Page 55 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

“No, thanks.”

Donovan carried on toward the far corner where a coffee maker sat on a rather short counter. She couldn’t have sworn to it, but she thought she’d caught the faint sweetish scent of whiskey as he’d passed. It hadn’t been fresh, which was the only reason she withheld judgment.

What was it about this town, though?

Every last one of them seemed determined to drink their troubles away, all the way down to the bottom of a glass.

Hadley stayed where she was near the front of the truck and let him take his time, and she suspected the refill had less to do with his coffee than with getting his bearings. He came back eventually and leaned a hip against the fender, a good six feet of concrete between them.

“I don’t know what I can tell you that isn’t already in my statement.” Donovan lifted a shoulder, though there wasn’t anything apologetic in the gesture. “I wish I could’ve been more help. All I was doing was driving home. I came on him too late.”

“Humor me.”

He stared at her a long moment, and a wariness worked its way through his features. That was too bad, because she wasn’t dropping the request.

She’d spent the better part of the day running the scenarios, and she didn’t believe Donovan had anything to do with Reed’s death. He didn’t have it in him. But she couldn’t shake the sense that he hadn’t been truthful about that night, either.

“All right.” Donovan took a long drink of his coffee before letting his gaze slide off her and out into the street. “I closed up the garage late. Seven, near enough eight. Stopped in at Gus’s on the way home as I usually do. Shot a couple racks of pool, had myself two beers.”

His focus dropped to the mug in his hands.

“Headed home afterward. Made that last turn onto the back road, and that’s when I saw it. Thought for sure somebody had set a burn pile too close to the ditch. The closer I got, the more trouble I had accepting what was sitting off in that little clearing.” Donovan’s thumb moved over a chip in the rim of his mug. “But sure enough, it was a truck. Whole thing was engulfed, but I recognized the back end right away. I called 911. Then I called Nora.”

Donovan’s jaw tightened, and then it seemed as if he forced himself to relax.

His boots had been aimed at her from the moment he’d leaned against the fender. Now, they turned, both of them, and his torso angled toward the open bay and the gray light beyond it. His free arm crossed his middle to grip the elbow of the arm holding the mug, folding him a size smaller than he’d been a moment ago.

“Donovan.” Hadley took a step toward him, unhurried. He stiffened, though he stayed put against the front of the truck. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“What do you mean?” A slow flush of irritation climbed Donovan’s neck. “That’s what happened. That was my statement to the sheriff, and you’re welcome to go check it. I don’t know what you’re implying, but⁠—”

She closed another step of the distance and lowered her voice, so he’d understand exactly how serious she was. She needed his help, and she was willing to go out on a limb to get it.

“I want to say something to you, and I want you to hear it as plain as day. I don’t believe you had anything to do with that fire. I don’t think you hurt Reed, and I don’t believe you killed him. I never have.” Hadley waited until Donovan’s gaze came up and met hers. “But you are leaving something out, and I can’t have that. A man died over in Emberwood this week. A professor. I think his death and Reed’s are tied together. So, if there’s anything you saw that night that you’ve been holding back, I need to know it.”

Donovan stared at her while he turned her words over, but she was confident he’d heard the meaning behind them. A low roll of thunder gave him a few seconds more to weigh it. Then he gave a slow nod.

“You might be closer to the mark than you know.” Donovan set the mug on the fender, steadier now that he’d made some connection of his own. She tamped down her impatience and let him get to it in his own time. “That professor. Roland Mercer, right? I know who he is. He came out to my place last summer.”

“Say that again,” Hadley instructed him softly, unsure she’d heard him correctly the first time around.

“It’s true. Rena and I were talking about it the other day. I mean, how much of a coincidence it was that his name came up. She’s the one who told me he died on campus this week.” Donovan reached for his mug now that the conversation had drifted away from that road and that fire. “Mercer knocked on my front door one evening, polite as you please, asking if he could walk the property with a metal detector.”

Donovan shook his head, a man apparently still marveling at the gall of a stranger.

“I told him no, of course. Didn’t know him from Adam. Told him to get off my land and not come back.” Donovan paused to take a sip, waiting out a roll of thunder that shook the tools on the pegboard. “A grown man wanting to run a metal detector over another man’s land at suppertime? I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. Figured he was one of those types, always out hunting old coins and belt buckles. That sort of thing.”

A crack of lightning lit the whole sky white, and the thunder came right on top of it. Within seconds, the rain started, a scattered pattering that turned steady before Hadley had finished counting it out. Past the bay doors, Main Street had gone to a gray blur. A separate world existed out beyond that threshold now, and she was going to have to walk back through it to reach home.

“Never saw the guy again. Like I said, didn’t think on it twice until Rena brought his name up last night.” Donovan gestured with the mug for them to move deeper into the garage. Rain had begun splattering on the sidewalk outside, kicking a fine mist in through the open bay. “You’re telling me you think Mercer’s death is connected to Reed’s murder?”

“I do.” Hadley didn’t think it was wise to lay out her theories, so she continued with her questions. “Is there anything else you can think of, Donovan? Anything at all that would help me?”

He didn’t answer right away. He crossed to a cart of tools and stared at them while she followed him deeper into the bay, out of the mist. When he finally turned to face her, his attention went past her shoulder to the rain coming down harder than before.

His hesitation was her opening, so she made her plea personal.

“Please, Donovan. Reed deserves justice. He deserves for somebody to get it right.”