Page 52 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

“You didn’t have to drive over from Emberwood this morning.” Hadley kept the two of them on the sidewalk a beat longer, in no hurry to move this indoors. She had calls to make, and if half her day was going to disappear in Emberwood, she’d sooner know it now. “You’ve got my cell, Nora.”

“It’s fine, honestly.” Nora glanced at Whitney, who nodded along. “We were headed this way anyway.”

“There’s an antique mall out past Garber.” Whitney lifted her coffee an inch toward the horizon. “Nora’s been promising to take me since June.”

“I wanted you to know what I learned first, though.” Nora didn’t talk over her friend, but she didn’t let Whitney get carried away with their plans, either. “My cousin’s in-laws are torn up over Roland. His mother hasn’t left the house since it happened, and his father’s had the mayor of Emberwood on the phone every hour on the hour, demanding answers. But there’s one thing my cousin said that I keep circling back to, and it’s about Roland’s research. These last few weeks, he’d gotten paranoid. Apparently, he came by his parents’ place Monday night and told them straight out that he thought somebody was watching him.”

A low roll of thunder moved somewhere out past the fields.

“His father asked if he meant the Threshing Man. I mean, they all knew how obsessed he was with the legend.” Nora tucked back a few strands of hair a gust had pulled loose. “Only Roland didn’t laugh, Hadley. He got agitated. Really agitated. He told his father he was serious, that there are worse things in this world than the Threshing Man.”

Another gust ran down Main Street ahead of the weather, cool and damp, and set the bakery awning snapping loud enough to carry a block. Hadley didn’t know what to do with Nora’s information, because it gave her nothing solid to follow up on. Still, she’d have Nick sit with the Mercer family again.

“It’s just awful, all of it.” Whitney’s attention had drifted somewhere past Hadley’s shoulder, and it took a moment to come back around. “Are there any leads? Anything at all?”

“We’re pursuing a few things, yes.” Hadley chose her words with care, turning a little so the wind didn’t work her own hair loose from its clip. “There’s a USB drive with information on it that could move the whole thing forward. That’s as much as I can say right now, though. Just so I’m clear, Roland didn’t say anything more to his parents? Had he spotted someone following him, or was it a feeling?”

“That’s all my cousin told me. But I’m sure I could ask his⁠—”

“No. Please don’t.” Hadley shouldn’t have pulled Nora into this investigation to begin with. Gut instinct had sent her to the hospital last night, chasing another avenue, and all it had earned was Nora’s hope raised and, worse, put her in the crosshairs of whoever killed Roland. “I appreciate the follow-up, truly. But we’ve got other leads to run down. I came back to make some calls, so please, go enjoy your day.”

Whitney’s gaze had dropped to the talisman in Hadley’s hand, the bundle of twine and husks rather than the key ring beside it.

“We should let her get back to work, Nora.” Whitney kept her focus on the talisman while reaching out to touch Nora’s elbow. “Come on. The place opens at eight, and I don’t want the good stuff picked over.”

Hadley remained on the sidewalk as they crossed to the car, parked beside the Equinox. Nora had more she wanted to say, that much was plain, but between Hadley’s deflection and Whitney’s steering, there wasn’t much left to land on. Not until Nora lifted a few fingers off the wheel and offered a small smile through the glass did Hadley return the gesture.

Then she crossed to the porch steps, thumbing the right key loose from the ring as she climbed the wooden planks. Reed had never locked the station. Not once in nine years, from what she’d been told. He’d wanted any soul in Whistlerun to be able to walk in at any hour and find help waiting on the other side of the door.

There was something fine in that, something worth mourning, because Hadley locked it every time she left. She’d have locked it twice if the hardware allowed, and never more so than after last night. The way she figured it, anyone with a problem while she was off duty could call the sheriff’s office, and Nick’s dispatcher would raise her on the radio inside a minute.

She’d have loved to live in the town Reed remembered from their childhood.

Those days were long gone, though, and Reed had all but died proving it. Whoever he’d met outside the festival grounds that night, whoever he’d followed to that deserted back stretch only townsfolk ever used, it hadn’t been a stranger.

Inside, the station was quiet.

Hadley crossed to her desk and dropped the keys on the hard surface. She went to do the same with the talisman and stopped short of letting it slip from her fingers. The husks had gone amber and thin with age, dry as old paper, and if she weren’t careful, they’d give under her thumb.

Sarah Cox had likely spent an entire morning making this, maybe even a whole day. She’d done it believing it would keep her safe from something. From the malevolent figure she’d been warned about over and over by her mother, her grandmother, the great-grandmother before her.

And Martin had pressed this small piece of his wife into Hadley’s hands and closed her fingers over it. She wasn’t about to leave it lying on a desk or shoved in a drawer.

She carried it to the front window instead, to the empty space between the two chairs, and leaned it against the sill, balancing it until she was sure it would hold. It sat crooked. She would pick up a suction hook at the hardware store this weekend and hang the talisman the way it was meant to be hung. It was the right thing to do.

She stared at it longer than she’d meant to and stepped back only when she caught Marjorie Foster peering through the display window of the flower shop across the street. It wouldn’t be long before the whole town heard the new chief had fallen in line and hung her husks like everybody else.

Hadley fought the urge to take it down, but she wouldn’t disrespect Martin or Sarah over her own pride. She turned from the window, and it was then she remembered she’d left the last of her coffee in the cup holder of the Equinox. There was always a pot on the burner in the back, though, so it took her no time at all to fill a mug in the kitchen.

Settled at last, her blazer hung over the back of the chair, she reached for the phone to call Nick. He wouldn’t answer. She’d leave him enough information to know where her morning stood.

“It’s me.” Hadley reached over and woke her monitor while she talked. “Nora Oliver just told me Roland went to his parents’ place Monday night. Said he thought somebody was watching him. If he was that uneasy, he might not have wanted that USB drive on him. He might not have wanted it in his own house at all. I think you should send somebody out to Holloway and ask the Mercers for permission to search their place. Roland could have left it there. Give me a call when you get this.”

She set the receiver in its cradle before the machine cut her off. She’d have run him through the rest of the morning, but she’d rambled enough, and cramming every last thing into a voice message wasn’t how she operated. She’d wait until she had something worth the call.

Hadley signed into her computer before taking a sip of coffee. It didn’t take long to find the number for the circuit clerk’s office, since they were the ones who handled land records for the county. Every deed, every plat, every parcel that had changed hands in Cane County since the first survey was recorded and kept in their books at the courthouse in Emberwood.

The woman who answered had clearly gotten into the coffee early, or else she was just a morning person. Cheerful in a way that had no business existing before eight, and helpful in a way Hadley hadn’t expected before the call.