Chapter 11
Hadley Dawkins
The Humanities Building at the Emberwood community college was the kind of squat brick structure that had gone up cheaply in the seventies and had been patched ever since, rather than replaced.
Hadley exited the elevator on the third floor that smelled of floor wax and stale, dust-baked air.
She came out into a hallway lined with cork boards and office doors.
A few stood open, and from the nearest with the nameplate that read ANNETTE BELKIN, came the low murmur of a phone call.
Hadley walked past quietly, mindful of the soles of her boots on the polished floor. She counted office doors as she went, recalling the number from the directory. Sure enough, Roland Mercer’s office was the fifth and last door on the right.
He was bent over his desk, working a box cutter along the seam of a cardboard carton.
She remained where she was while he finished, and he eventually drew a brand-new laptop from a white plastic mold.
He then carefully retracted the blade, stored the tool inside the top drawer, and set the empty, larger box down on the floor next to a small black trash bin.
She noted that he was very methodical in his efforts.
“My office hours are three to five today,” Roland said as he peeled a strip of plastic from the lid. He never glanced up from his task. “You’ll have to come back this afternoon. There’s a sign-up sheet on the—”
Something must have registered with him, because he stopped speaking and lifted his gaze to her face. He then immediately dropped it to the badge pinned to the lapel of her blazer. He straightened fast enough that the chair behind him rolled an inch and tapped the wall.
“Forgive me,” Roland muttered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He still held the thin piece of plastic in his other hand. “I assumed you were a student. How can I help you, Officer?”
“Chief,” Hadley corrected, stepping into the office. “Chief Hadley Dawkins, Whistlerun Police.”
The office was small enough that two strides put her at the front of his desk.
Every wall that wasn’t a window had been given over to shelving, and the shelving had been given over to stacks of paper.
Various books stood upright or lay flat across the hard surfaces, yet there seemed to be an organization to them.
Banker’s boxes were stacked in the corner with dates inked on their ends, and a county map had been pinned to the corkboard above the filing cabinet.
It was dotted with colored pushpins, some of them clustered so close together that they overlapped.
She didn’t need to be any closer to recognize the area as Whistlerun.
Roland hadn’t responded to her introduction, and something in the set of his shoulders shifted as he appeared to take stock of her impromptu visit.
He seemed to understand that she hadn’t climbed three flights of stairs to ask him a single question and leave.
He reluctantly gestured to the guest chair wedged between the filing cabinet and a leaning tower of journals.
“Sit, please,” Roland said before claiming his own chair.
The entire space smelled a bit musty, with an underlying scent of new packaging. She wasn’t sure if he adjusted the white box to line up with the edge of his desk for something to occupy his hands or if he was slightly obsessive about his belongings. She was leaning toward the latter.
“I’ll keep this as brief as possible, Mr. Mercer,” Hadley began as she made herself comfortable. “I’m investigating former Chief Langley’s death alongside the sheriff’s office. It’s come to my attention that he cited you for trespassing last year.”
Roland’s chin drew back a fraction. His hand came up to the frame of his glasses again and pushed them higher than they needed to go before he began to shake his head in earnest. Apparently, he didn’t agree with her assessment.
“No, you have that wrong,” Roland denied, eventually resting his forearms on the edge of his desk.
He laced his hands together, though he lined up both index fingers to point them in her direction.
“I was never cited for trespassing in Whistlerun. I was merely conducting some research, and Chief Langley understood that I wasn’t a threat to the owner of the property. I was not cited in that instance.”
In that instance.
It was an odd phrase, and one she made a mental note to follow up on later.
She’d performed a quick background check on him, but she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
Maybe she hadn’t gone back far enough. She chastised herself for slipping in her duties.
The fast-paced days of being a detective had taken a backseat to herding cows.
“Chief Langley was very nice to me back then.” Roland relaxed his fingers when she didn’t contradict his earlier statement. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to him. It was all over the news last year.”
Hadley didn’t want the conversation to get away from her, and she certainly didn’t want this line of questioning to turn into a personal discussion about a good man. She was here for information.
“I don’t understand why you would think my research has anything to do with Chief Langley’s death, though,” Roland inquired, his brows practically touching in displeasure. “I’d never met him before that night.”
A flash of emotion, there and gone, pulled his lips tight.
Not in fear, though.
Anger?
“And what about this past Friday night? Did you have more research to conduct on Mr. Vinton’s property?”
“Of course not,” Roland denied emphatically, frown deepening. His gaze dropped to the new laptop, still seated in its foam. He’d done so multiple times since she’d walked into his office. “I was home on Friday night, working on my book. Are you suggesting that—”
“Your book?” Hadley feigned interest, interrupting him to keep control of the conversation. “Were you conducting research for it last year, Mr. Mercer? Is that why you were on Mr. Vinton’s land?”
Roland didn’t respond right away. Instead, he removed his glasses and worked on a lens with a handkerchief he’d retrieved from his pocket.
His gaze cut to the filing cabinet in the corner, then to his office door, which still remained open.
She got the sense that he wasn’t comfortable with her question.
What was it about Roland Mercer that had Reed wanting to run something past her?
“Do you believe in the Threshing Man, Chief Dawkins?” Roland asked as he finished cleaning his glasses.
He then resettled them on the bridge of his nose before waving a hand, dismissing his own inquiry.
“What am I thinking? Of course, you believe. You grew up in Cane County, I presume. The Threshing Man has been my life’s work.
You see, there is more to him than meets the eye.
He’s fascinating, isn’t he? Moving through those fields for centuries… ”
His gaze darted over her shoulder, down the long stretch of hallway. The way he lowered his voice was obviously a prompt for her to lean forward, but she remained relaxed in the chair. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of drawing out her curiosity.
“He isn’t what everyone thinks he is, Chief Dawkins.
” Roland placed a hand over his heart. “For centuries, the people of this county have mostly told the story one way. A monster at the edge of the corn. Something that takes. But I have spent the better part of my life learning to read it the other way around, and I am close now. Closer than anyone has ever been.”
The more he spoke and revealed his beliefs, the tighter the tension coiled in the office.
Hadley experienced a flicker of déjà vu upon hearing his question, but the way he spun his theory took their interview somewhere else entirely.
He truly believed there was a supernatural entity lurking in Cane County.
“Close to what, Mr. Mercer?”
“Proof.” The corner of Roland’s lip turned upward in an awkward smile. “You’ll understand when the book is published for all to read. Everyone will.”
She had interviewed enough people to know when one of them had come to believe their own invention.
And sitting across from him, the conviction hardening his features, she understood that Roland fit that description.
The pinned map with its overlapping pushpins, the source material in boxes dating back decades, and the way Roland came across as slightly paranoid gave her pause.
A man who grew up on campfire tales and urban legends was one thing.
A man who’d staked his career, his whole life, on proving one of them was true was something else.
And harder to predict. The skeptics would ridicule him.
The believers would egg him on. Either way, he’d have every reason to keep pushing.
What if Reed had discovered something in the field last year?
What if Roland had allowed his paranoia to go one step too far?
“Is there anyone who can verify you were home on Friday night?” Hadley asked, abandoning his need to converse about the Threshing Man.
She wanted her questions answered, and he’d deliberately skirted the truth about his reason for being in Vinton’s fields last year. “A family member? Friend? Neighbor?”
Roland stared at her, almost in disbelief. She could hear the woman at the end of the hall laughing, presumably the one on the phone.
“No,” Roland finally admitted, the word coming out grudging and small. “I live alone.”
“Then here’s my problem.” Hadley kept her tone even, so he understood the seriousness of her allegation.
“Earl Vinton isn’t too pleased that someone is trespassing on his property again.
He requested that I investigate, and seeing as how the former chief of police discovered you on that same property last year, I’m inclined to think you decided to take another look around. ”