At least we get to go home. They rushed the search of our house on account of the big storm rolling in. Didn’t take them long to search everything. When you’re as poor as we are, you don’t own much.
All we are waiting for now is for Aunt Violet to show up with the ten percent of the assigned bail, and we can take Bone Layer home.
At the corner desk, Deputy Rankin hen-pecks on a typewriter as Grandmama stiffly waits there for him to finish. We didn’t speak the whole car ride over. She knows something, but now so do I. And it’ll take more than wanting to please her to part with my new knowledge.
Across the room, Bone Layer sits with his church coat folded nicely over his lap, his left arm cuffed to a metal pipe. A pipe he could rip straight off that wall if he wanted to. His eyes lost in a gaze to the nothing on the floor.
There’s a lot of secrets locked up in that man. I really need him to part with one or two.
The torrential downpour outside has me worried as hell. Where’s Rook right now? Does he have somewhere safe to go? All the years and all the storms, he’s managed okay. It’s flimsy reassurance, but I’ll take what I can get.
My attention, on the other hand, is constantly being pulled back to the rain-drizzled glass door up front. Not at the door, but at what I can see just beyond, Bone Layer’s truck and that small red suitcase that’s waiting for me.
My fingers are itching to get at what’s inside, but I can’t chance opening it here, can’t risk it getting confiscated by the sheriff.
I promised your mother I’d do anything to protect you. I keep replaying Bone’s last words in my head. He wouldn’t tell me that if he planned on turning me in, though, right? The practical side of my brain thinks maybe it’s just the recipe box; he hid it inside there for safekeeping.
“It’s a pitiful shame, if you want to know the truth about it,” the heavy, burly drawl of Deputy Rankin says as he pours himself a cup of coffee and grabs a slice of Callie’s marbled Bundt cake. My stomach growls at the sight of it; I haven’t eaten all day.
He’s not talking to me but to Billy Parnell. I must be invisible because neither one of them seem to notice I’m sitting just two chairs down.
“Somethin’ terrible if you ask me.” Billy’s accent has that exaggerated Southern drawl that feels like he’s talking in check marks, every syllable starts low and ends up high. “Sad how that pretty girl lost a brother and her daddy in a matter of days. Then all that crazy business with her aunt, too.” He shakes his head with a frightful shiver. “They hauled her off real quick-like. A rag doll the way they tossed her in that hospital van.” He takes a large bite. “Though maybe she’s better off somewhere else,” he says with a mouthful of cake.
I can’t say I don’t disagree with him. Gabby definitely needs professional help. Poor woman, her family locked her away like a shameful secret. That’s no way to live.
Billy leans into Deputy Rankin, dropping his voice. “You think he killed them all?” He pans his eyes over to Bone Layer as if there’s some other person in the room arrested for murder.
The scowl I send Billy’s way is lethal. He catches it from his periphery, realizing I’m watching and listening. He decides to shove another bite of cake into his mouth, then he makes himself busy pestering Callie at the intake desk.
Rankin bears down on me with one of those looks that says he thinks he’s better than me because he has a badge. I brandish my fakest smile and hope it reads like a middle finger.
Deputy Rankin isn’t wrong about Lorelei, though. Losing two loved ones like that...unimaginable. If she wasn’t an evil bitch for murdering my cousin, I might have felt sorry for her.
Her and Ellis may have been twins, but it’s clear they were nothing alike. Ellis didn’t seem like he had a bad bone in his body. I’m basing that off the handful of times I ran into him in town, during those brief summers and on holidays when they were home from boarding school. But that stark fear on his face as he ran from me—well, not me, Lorelei.
Biz-bong!
The station’s doorbell startles me back to the present. Oscar rushes into the building, shaking off the rain. He hands Callie a plastic bag protecting some evidence he found at the house. After he knocks clear the droplets clinging to his Stetson hat, his eyes land on me. He nods for me to join him in his office.
“It’s been a crazy few weeks around here.” Oscar’s bronze hand glides over his wet hair. He fans an open palm for me to sit across from him. Same seat I took two nights ago.
“It’s getting dark soon, and this storm isn’t getting any younger,” he says, grabbing up some paperwork and a pen. “We’ve got calls coming in that Davenport Road has waters rising. And we’ve already closed off the levee because of flooding. You should probably get Agnes on home before it gets too bad to drive.”
“Well, I wanted to wait on Bone,” I say, thumbing over my shoulder.
“Look.” Oscar stops signing his paperwork. “I can’t have you getting stuck on a flooded road and putting my boys in danger trying to fish you out of a ditch. They already had a tornado touch down up in Tennessee.” He takes one stack of paperwork and files them on top of another equally tall stack. “Don’t worry about Bone. Once his bail is paid and the paperwork is processed, I’ll bring him home myself. Of course, he’ll have to show up for court on Monday, but I’ll get him home tonight.”
Court on Monday. To press official charges for murdering those babies. And Papaw. And maybe even Stone. I’m wondering how, between now and then, I can make things right. “You don’t have to do that. I can take Grandmama home and come back for Bone.”
Oscar gives me an exhausted look; he’s tired of arguing. “Have you eaten today?” He raises a brow, knowing the answer. It’s the soft way he regards me that reminds me why I dated him in the first place. “Go home. Get something to eat. You could use the rest, Weatherly. I’ll bring Bone home shortly.”
I nod, standing. Food and sleep do sound good. “Hey.” I stop, realizing something. With Bone Layer getting arrested, and that Sin Eater Oil dreamy haze last night, I had forgotten about what Davis and I discovered with Lorelei’s car. It’s too exhausting to explain everything, so I just tell him the basics. “I know now is not the time, but Davis and I found a place that towed a gold brand-new Firebird Trans Am to their shop.”
Oscar’s shoulders drop.
I throw up my hands in surrender. “I’m just relaying the information. The receptionist said a girl brought her car in after hitting a deer—”
“It’s not illegal to kill a deer.”
I grit my teeth. I’m about to pull all my hair out if I have to keep convincing people Adaire’s death wasn’t an accident. I let out an exhausted sigh.
“The sheriff’s office has connections with the motor vehicles department, right?”
“Are you asking me to illegally get you information?”
“No,” I say. “I’m asking you to do your job and investigate. All it takes is one phone call.” I hold up a single finger. “Get the VIN number for Lorelei’s car and find out where it is.”
“I’ll have one of my boys look into it.” The dryness in his tone tells me he’s not jumping on it anytime soon.
“Thanks,” I say back to him, just as dryly. “I’ll tell Bone you’re taking him home. See you out at the house in a bit.” I turn my back on him before he can say anything more.
Out in the main room, it feels a lot colder than sitting here a minute ago. I walk over to Bone Layer. He scoots his knees out of the way, allowing me to sit in the folding chair next to him.
The sleeve on his church coat has a button loose. I make a note to mend it. His dark eyes search my face. The complexity of who he is kept at bay by his stoic silence. Like all his knowledge is stitched up tight, filling him to bursting. If he doesn’t let it out soon, I imagine his seams will split wide-open.
I don’t even know where Bone Layer is from besides Appalachia somewhere. Or if he has kinfolk he still speaks to. And yet here he is, knowing my entire world.
“Why?” A loaded question that’s asking him ten things at once, but mostly why he’s letting them arrest him for something he didn’t do.
