Chapter 13
Donovan Huber
The coffee maker in the office had a wheeze to it that Donovan had been meaning to fix for the better part of a year.
It hacked and spat the last of the water through the fine grounds before he poured it into a mug with WORLD’S OKAYEST MECHANIC embossed on the side.
It had been a gift from Rena two Christmases back that he still pretended to find funny.
He set the carafe back onto the burner before crossing to the open bay door. The first swallow scalded the roof of his mouth. He drank the coffee, anyway, leaning against the metal track while Main Street took its time waking up.
A delivery truck sat idle outside the diner with its hazards on, which was a daily ritual.
Mary Lou had already flipped the sign in the bakery window, and the smell of yeast and sugar carried down the block, barely cutting through the motor oil and gasoline that lived in his clothes.
Outside the flower shop, Marjorie had set her crates of mums out on the walk and was turning them one by one to face the street.
Three lots down, Hadley Dawkins’ Equinox was parked out front of the old Victorian.
Reed had done the opposite, using the spot for the cruiser, opting to park his personal truck around back most nights.
Donovan didn’t blame her for favoring her own vehicle.
The cruiser was old, soft in the suspension, and gutless where it counted.
Half the roads in this county had never seen a lick of tar.
A police chief out here needed something that could hold a line on washboard gravel at speed.
He’d told Reed as much, more than once, but the man had just laughed at the mere thought that the town would spring for better.
Donovan tore his gaze from the old Victorian, not wanting his thoughts to drift too much. He still had difficulty sleeping through the night. Unfortunately, he couldn’t change the fact that he’d been the one to find Reed’s body burning inside his truck.
To give himself something to do, Donovan stared down Main Street in the other direction, searching for someone else.
Lori Hayes had called the shop late yesterday afternoon.
Her check engine light had come on out past the feed store and stayed on, and she was hoping that she’d be able to drop it off before she had to open the boutique.
He’d told her half past seven. So here he was with the bay door up and the morning still gray at its edges, waiting on her the way he waited on everybody.
It was his job, though.
People brought him the things they couldn’t fix themselves and trusted him to tell them the truth about it.
One could learn a lot about another person from their vehicle.
He’d believed that since he was a kid sweeping his father’s bays.
A truck told more about a man than he ever could across a counter.
Take Earl Vinton’s old diesel. The floorboard was ankle-deep in receipts and seed catalogs.
The guy couldn’t bring himself to throw something away that might be useful later on.
The widow Hollister’s sedan was garaged, driven only eleven miles a week to church and back, and waxed once a month.
As for Garber’s ancient Ford, which by every law of metal and time should have quit years ago, it was still ticking.
He kept the paint shining like it had rolled off the lot that very morning, however little shine was left on the man himself.
Lori was taking too long this morning, because enough time had passed that images of a burning truck flashed through Donovan’s mind again.
He’d kept Reed’s truck running to the best of his ability, oil and plugs and a brake job that past summer.
Now, there was nothing left of it but whatever the state lab still had boxed up somewhere.
An entire vehicle, scorched and gone to evidence.
Donovan took another drink of his coffee, wondering if he shouldn’t tap into the half bottle of whiskey in his desk.
Next month would be a year since he’d witnessed the vehicle fire, and he figured that was why the nightmares had returned more frequently.
He’d even woken Rena up with his tossing and turning last night.
Rena was another source of stress.
It had been five years since he’d put a ring on her finger, and he still couldn’t have said with his hand on a Bible that he wanted all that came with that gesture.
The truth was uglier than anyone would forgive him for, because he’d only popped the question to get some peace.
Rena had been pushing him, his mother had joined in, and it wasn’t long before the entire goddamn town had pressured him to make it official.
Rena had said yes, of course.
Fortunately, not much had changed in their lives. But now that years had passed without a ceremony, Rena was starting to question when they would set a date, and their family and friends weren’t helping matters.
Before Donovan could turn and collect that half-bottle of whiskey from his desk, he caught sight of Lori’s vehicle at one of the intersections. He lifted a hand in greeting once she’d arrived and parked her little Honda right in front of the bay opening.
“Morning, Donovan!” Lori called out as she opened the driver’s side door. “I can’t thank you enough.”
She had one foot on the asphalt, but she was reaching back across the seat for her purse. Once she had it in hand, she straightened and exited her car, eventually bumping the door shut with her hip.
“It’s no problem,” Donovan replied without pushing his shoulder off the track. They’d gone through this ritual before, and she always ran into difficulty attempting to get the key to her ignition off her key ring. “I promised Hobbs that I’d have his truck ready before nine o’clock, anyway.”
Lori was dressed for success, as his mother would have put it.
The boutique was a bit ritzy, though it still offered jeans and pretty blouses for women to wear around town on a Friday or Saturday night.
Most of Lori’s business came from men searching for just the right gift, and she had plenty of items to offer in the shop.
This morning, she sported a soft blouse, the color of a ripe peach.
She wore dark slacks, low heels, and enough jewelry that the bracelets clinked together as she continued working to release the key from its holder.
Her dark hair was cut to the jaw and tucked behind one ear.
He’d heard from Rena that Lori colored the grey out, though there was no hiding the fine lines that fanned from the corners of her eyes.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Lori said without losing focus. The keys continued to jingle in her hand. “I’m hoping to get Betsy here to last another year, so I’m leaving her in your capable hands.”
“I’ll do my best,” Donovan promised as he held out his hand. Half the town named their vehicles, not that he’d gone so far as to do so with his own. “Betsy just needs a little TLC, is all.”
“There,” Lori exclaimed in success as she held up the key. She’d chipped a nail, but she didn’t seem to notice, and he was smart enough not to point it out. “Lord, I keep meaning to thin these out. I couldn’t tell you what half of them open anymore.”
A truck rolled past on Main before he could respond. It was reflex out here, the way a dog’s ears come up. A faded blue pickup, going slow, and Donovan had the make, model, and the owner placed in under a half second.
Mason Dawkins.
It was difficult to reconcile the man’s place in Whistlerun.
Donovan remembered Mason as the older boy who’d let a grease-stained kid hang around his daddy’s bays and never once made him feel like a pest. He had even shown Donovan how to gap a plug and never ratted when he dropped a socket down into an engine bay.
But then there was the Mason the town had built, during the trial and the years after. The teenager whom the papers had turned into a monster. The one who led a girl into the woods and came out alone with blood on his hands, according to his sister.
The truck slowed, signaled, and then eased to the curb in front of the station.
Donovan turned away. He had no business adding his stare to whatever Mason already carried, walking back into this town.
Donovan couldn’t say how he would have held up if he’d been handed a raw deal like that this late in life.
Hell, all those years gone and no way to grab them back.
The least he could do was let the man cross a street in peace.
Donovan still held out his hand for the key, but Lori’s interest stayed on the truck and its driver.
Mason had climbed down from the cab and slammed the door shut.
Prison had kept him lean, a little too lean, and he’d yet to let the cropped hair grow out.
He stood a moment beside the truck, settling his cap, a man clearly not yet easy in his own hometown.
It suddenly came to Donovan that Mason and Lori had attended high school together. They’d run with the same crowd, too—Mason, Sam, Emily, Lori, and a few others. Lori had been out there that night, drinking and laughing, before it all went sideways.
“Have you talked to him?” Donovan asked before he could stop himself. The keys jingled when her hands jerked upon hearing his question. “Since he got out, I mean.”
“No.” Lori cleared her throat, turning her key over and over, though there was nothing left to free from it. “No, I haven’t. I wouldn’t know what to say to him, anyway. At least, not after all this.”
Across the street, Mason started up the porch steps, one hand riding the rail.
“I suppose I feel guilty.” Lori’s gaze was like a magnet.
She was back to staring at the man who might never find peace.
“Same as the rest of us, I suppose. None of us believed it at first. Not Mason, we said. Not him. He couldn’t do something so horrible.
And then came the trial, and the lawyers, and the papers, and somewhere in all of it we… ”
Lori’s words caught in her throat.