Chapter 36 #2
The truck’s AC hummed, doing little to relieve the heat between the front seats. Burke watched the winding blacktop of the valley road, his palms flat on the wheel. Scout stared out the passenger window, fingers tapping his legal pad.
Neither of them spoke. In Sylva, you knew every name on the dry-erase board—and their daddies, too. Confronting an old bull like Red Stephens with a statement that put a target on his back wasn’t just police work.
It was a reckoning.
When the truck cleared the gravel turnoff for the Blackwood cattle operation, dust curled up behind it. The valley opened into rolling fields of summer grass, crossed by neat runs of black split-rail fence.
Burke spotted the battered ranch truck idling near the secondary equipment barn.
Red Stephens stood by the open bed, pulling a grease gun from a metal toolbox. He didn’t look up when the truck’s tires crunched to a stop on the limestone. He didn’t blink when the engine died or the doors opened.
Burke climbed out, adjusting his Stetson against the noon glare. Scout followed a step behind, his hand resting near his belt.
“Red,” Burke said, his voice carrying flat and even across the pasture.
Red gave the grease gun a final, deliberate wipe with a rag before turning. His sun-baked eyes took in the uniforms, his weathered jaw tightening under his gray beard.
“Burke,” Red said, voice a low rasp. “Brought the whole circus today, did you?”
“We need to talk, Red. Out here. Away from the crew.”
Red snorted, tossing the rag into the truck bed. “I told your boy Hale everything I know yesterday. Spent Saturday night out here chasing a broken line of north fence in the mud. I didn’t see anyone, and no one saw me. You want it a third time so Scout can write it down in his little book?”
“This isn’t about Saturday night,” Burke said, stepping closer until he stood at the edge of the truck’s shadow. “This is about Wednesday afternoon. In Mabel’s dining room.”
The sun had baked too much color out of Red’s skin for it to drain, but the lines around his eyes tightened into dangerous slits.
“You’ve been talking to June Harper,” Red said flatly.
“June walked into my office an hour ago, shaking,” Scout said from Burke’s shoulder, his tone steady. “She said you came storming through the front door of the Victorian. Said you slammed it hard enough to rattle the hutch.”
Red didn’t look at Scout. His gaze stayed on Burke, hard as flint.
“Talley Feed and Tack,” Red growled, chest rising under his denim shirt.
“That’s where I heard it. Walter Grady had his mouth running, telling the counter boys Mabel was fixin’ to sell the cattle farm.
Thirty years, Burke. Thirty years I’ve sweated over this herd.
This ranch was as much my life as it was hers.
Fixed every foot of wire, pulled every calf out of the frozen mud, and she was gonna sign it away, without even giving me a heads-up? ”
“So you went to the house,” Burke said.
“Damn right I went to the house,” Red snapped, taking a step forward, his fists clenching at his sides.
“I walked right in there, and I asked her to her face if it was true. I was angry. I didn’t hide it then, and I’m not hiding it now.
I told her she wasn’t going to sell this place out from under me. ”
Burke’s voice dropped into a lower register. “And when she didn’t back down, you told her she’d ‘find out the hard way.’”
The silence that hit the pasture was immediate, heavy enough to hear the wind moving through the tall fescue behind the barn.
“So an old busybody walks into your office, tells you me and Mabel had words, and suddenly I’m your killer?”
Burke didn’t bite. “I’m not here to talk about who came into my office. I’m here because those were your words.”
Red huffed out a sharp, bitter breath, shaking his head. “You really think if I was gonna kill Mabel Blackwood, I’d stand in her dining room and threaten her in front of a witness?” He snorted. “Come on, Burke. I might be mad, but I ain’t stupid.”
“Mabel’s hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t pour the tea after you left, Red,” Scout said, his pad still closed but his eyes tracking every micro-movement of the old man’s shoulders. “She spilled it all over the lace cloth. She couldn’t stop.”
That hit him.
Red went still, his jaw working like the picture of Mabel’s trembling hands had cut straight through the anger. He looked away toward the grazing cattle.
“She didn’t look like she was shaking to me,” he muttered. “She smiled and told me to get my muddy boots off her rug. She didn’t look sick.”
Burke studied him. The anger was still there. So was the regret.
Burke let a beat stretch, then eased in a notch softer.
“You sure didn’t pull any punches with her,” he said. “And she was having some issues.”
Red’s head snapped back around. “Well, hell, I didn’t know it,” he shot back. “Me and Mabel Blackwood been going head-to-head like two old bulls for years. That ain’t new. She’d have skinned me alive if she thought I was goin’ soft on her now.”
His mouth twisted. “June’s just a busybody lookin’ for fire where there ain’t any. Always has been.”
Burke had interviewed enough killers to know guilt and grief weren’t the same thing.
The trouble was, sometimes they looked exactly alike.