by Ben Farthing
She patted the shotgun that rested against the passenger’s seat.
Cessy would think about those things once she could question Valerie again.
She drove up Ulton Ridge, turned up Gordon’s driveway.
The gaudy castle stood quiet. The windows were dark against the Victorian brick walls. Gordon’s truck was parked outside the closed garage. The old man was probably still asleep.
Cessy parked, loaded the shotgun, and walked up to the front porch.
Morning songbirds whistled over the cool wind that blew up here on the mountain. The front door was a dark wood, engraved with the Wilder name, probably done inside Gordon’s shop. She didn’t see any fake wormholes.
Cessy chambered a shell.
She aimed and pulled the trigger. The deep boom of the shotgun struck her eardrums. The impact jolted her shoulder.
The doorknob punched inward, the wood next to the latch peppered with buckshot. She chambered another shell and fired again.
The door swung free.
She stepped into Gordon’s foyer, ears ringing.
Deer antlers on the walls, tigerwood floors, finely worked console tables against the walls. A staircase up, but in a house this big, Gordon would be in a first floor master.
Her ears still rang as she swept the house.
Formal dining room rarely used. Kitchen with marble countertops and glass doored cabinets. Den with a TV as big as her truck.
An open doorway into a sitting room, bookshelves on the wall, an armchair next to an end table, and a closed door.
She turned the doorknob and kicked it open. Straight ahead, a bed with an ornate headboard. To the left, Gordon Wilder holding a rifle.
The barrel flashed and gunpowder bellowed. A hole big as her thumb appeared in the door, next to where her foot had been a moment before. Gordon worked the lever action.
Cessy jumped back into the sitting room.
The rifle roared again. The round thumped the bookshelf she was leaning against.
Gordon’s furniture was too sturdy, the round too small a caliber.
Cessy aimed the shotgun at the damaged door. She was safe for now.
Stupid to think she could burst into a Hamlin home and intimidate someone by wielding a gun. This wasn’t Fairfax. People here fancied themselves cowboy kings of their mortgaged castles.
“Goddammit, Cessy, is that you?” Gordon sounded muffled.
“You lied to me yesterday.” Her own voice was muffled. She should have found some hearing protection.
No answer, and then, “Was that you shooting that woke me up, or were you fighting off home invaders?”
“You get a lot of home invaders up here?”
“Hamlin’s had a big meth problem for years.”
“I thought Sheriff Miller killed all the dealers.” Cessy stepped away from the wall, for a wider view through the doorway.
“Who you been talking to, that’s what you thought?”
Gordon didn’t know Jackson was still alive. Sharing that news might distract him from the matter at hand. Better to lie. “Kate found plenty of details. All about our mom and dad, you, Sheriff Miller. Those radio broadcasts you guys love. Sounds like you guys found a fun club to join.”
Cessy peeked around the edge of the doorframe. Gordon squatted behind his bed, rifle aimed overtop of it. She jumped back behind the bookshelf.
Gordon didn’t fire. “You found Kate, did you?”
“Is that so hard to believe? I’m a detective.”
He didn’t answer.
Cessy scratched at her stomach. If Kate was dead, and Gordon knew it, how would he respond right now?
“I’m confused why you’d come shooting up my house, if you already found who you were looking for.”
“Let’s just say, I’ve been getting answers from Kate. And one of them was that she came up here to see you a few days ago. Why’d you lie about that?”
Hesitation, then, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cessy sighed. “Here’s where we stand. I know Kate came up here three, maybe four days ago. I don’t know if that was to talk to you, or to search your property for something. Maybe radio broadcast equipment? I don’t know, and I don’t really care.”
“You talk a lot for someone who doesn’t care.”
“If she came to see you, then you’re lying to me, and I need to search your house. You better pray to God we don’t find a body.” Cessy swallowed. It was tough to keep angry nonchalance in her voice while accepting the possibility that Kate might be dead. “But if she came up here looking for something, then I need to know where it led her next. Either way, I need to search your house, and I need real answers from you.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” said Gordon. “You gave me time to shoot back, and now we got ourselves a standoff. I’ve got plenty of time to call the sheriff.”
“He didn’t show up to Tapjacks last night, dids he? I wonder where he could have got to?”
Cessy heard Gordon fumbling in a nightstand drawer. He cursed.
“No cell phone service, huh?”
“You’re still stuck out there.”
“And you’re stuck in there. Why don’t you be honest with me?”
“My word is solid.”
“You’re a car salesman.”
“Trying to rile me up?”
That wasn’t a bad plan. Rile him up, maybe he’d do something stupid, and then Cessy could get the upper hand. “You let Sheriff Miller kill your son.”
Furniture rattled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve pieced together a few things. Seen some weird shit since I got into town yesterday. At least a few of you old folks are obsessed with these local radio shows. My folks, Sheriff Miller, you. I heard Sheriff Miller talking to the radio like Lockler could hear him. The weird part was, Lockler responded. And then someone tells me that both Lockler and the Maple Table have been giving orders to Sheriff Miller. No, what was the word? Oh I remember now: pact.”
“You talk too much, girl.”
“Did you all join a cult? A couple radio personalities set up shop somewhere in Hamlin and convert you all by talking about the end of the world? What do you get out of it? The space aliens going to carry you off to heaven?” She said it to anger him, but realized it was a legitimate question. What had Lockler and the Maple Table offered Hamlin?
“Ain’t no cult,” said Gordon. “You hire a man for a job, you’re not swearing nothing to him but payment.”
“Well that raises all sorts of questions,” said Cessy. “Did you all join a cult, or just hire one?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Gordon growled. “We was tired of seeing our home fall apart.”
She was getting to him. Time to twist the knife. “When Sheriff Miller hired Lockler to get rid of the meth dealers, did you know that meant Jackson?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, but I’m figuring it out. Hamlin’s falling apart because there’s no money, meth heads are a hugely obvious problem, let’s blame the meth dealers.”
“They sold to high schoolers,” spat Gordon.
“Doesn’t mean killing them will fix the town. The coal mine’s still closed. The unemployed miners still refuse to learn new skills. Anyone young and ambitious still cuts town.”
“Like you? You got a mighty high opinion of yourself.”
Cessy laughed. Her gut protested the movement. “No, I ran away to escape how shitty of a person I was. I’m not one of the ambitious ones. But all that mixed together has put Hamlin in the dumps. And meth heads are easy to blame. So you old folks decide that’s what’ll you do. Did Sheriff Miller run for reelection saying he’d lock up the meth dealers?”
“You remember same as me.”
“I haven’t kept up with Hamlin politics. That was a lucky guess. And then what happened next? He locked up a few junkies, but couldn’t find the cooks?”
The muffled effect in
Cessy’s ears leveled out, although the ringing continued. She heard Gordon rustling around.
“What I don’t get, is who these cult leaders are, and why anyone listened to them in the first place. Just because they yelled about the things you wanted to yell about? Damn that’s stupid. You murdered your own son because an angry man on the radio said to do it.”
Gordon screamed, a jagged, mourning sound. “I didn’t know he dealt!” His voice came from just the other side of the doorway.
Cessy jumped back, raised the shotgun.
After he didn’t come charging through, Cessy asked, “Tell me what happened. Did Kate come up here looking for answers?”
When Gordon spoke again, it came from lower down the wall. He’d slumped to the floor. He sounded defeated. “Answer my question first. Did you kill Sheriff Miller?”
Cessy kept her gaze down the sights of the barrel. “I stuffed his body under a rock.”
“Your sister got all the brains, didn’t she? You know about Lockler and the Maple Table, but you still went and killed the one man they listened to?”
She didn’t want to admit she’d been bluffing about how much she knew. “How about you start from the beginning?”
“Only if you tell me how you got into the valley. I need a way out.”
Cessy couldn’t send Gordon to Valerie’s door. But she could tell him anything, and he’d have no way to verify it. “Fine. I’ll help you out of this mess if you tell me how you got into it.”
The Hamlin accent was usually cheery, even if what they were saying was vicious. Gordon’s drawl went monotone, dead inside. “Hamlin used to be a good place. People used to care for one another.”
“Must have been before my time.”
“I didn’t say there weren’t bad seeds. There’s just more of them more recently. Got to be, with all the addicts, you had to lock your doors at night. We talked about it at the diner most nights. What we could do. One night we got angry. There were seven of us sitting there. The old guard of Hamlin, led by Sheriff Miller. We cried. Said we’d do anything to save our town. Well, somebody heard us. That night, all our radios cut on, and there was Lockler, raging about what terribleness had come upon Hamlin. A couple of us--me, your mom, John Watkins--we liked the idea, but something about Lockler was too rabid. Not much good can come from pitching a fit, but you’ve learned that.”
“I’ve tried.”
“So the next morning, our radios all turn on again. This time it’s the neighborly voices from the Maple Table. That smart sounding guy, the one who sounds like a jolly grandpa, and the lady who sounds like my second wife. They talked about the same things as Lockler, how sad it was that Hamlin was going downhill. They said things like how even though anger never solved anything, you had to sympathize with the folks getting angry at the vermin hurting our town. And it was going to take passion to fix things, so maybe we shouldn’t fault those who get a little too passionate.”
“Did you tell anyone your reaction to Lockler’s first broadcast? How did the Maple Table know you needed convincing?” Cessy looked around the sitting room. It was probably bugged by this cult.
“They just knew. I live up here alone. I hadn’t talked to no one. You could ask your mom or John, but I reckon they’ll say the same. We didn’t talk about our first reactions until later.”
“Did it work? Did the Maple Table convince you Lockler’s anger was appropriate?”
“We had kids smoking meth in the high school bathrooms,” Gordon said. “I’m ashamed to say it, but yes. Hamlin needed to get back to what it was.”
“Then they killed Jackson, and your opinion changed.”
“It wasn’t right away they killed my boy. I got spooked even before that. This mountain used to be my Fort Knox. But it got to feeling like Hell itself had crept in. Some nights, the stars looked closer, like Hamlin was so important we’d dragged down outer space to get a better look. One night, I went to the bathroom, and there was a coal vein in my shower tile. Jutting out like I was my daddy, a mile underground with a pickaxe.”
“Walls of shadow, and swarming tiny holes,” said Cessy without thinking.
“Don’t get near either of those,” warned Gordon.
“Yeah, I figured.” Cessy patted her aching gut. “Where are they coming from?”
“I don’t know. Maybe from inside the old mine. It’d explain why I’ve been getting the worst of it, my house being the closest in town to the mine. But I’ll tell you what, when I raised concerns at Tapjacks, told them it was getting creepy, and maybe we needed to talk to the pastor, everyone stopped talking to me. I mean, we’d still talk, I was still part of the town. But if I tried to say, ‘hey, did any of y’all’s shower tile turn into coal,’ they’d grumble and change the subject. Usually to how much they hated the vermin in Hamlin, and how great it was that we were finally getting rid of them.”
Cessy jostled the shotgun. Floorboards creaked. In the corner of the bedroom visible from Cessy tight angle, Gordon’s shadow appeared, standing.
What he was saying was insane, but not any more than sheets of darkness and parasitic perforations. Right now, she had to stick to her purpose. “Were you this open when Kate came calling?”
“I told your sister to go home. Back to D.C., or wherever she calls home now.”
“So you were lying to me.”
“I’ll tell you the same. Go home. However you got into Hamlin, take that same route right outta here. Just show me the way first.”
“Kate didn’t go home. We live close to each other. She hasn’t been in her apartment in two weeks. When did you see her?”
“A week or so ago. She came asking about Lockler. I lied and said it was just someone bored in town.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“Who did you tell her it was?”
“I told her to go home!”
“But she was looking for answers. So whoever you sent her to, that’s where she went.”
“I said the first name that came to mind. I’d had breakfast with John Watkins that morning. That’s who I said.”
It turned out, Cessy would find her way to Valerie’s parents. “What did you tell Kate when she came back four days ago?”
“She only came by once.”
“Stop lying.”
“You said it yourself. Maybe she came back to break in.”
Cessy considered it. Jackson had been sure that Kate came up here four days ago. He was a junkie, but he wasn’t completely lost to the world. “Let’s say she did. Why would she?”
“Damned if I know. I told you, the moment I expressed doubt about Lockler and the unnatural things going on up here, Sheriff Miller started treating me like an outsider. Everyone else followed suit.”
“What would the Watkins have told her that would send her back up here?”
“I don’t know!”
“I’d like to search your house.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Kate. Or whatever she was after.”
The butt of a rifle appeared on the floor in the doorway. Gordon kicked it through. “Okay.” He stepped through the door.
Cessy aimed the shotgun at his chest.
Gordon raised his hands. He wore the sweatpants and t-shirt he’d been sleeping in. Red eyes, drooping expression--the man looked exhausted. “Where do you want to look first?”
33
Five minutes into their search, the radios turned on.
They’d started in the master bedroom.
With the shotgun still trained on Jackson’s father, Cessy searched through a closet full of blue jeans and t-shirts, and a bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned in months.
The rest of the downstairs proved fruitless.
Gordon offered no suggestions to what Kate might have been looking for, or where she might have looked.
They went upstairs. The stairs themselves were hardwood. Halfway up, a black smear on the polished wood. Cessy took note of it, and kept moving
.
The second floor had a more homey feel than downstairs. Plush carpet, paintings of landscapes on the walls.
A radio played from down the hallway, from a vague source. The cheery woman from the Maple Table. “She hates us because she’s lazy. She doesn’t appreciate a day’s hard work. People like her move to the big city and think they’ve got it all figured out. Which one comes first, I wonder? Do they get all high and mighty, and so they move to the city? Or does living in such an uppity place make them all high and mighty?”
The wise grandpa responded. “It’s not our place to judge. Of course, we must be reasonable. If someone’s threatening our families, we can’t sit around and wait for them to act.”
Cessy stood at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t pinpoint which room the radio was coming from. Maybe all of them. She aimed the shotgun at Gordon, who scratched his beard while he looked one direction up the hallway, then the other.
“I didn’t turn that on. I haven’t been up here since last week.” He reached for his waist, where he might be carrying a pistol if he’d had time to strap it on this morning. “We should go back downstairs.”
Cessy wasn’t interested in his fear. “Was she talking about me?”
“All that big city crap? Either you or Kate. Everyone already hates you, no need to convince anyone, so I’d venture she’s talking about Kate.”
“Does that mean Kate’s still alive?”
Gordon craned his neck to look through a bedroom doorway. “Why are you looking for her if you didn’t believe that already?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t know. There’s your answer. I’ve told you everything I know. Tell me which road’s open. I gotta get out of here. Sheriff Miller can’t protect anyone no more.” Gordon backed up, into the barrel of the shotgun. He glanced back, confirming her finger was off the trigger. “We should go downstairs. Maybe outside.”
The Maple Table cheerily discussed the proper level of hatred for someone who didn’t understand small town values.
