CHAPTER SEVEN
Gus Farley’s house sat on a sagging stretch of road where the mailboxes leaned at odd angles and the porches all seemed to list in one direction or another, as if the whole neighborhood had spent years giving up together.
Selena pulled in behind Connor’s SUV and cut the engine.
For a second she stayed where she was, looking past the windshield.
The Farley place was small and weathered, with pale siding gone chalky from sun and rain.
A chain-link fence enclosed a front yard cluttered with old flowerpots, a rusted birdbath, and a wind spinner that turned with a tired squeak whenever the breeze touched it.
One upstairs window had a blanket pinned over it instead of curtains.
Connor got out first.
Selena followed, shutting her door with a muted thud. The air smelled faintly of damp soil and overheating power lines that ran beyond the homes on this side of the road.
She looked up. At the far edge of the neighborhood, past a strip of scrub ground, an electrical tower rose against the afternoon sky.
It was then that she noticed Connor had gone still. His eyes had fixed on the tower, and some of the ease he usually wore in his body had drained out through his shoulders.
Selena stepped around the hood of the car. “You okay?”
Connor blinked, as though he had forgotten she was there. “Yeah.”
“That didn’t sound very convincing.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Connor, I might not have seen you in years, but I remember that look. What’s going on?”
He kept looking toward the tower. “This street gives me a bad feeling.”
“Why?” Wind moved through the dry grass by the ditch and caught some wind chimes somewhere nearby but out of sight.
Connor blew out a breath. “I suppose it doesn’t matter… A few years ago, a call came in about kids trespassing back there. Climbing where they shouldn’t.” He nodded toward the tower. “By the time I got here, one of them had already gone up.”
Selena said nothing.
Connor’s mouth tightened. “He touched the wrong thing. That was it.”
The image came into her head whether she wanted it or not. A child. A tower. The awful smell of burning flesh.
Connor rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I found him at the base. His friends were standing there screaming. He was only fourteen.”
Selena studied Connor’s face. He was not telling the story for sympathy. Connor never looked for that. The memory had the exhausted shape of something he had carried for a long time and never quite set down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Law enforcement means we come up against the worst things imaginable.”
Connor gave a small nod. “Yeah.”
It was not much of a reply, but it was enough. Selena felt the urge to say more, to put some softer human thing between them for once, but habit stopped her. Distance remained easier.
She turned toward the house. “Let’s talk to Gus Farley.”
Connor fell into step beside her.
The gate creaked as they opened it. A concrete path led through the yard, cracked in three places and crowded at the edges with weeds. Up close, the house smelled faintly of old wood and the heavier sweetness of flowers gone over in their pots.
Selena knocked.
No answer came at first. She heard movement inside, though. Slow movement. A chair leg scraping. Then footsteps, careful and measured, approached the door.
It opened three inches.
An old man looked out at them.
Gus Farley was frail enough that the door seemed too heavy for him.
Wisps of white hair clung to the sides of his head.
His face had the fine, folded look of old paper.
Thick glasses magnified pale, watery eyes.
He wore a cardigan buttoned wrong by one hole and held the door with a hand that trembled.
“Yes?”
Selena lifted her credentials. “Mr. Farley? I’m Agent Selena Raven with the FBI. We’d like to talk with you about Brenda Colter.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I… I heard this morning on the local news. I’m too upset about it. Can you call another time?”
“We really would like to speak with you today,” Selena said.
“I just don’t feel up to it, sorry.” He began to close the door mournfully. Selena was beginning to feel frustrated with how people were closed off to her in Harlan.
Connor stepped forward. “Gus, I don’t think we’ve met, but I’m the sheriff for the county. We’re all really upset about what happened to Brenda, and we’d love to talk with you to find out anything we can about her life. It could be the difference between catching her killer and him walking free.”
Gus’s gaze landed on Selena, wary at once. Then it moved over her shoulder to Connor as he seemed to process Connor’s words.
Something changed.
The old man peered closer, head tilting slightly. “Aren’t you Arthur Chase’s son?”
Connor looked caught off guard. “Yes, sir.”
Gus’s face opened into a smile that made him look suddenly less fragile. He pulled the door wider. “I remember your father.”
Connor stepped up beside Selena. “You knew my dad?”
“Oh, I knew him well!” Gus said. “I heard his son made sheriff, and I was pleased. Come in, come in.”
The invitation seemed to come more from Connor’s last name than from Selena’s badge, another victory for Connor that got under her skin, but she’d take it if it meant moving forward with the case.
Inside, the house was cluttered in a way that stopped just short of chaos.
Stacks of newspapers lined one wall. Crocheted blankets lay folded over the back of a sofa.
Framed photographs crowded every available surface.
A grandfather clock ticked softly in the hall.
The place was crowded with objects but still warm somehow, lived in and kept up as well as one old man could manage.
Gus shuffled ahead of them, leading the way to a sitting room that looked onto the side yard. “Your father was a fine man, Sheriff.”
Connor glanced around as they followed. “How did you know him?”
Gus lowered himself into an armchair with floral patterns on it. “A court case. Long time ago now. I was a younger fool then. My brother, too.”
Connor’s brows lifted slightly. “What sort of case?”
Gus gave a dry little chuckle. “The kind families don’t put in scrapbooks. My younger brother was charged with embezzlement. He was adamant he was innocent. No one believed him. Everybody thought he was finished.”
Connor seemed to search his memory. “I think I remember hearing something about that.”
“Your father represented him even though we didn’t have the money. Dug where other men wouldn’t bother. Found enough to put doubt where it belonged. My brother was found not guilty.”
He looked up with surprising brightness in his eyes. “The Chases will always be welcome in my home.”
Connor took that in quietly. Selena watched the way the words affected him. Pride and grief rarely announced themselves together, but both passed across his face before he tucked them away.
Gus waved toward the worn chairs around a low table. “Please, have a seat. You want something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” Selena said.
Connor added, “We’re all right, Mr. Farley.”
Gus seemed not to hear either of them. “Sit down. I’ll get lemonade.”
Before Selena could stop him, he had already shuffled up and off toward the kitchen.
Connor started after him. “Mr. Farley, you really don’t have to…”
A cupboard door opened somewhere beyond the room. Glass clinked.
Selena looked at Connor. “He’s doing it anyway, isn’t he?”
Connor huffed out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh. “Yeah.”
They sat.
The room around them had the faded comfort of another era.
Patterned wallpaper had yellowed slightly at the corners.
A lamp with a fringed shade stood beside the sofa.
On the mantel sat more photographs, most black-and-white, one of them showing two young men in shirtsleeves by a truck from the late sixties or early seventies.
A radio played softly from another room, some old country tune almost swallowed by static.
Gus returned carrying a tray with three glasses of lemonade that shook dangerously in his hands.
Selena stood at once. “Let me help you.”
She took the tray before one of the glasses slid off. Gus gave her a grateful nod, though his pride winced a little at the assistance. She set the tray on the table and handed him one of the glasses only after he was seated.
Connor took the second. Selena kept the third untouched on a coaster.
Gus settled back into his chair and looked between them. “Now then. What’s all this about, again? Forgive me, I forget things.”
Connor leaned forward slightly. “Gus, I know it’s hard given the circumstances, but we wanted to know a bit about Brenda’s visits here.”
“Is it true what the radio said, that she was murdered?”
“I’m afraid so,” Selena answered.
“Poor Brenda…” The man looked down at his hands. Selena saw a tear drop onto them. No matter how many times she saw such things, she always felt so painfully sorry for the loved ones left behind.
Selena pulled a tissue from her bag and held it out. He took it automatically.
“When did you see Brenda last?” Selena asked.
Gus dabbed his eyes. “She was here on Tuesday,” he said. “She fixed the loose curtain in the spare room. She put too much pepper in the casserole, like always.” His voice thinned. “We laughed about it.”
Selena said gently, “We heard Brenda helped you around the house.”
Gus pressed the tissue to one eye. “She did. Sweet girl. Stubborn though.”
“What kind of help?”
“Little things. Brought groceries. Tidied up. Took old food from the fridge and scolded me when I tried to keep it anyway.” The tissue trembled in his hand. “She’d bring a nice dinner now and then. Soup if the weather turned.”
“She was paid for that?” Selena asked.
Gus nodded. “Eventually.”
“Eventually?”