24. Grant
TWENTY-FOUR
GRANT
Someone fires shots near the ranch on a Thursday.
I'm two miles away at the south fence line when I hear it, distant, but in the direction of the farmhouse, two shots, clear in the cold morning. I'm back in my truck and on the road before the echo finishes.
Jessika is outside the barn when I pull in, with Presley and a white-faced Nova and all the horses alarmed and pressing away from the south pasture fence.
Nobody's hurt.
The shots went into the tree line on the east side of the property, I find the marks on two oaks about thirty feet into the trees. Not aimed at the house or the barn. Aimed at the tree line. As a statement.
As a message.
Jessika is photographing the trees with her phone. Her hands are steady. Her face is controlled. But when I come to stand beside her and she turns to look at me, I can see the fear she's been holding closed underneath the control.
"We're moving too slow," she says.
"I know."
"The AG contact, I’ve been playing phone tag for four days."
"I know."
"Holcomb is escalating," she says. "He's rattled. He knows we're getting close."
"Yes." I look at the marks on the trees. "Which means we need Morgan somewhere more secure."
"And we need the documents somewhere on record."
"Ruth Ellory."
"She's already taken a risk holding them." Jessika thinks. "My law school contact, Brian Holt at the AG's office. He texted me back last night. He wants to take a call tomorrow."
"Okay."
"But today—" She looks at me. "Someone just fired shots at our property. I need to do something today."
I look at her father. At Nova, who has gone to stand at the fence with one hand on Callie's nose, the horse and the girl grounding each other.
"Drive into Calwell," I say. "Go to the county sheriff's office, not Collins, the sheriff himself. File a report. On record, with photographs. Make it official."
"And if he's in Holcomb's pocket too?"
"Then you have a record of having filed it. Which matters if this goes to court." I pause. "And take Nova somewhere."
"Where?"
I think. "Is there somewhere she can go? For a few days? A friend?"
Nova has been listening from the fence. "Kayla's," she says without turning. "She asked me to come for the weekend anyway."
I look at Jessika.
"Let her," I say quietly. "Until this moves somewhere more stable."
She doesn't like it. I can see that, the particular resistance of a protective mother to something that looks like retreat. But she looks at Nova at the fence, and at the shot marks in the trees, and makes the calculation.
"Okay," she says. "Okay."
The day moves fast.
Jessika goes to the sheriff's office. Files the report. The sheriff himself takes the information with a careful neutrality that could be professionalism or could be something else.
Nova goes to Kayla's, with a bag and her phone and a long hug from her grandfather and a look she gives me over Jessika's shoulder when Jessika hugs her, a look that says: don't let anything happen.
I'm watching the property for the rest of the day, moving a circuit, the barn, the tree line, the access road, the barn again. Presley makes coffee and brings it out to me on the second loop, and we stand in the cold afternoon by the fence and drink it without saying much.
"You love my daughter," Presley says. Eventually.
I look at him.
"I'm not going to pretend I don't see it," he says. Steady. Direct. "I'm an old man who's had a stroke and I'm not interested in dancing around things."
I take a breath. "I don't know what it’ll turn into yet."
"That's honest." He looks at the fence line. "I handled things badly. Years ago. With you. With Morgan." He pauses. "I was a man who wanted his family to be a certain thing, and when it wasn't, I found reasons for it that were easier than the truth."
"Mr. Hills?—"
"Presley." He says it firmly. "You've been fixing my fences for three weeks. Call me Presley." He looks at me. "I owe you an apology."
I hold his gaze for a moment.
"You don't owe me?—"
"I blamed you for my son's addiction," he says.
"When the real problem was that I ignored his illness for years because I didn't know how to face it.
" He says it clearly, without self-pity, the way you say things when you're old enough to be done with the comfort of lying to yourself.
"My son is bipolar. He has been since adolescence.
I saw signs for years and I told myself other stories. It was easier."
I don't say anything.
"And you took the weight of that," he says. "Without saying anything. Without defending yourself to me. Why?"
I look at the trees.
"Because Morgan needed someone to stay quiet," I say. "And your family was—" I pause. "I wanted you all to be okay. That mattered more than me being right."
Presley is quiet for a long time.
"You're a better man than I gave you credit for," he says. "Than most people give you credit for."
"I've made plenty of mistakes of my own," I say.
"Yes," he agrees. "So have I." He finishes his coffee. "But here we both are anyway."
He goes back inside.
I keep walking the circuit.
The evening comes in cold and the property is quiet and Jessika gets back from Calwell at seven with the report filed and a grim certainty in her face.
"The sheriff really doesn’t care, him and Collins are buddies.” she says. "They went through training together. There's no way this report lands on anyone's desk without Collins knowing about it by morning."
"Then we move tonight," I say.
"The call with Brian Holt is tomorrow."
"We move the documents tonight. Get Morgan something, more confirmed. Get everything into a position where it can't be quietly disappeared."
She looks at me.
"Okay," she says. "What do we do?"
I take out my phone and call Dave.
Then I call a lawyer I know in Whitmore County, a woman who does civil rights work, who has a particular relationship with the state AG's office, who has no connection to Briar County politics.
Then I call Mack, who has a truck with an out-of-county plate and who doesn't ask too many questions.
We work through the night.