Page 71 of Brimstone Hollow

“I figure you seem all right.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“You gonna finish that shake?” he asks, as my phone buzzes in my bag.

I push the half-drunk shake to Camper Van Dave, fish my phone out, and step away from the counter. “Hey,” Dishman says, as I push through the door back into the parking lot. “You know the footage from Walmart? The security cameras from the night Ezra died?”

“Yeah,” I say, thinking it’s a long shot butmaybewhoever killed Ezra—probably Nathaniel Nickels—purchased the new knob and dead bolt there andmaybewe can catch him on camera.

“Well,” he says. “It’s here. They just now sent it over.”

“And?”

He heaves an annoyed sigh and says, “There’s a ton of it.”

“And?”

“You gonna make me spell it out for you?”

I swear I can feel him rolling his eyes through the phone.

“I’ll start for you,” I say, and put on my best Chief Dishman voice. “Annie, I sure would appreciate it if…”

“God almighty, you’re a pain in my ass,” he says, but there’s laughter in his voice. “You coming over here or not?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Soon, I’m standing against the back wall of a little conference room, watching as Chief Dishman goes over what we know so far. Officer Gavin sits at a table with another officer I’ve just met, a plump lady probably in her late forties named Jeanine.

Dishman stands beside a whiteboard decked out with photos from the crime scenes and printouts of mug shots, rap sheets, and various other pertinent information. On the far left side of the board are photos of Ezra King, both alive and dead, along with pictures of his mended door and scratched-up table. On the far right: Joel Shepherd’s mug shot, an old article about Kentucky’s King of Weed, and a photo from his release. Between them are photographs of Billy Shepherd, Dean Griffon, and Nathaniel Nickels.

I realize, looking at the board, that it’s exactly the same as the clothesline I’d built in my head, with Ezra King and Joel Shepherd at either end, and three guys between them.

“This is what we’re trying to find out,” Dishman says, pointing at a photo of Ezra’s new dead bolt and doorknob on the board. “Who was it that bought a new set of hardware and repaired Ezra King’s door on Friday night? That person was likely trying to cover up whatever really happened to Ezra. Make it look like an accident. The money’s on Nathaniel Nickels, but we can’t know for sure until we see the footage.”

I look from Ezra to Billy to Dean to Nathaniel to Joel and, for the first time, realize we’re missing someone.

“What about Bart… Whatshisname?” I ask. “The farmer guy that’s been helping out Joel Shepherd. The guy we saw yesterday bringing him groceries?”

“Yeah,” Dishman says. He opens a file folder and pulls out a mug shot from Bart’s arrest twenty years before. He sticks it to the board with a magnet.

“Bartholomew Casada,” he says. “Looks like a dead end. We’ve checked his alibi for the whole of Memorial Day weekend. His wife’s family documented the holiday weekend pretty thoroughly on social media. Bart and his wife got down to Dandridge, Tennessee, on Thursday afternoon—stayed at the lake with his wife’s family over the weekend—and didn’t get back until Tuesday morning, not long before me and Annie here encountered him. But… he’s still on our watch list. Just because he might not have been present at any of these murders don’t mean he don’tknowanything about ’em.”

Gavin looks from the whiteboard to me and says, “Plus, Chief’s been trying to catch Bart at it for years so… anything you turn up…”

Dishman shoots him a look and then says, “Yeah, all right. I’ve been sure Bart’s been growing for Shepherd ever since he got out of the pen more than a decade ago.”

“I take it you’ve searched his place,” I say. “You said he’s one of these off-the-grid types, right? Some kind of bunker?”

“It’s a concrete house—built into a berm—but yeah, basically.”

Gavin looks at me and says, “We got a call from his wife, about a year back, saying Bart was in the yard, drunk, brandishing a firearm. By the time we arrived, it had all settled down and she claimed what she’d thought was a gun was just a socket wrench, if you can believe it.”

“I cannot,” I say.

“Yeah, well, we didn’t either,” Dishman says. “And we had probable cause to search his place since he’s a felon and felons can’t have guns.”

“But you didn’t find anything?”