Page 60 of Brimstone Hollow

“She died,” he says softly. “When she was eleven.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Cancer,” he says. “Leukemia.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. My heart aches for him. For his loss. It hits me harder than I’d have expected, like a sudden, sharp pang.

“It was a long time ago,” he says.

“I’m still sorry,” I tell him.

Eleven, I think. And I picture myself so close to that age. Standing in a kitchen not unlike this one with my own dad. Both of us contemplating the freezer pizza we’d managed to burn. What would it have been like, I wonder, if my dad been more like Dishman?

“I appreciate it,” Dishman says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him. His jaw is clenched, the back of his neck is red, and his big shoulders are strained with tension. He turns his body away from me and steps outside to dust the exterior of the door.

I lean forward, chin in my hands, and stare at the table. I realize now that I hadn’t seen its surface before. With the snake-milking supplies, the snake box, and the towel on it, the tabletop had been mostly covered. Now I see that it’s been scarred up, and recently. Along with a big elbow-sized dent, three long scratches are gouged into the top, and they look fresh, but the wood within the scrape is mottled. Some of it looks raw while other places are stained a much darker color than the rest of the table. I run a gloved finger over them, thinking.

“Chief?” I holler. Dishman comes back inside.

I show him the table and he, like me, runs his finger down one long scratch. Then, he digs his keys out of his pocket and hands them to me.

“My forensic kit is in the trunk,” he says.

I jog out to the car and haul the big silver box out. As I head back into the house, Will comes out of the church and follows me.

“What’s going on?” he asks. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” I say.

I watch as Dishman mixes luminol in a spray bottle and then closes the kitchen and living room curtains to make it as dark as possible. Will stands in the entryway watching and I look over Dishman’s shoulder as he mists the product into the long gouge on the table top. It’s not more than a couple of seconds before the chemical reacts, illuminating the long scrape and the area around it a pale blue.

“Blood,” I say.

“Yep,” Dishman says.

Will looks at the scratches and then says slowly, “Ezra must have been milking the snakes when he was bit. And then he bled onto the table.”

“Are the scratches new?” I ask.

“I… don’t know,” Will says, his eyebrows drawing together. “The table is old, but it’s very good wood. Whenever we milk the snakes, I always put a towel down first thing because the boxes are rough and… Brother Ezra was never very careful. I tried to tell him, but he—he wouldn’t listen…”

“Let’s dust the table,” I say.

Dishman opens the curtains and brings the dusting kit into the kitchen. I watch as a few prints emerge along the edges. But no match for Nathaniel Nickels.

“Those are probably mine,” I say, pointing to the edge where I’d sat the day before. “And those are likely yours, Will.”

Will nods.

“It’s been wiped clean,” Dishman says.

“That was me,” Will says.

We both turn to look at him and he says, “I always clean the kitchen before and after I milk the snakes.”

“Was there blood on the table when you got here yesterday?” I ask.

He shakes his head.