Page 19 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

As Charlie Ashlock and I walked up Silas Hepworth’s driveway, a shotgun blast ripped through the morning air.

I ducked, shoving Charlie behind me, and reached for the nonexistent holster at my side.

Neither of us had been hit. There was no sign of life in the front yard and all the windows in the house and trailer were dark, no faces or barrels aimed our way.

“What the—” Charlie muttered behind me.

Another blast rang out, echoing off the buildings on Hepworth’s property.

Charlie pointed to the barn and I nodded.

The shots were coming from somewhere behind it.

We glanced at each other and moved in that direction, following the weeds that grew at the base of the faded building.

When we got to the edge, there was another blast—this one even closer—followed by a wheezy laugh.

“You can’t let the butt jump around like that. You’ve got to brace it.”

“I am.” This voice was higher, younger.

“Those cans over there say otherwise.”

I motioned for Charlie to stay behind me and moved carefully around the edge of the barn.

An old man and a young woman leaned over the hood of a rusted pickup with no tires on it.

On the other side, about twenty yards across a bald dirt yard, two Campbell’s soup cans sat on top of a fence.

It was just shooting practice. I took a deep breath and ignored the flood of panic and adrenaline of being on an unfamiliar farm with armed strangers. Sometimes PTSD was an insistent bitch.

“Howdy.” I walked forward slowly, hands in sight. The man and young woman whirled around. They didn’t aim their guns at us, but they didn’t put them down either.

“The hell are you doing here?” The old man—clearly Hepworth—-spoke directly to Charlie.

“We need to ask you some questions.”

Hepworth straightened with some effort, never losing his grip on the gun. “And I need you to get off my property.”

“We’ll be happy to, I promise, if we could just have a couple minutes of your time first. You spoke to my partner yesterday.

” I stopped well short of the truck and extended the business card, which never felt anywhere near as official as a badge.

Neither of them looked interested enough to want to read it.

“The two of us are trying to help Charlie here track down his girlfriend.”

“Already told the other one I don’t know anything.”

“Grandpa,” the young woman turned to Hepworth, “are they talking about the woman who was here the other day?”

The old man flushed red and looked constipated as hell. He grabbed the shotgun out of her hand and told her to be quiet. Ignoring Hepworth, I pulled up Kate’s picture and walked close enough for her to see it clearly. “This woman?”

She nodded, shoving long, greasy hair out of her face. “She took grandpa’s shotgun. Told him she’d come back and kill him. That’s why we’re—”

“That’s why nothin’.” Hepworth cuffed the young woman on her shoulder until she dropped her head and fell silent.

“She threatened you?” I asked Hepworth directly. Charlie stepped up, making a tense box out of the four of us.

“Get in the house.”

The young woman hesitated, glancing between all of us.

She looked a few years older than Garrett, probably late high school or just graduated.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and nervous, and her clothes were as ill-fitting and grimy as her grandfather’s.

Clearly, hygiene wasn’t a big priority on the Hepworth farm.

“Is she . . . ?” the young woman started to ask.

“You heard me,” her grandfather repeated. “I said get.”

She listened this time, disappearing around the barn in the direction of the house. Hepworth waited until he heard the screen door slam before he focused on me and Charlie.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

He grunted and leaned against the truck, setting one of the shotguns on the hood and keeping the other. “She came here out of the blue, trespassing on my property, and told me to stop, well . . .” He flashed a look at Charlie.

“Blackmailing your neighbor?” I supplied.

“I’m not the one doing anything wrong. He’s got the drug operation out here in the middle of the country where good people are trying to make a living. There’s kids here.” He jabbed in the direction his granddaughter disappeared. “People raising families.”

Raising families obviously meant different things to different people.

And while calling Charlie’s basement a drug operation was technically true, the brightly lit rows marked with careful labels were a far cry from the filthy meth labs and truckloads of opioids I’d seen as a police officer.

Charlie had given me a tour this morning, calling each plant by name and excitedly pointing out the properties of “Lenore” vs.

“Errol.” He was nerdy and kind of irritating, but also nothing like the offenders I’d arrested over the years.

Marijuana was legal in most states now, it seemed, and even the feds had backed off on enforcement and prosecution in legalized states.

The old man’s rant felt like a throwback to satanic panic.

“You’re not doing anything wrong?” I flipped open my notebook. “Looks like we’ve got possession of a controlled substance, harassment, and extortion, from what Charlie tells me.”

“Harassment!” Silas exploded, making the rusted truck squeal with his sudden outburst. “That’s what you should charge her with. That bitch assaulted me and stole from me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because this guy’s too cowardly to do his own dirty work, that’s why.”

“What are you talking about?” Charlie stepped closer. Hepworth’s hand slid down to the trigger of the shotgun. I moved into a position where I could reach either of them if I had to, and lifted my hands in a let’s-take-it-easy gesture.

“Are you saying she stole one of your guns?” I tried to piece the situation together from what his grandkid said earlier.

He grunted. “She knew better than to steal it while I was right there. It was the money she came back for.”

“What?” Charlie got in his face, heedless of the gun in Hepworth’s gnarled hands.

“The five grand you paid me. I put it in a cupboard in the kitchen until I could take it to the bank. Same place you always saw me put the weed. Well, a few days after that bitch came and threatened me, I go to the cupboard and it’s all gone.

Every penny. She broke into my house and took it.

” He squeezed the barrel of the shotgun in a red fist. The finger on the trigger clenched.

“And you told her right where to look for it, didn’t you? ”

“She took the money I paid you?” Charlie seemed confused and overcome.

“As if you didn’t know.” Hepworth got in Charlie’s face.

I wedged a shoulder in between them and snagged the old man’s attention. “What happened then?”

“Nothin’. Money was gone and she knew better than to set foot on my property after that.”

I nodded and made a noise of understanding. “But what about her threat? You must’ve been worried she’d carry through with it.”

“Worried?” He laughed once, an ugly shot of sound. “I’ve lived through war. Been married twice and worked these fields for forty years. No little girl’s gonna get in my face and make me worry about anything.”

“So you didn’t talk to her after that? Not even to confront her about the money?”

He spit on the ground, not saying anything. His face looked like bunched leather, something left out in the sun and forgotten.

“And where were you on the morning of June 7?”

“Where I always am. Right goddamn here.”

I looked at the open stretch of land beyond the fence and the Campbell’s soup cans. Silas Hepworth owned a hundred acres of farmland and a handful of weathered outbuildings. The land rolled gently here, creating pockets of absolute privacy, places where no neighbor could see what he might be doing.

“Sure, Silas.”

I picked up the extra shotgun lying on the hood of the pickup, loaded it, took a bead on the tin cans, and squeezed the trigger. Twin blasts ripped apart the air around us. The cans flew off the fence.

“Those charges I read you are real. So if you decide you want to continue blackmailing Charlie, I’m here to tell you that his girlfriend—wherever she is now—was right.”

“Right about what?”

I stepped closer until he had to look up to see me.

“You’re going to regret it.”

Back at Charlie’s place, shit hit the fan. He’d been quiet and even docile at Silas’s house, letting me lead the interview as he hovered in the background. As soon as we walked back into his kitchen, though, he went into a full meltdown.

“He killed her. God, do you think he killed her?” Charlie paced the yellow Formica, head in his hands like he was trying to pull his own hair out. “Why would she do that? Why would she threaten that asshat and steal back the money? Oh my god, she was trying to protect me and he killed her.”

He kept spiraling, ignoring me until I had to physically get in front of him, take him by the shoulders, and push him into a chair.

“Sit down. Breathe. Smoke something.”

“But you heard—”

“I did.” I sat across from him. “I’ve heard a lot of people say a lot of things, as a private investigator and as law enforcement. Most of it is bullshit or cover. When people get backed into a corner, they’ll say anything they think can get them out of that corner. You have any kids?”

He shook his head.

“Been around kids?”

He shrugged as his eyes filled with water and he backhanded his face with an arm. He was barely listening.

“Interviewing suspects is a lot like dealing with children. You’ve got to weed through their stories and figure out fact from fiction.”