by Lucy Score
“So what are you saying?” Gibson asked, crossing his arms. “You want us to start our own investigation?”
“Not anything officially. But we knew him, we knew Callie, and we know damn near every person in this town. Maybe there’s something the police missed. Maybe there’s something they overlooked. Maybe one of us holds the key to why that sweater came into his possession.”
“I agree,” Scarlett piped up. “I think doing some digging on our own is better than sittin’ on our asses, twiddlin’ our thumbs and trying not to smash a camera in a dumbass’s face.”
“Agreed,” Jonah said. He was quiet during family gatherings. Maybe he was still finding his place with us. Or maybe it was the fact that Gibson still treated him like an outsider.
“Where should we start?” Jameson asked.
“Let’s start with the week Callie disappeared. Try to figure out exactly what each of us were doing that week and maybe one of us will remember something important.”
“This is bullshit,” Gibson said, getting to his feet. “He did it. And you want us to speed up the process to prove it?”
“How can you be so sure?” Scarlett asked, jumping to her feet.
He glared down at her. “Because Jonah Bodine ruined everything he touched in this lifetime. The whole town knows it. Y’all might as well get on board.” Without another word, he snatched his coat off the back of the chair and stormed out.
The room fell silent for a minute. We heard Gibs’s truck rev and pull away with the churn of gravel.
“He does that on purpose so I have to rake the damn rocks out of the damn yard,” Scarlett complained.
Ignoring my brother’s typical abrupt, angry departure, I let his words echo in my head. The whole town knows it. “Speaking of the whole town,” I began.
“No,” Jameson said adamantly.
“Yes!” Scarlett insisted. “This is more than just our problem. It’s affecting the whole dang town.”
“It has to be done,” I said.
“What are we cryptically arguing about?” Jonah asked.
19
Cassidy
The reporters were taking over the town like a hoard of zombies. They clogged up the streets with their news vans, took all the available stools at the diner, and generally made asses of themselves as they chased residents down the sidewalks demanding answers to their questions. The high school had to set up a line of sawhorses in front of the building to keep the no-good, nosy snoopers away from the faculty and students.
Bootleggers weren’t happy. I could feel the rebellion building like the Jaws theme song. Ugliness was inevitable.
My father called two of our summertime deputies back into service to manage the mess. Now our budget was shot to hell. Forget repaving the parking lot, we had fat payroll expenses to deal with.
Detective Connelly seemed to not give two shits that Bootleg was on the verge of a mutiny. He was still residing in the police station’s musty conference room like a spider in a web.
We generally used the space as a lunch room when we did potlucks or for the monthly staff meetings that also involved food. There weren’t a lot of open investigations that required us to gather ‘round that table. But it was the principle of the matter. He could have taken an empty desk, but Connelly preferred to be separate from it all.
The river of citizens lining up to recount their exact whereabouts and recollections of the night Callie Kendall disappeared had trickled to a stop after a day or two of him acting like a low-down snake in the grass to every single person who walked in the door.
Connelly made it clear he didn’t have time for small-town gossip and he made no bones about being quite the dick about it.
And after more than a few veiled “someone’s gonna have to talk to him about how we do things around here” mutters around the station, I realized it was gonna have to be me. My dad, while a lovely, fair, and just human being, couldn’t communicate worth dog crap. His conversations with my mother consisted entirely of “uh-huhs” and “yes, dears”. And that was over where they’d go to dinner. Throw in a topic with some conflict, and my dad clammed up like an inanimate object.
It was after one particularly annoying incident in which a blogger from WV Tattle Tales jumped in line in front of Bernie O’Dell at Yee Haw Yarn and Coffee and snagged the last fresh cup of coffee that did it, resulting in a shoving match that I had to break up. I lost my own damn coffee in the melee. Someone needed to do something, and I was going to be that someone. These visitors needed to be reminded of their place. They were visitors here and should be behaving respectfully, not mowing down townspeople like a stampede of gassy, entitled bison.
I knocked briskly on the open conference door. Connelly didn’t bother looking up from the screen of his laptop that he was frowning fiercely at.
I waited, schooling my face into blank professionalism. It was a power play, I thought, as the seconds ticked by. But everything the man did was, and I was willing to play if it meant my town could shake these idiots loose. He was probably scrolling Facebook like a jerk.
“What is it, deputy?” he asked, finally looking up.
“The press is causing disturbances around town,” I reported. “How would you like us to handle it?”
He stared at me for a long minute. “Comes with the territory. I’m sure you and your neighbors will adapt.”
I wondered if his wife had ever pepper sprayed him for his holier-than-thou attitude. I could imagine him sitting down to a home-cooked meal and instructing his wife on how she could do her job better. Then BAM! Face full of pepper spray.
“We’re familiar with media attention, sir. We lived through plenty of it after the disappearance,” I reminded him.
He grunted, still studying me with those watery blue eyes. If he thought the stern silent treatment would scare me, he had another thing coming. I’d made it my personal mission in life to never let the cracks show. Connelly would have to up his game big time to get a rise out of me.
“If you’re so well-versed in dealing with media attention, then I’m sure you can find an appropriate way to handle the situation,” he said.
Subtext: You annoy me with your pissant questions.
“After the disappearance, the sheriff’s department enacted a few town ordinances to protect citizens’ privacy,” I said, soldiering on. “Are you comfortable with us enforcing those ordinances?”
“It’s never a good idea to piss off the media, deputy,” he told me.
“Sir, some of them are toeing the harassment line pretty aggressively. Trespassing on private property, blocking traffic, surrounding vehicles.” I remembered Bowie’s white-hot anger the other morning being cornered in his own driveway. Even though I was still good and pissed off at him, he deserved some level of police protection. “It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a safety issue. They’re harassing innocent people.”
Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say.
“How innocent can they be if their father’s a murderer? What are the odds that one of them didn’t know something?” Connelly drawled.
I blinked. “Excuse me, sir?”
The accusation was made. The lines drawn. Now he was moving on. “Deputy, I suggest you and your kin,” his eyes skated to the glass window where my father was talking football with Bex, “treat visitors with the utmost respect lest they decide to paint you as a gun-toting, uneducated redneck.”
“Hillbilly, sir,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?” His eyes iced over.
“‘Round here we prefer the term hillbilly.”
His thin lips twisted in what might have been a smile. “Hillbillies then.”
“We’ll do our best to be respectful,” I told him. Yeah, right. Bootleg Springs had a hive mind, and if their police department wasn’t stepping up to protect them, they’d take matters into their own hands. It was gonna be a real mess.
I turned to leave and then paused in the doorway. Something had been bothering me since t
hat press release. “You sure are organized, sir.”
He looked up from his laptop again.
“We no sooner got the call that someone had leaked the DNA results and you had a whole press conference organized.”
“If you want to accuse me of something, deputy, man up and say it.”
It was my turn to give him that long, cool stare. “No, sir.”
There was a simmering pissed-offness cooking away under his cool surface. “Maybe you’re not used to how investigations work,” he suggested grimly. “But right now the more attention on this case, the more information we’ll dig up. People can’t hide in the spotlight. Someone somewhere is gonna remember something that your daddy missed the first time around.”
I kept my face cool and neutral.
I’d known it in my gut. Connelly had been the leak. And then he’d gone and lectured us on keepin’ our gums from flappin’.
I turned to leave.
“One more thing, deputy. You might want to decide where your loyalty lies. With this department or somewhere else.” He turned his laptop around so I could see the screen.
It was an article with a picture of me glaring down the loafer-wearing moron in Bowie’s driveway.
Live-in cop girlfriend defends suspect’s son, threatens press.
Well, hell. It looked like things were about to get real messy.
20
Cassidy
It had been a long, shitty week. Not only were the assorted “journalists”—and I used that term very loosely—wreaking havoc on my town, but Detective Connelly had decided the only way I could prove my loyalty to the department was by becoming the perfect lackey. He had me scanning, faxing, and general paper pushing all the days of my life.
My dang papercuts had papercuts.
Meanwhile, he and my father had been sitting down with every witness interviewed in the original investigation looking for any information that may have been overlooked. Connelly didn’t come right out and say it, but his attitude made it clear that he thought Bootleg was a bunch of ignorant rednecks policed by a smaller group of even more ignorant rednecks.
I couldn’t say that I much cared for his barely veiled contempt. Neither did Mrs. Varney, who said the man was slicker than owl shit. Or Fanny Sue, who’d been berated by the man over a misunderstood message. Fanny Sue was so mad, when she spotted a drunk Otto Holt mid-piss on Connelly’s front tire, she just turned around and went whistling on her way.
It was an hour from the end of my shift tonight. An hour before I could go home and smush my fur friends. And I was relishing the fact that the Man Who Shall Not Be Named had left on some vague, urgent, “nobody questions a homicide detective” business. He probably had to poop or kick a nest of baby squirrels.
I used the opportunity to grab one of the ancient cruisers in the parking lot.
It was a Thursday night on the cusp of winter and Thanksgiving. Dark. Cold. Quiet.
Very quiet.
The only people on the streets were press. You could tell them from everyone else by their shoes—usually loafers—and the tech gadgets permanently affixed to their hands. Where were my neighbors? I cruised up the hill to The Lookout. The parking lot should have been full but there were only a handful of vehicles parked up against the building.
I looped around and drove back into the heart of town.
Storefronts were dark, which wasn’t unusual for 9 p.m. on a Thursday. But what was unusual was the fact that the apartments above Bootleg’s retail spaces and the houses were dark, too. Where in the hell would my entire town have gone?
On a hunch, I pointed the car east. Bootleg Springs depended on tourism, but that didn’t mean that we didn’t get good and sick of the tourist crowd every once in a while. While most of the rental properties were on the western end of town, doglegging the lake, Bootleg had reclaimed a few places to the east.
The secret hot springs were there. Protected by No Trespassing Signs and solemn vows that Bootleggers would never reveal to outsiders the existence of the springs. We’d long ago ceded the regular springs in the lakeside park to the crowds of travelers that descended every year. But the secret springs, we kept those to ourselves.
There was also a crescent moon-shaped beach tucked between tall rock outcroppings, accessible only by boat or what was affectionately known as a goat path. Everyone headed there the weekend after Labor Day for a beach BBQ that lasted into the early hours, celebrating another successful summer.
My nose for trouble didn’t give me anything to sniff at near the springs so I continued on. The weather had warmed enough for some serious snow melt. I noticed what looked like a whole mess of wet tire tracks leading off of the main road and onto Still Lane, a twisty, turny mountain road. There was nothing up there but a handful of private properties and an army of potholes that could swallow a Mini Cooper.
Curious, I turned onto the road. I bumped along slowly, wondering if something really was wrong or if I was imagining things. I liked to think I had good instincts, but they’d let me down before. Case in point: Bowie Bodine. Maybe I was one of those people who thinks they’re really good at singing when they’re actually just really annoying and warbly. And convinced of their talent, they go around singing in the grocery store just waiting to impress passers-by. When in reality, they’re scaring everyone off. Like “Oh, no! Here comes that dang crooning third-grade teacher again. Will someone please tell her she doesn’t have to sing her to-go order to me?”
I shoved my concerns out of the way when I spotted it.
Old Jefferson Waverly’s property was lit up like a Christmas party. There was a veritable sea of vehicles parked in his north pasture. Light spilled from the cracks between the planks of his picture-pretty picnic barn.
I spotted Rocky Tobias’s souped-up pickup parked next to EmmaLeigh’s VW Bug. Reverend Duane’s decades-old sedan was parked in front of Granny Louisa’s El Camino. It looked to me that every dang Bootleg resident was in attendance. Was there some hoedown that I’d forgotten to RSVP to?
I spotted Bowie’s SUV toward the back of the field on one side of Wade Zirkel’s flashy extended cab. Gibson’s Charger was on the other side. They were parked right up against Wade’s truck. I rolled my eyes.
The Bodines didn’t feel kindly toward Wade Zirkel after he cheated on Scarlett. Never mind that she shouldn’t have been dumb enough to date him again in the first place.
I parked my cruiser near the barn and climbed out. The low murmur of a sizeable crowd reached out and beckoned from the barn. Something was definitely afoot.
Picking my way over the uneven ground, I came up on the side door to the barn and stopped to listen.
“All right. All right. Let’s call this meeting to order,” I heard Mayor Augustus “Auggie” Hornsbladt call.
What in the hell was going on?
My curiosity got the best of me, and I pulled the heavy wood door open. Yep. All of Bootleg Springs was crammed inside on lawn chairs and wooden benches. Mayor Auggie was standing up at the front on a milk crate talking into a wireless microphone.
Not wanting to announce my presence quite yet, I decided to get inconspicuous. Zadie Rummerfield was sitting on the end of a bench at the back of the barn. I nudged her over. She shot me a guilty look as she scooted.
Uh-huh. So this was an event I wasn’t invited to.
I noticed that my father wasn’t in attendance. Either it was something against me and my family, which I doubted, or this was something Bootleg wasn’t keen on advertising to the law.
“Thank y’all for coming,” Auggie said into the mic. He was wearing his usual uniform, a cowboy hat and bib overalls. “As you’re all aware, we’ve got ourselves a problem.”
I crossed my arms and kicked my legs out. Someone poked me in the shoulder, and I looked up.
Bowie.
“Move down,” he whispered to me.
Reluctantly, I scooched closer to Zadie who was, by now, all but falling into Jimmy Bob Prosser’s lap.
/> Bowie sat next to me, shoulders touching, knees rubbing. “What are you doing here?” he demanded in a low whisper.
“My job,” I said flatly. “You think the Bootleg PD wouldn’t notice when the entire town goes missing?”
“It’s not what you think, Cass.”
“What do I think it is?” I seriously had no idea. But it was yet another thing I’d been cut out of. I wondered if I should get another cat.
“You’re not gonna like what you hear,” he predicted.
“I think I’ll survive,” I hissed dryly. I didn’t need him deciding what I should and shouldn’t hear. I didn’t need him period.
The crowd was rumbling again over whatever their shared problem was. I had a feeling I knew what it was.
“They set up shop in my cafe,” Annie called from the middle of the crowd. Annie ran the Yee Haw Yarn and Coffee. “They buy one cup of coffee and suck up the Wi-Fi for the whole day.”
“They’ve been blocking my driveway for a week straight now,” Lula complained from somewhere on my right. Lula owned and operated Bootleg Springs Spa. She also lived two blocks over from me. I’d been shooing reporters away from the neighbors, but I’d have to expand my reign of terror.
“They’re littering.”
“One of them almost ran over Bex when she was crossing the street the other day!”
“They called us all uneducated slow-talkers in their paper!”
“They’re sitting in front of the high school offering students money for information!”
“I heard one of them call Reverend Duane, Reverend Redneck!”
“One of them tried to kick Mona Lisa McNugget!”
A collective gasp rose up in the barn.
“I hear y’all and I’m in agreement. We gotta get rid of these here reporters,” Auggie announced. “Now, who’s got a plan?’