Untitled chapter
Monday, County Sheriff’s Office: 4:00 A.M.
“Okay, Mr. Ross, let’s try this again,” County Sheriff Ray Moon said. “’Cuz I done seen some fucked-up shit in my time, but this—”
Cain Ross let out a heavy sigh as his body sagged into his seat. “Look, Sheriff, I don’t know what else to say to convince you.”
“Well, Mr. Ross, you’d better think of something, ’cuz right now you bout to be charged with the murder of an entire town! I got building’s burning, bodies everywhere, and you—the only survivor—giving me half-assed stories ’bout some boogeyman as the cause of all this! So right now, you’d better start over, nice and slow, and hit every detail.”
Cain squirmed nervously in his seat. His head dropped to his chest so his eyes wouldn’t meet the stern gaze of Ray Moon. Murder? I’m being charged with murder! I never should’ve moved to this little hick town.
In the beginning, everything seemed so promising. But that was before all hell broke loose. Before being arrested by the county sheriff’s deputies and dragged to the station in handcuffs—and before he met this goddamned Sheriff Ray Moon.
And then there was that.
Just who is Sheriff Ray Moon?
Cain had expected to see Sheriff Haynes when he was brought in. Haynes, after all, had replaced the previous sheriff, Jim Pritchett, after the unfortunate business in town eight years before. Cain was certain this conversation would be very different if Haynes were here.
But there was no point complaining or asking, “Hey, where’s Sheriff Haynes?” because Ray Moon didn’t seem to be the type you put questions to. There’s a new sheriff in town, and, boy, does he look the shit.
So here Cain sat—in an incredible amount of pain—trying to clarify his involvement in something he wasn’t even sure he could explain.
“Sheriff, I already admitted to setting the fires,” he said finally. “But I didn’t kill anyone. Those people were already dead.”
“Right, killed by your boogeyman. Look—I’m giving you one last chance to convince me.”
“Where do I start?”
Ray Moon pounded his fist on the desk. “At the beginning, dammit!”
Cain sighed again and rubbed his eyes. It had been over twenty-four hours since he had any sleep. “Let’s see. I moved here about, oh, four years ago I guess, and—”
“Not that far back, for crying out loud!” Sheriff Moon, nostrils flared, interrupted. “Start with all the craziness you were talking ’bout and save the four-score-and-seven-years-ago bullshit!”
“Oh,” Cain replied, thinking, Well, why didn’t you say so before? “That was three days ago. Three days exactly. I was working in my shop when Tobias—everyone called him Toby—came in. Now Toby was unemployed—had been since before I got to town. You see, Toby was, uh, Toby was in a car accident as a child, and, uh, his brain … he was without oxygen for a while … quite a while is actually what I had been told … so even though he survived, he was, uh, retar—no, brain damaged. That’s the term, right?” Cain looked to the sheriff for confirmation or agreement.
He got neither.
Continuing, he said, “Anyway, I’d always give him a little something because he’d sweep up for me.” Cain paused again when it dawned on him—the facial expression of Sheriff Moon being the major clue—that he was rambling. He cleared his throat and got right to it. “Three days ago, Toby comes into my shop to tell me that Robert Marshall had just passed.”
