Chapter 12 #2
“The Threshing Man doesn’t chase you into the field.
He waits for you to walk in on your own.
He’s patient. He was there when your people were born here, and he’ll be there when they put you in the ground.
” Gus set the verses down slow, each word in its place, and it gave her pause.
She’d heard the additional details before.
Some would hear a threat folded into it.
It could just as easily be heard another way.
“Folks around here tell most of those old verses wrong, though. Take the trench coat. There was never any trench coat. Corn husks for clothes, sure, if you go back to the oldest tellings. But a trench coat?”
The humor thinned out of his face.
“We both know who the real monsters turned out to be, don’t we?”
Gus let out a low, rattling laugh with a good deal of disappointment buried in it. She’d always known Gus didn’t believe in the urban legend, though he’d never once mocked those who did.
He reached over and patted the back of her hand.
“Don’t go giving credence to something beyond our control, Hadley.
” Gus tipped his head toward the rear of the bar.
“Elijah’s back there in his booth. You go careful with him, you hear me?
That man loved this town so hard for so long he forgot somewhere along the way that dedication can cross lines.
You don’t want to make that same mistake. ”
Gus settled back, the toothpick rolling in between his thumb and index finger.
“Go on, then. Get what you came for. Sam will bring your dinner.”
Gus held more secrets than he let on, and she didn’t like leaving the thread where it lay.
She made a private note to come back to him when the room wasn’t this full, to find out what else he might recall about the Threshing Man tales, and whether the Mercer family had ever crossed his bar.
But those were conversations for fewer ears.
Hadley gave him a small smile and slid off the stool, collecting her drink as she went.
She’d spotted Elijah Garber on her way in, alone in the back booth with his bourbon and a cleaned-off plate.
The years had finally gotten their hooks into him, thinning him at the shoulders, graying down what was left of his hair.
He motioned her toward the seat across from him.
“Hell must’ve frozen over while I wasn’t looking.” Elijah lifted his drink and held the rim near his lips, in no hurry to actually take a sip. “This about whatever had you over in Emberwood today?”
Hadley claimed the bench across from him and set her glass on the table, holding her silence while Sam came around with her plate. She’d drawn enough attention already. Her sitting down with Elijah would be fodder for the morning crew before the coffee had finished brewing.
“Thanks, Sam.” Hadley tugged a few napkins from the dispenser. “Would you bring us two black coffees when you get a minute?”
Elijah’s jaw tightened at the implication that he couldn’t handle his liquor.
Lately, he’d gone from his two bourbons to three, at least according to Rena, who’d heard it from her fiancé.
Donovan Huber’s place sat just up the road from Elijah’s, out the same direction as the stretch where Reed’s truck had burned.
She and Elijah hadn’t had a private word since she’d gone out to his porch last fall, hoping the man who’d taught her the job, who’d taken her trembling ten-year-old statement over a mug of hot chocolate, would finally give her the truth about her brother’s case.
Instead, he’d laid one platitude over the next in his own defense.
He’d buried a witness’s account. He’d looked the other way and called it loyalty. She didn’t hate him for it, but she would never again take a word from him at face value, and everything he gave her tonight would get turned over twice before she trusted it.
“Tell me about the Mercers.”
Something tugged at the corners of his eyes.
She ignored it and reached for a wing. The barbecue sauce found a tiny split in her lip, and she sucked a breath through her teeth, though the burn went numb soon enough as she kept on with her dinner.
She’d regret the fire building in her sternum, but that was a problem for later.
“Which one?” Garber leaned back, his interest plain. “Carl’s been at the bank over in Holloway near forty years. Decent enough. Upstanding family. Two grown children. Anything else?”
“Roland.”
“So that’s who you went to see in Emberwood.
” Elijah studied her while she ate, while she stayed unforthcoming about her reasons.
Her silence prompted him to continue. “He teaches at the community college out there, so you’ve likely got everything I’d know already.
What is it you’re really after, Hadley?”
“Roland Mercer was in Earl Vinton’s east field last year.” Hadley wiped her fingers on a napkin. “And there’s a fair chance he was out there again this past Friday. I want to know what his interest is in Vinton’s property.”
“Earl.” Garber made a sound that was neither a laugh nor a cough.
“Earl Vinton hasn’t had a happy day in his life that wasn’t built on having something to complain about.
That man would have filed a report on the weather if I’d let him.
As for Roland, the whole county knows about his obsession with our local folklore. Hell, he’s made a living off it.”
“Six years back, Mercer was cited for trespassing on the land next to Vinton’s. A judge tossed it without a fine. Last year, Warren talked Reed into burying another one. I’d like to understand why everyone keeps handing this man a pass.”
Garber’s thumb went still on the rim of his glass. The jukebox rolled into a slower song, and knowing their voices would carry into the lull, he lowered his.
“Roland Mercer is harmless.” Elijah spoke as a man does when trying to calm a fretting animal. “He’s a sad, lonely soul chasing a ghost story.”
“How many times did you cover for him?” Hadley waved the napkin, dismissing her own question before he could dodge it. She doubted she’d get the truth either way. “The way I see it, Roland’s got an interest in those fields, and I’m not at all sure it has anything to do with the Threshing Man.”
She laid out the facts, and nothing more. She didn’t reveal that Roland had marked the back road where they’d found Reed’s truck, pinned on a map among a dozen others. She had no idea yet how Mercer tied into Reed’s death. But there was a thread, and she meant to find its end.
“This isn’t about a couple of trespassing charges.
” Elijah leaned in a little. “Listen, I know what it is to want an answer so bad you start seeing one in every shadow. But Reed’s gone.
I loved that boy like my own, and I’d give a good deal to put the man who did it in your hands.
But you don’t go hanging a murder on a fella for being odd and walking where he shouldn’t. ”
“I’m not hanging anything on anyone.” Hadley ate a few more fries before pushing her plate away, her reflux already lodging its complaint.
She decided to give Elijah one thing, just enough to see if it shook anything loose.
“Reed kept a citation from last year. There was a sticky note on the front of the folder. He wanted me to find it, to know about the trespassing charge, and to know that Warren had asked him to drop it. You keep telling me you loved Reed like a son. So, prove it. What do you think he wanted me to know about Roland Mercer?”
Garber held her gaze a long while before he picked up his drink. He drained the contents and set the glass down hard, the way a man does when he wants to make a statement.
“Then you’ll want to talk to Nora.” Elijah turned the empty glass a slow quarter circle. “If Reed wanted you to know something in particular, she’s your best bet.”
“Nora? Nora Oliver?” Hadley pulled her drink in front of her and took a long pull on the straw, hoping the cold beverage would quiet the burn coating her throat. The cold did next to nothing. “Why? Because he confided in her?”
“You forget how it all knits together out here.” Elijah shook his head, something close to disappointment in it.
“Nora’s mother was a Stiles before she married into the Olivers, and the Stileses run thick out toward Holloway.
Her cousin Wade married Roland’s sister, oh, four years back now.
Quiet little wedding. So, if anybody can tell you whether that man’s got it in him to hurt a soul, it’d be Nora. ”