by John Hart
“Kill any dogs this morning?”
He cleared his throat and his eyes came up. He opened the desk’s drawer and slipped whatever he’d been holding inside. Then he closed the drawer with something like care and shook his head. “Let me tell you something about scavengers, son. Only a matter of time before they find a streak of bold.”
I didn’t know if he was talking about the dogs or the people who wanted him to sell, men like Zebulon Faith and Gilley Rat. I wondered if new pressures were being brought to bear. Assault and murder. Dolf in jail. Debt ramping up. What forces now conspired against my father? Would he tell me if I asked, or was I just one more complication? He found his feet and steadied himself. His pants were wrinkled and muddy at the cuffs. His shirt hung out of his belt on one side. He twisted the cap back onto the bourbon and walked it over to the side bar. The day had put a new bend in his back and three decades onto the way he walked. He put the bottle down and dropped a hand around its neck. “I was just having a drink for Dolf.”
“Any word?”
“They won’t let me see him. Parks went back to Charlotte. Nothing he can do if Dolf won’t hire him.” He stopped by the side bar, and his pale whiskers caught that small, yellow light so perfectly that it could have been the only color left in the world.
“Has something changed?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Strange things can happen in the human heart, Adam. There’s power there to break a man. That’s all I know for certain.”
“Are we still talking about Dolf?”
He tried to pull himself together. “We’re just talking, son.” He looked up and straightened a framed photograph on the wall. It was of him and Dolf and Grace. She was maybe seven, teeth too large for her face, laughter all over her. He stared at her, and I knew.
“You told Grace, didn’t you?”
His breath leaked out. “She should hear it from someone who loves her.”
Sudden despair filled me. Dolf was all she had, and as tough as she pretended to be, she was still a kid. “How is she?”
He sniffed and shook his head. “As far from Grace as I’ve ever seen her.”
He tried to lean a hand on the side bar, but missed. He barely caught himself. For some reason, I thought of Miriam, and how she, too, tottered at the edge of some dark place. “Have you spoken to Miriam?” I asked.
He waved a hand. “I can’t talk to Miriam. I’ve tried, but we’re too different.”
“I’m worried about her,” I said.
“You don’t know anything about anything, Adam. It’s been five years.”
“I know that I’ve never seen you like this.”
Sudden strength infused his joints; pride, I suspected. It stood him up and put a copper flush on his face. “I’m still a long way from having to explain myself to you, son. A long goddamn way.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly, the anger was mine. It was raw and laced with a sense of injustice. “This land has been in our family for more than two centuries.”
“You know that it has.”
“Passed down from generation to generation.”
“Damn right.”
“Then why did you give two hundred acres to Dolf?” I asked. “How about you explain that.”
“You know about that?”
“They’re saying it’s why he killed Danny.”
“What do you mean?”
“Owning that land gives Dolf a reason to want you to sell. If you sell, he can, too. Grantham thinks that maybe Dolf was killing cattle and burning buildings. Maybe even writing those threatening letters. He has six million reasons to do something like that. Danny worked the farm, too. If he caught Dolf working against you, then Dolf would have reason to kill him. It’s one of the theories they’re pursuing.”
His words slurred. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I know that, damn it. That’s not the point. I want to know why you gave that land to Dolf.”
The strength that had so suddenly filled him vanished. “He’s my best friend and he had nothing. He’s too good a man to have nothing. Do you really need to know anything more than that?” He lifted the glass and knocked back the last slug of bourbon. “I’m going to lie down,” he said.
“We’re not finished here.”
He didn’t answer. He left the room. I stood in the door to watch his back recede, and in the hushed splendor of the great house I felt the tremor of his foot on the bottom stair. Whatever grief my father suffered, it was his, and under normal circumstances, I would never intrude. But these times were far from normal. I sat at his desk and ran my hands across the old wood. It had come from England originally, and had been in my family for eight generations. I opened the top drawer.
There was plenty of clutter: mail, staples, junk. I looked for something small enough to be cupped in a large man’s palm. I found two things. The first was a beige sticky note. It sat atop the clutter. On it was a man’s name: Jacob Tarbutton. I knew him vaguely, a banker of some sort. I would never have considered it a possible source for my father’s anguish save for the numbers written below the name. Six hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Beneath it he’d scrawled first payment, and then a due date less than a week out. Recognition hit me with a twist of nausea. Rathburn was telling the truth. My father was in debt. And then I thought, with guilt, of the buyout he’d insisted upon when he’d driven me off the farm. Three million dollars, wired to a New York account the week after I’d left. Then I thought of Jamie’s vines, and of what Dolf had told me. Getting the vines in had taken millions more. He’d sacrificed producing crop to make it happen.
I thought that I finally understood, but then I found the second thing. It was in the very back, lost in the corner. My fingers discovered it almost by accident: stiff and square, with sharp corners and a texture like raw silk. I pulled it out, a photograph. It was old, backed with cardboard and curled at the edges. Faded. Washed-out. It showed a group of people standing in front of the house I’d known as a child. The old one. The small one. It filled the space behind the group with a simplicity that pulled at me. I looked away, studied the people that stood in front of it. My mother looked pale, in a dress of indeterminate color. She held her hands in a clench at her waist, and turned her face in profile to the camera. I touched her cheek with my finger. She looked so young, and I knew that the picture must have been taken shortly before her death.
My father stood beside her. Somewhere in his thirties or forties, he appeared broad and fit, with smooth features, a careful smile, and his hat tipped onto the back of his head. He’d laid a hand on my mother’s shoulder, as if to hold her up or to keep her in the picture. Dolf stood next to my father. He smiled broadly, hands on his hips. Unabashedly happy. A woman stood behind him, her face partially obscured by his shoulder. She was young, maybe twenty. She had pale hair, and I could see enough of her face to know that she was beautiful.
It was in the eyes that I saw it first.
Sarah Yates.
And her legs were perfect.
I put the photo back in the drawer and went upstairs to find my father. His door was closed, and I knocked. He did not answer so I tried the handle. Locked. The door was nine feet tall and solid. I knocked harder, and the voice that came back was shorn of emotion. “Go away, Adam.”
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I’m done talking.”
“Dad—”
“Leave me be, son.”
He did not say “please,” but I heard it nonetheless. Something was eating at him. Whether it was Grace, the debt, or Dolf’s hard fall, it didn’t really matter. He was forlorn. I left him alone and turned for the stairs. I saw the car coming when I passed the second window. I was in the drive, waiting, when Grantham stepped out.
“Are you here to tell me that you found Zebulon Faith?” I asked.
Grantham put a hand on the top of his car. He had on blue jeans, dusty cowboy boots, and a sweat-stained shirt. Win
d riffled his thin hair. The same badge hung on his belt. “We’re still looking for him.”
“I hope that you’re looking hard.”
“We’re looking.” He leaned on the car. “I’ve been going over your file. You hurt a lot of people over the years, put some in the hospital. I missed that, somehow.” He leveled a gaze at me. “I’ve also been reading up on what happened to your mother. Losing someone that you love, well, that can make a person crazy. All that anger and nowhere to put it.” He paused. “Any idea why she did it?”
“That is none of your damn business.”
“Grieving never ends for some folks, anger either.”
I felt the blood stir, the hot flush in my veins. He saw it, smiled as if he’d figured something out. “Apologies,” he said. “Sincere apologies.” He looked like he meant it, but I knew that I’d been played. The detective wondered about my temper. Now he knew.
“What do you want, Grantham?”
“I understand that you were at the Register of Deeds this morning. Mind if I ask why?”
I didn’t answer. If he knew that I was checking on his theories of motive, then he’d also know where I got the information.
“Mr. Chase?”
“I was looking at maps,” I said. “Maybe I’ll buy some land.”
“I know exactly what you looked at, Mr. Chase, and I’ve already discussed the matter with the Salisbury City police chief. You can rest assured that Robin Alexander will be excluded from every stage of this investigation from now on.”
“She’s already off the case,” I said.
“She stepped over the line. I’ve asked for her suspension.”
“Is there a purpose to this visit, Detective?”
He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. A sudden wind cut channels through tall grass in the fields beyond the barbed wire. Trees bent, then the wind vanished. Heat pressed down.
“I am a rational man, Mr. Chase. I believe that most things follow their own logic. It’s just a matter of figuring out what that logic might be. Even insanity has a logic, if you look deeply enough and in the right places. The sheriff is happy with Mr. Shepherd, happy with the confession.”
Grantham shrugged, left the rest unsaid. I finished for him.
“But you’re not.”
“The sheriff dislikes all of you. I assume that it has something to do with what happened five years ago, but I don’t know why and I don’t really care. What I do know is that Mr. Shepherd has been unable to provide any discernible motive.”
“Maybe he didn’t kill him,” I said. “Did you talk to Danny’s old girlfriend? She filed an assault warrant against him. She’d be the logical person to investigate.”
“You forget that Mr. Shepherd’s gun was used in the murder.”
“He never locks his house.”
He gave me the same unforgiving look I’d seen before. Then he changed the subject. “Judge Rathburn called the sheriff right after you left his office. He felt threatened.”
“Ah.”
“The sheriff called me.”
“Did you come out here to warn me to stay away from the judge?”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No.”
“Is your father home?” The shift was sudden, and it made me nervous.
“He’s unavailable,” I said.
Grantham’s gaze slid across my father’s truck, then up to the house. “Mind if I see for myself?” He started for the door, and I pictured my father in his state of fractured dismay. A sense of protectiveness filled me up. A bell started ringing in the back of my mind.
“I do mind,” I said, stepping in front of him. “This has been difficult for him. He’s in distress. Now is not a good time.”
Grantham stopped and his mouth compressed. “They’re close, aren’t they? Your father and Mr. Shepherd?”
“Like brothers.”
“He’d do anything for your father.”
I saw it now, the way it could play. Cold infused my voice. “My father is no killer.”
Grantham said nothing, kept those washed-out eyes right on me.
“What possible reason could my father have for wanting Danny Faith dead?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Grantham replied. “What reason do you think he could have?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Is that right?” He waited, but I said nothing. “Your father and Zebulon Faith go back a ways, decades. They both own land out here. Both are strong men, and capable, I think, of violence. One wants the deal to go through. The other doesn’t. Danny Faith worked for your father. He was caught in the middle. Frayed tempers. Money on the table. Anything could have happened.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Your father owns no handguns, but has access to Mr. Shepherd’s house.”
I stared at him.
“Mr. Shepherd refuses to take a polygraph. I find it odd that he would confess to a murder and then refuse a simple test that could corroborate his story. It forces me to re-evaluate the confession. It leaves me no choice but to consider other possibilities.”
I stepped closer. “My father is no killer.”
Grantham looked to the sky, then off to the distant trees. “Mr. Shepherd has cancer.” He looked back at me. “Are you aware of that?”
“What’s your point?”
The detective ignored my question. “I spent twenty years as a homicide detective in Charlotte. There were so many murders toward the end, that I could barely keep track of them. I had murder files on my bedside table, believe it or not. Hard to process that much senseless death. Hard to maintain focus. Eventually, I got one wrong and sent an innocent man to prison. He was shanked in the yard three days before the real killer confessed.” He paused and looked hard at me. “I came up here because murder is still somewhat unusual in Rowan County. I have time to dedicate to the victims. Time to get it right.”
He took off the glasses, leaned closer. “I take the job very seriously, and I don’t necessarily care what my boss has to say about it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’ve seen a father take the heat for a son, a husband go down for a wife and vice versa. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one friend take a murder rap for another, but I’m sure it could happen if the friendship is strong enough.”
“That’s enough,” I said.
“Especially if the one going down is dying of cancer and has nothing to lose.”
“I think you should leave now.”
He opened the door to his car. “One last thing, Mr. Chase. Dolf Shepherd was put on suicide watch this morning.”
“What?”
“He’s dying. I don’t want him killing himself before I get to the bottom of this.” He put his glasses back on. “Tell your father that I’d like to speak with him when he feels better.”
Then he turned and was gone, lost behind a window that reflected high yellow clouds and the deep blue of a windless sky. I watched him go, and thought of my father’s dismay and of the words he’d spoken with such conviction.
Strange things can happen in the human heart, Adam. There’s power there to break a man.
I still did not know what he was talking about, but suddenly I was worried. I looked from the rear of Grantham’s car to the second-floor window of my father’s room. It was barely open, no more than an inch at the bottom. At first, there was nothing, then the curtains moved slightly, as if in a breeze.
That’s what I told myself.
A breeze.
CHAPTER 24
I wanted to talk to Dolf. Needed to. Nothing made sense: not Dolf’s confession, not Grantham’s suspicions. The only thing that made less sense than Dolf Shepherd killing Danny was the idea that my father had. So I went to the detention center, where I was denied visitation. Visitors are allowed, but only during certain hours and only if your name was on the list, which my name was not. Up to the prisoner, I was informed.
“Who’s on the list
for Dolf Shepherd?” I asked.
Grace was the only name.
I turned for the door, then stopped. The guard looked bored. “There must be a way,” I said.
He regarded me evenly. “Nope.”
Frustrated, I went to the hospital. My father had told Grace about Dolf and I could only guess at her thoughts and feelings. In her room, I found an unmade bed and today’s newspaper. Dolf’s arrest was page one news. They ran his picture under a headline that read: MURDER NUMBER TWO AT RED WATER FARM.
The facts on Danny’s death were slim, but the descriptions were lurid. Partially skeletonized remains were hauled out of a deep crack in the earth on a bright, blue day. Dolf’s confession was more certain. Although the sheriff had scheduled a news conference for the following day, reliable sources were apparently talking. And speculation was rampant. Five years since another young man was killed on the same farm.
My picture was on page two.
No wonder my father was drunk.
I closed Grace’s door behind me and sought out the nurse’s station. Behind the counter was an attractive woman who told me, in clipped tones, that Grace had been discharged from the hospital less than an hour earlier.
“On whose authority?” I demanded.
“On her own.”
“She’s not ready to leave the hospital,” I said. “I’d like to speak to her doctor.”
“I’m going to ask you to lower your voice, sir. The doctor would not have allowed her to leave unless he felt that she was fit to do so. You are welcome to speak with him, but he’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Damn it,” I said, and left. I found her sitting on the curb outside of the detention center, a bag of clothing clutched in her lap, her head bent. Hair hung limply over her face and she was rocking gently as cars blew past less than five feet away. I parked as close as I could and got out. She did not look up, not even when I sat down next to her. So I looked at the sky, watched the cars. I’d been here less than an hour ago. We must have just missed each other.
