He checked his phone. Hours indeed. It was pushing six, and though he wasn’t sure when dawn was due, precisely, he knew he’d be stupid to still be here once the sky grew light.
One cheap lighter wasn’t much, but it was something. He slipped it into a sandwich bag from his pocket and picked his way through the rubble, the scorched earth, and eventually found grass and gravel beneath his feet once more. He ditched the taped-up plastic and the gloves, wadding them up and stashing them in his trunk for the time being. Sloppy, but time was of the essence.
He found his front door key and let himself into the farmhouse, relieved to find it dark and silent. Normally Christine would be up by this hour, but he had no doubt she needed to sleep in . . . if she’d dropped off at all. He fucked around until he found the right light switch, then crept up the front stairway to the Churches’ wing of the house, hoping Miah’s room was where he remembered, the last door on the left.
Casey knocked firmly. No answer. He turned the knob and eased the door in on a dark room. “Miah?”
“Yeah.”
He pushed inside, letting the light from the hall reveal Miah, who was sitting on his bed, fully clothed, with his back against the wall and his hands linked atop his belly, staring at the far window.
“I got no doubt you don’t feel like talking just now,” Casey said quietly, “but I found something that I could really use your opinion on.”
“What?”
“Turn on that light.” He nodded to the lamp on Miah’s deep windowsill, and he turned it on. He looked about fifty by its mellow glow.
“I found a lighter in the barn, beside the John Deere. Any chance you recognize it?”
He handed Miah the baggie, and the man’s eyes were wide in an instant.
“You know it?”
“Yes, I fucking know it.”
“Whose?”
Miah spoke so quietly—a simmering growl of a sound—Casey could only just make out the name.
“Bean?” he echoed.
“Chris Bean.” Miah sat up, still staring at the bag. “He used to work for us.”
“When?”
“Must’ve hired him five, six years ago. Fired him two winters back.”
“Why?”
“Drugs. He was one of our best hands, until he got mixed up with amphetamines. I was the one who caught him at it. I’d know that lighter anyplace—I found him camped out in one of the outbuildings, and I saw it on the floor beside a couple of folded-up sheets of aluminum foil, with tweaker streaks burned all over them.”
“You think this is revenge, for your dad firing him? That’s pretty fucking extreme.”
Miah shook his head. “Dad didn’t fire him. I did. Dad gave him more second chances than he deserved, even paid for him to go to rehab. I’m the one who got sick of it and kicked him out.” His head jerked to the side, facing the open door like he might jump to his feet and stride out into the predawn darkness at any moment.
“There any chance he could’ve dropped that in the barn back when he was still working for you?”
“None. I hustled him out that night. Stood there watching while he packed.”
“He drive a dark truck back then?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean shit.”
Well said. “You know where he is these days?” Casey asked.
“I know where he used to stay, after he left.”
“Has he been in touch since? Started anything, with any of you?”
“Nothing. But I’m only happy to start something with him right fucking now.”
“It’s six a.m.,” Casey said, but Miah was already swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress and reaching for his boots.
“I’m coming with you.” Casey didn’t trust the hate blazing in Miah’s eyes and wouldn’t put it past the man to do something rash.
He followed his friend out of the room, down the stairs, and they grabbed their coats in the front hall. Miah didn’t hold the door for Casey, just flung it wide and went striding into the dark. “We need answers, Miah, okay? Answers first, justice later.”
“If you come, you stay the fuck out of my way.”
“I can’t promise that.”
Miah stopped short. “That cocksucker murdered my father. You have any fucking clue what he has coming to him?”