Chapter 2 #2
Julian leaned back in Reed’s chair as he continued to eat his breakfast, not losing his appetite over the blue container in the least. He appeared entirely at home, and Hadley came to terms with the possibility that she might have to kill him for appearing so comfortable in Reed’s seat.
“How’s Mason?”
The question about her brother came out of left field, although she’d been expecting it. Julian had just taken his time getting there.
“He’s adjusting,” Hadley replied carefully.
“Adjusting,” Julian repeated, the word a question by itself.
“It’s been rough,” Hadley admitted, her gaze drifting to the window.
Main Street was becoming slightly busier, as was usual this time of the morning.
Mrs. Foster should be making an appearance any time now, and Hadley certainly wouldn’t mind the interruption.
“Anyone would have trouble adjusting after spending twenty years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit, Ramos. ”
Julian shoved the last bite of donut in his mouth while she somehow refrained from tacking on her involvement with such an injustice.
After all, it had been her testimony that had sent her brother to prison in the first place.
Julian chewed slowly, clearly waiting for her to continue. He had always been good at waiting.
She set her coffee down on the desk behind her without turning around, not wanting him to catch the tremor in her hand. The little hot ache behind her sternum had spread up into her throat.
She’d only been ten years old when her brother had come stumbling out of Cox’s woods with Emily Esten’s blood on his hands and a story no one in the courtroom had believed.
Mason had blamed the Threshing Man for killing Emily, yet the prosecutor had convinced Hadley to take the stand and testify to what she’d witnessed that night.
The jury had believed her.
The judge had believed her.
And their family had never been the same.
“He’s drinking,” Hadley reluctantly admitted, but giving up that information meant she could keep other private matters to herself. “Not like our father. Not yet. But he’s drinking, and I haven’t really brought it up to him.”
“Have you tried?” Julian asked softly.
“I just said not yet, Ramos.” Hadley crossed her arms and tried to even out her breathing before continuing. “Don’t push it.”
“Mm,” Julian replied, neutral. He leaned forward and reached for his coffee. “Has the settlement money come in?”
“No. I expect it to be released before the end of the year. Mason has been building furniture in a shed he put up himself to tide himself over,” Hadley explained, finding it easier to keep going now that she had started.
“It’s behind the house. He started building it in February and had it usable by April.
He’s been working out of it ever since. It began with a small bench, and now he’s making chairs.
He sells them at the farmers’ market over in Bram County on Saturday mornings. ”
“Because he won’t take money from you,” Julian guessed.
“He won’t take money from me,” Hadley confirmed.
“Did you offer?”
“I offered the first week,” Hadley replied, picking her coffee back up now that she’d calmed her nerves. “Let’s just say that I haven’t offered since.”
“And you two?” Julian asked, his eyes steady on hers.
“We’re working through it.”
Julian’s expression flickered, just enough to tell her that he really was concerned for her well-being. He didn’t push, though. He was a good detective. He was a better friend.
“All right,” he said simply.
Her shoulders eased down, and the ache in her chest started to subside. She’d reassured him enough that he was willing to let the matter drop.
“So, tell me,” Hadley directed while studying him. “Why are you really in Whistlerun?”
“The sheriff asked me to meet him over in Emberwood,” Julian replied as he lifted his legs to the desk and crossed them at the ankles. “I’m due over there in about an hour, so I had some time to kill. Besides, Maisy’s coffee is the best.”
“Maisy’s coffee is not on the route,” Hadley pointed out, raising one eyebrow. “And I don’t believe that you’ve ever had Maisy’s coffee.”
“It is the route I chose today,” Julian replied, grinning. “And you don’t know that I’ve never had it before, so you can stuff it in your—”
“Julian,” Hadley warned.
“Hadley,” Julian shot back, unbothered.
She let it go.
“Anything I should be aware of about the case in Emberwood?” Hadley asked, curious why Sheriff Turner had requested assistance from the Arkansas State Police. He preferred to handle things himself when possible.
“No,” Julian replied, shaking his head. “Gang shooting. The sheriff just wants a fresh set of eyes. Speaking of, I noticed that your girl at the gas station was hanging a corn-husk thing in the window. Twigs, husks, little yellow beads. Looked like she’d made it herself.
I thought that superstitious nonsense about the Threshing Man would have gone by the wayside by now. ”
“That’d be Rena,” Hadley advised him before taking a sip of her coffee. “And don’t let her catch you saying it’s superstitious nonsense. Or anyone else in this town, for that matter.”
“What I don’t get is why she’s still hanging a talisman in the window after you arrested Kalen Telfort.
You closed that case eleven months ago. The man who abducted those girls is in the ground, and his kid is behind bars.
You’re the reason Mason was exonerated. Isn’t the town well past the point where a twenty-something cashier at a gas station should be hanging husks in a display window? ”
Leave it to Julian to put the kindest possible spin on it. The truth was less generous. Hadley was the reason her brother had spent twenty years in Varner prison in the first place. The fact that she had also been the one to exonerate him didn’t balance the ledger. It never would.
“Those talismans have meaning here, Julian.”
“That’s exactly the kind of thing you would say, and exactly why I drove an hour and a half to look at you in person.” Julian shook his head in disappointment. “Don’t get dragged under by that nonsense, Dawkins.”
Hadley lifted her mug and took a long swallow of coffee that had gone lukewarm.
She gave herself a beat to decide how much to say and how much to keep.
She wasn’t reverting back to the young, eighteen-year-old who’d left Whistlerun with a desperate need to escape.
Life in the Ozarks had its own kind of gravity, and she needed to find her place inside it if she wanted to serve the residents as their Chief of Police.
“Nothing is going to rid Cane County of folklore, Julian. The Threshing Man is practically a relative at this point. The talisman isn’t a reaction to the case. The case was a reaction to the talisman, you might say.”
“Walk me through it.”
“You read the pieces in the press. They covered it all, believe me.”
“I read the articles, and I read your criminal reports on the case. A serial offender used a regional legend as cover for his crimes. It did not tell me that the cashier at the gas station would still be hanging husks above her register every September until the day she dies. It also did not tell me that the cashier’s grandmother probably taught her the pattern to braid them in.
Seriously, she’s good. Anyway, I’m merely asking how it’s possible for the residents to believe in something so far-fetched. ”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment. She had not been planning to do this today. The Threshing Man was not a typical Monday-morning topic to discuss over coffee. Julian also wasn’t one to let things go.
“Fine,” Hadley agreed, though very reluctantly.
She set her mug on her desk again before folding her arms and settling in to help him understand.
“The talisman is a pentacle. Five points made of twigs tied with twine. Husks braided through the spokes. Little yellow beads at the bottom because the beads are supposed to look like dropped grain, the kind a person scatters behind them when they walk through a field to keep something from following. You don’t hang it over a door.
You hang it in a window. The ones that face the fields.
The talisman is what makes the field unable to call you out into it. ”
“Call you out into it,” Julian repeated, neutral. Sort of. She could still hear the doubt laced in his words. “What does that mean?”
“That’s the rule. He doesn’t take you. You go to him. He just takes what’s owed.”
“Hadley.”
“That’s the rule, Julian. That’s what they teach you growing up here.
The Threshing Man doesn’t drag you out of your house.
He waits at the edge of the field, and you walk in of your own accord.
That’s why the talismans are in the kitchen window and the bedroom window and not on the porch door.
He doesn’t come into the house. He never has. He doesn’t have to.”
She heard her own voice settle into the cadence her mother had used at the kitchen table when Hadley had been seven and eight and nine, sitting cross-legged on a chair too tall for her, and she made herself stop talking for a second.
She recalled Mason standing near the counter, and she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen.
“Go on.”
She covered up her lack of breathing by bending down and feigning interest in the zipper of her ankle boot.
Given that the weather was starting to cool, she’d pulled them out of the closet just last week.
The thought of something simple like her wardrobe made it possible to draw air into her lungs.
Clearing her throat, she stood upright and resumed her comfortable position against her desk.