“That’s not the point,” Glenn said. Winston could feel Glenn’s eyes probing the side of his face as if trying to uncover something he did not want to reveal. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Sheriff?”
Winston clenched his teeth as if conscious that his mouth could open and he could speak and tell the truth at any moment. He and Glenn had worked together for years, and during that time Glenn had been his most trusted deputy, and Winston hoped that one day Glenn would become sheriff because he was honest and consistent and fair. As far as he knew, they had never misled each other or withheld anything, and they’d certainly never lied to one another. But Winston knew that he was lying now; if not lying, then what was he doing? If he were being honest, he would admit that he wasn’t sad that Bradley Frye had been shot and killed—and perhaps he would even admit to Glenn that he, if only for a moment, had considered doing the same thing just the night before—but he also wished that Frye were still alive because his being murdered made the way forward more complicated for everybody. But regardless of what Winston wanted or didn’t want, in that moment, he knew that he could be either a good man and keep his mouth shut, or a good sheriff and tell Glenn all that he knew. He hoped that if Glenn ever became sheriff, he would somehow find a way to be both a good man and a good sheriff all the time. Winston had always assumed that would be true of himself, but now he knew differently. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “we’ll knock on doors in the Grove. Get the coroner’s report, see what can be learned about the weapon.”
“It’s a mistake to wait until tomorrow,” Glenn said.
“It might be.”
“It is.” Glenn sighed and shook his head. He turned and looked up at the house that Jay had set fire to just a few hours earlier. From where they sat, it was too dark to see much aside from the white construction plastic that covered the structure’s exterior. “What do you think Englehart was doing out here?”
“Playing security guard,” Winston said. “It’s pretty clear that Frye hired him to keep an eye on things. I reckon Englehart was trying to get in good with the new sheriff.”
“Maybe he was already in with him,” Glenn said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “It just strikes me as strange that Frye sent Englehart back out here after the fire.” The mention of the fire seemed to remind Glenn who’d set it, and he looked over at Winston. “What did you do with that kid?”
“Turned him loose,” Winston said.
“No charges?”
“No.”
“That’s what I figured you’d do.”
“Yeah,” Winston said. “It seemed like the right thing.”
“Hard to say,” Glenn said.
“It always is.”
The two men sat there for a moment as if waiting for the other to either confess something or ask a question that would lead to a confession, but neither of them spoke.
“Well, I’m going to get,” Winston finally said. He put his hand on the door handle. “We’ve got liftoff tomorrow morning.”
“Yep,” Glenn said.
“All right,” Winston said.
Glenn nodded in the direction of the house. “I might nose around up there,” he said.
“What are you hoping to find?” Winston asked.
“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “I’m just not ready to go home yet.”
“All right,” Winston said. He opened the door and stepped out.
“Sheriff,” Glenn said. Winston turned and looked back into the car. “Get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Winston said. “You too.” He closed the door and walked to his cruiser and climbed inside. He turned around in the cul-de-sac, and as he passed the scene he could see the light from Glenn’s flashlight searching the ground around the house.
Winston had only made it out to the development’s entrance when Glenn’s voice called to him over his walkie-talkie. Winston stopped the car and took the radio from his belt. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Sheriff,” Glenn said, “you might want to turn around.”
Winston parked in front of the house and walked up through the muddy yard where Glenn waited at the corner of the garage. Around the corner, the driveway ended at an aluminum door, large enough to accommodate two cars. Here, the side of the house was burned black and charred, except for the spot where Glenn held his flashlight beam on a sheet of bright, new construction plastic that had clearly been placed on the house after the fire.
“What do you make of that?” Glenn asked.
“I didn’t think Englehart was in the construction business,” Winston said.
Glenn raised his flashlight and shone it along the expanse of the garage. “No windows,” he said. “All the other garages in these houses have windows.” Winston turned to look at the houses in the distance to see if Glenn was right, but it was too dark, and the other houses were too far away.
“You try raising the garage door?” Winston asked.
“It’s locked,” Glenn said. “Front and back doors are too. So are all the windows on the first floor.”
“A big gust of wind could tear that plastic loose,” Winston said. “We might’ve found it that way.”
“I think that is how we found it,” Glenn said. He stepped forward, and without speaking, he reached out and tore the plastic off the corner of the house. The staples popped free, and the sheet came down easily. Glenn kept tearing it, backing up as he pulled the whole sheet free. Beneath the plastic, the flames had burned a hole through the plywood and the insulation beneath, revealing charred wall studs and damaged drywall. Winston used his flashlight to knock some of the drywall loose, and he found that it left behind a hole large enough to stick his head and shoulders through. He and Glenn looked at each other, both of them thinking the same thing: they had done something together that they probably shouldn’t have done; but Winston was also thinking something that he knew Glenn could not possibly have been thinking: they had come back to one another in this moment of complicity.
Glenn held the flashlight while Winston bent at the waist and braced his hands against the house’s exterior and poked his head through the wall. There wasn’t enough light, and he’d been able to see only a little of what was inside the garage, but what he saw was enough for Glenn to take a crowbar from one of the home sites and pry open the garage door. Only then, standing at the entrance to the garage, did they have a full appreciation of exactly what they’d found. In the garage’s back left corner, their flashlight beams passed over four pallets loaded with brown-paper-wrapped squares that had been shrink-wrapped and stacked waist-high. One of the pallets had been unwrapped, and it was clear that packages had been removed. In the middle of the garage sat a folding table, piled with scales, baggies, ties, and various items. Whoever had been at work here had been comfortable; they’d left behind empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, wadded-up bags of potato chips.
“I’ll be damned,” Glenn whispered.
For Winston, it all came into focus: the comments Englehart had made about Bellamy on the runway the morning after the plane came in; Bradley Frye’s showing up at the crime scene and asking about the FBI; his insistence that Winston keep people out of Plantation Cove; and his willingness to employ Englehart to serve as the night watchman. He’d wanted Jay turned over to him because he was afraid of what the boy might have seen, which was the scene that Winston was taking in at that very moment, the scene Englehart had tried to keep anyone from seeing.