Page 90 of Brimstone Hollow

“Annie?” he says, his voice raspy with sleep.

“Where are you?” I ask. “Listen, I realized that—”

“Where the hell do you think I am?” he grumbles, talking over me. “In bed, trying to get some damn sleep. Why are you calling me at this hour barking orders? Annie, if—”

“It’s Ezra,” I say. “He’s dead.”

“What do you mean? Of course he’s dead.”

“No…” I say. “Listen, just get down to the church.”

TWENTY-FIVE

“ANNIE, YOU DID WHATyou could,” Leo says. “Ain’t no more you can do than that.”

I sit on the front steps of the church, waiting for Chief Dishman, as Leo’s voice settles my racing heart, my turning stomach.

“I know,” I say. “I just feel bad for Katie. Her dad was alive this whole time.”

“Well. It sounds like he was a bad dude. You know? I’m not saying it’s better he’s dead. I’m just saying… it sounds like maybe he was involved in some bad shit. Guys like that always know they’re on borrowed time.”

“I know,” I say.

“Have you called Katie yet?” he asks.

“Not yet. I’d like to have more information when I do. The first thing she’ll ask me isWhat happened? How did he die? Who killed him?and honestly, right now I just don’t have those answers for her.”

I watch as the sun’s light touches the field across the road.

“You did what your client hired you to do,” he says. “You found out that her father’s death and burial wasn’t as straightforward as she was told. You found out what he was probably involved in. And, after all that, you found the man himself.”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re not done there, are you?”

“No,” I say. “No, I don’t think Icanbe done. Not yet. This town… Katie told me when she hired me that her mom used to say Mount Zion was a nest of vipers.”

“Sounds like she was right,” Leo says softly.

I make a sound likehmmmand then listen as he takes a drink of his coffee. After a few quiet moments he says, “You’re gonna stay in that town till you pull every last snake out of its hole, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think I am.”

He chuckles but his tone is serious when he says, “Be careful, Annie. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

We hang up and I watch as Dishman pulls up in a cruiser, Gavin riding along in the passenger seat. They both look disheveled and sleepy. Dishman’s normally crisp black shirt and gray slacks are rumpled and his duty belt sags to one side. He straightens it as he walks up the steps toward me.

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

I tell him the condition in which I found Ezra’s body. Dishman’s eyes open wide and he runs both hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

“Aside from the knock on the head, he’s also got a lot of older bruising,” I say. And I tell him my theory about Nathaniel Nickels busting into the parsonage and their ensuing fight.

He looks past me as he listens, into the interior of the church.