Page 107 of Brimstone Hollow

I let out a growly grunt and sit back, scrape the moisture from my face. I pick up my phone and look at the screen. My thumb hovers over Dishman’s number.

And what will I say if he even answers?Hey, did you kill my client’s father and let another man take the fall and run off with a van full of evidence?

And what would he do, run even farther away? Disappear as Ezra had planned to do? Cross the border and never come back? Desert the town that’s depended on him for the last twenty years?

I could put a call in to the state police, tell them everything I’ve uncovered so far—including Dishman’s lie—and let them handle it from here. But I have no proof. Only a theory. The only person who knows for sure whether Chief Dishman was in that church with Ezra before I got there is Chief Dishman himself.

Annie-Girl, my father’s voice says, echoing out of my memory.Annie-Girl, let’s go for a drive…

I start the engine and I’m about to head back to the motel when my phone buzzes. It’s a local number, one I don’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail and the phone immediately buzzes again. Same number. Finally, I answer.

“Annie Gore? This is Madison Baker. I’m Joel Shepherd’s attorney. Would it be possible for you to come to Mr. Shepherd’s residence?”

“Joel Shepherd wants me to pay him a visit? Why?”

“Because he wants to hire you, Miss Gore. And before you say no, I can confidently assure you that you’re going to want to hear what he has to say.”

THIRTY

ALL THE WINDOWS OFJoel Shepherd’s house have been opened. The breeze blows, billowing the old cotton curtains. Dust swirls like currents of gold, shimmering in the eerie silver light of the coming storm. Despite the breeze, the air inside is musty and close, filled with the scent of the decaying house and the hope it once held.

“Have a seat,” Joel Shepherd croaks at me, waving a hand to the empty chair across the round kitchen table from him. Beside him, on the floor, is his ever-present oxygen tank. Madison Baker, whom I recognize from the five minutes I spent looking up her website before I left the Dairy, sits in the chair nearest the kitchen window. She’s in her fifties and plump with a blond bob and a smart blue linen pantsuit. A leather briefcase rests beside her feet.

In the entryway between the kitchen and the living room, Bart Casada—the farmer who’s been bringing Joel Shepherd his groceries—leans his huge frame against the wall, watching as I take the offered seat.

“What is this?” I ask Shepherd. “What do you want?”

But it’s Madison who answers. “At Mr. Shepherd’s request, I made a few calls today. Among them, Judge Bolten in Lexington. And an attorney friend of mine in Louisville. They’ve both had dealings with you and they both informed me that you are intelligent, competent, and true to your word. In short, we believe that if you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it.”

I almost laugh. The last thing I’d imagined myself doing when this day began was having an audience with the King of Weed while his lawyer offered me a job.

“I’m sure you’re aware,” I say, in the same level monotone that Madison used, “that I already have a client and an active case.”

Madison looks from me to Joel Shepherd, as if they’re communicating telepathically, and before I can get pulled into the undertow of a bunch of bullshit legalese, I push my chair out.

“This was a waste of my time,” I say.

“Stay where you are,” Joel says. “There’s something was taken from me. I want to hire you to find it.”

Now, as the pieces begin clicking into place, I finally realize why I’m here. And this time, I do laugh.

“You want me to find whatever it was Ezra took,” I say. “Whatever it was he hid in the church.”

The corner of the old man’s mouth ticks up. “That’s right.”

He takes a shallow, rasping breath and says, “Time was, I’d have twenty or thirty guys, all on my payroll. I could send any one of ’em into that church and they’d be back in an hour. Now?” He waves his hand around to indicate the dilapidated empty house. “Who’s here now? Matthew Dishman turned my operation inside out. But he never got Ezra, never even knew about him. That’s how good Ezra was. And I can’t take credit for that. It was James, my son, who brought Ezra into the fold.”

“How?” I ask.

“We used to hold card games back in the day, before I went away. And Ezra was a regular there. Lost more than he won but everyone loved him. That’s the kind of guy he was. Always bumming money but you couldn’t hardly tell him no. Anyway, I got caught and sent away along with most everyone else. My brother did what he could to keep it going, but with no truck, no way to transport like we’d done, he was out of options. So, it was my son who went to Ezra—who’d become a preacher a few years earlier—with an idea.”

“The tent revival circuit,” I say. “The RV.”

“That’s right. Ezra moved the pot in the background of his tent ministry. Never selling locally and never selling directly, always just delivering to distributors and collecting the money. Then, Ezra would come out to Big Sandy and do his preaching there and then give me whatever news there was to give and take back whatever I wanted to say to my brother and my son. But then, my brother died. Heart attack. After that, my son took over full time and it wasn’t long before he ended up in prison himself. Stupid bastard went out drunk and hit a van full of kids.”

He spits the last few words, anger still roiling alongside a shame so heavy it bows the old man’s head. He coughs and sputters for a few seconds and then wipes his mouth and says, “So that left my grandson. But he was too much like his daddy. Too rash. Too angry. Too busy chasing women and liquor to see the trouble he was getting himself into. You know what happened to him?”

I think back, recalling what I’d read about the Shepherds, what Hollis had told me.