Chapter 7: The Cells

Deacon stopped in the kitchen doorway.

"I've never sent you anywhere in my life," he said.

"At the gatehouse," the man said. "Six o'clock tonight. You pulled up in your truck and told me to go get it."

"I was in Graylick at six."

"You were at the gatehouse, sir. I saw you."

Bowie looked up at me from the floor.

I looked at Deacon.

His eyes had gone back to grey, and there was something in them I'd never seen there.

He was waiting to see if I believed it.

We tied the man's hands with a dish towel and the cook's extension cord and put him in the back seat between Bowie and the door.

He didn't say another word for two hours.

Nobody did.

The Ridge was dark when we pulled in. Two in the morning.

Deacon walked the man into the meeting hall and down the stone steps to the cells himself.

Then he went up to his room, and I followed him through the connecting door without knocking.

Bowie came in from the hall a second later and shut that door behind him.

Deacon stood at the window with his back to us.

"Go on," he said. "Ask it."

"Fine." I crossed my arms. "Why would a man in your uncle's jacket say your name?"

"I don't know."

"Did you ever send anybody for that jar? Any day? Any time?"

He turned around.

"No."

"Did you tell anybody where it was?"

"Bowie. You." His jaw flexed. "Nobody else."

"Did you ever go into my diner after I left that morning in February?"

"I was unconscious on your floor, Dovie."

"I know." I took a breath. "I know you were."

"Then what are you asking me?"

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