Page 74 of Brimstone Hollow

“We won’t find Ezra’s body,” I say.

He nods. The morning air is warm and misty but not yet insufferably hot. A mourning dove coos in the shelter of some building and its voice filters out to us in a haunting echo.

“You sure you’re okay?” Dishman asks, turning so we’re facing each other. He looks as haggard as I feel. And just as determined.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine.”

“All right,” he says. “Drive safe. Get some sleep.”

He walks down the steps to what is apparently his own car, a twenty-year-old Honda CR-V. I climb into the Bronco and we both pull away, going in opposite directions.

I head back to the motel, get in the door, and call Leo before he can call me.

“Everything okay?” he asks when he picks up.

“Yeah,” I say. “I just got back to my room. I think I’m gonna go for a run before I get some sleep.”

While I strip out of my jeans and T-shirt, I put him on speaker and tell him about spending the whole evening and night watching the security footage.

“Damn,” he says, after a long whistle. “You know if you’d come and work for me you wouldn’t have to do the boring shit anymore. I pay analysts for that.”

“I know,” I say. “But this is where I belong. This town, this case. Who else is gonna do this? Who else is gonna get the answers Katie needs?”

I pull on my running shorts and sports bra and think about whether or not to strap on my running holster, finally deciding that it’s better to be safe than sorry. I slide the gun into the holster and check it’s secure.

“How are the nightmares?” he asks.

“Not great,” I say.

I sigh and sit down on the bed to tie my sneakers. “I felt like I was about to wrap this up. Open Ezra’s casket, find evidence of a struggle…”

“And instead,” he says, “somebody’s run off with the damn body.”

“Yeah,” I say. “The people in town here… I wouldn’t say everyone loved Ezra King. But they respected him. Or they were awed by him. Awed by the power he seemed to have.”

“And it’s bothering you,” Leo says.

“It is, yeah. It bothers me that he cared more about his snake handling and his faith healing and his pulpit than he ever seemed to care about his wife and kid. There wasn’t a single picture of Katie in his house. It’s like she didn’t even exist to him. Like Maggie left and took Katie and that was it.He just acted like his whole marriage, fatherhood, it never existed. If your faith is the most important thing to you, then… fine, I guess. But I feel like that’s not really what was happening here. I feel like… maybe it was all a show. A spectacle. This guy everyone adored—I mean, you ask anyone in Mount Zion about Ezra King and maybe they were creeped out by the snakes but everybody respected his strength of faith to the point that when that coffin came up empty yesterday, the first assumption wasn’t that his body had been snatched but that he’drisen to heaven.”

Leo snorts.

“You’ll get there,” he says, so reassuring I actually believe him. “Your client sent you to that town to find out what happened to her father, right?”

“Yes.”

“And to find out who he was, who hereallywas.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you haven’t stopped doing that. You just had some roadblocks in the way.”

“Right,” I say. “My brakes being cut, a dead body, drugs, amissingbody, a missingfinger…”

A surprised breath of a laugh escapes him and he says, “Yeah, that place is crazy. But you’ll get there. This girl wants to know who her daddy really was and you’re gonna find out for her because you’re right, ain’t nobody better for this job than you. You’ll get there.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You got your gun?”