Page 72 of Brimstone Hollow

“Not a damn thing,” Jeanine says. “Place was squeaky clean.”

“And believe me,” Dishman says. “If the man got tossed out of the car, I’d arrest him for jaywalking.”

Jeanine barks out a sudden laugh and then points at Dishman like he’s said something hilarious. Gavin and I look at each other blankly.

“Jesus, Annie,” Dishman says. “Beverly Hills Cop. You’ve got to watch it.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll put it in the queue right after all this Walmart footage.”

He gives me his trademark look of admonishment and then goes back to his notes. “All right, everyone, let’s get to work. It’ll be a long night. We’ve got about twelve hours of footage to go through.”

“Twelve hours?” Gavin says.

“Yes,” I answer. “Will Carpenter says that he last saw Ezra King at the church on Friday evening at about six o’clock. Thelma Worley found Ezra’s body the next morning around eight o’clock, and by then the door had been fixed and the fresh paint on the frame had dried.”

“Okay,” Gavin says, bobbing his head as he jots down the times.

Dishman says, “Walmart’s the only place around here to buy new door hardware and it’s forty-five minutes away, so just to be safe we’re looking at somewhere between seven and seven.”

“How many cameras are there?” Jeanine asks.

Dishman answers, “Three in the parking lot, two on each entrance, one on each self checkout, and five wide shots of the whole store.”

“There’s only three of us,” Gavin says, looking from Dishman to Jeanine.

“Four,” I say. “I’m going to help out.”

Dishman glances over the frames of his glasses at me and says, “That’s right. Annie Gore was a special investigator in the Air Force before she was a private investigator so I’ve roped her in for this. Now, we’re looking specifically for Nathaniel Nickels—six foot three, about 175 pounds, long blond hair—usually in a ponytail—buying hardware for a door along with supplies for fixing the frame. But, you see any of these guys associated with Ezra King and Joel Shepherd or anyone at all buying a set of brass door hardware, you let me know.”

Dishman sends the picture of Nickels to all our phones and tells us which sections of the footage to take, and then we break up and head back into the main room, where I sit down at an unoccupied desk and try to make myself comfortable.

“You sure about this?” Dishman asks me. “It’s gonna be a slog.”

“I’ve got no other leads to follow right now,” I say. “It’s this or go home and I’m not ready to go home. Besides, it’s not like this is my first time combing through boring-ass security footage looking for a needle in a haystack.”

“All right,” he says.

Instead of going back to his office, he takes the other free desk and we settle in to work. I watch the footage on double speed, slowing down and taking screen grabs anytime I see anyone remotely close to Nickels’s description. The store’s traffic is thick and fast with the holiday weekend sales, but it slows down around elevenPM. When I start to feel nauseated by the constant stream of footage, I hit pause, shake my head, and get a fresh cup of coffee.

I watch as Melissa Charles is relieved by a guy in his seventies who introduces himself as Dale. He kicks his feet up on the desk, pulls out his phone, and begins a marathon session of some farming game with the sound just high enough that I hear the simulated sounds of hoeing and wood chopping all the way across the room.

A little after ten o’clock, Dale alerts us to a domestic incident in progress, and Dishman and Gavin grab their jackets and head out. Jeanine and I keep at it, barely looking up, until they return about an hour later.

“Yeah, I know, but why won’t she just leave him?” Gavin asks quietly as they trudge back to the desks, apparently continuing a conversation they’d started on the way back.

“There’s no simple answer,” Dishman says. “All we can do is help her if she asks for it, and tonight she didn’t want any help.”

Two hours on, Jeanine stands, cracks her back, and announces that she can’t do any more, and with Gavin nodding off at his desk, Dishman tells them both to go home.

I keep at it, tracking everyone who came and went during the wee hours. A tall man in a rain jacket. A teenager pushing a stroller with a little dog in it. Then, there’s a man with his daughter. They both look sleepy, like they’ve been driving all night. The little girl rubs her eyes and then laughs at something her dad says as he picks her up and puts her in the cart.

I shut my eyes for just a second. Only a second.

When I wake, I hear crying. Weeping and sniffling and scraping at tears.

I’m on the old sofa. The mauve fabric, well worn and threadbare on the arms, is darkened by my drool. The room is illuminated by the light of the TV. We’d been watchingField of Dreamsand I’d fallen asleep halfway through. Now the credits are playing and my dad, on the other end of the couch, is leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. I realize he’s crying. His shaking, sobbing body vibrates weirdly in the blue half-light of the TV screen. Almost like he’s out of sync with reality.

“Dad?” I ask.