Page 108 of Brimstone Hollow

“He died in a bar fight,” I say. “Is that right?”

There’s a long, slow nod. The old man’s hands rest on the table, clasped together. They’re spotted with age, the knuckles swollen and red. He rubs his right thumb over the muscle between his left thumb and first finger. The movement makes a dry, papery sound.

“After he died, the only one left was Billy. My brother’s grandson. And Billy wasn’t no ’count. As stupid as he was devious, I’d say. I don’t know whose harebrained idea it was to start peddling hard shit, but I want you to know I never touched that stuff. I was a farmer, goddammit. Just a farmer and—” His words are swallowed by a hoarse, strangled coughing fit.

Bart walks behind us and gets a glass from the dish drainer, runs it full of water, gives it to the old man. Joel reaches for it with a shaking hand and takes a few short sips.

When he recovers he says, “Billy and Ezra together were like two foxes in a henhouse. Frenzied, stupid, and dangerous. I’d hoped at least Ezra was too smart to steal from me, but on that count, I was wrong. Maybe he thought I was too old, too sick, too far away to ever find out what theywere doing. And maybe, if Ihadn’tbeen so old and sick, I’d still be in there. But, as it is, they let me out with an ankle bracelet and I wasn’t home two weeks before Dean Griffon came rolling up to my door with a grocery sack of horse and snitched on both of them.”

Shepherd pauses and takes another drink of water.

I watch him drink and then I say, “So you got Nathaniel Nickels involved.”

He nods. “He wasn’t supposed to kill nobody. Billy was a shithead, but he was kin and under no condition did I want himdead. No, I sent Nathaniel over to Billy’s to beat some sense into him and find out where the money—my money—was. But… Nickels turned out to be just the latest in the parade of dumbasses I found upon my return to Mount Zion. He beat the shit out of Billy and Billy finally told him all the money was in goddamnBitcoinand it had to be accessed from his laptop, which Nickels took off Billy’s coffee table and brought to me. Problem was, I couldn’t open the damn thing. It was locked. Apparently, what I needed was a fingerprint.”

My stomach drops as more pieces click into place. I lean forward, listening.

Shepherd notices the shift and says, “You’re ahead of me. But it didn’t occur to me to even think about a fingerprint lock on a computer. That shit didn’t exist when I went in. Bitcoin neither, for that matter. But, listen, I never wanted Billy dead. I sent Nickels back over there to round up Billy and bring him over here so he could open the laptop in person, but he called when he got there and said Billy was dead. That idiot actually asked me if I wanted him to bring me Billy’s whole-ass corpse! I said,Goddamn, no, you stupid meathead. Cut his finger off and bring it over here.”

“And then you told him to burn the place down,” I say. “Get rid of the evidence.”

“That’s right,” he says. “Only, no surprise to any of us, Nathaniel Nickels couldn’t tell a dead man from a live one. I only heard later about Billy crawling his half-dead self out of that house. Jesus Christ. I never wanted any of that.”

He shakes his head again and, watching him, I believe him. I believe that, for all Joel Shepherd’s faults, he never meant for anyone to die.

“So, what happened next?” I ask.

“Nickels called and said he had the finger with him and should he bring it here. I told him to hold off, go over to Ezra’s while you’re at it and scare the shit out of him, get him to give you his part of the heroin money, threaten him with the finger, show him how he’d tortured Billy, whatever he had to do to get whatever cash Ezra had made so far. Teach him a lesson. Take the cash, and leave. Don’tkillnobody. So, he went over there, dragging that big-ass baseball bat along with him, and… that’s the last I heard of him. I waited around all night and the next morning—”

“And then you heard Ezra King was dead,” I say. “Bit by a snake.”

He nods. “That’s right. I figured Nickels and Ezra must’ve fought and a snake must’ve got loose and bit Ezra and he died. Then, Nickels ran off. Back in the day, I’d have had a manhunt out after his ass but now… damn, wasn’t nothing much I could do except wait and see if he came back. And Ezra? I thought the man was dead—same as everyone else—until he called me.”

“Ezra called you?” My face must betray my surprise because the old man laughs a thin, croaking laugh.

“Shit, I was as shocked as you are,” he says. “He didn’t actually callmethough. He called Bart. He had Bart’s number in his burner phone.”

“Because of the grow operation,” I guess. “Bart’s the farmer now. He’s the one growing your product.”

Shepherd looks at Bart, now leaning against the kitchen counter, his huge arms crossed over his chest, and then back at me.

“No comment. What I will say is Ezra and Bart go way back. They’ve known each other a long time and Ezra would’ve known that Bart could get a message to me, which he did. Ezra was slicker than goose shit, but everyone has their weaknesses. With Ezra, it was gambling. The minute he let go of that pulpit, he was right back to his old ways. Lost nearly all his cash at some Indian casino halfway to Mexico. Came running back here.”

“Why?” I ask. “He wanted to make a deal?”

“That’s right,” Shepherd says. “He’d worked out—somewhere between here and Arkansas—the real reason Nathaniel Nickels was walking around with a severed finger in his pocket. He told me he knew where the finger was and he’d trade it to me for stake money so he could get away for good. I told him to bring it on over and we’d talk and he said he didn’t have it on him but he could get it—ifI made the deal.”

“When was this?”

“The day y’all dug up his empty-ass coffin. The coroner do that? Take the body out of the coffin? I’ve heard all kinds of shit today.”

“Seems likely,” I say. “From what we know, Ezra probably paid him to pass Nathaniel Nickels’s corpse off as his own, and when he heard we were going to exhume the grave, he panicked.”

Shepherd nods, takes another drink of his water. The refrigerator hums. A phone in Madison Baker’s briefcase buzzes. She ignores it.

“Well,” Shepherd says. “Then Roman Bradley sure screwed us on that one, whether he knew it or not, because Ezra called again the evening after y’all brought out the empty coffin. He said he’d run into a problem. It’d be another day.”

“But somebody killed him,” I guess. “Before that could happen.”