nodded, and puffed away.
“I’m sorry for the upset we’ve caused,” said Amber.
“Ah, you seem like you’re going through a lot, so I’m not going to hold it against you. Ella-May isn’t, either, despite her silence earlier. That man has been a plague on our family, so we don’t especially like talking about him at the dinner table.”
“You knew him?” she asked.
Teddy nodded. “Everyone knew him. Nobody knew him well. Probably how he got away with it for so long.”
“How did you find him? How did you figure out what he was doing?”
Teddy tapped the stem of his pipe against the chair, and put it back between his lips. “We didn’t,” he said. “Ella-May did. I’m a smart enough fella. I was a good deputy and I make a good sheriff. But Ella-May is my secret weapon. She paid attention to the little things, the little details. She added things together. She made enquiries. All under the radar. Not even her father suspecting for one moment that what she was doing was gathering evidence.
“Then her dad passed away. Nothing dramatic. He wasn’t killed in the line of duty or anything like that. His heart just gave out one sunny afternoon while driving back to the station. He pulled over to the side of the road and had his heart attack and died. Responsible to the last. His replacement was not a particularly intelligent man. I brought Ella-May to him and she gave him all her evidence, told him her conclusions, and he ignored it all. He didn’t want to imagine that a town like Springton could hold a horror like that. Dacre Shanks was a creepy little guy in a creepy little toystore. Sheriff Gunther, that was his name, was content with that. Creepy was fine. He could understand creepy. But serial killer? That was beyond him.
“So I started an unofficial investigation. My fellow deputies trusted me, and they trusted Ella-May. All the work she’d done meant we hit the ground running. We quickly had enough so that we could call in the Feds. Gunther found out, was not happy, threatened to fire us all. He called the FBI, told them it was all a big misunderstanding. That same night we got word that someone else had gone missing, a boy who fit the profile of some of Shanks’s other victims. We convinced the judge to get us a search warrant – without Gunther’s help – and we raided that toystore.”
“Did you save the boy?” Amber asked.
“No, we did not.” Teddy puffed on the pipe, but it had gone out. He didn’t seem to notice. “We ran in on Shanks standing over him, though. All four of us opened fire. You know the rest. Gunther lost his job after that and I was elected in his place. For some reason, the folks around here have been electing me ever since. I don’t think they’re too smart.”
“And what about after? There were other murders, weren’t there? Ten years later, something like that?”
“Feds came to investigate. Thought there was a copycat. But, by the time they got here, the killings had stopped.”
“Did your daughter have anything to do with that?”
Teddy struck a match, lit his pipe again. Gave it a few puffs. “The world is full of bad men, Amber. Bad women, too, I guess. Some of them hide in plain sight, and some of them don’t. Some of them wear masks, and some of them wear smiles. I thought I’d seen the full extent of evil when we burst in on Dacre Shanks. Turns out I was wrong. There’s another evil, a whole other layer of evil that I’d only read about in the Bible. I believe you know what I’m talking about.”
She nodded.
“I’ve glimpsed impossible things,” Teddy said. “I haven’t seen them fully because I honestly don’t think I’m able. But I’ve seen enough to know that whatever path you’re on, it’s something I can’t help you with.”
“I understand.”
“You get back to bed now, Amber. And you have good dreams, you hear me? The world’s just about full up of the other kind.”
SHERIFF ROOSEVELT HAD ALREADY left for work when Amber got up the next morning. She joined Milo and Glen at the table and Ella-May served them breakfast, but didn’t eat with them. Amber ate in silence and Milo didn’t say a word. Even Glen seemed subdued.
They threw their bags in the Charger and went back inside to pay. Ella-May gave Milo a handwritten receipt and walked them to the door and they stood there, waiting for someone to say something.
Ella-May was the one to puncture the quiet. “I’m not going to ask about your business,” she said. “I’m not going to ask why you’re interested in a man who has killed so many people, or how you know what you know. There’s a dark underbelly to this country and I am well aware that there are people who have to walk through it – oftentimes through no fault of their own. If you’re on that path … well, I’d pray for you if I prayed.”
Amber gave her a small, pained smile.
Ella-May nodded brusquely. “I’ve called Heather. I told her to speak to you if she’s in the mood. That’s no guarantee that she will, mind you. My daughter is her own woman. The library opens late today, so she’ll be at work at two. You could call in then, see if she’s feeling talkative. Good day to you, now.”
She closed the door.
At ten minutes past two, they walked into the library and found Heather Medina restocking shelves in the Self-help section. Up close, she was an attractive woman with plump, soft lips but hard eyes. There was a thin scar on her neck that disappeared behind the collar of her blouse. Everything about her, from her manner to the shoes that she wore – practical, like she was ready to run or fight at any given moment – screamed survivor. Amber liked her instantly.
“Your mother sent us,” Milo said.
Heather nodded, and kept sliding books on to the shelves. “She told me you’re a curious bunch, with a particular interest in our town’s recent history. I told her I’d already been speaking to you. I told her you’re not exactly subtle.”
“She said you’d talk to us if you were in a talkative mood,” Amber said.
“And you’re wondering what kind of mood I’m currently in?” asked Heather. “It’s Amber, right? And Glen? I used to have a boyfriend called Glen. Really good guy. I guess he was my first love. My high-school sweetheart. Dacre Shanks came back from the dead and killed him when I was sixteen.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Amber didn’t notice the words sliding down her spine until they made her shiver. “It’s true, then? Everything we’ve heard?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Heather. “It all depends on what you’ve heard, doesn’t it?”
The elderly librarian passed, gave them all a suspicious look, and Heather smiled, keeping her eyes locked on her until she’d moved out of earshot.
“When I was a kid, we all knew who Dacre Shanks was,” said Heather. “I grew up hearing about the things he’d done and how my mother had been the one to figure it all out. In the
