Ann Aguirre - Hell Fire

“Let me guess,” Chance put in. “He went out to hunt and never came back.”

Like Glen, Miz Ruth’s husband.

She looked puzzled. “I don’t know if I ever heard that, but it could be. Men around here do love their guns.”

“How many people have gone missing in the last year?” Jesse wanted to know.

“We should put Shannon’s bike inside,” I said.

“Already did.” She climbed in front with Jesse, still thinking about his question. “Hard to say, because I don’t always know when someone gets scared—or sick of this town and just takes off—and when they just don’t come back. But I’d say ten. At least ten.”

Ten was a high number in a town as small as Kilmer. Chance and I exchanged a grim look while climbing in back.

Saldana glanced at me over his shoulder. “We need to find Little Ed Willoughby and ask him why he tried to use his vehicle as a deadly weapon, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Chance muttered. “I’d like a word.”

The rest of the drive passed in silence. I wasn’t sure we should have brought her with us. It might dump more trouble on our heads to be seen with her, since we weren’t ready to leave town just yet. Then again, I didn’t know if it was a good idea to leave her alone in the house, even with good wards. On the balance, it was probably better to keep her close. I didn’t intend to let Kilmer claim another victim.

“Where to?” Saldana asked her.

“The newspaper office is downtown,” she answered, pointing. “I’m not sure if Mr. England will be in. If not, we can talk to the editor, Sam Proust.”

“Does the town have any reporters?” Back when I lived here, there had been one who wrote shiny human interest stories about how great Kilmer was.

“Two. Mr. Proust’s daughter, Karen, and that old nut job—”

“Dale Graham.” The name came to me before she said it.

Saldana parked the Forester, and Chance helped me out, then fed some coins into the meter. I glanced around at the quiet square, wondering if I imagined being the cynosure of malevolent eyes.

“He’s gotten weird in his old age,” she went on. But when I asked, she wouldn’t clarify. Shannon just shivered a little and pulled up the hood on her black sweatshirt. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Will you get in trouble if you’re seen with us?” I asked as we walked toward the newspaper office, a nondescript brownstone building a few blocks from the downtown square. The guys trailed us, talking in an undertone that made me nervous.

She shrugged. “Probably. But I’m not going back.”

I understood that well, maybe better than she knew. We came through the front door in a group, visibly alarming the thin, overworked-looking woman who greeted the general public. By her expression, people didn’t often turn up unannounced.

“We don’t give tours,” she said in a preemptive strike. “And the printing is done off-site.”

That probably deterred anyone else who stopped by, but we had other needs. “We’re here to see Mr. England.”

Her eyes widened. “Absolutely out of the question.”

“I figured it might be,” Jesse muttered.

“Maybe we could talk to Sam Proust,” Shannon suggested.

The receptionist became positively frosty. “Young lady, you cannot just waltz into a place of business like this.”

I didn’t know if she meant me or Shannon, but I answered. “Then how about Dale Graham? This is about a story,” I added.

We’d just keep name-dropping until we found someone we could see. She didn’t like it, but she got on the phone. A few minutes later, a man in late middle age came out in a pair of ragged jeans, a brightly patterned shirt, and a leather vest. He was actually wearing love beads and cowboy boots, an interesting look to be sure.

“I’m Dale,” he said. “Clarissa said you wanted to talk to me about a story idea?”

Obviously, we weren’t going to get to see the back of the newspaper office today. “Yes, sir. We’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Chance said. “Interested?”

“This town is cursed,” the reporter said around a mouthful of peach pie.

We sat wedged into a booth at Ma’s Kitchen, a hole-in-the-wall that looked like it had been decorated just after World War II and hadn’t been updated since. Good thing Shannon was small, or we’d never have fit. She huddled on the other side of Chance while Jesse sat beside Dale Graham, who carried the scents of patchouli and hemp. He’d listened attentively to everything we had to say, and then made his somber pronouncement with a glee that contrasted sharply with its portent.

“You think it is?” Jesse asked. “Or you know it?”

Dale Graham took a sip of coffee to wash down the pie, his wooden beads rattling with the movement. “Do I have proof, you mean?”

I could see by Jesse’s expression that he thought this was a waste of time, but his smooth voice didn’t lose an iota of its patience. I grinned when I realized I could destroy his calm better than anyone else. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“I’m working on that,” Graham said. He scraped his fork back and forth across his plate, making an irritating sound just a half step above nails on the chalkboard.

“So that’s a no,” Chance put in.

Well, we wouldn’t get anywhere if they alienated him, assuming he had anything of value to tell us. I was starting to doubt it. “What have you learned?”

He finally put down his fork and took a quick look around the diner as if he suspected someone of eavesdropping. Maybe his paranoia was persuasive, but I found myself doing the same thing. Men in flannel shirts sat at the breakfast counter, pushing their eggs around their plates while they nursed cups of coffee. Near the back, two old women were arguing over whether grits should be considered a starch. Nobody seemed to pay us any particular attention, but I leaned in so he wouldn’t need to raise his voice.

“I keep a journal,” Graham confided. “Making notes on the strange events around here. It goes back a long way, but things have really started to step up in the last fifteen years, and events seem to be escalating exponentially.”

“Missing pets and people,” I guessed.

The reporter gave an approving nod. “The freaky thing is, I don’t think anybody is looking for them.”

That was news. “Miz Ruth said her husband went hunting and never came back. The sheriff supposedly mounted a search, but nothing ever came of it.”

Graham shook his head. “Not true. I was in his office when she came in, and old Bulldog Robinson didn’t mount anything but his feet on his desk.”

“What were you doing in the sheriff’s office?” Jesse asked with a raised brow.

Looking put upon, Dale mumbled, “I was detained regarding an allegation of possessing controlled substances.”

“So you know for a fact, there was no search party,” Chance said, thoughtful.

“He didn’t even file the form she filled out,” the older man answered. “Just pitched it in the trash as soon as she left.”

Shannon articulated what everyone was thinking. “Whatever’s going on here, Sheriff Robinson’s in on it.”

I could tell that idea went down smooth as a truck full of cacti, particularly where Jesse Saldana was concerned. He looked like he hated the idea of another dirty cop. After what had happened with his partner, I couldn’t blame him, but at the moment we needed to decide how this information best served us.

“There’s something in the woods,” I said quietly. “And I think they know about it. So if someone disappears out there, they realize there’s no point in looking.”

“But they don’t want to panic the townsfolk.” Jesse drummed his fingers against the tabletop. “So they pretend to go about their business while feverishly looking for a solution to a problem they don’t acknowledge.”