Page 27 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

He hadn’t gotten the answer to his Threshing Man question.

And she hadn’t gotten the answers she’d come for, which meant Mason wouldn’t be getting one, either.

It was all one vicious cycle without end.

“Hadley?” Nick waited until she turned, her hand still on the knob. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“I’m not chasing ghosts, Nick.” Hadley wasn’t sure what caused her to defend her actions, but the words escaped her before she could stop them. They also didn’t erase his doubt, if his frown was anything to go by. “Reed wanted to show me that citation, which meant he thought something was off with the situation. Whether that was Mercer being in Earl Vinton’s field last year or Warren’s request...well, I don’t know. But the least I can do is follow through.”

It was obvious that Nick wanted to point out that she wouldn’t have to be cleaning up after Reed if he’d done his job in the first place. That was neither here nor there. Reed wasn’t around to fix his mistakes, and Whistlerun had become her responsibility. She just hoped the answer she was about to dig up wouldn’t cost her the way it had cost him.

11

Hadley Dawkins

September 2026

Tuesday – 9:42 am

The Humanities Building at the Emberwood community college was the kind of squat brick structure that had gone up cheaply in the seventies and had been patched ever since, rather than replaced. Hadley exited the elevator on the third floor that smelled of floor wax and stale, dust-baked air. She came out into a hallway lined with cork boards and office doors. A few stood open, and from the nearest with the nameplate that read ANNETTE BELKIN, came the low murmur of a phone call.

Hadley walked past quietly, mindful of the soles of her boots on the polished floor. She counted office doors as she went, recalling the number from the directory. Sure enough, Roland Mercer’s office was the fifth and last door on the right.

He was bent over his desk, working a box cutter along the seam of a cardboard carton. She remained where she was while he finished, and he eventually drew a brand-new laptop from a white plastic mold. He then carefully retracted the blade, stored the tool inside the top drawer, and set the empty, larger box down on the floor next to a small black trash bin.

She noted that he was very methodical in his efforts.

“My office hours are three to five today,” Roland said as he peeled a strip of plastic from the lid. He never glanced up from his task. “You’ll have to come back this afternoon. There’s a sign-up sheet on the⁠—”

Something must have registered with him, because he stopped speaking and lifted his gaze to her face. He then immediately dropped it to the badge pinned to the lapel of her blazer. He straightened fast enough that the chair behind him rolled an inch and tapped the wall.

“Forgive me,” Roland muttered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He still held the thin piece of plastic in his other hand. “I assumed you were a student. How can I help you, Officer?”

“Chief,” Hadley corrected, stepping into the office. “Chief Hadley Dawkins, Whistlerun Police.”

The office was small enough that two strides put her at the front of his desk. Every wall that wasn’t a window had been given over to shelving, and the shelving had been given over to stacks of paper. Various books stood upright or lay flat across the hard surfaces, yet there seemed to be an organization to them.

Banker’s boxes were stacked in the corner with dates inked on their ends, and a county map had been pinned to the corkboard above the filing cabinet. It was dotted with colored pushpins, some of them clustered so close together that they overlapped. She didn’t need to be any closer to recognize the area as Whistlerun.

Roland hadn’t responded to her introduction, and something in the set of his shoulders shifted as he appeared to take stock of her impromptu visit. He seemed to understand that she hadn’t climbed three flights of stairs to ask him a single question and leave. He reluctantly gestured to the guest chair wedged between the filing cabinet and a leaning tower of journals.

“Sit, please,” Roland said before claiming his own chair.

The entire space smelled a bit musty, with an underlying scent of new packaging. She wasn’t sure if he adjusted the white box to line up with the edge of his desk for something to occupy his hands or if he was slightly obsessive about his belongings. She was leaning toward the latter.

“I’ll keep this as brief as possible, Mr. Mercer,” Hadley began as she made herself comfortable. “I’m investigating former Chief Langley’s death alongside the sheriff’s office. It’s come to my attention that he cited you for trespassing last year.”

Roland’s chin drew back a fraction. His hand came up to the frame of his glasses again and pushed them higher than they needed to go before he began to shake his head in earnest. Apparently, he didn’t agree with her assessment.

“No, you have that wrong,” Roland denied, eventually resting his forearms on the edge of his desk. He laced his hands together, though he lined up both index fingers to point them in her direction. “I was never cited for trespassing in Whistlerun. I was merely conducting some research, and Chief Langley understood that I wasn’t a threat to the owner of the property. I was not cited in that instance.”

In that instance.

It was an odd phrase, and one she made a mental note to follow up on later. She’d performed a quick background check on him, but she hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Maybe she hadn’t gone back far enough. She chastised herself for slipping in her duties. The fast-paced days of being a detective had taken a backseat to herding cows.

“Chief Langley was very nice to me back then.” Roland relaxed his fingers when she didn’t contradict his earlier statement. “I was sorry to hear about what happened to him. It was all over the news last year.”

Hadley didn’t want the conversation to get away from her, and she certainly didn’t want this line of questioning to turn into a personal discussion about a good man. She was here for information.