Chapter 13

13

"Fuckity-fuck-fuck." Faith tried not to bang her head against the steering wheel of her Mini. The storm had finally passed, but the gravel road had turned into a muddy nightmare. Rocks kept dinging into the side panels. The steering felt slippery. She looked up at the sky. The sun was brutal, like it wanted to suck back up as much water into the clouds as possible.

She had shot herself in the foot by volunteering to interview Penny Danvers, the cleaner and bartender at the lodge, but Faith hated autopsies. She attended them because it was her job, but every single part of the examination grossed her the hell out. She had never been able to get used to being around dead bodies. Which was how she'd ended up driving through the backroads of Bumfuck, North Georgia, instead of taking a victory lap for her excellent detective work interviewing Dave McAlpine.

She silently chastised herself. A better outcome would've been a confession or a giant clue that pointed to the killer so that Jon had closure. This wasn't a game of good guys vs. bad guys. Mercy had been a mother. Not just a mother, but a mother like Faith. They had both given birth to sons when they were barely more than children themselves. Faith had been lucky that her family had supported her. Without their strength holding her up, she could've just as easily ended up like Mercy McAlpine. Or maybe even trapped with a reprehensible abuser like Dave. Shitty men were like periods. Once you had your first one, your life was consumed by dread or panic over when it would show up again.

Faith glanced at the open notebook on the passenger's seat. Before she'd left the hospital, she'd worked with Will to incorporate Mercy's calls to Dave with Will's ballpark times about what he'd heard and from where. They'd managed to construct what was probably a close guess of the last hour and a half of Mercy McAlpine's life:

10:30: Seen making rounds (Paul: witness)

10:47, 11:10, 11:12, 11:14, 11:19, 11:22: Missed calls to Dave

11:28: Voicemail to Dave

11:30: First scream from compound (Howl)

11:40: Second scream from bachelor cottages (Help)

11:40: Third scream from bachelor cottages (Please)

11:50: Body discovered

Midnight: Death pronounced (Sara)

Faith was still not happy with the multiples of ten. She had to get up to that property and find that map. Her first goal was to establish the areas where the Wi-Fi worked so she could figure out where Mercy had been when the calls to Dave were made. From there, Faith could plot out the different possible routes Mercy could've taken to the bachelor cottages. Will might be off by as much as five minutes on either side, which didn't seem like a lot, but when you were building a murder case, every minute mattered.

At least Mercy had done them the favor of making so many calls. The voicemail had already been sent to the lab for sound analysis, but that would take at least a week to get back. Faith picked up her phone from the cup holder. She tapped the recording she'd made of Mercy's last message to Dave. The woman's voice sounded desperate as it echoed inside the Mini.

"Dave! Dave! Oh my God, where are you? Please, please call me back. I can't believe—oh, God, I can't— Please call me. Please. I need you. I know you've never been there for me before, but I really need you now. I need your help, baby. Please c-call—"

Faith hadn't noticed before, but Mercy had started sobbing when she'd muffled the phone. In the car, Faith silently counted down the seven seconds of the woman's soft cries.

"What are you doing here? Don't! Dave will be here soon. I told him what happened. He's on his—"

Faith glanced down at her timeline. Thirty-two minutes later, Mercy was pronounced dead.

"What happened to you, Mercy?" Faith asked the empty car. "What was it that you couldn't believe?"

The woman had seen or heard something that terrified her enough to shove her clothes and notebook into the backpack to flee. She hadn't taken Jon, which meant whatever happened was only threatening to Mercy. Threatening enough that she needed Dave to show up for her after years of not being there. Threatening enough that she didn't go to her own family for help.

Faith's bet was that the bad thing had kicked off during the thirteen-minute gap between the first call to Dave and the frantic five missed calls that had started at the 11:10 mark. Mercy would've been inside the house at some point to pack her backpack. Faith wasn't sure what items she would take if she had to leave her house for ever, but chief among them would be the letter that her father had written to her before he'd died of pancreatic cancer. There was no way Mercy had taken the notebook unless it had incredible value.

And there was no way the lab would be done with the analysis in less than a week.

Dave will be here soon. I told him what happened.

Faith thought about all the times she had told a man that another man was on the way. Usually it happened when she was trying to enjoy a night out alone. There was always some dude who would sidle up to flirt. The only way to get rid of him was to make it clear that another man had already pissed on the fire hydrant he was sniffing.

Which brought Faith back to the locked-room mystery of it all. One of the tenets of the genre was that the person you didn't think did it had actually done it. Dave was so obvious that he practically had a neon arrow pointing at his head. The most dangerous time for a domestic abuse survivor was when she was leaving her abuser. The strangulation was a textbook sign of an escalation in violence. But being a reprehensible shitslug didn't make you a murderer. And Faith kept coming back to the voicemail. Mercy wasn't telling Dave that Dave was on the way. There were only a handful of men at the lodge who could've caused Mercy to invoke his name.

Chuck. Frank. Drew. Max, the investor. Alejandro, the chef. Gregg and Ezra, the two waiters from town. Gordon and Paul, because you never knew. Christopher, because he and Mercy were basically raised inside a VC Andrews novel in the north Georgia mountains.

Faith let out a heavy sigh. She needed more information. Hopefully, Penny Danvers, the bartender and cleaner at the lodge, would be as insightful and talkative as Delilah had been on Will's recording. Hotel cleaners saw your character in its harshest light, and God only knew Faith had dropped a few truth-bombs on unsuspecting bartenders in her day. Which was probably not a rabbit hole she needed to go down right now. Instead, Faith focused on the never-ending gravel road. She glanced into her rear-view mirror. Then at the road. Then out the side windows. Everything looked the same.

"Fuck me."

She was completely and totally lost.

She slowed her car to look for signs of civilization. All she had seen in the last fifteen minutes were fields and cows and the occasional low-flying bird. Her GPS had told her to take a left at the fork in the road, but she was beginning to think it had lied. She checked her phone. No signal. Faith performed a three-point turn and headed back the way she'd come.

Somehow, the fields and cows and the occasional bird looked different on her way back. She rolled down both windows and listened for cars or a tractor or some indication that she was not the last woman on earth. All she heard was a stupid bird cawing. She turned the dial on the radio, expecting to hear either alien voices or the farm report, but she was rewarded with Dolly Parton singing "Purple Rain".

"Thank God," Faith whispered. At least something was still good in the world. The wind blew into the car, drying some of the sweat on her back. She heard her phone chirp. Faith looked down at the screen. The signal was back. She had two text messages.

Faith tapped in her code, telling herself it was okay to text and drive because the only person she could kill was herself. Which she almost did when she saw the text from her son.

He was at Quantico. He loved it there.

Faith had secretly been hoping that Jeremy would hate it. She did not want her son to be a cop. She did not want him to be an FBI agent. She did not want him to be a GBI agent. She wanted him to use his fancy degree from Georgia Tech and work in an office and wear a suit and make lots of money so when his mother crashed her car on the side of the road from texting and driving, she would wind up in a nice facility.

The other text was only marginally better. Faith's mother had sent a photo of Emma with her face painted like Pennywise, the clown from It. Faith would figure out later whether the homage was intentional. She sent back a bunch of hearts before dropping her phone in the cup holder.

"Fuck!" she screamed. A bird had nearly flown straight into her windshield. Faith turned the wheel and ended up bumping along the shoulder. She over-corrected. The car started to hydroplane. Everything slowed down. She knew that you turned into a skid when you were on ice, but did you do the same with mud? Did you wrench the wheel in the opposite direction or would that jackknife you into a ditch?

The answer came soon enough. The Mini morphed into Kristi Yamaguchi, twisting into a three-sixty, lifting up on two wheels, and gliding across the road until it landed in the opposite ditch.

The car gave a violent shudder as it settled into the gulley. Faith was too breathless to utter a curse, but she promised herself she would as soon as her asshole unclenched. There weren't a lot of ways this day could get any worse.

Then she got out of the car and saw her back wheel buried in two inches of mud.

"Mother—"

Faith put her fist to her mouth. She could handle this. She'd worked as a patrol officer. Her shifts had been routinely filled with helping dumbasses extricate their vehicles from ditches. She found her emergency kit in the trunk, which had blankets, food, water, an emergency radio, a flashlight and a collapsible shovel.

"Purple Rain" had reached its crescendo. She had to think Dolly Parton would appreciate an exasperated mother of two digging herself out of the mud in the middle of nowhere while she listened to the Prince cover. Faith's hands started to ache as she dug. She suffered through an entire Nickelback song clearing a path. For good measure, she grabbed handfuls of gravel and packed them at the base of the tire. She was splattered in mud by the time she was finished. She wiped her hands on her pants before getting back into the car.

She tapped the gas, praying for traction. The car inched forward, then rocked back. She kept at it, slowly rocking forward and back until her wheels found purchase on the gravel.

"You fucking queen," she told herself.

"Hell yeah."

"Fuck!" Faith jumped, banging her head on the sunroof. A woman was standing on the other side of the ditch. Her face was haggard, worn down by the hard sun and an equally hard life. A Bluetick hound was sitting beside her. She had a shotgun slung across her shoulders like a dangerous scarecrow. Her hands dangled from either end.

"Didn't think you could do it," the woman said. "Never met one of you city folks who could punch your way out of a wet paper bag."

Faith bought herself a moment to contain her freak-out by turning off the radio. She wondered how long the peanut gallery had been standing there. Long enough to see the Mini's Fulton County car tag, which identified her as a resident of Atlanta.

She told the woman, "I'm with the—"

"GBI," she said. "You're with that tall fella. Will, right? Married to Sara."

Faith guessed this woman was a witch. "I didn't catch your name."

"I didn't throw it." She lifted her chin in defiance. "Who you looking for?"

"You," Faith guessed. "Penny Danvers."

She gave a single nod. "Smarter than you look."

Faith ran her tongue along the back of her teeth. "Do you want a ride back to your place?"

"The dog, too?"

Faith didn't think her car could get any filthier. She reached over and pushed open the door. "I hope he likes Cheerios. My daughter likes to throw them at my head."

The dog waited for Penny to click her tongue before he jumped through the two front seats with his muddy paws, then promptly started hoovering the floor, which was the only good thing that had happened today. Penny got in the front. The door slammed. She braced the shotgun between her legs, the muzzle pointed at the roof. Another good thing. She could've pointed it at Faith.

"I'm two miles up on the left. Gets a little bumpy, so hang on," said the woman with the loaded shotgun who wasn't wearing her seat belt. "You'll see the barn before you see the house."

Faith put the gear in drive. Both windows were still down. She kept the speedometer at thirty so dust from the gravel road wouldn't choke them inside the car. And also because the dog smelled like a dog.

"So," Faith said. "Out hunting or—"

"Had a cayote take one of my chickens." Penny nodded at the radio, "Did you hear her cover of ‘Stairway to Heaven'?"

Dolly Parton. The universal icebreaker. And a giant clue that Penny had been standing alongside the ditch for a hell of a lot longer than Faith had realized. She tried not to show her unease when she asked, "From Halos and Horns or from Rockstar?"

Penny chuckled. "Which one do you think?"

Faith couldn't begin to guess, and Penny didn't seem interested in volunteering. She had taken some bacon out of her pocket and was offering it to the dog. She saw Faith looking and offered her some bacon, too.

"I'm good," Faith said.

"Suit yourself." Penny took a bite, staring silently at the road as she chewed.

Faith was struggling to think of random facts about Dolly Parton to break the ice when she silently reminded herself that sometimes, it was better to keep your mouth shut. She let the empty fields roll by. The cows. The occasional, low-flying, murder-bird.

As promised, the road turned bumpy. Faith had to fight with the steering wheel to keep from going into the ditch again. There were potholes in the city, but these were more like crevasses. She was grateful when she finally spotted the barn in the distance. The thing was huge, bright red, and probably new because she hadn't seen it on Google Earth. An American flag was painted on the side that faced the road. Two horses swung up their heads to watch the Mini pass.

Penny said, "We're patriots here. My father served in Nam."

Faith's brother was currently in the Air Force, but she said, "I'm grateful for his service."

"We don't like having you Atlanta people all up in our business," Penny continued. "We got our own way of doing things. You stay out of our lives. We'll stay out of yours."

Faith knew this woman was testing her. She also knew Georgia would be Mississippi without metro Atlanta's tax dollars. Everybody romanticized country living until they needed internet and healthcare.

"It's up there." Penny pointed to the only driveway for thirty miles like it was easy to miss. "On the left."

Faith slowed to make the turn down the long driveway. She saw the name on the mailbox, and Penny's tribalism made a lot more sense. "D. Hartshorne. That wouldn't be the sheriff?"

"Used to be," she said. "That's my daddy. He lives in the trailer out back. We moved him there after his stroke cause he can't handle stairs. Biscuits is my brother."

Faith treaded carefully. "Are you close?"

"You mean, did he tell me about Dave not being the one that killed Mercy?"

Faith guessed she had her answer.

"If you're wondering, Biscuits called up to the lodge to tell them, but he couldn't get through. Phone and internet finally crapped out." She gave Faith a meaningful glance. "He's helping the highway patrol clear an overturned chicken truck down in Ellijay. Asked me to let them know when I go in to work."

"Will you?"

"I dunno."

Faith couldn't control what Penny was going to do, but she could try to get as much information out of her as possible. "Biscuits told my partner that you used to see Mercy and Dave walloping on each other back in high school."

"Not much of a fair fight." Penny's jaw had cranked down so tight that her lips barely moved when she spoke. "Mercy could take a punch, I'll say that."

"Until she couldn't."

Penny gripped her hands around the shotgun, but clearly not because she wanted to use it. Her chin tilted down to her chest as they coasted toward the farmhouse. For the first time since the woman had announced herself on the road, she seemed vulnerable.

Faith wished like hell that Will was here. He could carry a silence longer than anybody she'd ever met. She had to bite her lip to keep herself from asking a question. They had almost reached the house by the time her effort paid off.

Penny said, "Mercy was a good person. That gets lost a lot of times, but it's true."

Faith pulled alongside a rusted Chevy truck. The house was as worn as Penny; paint peeling off bleached wood, rotted front porch, a swaybacked roof with missing shingles. There was another horse on the side of the house. He was tied to a post. His head dipped down into the water trough, but his eyes stayed on the car. Faith suppressed a shudder. She was terrified of horses.

"What you gotta know," Penny said, "is up here, girls get the message real early that whatever you get, that's what you deserve."

Faith didn't think that message was limited to any specific region.

"There was a big stink when Mercy got pregnant in high school. All kinds of phone calls and meetings. The pastor weighed in. Don't get me wrong, it's not like she was a good student, but she had a right to stay in school, and they wouldn't let her. Said she set a bad example. And maybe she did, but it still wasn't right how they treated her."

Faith chewed her bottom lip. She hadn't been stopped from entering ninth grade after she'd given birth to Jeremy, but everyone in the school had made it clear that they didn't want her there. She'd had to eat lunch in the library.

"Mercy was always wild, but the way that aunt stole her baby away was wrong. She's a lesbian. Did you hear?"

"I heard."

"Delilah's a wicked bitch. Got nothing to do with what she does in the bedroom. She's just wicked." Penny strangled the shotgun again. "She made Mercy jump through all kinds of hoops just to have visitation with her own child. It was wrong. Nobody stood up for Mercy. They all thought she was gonna fail, but she stayed off the liquor and heroin so she could get Jon back. That took real grit. Gotta admire her for battling those demons. Especially since she didn't get a lick of help."

"What about Dave?"

"Shit," Penny muttered. "He was working at the blue jean factory. That was a good job before they moved the whole thing to Mexico. He was rolling in dough, buying drinks down at the bar, living it up."

"What was Mercy doing?"

"Sucking dick on the corner so she could pay for a lawyer to get custody of Jon." Penny studied Faith carefully, looking for a reaction.

Faith didn't give her one. There wasn't one thing she would not do for her own children.

"The only job Mercy could get was at the motel, and the only reason that happened is the owner wanted to piss off Papa. Nobody else would hire her. She was poison down here. Papa made sure of that."

"You mean Cecil?"

"Yeah, her own damn daddy. All he ever did was punish her and punish her all of her damn life. I watched it happen. I've been cleaning rooms at the lodge since I was sixteen. Let me tell you this." Penny pointed her finger at Faith like this part was important. "Mercy took over the place after Papa had that bike accident, all right? And all I know is before Mercy was in charge, they could just about make payroll. Then she's running the place and they're hiring a fancy chef from Atlanta and another waiter from town and then Mercy tells me I can go to full-time cause they need a bartender for cocktail hour before supper. What do you think of that?"

"You tell me."

"Papa never understood that people wanna drink when they're on vacation. He served one glass each of that cheap-ass mulberry wine, and if guests wanted more, they had to pony up five dollars cash right then and there." She snorted a laugh. "Mercy brought in the top-shelf liquor, started advertising special cocktails, letting people run tabs. Some of those corporate retreats, they'll pay cash cause they don't want their bosses seeing they're basically alcoholics. Just do the math. At full capacity, they got twenty adults ordering enough hooch every night to justify a bartender."

Faith was excellent at math. Restaurants generally doubled the shelf price of liquor, but they bought it at wholesale pricing. Two cocktails a night times twenty people could net anywhere between four and six hundred dollars profit in a single day. And that didn't include wine sales and whatever they took back to their cottages.

"Mercy raised the rack rate twenty percent and nobody blinked an eye. She fixed up the bathrooms so you didn't get a fungus from taking a shower. She was bringing up high-dollar guests from Atlanta. Papa couldn't stand it." Penny looked back at the house. "Any other daddy would'a been proud, but Papa fucking hated her for it."

Faith wondered if Penny was offering up another suspect. "Cecil was badly injured after the bike accident, right?"

"Yeah, he can't get around no more, but he sure does run that hateful mouth of his." Penny's anger had leveled out. She let the shotgun rest against the dashboard. "I'm gonna be real with you, mostly cause you probably already run my record, but my license was permanently pulled."

Faith knew what she was really saying. Penny had gotten so many DUIs that a judge had passed down a lifetime ban.

"I know what you're thinking. Makes sense that an old drunk like me is a bartender. I've been sober for twelve years, so you can get off your high horse."

"That's not what I was thinking," Faith said. "Your father was still the sheriff twelve years ago. He had a lot of power. It must've been hard for him to not pull any strings to help you."

"You'd think so, right? But he loved it. Made sure I couldn't go anywhere without his permission. Had to beg him to take me to work. To the store. Or the doctor. Hell, I should thank him. Made me learn how to ride a horse."

Faith read between the lines again. "The only job you could get was at the lodge."

"You got it," Penny said. "Daddy had me up there so he could keep me under his thumb."

"He's friends with Cecil?"

"Those two bastards are cut from the same cloth." Her tone had turned bitter. "All him and Cecil ever cared about was being the motherfuckers in charge. Everybody thinks they're so great. Pillars of the community. But I'll tell you what, they get you under their thumb and …"

Faith waited for her to finish the and.

"They see a woman with high spirits—maybe she likes a drink, maybe she wants a little fun—and they tear her down to the ground. My daddy broke my mama so hard she ended up in an early grave. He tried to break me, too. Maybe he succeeded. I'm still here. Living in this shithole. Cooking his dinner. Wiping his bony ass."

Faith saw the haunted look in Penny's eyes as she stared at the house. The dog shifted in the back seat. He rested his snout on the console.

Penny's hand reached back to pet him as she continued, "You wanna know why the old men in this town are so angry? It's because they used to control everything. Who had to spread her legs. Who didn't. Who got the good jobs. Who couldn't earn an honest living. Who got to live in the good part of town and who got stuck on the wrong side of the tracks. Who could beat his wife. Who would go to prison for drinking and driving and who could end up in the mayor's office."

"And now?"

She huffed a laugh. "Now all they've got is Food Network and adult diapers."

Faith looked at Penny's worn face. Once you peeled away her posturing, there was a depressing level of defeat.

"Shit," Penny muttered. "No matter what I did, it was always gonna end up this way. Same with Mercy. Her daddy wrote the first page of her life before she had a chance to figure out her own story."

Faith let her continue to rant. She was normally all in for a good men are assholes session, but she had to find a way to re-center the conversation around the investigation. With Dave out of the picture, that left only a handful of suspects at the lodge who could've raped and murdered Mercy.

She waited for Penny to wind herself down before asking, "Was Mercy seeing anybody?"

"She barely ever left the mountain. Can't remember the last time she was down. Couldn't drive herself. Didn't like showing her face, especially after what she had to do to get Jon back. That old bitch that runs the candle shop spit in her face once, called her a whore. People down here got long memories."

"Mercy wasn't hooking up with anyone in town?"

"Hell no, that would'a gotten out on the front page of the newspaper. You can't keep nothing to yourself down here. Everybody's up in your business. Better off being a Happy Meal. Always come with a toy."

"What about the staff at the lodge? Was Mercy seeing someone there?"

"Don't eat where you shit. Alejandro's a tight ass and those two waiters don't have a pubic hair between 'em." Penny shrugged. "She might'a thrown a bone to a guest here and there."

Faith couldn't control her surprise.

Penny laughed. "A lotta those couples, they think being isolated at a luxury resort is gonna fix their marriage. Then the men give a look, maybe make a comment, and you know they're good for some fun."

Faith thought about Frank and Drew. Of the two men, Frank seemed like a prime target for a mountain quickie. "Where do they go?"

"Wherever they can be alone for five minutes." She fluttered her lips again. "Ten if you're lucky, then they slip back in bed with their wives."

Faith gathered she was speaking from experience. "Did Mercy ever have anything going on with Chuck?"

"Hell no. Poor little weirdo's been sweet on Mercy since Fish brought him home from college over Christmas break." She explained, "They call Christopher Fishtopher on account of he's obsessed with fish. Him and Chuck went to UGA together. Peas in a pod. Both of 'em are super geeky. Not a lot of luck with the ladies."

"I heard that Mercy yelled at Chuck during the cocktail party last night."

"She was nervy is all. Merce didn't tell me what was going on, but I could tell the family bullshit had her riled up more than usual. Chuck was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which is his specialty, by the way. Always creeping up on people, especially women." Penny went to the obvious question. "If Chuck was a rapist, he would'a done raped Mercy a long time ago. And she would've sliced open his throat. I can promise you that."

Faith had worked her share of rape cases. No one knew how they would react. Her opinion was that whatever a victim did to survive was exactly what the victim should've done to survive.

"I'll tell you who Mercy was worried about," Penny said. "That guest, Monica, she was already off her ass when she showed up for cocktails. Lady tipped me twenty bucks cash money with her first drink. Told me to keep 'em coming, but I'm gonna be honest, I watered that shit down. Then Mercy told me to water it even more."

"What was she drinking?"

"Old Fashioneds with Uncle Nearest. Twenty-two bucks a pour."

"Holy hell." Faith readjusted her math on the liquor gains. The lodge could've been brushing up against a grand on some nights. "Anyone else drinking?"

"Just the normal amount. Husband didn't take a sip, though."

"Frank," Faith supplied. "Did he have any interactions with Mercy?"

"Not that I saw. Trust me, with what ended up happening, I would'a told Biscuits if I'd seen a dude trying to pull anything."

There was nothing left to ask about but the VC Andrews of it all. Faith tried to approach the subject carefully. "Did Fish ever hook up with any guests?"

Penny guffawed. "Only thing Fish could hook is trout."

Faith pulled a detail from Will's recording. "What about that awful business between Christopher and Gabbie?"

"Gabbie? Wow, that's a blast from the past. It's been a minute. I was still drinking when she died. So was Mercy, bless her heart."

Faith felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up. Delilah had made it out like another failed relationship for Christopher. "Do you remember Gabbie's last name?"

"Damn, this was years ago." Penny fluttered her lips in thought. "Can't remember, but she's a prime example of what I was talking about before. Gabbie come up from Atlanta to work at the lodge over the summer. Gorgeous as hell, full of life. Every man on that mountaintop was in love with her."

"Including Christopher?"

"Especially Christopher." She shook her head. "He was tore the hell up when she died. I'm still not sure he's over it. Took to his bed for weeks. Wouldn't eat. Couldn't sleep."

Faith was desperate to pepper her with questions, but she held back.

"Problem was, Gabbie noticed him," Penny said. "Fish's life, he's mostly invisible. Especially to women. And then comes Gabbie smiling and pretending to be interested in waterway management or whatever the hell he's yapping about at the dinner table. I mean, it's not his fault he can't read people. Gabbie was just being nice. You know how some men take kindness for interest."

Faith knew.

"The person Gabbie was real tight with was Mercy. They were close to the same age. Instant best friends, is what I'd call it, like within a day of meeting each other they were joined at the hip. Gotta admit, I was envious. Never had anybody that close to speak of. And they had all kinds of plans for when the summer was over. Gabbie's father owned a restaurant in Buckhead. Mercy was gonna move to Atlanta and wait tables and they were going to get an apartment together and make lots of money and live it up."

Faith could still hear the envy in Penny's voice.

"The two of 'em, they'd sneak out of the lodge almost every night. This was back when there'd be raves down at the old quarry. Stupidest location in the county to get wasted. The road out of there is twisted as a nun's twat. Drops straight down on either side, no guardrails until you hit the curve. They call the last mile Devil's Bend, cause you go down a hill and jerk into a corner like a roller coaster. I'd party with 'em sometimes, but something in my bones told me we'd all end up dead if we kept at it. Started my path to sobriety, especially after what happened."

"What happened?"

Penny hissed out a long sigh between her teeth. "Mercy drove her car straight off Devil's Bend. Dropped straight into the gorge. She got thrown through the front window, sliced off half her face, broke half her bones. Gabbie got crushed. Daddy said she had her feet up on the dashboard when it happened. Coroner told him her leg bones must'a pulverized her skull. Had to use dental records to identify her at the autopsy. Looked like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to her face."

Faith felt her stomach roil. She had worked those kinds of accidents.

"Say what you will about Cecil, but he kept Mercy out of prison. By all rights, she should'a been up on a manslaughter charge, at least. Bloodwork showed she was pumped full of dope when it happened. Mercy was still off her ass when Biscuits rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital. EMTs had to restrain her. He told me half her face was hanging off her skull and she was laughing like a hyena."

"Laughing?"

"Laughing," Penny confirmed. "She thought Biscuits was pranking her. Thought she was still at the lodge. That she'd OD'd and they were parked outside the house. EMTs heard her laughing, too, so word got around real quick. Ain't a person in this town you could'a put on a jury who wouldn't have convicted her at trial. But there wasn't a trial. Mercy basically walked. Which is another reason people in town hate her. They say she got away with murder."

Faith couldn't understand how that had happened. "Did she take a plea deal?"

"You're not hearing me. There was no deal to take. Mercy wasn't charged with nothing. Didn't even get a ticket. Voluntarily gave up her license. Never drove again as far as I know, but that was her choice, not a judge taking it away." Penny nodded, like she was agreeing with Faith's shock. "You were asking about abuse of power? That's what my daddy used it for, to put Mercy under Cecil's thumb for the rest of her living days."

Faith was dumbstruck. "She just got away with it? No consequences?"

"I mean, her face was a consequence. She told me every time she looked in a mirror, that scar reminded her of what a bad person she was. She was haunted by it. Never forgave herself. Maybe she shouldn't have."

Faith could not understand how any of this had happened. There were so many levers that had to be pulled in order for Mercy to escape criminal prosecution for vehicular homicide. And not just on the law enforcement side. The county had a prosecutor's office. A circuit judge. A mayor. A board of commissioners.

She guessed that Penny's tirade against the angry men who used to control this town was useful after all. Mercy hadn't been punished because they had all gotten together and decided that she wouldn't be punished.

"I guess the only good that came out of it is, that's when Mercy started trying to get sober," Penny said. "Took a few tries, but once her head was clear, all she could think about was Jon. She told me without him, she would'a walked into the lake and never come back out."

Faith didn't know how Mercy had stopped herself. The guilt of being responsible for her best friend's death must have been crushing.

"Being honest, I think sometimes Mercy would'a been better off serving her time in prison. The way Cecil and Bitty treated her was worse than anything could'a happened to her on the inside. It's bad enough when a stranger rips you down every day of your life, but when it's your own mama and daddy?"

Faith was surprised by her own feelings of sadness for Mercy McAlpine. She kept going back to something Penny had said— Her daddy wrote the first page of her life before she had a chance to figure out her own story. That wasn't entirely true. Cecil might have started it, but Dave continued the same abusive narrative, and yet another man had ended it. Faith didn't believe in fate, but it sounded like the woman hadn't stood a chance.

Her phone started to ring. The caller ID read GBI SAT.

She told Penny, "I need to get this."

Penny nodded, but she didn't get out of the car.

Faith pushed open the door. The sole of her boot sank into the mud. She tapped the phone. "Mitchell."

"Faith." Will's voice was faint over the satellite connection. "Can you talk?"

"Hold on." Faith squicked through the mud to get away from the car. Penny was openly watching her progress. The horse lifted its head as Faith walked past. His eyes followed her like a serial killer. She trudged out another few yards, then told Will, "Go ahead."

"Mercy was pregnant."

Faith's heart sank from the news. She could only think of Mercy. The woman couldn't catch a break. Then her detective brain took over, because this changed everything. There was no more dangerous time for a woman than during pregnancy. Homicide was the leading cause of maternal death in the United States.

"Faith?"

Faith heard the car door slam. Penny had gotten out. The dog was sitting at her feet. Faith kept her voice low, asking Will, "How far along?"

"Sara estimates twelve weeks."

Faith listened to the phone crackle in the silence. She turned her back to the car. "Did Mercy know?"

"Unclear," Will said. "For what it's worth, she didn't mention it to Sara."

"Penny told me Mercy's hooked up with guests before."

Will let the silence linger for another beat. "The road's completely washed out. We left another UTV for you back at the hospital. Find Sara and bring her up with you. She might be able to get Drew and Keisha to talk to her."

"You think Drew—"

"They've been to the lodge twice before," he reminded her. "Drew said something strange to Bitty this morning. Sara can fill you in."

"I'm heading back to the hospital now."

Faith ended the call. The horse snorted in her direction, even though she gave it a wide berth. Penny had the shotgun slung back over her shoulders. She was looking down at the ground.

Faith followed her line of sight. The Mini's back right tire was flat. "Fuck."

Penny asked, "You got a spare?"

"It's in my garage. My son took it out when he moved his band equipment." Faith hoped the FBI knew that Jeremy was a moron. She nodded to the Chevy truck. "Can I get a lift to the hospital? My partner needs me at the lodge."

"I don't drive, and that truck don't work, but Rascal's got plenty of gas."

"Rascal?"

Penny nodded toward the horse.