“You think?”
McKindrey nodded. “If I was you, I’d cut me loose and get goin’ before you bring more trouble down on yourselves.”
“We’ll take that under advisement,” said Finch, and stepped close to the Sheriff. “First I have a few questions. I suggest you answer them quickly and truthfully or your wife won’t recognize you even if you do make it home, you understand?” While he spoke, he cocked his gun and aimed it at the floor, squinting through the sight. “Because unfortunately for you, we can’t leave without some information, and my gut tells me you have it. So…” He dry-fired the gun, then retrieved a magazine from the table. “The sooner you tell us what we want to know, the sooner you’ll get out of here.” He slammed the clip home and leveled it at the Sheriff. “But for every question you don’t answer, I’m going to shoot you somewhere that will hurt unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, but it won’t kill you. And Beau here makes a killer tourniquet. I could cut off your head and I bet he’d be able to keep you alive long enough to answer our questions.”
“Don’t know about that,” Beau said and upended the Doritos bag. Rust-colored crumbs filled his palm.
Finch smiled at him. It faded when he looked back at McKindrey. “So what’s it to be? Are you gonna be a hard ass and make us get tough with you or what?”
“You boys are fools,” McKindrey replied with a sour grin. “You think this is the way to get someone to cooperate? Y’all can go fuck yourselves way I see it.”
In two steps Finch was up close and shoving his palm against McKindrey’s broken nose. The agony was unbearable and the Sheriff writhed against it, the ropes digging into his hands as he clenched his teeth to keep the scream behind them. Unconsciousness loomed and was denied as Finch slapped him across the face, once, twice, and then a third time. “Listen to me you redneck fuck,” he said, “You pass out and when you wake up there’ll be pieces of you missing, got it?”
McKindrey took a moment to swallow the pain, to steel himself, though it was an enormous undertaking. “Go to hell,” he said when he finally found his voice.
Finch shot him in the left foot. The bang was like a wrecking ball through the kitchen. McKindrey screamed.
“Fuck,” Beau said, rubbing crumbs from the legs of his jeans. The Doritos bag was lying on the floor by his feet. “Warn me when you’re gonna do that shit, all right?”
“How about now?” Finch asked, glaring at the Sheriff. “You sensing the rhythm we have going here?”
“Okay, okay,” McKindrey told him, shutting his eyes as blood filled his boot. “Shit…” He was awash in sweat. “What do you want to know?”
“The Merrills,” Finch said. “I want to know all
“I don’t know,” McKindrey said, spitting blood onto his shirt. He jumped at a sudden hiss, but it was only the black man, who had twisted the cap off a bottle of Orange Crush. Beau smiled at him as he took a sip.
“Wrong answer,” Finch told him, and stepped back, gun aimed at the man’s right foot this time. He cocked the hammer.
“No,” said the Sheriff. “Wait. What I meant was I don’t know everythin’ you’re askin’.”
Finch didn’t lower the gun. He waited.
McKindrey went on.
“They run this town, not me. That’s the first thing you gotta understand. They run it because they own it. However it were done, whoever they kilt to get it, they own more than sixty-five percent of the land around here, mostly unpopulated, old farms, woods, that kind of thing. But even if they didn’t, people here have learned to coexist with ’em best they can. They stay out of anywhere’s got the Merrill name on the deed. No one interferes with their business, and they don’t interfere with ours. You probably seen what happens when that changes.”
Finch nodded. “Wellman and the farmer.”
“They’ve been around long enough to know better. Should’ve just stayed out of it.”
“And let a girl die.”
McKindrey knew he had to be careful. He did not yet know what connection this man had with the girl that had escaped the Merrills. “That was unfortunate,” he said.
“What was?” Finch asked. “What they did to her, or that she survived?”
The Sheriff shook his head. “Elkwood’s nowhere. Six minutes away from not bein’ on no goddamn map no more. Nobody cares what happens here, ’cept those few who come lookin’ for all that rustic rural bullshit. World’s changin’, ain’t no place left that’s got the feel of the old times to it. So sometimes folks come to Elkwood, lookin’ for God only knows what. But that ain’t what they find, and ain’t no one gonna hunt ’em off. If’n you lived here, you’d understand. Fear can be a great governor.”
“You saying Elkwood’s a town full of cowards?”
McKindrey glared at him. “I’m sayin’ it’s a town full of scared folk, folk who feel bad for what happens here but ain’t about to get kilt for doin’ the right thing.”
Finch smiled bitterly. “And your role is—what? Chief chickenshit?”
“I handle whatever I can. Whatever’s in my power to handle. That’s the job I were given and that’s the job I do. Folks here feel safe because of me. They know nothin’ gonna happen to them as long as they mind their business.”
“So you do nothing, in other words.”
McKindrey felt the strength ebbing from him, despite the awareness that he might need it if an advantage presented itself. He was exhausted and in a great deal of pain. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to tell me why you never called someone up in the dead of night who maybe wasn’t such a spineless weasel and told them to get an army together to eradicate the Merrills. State police, FBI, whoever. There were always options. Why didn’t you take them?”
“That dog don’t hunt. Anyone who ever tried to go up against them ended up in the dirt,” McKindrey told him. “They’re vicious people, Mr. Finch. They’ll stop at nothin’, and there’s no one they won’t kill in the name of their God.”
This gave the man pause, and a curious look passed over Finch’s face. After a moment he asked, “Who is their God?”
McKindrey shrugged. “Same one as ours.”
“Where do we find them?”
“I don’t know.”
Finch uncocked the gun, walked to the table and set it down beside his friend. Any relief the Sheriff might have experienced as a result of this development abated when the man picked up a hunting knife.
“Do you know what they did to the girl?” he asked.
“Yes,” McKindrey admitted.
“Good. Then you might want to reconsider your answer. We’ve already taken your toes, just like the Merrills did to Claire. And in keeping with their methods, your fingers are next. Then your eye.” He looked at his friend. Beau drained the bottle of orange crush, smacked his lips and handed it to him. Finch held it up and looked pointedly at the empty bottle as he spoke.
“They also raped her, Sheriff.”
McKindrey felt cold in the pit of his stomach. He had no doubt that they would do all the things they’d threatened to do if he didn’t give them what they want. So he started talking.
“The Mother,” he said. “She got a brother or a nephew or somethin’ livin’ in Radner County. I don’t know who he is, or whether he’s as crazy as the rest of ’em, but he lives about twenty miles north of the chemical waste plant in Cottonwood. There’s nothin’ out there but dead land, a few abandoned homes. Can’t say for sure that’s where they went, but it’s the only one of their kin I know about, and that’s the God’s honest.”
Finch and his friend exchanged a look. Beau nodded.
“You’ve been a great help, Sheriff,” said Finch.
They started to move, holstering weapons and sheathing knives. McKindrey waited until it was absolutely clear that they were not going to untie him before he started yelling.
“You sonsabitches! Let me go!”
The men had been heading for the door. Now they stopped. Beau muttered something in his friend’s ear,
