Adrian Blackwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Adrian came down from the hills at dusk with three names in his pocket and no faces to match them. He had copied the last letter word for word before Silas Thornwood took the journal back. The names sat on the paper like locked doors. Any of the three could be the killer. Any of the three could be the man who tried to help her. He needed a way in without asking questions that would travel back to the sheriff. He took the long way into town, past a broad willow that spread over the road like a green tent. A woman was waiting under it. She wore a dark jacket and a leather bag on a strap across her chest. Her boots were planted like she had been standing there a while. "You're the man asking about the saloon girl," she said. Not a question. Adrian stopped. "Word moves fast." "My name is Elena Marsh." She watched his face for the flinch. She got it. "So you have heard the name." One of the three. Written in a dead girl's hand forty years ago. Standing in front of him, maybe thirty years old. "My grandfather," Elena said. "Same name. He died last spring. I've been going through his things." She opened the bag and pulled out a bundle of papers tied with string. "He kept a ledger. Names, dates, money in and out of the saloon. I think he was afraid of two of the men he worked with. I think one of them is why that girl never came home." Adrian kept his hands at his sides. "Why bring this to me." "Because the sheriff's father closed the case," she said. "And the sheriff won't open it. You will." She led him off the road to a log cabin set back among the pines. The porch sagged. Paper scraps clung to the shingles where wind had pinned them. Inside, a lamp was already lit. A kettle sat cooling on the stove. Someone else lived here with her. She did not say who. She cleared the table and laid the ledger flat. Adrian opened it beside his copy of the last letter. He read for an hour. Elena did not speak. The ledger named the same three men. Two of them had shared a bank account. The third had been paid off the books, small sums, every week the girl had worked, ending the week she vanished. Adrian set his finger on the third name. "This one." "That's what I thought," Elena said. "His son runs the feed store now. He's on the town council. He sits two chairs from the sheriff every Tuesday." Adrian closed the ledger. He had a suspect. He had also just told a stranger everything he knew, in a cabin whose second occupant he had not seen. He looked at the back door. It was bolted from the inside.