Chapter 12
Hadley Dawkins
The gravel lot beside the Watering Hole had filled in since sundown, pickups and a couple of sedans nosed in at angles that suggested nobody had given much thought to any order. Hadley had left her own vehicle at the station and walked the two blocks down Main.
She stopped at the edge of the lot for a moment, in no hurry.
She usually avoided the place. When she’d first taken over as police chief, half the town hadn’t been sure it had been the right decision, and she’d figured the cleanest way to handle that doubt was to keep her distance.
Let them grow used to her wearing the badge.
Yet what had made Reed so good at the job was the very thing she’d been holding herself back from.
He’d been one of them, woven all the way in.
Then again, maybe that was what had gotten him killed.
Hadley leaned her head back and stared at the stars.
She rarely took the time to appreciate the Ozarks, the way the dark out here went deep and clean and let the entire sky come down close.
It was nothing like the washed-out city glow she’d chosen to live under for close to twelve years.
Behind the structure, the corn gave off its low, dry rasp, leaves stirring in a breeze she could barely feel, as if to remind her the Threshing Man was out there somewhere among the rows.
She supposed the old legend had been at the edge of her thoughts all day anyway, given that she’d spent most of the afternoon on her laptop digging into Roland Mercer.
She’d finally gotten confirmation: six years back, Mercer had been cited for trespassing out by the eastern fields, on the property bordering Earl Vinton’s land.
A judge had dismissed the charge without so much as a fine.
She had Roland to thank for steering her down that road.
His answer to her question this morning had lodged in her like a splinter she couldn’t leave alone, and it had taken several phone calls to the right people before the answers came loose.
Now she had proof that his trespassing wasn’t a one-time thing.
She just wasn’t sure yet what to do with it.
There was one man who might know how a citation came to die on a judge’s desk in this county. The man who had worn the badge before Reed ever pinned it on, and who took his supper at the Watering Hole most evenings, in the same booth, with the same measure of bourbon.
A battered truck swung into the lot, gravel popping under its tires. The interruption pulled her attention back to the matter at hand. She crossed the lot and hauled the door open. The heavy smell of fryer grease met her, along with a low country twang turning over on the jukebox.
The Watering Hole had been a warehouse once and had never entirely stopped looking like one.
Photographs of Whistlerun crowded the walls, the images gone grainy with age, most of them belonging to people she’d only ever known as headstones.
Behind the bar, a glass case held a row of war medals that caught the light when the door swung shut behind her.
Sam Cashman stood at the tap, a rag over one shoulder, measuring just how much foam climbed the glass.
He’d been her brother’s closest friend once, back before the worst thing that could happen to them came true.
Where the years in prison had carved Mason down to something lean and spare, drink had done the opposite to Sam, leaving him soft and worn past his age.
As she closed the distance to the counter, she feigned ignorance over the slight tremor in his hands.
“Chief Dawkins.” Sam settled the glass in front of Keith Bennett, one of the regulars, then pulled the rag off his shoulder and wiped his fingers while he studied her. “Is this an official visit?”
“No.” Hadley leaned against the counter rather than take the lone empty stool. “I was hoping you’d set me up with some wings and fries. And a Shirley Temple.”
He kept regarding her carefully, as if weighing whether there was any truth in her response.
They hadn’t spoken at length since Reed’s funeral, when she’d cornered him on the sidewalk and pried loose the very thing he’d carried for twenty years.
Maybe that confrontation was best left where it lay.
He’d kept quiet about what he’d seen in those woods the night Emily Esten disappeared, a second figure he’d never named, and Hadley still didn’t know whether his speaking up would have changed a single thing for Mason back then.
She suspected Sam didn’t, either. Unfortunately, the not knowing was its own slow kind of poison.
“Dirty Shirley?”
“Not tonight.” She turned down the offer to spike her drink. “I’ve got somewhere to be first thing in the morning.”
Sam seemed on the verge of saying something more, but he only tapped the counter and crossed to the small opening that fed into the kitchen.
He clipped a ticket where the cook would see it and called the order through, then lingered there a moment with his back half to her.
His hesitation to start up a conversation landed somewhere under her ribs.
She should have started coming in here a long time ago.
“I stopped by Mason’s place last night,” Hadley said, reaching for one of the cherries from the garnish tray.
Her brother had mentioned once or twice that Sam came around often, though he was never there when she dropped by.
“I don’t know if he’s told you, but he’s replacing all the furniture in the house.
He’s already started on a dining room table. ”
“I was out there this past weekend.” Sam began to make her Shirley Temple. “We drank to the settlement money coming in early. He can buy all the wood needed for that furniture and start on the porch. Did he show you the plan for a wraparound?”
Hadley wasn’t sure how she kept her expression from revealing her shock.
Mason hadn’t said a word to her about the settlement, or the porch, or whatever celebration he’d had with Sam over the weekend.
A deep ache started up behind her sternum, and there it was again, the very thing that had taught her to keep her distance in the first place.
She pulled the cherry off its stem with her teeth, chewed, and made herself swallow the remnants before she answered.
“I know he really appreciates your visits, Sam.” Hadley glanced down toward the end of the bar and lifted a hand in greeting. “Would you mind running that Shirley Temple down there? I haven’t seen Gus in a while. I’d love to say hi.”
“Sure thing.”
He hadn’t caught the deflection, because Gus Jenkins was already waving her over. The older man sat in his usual spot, the corner stool at the end. As she rounded the bar, she nodded to the patrons she passed, and their surprise at the sight of her was plain on every face.
“There she is.” Gus rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, his greyish-blue eyes lit with mischief. There was a warmth in his voice that none of the other residents ever managed when they spoke to her. “Sit with me.”
Gus had owned the Watering Hole for the past sixty years.
He’d outlived two wives, a daughter, and nearly everyone left who could recall what the building had been before he bought it.
At ninety-nine, he was the oldest soul in Whistlerun, all knuckle and scarred, swollen joints, but his back held straight as a fence post. The medals in the case were his, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart anchoring the rest, though he rarely spoke of them.
“How’s the heart, Gus?” Hadley asked, nodding her thanks to the men who slid down the row of stools to open a place beside him.
She wouldn’t stay long, but that hardly mattered.
Gus wanted her next to him, which meant the whole bar would accommodate him.
He’d turn a hundred come spring. If his heart held, the entire town would turn out for it.
They’d have Hadley shut down Main, string the lights, wheel out a cake big enough to outdo a church social, and every soul who’d ever been poured a drink or talked down off a hard night in this very building would come to lay a hand on his shoulder.
“Still arguing with me.” Gus patted his own chest once with a knotted hand. “Doctors keep acting surprised every time I turn up for the next appointment. I keep telling them the Lord will take me when it’s my time and not a second sooner.”
“He knows we need you here.” Hadley meant every word of it. She couldn’t picture Whistlerun without him, and the town had buried enough bodies this past year. They were owed a little mercy. “Which is exactly why you’ll keep those appointments. You hear me?”
“Sam sees that I get there and back.” Gus worked the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, his attention never once leaving her. “Ask your question, Chief.”
Sam was already crossing the floor with her Shirley Temple.
He’d given her extra cherries, and she smiled her thanks.
He seemed to sense there was more to her sitting down than supper, and he drifted back the way he’d come.
She honestly hadn’t planned on asking Gus anything tonight, but if anyone in this county carried the whole of the Threshing Man in his head, it was him.
“They say the Threshing Man comes when the fields go quiet,” Hadley recited, dredging up the piece of folklore, half expecting him to answer with some scrap of his own wisdom. “When the air smells like rot, and the sky goes copper. He doesn’t reap what’s sown. He takes what’s owed.”