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“Did you see Vance on Thursday?” asked Gretchen.
Lark nodded.
“You saw him Thursday,” Josie said. “But not yesterday. When was the next time you saw Vance after Thursday? Physically?”
“Physically? Just now, outside.”
“He wasn’t at the a.m. milking today?” asked Gretchen.
“No. He missed it again. I can do it myself, no problem. It just takes longer.”
“If you had not seen him since Thursday,” Josie said, “how did you know he was here when we arrived?”
“I heard him come in around three in the morning. When he gets drunk—good and smashed, not the drunk where he’s angry and mean but the drunk where he’s just obliterated—he falls a lot. He fell in the hall here. I heard him cursing.”
“You didn’t come out of your room?” asked Gretchen.
Lark looked behind them again, as if she expected someone to be standing in the hall. Whether that someone was Mett or Vance, Josie couldn’t tell. “I never come out when he’s drunk if I can help it.”
“Okay,” Gretchen said. “You stay here while we search his room. Also, we’re going to need the names and contact information of anyone who helped with the afternoon milking yesterday.”
Lark said nothing. Reaching over, she pushed the door open.
Josie snapped on a pair of latex gloves, as did Gretchen, and they entered Vance’s bedroom. The smell of sweat mingling with stale beer hit them immediately. A queen-sized bed took up most of the room, a blanket and sheet rumpled at its foot. A large wooden dresser spanned one wall. On top of it were two framed photos: one of a much younger Dermot, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lark, and two small children. The Hadlee family. They were sitting on a picnic blanket, huddled together. The ends of Dermot’s mouth lifted in what Josie supposed could pass for a smile. His wife, Susanna, wore a smile that wasn’t much more convincing than his, and yet she was still striking with high cheekbones, full lips, and long glossy locks split by a white forelock which stood out against her otherwise dark hair. The only thing out of place was what looked like a clunky hearing aid in her left ear. Vance sat in his mother’s lap and grinned at the camera. Lark stood behind her parents, unsmiling. The photo had none of the crispness of modern-day pictures and had started yellowing around the edges.
The other frame held a photo of a smiling couple on their wedding day. Josie froze when she realized it wasn’t Dermot Hadlee and his wife, but Vance and Anya. They stood in a rolling green pasture under a white arbor decorated with flowers and gauzy white fabric. Vance’s smile was wide, his expression reflecting the happiness of wild abandon. Anya’s was more subdued. Maybe she hadn’t consciously known or understood it at the time, but some part of her deep down must have had doubts about the marriage for which she had repeatedly sacrificed her career ambitions.
Gretchen’s voice made her startle. “Divorced ten years and still has the wedding photo on his dresser. No way has he moved on.”
A chill rolled up Josie’s back, nipping at the hair on the nape of her neck. “Not a chance,” she whispered so that Lark wouldn’t overhear. Vance’s smirk flashed through her mind. He didn’t miss Anya, she was sure of it. He was angry with her for what he thought she had done to him. Making a ‘private matter’ public. Humiliating him. Saddling him with a criminal conviction. That was the perspective of an abuser. What Anya had really done was stand up for herself, hold him accountable for his actions, and leave a dangerous and toxic situation.
Gretchen said, “It doesn’t even look like Anya.”
Although it was clearly a younger, curvier, fresh-faced Anya, Gretchen was right. It looked nothing like the woman they knew. Even her dress was an elaborate, over-embroidered affair that Josie couldn’t imagine Anya choosing for herself. “It doesn’t look like her because it’s not her. Not anymore.”
Feeling like a voyeur, Josie quickly turned away and helped Gretchen search the room. They found porn magazines, condoms, several hundred dollars in cash, what looked like cocaine, and several small baggies filled with pills. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough to make a case for Vance to be charged with possession or possession with intent to distribute drugs.
No branding implements.
The compartment under Vance’s nightstand held only family photos from his and Lark’s early childhood when their mother was still living with them on the farm. As Josie flipped through them, she saw Susanna Hadlee’s smile change over the years. It was bright and joyful on the day of her wedding and shortly after the births of her children. Then, as the kids grew into toddlers, the muscles around her mouth seemed to get stiffer. Her smiles were mechanical, forced. The light in her eyes slowly extinguished, like a dying candle at the end of its wick. Then there were no more photos. Again feeling like a voyeur, Josie stuffed the pictures back into the compartment and covered it.
After searching the rest of the room and finding nothing, they returned to the hall where Lark waited. She gestured toward the room next to Vance’s, which turned out to be hers. They searched it, finding nothing of concern other than a pocketknife beneath her pillow. They didn’t ask her about it. Josie was pretty sure she knew why it was there. Once Mettner had concluded his own searches of his assigned bedrooms, all of them moved downstairs.
Methodically, Lark took them through the rest of the house. They found nothing. Outside, Dermot, Cyrus and Vance sat in chairs on the porch. Vance and Dermot glared. Cyrus maintained a blank expression but given the way he tapped his foot against the porch floorboards, like he was listening to a tune no one else could hear, he seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of the Hadlee farm being searched. Josie was relieved that the vehicles were at the side of the house, out of view of the men. The Hadlees had two pickup trucks—one black and one silver—a red SUV, and a white sedan. Lark pointed to the newest truck, silver gleaming in the sunlight. “That’s the one Vance drives. Normally.”
Gretchen approached it. “Normally?”
Lark pointed to the small white sedan. “Sometimes he drives that old piece of crap. When he doesn’t want Dad to know where he’s been. The truck’s got GPS. That old car does not.”
They started with Vance’s truck. Inside was a lot of garbage, including several empty bottles of liquor. The other vehicles were cleaner and more well-kept. None had any branding implements inside or Sharon Eddy’s missing glove. When they finished, Lark said, “I’ll take you back to the other buildings. Might take you a while—they’re pretty spread out.”
She started walking away, deeper onto the property, and they followed. Ahead, the roofs of the cowsheds came into view, two small humps. Here at the back of the property, the smell of animals, feed, and manure mixed together to create a powerful stench. Gretchen coughed and wiped at her eyes. “Good lord,” she muttered. “I’m not sure what’s worse: a dead body or this.”
Mettner laughed softly. “You get used to it.”
“You do,” said Josie. “But it’s pretty unpleasant.”
“Not something I’d want to get used to,” Gretchen answered.
