Page 128 of Death on Gallows Path

I hoped Teague would open the conversation as we drove toward Lafayette the following Sunday. At least to ask questions.

We were past Indianapolis when I gave up that hope.

But not the hope that we could shake these secrets’ tyranny.

“Teague, I’m going to talk to you. I want you to talk to me.”

He didn’t look at me, but jerked his head toward a sign for an exit.

He drove past a parking area where our view would have been of a truck wash to where we faced fields with corn plants popping up.

He turned off his truck. We lowered the windows, feeling a warming breeze.

Silence.

I was going to have to talk.

“You must know what this is about, Teague.” Not waiting for him to react, I added, “I do know some. I know Adam, your cousin’s son, was involved with urban exploration.”

His grunt passed for affirmative.

I stepped carefully. “You were . . . concerned?”

“Concerned? Yes.” He looked straight ahead. “They’d go into dangerous buildings. Boarded up, posted for trespassing. They acted like the owners were mean-spirited instead of trying to keep them safe.”

“You tried to talk to him. Including that night.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Was off-duty, but heard a radio call about people in a building near a scheduled implosion and I figured . . . Got there first. Shouted at them that the building next door was going to go any minute and the one they were in wasn’t sound.

“Some came out, scattered. Not Adam. I went in and he was standing there, looking deeper into the building. I could see he was going to take the leap to the next position, over . . . nothing.

“I was almost to him. Reached for him, but I was shouting at the same time and he jerked away. It was . . . it was like moving triggered the world to explode.”

I extended my hand toward him. Stopped. Let it drop to the console between us.

He regripped the steering wheel.

“I reached . . . He wasn’t there — No. I wasn’t there. I . . . dropped. Learned later the explosion ripped the floor out where we were standing, which was also the roof of a tunnel, I fell into the belly of the tunnel. A beam fell across where I was and that kept the worst off me.”

He looked out the driver’s window.

“Lucky. That’s what they said.” Bitterness corroded his words. “The explosion didn’t kill Adam, but the debris did. Blow to his head? Metal in his chest? Didn’t matter which got him first. He was gone.”

Anger surged through me at anyone — even Teague — blaming him.

Teague had tried to help Adam all along, had tried to get him out of that place. Out of danger.

Still, he blamed himself. I heard it in every inflection, saw it in the tic of muscle below his eye.

“That’s when your eye was injured? And your department . . .”

“Chief made noises about me being off-duty when I was hurt. But eventually insurance covered most.”

Eventually. At his lowest point, he’d had to fight for what healed him.

A new surge of anger hit, this one safer. All the things he did now — drive and teach and carpentry and the sheriff’s department. Knowing his determination, all they had to do was wait for him to recover and—

And he’d never have come to Haines Tavern.