Page 58 of Brimstone Hollow

He turns to leave and I follow him out, casting one last glance back at the old man. He’s still not looking at us. His eyes seem fixed on some invisible point in space.

As we approach the vehicles, another truck pulls up. This one’s a nearly new green Silverado that bounces as a huge man inside steps out, hauling bags of groceries with him.

“Morning, Bart,” Dishman says as the man comes toward us.

“Chief,” Bart says with a nod. “What you doing up here? Who’s this?”

“Bart, this is Annie Gore, a PI from Louisville. She’s assisting with an investigation. Annie, this is Bartholomew Casada. He—”

“Just Bart,” the man says.

“Bart’s a local farmer and he’s at Joel Shepherd’s house because…” Dishman rolls his hands, prompting Bart to explain his presence there. Bart spits on the gravel and then says, “Old man can’t leave the house. So, I’ve been helping him out.”

“Well,” Dishman says. “That’s mighty kind of you.”

“Just doing my Christian duty.”

Dishman snorts. “Your Christian duty?”

“There’s a lot of that going around lately,” I say.

“I’d better get these bags inside,” Bart says, and pushes past us toward the house.

Just as he gets to the porch Dishman says, “Hey, Bart, where were you on Friday night?”

Bart laughs. “Down in Dandridge, Tennessee, visiting Bella’s family. We just got back this morning. You can call down there yourself, ask ’em.”

“Thanks,” Dishman says. “I’ll do that.”

Dishman walks with me the rest of the way toward the cars.

“Who is he really?” I ask, nodding in Bart’s direction as he disappears into the house. “Besides a local farmer doing his Christian duty.”

Dishman crosses his arms over his chest and says, “He used to grow weed for Shepherd. When we shut down the operation, Bart went with the rest of the crew. He spent five years inside, and when he got out, he went off the grid.”

“Like… full time?”

“Just about,” he says, frowning. “He set up a whole hillside of solar panels and he lives out on nearly two hundred acres. Lives in a half-underground bunker, grows his own food, keeps his own livestock.”

“You think Bart’s still working for Shepherd,” I say. “More than just errands.”

“Bart was Shepherd’s best grower back in the day,” he says. “The man’s a genius with plants, has a degree in plant biology or some such. But… I’ve been looking for years. Never found a trace of marijuana around the man. Nothing. I just don’t believe it’s over.” He shakes his head.

“I heard about what Shepherd did,” I say gently. “How he ran through that roadblock.”

I leave off the rest of it. The consequences. The fallout. Dishman losing both a friend and his mentor. This isn’t just about catching some wily old weed farmer. It’s personal.

Dishman says, “I hope to find the operation—whatever’s left of it—before I retire. I always had the feeling, between the way Joel acted on the stand and the way his family acted, that we never got it all. I was sure the power went from Joel to his son to his grandson and then to Billy, and now that Billy’s dead and Joel’s back, I can’t help thinking—”

He pauses as his phone rings, and he answers. I dig out the Bronco’s keys while he mostly just listens to Gavin and then gives new orders to check Bart Casada’s alibi.

When he hangs up, he says, “Gavin called around and couldn’t find a single other jail or prison Ezra visited.”

“So, only Big Sandy,” I say. “Only the place where Joel Shepherd was locked up?”

He nods and looks over my head, back toward the house. I follow his gaze. The light glints off the windows. There’s no sound from within.

“You said something about the hardware on Ezra’s door…” he says, softly. “I’d like to see that for myself.”