34
True to Mason’s prediction, everyone wanted to know about the latest development in the Dixon case, given the packed house in the midst of an earlier-than-forecasted blizzard.
And true to her officer’s report, sitting on the riser in the front of the room was Austin Dekes, their normally solid-as-a-rock fire chief, not looking particularly solid at all.
Flushed face, unsteady gait, twitchy finger. All these years later, Austin hadn’t just fallen off the wagon but was packing his favorite shotgun to boot.
“He wants to know who did it,” Officer Sandford informed her.
“Did what?”
Officers Sandford and Childs exchanged glances.
“We don’t exactly know,” Sandford confessed.
“And the town residents?”
“Umm.” Now Childs’s turn. “They don’t seem to wanna leave the show.”
“Fuck me.” Not her most professional statement, but it had been that kind of day.
Both of her officers shrugged. “No one’s moved. Which isn’t a bad thing, as it’s kept the situation calm. But on the other hand…”
They had a hostage situation involving several hundred townsfolk. Mandy noticed that many of the volunteer fire department members were front and center. They’d probably attempted to talk their beloved leader down. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked.
She could call state, summon the cavalry. God knew her tiny department wasn’t equipped for the likes of this. And yet as her father had always said, community policing was exactly that—about community. Absolutely, positively she wasn’t giving up on one of her neighbors now.
“I’m going in. Your job is to contain the perimeter. And bit by bit, let’s try to convince some of our overly curious residents that it’s time to leave.”
Her officers exchanged glances. Mandy got it. Like hell a bunch of bored locals were giving up front-row seats to juicy drama any time soon. Seriously, police academy classes didn’t come close to preparing a small-town cop for the likes of this.
She adjusted her hat, entered the fray.
“Hey, Austin.”
The fire chief immediately swiveled in her direction. Mandy kept her shoulders relaxed, her hands fully visible.
“I understand you have some questions you want answered.”
“Who did it?” Austin exploded. “I know someone here did it. Had to be one of us. Had to be!”
He swung his shotgun in the direction of the audience, half of whom leaned back in horror, while the other half leaned forward in anticipation. Dear Lord.
Mandy took several steps toward the dais. This close she could tell that Austin was indeed obliterated. Two decades of sobriety gone just like that. She knew it had been a hard night followed by a harder discovery, but this level of reaction…
“I don’t understand,” Austin was muttering. “That night. I swear it was a deer. And then…I was attacked by bears. But deer. Bears. Wild animals. I swear it.”
The shotgun shook noticeably in Austin’s hand. One of his crew took a step forward. Mandy waved the woman back.
“Tell me about the deer, Austin.”
“I didn’t see it. I was driving home. The storm. And then…lightning. Kawpooey! The tree exploded. An animal darted across the road. I tried to swerve, but…I wasn’t fast enough.”
“The storm, thirty years ago. That’s the night you’re talking about, Austin?
” Mandy could already tell that a decent chunk of the room followed her line of thinking.
In a town that remained defined by one moment, one family, how could it be any different?
Which would make the tree in question the one near the end of the Dixon driveway, a giant oak that had been famously split in half.
“I pulled over. I did! Honest. To check.”
“You’d been drinking.”
Hollow chuckle. “Those days, not like I was ever sober.”
“So you were drunk, driving home in the middle of a thunderstorm, and you saw a tree get struck by lightning.”
“I wanted the deer to be all right. But when I got out of my vehicle—the deer didn’t look so good. I thought I should do something.”
“You wanted to help the animal,” Mandy prodded gently.
“Bears attacked me! Out of nowhere! I was looking down and then, just like that, I got knocked on my ass! Staring up at nothing but teeth and claws. I was gonna die, I swear I was gonna die.”
Austin jerked his shotgun unsteadily. Mandy extended a soothing hand.
“What did you do, Austin?”
“I made it back to my car and I shot at them! I didn’t want to hurt them, but I had to protect myself.”
Mandy was starting to understand. Such a sad and tragic tale. Such a sad and terrible night.
“Where did you get the gun, Austin?”
“My glove compartment.” He stared at her blankly. “Everyone keeps a pistol in their glove compartment.”
In the Live Free or Die state, he wasn’t necessarily wrong.
“Did you shoot at a bear, or bears?” Mandy emphasized the plural.
“I’m not sure. There was screaming. And so much rain, coming down in sheets. Thunder. Lightning. It was all so much, too much.”
Mandy nodded. She took up a casual position leaning against the raised dais just two feet from the swaying fire chief.
“You shot wild animals. Except you didn’t, did you, Austin?”
He shook noticeably. “I went back the next day.”
“To see what had happened. After three or four cups of coffee, I’m assuming.”
“Nothing.” Austin appeared genuinely bewildered. “No hit deer. No shot bears. Just…nothing.”
“Then later in the day, you heard that the Dixon family had gone missing.”
“There was nothing! Which was good, so good. Couldn’t have been me, right? I could barely stand up that night, let alone…you know.”
“You could still shoot a gun,” Mandy observed quietly.
“I told myself I’d never drink again. I’d crashed my car. Suffered terrible delusions. But it was over. I’d get straight. And…and…ten years later I did.”
Austin ended in a mumble. Mandy understood. Couldn’t be a cop without getting to see firsthand the damage addiction could do.
“But then this morning,” she prodded gently, “discovering what we discovered. You remembered more, didn’t you? As in, not a deer. Not a family of bears.”
“Makes no sense. From the road…to there! Someone else…one of them!” He turned his shotgun wildly toward his neighbors. “One of them did it. I couldn’t’ve!”
Mandy forced herself to remain calm. Despite her directions and very much in line with her expectations, very few of the townsfolk had left their chairs. Because they trusted their fire chief that much? Or wanted answers that badly? Either was possible.
“Austin, the next day you went back to the scene, right? Because you did have doubts. But you didn’t find anything. Correct?”
“No!”
“Did you happen to check your firearm? Double-check if you’d really discharged your weapon?”
“Four rounds missing.”
“How good a shot are you, Austin? Like four shots, four bull’s-eyes?”
Austin regarded her blearily. “Huh?”
Yeah, she was starting to get it. Austin had been involved that infamous night.
Maybe struck one of the Dixon children, or the dog, with his car, then ended up shooting at other members of the family.
But one significantly impaired man eliminating all six with four bullets?
Then transporting the bodies, sealing them up in a cave, and cleaning up the entire mess?
She didn’t believe Austin was that good, especially not back in his hard-boozing heyday.
“I think you’re right, Austin, about someone here knowing something,” she informed him. “I believe it’s time to poll our studio audience. After you surrender your shotgun.”
She held out a hand expectantly, while a low murmur erupted behind her. Austin peered down at his weapon, still clutched in both hands.
“Austin, look at me.” Then, when he did: “You need answers. What happened that night, it’s not all on you. It’s one piece of a much larger puzzle. For the past twenty years, you’ve kept this town safe. There are so many in this room who are grateful to you.”
She glanced over her shoulder. A small flurry of nods.
“You have served them. Now it’s their turn to help you. Let it go. Surrender your burden. Let us be there for you.”
Austin swayed slightly, another tremor snaking through his frame.
Several members of his crew crept closer.
Mandy didn’t look at them. She kept her gaze fixed on the man who’d clearly done a whole lotta wrong, but then a whole lotta right.
Whether those things equaled out wasn’t her place to judge.
Her job was to keep her town safe—all members of her town included.
Abruptly, Austin thrust out his shotgun. Then he sat down hard. She collected the gun with a discreet nod at her officers. As in, do nothing, say nothing. There were cards left to be played.
With Austin now disarmed, Mandy turned to regard her neighbors directly. No Betty and Mason, who’d had a heads-up on the situation, but otherwise, all the major players were accounted for. The legacy families, whose ancestors built this community and whose bloodlines many would argue still ran it.
“Who here knows of a cave, located in the granite ledge between Skyline Drive and the Dixon property?”
A general mutter sweeping through the room. She was not surprised that the Baird sisters raised their hands first.
“We heard stories.” Lana Baird, sounding tentative.
“Don’t be ridiculous, we were flat-out told—that area, absolutely off-limits.” Lydia Baird glared at her sister.
Mandy waited.
“In our younger days we were prone to explore.” Ninety-year-old Lana again, whose statement generated more nods of assent. “We were given explicit instructions never to inspect the ledges. That place…something bad had happened.”
Mandy gave both elderly sisters a look. “In other words, you headed straight there.”
A few titters around the room.
“Kinda,” Lydia allowed. “But our father wasn’t wrong. Wandering those woods, getting near those ledges…Bad juju there. No doubt about it.”
“What did your father actually tell you?”
“The sins of our past,” Lana stated immediately. “Our forefathers had discovered a grand, cathedral-like space. Magnificent and otherworldly.”
“And we should never set foot in it,” Lydia added. “Terrible things happened. Times of shame and horror. Our father told the truth. Dark, dark energy there. We adventured our way to the base of those rocks, then immediately turned back around. ’Sides, couldn’t make out any sort of opening anyway.”
Mandy gazed around the room, where here and there some locals were nodding. But mostly, blank stares. It appeared the cave itself wasn’t common knowledge.
She went with her next instinct. “And the legend of the lost Continental treasure?”
“Ooh, ooh, oh!”
This got her a solid dozen hands in the air. She went with Dean, a longtime friend of her parents who happened to own the local diner.
“During the Revolutionary War, a chest of currency was being transported through the mountains when it got lost in a snowstorm. Which at the time was bad but maybe not so bad, as the Brits had figured out how to counterfeit the bills and devalue the colonial funds. Still, if the chest proved to hold authentic denominations, well, the historical value alone would be priceless.”
“And you’ve spent how much time searching for them?”
“Oh, in my younger days I might’ve done some poking around in the woods, but who hasn’t?” Fresh round of shrugs.
Time to cut to the chase.
“Has anyone here been in the cavern in question? Any year, any time. Who’s actually visited this place?”
Mandy’s neighbors eyeing each other, then, one by one, shook their heads.
“Even during the Dixon search and rescue efforts?” she pressed.
Still nothing.
Well, shit. She turned back to Austin, who’d clearly inflicted some sort of damage to the Dixon family that night. She had a feeling, however, that was the beginning of the story, not the end.
“Did you know?” she asked him softly. “The cave this morning. Did you know?”
Austin sagged, mumbled, “Never saw that place till we entered it.”
Which left her with…
One distinct villager who was not present, and yet clearly knew more about that night than anyone. Isla McLean, who lived in the vicinity and, Mandy was more convinced now than ever, had played an integral role.
She sighed heavily. Handed off Austin’s rifle to Officer Childs. Gazed outside where the night had gone white with snowfall.
She knew what she needed to do next.