“Then answer it,” Grant challenged, ignoring Burke’s warning hand on his arm. “A girl goes missing, Hollis is all over the scene, and you close it out like it’s a runaway case.”
Burton’s chest expanded, a slow, deliberate breath. “Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me you came over here to question me on the law? On my integrity?”
He stepped right into Grant’s space, eye-to-eye, two generations of Scott steel clashing in the dark.
“I never broke a law in my life,” Burton rasped, his voice like grinding stones.
“And I sure as hell wouldn’t break one for Wade Hollis or anyone else, for that matter.
I wore that badge with honor for thirty years.
So you boys better think long and hard about the next words coming out of your mouths.
Because once you say ’em, you can’t take ’em back. ”
Burke stepped back a half-inch, the lawman in him recognizing the absolute, unshakable conviction in his father’s voice. He looked at Grant, pleading with his eyes for him to shut up.
But Grant didn’t move. He was too much like the man in front of him.
“The sketches don’t lie, Pop,” Grant said, his voice lower now, but no less stubborn. “She drew the landing strip. She drew Wade's people loading crates into a Cessna. And she drew you standing in the treeline with your badge, watching it happen.”
Burton held his ground, his face a granite mask in the gathering dark.
“I don’t deal in drawings and imagination.
I deal in what can be proven in a court of law.
There was no body. There was no struggle.
There was no evidence of foul play. That is the truth.
That is the record. If you think you know better, then you go find it.
But don’t you dare stand in my yard and question my honor. ”
He turned his back on them. Final.
The sound of the pliers biting into wire again was the only goodbye they got.