“The club’s shit, just so you know.”
Liam turned to the man at the counter, who gazed at him from under a tangle of dark hair streaked with gray. His face was long and narrow, with sallow cheeks that fell in like slack sails. He was unshaven, and when Liam looked at the man’s hands wrapped around a similar mug of coffee, he saw long yellow fingernails with dirt caked beneath them.
“That so?” Liam said, not wanting to talk and saying as much with the dead tone in his voice.
The unkempt man nodded. “I don’t know where the hell they get their bacon, but it doesn’t taste like any pig that I’ve had before.” The man waved a hand in disgust, and Liam caught a waft of body odor from his direction.
Liam sipped from his cup and was surprised at how good the coffee was. He could almost feel the caffeine bolstering him, straightening his insides, which felt folded and broken.
“Good coffee, though,” the man said, as if reading his mind. Liam adopted silence to get his new friend to stop addressing him, and merely nodded. “You’re from out of town,” the man continued. It wasn’t a question.
Liam glanced in his direction. “Yeah.”
“Lots around these days. You don’t look like a reporter, though.”
Liam stiffened. He hadn’t been in town for more than fifteen minutes and already the confrontation he’d been dreading was upon him. “I’m not.”
The man sipped his coffee and looked past Liam to study something on the wall. “Yeah, killing always brings the vultures. I knew they’d come after the first ones, but now it’s bound to be twice as bad.”
Liam paused, his cup hanging a few inches below his mouth. “What do you mean, ‘the first ones’?”
The man’s bloodshot eyes flicked back to Liam’s face, and he squinted. “Wasn’t two weeks ago Jerry and Karen Shevlin were found the same way as the ones last night. Their boy was luckier, but not by much. Lost an arm from the elbow down and hasn’t woke up yet. Poor little bugger, he can’t be more’n ten or eleven.”
Liam set his cup down and turned to fully face the man. “You’re telling me there was a double murder here last week?”
The man nodded, his clumpy hair bobbing with the motion. “Yeah, local authorities tried to keep it quiet right away, but it got out after only a day or so. Now this new one last night.” The man shook his head. “And the doctor along with his wife at that. Sad, sad business.”
The door to the kitchen banged open, and the waitress came out holding a plate with a soggy-looking sandwich and a pile of wilting French fries. Her eyes flitted to the man down the bar, and her mouth dipped at the corners.
“Nut, I told you not to bother people, or Dale will boot you out again.”
Before the man could respond, Liam spoke. “He’s fine, not bothering me at all.”
The waitress gave Nut another stabbing look, and then smiled at Liam. “Anything else I can get you, hon?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Liam said.
The waitress moved off to check on the couple in the booth, and the man at the bar leaned forward conspiratorially. “My real name’s not Nut, but everyone calls me that. Nice to make your acquaintance,” he said, holding out a dirty hand.
“Liam Dempsey,” Liam said, and shook hands with the man, taking in the surprise and calculation in Nut’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t be—” Nut began, but Liam stood, already reaching for his wallet. With a flick of his hand he laid a twenty on the counter, and moved past the waitress and out the door without looking back.
CHAPTER 2
He tried to call the number Agent Phelps had told him earlier that morning but each time he dialed, the digits slipped away from his memory like sand through fingers.
Liam punched the end button and stared through the truck’s windshield, his heart thudding faster with a feeling he hadn’t experienced in almost a year. He willed his pulse to slow before bringing up the browser on his phone. In less than a minute, he found directions to the sheriff’s office and threw the truck into reverse.
The Tallston sheriff’s department sat four streets south of the café, built beside an imposing three-story brownstone that served as the town hall. Liam strode up the concrete entrance ramp and pulled open the glass door emblazoned with a gold shield, the words Tallston Sheriff’s Department curved around its upper half. A cool wave of air-conditioning washed over him as he stepped through the door, effectively cutting off the day’s burgeoning heat. The lobby of the office was simple, with a reinforced steel door set in the left wall and a Plexiglas partition directly ahead. A round hole the size of a grapefruit was cut in the center of the glass, and a plump woman in a brown uniform rested behind the desk, a black headset tipped up so that it touched the taut strands of her ponytailed blond hair.