Chapter Two #2
If Lester’s worst guess is right, four before Kaylee makes five young women in six months. Five recent cases being explained away one by one despite an older Pearly Gates pattern everybody in this county should already recognize.
“Were they connected?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Daddy open investigations?”
“He followed the reports.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“He did his job.”
“Then why is he keeping me out of it?”
Lester gives me a tired look. “You really have to ask?”
“Yes.”
“Because every road in this mess keeps pulling toward Hell.”
His gaze shifts north, toward roads neither of us can see from here, and I think about Daddy ordering me away from every biker in Heck’s Kitchen.
“The Kings?”
Lester shakes his head. “I didn’t say that.”
“You said every road leads toward Hell.”
“Hell is bigger than the Kings.”
“Not by much.”
He picks up his coffee. “Forget I said anything.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“It sounded like one.”
“Twila.”
I step between him and his patrol car before he can retreat into it. “Why the hell does this keep coming back to Pearly Gates?”
His face closes so quickly I almost miss it.
Almost.
The old access road leads to the retreat complex north of Hell, a place Pearly Gates used years ago for revivals, addiction programs, and youth retreats when the ministry had more money and more bodies to fill it.
I remember tall white fences, locked gates, and security lights in places that never made much sense for a religious retreat that was supposed to be abandoned.
Their current church and compound in town have bothered me for years too, and lately the name carries more than an old bad feeling.
Sophie already followed Montgomery-linked money and property into Pearly Gates territory.
I know enough about that to understand there are questions nobody has answered yet, but I don’t know what any of it has to do with Kaylee Quill.
Underneath all of that is something older. Daddy was warning me away from Pearly Gates when I was a teenager, long before Sophie ever followed a dollar, and he never told me why. Wasn’t religion. He had no problem attending First Baptist.
“Lester.”
“I’ve said too much.”
“You’ve barely said a thing.”
“Enough to get my ass chewed.”
“By the sheriff or somebody else?”
His eyes cut sharply to mine, and there it is. The look isn’t irritation, and it sure as hell isn’t a man worried Amos is going to yell at him.
That’s fear.
Before I can press him, his radio crackles again.
“Unit seven, Sheriff Dix requests your location.”
Lester presses the button. “Piggly Wiggly.”
“Sheriff requests you report to the department.”
He looks at me, and I don’t need him to say it.
Daddy knows we’re talking.
“Better go.”
“Lester.”
“Handle the road checks for me, Deputy.”
He climbs into his patrol car and pulls out of the lot before I can get anything else from him.
I stand beneath the broken PIGLY WIGLY sign with cold coffee in one hand and more questions than I had an hour ago. Two trucks roll past on Paradise Road while I look north toward an access road I can’t see from here.
The old Pearly Gates road is ten minutes away. I could be there before Daddy made it back from wherever he is, but he’d know, and knowing him, he’d suspend me before I reached the gate.
I climb back into the Interceptor instead. I key the mic. “Unit twelve, clear of Piggly Wiggly.”
For the next two hours, I do exactly what I’m told.
I patrol Paradise, cut past Paradise Falls and the narrow turnoff that disappears back toward Crooked Creek Hollow, stop a truck with a broken taillight, check the doors at the pharmacy, and run three teenagers out of the cemetery after catching them drinking beer behind the mausoleum.
Then I answer a noise complaint involving a leaf blower, a trumpet, and a drunken custody dispute over a beagle.
All the while, Kaylee Quill’s face stays in my head.
By midnight, I’m back at the sheriff’s department.
The sweat from Heck’s Kitchen has dried cold beneath my uniform shirt, and the coffee in my cup tastes like burnt mud.
My split lip aches every time I worry it with my tongue, and I can’t help but think of Whiskey, wiping the blood there.
His rough hands on my skin, his thumb in his mouth.
The front office is dark except for the lamp over dispatch and the blue-white glow of a computer monitor somebody forgot to shut down.
The air smells like old carpet, printer toner, and the pot of coffee that has probably been cooking since noon.
Daddy’s office door is closed, and Lester’s unit is outside, but I don’t see him.
I finish the Piggly Wiggly incident report, log the ham as an improvised weapon without taking it into evidence, and wait until Linda, the dispatcher disappears into the break room.
Then I open the department RMS and pull Kaylee Quill’s missing-person report. Kaylee Quill’s report comes up immediately, and I read every line. Last seen leaving work at 10:42 p.m. Vehicle located behind the gas station. Phone missing. No sign of a struggle. Possible voluntary departure.
I print the rest of the report before Linda comes back, and the printer sounds deafening in the quiet office. When the page slides into the tray, I immediately see the problem.
A black block covers part of the witness information.
County reports aren’t supposed to be redacted from county deputies with my access.
The floor creaks behind me.
I spin.
Daddy stands in the hallway.
He’s changed out of his uniform and into jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, but his service weapon is still clipped to his belt. He looks tired enough that the lines beside his mouth seem deeper than they did at Heck’s Kitchen.
Then he sees the paper in my hand.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“My job.”
“That case ain’t assigned to you.”
“Then tell me why I’m hearing even more girls have been disappearing for six months. More than the ones in the paper.”
“The other cases weren’t classified that way. Voluntary departures.”
“According to who?”
“According to the evidence.”
“What evidence? I’m authorized to access every open county case.”
“Not these.”
His voice goes flatter, the sheriff replacing my father one word at a time.
I hold up Kaylee’s report. “Why is witness information redacted? Did somebody from Pearly Gates call in the sighting?”
Something flickers across his face, so slight another person might miss it.
I don’t.
“They did,” I say.
“You’re making mighty big assumptions.”
“Then correct me.”
Daddy reaches behind himself and closes the office door. The latch clicks softly, cutting us off from dispatch and leaving the room too quiet for the look on his face. Then he crosses toward me.
“I’m ordering you to stay out of these investigations.”
“Investigations. Plural.”
His mouth compresses.
“Is that because you think I’m incapable?”
“Because you don’t know when to stop. Mr. Montgomery already complained.”
“That his daughter wanted him checked on?”
“This is bigger than one deputy.”
“Then let me help.”
“No.”
“I’ve got the training. I can take care of myself.”
His palm comes down on the edge of the desk, not hard enough to make me jump but hard enough to rattle the pens in a plastic cup.
“You stay away from Heck, Pearly Gates, and that Whiskey unless you’re responding to an active call. Do you understand me? No more wrestling either.”
As I laugh at that last part, I look at his hand braced against the desk, then at his face. This ain’t the expression of a sheriff irritated with a deputy for stepping outside her assignment. I saw the same fear in the Heck’s Kitchen parking lot and again in Lester tonight.
Whatever is underneath this has been here longer than Kaylee Quill.
“Twila.”
“Okay, except the wrestling.”
He studies my face, trying to decide whether I mean it.
He should know better.
Daddy takes the report from my hand, carries it into his office, and locks it inside a drawer. He doesn’t say good night before leaving.
I wait until his truck pulls out of the lot, then return to the computer.
Kaylee’s report is gone from my recent searches.
My access log has been cleared.
I sit staring at the empty screen while possibilities start lining themselves up in my head.
Somebody is hiding what’s happening to those girls.
Maybe Daddy knows who. Maybe somebody has enough leverage to make a sheriff bury things he doesn’t want buried.
The Kings are mixed up in it somehow. I already know they’re digging into Pearly Gates.
What I don’t know is what they’ve found, why Daddy is shutting them out, or why he’s suddenly so damn afraid of me getting close to any of it.
I think about Whiskey watching me from the bar, his thumb against my mouth and all the teasing disappearing when he told me I wasn’t scared enough.
He knows something. The Kings always know something. I shut down the computer, pull my jacket over my uniform, and step into the dark parking lot. Daddy ordered me to stay out of Hell, or rather, what the older folks say, Heck, away from Pearly Gates, and away from Whiskey.
Three orders.
One investigation.
By the time I reach my patrol SUV, I’ve already decided which one I’m breaking first.