Page 33 of The Whisper Place
“Can you tell us what happened?”
He grunted and leaned against the truck, setting one of the shotguns on the hood and keeping the other. “She came here out of the blue, trespassing on my property, and told me to stop, well . . .” He flashed a look at Charlie.
“Blackmailing your neighbor?” I supplied.
“I’m not the one doing anything wrong. He’s got the drug operation out here in the middle of the country where good people are trying to make a living. There’s kids here.” He jabbed in the direction his granddaughter disappeared. “People raising families.”
Raising families obviously meant different things to different people. And while calling Charlie’s basement a drug operation was technically true, the brightly lit rows marked with careful labels were a far cry from the filthy meth labs and truckloads of opioids I’dseen as a police officer. Charlie had given me a tour this morning, calling each plant by name and excitedly pointing out the properties of “Lenore” vs. “Errol.” He was nerdy and kind of irritating, but also nothing like the offenders I’d arrested over the years. Marijuana was legal in most states now, it seemed, and even the feds had backed off on enforcement and prosecution in legalized states. The old man’s rant felt like a throwback to satanic panic.
“You’re not doing anything wrong?” I flipped open my notebook. “Looks like we’ve got possession of a controlled substance, harassment, and extortion, from what Charlie tells me.”
“Harassment!” Silas exploded, making the rusted truck squeal with his sudden outburst. “That’s what you should charge her with. That bitch assaulted me and stole from me.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because this guy’s too cowardly to do his own dirty work, that’s why.”
“What are you talking about?” Charlie stepped closer. Hepworth’s hand slid down to the trigger of the shotgun. I moved into a position where I could reach either of them if I had to, and lifted my hands in a let’s-take-it-easy gesture.
“Are you saying she stole one of your guns?” I tried to piece the situation together from what his grandkid said earlier.
He grunted. “She knew better than to steal it while I was right there. It was the money she came back for.”
“What?” Charlie got in his face, heedless of the gun in Hepworth’s gnarled hands.
“The five grand you paid me. I put it in a cupboard in the kitchen until I could take it to the bank. Same place you always saw me put the weed. Well, a few days after that bitch came andthreatened me, I go to the cupboard and it’s all gone. Every penny. She broke into my house and took it.” He squeezed the barrel of the shotgun in a red fist. The finger on the trigger clenched. “And you told her right where to look for it, didn’t you?”
“She took the money I paid you?” Charlie seemed confused and overcome.
“As if you didn’t know.” Hepworth got in Charlie’s face.
I wedged a shoulder in between them and snagged the old man’s attention. “What happened then?”
“Nothin’. Money was gone and she knew better than to set foot on my property after that.”
I nodded and made a noise of understanding. “But what about her threat? You must’ve been worried she’d carry through with it.”
“Worried?” He laughed once, an ugly shot of sound. “I’ve lived through war. Been married twice and worked these fields for forty years. No little girl’s gonna get in my face and make me worry about anything.”
“So you didn’t talk to her after that? Not even to confront her about the money?”
He spit on the ground, not saying anything. His face looked like bunched leather, something left out in the sun and forgotten.
“And where were you on the morning of June 7?”
“Where I always am. Right goddamn here.”
I looked at the open stretch of land beyond the fence and the Campbell’s soup cans. Silas Hepworth owned a hundred acres of farmland and a handful of weathered outbuildings. The land rolled gently here, creating pockets of absolute privacy, places where no neighbor could see what he might be doing.
“Sure, Silas.”
I picked up the extra shotgun lying on the hood of the pickup, loaded it, took a bead on the tin cans, and squeezed the trigger. Twin blasts ripped apart the air around us. The cans flew off the fence.
“Those charges I read you are real. So if you decide you want to continue blackmailing Charlie, I’m here to tell you that his girlfriend—wherever she is now—was right.”
“Right about what?”
I stepped closer until he had to look up to see me.
