Chapter 5
Hadley Dawkins
Hadley pulled away from the curb in front of First Baptist with the bitter taste in her mouth that always set in after a conversation with Warren Caldwell.
The taste itself, somewhere between copper and the back end of old coffee, was the one her body produced when it had spent twenty minutes being polite to a man when it would rather have been pushed down a flight of stairs.
To his credit, he typically left her alone to do her job and didn’t make a habit of looking over her shoulder.
As long as it stayed that way, they wouldn’t have a problem.
She rolled the window down two inches and let the September air do its work on the worst of it.
The information Warren had given her wasn’t nothing, even if he had attempted to select each piece for maximum political comfort.
She had decided, somewhere between the church parking lot and the second block of Main Street, that she was not going to drop the investigation on the strength of Warren’s reassurances.
He had stressed to her numerous times that Mercer was harmless, but she would decide that for herself once she had spoken to both Roland Mercer and Earl Vinton.
Earl was the closer of the two, so that’s who she would question first.
The Vinton place sat about eight minutes outside of town on the same general stretch of county road that ran past the Cox farm. Given the time of year, Earl would either be at home for an early lunch or out in his fields checking equipment ahead of the harvest.
Either way, she could easily locate him.
She turned east at the corner of Main and Pickens and drove out of town.
The cornfields started about a mile out. Sarah Cox had written in one of her journals, before her death, that a Cane County cornfield in late September was the loneliest sound in nature. She wasn’t wrong.
Hadley passed the turn for the Hobbs place a mile later.
The Telfort land backed up against it. The forensic team had finished its work there back in March.
The cabin in the pines stood empty now, and the Telfort dairy herd had already been sold.
She’d heard the money had gone to Kalen’s defense attorneys, but the sale of the land and equipment was currently tied up in wrongful death suits filed by the victims’ families.
It could be years before the property could be touched by anyone who wasn’t a lawyer.
The four-way of County Road 7 and Holcomb Road was the kind of rural crossing where the stop signs sat only on the crossroad, while the main road carried through without slowing.
She came up to it doing exactly thirty-five, the posted speed, right as a black pickup blew through the stop sign on her right.
The vehicle roared past her front bumper at what had to be close to sixty.
Hadley muttered under her breath before reluctantly pulling south onto County Road 7 behind him. She was, after all, the chief of police. Questioning Earl would have to wait a little longer while she conducted the responsibilities of the job.
She recognized the truck immediately, too.
The vehicle belonged to Matt Rutledge, the oldest of the Rutledge children.
He was twenty years old, a junior at the community college in Emberwood, and this was the third time inside a month that she’d caught him speeding.
The first time had been on the highway, and she had let it go because she had been off-shift and on her way back from Bram County.
The second time, she had honked at him from a quarter mile back and monitored him slowly for about thirty seconds before he had eased the pickup right back up over fifty.
Third time was a charm.
Hadley reached up to the magnetic-mounted cherry-top she had pulled off the dashboard of the cruiser back in March.
She wasn’t comfortable driving the thing due to the engine issues.
The oil leak, the brake lines, and the hesitating starter had been the kind of department-budget problems she was not going to be allowed to solve in the current fiscal year.
Her own Equinox was a more reliable vehicle for driving into a field at midnight, though she was considering making a new purchase on her own dime.
That decision was for another time, though.
She flipped the switch. The lights came on. The siren came on.
The black pickup didn’t slow down, almost certainly because Matt was playing his music at full volume.
Hadley pressed her foot down on the accelerator.
She pulled the Equinox close to his rear bumper before reaching for the portable radio on her belt.
The handheld didn’t have the range of the cruiser’s mounted unit, but Cane County dispatch had built up enough repeaters in the last decade that the difference no longer mattered out here.
“Cane County dispatch, this is Whistlerun Chief. I have a ten-thirty-eight on County Road 7 southbound, a mile past Holcomb Road. Plate is Arkansas Tango Foxtrot Six...”
Hadley continued to give the license plate number of the black F-150 just as the brake lights came on.
The truck immediately slowed and began to drift toward the gravel shoulder.
She didn’t have to be told the driver’s name.
She’d caught sight of the young man’s face when he sped past her, but she’d follow protocol for a traffic stop.
“Chief Dawkins, I have your ten-thirty-eight on the log.” The dispatcher’s voice came through low enough to prompt Hadley to twist the volume knob to the right. “The plate belongs to…”
Hadley gradually pulled to a stop behind him, though she left the lights running. She stepped out of the Equinox, returned the radio to her belt, and took in her surroundings. The shoulder of the road sat under the half-shade of a sycamore that had begun to turn gold along its top branches.
Matt already had the driver’s side window all the way down as she approached him.
He was tall and narrow-shouldered, wearing a Nike hoodie he had cut the sleeves off of and a worn ball cap turned backward.
He had both hands on the steering wheel where they belonged, which told her that he understood at least the basics of a traffic stop.
“Chief Dawkins.”
“Matt.” Hadley let his name sit between them for a second longer than was comfortable. He shifted in his seat. “Do you know why I stopped you today, Matt?”
He flushed under the bill of the cap, and he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“I’m just running late for lunch, that’s all. I had a class this morning at Emberwood, and I’m supposed to be at the Vinton place at one. I was just hoping to grab a quick lunch before driving out that way.”
“And last week?”
“Um, I’m not making excuses, but I—”
“License and registration, please.”
Hadley was almost certain that she heard him groan in protest, already accepting that he was going to have to explain a hundred-and-ten-dollar speeding ticket to his parents.
He released the steering wheel, leaned to his left, and retrieved his wallet.
He pulled out his license and handed it to her before reaching for the glove compartment.
At least he was wise enough to keep his registration handy.
Hadley took both documents and stepped back from the window.
She’d have to write the citation longhand, though she had received an email from Sheriff Turner advising her to be on the lookout for a package this week.
The state had approved the equipment grant that the county had been waiting on for the better part of two years, which meant the department could finally be fully electronic.
The tablet would not only make her job easier but also more efficient.
“…just wish the chief of police would focus on real crime instead of handing out speeding tickets.”
Hadley didn’t alter her gait. She paused to allow for another vehicle to pass them before opening her driver’s side door.
She settled in the seat and reached into the console, retrieving her citation book.
It took her the better part of ten minutes to write everything out, from the violation to Matt’s information off his license to the boxes the county required for court.
Once the tablet arrived, the same citation would take less than three minutes.
She’d merely scan his license at the window.
The system would then automatically pull his information.
She would tap the violation code, and the dash-mounted printer would push the citation out before she had finished walking back to her vehicle.
She completed the citation with her signature, but didn’t tear it off the pad.
Matt’s signature was needed, as well. She made sure to have everything in hand as she exited her vehicle and slammed the door shut.
His parting shot needed a little more context, so when she came to a stop beside him, she requested just that.
“Matt,” Hadley said as she handed him his license and registration. “What did you mean by real crime?”
Matt clearly hadn’t expected her to call him out on the disrespect.
She studied his face, currently going through the small sequence of recalibrations a twenty-year-old boy’s face goes through when he realizes he probably pushed too hard.
He glanced away from her as he continued to hold his documents.
“I’m sorry about that. It was nothing, Chief Dawkins.”
“Try again, Matt.”
“It’s just…well, last Friday, Katie went out with Josh Delane to the old hickory near Vinton’s east field. They were just hanging out, not drinking or anything like that, but she came home early. Said she and Josh had seen something in the cornfields.”
“Can she identify the person?”
“That’s the thing,” Matt said, tapping his license on the steering. “Katie thinks it was the Threshing Man.”
Hadley resisted the urge to close her eyes in resignation. She’d grown up with the stories, but she hadn’t lied to Julian this morning. The urban legend was like a long-lost relative at this point. No one could let him go, not even the younger generation.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be right,” Matt said with a shrug.
“Katie overreacted, as usual. I promised her that I’d look around this weekend while I was helping out Mr. Vinton, and I found some boot prints about thirty feet away from the pull-off.
Someone was definitely trespassing on Mr. Vinton’s property, not that Katie believes me. ”
Matt took his time putting his license in his wallet and the registration back in the glove compartment. He held out his hands for the pen and citation book.
“I didn’t mean anything by—”
“Did you tell Vinton you found evidence of someone trespassing in his fields?”
“Yeah,” Matt murmured, still waiting for her to hand over the paperwork. “He knows. Look, I really don’t want to be late for—”
“What was Vinton’s reaction?” Hadley asked, noting Matt’s change in demeanor. “Is there a reason he didn’t call me?”
“I don’t want—”
“Matt, you’re the one who’s making this take longer than necessary.”
“Mr. Vinton said that you weren’t going to do anything about it anyway,” Matt finally fessed up, adjusting his ball cap with unease. “It’s why I mouthed off earlier. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop,” Hadley directed him, unable to defend her current role as Police Chief. Reed hadn’t given Earl Vinton any reason to believe that Whistlerun’s law enforcement would follow through with its responsibilities. “I do not ever want to pull you over again, Matt. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Matt muttered, his attention focused on the citation pad. “We are clear.”
“No more speeding.”
“No more speeding, ma’am.” Matt was beginning to realize that he might just drive away from here without needing to come clean to his parents. “I promise.”
“One more thing, Matt.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“If you see anything in those cornfields, any tracks, any people, anything at all, you are going to call me about it. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go have some lunch.”
Matt didn’t waste any time. He shifted the truck into drive, and then he pulled off the shoulder slowly with his blinker on. She didn’t doubt that both his hands were on the wheel while driving at thirty-five miles per hour.
At least, for today.
Hadley waved at Mrs. Latham as the older woman drove past. Matt’s luck had run out. Mrs. Latham was friends with the Rutledges, and they would almost certainly be getting a call any minute.
Once Hadley was settled behind the wheel, she tore the citation off the pad and crumpled it slowly in her right hand.
She dropped the balled-up paper into the door’s side compartment, set the pad on the passenger seat, and reached into the center console for her ChapStick.
She uncapped it with her thumb and ran what was left of the soothing wax across her lower lip while sorting through the information Matt had just given her.
Coincidence?
Someone had been walking through Earl Vinton’s east cornfield.
Roland Mercer had been caught in that same field the previous October.
If Mercer was truly writing a book on the Threshing Man, why had he chosen Vinton’s property?
Why not the Cox property, where most of the disappearances over the decades had occurred?
The majority of the abductions had been credited to the Telforts, but there were still other missing persons investigations that had remained unsolved over the years.
What exactly had Mercer uncovered about the legend that no one else had?