Chapter 22
Hadley Dawkins
Hadley pulled up out front of the station and spotted the two women before she’d shut off the engine.
Nora and Whitney, each with a coffee from the bakery, their heads bent toward one another, so deep in conversation that neither had marked the Equinox at the curb.
Hadley let them go on a moment before she turned her focus to the rearview mirror.
Her reflection was the same as yesterday, and that struck her as unfair.
An hour ago, she’d found her brother’s truck folded into an oak and spent the drive to their childhood home picturing him dead in a ditch.
She’d stood in the living room, a foot from the floorboard she’d learned to skip at seven years old, and listened to Sam Cashman decide to save his own life while her brother drank his own away one swallow at a time.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure she’d still be standing after all Mason had carried.
Yet she couldn’t push the disappointment down, or the regret that ran under it for how the two of them had turned out.
None of that stared back at her from the mirror.
Her eyes were the same green. Her lips were still annoyingly chapped.
The same scar ran through her right eyebrow.
Hadley let out a slow breath before popping the console for a bottle of antacids.
She shook two into her palm and chewed them down, and once the chalk coated her tongue, the burn under her sternum eased back a fraction.
She traded the bottle for a tube of ChapStick worn down almost to nothing, barely enough wax left to cover her bottom lip, but she made do.
The weather had turned on the drive back into town.
The clear sky she’d driven out to the Cox place under was gone, and a bank of clouds had stacked up in the west, gray at the base and building taller by the minute.
The air had thickened, heavy even inside the vehicle, with a chill threading underneath that hadn’t been there at dawn.
A storm was coming.
The rain wouldn’t arrive until later in the day, by her guess, which left her the morning to make her calls and decide whether she was driving out to Emberwood or to Earl Vinton’s place. She reached across for the talisman on the passenger seat and stepped out of the vehicle.
Whitney spotted her first. She murmured something low and nudged Nora, whose head came up, and she covered half the distance between them without delay.
“Hadley. We were hoping you’d be back soon.” They met on the sidewalk in front of the old Victorian. Nora’s gaze drifted toward the front porch. “Reed wasn’t in the habit of leaving the station much before ten.”
“Is everything all right?” Hadley couldn’t tell if the comment was a criticism or an observation, and she let it go either way. “I’m just coming back from an interview.”
“An interview? Concerning what we spoke about last night?” Nora traded a look with Whitney, enough to indicate that she’d confided in her friend.
When Hadley didn’t answer straightaway, Nora pressed on.
“I spoke with my cousin last night after I got home. We were on the phone for hours. By the time we hung up, I figured it was too late to call you.”
“You didn’t have to drive over from Emberwood this morning.” Hadley kept the two of them on the sidewalk a beat longer, in no hurry to move this indoors. She had calls to make, and if half her day was going to disappear in Emberwood, she’d sooner know it now. “You’ve got my cell, Nora.”
“It’s fine, honestly.” Nora glanced at Whitney, who nodded along. “We were headed this way anyway.”
“There’s an antique mall out past Garber.” Whitney lifted her coffee an inch toward the horizon. “Nora’s been promising to take me since June.”
“I wanted you to know what I learned first, though.” Nora didn’t talk over her friend, but she didn’t let Whitney get carried away with their plans, either.
“My cousin’s in-laws are torn up over Roland.
His mother hasn’t left the house since it happened, and his father’s had the mayor of Emberwood on the phone every hour on the hour, demanding answers.
But there’s one thing my cousin said that I keep circling back to, and it’s about Roland’s research.
These last few weeks, he’d gotten paranoid.
Apparently, he came by his parents’ place Monday night and told them straight out that he thought somebody was watching him. ”
A low roll of thunder moved somewhere out past the fields.
“His father asked if he meant the Threshing Man. I mean, they all knew how obsessed he was with the legend.” Nora tucked back a few strands of hair a gust had pulled loose.
“Only Roland didn’t laugh, Hadley. He got agitated.
Really agitated. He told his father he was serious, that there are worse things in this world than the Threshing Man. ”
Another gust ran down Main Street ahead of the weather, cool and damp, and set the bakery awning snapping loud enough to carry a block. Hadley didn’t know what to do with Nora’s information, because it gave her nothing solid to follow up on. Still, she’d have Nick sit with the Mercer family again.
“It’s just awful, all of it.” Whitney’s attention had drifted somewhere past Hadley’s shoulder, and it took a moment to come back around. “Are there any leads? Anything at all?”
“We’re pursuing a few things, yes.” Hadley chose her words with care, turning a little so the wind didn’t work her own hair loose from its clip.
“There’s a USB drive with information on it that could move the whole thing forward.
That’s as much as I can say right now, though.
Just so I’m clear, Roland didn’t say anything more to his parents?
Had he spotted someone following him, or was it a feeling? ”
“That’s all my cousin told me. But I’m sure I could ask his—”
“No. Please don’t.” Hadley shouldn’t have pulled Nora into this investigation to begin with.
Gut instinct had sent her to the hospital last night, chasing another avenue, and all it had earned was Nora’s hope raised and, worse, put her in the crosshairs of whoever killed Roland.
“I appreciate the follow-up, truly. But we’ve got other leads to run down.
I came back to make some calls, so please, go enjoy your day. ”
Whitney’s gaze had dropped to the talisman in Hadley’s hand, the bundle of twine and husks rather than the key ring beside it.
“We should let her get back to work, Nora.” Whitney kept her focus on the talisman while reaching out to touch Nora’s elbow. “Come on. The place opens at eight, and I don’t want the good stuff picked over.”
Hadley remained on the sidewalk as they crossed to the car, parked beside the Equinox.
Nora had more she wanted to say, that much was plain, but between Hadley’s deflection and Whitney’s steering, there wasn’t much left to land on.
Not until Nora lifted a few fingers off the wheel and offered a small smile through the glass did Hadley return the gesture.
Then she crossed to the porch steps, thumbing the right key loose from the ring as she climbed the wooden planks.
Reed had never locked the station. Not once in nine years, from what she’d been told.
He’d wanted any soul in Whistlerun to be able to walk in at any hour and find help waiting on the other side of the door.
There was something fine in that, something worth mourning, because Hadley locked it every time she left.
She’d have locked it twice if the hardware allowed, and never more so than after last night.
The way she figured it, anyone with a problem while she was off duty could call the sheriff’s office, and Nick’s dispatcher would raise her on the radio inside a minute.
She’d have loved to live in the town Reed remembered from their childhood.
Those days were long gone, though, and Reed had all but died proving it. Whoever he’d met outside the festival grounds that night, whoever he’d followed to that deserted back stretch only townsfolk ever used, it hadn’t been a stranger.
Inside, the station was quiet.
Hadley crossed to her desk and dropped the keys on the hard surface. She went to do the same with the talisman and stopped short of letting it slip from her fingers. The husks had gone amber and thin with age, dry as old paper, and if she weren’t careful, they’d give under her thumb.
Sarah Cox had likely spent an entire morning making this, maybe even a whole day. She’d done it believing it would keep her safe from something. From the malevolent figure she’d been warned about over and over by her mother, her grandmother, the great-grandmother before her.
And Martin had pressed this small piece of his wife into Hadley’s hands and closed her fingers over it. She wasn’t about to leave it lying on a desk or shoved in a drawer.
She carried it to the front window instead, to the empty space between the two chairs, and leaned it against the sill, balancing it until she was sure it would hold.
It sat crooked. She would pick up a suction hook at the hardware store this weekend and hang the talisman the way it was meant to be hung. It was the right thing to do.
She stared at it longer than she’d meant to and stepped back only when she caught Marjorie Foster peering through the display window of the flower shop across the street. It wouldn’t be long before the whole town heard the new chief had fallen in line and hung her husks like everybody else.
Hadley fought the urge to take it down, but she wouldn’t disrespect Martin or Sarah over her own pride.
She turned from the window, and it was then she remembered she’d left the last of her coffee in the cup holder of the Equinox.
There was always a pot on the burner in the back, though, so it took her no time at all to fill a mug in the kitchen.