Want a free book?

Sign up to my no-spam newsletter to get your free book Tell Me Where the Sandman Sleeps.

Just point your browser to www.PTLBOOKS.com to get started!

Also be sure to check out my Facebook group to discuss my books, and anything horror or thriller related: www.facebook.com/groups/LogansInsatiableReaders/

ALSO, I’ve got a NEW podcast for you, featuring in-depth insights into old and new Chase Adams cases. Search for ‘BEYOND THE CRIME SCENE: A CHASE ADAMS PODCAST’ to start listening now.

For more information about this podcast, please see the Author’s Note at the end of this book.

Grim Harvest

A Chase Adams FBI Thriller

Book 16

Patrick Logan

Grim Harvest

Prologue

The man was naked beneath the thick black apron. The vinyl material creaked as he walked, the sound echoing off the high ceilings in the tiled room. His heavy boots added to the cacophony, and he timed his footsteps with the noise from his apron.

Thump, creak, thump, creak, thump, creak.

A smile crossed his lips.

He lived in a muted world, his ears filled with a constant buzz, a dull drone that had taken years to get used to. Only specific sounds seemed capable of cutting through the din, and these just happened to be two of them.

Thump, creak.

The man adjusted his grip on the items clutched in each hand. In his left, a silver pneumatic tank, worn and scuffed from years of use. In his right, the captive bolt stunner, connected to the tank by an air hose.

A simple device.

Pull the trigger, and compressed air surges from the tank through the hose to the stunner, driving a five-and-a-half-inch cylindrical bolt out of the chamber, only to retract in an instant.

How many times had he used the stunner?

A dozen? Hundred? Thousand?

He wasn’t sure.

Numbers had always been difficult for him.

How many had he sacrificed with this device?

Thump, creak.

Thump, creak.

He approached the three animals suspended from the ceiling, their hind legs wrapped in chains attached to a mechanical winch.

He’d already used the stunner on them, rendering them completely incapacitated but he was remiss to put the device down.

It was one of the few things he remembered from before.

He approached the first sow, the biggest of the three animals, and cocked his head.

Peaceful.

That was the only way to describe what he saw.

If it weren’t for the hole in the sow’s forehead, one might have thought it was sleeping.

The man used the stunner to trace a line across the animal’s jaw all the way to its snout, caressing the pink flesh.

It was time.

The man placed the captive bolt stunner and tank on the floor then reached into the center pocket of his apron and pulled out something else.

A bleeding knife.

Six inches long, tapered, and incredibly sharp.

He hooked two fingers in the sow’s snout, curled them, and yanked downward, tightening the muscles in the animal’s neck.

He didn’t hesitate as he drove the knife into its taught flesh. Expertly aimed, the blade severed both the carotid artery and jugular vein.

Hot blood spurted forth, coating the man’s bare arms.

He shuddered, watched the flow of blood slow, watched it drip thickly to the trough at his feet.

He moved on to the next animal, a smaller sow, and repeated this process.

His hands were slick now, and he adjusted his grip on the handle of the blade.

The third animal wasn’t a sow.

It was a sacrifice.

He used the back of his fingers to caress the animal’s cheek, leaving a trail of pig blood in his wake.

No snout here.

Instead, he wrapped his hand in the animal’s hair and pulled down and back, exposing the neck.

With a sigh, he plunged the knife in.

Blood sprayed even further this time, coating his upper chest.

The man closed his eyes, let the hot fluid cascade over him.

A moan escaped his lips, and he raspberried, spraying blood.

Tasting blood.

A final sound drifted to his ears: liquid dripping into the trough.

Oh, how beautiful that sound was.

He wanted to stay here, stay like this forever.

But that wasn’t to be.

He had more work to do.

It was time to butcher.

PART I – The Town

Chapter 1

Georgina Adams pulled one of the headphones out of her ears.

“What?” she hollered.

Through her remaining headphone, she heard Raven’s voice.

“And that concludes episode ten of Beyond the Crime Scene. I’m your host, Raven. Before I go, I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of my listeners for your support over the past eight months or so. I started this podcast with one goal in mind: to go beyond just the crimes and dig deep into the aftermath. Explore the effects that these tragedies have on the families and friends who are left behind. I never thought that it would be popular, didn’t do it for the fame, or the money… ha, definitely not for the money. But now, with nearly a quarter million downloads, I’m amazed by your support. Thank you, listeners. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Crime Scene.”

Raven’s voice faded, replaced by music, and Georgina felt a smile form on her lips.

Two hundred and fifty thousand downloads! An incredible, almost unbelievable number. How is—

She was startled by a knock on her bedroom door.

“G? Chase has been calling you for dinner for the past ten minutes. Starting to get pissed.”

Georgina coiled her headphones around her phone and tossed it on the bed.

“I’m coming.”

Rachel Abernathy waited by the door and together they made their way downstairs.

Pleasant smells rose to meet them.

“Sorry,” Georgina said preemptively. “I was—”

She stopped cold, her eyes falling to the dining room table. They’d made a habit of eating dinner together most nights when Rachel was in town from school, but nothing like this.

Georgina had heard old-timey stories of traditional family meals, which involved the matriarch announcing to all that tonight, they would be bringing out the good silverware.

This, she surmised, was a little like that.

Each place setting was flanked by multiple forks and knives, a spoon, fancy napkins. The oversized dinner plates were even set on silver chargers.

Rachel must have also found this odd because she leaned down and said in Georgina’s ear, “What the heck is going on?”

Before Georgina could answer, utter something sarcastic about how they must be hosting the Queen, Tate and Chase appeared, the former with his arm wrapped around his wife’s waist.

Georgina stared at the two of them, each with a full glass of red wine in their hands, matching smiles on their faces.

“Uhh, Dad?” Rachel said.

“Yesssss,” Tate said, drawing out the word.

“What… what’s going on?”

Rachel cast a surreptitious glance at Georgina.

“Nothing. What do you mean, what’s going on?”

Rachel waved a hand over the table settings.

“What about it?” Tate asked. “We can’t just sit down as a family and have our first—”

Chase nudged Tate in the ribs, and he winced dramatically.

“What?”

“Don’t say it,” Chase warned.

“Say what? That I want to enjoy Thank—”

“Tate! Don’t say it.”

Tate looked at Chase and shrugged.

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Georgina, you want to help me with dinner?”

“Sure.”

She followed Tate into the kitchen.

“We’re having mashed potatoes, flank steak, and your aunt’s super-secret Brussels Sprout recipe.”

“She doesn’t—” have a secret recipe, Georgina was going to say, but Tate cut her off.

“I know, just… just humor her, okay?” There was a glint in Tate’s dark eyes, which made Georgina grin. “She’s trying.”

That, Chase was.

Her aunt was a lot of things, a protector, a damn good FBI Agent, but a chef she was not.

Using oven mitts, Georgina carried the warm bowl of sprouts and the mashed potatoes into the dining room and set them down.

Tate brought the steak, which had been sliced against the grain and sprinkled with flaky salt.

It actually… smelled good.

They all sat.

“This looks amazing,” Rachel said, unable to keep the surprise from creeping into her tone.

“Thanks.” Chase sipped her wine.

“But if you ask us to hold hands and pray, I’m ordering a pizza and eating in my room,” Rachel said.

Tate chuckled.

“Praying? This family? I think not. Put a few strips of meat on my plate for me, would you?” He held his plate out to his daughter. “The rarer ones.”

Rachel used the tongs to select three of the thicker slices. When Tate continued to hold his plate out and nod at the cutting board, Rachel rolled her eyes and added two more.

They served themselves, with Georgina selecting just two Brussels Sprouts, two of the smaller ones.

She made sure they didn’t touch her potatoes or meat.

“Speaking of family,” Tate began slowly, “it’s so nice to have everyone together. This is going to be our first real Thanksgiving, and I wanted to start it off with a steak tonight. But the coup de grace will be Sunday’s dinner. Turkey, sweet potato pie, cranberry sauce… the works.”

Chase winced but Georgina’s attention was on her step-sister. Rachel’s eyes were downcast, and she was preoccupied with smoothing mashed potatoes with the back of her spoon.

She didn’t need to say anything; Georgina knew what Rachel was thinking about.

She was thinking about her mother again.

This had been happening more often as of late.

Holidays brought back memories for her.

Georgina was thankful that her own memories of her mother were too vague to recall many of the details.

“Rach?”

Rachel gave her a sad smile.

“I’m okay.”

She went back to playing with her mashed potatoes and Georgina, reminding herself to speak with Rachel after dinner, started to eat.

Tate’s steak was delicious as were the mashed potatoes.

The Brussels Sprouts… not so much. Georgina wasn’t sure what the secret ingredient Chase had added was, but had she been consulted, she would have recommended making them less special.

Even normal Brussels Sprouts were a tough sell.

Georgina hard swallowed the two green alien brains on her plate and didn’t reach for more.

Roughly halfway through the meal, Chase’s phone started to buzz.

“I told you not to say it, Tate.”

Tate, his mouth full of steak, swallowed. Georgina could see his throat expand from the sheer quantity of food.

He washed this down with a healthy gulp of wine.

“Don’t answer it, Chase,” Georgina said. As hokey as this whole charade was, she was actually starting to enjoy their time together.

It seemed somewhat normal.

And not much about the Adams-Abernathy union could be considered normal.

“I have to.”

Chase showed Tate the caller ID.

“Sorry, guys,” he said with a groan. “It’s work. We have to take this.”

Chapter 2

Chase was pissed.

It had been Tate’s idea to make the whole clichéd Thanksgiving family meal. And, while at first, she’d been hesitant, after going along with it, Chase was enjoying herself.

And now… this.

FBI Quantico Director Jeremy Stitts calling about a new CVU case. Her old partner, her old flame.

Now her boss.

At least the man let them finish their dinner.

Afterward, Rachel and Georgina did the dishes. Then they sat down and watched some mindless reality show on TV.

Had popcorn, despite all of them being full from dinner.

“We’ll leave you some cash to order in,” Chase said as the two girls started getting ready for bed. “For anything else you want to do, really.”

Georgina pulled her toothbrush out of her mouth and asked, “You’re not going to be here in the morning?”

“We’re going to fly out before you guys are awake.”

Georgina nodded, went back to brushing her teeth.

Both Chase and Tate said their goodbyes and then sat down at the kitchen table.

Tate refilled their wine glasses.

They didn’t talk about the case, didn’t review any of the information that Stitts had sent over.

They just sat there in silence for a while.

After a time, Tate said, “Are we ever going to have a normal life?”

It was a strange question, coming from him. Nothing about his life was normal.

The accident, his then-wife taking the fall, his daughter’s injuries and subsequent recovery, their marriage.

Hell, even their honeymoon had been anything but normal.

And then there was her life.

Chase shuddered.

“We signed up for this, Tate.”

He nodded and drank his wine.

“That we did.”

After emptying their glasses, they packed their bags. There was no way of telling how long this case would last, so they brought enough clothing for a week. If it went beyond that, they would just have to do laundry.

Chase hoped this didn’t happen.

In the morning, they left quietly, careful not to wake Rachel or Georgina. Chase left them a note.

Stitts had given them the option of driving to the small, rural town of Maple Hollow, population of around 2000, in upstate New York.

They’d elected to fly despite their shared apprehension following what happened on their honeymoon.

They touched down in just under an hour and a half in Albany. From there, they rented a car and headed north to Maple Hollow.

As desperate as they were to get started on the case, Chase convinced Tate to take a little detour. She figured that given the insane speeds that her husband liked to drive, even with the deviation, they were set to arrive ahead of schedule.

“I just need five minutes,” she told Tate as she stepped out of the car.

She missed this place. Part of committing to Tate meant selling the house that she’d lived in with Georgina. It was—it still is—beautiful. All wood, one story, ranch-style. But it was the land that she really loved.

Chase thought back to flying the drone through the flower fields out back, watching Georgina, then just a little girl, laughing and playing.

Yeah, she missed it.

“Chase?”

She jumped, unaware that Tate had joined her by her side.

“Yeah?” Chase kept her eyes trained on the house. There was no car in the driveway and the place looked unchanged from when she’d sold it.

Is there anyone living here? Or was it purchased by one of those giant hedge funds that are content in just letting it remain vacant while it appreciates in value?

“When we’re done with the FBI and Georgina and Rachel have moved out, I want to retire here with you.”

Chase took Tate’s hand in hers.

“Me, too, Tate. Me, too.”

But it was an empty promise and they both knew it.

Because Chase Adams would never be done with the FBI.

It was who she was.

It was in her blood.

***

“Who’s our contact?” Tate asked as he finally slowed. They’d just passed by a green road sign that read: Maple Hollow, Population 2036.

Someone had crossed out the 36 with a black marker and had written 33 beneath it.

They were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by yellow cornfields as far as the eye could see.

The road on which they traveled was made of packed gravel. Chase recognized the thick grooves made by heavy farm equipment.

“Don’t know,” she said, pulling her phone out and looking at the document that Stitts had sent her. Even for him, it was sparse.

A boy, sixteen years old named Archie Beaumont, went missing two nights ago.

A concerned townsfolk, a farmer named Ed Barton, discovered what he believes to be the teenager’s remains.

Some of his remains, anyway.

That was all they had to work on.

“Doesn’t say?”

“Nope.”

Tate slowed even more, the car barely moving now. To their left, they spied civilization, minimal as it was.

Farms, mostly. Beyond that, what appeared to be some industry, a diner, a movie theater.

And then, half a mile down the road, things unexpectedly opened up.

“What is this place?” Chase asked absently.

It reminded her of a movie set from an old spaghetti western.

New buildings, all made of the same dark wood, lining either side of the road. She spotted a grocery store, a bank, a bar, a church toward the end of the half-mile strip.

Chase looked left, at the farms, which were weather-beaten, before turning back to this new area.

The dichotomy was striking.

“So, we don’t know who we’re meeting… do we know where we’re meeting?”

Chase expected to see horses tied up outside a saloon, but the few parking spaces she noticed were filled with mostly high-end electric vehicles.

Odd, she thought.

Chase knew farming districts.

Had met a few of the hard men and women who worked there.

They were humble by simplicity and necessity.

Not so here in Maple Hollow, it appeared.

“A corn… maze?” Chase said, more a question than a statement.

“Oh, wow.” Tate rolled his eyes. “Helpful.”

They were surrounded by corn fields any and all of which could be considered a maze or labyrinth.

“Maybe… maybe we should ask him?” Chase asked.

Up ahead, a man in overalls and a straw hat stood on a ladder, struggling to unfurl a massive banner and secure it to a wooden light pole that marked the entrance to the spaghetti western movie set.

“Good idea.”

Chase wouldn’t have been surprised if the banner read: Quiet, please. Filming in progress. A Clint Eastwood Film.

Chapter 3

“Hi, there,” Tate said, waving his hand congenially. This was their unspoken plan, Tate doing the talking, Chase the observing.

They’d tried it the other way around before, but that hadn’t worked out so well.

Some people were just better at things than others.

Being friendly wasn’t Chase’s forte.

The man, not appearing to hear Tate’s greeting, cursed as the side of the banner on the pole opposite the one he was working on fell.

“Here, let me give you a hand with that,” Tate said.

He picked up a second ladder from the side of the road, leaned it on the other pole, and started to climb.

The man finally noticed Tate and his freckled forehead crinkled.

He was as farmer as they came, Chase saw. Weathered face, thick eyebrows, wisps of sun-bleached hair peeking out from beneath his straw hat.

Despite the cool weather—it was dipping into the mid-sixties—the man was only wearing a sweat-stained t-shirt, brandless, beneath his overalls.

He said nothing as Tate secured the banner by slipping the eyelet over the nail that the farmer had earlier tapped in.

“Thanks,” the man said.

As the men descended, Chase leaned back and took in the banner.

No Clint Eastwood film here.

Instead, the banner, which was silk printed, and the words flanked by colorful cornucopias, read Maple Hollows 4th Annual Thanksgiving Festival.

The farmer brushed his hands off on the thighs of his overalls.

Then he took them in, slowly, deliberately.

A wry smile appeared on his lips.

“Y’all are early for the festival. Things don’t really get going until Saturday night. But Sunday is the real party.”

It was only Thursday.

“Actually, I—”

Chase interrupted before Tate could say more.

“It’s our first time. We were told it’s a big party,” she said quickly. Tate gave her a look but went along with her.

The man laughed, pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette, and lit up.

“That’s an understatement.”

“Really?” Chase feigned interest.

Exhaling a stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, the farmer waved his arms around.

“You’re here for yer first time and you don’t know how many people show up? I thought yous was one of ‘em YouTubers or whatnots.”

Chase shrugged.

“No, no YouTubers here.”

She thought that her ignorance might offend the man, but instead, he laughed.

“Well, yous in for a treat. This street? In three days, you won’t even be able to move.”

“Ah. So, this is all just a set-up?”

The man smoked.

“Whattaya mean?”

“I mean, the stores and everything. It looks like a movie set.”

He snorted.

“Naw, this is real. I mean, they ham it up a little for the festival, but this is where most people shop in town. Got everything we need. Grocer, butcher, doctor. Bank. Church. It’s all here.”

Chase peered up the street.

“Isn’t the population around two thousand?”

It looked a little small to accommodate that many people.

“‘Bout that. Double during the festival.”

“Where does everyone live?”

Aside from a handful of wooden houses tucked behind the grocery store, and what might be apartment buildings above the stores lining the streets, she didn’t notice any real accommodations.

“Back der. Just over the hill.” Cigarette in hand, the man gestured non-specifically behind him. Chase did see a hill, but only barely; there was a massive cornfield beyond the church, which was the central feature of the town.

“Ah.”

Chase nodded at Tate, indicating for him to join her.

“Hope y’all got a reservation. There’s like two hotels in town and they usually booked solid this time of year.”

Chase hadn’t expected this. Nowhere in Stitts’ notes did he mention a Thanksgiving Festival. To be fair, he didn’t mention much of anything, but still.

That would have been nice.

“Well,” Tate said, scratching the back of his head. “Actually, we’re not here for the Festival.”

The man cocked his head.

“No?”

“No. What’s your name, friend?”

The farmer became guarded, suspicious.

“What you here for, den?” The man’s eyes narrowed, and he butted out his cigarette with a dusty cowboy boot.

Tate glanced at Chase, who nodded.

It was time to get to work. No more chit-chat.

Understanding her unspoken message, Tate pulled out his FBI badge.

“We’re with the FBI. And we’re here about the missing kid.”

For a long time, the man didn’t say anything. Then he pushed his hat up his forehead and spat in the dirt.

A normal enough thing for a farmer to do, but in Chase’s experience, it was rarely a welcoming gesture.

Hawk tuah had developed a different meaning of late—Thanks Georgina for showing me thousands of those videos—but it generally wasn’t a good sign.

“That mean you gonna wanna see Sheriff Thomas.”

It was as good a place to start as any.

“And where might—”

“Thing is, Sheriff Thomas ain’t gonna wanna see you.”

***

Eventually, they got the farmer to open up a little.

Joseph Bell worked part-time at the Mills General Store and also ran a chicken farm. When questioned about why he was setting up the Thanksgiving banner, Joseph answered, without a hint of irony, that everyone helped out this time of year.

Chase got the impression that if it hadn’t been for Tate setting up said banner, Joseph Bell would have told them a whole lot of nothing.

The farmer led them around the side of the church and toward a massive cornfield beyond. Several other townsfolk said hello to their guide and then gave Chase and Tate strange looks.

They couldn’t have been more out of place. Chase, in her charcoal gray suit and jacket, white blouse beneath, Tate in his ‘uniform’: beige khakis, short-sleeve polo, with a seersucker jacket over top.

Chase thought about the clothes she’d packed. Most outfits were like the one she was sporting now, but she had thrown in a couple of pairs of jeans and T-shirts.

She knew small towns like Maple Hollow. They weren’t fans of people poking around in their business and had some not so complimentary opinions of ‘big city folk’.

She intended to change as soon as the opportunity arose.

Joseph moved slowly. He was in no hurry. The cornfield in question was off to their left, and the closer they got the better view Chase was afforded of the subdivision that Joseph had spoken of.

The difference between this and the spaghetti western town was jarring, to say the least.

Although she still couldn’t see all of the houses, the ones that were visible to Chase appeared to have been literally cut out of suburbia and airlifted to Maple Hollow. The houses were all the same: white siding, dark gray roofs.

Large.

“Sheriff prolly in here.”

Chase turned back to face Joseph. As did Tate—like her, he had been mesmerized by suburbia, as well.

More banners had been erected, announcing haunted hay rides, pumpkin picking, and other Thanksgiving-related activities. The big banner, rivaling the one at the town’s entrance, had been placed on two large poles spanning across a small opening in the massive cornfield. It proclaimed: “Welcome to the Largest Corn Maze in all of the North East!”

Chase didn’t understand the allure of such a thing. Being trapped inside a maze reminded her of that final scene in Kubrick’s The Shining.

“He’s… in here?” Tate asked, indicating the maze.

“Yep. Should be.”

Joseph stopped in front of the entrance, and it was obvious by the way he placed his hands on his hips that he had no intention of entering.

“You’re not going in?” Chase asked.

“Nuh-uh.”

The way the man said this indicated that, like her, the idea just wasn’t for him. In fact, Chase got the impression that the man might even have been a little frightened of the maze.

This seemed odd, given the man’s appearance and his gruff demeanor.

Tate sighed. Looked skyward.

Chase had brought her drone with her to Maple Hollow, not knowing if it would come in handy.

Now, it seemed like it just might.

“Well, Chase?” Tate said, himself hesitant. “You ready?”

Chapter 4

“I don’t like this,” Chase grumbled.

“Me neither. Should we have asked Joseph for a map?”

“Too late, now.”

They walked slowly. Chase tried to identify landmarks in the maze to be sure they could find their way out again, but there didn’t appear to be any. The yellow cornstalks extended a good two feet over even Tate’s head, and the passageway, made of dirt, was about five feet wide. This allowed Tate and Chase to walk side-by-side, with about a foot to spare on either side.

Eight feet into the maze, they were met with their first crossroad.

They stopped.

Tate looking right, Chase left.

“This is fucked up,” he muttered.

“Don’t even think about splitting up.”

Tate chuckled.

“No chance. We get—”

Chase hushed him, her ears perking.

She heard someone—someones—approaching from the right.

Pointing at her ears first, then down the right lane, they both listened.

“This doesn’t… anything… the Festival… goes on…”

A man’s voice. Strong, despite Chase missing half the words to the corn. She nodded in the direction of the voices, and they started that way, with more purpose this time.

With every step, the man’s voice became clearer.

“Is everything else set up?”

“Yessir,” another man answered.

“What about tickets? How are sales?”

“You were right… raising the prices didn’t lower sales. If anything, we’re on track to beat last year’s record year in total sales and that doesn’t take into consideration the increased price.”

“Good… good.”

They reached another fork, this time with three tines. Tate stepped into the middle one, but Chase grabbed his arm and pulled him into the one on the right.

They took two steps and then stopped as the men who they’d overheard speaking suddenly came into view.

Two men, one large, six-two, with a thick build. Ex-college football player physique. Muscular, but covered in a layer of fat, a gracious gift of aging. He was wearing a dark, long-sleeved button-down shirt and matching pants. Clearly, a uniform. The only thing that seemed out of place was the item on the man’s head. It was a beige cowboy hat. Beside him stood a younger kid, dark hair, thin but wiry. He was wearing the same uniform as the bigger man, minus the hat.

“We need to—”

The bigger man’s head was down but when his smaller companion noticed them, he reached out and touched his arm.

They both stopped.

“Hey,” the big man said. His eyes were hard. “You ain’t allowed in here.”

Chase knew instantly that he was going to be a problem. Her only hope was that the man wasn’t the one in charge.

“We’re—”

“I don’t care who you are,” the man said flatly. He took two menacing steps forward. “Maze don’t open until Saturday. No visitors allowed. No cameras, no pre-scouting.”

“We’re not visitors,” Tate said.

“It don’t matter who you are. You’re trespassing.”

Chase felt her hackles rise.

“Actually,” she said, stepping in front of her partner. “We’re with the FBI.”

Her intention in saying this was for the man to finally let his guard down.

She was not expecting him to laugh.

“Y’all wanna be thrown in lockup? We don’t like no troublemakers in our town.”

Tate pulled out his badge.

“As my partner said, we’re with the FBI.”

For a big man, the guy in the hat moved fast. He snatched the badge from Tate’s hands before he could pull it back.

“Hey!” When it looked as if Tate was readying himself to take it back, Chase put a calming hand on his shoulder.

The man brought the badge close to his face, pulled it back again. A sneer appeared on his lips when he passed Tate’s credentials to his friend.

“Now is the time you tell us who you are,” Chase said.

The man glowered at her.

“Lady, this my town. I don’t—”

“Agent,” Tate corrected.

The man didn’t even look in Tate’s direction—his eyes remained locked on Chase.

“Lady,” he repeated, this time with more emphasis. “This my town. You don’t come into my town, FBI or not, and start barking orders at me.”

The smaller man, evidently done looking at Tate’s badge, held it out. Tate took it and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

“And I don’t remember callin’ no FBI, do you, Mikey?”

“No, sir.”

The big man nodded.

“Right, well, thanks for making the trip, but your help ain’t needed. Like I said earlier, the maze ain’t open until Saturday.”

He gestured for them to turn around and exit the maze the way they’d come. Chase felt her temperature rise.

Neither she nor Tate moved.

“Have you ever heard of the CVU?” Chase asked.

The man’s sneer became a sinister grin.

“Don’t watch much cable TV out here. We do actual work in Maple Hollow.”

Chase ignored the jibe.

“It’s a division within the FBI,” she informed the man calmly. “Been around for a couple of years now. The thing is, Mr…”

It wasn’t the man who answered, but his dark-haired companion.

“Sheriff Thomas.”

Fucking great. So much for this man not being in a position of power.

“The thing is, Mr. Thomas, our federal mandate gives us authority over any case in the United States that involves violence toward a minor. So, if you—”

“I don’t know where you got your info from, but Archie Beaumont was sixteen. He ain’t no minor.”

“Maybe you should watch more TV then, Mr. Thomas. Because even though you might be considered an adult in Maple Hollow at the age of sixteen, we are federal agents. Federally, someone doesn’t stop being a minor until they reach the age of eighteen.”

As she let this sink in, Chase noticed Sheriff Thomas’ hands clench, relax, clench again.

“We didn’t ask for no FBI,” he growled.

Chase didn’t justify this with a response. She’d already said her piece.

“Sheriff Thomas,” Tate said, sounding exasperated. “We can do this one of two ways.”

“Don’t you threaten me,” Thomas warned. His lackey, Mikey, tried to calm his boss the way Chase had just done to Tate, by putting his hand on his shoulder, but the big man angrily shook him off.

“We can coordinate with the Maple Hollow Sheriff’s Department, or we can get a court order and take over the investigation. You won’t be allowed to do anything in your town until the case is closed.”

Chase knew that it was in their best interests to remain silent now, but she couldn’t help herself.

“If I’m forced to call Quantico, within hours, this place will be overrun by FBI Agents. And—you might not know this, seeing as you don’t have cable out here—we are very thorough. I’m almost positive that our investigation will take all… weekend… long.”

Sheriff Thomas’s face, weathered like the farmer Joseph Bell’s, reddened.

“One of two ways, Sheriff,” Tate chimed in, almost cheerfully. “Your choice.”

Chapter 5

“Well, what will it be, Sheriff?” Tate prodded.

“What’ll it—” he grunted. “Well, would you look at that? It’s time for my break. Mikey, you deal with these clowns.”

The sheriff came very close to bumping Tate with his shoulder on the way by.

Chase waited until the man was lost in the corn before coming forward.

“My name’s Deputy Mike Biffle,” the man said, scratching the top of his head. “Everyone around here calls me Mikey.”

The man seemed embarrassed by how the sheriff had acted, which Chase took as a good sign.

“Agents Abernathy and Adams,” Tate said.

He didn’t extend his hand. From his body language, Chase could tell that her partner was fuming on the inside.

“Well, sorry about that. Sheriff Thomas gets a little… antsy right before the Festival. He’s not normally this…” Mikey let his sentence trail off.

This what? Rude? Angry? Argumentative? This much of an absolute asshole?

“Anyways, he’ll calm down.”

The three of them stood in the cornfield, hands awkwardly resting at their sides.

“I guess… I guess I should show you what we’ve found.”

“You don’t want to wait for the Sheriff to end his break?” Chase said. “Make his decision?”

“Naw, I already know what he’s going to say. The last thing he wants is for anything to mess with the Festival.”

“Like a dead kid?” Chase couldn’t help herself.

Deputy Biffle winced.

“It’s, uhh, it’s more than that. Come with me.”

Chase and Tate stayed close to the deputy as he turned and walked back the way he and the sheriff had come.

They moved deeper into the maze, none of the trio saying anything. Twice, the deputy was forced to backtrack when they came to dead ends.

“How long has this maze been here?” Tate asked while they retraced their steps.

“Oh, about four years. But they change it for every festival.”

“Anyone ever get lost?” Chase asked.

“All the time. We have spotter towers.” Mikey pointed at what looked like a wooden duck blind high up to their left. He pointed to another even further—a quarter mile, maybe—this time to the right. “Don’t usually have people in them, though. We used to when it first opened, but tourists didn’t like it so much.”

This surprised Chase.

“What do you mean?”

Mikey shrugged.

“The reason why people like this maze, why it’s so popular, is that they can get lost. Nothing fake about it.”

Chase thought about the spaghetti western town.

Tourists didn’t mind some fakeness, it appeared.

She decided to change the subject.

“Archie… that’s the kid who went missing?”

Mikey’s demeanor changed.

“Yeah.” His voice was low, husky. “But he ain’t missing no more.”

Chase’s thoughts turned to the paltry notes that Stitts had sent her.

Archie Beaumont hadn’t shown up to school two days ago, which wouldn’t have normally been something that pinged on Linus’ radar.

Even the fact that the scant police report mentioned that some of the boy’s body parts had been found wouldn’t have necessarily warranted their involvement.

Except, last year, another kid, fifteen years old, went missing, as well.

Ian Morrison.

He was never found.

In the two years before that, two other high schoolers went missing from Maple Hollow.

Both had been butchered, their remains spread out across a cornfield. A drifter from Albany had been arrested and confessed to killing these two kids.

And all of these events took place around Thanksgiving.

This made Chase think about what Joseph had told them about Maple Hollow, how popular the festival was. How you wouldn’t be able to move, let alone find a hotel to stay in later on.

Kids probably flocked to the place because of the murders. Armed with cell phones, YouTube must be overrun with wannabe influencers talking about the crimes.

It was like taking part in a real-life found-footage horror film.

They turned a corner and then stopped abruptly.

Two other deputies were standing with their backs to them. Both were thin like Deputy Biffle. One had shoulder-length blond hair, the other chestnut and close-cropped.

“Diaz? Ozeil?” Biffle said.

The two men slowly turned but Chase didn’t even look at them.

Her eyes were trained on a scarecrow that was attached to a tall pole, roughly three feet higher than the tallest corn stalks.

It was grotesque.

The scarecrow itself was handmade and typical in terms of construction. An oversized long-sleeved shirt stuffed with hay, yellow straw jutting from the wrist holes.

A burlap sack, with thick yarn or threading as X’s for the eyes and a crude line in a half-smile for the mouth, was stuffed with more hay to give the head a more-or-less spherical shape.

Fairly typical, if a little off-putting.

But the elements that were unique to this scarecrow were what pushed it from disturbing to disgusting.

A glistening loop of what Chase assumed was intestine, maybe five feet in length, hung around the scarecrow’s neck like an organic necklace. The shirt had been opened around the midway point and there was something shoved deep inside the cavity.

It was a dark red, almost maroon in color. And, like the intestines, it too glistened. Pieces of broken hay clung to the tacky surface.

A person unfamiliar with the scene might have thought that these were just part of a macabre Halloween decoration that someone had forgotten to take down.

But a more seasoned vet noticed the flies.

Dozens of them swarmed the scarecrow, desperate for their last meal before winter sunk its teeth in.

“Biffle?” one of the deputies, the one with the long blond hair, said as he turned. His eyebrows lowered as he observed Chase and Tate. “Where’s Sheriff Thomas?”

“He’s… 0n break.”

The deputy made a face.

“On break?” The way he said this suggested to Chase that it wasn’t something that the big sheriff did often.

“Yeah,” Biffle said hesitantly. “This is Agent Abernathy and Adams with the FBI.”

“F… FBI?” the other deputy said. His expression was one of discomfort.

“FBI,” Tate repeated sternly. “We’re here to assist on the case.”

“B-but… wait, did Sheriff Thomas invite you?”

Chase couldn’t tell if the thin man with the dark hair was genuinely curious or if he was in a state of disbelief.

“What’s your name?” Tate said, taking an authoritative stand.

“D-deputy Diaz.” He indicated the man standing next to him. “This is Deputy Ozeil.”

“Agent Abernathy,” Tate said, ignoring the fact that Biffle had already gone through rudimentary introductions. “And this is Agent Adams. Like I said, we’re here to assist on the case.”

“But—”

“Deputy Diaz,” Chase interrupted, “Where’s the body?”

“The… body?”

Ozeil stepped in for his stuttering counterpart.

“There is no body.”

Chase looked at Biffle.

“How do you know that these… parts… belong to Archie Beaumont?”

“Right. Well…” Biffle gestured at Ozeil, who bent down and picked up an evidence bag that had been placed behind the scarecrow.

“Because of this,” Ozeil said, holding the bag out to Chase. Some of the plastic had been smeared with blood, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it to obscure what was inside.

Orange hair, an entire head of it, attached to part of a scalp. “Nobody in town has hair like this except for Archie.”

Chapter 6

Chase felt sick to her stomach. A sixteen-year-old boy missing for two, almost three days. At some point, he was scalped, part of his intestines removed, and, if what Chase thought was correct, his heart had also been ripped out.

Ozeil told her that the hair had been found just behind the scarecrow, but he guessed, based on the smear of blood on the top of the burlap sack, it had been placed on top but had fallen off.

Chase refused to let the disgust building inside her show on her face.

“When was all this discovered?” she asked.

“Yesterday. A farmer who was helping to trim back some of the more unruly stalks came across it and called it in,” Deputy Ozeil stated.

Yesterday? What the fuck is it still doing here now?

Based on what Biffle said next, Chase had evidently done a poor job of hiding her expression.

“We’ve had someone stay here with the scarecrow day and night since it was discovered, guarding it.”

Against what? Against whom?

“Did you guys call in a coroner? Medical Examiner?” Tate asked, his voice suggesting that, like her, he was more than a little confused by the lack of action.

“Of course,” Diaz said defensively. “He’s on his way. Should be here in…” The deputy checked his watch. “About an hour.”

“What the hell is taking him so long?” Chase blurted.

The question drew spiteful glares.

“He was busy, getting ready for the festival.”

What is with this fucking festival that makes it more important than a dead teenager? A disemboweled teenager?

Chase was about to voice her opinion but Tate, perhaps recognizing this, spoke up first.

“If he’s busy, why not call someone in from Albany? Or, if not Albany, then Syracuse?”

“We, uhh, we like to keep things in-house here in Maple Hollow.”

Of course, you do.

Like her, Tate’s patience had reached the end of the rope.

“Are there cameras in the maze?”

“There were years ago, but Sheriff Thomas took them down. The visitors didn’t like ‘em. Someone gained access one year before it opened and drew a map of the layout and leaked it online.”

Tate scowled.

“What’s around here?” he asked.

“The town—”

“I know where the town is, but this is a huge maze… must be a couple hundred square meters—”

“Just under a square mile,” Diaz said with a hint of pride.

Tate ignored him.

“What’s on the other side? To the North and East?”

“Farms,” Diaz said simply.

“What kind of farms?”

“Mostly agriculture. Sheriff Thomas’ cow farm is to the east. The abattoir is located beside it.”

Chase squinted.

“We need to search the entire maze for the rest of the body.”

“That’s, uhh, that’s going to be tough.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s almost a square mile of corn to sift through.”

Chase squinted even harder.

“So?”

Diaz shifted his weight, eyed the two other deputies.

“Sheriff Thomas isn’t going to be keen on the idea of us traipsing through the maze, ruining the layout.”

Chase felt like she was in the Twilight Zone. These deputies—yes, deputies—have a missing kid whose body parts show up in some sort of macabre display and they’re more concerned with ruining a stupid maze than finding the killer?

Or… maybe they didn’t care about the maze so much.

Maybe they were scared of Sheriff Thomas.

This made more sense.

Chase thought back to the threat they’d issued to the sheriff about closing the town down and filling it with FBI Agents.

“Well, the way I see it,” Chase began, “you and your men can search the maze, or I can go to one of the many farms in the area and borrow a plow and mow the entire field down. What do you think would anger your sheriff more?” Chase picked up a notable increase in Deputy Biffle’s respiration rate. “Well?”

Biffle looked to Diaz and Ozeil.

“Gather some of the other deputies and—”

“We’ve already searched most of the maze,” Diaz said, reproachfully.

“Keep searching. Just, uhh, try to do your best not to ruin the maze.”

Diaz scowled.

“Fine, but you’re going to be the one to tell Sheriff Thomas, not me.”

“Or me,” Ozeil parroted.

They were frightened of the sheriff.

No doubt about it.

***

While the deputies spread out to search the maze, Chase and Tate stayed behind to wait for the coroner to arrive.

And, in under an hour, he did.

A diminutive man in his mid-fifties, Antoine Mills, was bald, with stopped shoulders and unusually long arms.

His dark eyes were shifty, and he had a rash on the backs of his hands that, within just a few seconds of meeting the man, Chase knew that he scratched not just because of the irritation, but because it was also a nervous tick of his.

This seemed to be exacerbated when he asked, which he did several times, where Sheriff Thomas was.

“He’s still on break,” Tate informed the man. He’d been standing in front of the scarecrow and now he stepped aside. Antoine’s eyes moved to the display and Chase noticed the man’s prominent Adam’s apple rise in his throat and never quite return to its resting position.

“We’ve been told that this was discovered yesterday.”

Antoine shuffled forward, setting his black bag on the ground.

Painfully slowly, the man removed a set of gloves and several evidence bags. He put the former on.

Swatting flies away, he delicately removed the intestine from around the scarecrow’s shoulders. Then he did something strange.

The man brought it close to his face and smelled it.

Sniffed it, hard.

Then he nodded to himself and put the offal in a bag.

Chase looked at her partner, made a face.

Tate shrugged.

Antoine started on the hole in the scarecrow’s chest.

“So, you guys are from the Albany field office? Because they don’t often—”

“No,” Chase said flatly. “We’re part of the Children’s Victims Unit out of Quantico.”

“Ah, okay.”

Antoine dug deep into the straw chest cavity. He pulled out what Chase confirmed was a heart and started the laborious task of picking broken pieces of hay from the organ.

Her face was locked in such a fierce frown that the corners of her jaw started to ache.

Like with the intestine, Antoine sniffed the heart, too.

Chase could no longer contain herself.

“What are you doing?”

The man startled as if he’d forgotten that they were there.

“I used to work in the abattoir. I can tell how fresh the organ is by smelling it.”

“What—what do you do now?”

The coroner was usually an elected position. And in a town like this—in Joseph Bell’s words, everyone helped out this time of year—she suspected that it wasn’t a full-time gig.

“I own and operate the local grocery store,” the man said.

He blinked.

Chase blinked, too.

It still irked her that the person responsible for determining cause and manner of death, and for investigating suspicious crimes, could have zero medical knowledge.

A grocer, for Christ’s sake.

She wanted to call the man out for being too preoccupied stocking shelves than to come out here but bit her tongue.

They were already off to a rocky start in Maple Hollow.

Antoine put the organ in a bag.

“Any idea if the heart is from a child or an adult?” Tate asked.

Antoine made a fist and held it next to the bag.

“Based on the size, I’d say a teenager. It’s smaller than my hand by quite a bit. I was told by Sheriff Thomas that these are likely from Archie Beaumont?”

From… like the boy had just graciously given his organs over to science.

Tate indicated the evidence bag that contained the scalp and hair, which one of the deputies had left at the base of the scarecrow.

Antoine picked it up, inspected it in the sunlight.

“Right, sure looks like Archie’s hair.”

The man’s ambivalence to this fact was bizarre, especially given how he’d acted upon seeing the scarecrow.

Chase recalled Antoine’s comment about previously working in the abattoir. Given this context, the man’s unperturbed nature made a little sense.

Despite using Archie’s name, the coroner wasn’t looking at these as human remains, but as those from a slaughtered animal.

“What do you know about Archie?” Tate asked.

Antoine’s face fell, and he placed all of the organs into his black bag and out of sight before answering.

“Good kid. Parents are divorced. Lives with his mom.”

“You know the address?”

“No. I know he lives in the division, though.”

Chase figured Antoine was referring to the new subdivision.

“Okay. We’ll see if we get some of his DNA so that you can compare it to the organs,” Chase said.

“That’s Archie’s hair, for sure.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Chase muttered.

“I mean, it’s pretty unique. The color, the length.”

“We’ll get you some DNA to compare,” Tate affirmed.

When Antoine screwed up his face, Chase said, “You do know how to do DNA analysis, don’t you?”

Antoine scratched the back of his left hand, leaving angry red marks behind.

“I mean, I’ve read about it.”

Jesus Christ.

“Have you ever done it before?”

“I… no. But I can try.”

Another awkward glance between Chase and Tate.

“Okay,” Tate said. “We’ll get you DNA.”

“Good.”

Unbelievably, the coroner picked up his bag and looked as if he was searching for a way out of the maze.

“Aren’t you going to take the scarecrow with you?” Chase asked, incredulous.

“…with me?”

Chase couldn’t tell if the slaughterhouse worker turned grocer turned coroner was stupid or just inexperienced.

Life had taught her that, in these cases, it was usually a bit of both.

“Yes, with you,” Chase repeated harshly. “It might have evidence on it.”

“Sheriff Thomas didn’t say anything—”

“I don’t care what Sheriff Thomas said. Call one of the deputies, get him to help take it down, and bring it with you. I want you to go over every square inch of it with a fine-toothed comb. Got it?”

Chapter 7

“What the hell is going on here, Tate?” Chase asked while on their way back to their rental. “And don’t tell me that this is just a small-town thing. I’ve been to small towns. This place is strange.”

It had taken them three tries to find their way out of the maze, during which time they passed absolutely no one.

The Sheriff was still on “break”, the deputies were presumably searching the corn for more evidence, and the maze was off-limits to everyone else.

“You’ll get no argument with me. This place is weird as hell.”

The city was more active now. Shop owners had put out signs advertising everything from cheap beer and snacks to camping tents of all things. There were more banners, too, probably erected by Joseph Bell.

Nobody, nobody, seemed at all perturbed by the fact that a teenage boy had been disemboweled in the corn maze.

Yeah, Tate was right; this place was strange.

There was the possibility that they were simply unaware of what had been discovered, but Chase doubted it.

Information traveled fast in small towns.

Spread like an incurable virus.

Tate noticed her roaming eyes.

“We should think of looking for a place to stay. If what they said about this place being overrun by tourists in a few days, we’re going to be hard-pressed to find a place to sleep.”

Sleep was the last thing on Chase’s mind, but she knew that her partner was right. As they continued toward where they’d parked their car, she noticed that most of the rows of storefronts had at least two floors above them.

Even if they were offices, she wouldn’t be surprised if they were converted into sleeping quarters for the festival.

Tate was just opening the door to his car when they spotted Joseph Bell. The man was engaged in what looked like a serious discussion with a blond woman outside the grocery store.

Chase met Joseph’s eyes, and she raised her hand in a half-wave.

Rather than returning the gesture, the man quickly averted his gaze and pulled the blond woman through the doorway to continue his discussion.

Tate started the car.

“Let me give Linus a call, see if he can get us Archie’s address,” Chase said.

“Alright. I’ll head to the ‘division’.”

As Tate drove, Chase took out her cell phone.

“Linus? It’s Chase.”

“Hey, you guys in Maple Hollow?”

“Yep. They… they had no idea we were coming.”

A passive-aggressive way of saying, you should have warned them, and you should have warned us that the Sheriff was a dickhead.

“I tried. Called the Maple Hollow Sheriff’s Department four times. The first two, a secretary picked up and I asked to be transferred to Sheriff Thomas. When I told them I was calling from the FBI, I was put on hold forever. When I called back, they just stopped picking up.”

“Could have given us a warning.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. Listen, we think we found Archie. Part of him, at least.”

“…part of him?”

Chase rubbed her temples.

“Someone draped intestines on a scarecrow, put a human heart in its chest.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, pretty gruesome. There was also hair and a scalp on the scarecrow’s head.”

Linus didn’t say anything to this.

“I need to know where Archie lives.” She paused. “Sorry, lived.”

When Linus still didn’t answer, Chase said, “You still there?”

“Yeah,” the man said dryly. “I’ll find out.” Chase heard a rolling sound, assumed Linus was pulling up to his computer. This was confirmed by typing. “How do they… how do they know the… uhh… parts belong to Archie? They do DNA analysis already?”

“No. They’re a little… slow. But everyone recognized the hair, said it was distinctive, that it could only be Archie’s.”

“Ah.” More typing. “Okay, I found his school records—Maple Hollow High School. Archie lives at 12 Westwood Way, Maple Hollow.”

Chase covered the mouthpiece and relayed the address to Tate who put it in his GPS.

“Does the school have a contact person for Archie?”

“They do; Brenda Focci.”

She passed this on to Tate as well, noting the different last names.

“Anything else I can do for you?”

Chase thought about this.

“See what you can find out about Sherrif Aiden Thomas.” She pictured the coroner with the bald head and extra-long arms. “While you’re at it, look into the coroner, Antoine Mills.”

“Will do.”

Tate left the main drag and followed the single-lane road, flanked by corn fields, toward the subdivision.

“One more thing, Linus. Be ready. Things might go south here, get ugly. We might need to take over.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Linus’ voice was tight.

“Let’s hope.”

Chase hung up and stared out the window. Endless cornfields passed by in a yellow/brown blur. And then it opened up.

“What the hell?” Tate said out of the corner of his mouth.

What the hell, indeed.

The spaghetti western town was fake, but this? The ‘division’ as the coroner put it?

This reminded Chase of those towns that they’d erected to test the atomic bomb in the Nevada desert.

There were farms and corn fields then, boom, rows upon rows of new fab constructions. Green lawns. Matching black wrought iron fences.

White siding, blue-gray roofs.

Three alternating models, all two stories, all spacious.

“Hey,” Tate said. “Remember when you said that things were strange here?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I have a feeling that they’re about to get a whole lot stranger.”

Chapter 8

“Where the hell do these people work?” Tate asked as he wove his way through the meticulously maintained streets, following the GPS’s directions to Westwood Way. “You saw the town, they can’t all work here.”

“Especially to afford places like these.”

While real estate in Maple Hollow wouldn’t be inflated like in New York City, or even Albany, Chase knew that these new constructions didn’t come cheap.

Tate shook his head.

“Weird.”

Stranger still was the fact that Chase used to live no more than two hours from here. Not only had she never heard of Maple Hollow, but she hadn’t heard about the festival, either.

True, while she’d been in upstate New York, Chase had been pretty much checked out from anything that didn’t involve Georgina, but still.

Most of the driveways were empty and Chase’s first thought was that maybe the homes were unoccupied.

A quick look through some of the windows suggested differently. Chase saw the hallmarks of family life; paintings on the walls, a pile of dirty laundry in a bin by an interior door, computer stations with two and sometimes three stacked monitors.

“Hey,” Tate said, flicking his chin toward an oncoming car. It was dark blue, with sirens on top and the Maple Hollow Sheriff’s Department insignia plastered on the side.

Chase craned forward, squinted into the sun. It reflected off the windshield, a schism of bright light that made it impossible to see inside.

It wasn’t until they passed it on the right that she got a glimpse of the driver.

Sheriff Aiden Thomas, his lips pulled back and baring his teeth, stared back.

He didn’t wave, didn’t do anything. Just stared.

His eyes were so locked on Chase’s that for a fretful moment she feared that the man was either going to accidentally crash into them or drive off the road.

He did neither.

Sheriff Thomas just kept staring and driving.

“What a dick,” Tate said.

Chase realized that they were going in the exact opposite direction of the Sheriff.

The GPS instructed them to turn right onto Westwood Way.

“So much for going on a break,” she said.

Chase didn’t need to add anything else. There was only one reason that the sheriff would be here.

Tate pulled up to the curb outside house number 12.

The Beaumont/Focci residence was indistinguishable from all of the other houses in the subdivision. They got out and started toward the door.

“You want me to do the talking?” Tate asked.

“Sure.”

Given that the sheriff had more than likely just been here, and considering his attitude toward them, she suspected that talking would be at a minimum, anyway.

Tate went first, knocked hard.

The door opened a crack, and a single red eye peered out.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Focci?”

“Y-yes.”

She sniffed. Wiped her face.

“My name’s Agent Abernathy and this is my partner, Agent Adams. We’re with the FBI. Can we come and speak to you for a moment?”

“I—”

The rev of an engine caused Chase to look over her shoulder.

The sheriff was back. He parked directly behind their car and got out.

What the hell are you doing?

The man sat on the hood of his vehicle and crossed his arms over his chest.

Tate and Chase weren’t the only ones who noticed him.

“I don’t think so,” Brenda said softly.

“Ms. Focci, Archie—”

“I know what happened to Archie,” Brenda sobbed. “I know what happened to my boy.”

Care to let us in on the secret? Chase thought glumly. Because I have no idea how Archie went from missing to being disemboweled and draped over a fucking scarecrow.

“Please, I just need to be alone right now.”

“I understand that you’re grieving and I’m very sorry for your loss. We just want to have a little chat. Figure out who might have done this.”

Brenda started to nod but then her eyes darted over Tate’s shoulder.

“I’m… sorry.”

“Ms. Focci, we’re—”

“This is embarrassing, but I really have to use the bathroom,” Chase blurted. She almost went as far as to cross her legs and lean over a little but decided at the last second that that was overboard. “Please? With all the guests coming into town, we don’t even have a hotel room.”

Brenda was on the fence.

“Please? I’ll only be a minute.”

Brenda nodded and reluctantly opened the door. Before the woman could change her mind, Chase was already inside.

“It’s on the left, just past the kitchen,” Brenda informed her.

In her periphery, she saw Tate shift his weight to block the sheriff’s view of the open door.

“Thank you.”

Chase hurried through the house toward the bathroom. She did her best to take everything in without making it look like this had been her objective all along.

The place was neat, well kept. No dishes piled up in the sink. Not much of anything, really. Wads of used tissues sat on the coffee table next to two cups.

One for Brenda, one for Sheriff Thomas, no doubt.

There was no mystery as to why the sheriff had come here.

He’d told Brenda, in not so many words, to keep her mouth shut if the FBI came knocking.

As if that wasn’t for the grieving woman—which, for the record, they hadn’t even confirmed that the organs belonged to Archie—Sheriff Thomas had returned to make sure that the poor woman got the message, loud and clear.

Chase found the bathroom and slipped inside.

She didn’t actually have to go to the bathroom, but she was thirsty. Using her hands, she scooped cold water from the tap into her mouth. It tasted good.

The air in Maple Hollow was dry.

Chase ran the tap for a few more seconds then flushed the toilet. She dried her hands on the towel and exited the bathroom.

She was surprised to see Brenda standing in the kitchen in front of the fridge.

Chase cleared her throat to announce her presence and then approached.

Taped to the stainless steel appliance was a single photograph. It showed three smiling kids in their mid-teens. In the center was Archie and Chase was forced to admit that the teenager’s hair was, indeed, distinctive. More auburn than orange, it was long and swept behind his ears. Archie’s arms were draped over the shoulders of two other boys. One was sturdy looking, with chubby cheeks and freckles on his nose. His hair was short and dark. He looked strangely familiar to Chase. The other kid wore glasses and had a beak-like nose.

“Is that him? Is that Archie?” Chase asked softly.

Brenda reached out and traced a finger across the middle boy’s face.

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Chase left the now weeping woman and met Tate outside.

The sheriff’s car was still there, but the man was no longer sitting on the hood.

“Did he say anything?” Chase asked, meaning the sheriff.

“No.” Tate’s voice was hard. “He looked like he wanted to, but changed his mind, got back in his car.”

“Should we say anything to him?”

Tate walked toward their rental and Chase followed.

“I don’t think so. Not now, anyway.”

Back in the car, Chase said, “I saw a photo on the fridge of Archie and two of his friends. I think we should head to the high school, see if we can figure out who they are, and talk to them.”

Tate started to drive.

“Well, the good thing is,” Tate pointed at the rearview mirror. “It looks like we have a chaperone. What do you think the chances are that Sheriff Thomas gives me a speeding ticket?”

Chapter 9

Tate pushed his rental pretty hard—just regular driving for him—despite Chase asking him twice to slow down. The sheriff kept up with them and at one point he did flick on his lights.

“Oh, great,” Chase mumbled.

But to her surprise, as Tate slowed, Sheriff Thomas hammered on the breaks and did a full 180 before speeding off somewhere else.

Chase relaxed a little.

From her conversation with Linus, she knew that Archie had attended Maple Hollow High School—two points for originality there—and Tate drove to it.

Located on the western edge of town, a quarter mile west of the corn maze, the high school, and the surrounding area, which included various businesses—a tax consultant, a grocery store, an arcade—as well as an older area of two-story homes, looked real.

If Chase had to guess, these had been here long before the new downtown core and definitely before the new builds.

The school was constructed of yellow brick. It was typical of high schools, not as fancy as the WCI that Georgina used to attend before the shooting—they’d mutually decided that homeschooling would be best for the foreseeable future—or the elementary school that the girl had once attended with Lousia’s kids, either.

It wasn’t new and it wasn’t rundown.

It just was.

Tate parked in one of the few empty spots in the lot.

“Think he’s already been here?” Chase asked as they walked to the front doors.

“No idea.” Tate indicated the intercom box on the wall and the sign that read ‘ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK INTO THE MAIN OFFICE’ above it. “But we’re about to find out.”

Tate clicked the button, and a crackling voice answered.

“Hello?”

“My name’s Agent Abernathy and my partner is Agent Adams. We’re with the FBI. I was hoping—”

There was a buzz and Chase tried one of the doors.

“I guess that answers your question,” Tate remarked.

The interior of Maple Hollow High was as unexceptional as the exterior. Given the bizarre nature of the entire town, this came as a bit of a relief for Chase.

“Hi.” The woman who came out of the office was also average in most respects. Average height, weight, brown hair, not ugly but not striking, either.

“We’re with the FBI.” Tate preemptively showed his badge and Chase did the same. The women gave these a cursory glance and then looked around nervously.

“Is this about Archie?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, we can talk in here.”

The woman gestured toward a glassed-in area just inside the doors. Once inside, the woman closed the door and drew the blinds.

“Are you the… principal?” Chase asked. There were two plastic orange chairs just beneath one of the glass windows. They looked extremely uncomfortable, and she elected to stand.

“Me? No. No. I’m just the secretary.” As if they needed proof of this, the woman slid behind her desk, which prominently displayed a sign: Mrs. Ella Sacker. “The principal had to step out for a moment. Do you want me to call him?”

“That’s alright,” Chase said quickly. A call to the principal might then result in a subsequent call to the sheriff. Hell, maybe Sheriff Thomas was with Principal—her eyes found the closed door behind the secretary—Levine investigating a cow tipping incident or whatever other emergency had fortuitously gotten the asshole off their backs.

“This is about Archie, right? I heard that they found him.” Ella’s voice cracked.

Part of him.

“We can’t really divulge too much information right now but—”

“Mrs. Slacker, Archie is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”

Chase looked at Tate.

They hadn’t discussed their approach, hadn’t thought that they’d be allowed in, but this admission seemed unnecessary.

Mrs. Slacker covered her mouth with her hand.

“I’m very sorry. Did you know him well?” Tate asked.

Now, Chase understood the tactic. If Sheriff Thomas had spoken with the secretary, making a bold statement to disarm her might serve their purpose well.

Distract the woman in the hopes that she’d open up.

“Yes.” Ella sobbed. “I knew Archie. He was a good… a good boy.”

“Again, I’m very sorry,” Tate continued. “Can you tell us a little about him?”

A subtle nod.

“Archie’s quiet and polite—not like some of the other entitled kids here. Always says hello and thank you. Please.”

“Was he into sports or…?”

“No, not really. I mean, he liked baseball, I don’t think he played.”

“What about friends? Was he popular?”

If Sheriff Thomas had been here, then Tate’s plan was working like a charm.

“Not really. I mean, he had some friends. Liked to hang out with Lee and Timmy a lot.”

The photograph on Brenda Focci’s fridge came to mind.

“One has glasses? The other a thicker build with short dark hair?”

“Yeah. That’s them. Timmy wears glasses.”

“They wouldn’t happen to be in class right now, would they?” Chase asked.

“I saw Timmy this morning, not sure about Lee. I can check the attendance records and see what class they’re in.”

“Please do.”

The woman wiped her nose and then leaned forward.

She typed for several seconds, then nodded.

“They’re both here—science class.”

Chase offered Tate a silent exchange then the latter said, “Mrs. Sacker, when is the principal due back?”

“Not sure. I think he said he’d be gone for an hour.”

“Do you think he’d mind if we used his office?”

Brenda’s upper lip lifted a little.

“If he says anything, you can tell him that the FBI needed to borrow it,” Tate added.

“I guess… I guess that’d be okay.”

“Good. Then there’s something we’re going to need you to do.”

***

“You see this?” Chase asked, picking up the framed photograph on Principal Levine’s desk.

“Fucking hell.”

It was a photo of Sheriff Thomas on a dock. Chase presumed the man beside him was Principal Levine. The principal held a fishing rod in one hand, while the fingers of his other hand were jammed through the gills of an impressive large-mouth bass.

“Yeah, we should probably make this quick.”

“Yeah.”

Tate sat down in the principal’s chair while Chase turned her back to the door and inspected the wall of books.

“Just go right in, boys,” they heard Ella say from outside the office.

“Do you know what this is about?” a young voice asked.

“Uh-uh.”

The door opened and Chase looked over her shoulder.

They were identical to the kids in Brenda’s photo, right down to the same clear, acrylic glasses on Timmy’s face.

“Who are you?” the other kid, Lee, asked when he saw Tate behind the principal’s desk.

“Please, sit down.”

Before Ella had called the boys’ class, they’d moved the plastic chairs from the outer office into here.

“Who are you?” Lee asked again.

“Take a seat.”

They looked scared and rightfully so. Being called into the principal’s office was always a nerve-wracking experience for a student but entering the office and finding two strangers, well-dressed strangers, stern-looking strangers?

Yeah, they had every right to be scared.

Both boys sat.

“What are your names?”

“Lee.”

“Timmy.”

Tate placed his elbows on the desk and leaned forward dramatically.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Tate Abernathy and this is my partner, Special Agent Chase Adams.”

The boys’ eyes widened.

Oh, they were scared, all right.

“Does this have something to do with Archie?” Timmy asked.

Chase saw Lee’s jaw tighten and the boy gave his friend a side-eyed glance.

“Why would you ask that?” Tate said.

“It’s just—”

“I should probably call my dad,” Lee said, interrupting his friend.

“After I ask you a few questions.”

According to Linus, Archie was sixteen. Assuming their friends were the same age, they could be questioned without their parents being present and without their consent.

“Since you brought up Archie, when was the last time you saw him?”

“Three nights ago,” Timmy said. This brought about another glare from Lee.

“What were you guys doing?”

“We were in the field—” Now Lee overtly elbowed his friend. Timmy grunted, folded in the direction of the blow.

While Tate had been doing the talking, Chase was trying to understand the dynamic, the situation.

She thought she’d just figured it out.

What did three sixteen-year-old boys like to do at night in a cornfield? Despite the newfangled downtown core, she couldn’t remember seeing an arcade or shopping mall.

“You guys aren’t in trouble,” Chase said. “And we’re not local cops. If you were out in the field drinking or maybe smoking some weed? My partner and I really could care less.” Lee opened his mouth, but Chase continued without giving him a chance to speak. “I promise, I don’t care. We didn’t come all the way from Virginia to bother two kids for drinking or smoking underage. We’re worried about your friend. About Archie.”

Timmy’s head suddenly dropped.

“I heard… I heard he’s dead. Just like those other kids.” He sniffled and Lee elbowed him again, less hard this time. “What? You remember Ian? He’s gone, man. No one’s seen him.”

“He moved away with his mom,” Lee countered.

“He didn’t!” Timmy shook his head. “No way.”

“Timmy—”

“What about Paul and Keith, huh? They didn’t run away.”

“No, that methhead Angus Peterson—”

“Enough,” Tate said loudly. This shut them both up. Tate waited. One breath, two. “We just want to know about the last time you saw Archie.”

A shuddering sigh out of Timmy. He didn’t look at his friend when he started to speak again.

“We met up at Lee’s place, me, Archie, Lee. Wandered through the fields. We had a—” he paused, “—a beer.”

A beer?

Chase read between the lines.

They’d smoked a joint.

“Listened to music. Then, around midnight, I went home. Lee walked Archie home.”

Lee shook his head.

“I didn’t walk him home.”

This comment was an implicit agreement about the rest of what Timmy had said. Except for the ridiculous ‘sharing a beer’ statement. “I was gonna, but he said it was fine. That he liked to walk by himself.”

“Archie lives in the new development, right?” Having not confirmed that Archie was dead, Chase deliberately used the present tense.

Neither boy batted an eye.

“Yeah,” Timmy said.

“What about you guys? Where do you live?”

“I live on a farm by the maze. Lee lives on the other side.”

“Okay. And, Lee, where did you last see Archie?” Chase asked.

“He was walking down the road, goin’ home.”

“Did you see anybody else? A car maybe? Someone walking their dog at night?”

Lee seemed to think about this for a while before answering.

While he did, Chase thought back to the sparse case file that Stitts had sent her. There was no mention of Archie hanging out with his friends prior to going missing.

There was no mention of anything related to his disappearance.

Maple Hollow investigative work at its finest.

“I think… I think I saw a tractor?”

“Do you remember what color it was?” Tate asked.

“Yellow?” Lee shook his head. “It was dark out, but I think it was yellow.”

“Did you happen to get the license plate? Were there any markings on the side? A brand name?”

Lee shrugged.

“I didn’t really see, wasn’t really looking.”

Chase nodded at Tate.

“Thank you. You can go back to class now.”

The boys, still a little shell-shocked, stood and opened the door. When they entered the secretary area, Lee stopped.

“Mr. Thomas? I was looking for you. You have labs in five minutes,” a male voice said.

Chase’s blood suddenly turned to ice.

“Oh, shit.”

It dawned on her why Lee had looked familiar, first in the photograph on Brenda’s fridge, and then in person.

Lee looked like a smaller version of his father, Sheriff Aiden Thomas.

Chapter 10

“Yeaaah, this is going to be a problem,” Tate said.

“I should have known,” Chase chastised herself. “I should have known, Tate.”

“How? We didn’t even know the kids’ last names.”

Chase shook her head, frowned.

“I saw the photo on Brenda’s fridge, knew that the kid looked familiar.”

Tate pulled into the parking lot of a diner. They decided not to go back to the main strip, thinking that if they stayed in the old part of town, they were less likely to run into either the sheriff or one of his deputies.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This place is messing with our heads.”

True; the fact that nobody seemed to care that a young boy first missing and then torn apart was disquieting, to say the least.

But it was more than that.

It was the sheer vulgarity of the kill that was bothering Chase. They were dealing with an extremely disturbed individual and, in a matter of days, the entire town was about to be overrun with an almost infinite number of potential victims.

They were seated at a table near the front door by a waitress in her mid-fifties. Chase wasn’t hungry but she ordered anyway. What she really wanted was a drink. An ice-cold beer.

Something to cleanse her mouth of the awful taste.

But when the food came, Chase’s stomach grumbled, and she dug in. As did Tate.

“One of the kids, the one with the glasses?” Tate said around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Timmy.”

“Yeah, Timmy. He mentioned that someone went missing last year.”

“I think he said Ian?”

“Right. Said Ian went missing. Was that in the package that Stitts sent you?”

“Yeah.” Chase pulled up her phone, scrolled through the document. “Ian Morrison, fifteen years old. Went missing around the same time last year.”

Tate made a face.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“No suspects? No… I dunno, last sighting or interviews?”

“Tate, that’s it. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Chase watched her partner’s face intently as he mulled this over.

The man nodded to himself.

“What about that guy that was convicted of killing those other two kids?”

“Angus Peterson.”

“Right. What about him?”

Chase didn’t need to look at her phone this time.

“Drifter from Albany, history of drug abuse. They found him with one of the kids’ backpacks on him. Gave a full confession.”

“Same time, though? Thanksgiving?”

This, Chase had to look up.

“Yep.”

“What is it about Thanksgiving in Maple Hollow that makes people want to kill?”

“No idea. But if we—” Chase stopped mid-sentence as the chime above the diner’s front door went off and a man walked in. “Shit.”

“What?” Tate craned his neck around and then dropped his fork.

The man stormed over to them.

“What the fuck are you doing talking to my son?” Sheriff Thomas demanded. He was red-faced, more so than his usual flushed complexion.

“Excuse me?” Chase said, her own face starting to heat up.

“Lady, I told you—”

“I told you not to call her Lady,” Tate cut in.

Sheriff Thomas gave him a rictus grin.

“And I told you to stay the fuck out of my town.”

The dozen or so other patrons were all staring at them now, drawn by the sheriff’s loud voice. The server was also inching toward them.

Chase thought that the prospect of them intervening was next to zero.

Tate started to rise, but Chase pulled him back down.

“Why are you so angry?” she asked. “We’re here to help find a killer.”

Thomas pulled back a little.

“I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.”

“Well, we’re here, so deal with it.”

Now, the sheriff gave them a death stare.

It might actually help their cause if the man did something stupid now, but he didn’t.

He just smiled. Laughed a little.

“Hey, you guys find a place to stay yet?”

Chase was taken aback by the question. Tate, still seething, didn’t answer, either.

“Well, it’s festival time and we’re kinda full in Maple Hollow.” He tapped the table with the thick knuckles. “Good luck with that.”

Then the man left, but not without harsh words to the bartender, which Chase couldn’t quite make out.

For a good minute, Tate remained stoic.

Then Chase saw him take a deep breath.

“I hate that man.”

“As do I.”

Chase looked down at the half-eaten sandwich on her plate. She was no longer hungry and pushed it away from her. The waitress, who was standing at attention, quickly took it and Tate’s away.

“Why don’t we just call Director Stitts? Tell him what’s going on here, tell him that we need all available field agents to flood this town, shut it down,” Chase said.

“Naw, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because, that’s what he wants, Chase. Sheriff Thomas wants to piss us off so bad that we go over his head. You think people don’t want to talk to us now, wait until we do that, and he tells everyone that Big Brother is trying to steal their widgets or whatever. They’ll completely shut us out.”

“So, what? It’ll also stop his beloved festival from happening.”

Tate shook his head again.

“No—the tickets have been sold, hotel rooms booked. Restaurants reserved. People will show up.”

Chase felt her frustration mounting and it had been at Everest levels to begin with.

“So, what?” Exasperation crept into her voice.

“You know how bad it will look if we have five hundred or a thousand tourists, mostly young people, being harangued by the FBI and forced to go home? And they’re all armed with cameras? It’ll be a fucking nightmare, Chase. And I’m not talking about just from a PR standpoint, but you’ll have kids sneaking over the barricades, running into the maze. Fucking with potential evidence.”

Chase hated it but knew that Tate was right. Hated it even more that they were falling into the sheriff’s trap.

Hated most of all that they were fucked.

Chase waved her hand, indicating for the waitress to come over. The woman, who had been watching them the entire time, hustled to their table.

“Can we have the check?” Chase asked.

“It’s, uhh, it’s been taken care of.”

Chase made a face.

“What?”

“Your bill has been taken care of.”

“By who?” Chase snapped.

But she knew who.

“Fine, whatever.” Chase grabbed her coat and got out of the booth. Tate did the same.

“I’m also… I… I regret to inform you, but we are going to be unable to accommodate you again.”

“Accommodate us…” Chase trailed off and then realized what the woman was saying.

She saw red, wanted to tell this woman to fuck off, that they weren’t interested in their shitty food and shittier choice of music.

Tate calmed her and she took a breath.

It wasn’t the waitress’ fault.

Chase threw her hands up and stormed out of the diner, but not without one final parting shot.

“This fucking town.”

***

They spent the next two hours trying to find a place to sleep that night. Two fucking hours.

One hotel almost accepted them, but apparently, it was Maple Hollow’s policy to check ID before renting a room.

That’s when things went south.

The concierge, evidently, had made a mistake. Those four rooms, cancellations, which were suddenly available? Well, that was a system glitch.

Chase just laughed.

“This is fucking stupid.”

They tried two more places and were rejected on the spot.

Tate decided to level with the old man who was behind the desk at their final stop.

“Look, we just need a place to stay. I noticed that the store in town was selling tents. Can we camp out somewhere?”

The man’s face contorted.

“We’re desperate here.”

A heavy, labored sigh fell out of the man’s mouth.

“There’s a farm that will let you camp out for a hundred bucks a night.”

A hundred bucks a night? Were they that desperate?

“Where’s that?”

The man grew even more uncomfortable. He looked like someone who had farted and got a little more substance than he’d bargained for.

“The thing is…”

“Just spit it out,” Chase barked.

“It’s Sheriff Thomas’ farm.”

Fuck.

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

They had no choice but to go to Albany—two hours from Maple Hollow. That was their plan anyway, but they got lucky. Found a roadside hotel halfway between the city center and Maple Hollow.

Sheriff Thomas’ reach was wide, but evidently not this wide.

Not yet, anyway.

Chapter 11

They checked into the hotel, which was old, smelled like canned fish, but was their only other option aside from driving all the way to Albany.

That, Chase suspected, was not only what Sheriff Thomas wanted—for them to be two hours away from Maple Hollow—but what he expected from a lady as well.

“Gross,” Chase said as she tossed her bag on one of the beds. She opened it, took out a casual outfit, jeans, dark T-shirt.

“What do you want to do?” Tate asked.

By the time they’d driven to the hotel and checked in, it was nearing five o’clock. And what had they accomplished?

They’d visited the crime scene, pissed off the local sheriff, met with some kids who told them a whole lot of nothing, and—

Chase put the brakes on her runaway thoughts.

Maybe the kids had told them something.

“There’s no mention of a tractor in any of the sheriff’s reports regarding Archie’s disappearance.”

“Tractor?”

“Yeah, Lee said he saw a tractor after Archie left him and started to walk home.”

“You sure it’s not in there?”

“No. No mention of Lee or Timmy, either.”

Tate started to undress.

“Either Sheriff Thomas is the worst fucking sheriff in history, or he just wanted to keep his son’s name out of the report.” Tate cocked his head. “Could be both, I guess.”

As Tate stripped down, Chase called Linus again.

It went straight to his answering machine and Chase frowned. She left a message, asking for an update on the information she’d requested about the sheriff and the coroner.

Tate started to remove his pajamas—yes, the man wore pajamas, he was that old—from his suitcase.

“What are you doing?” Tate, who was holding the navy blue outfit in his hands looked at it first, then at Chase. “Tate, it’s five o’clock.”

“Right.” He put the pajamas back in the suitcase and then stood there, hands on his hips, as if not sure what to do next.

Tate was one of the best agents that Chase had ever known. He was smart, intuitive, and had a knack for morphing into any role to obtain information in a moment’s notice.

But sometimes, the man was just lost.

Chase put on her casual outfit.

“You’re not thinking of going back to Maple Hollow, are you?”

“Hell, yes, I am. And you’re coming, too.”

***

Maple Hollow was livelier at night. The downtown core was bustling with people, and the general vibe was one of excitement.

Judging by the sheer number of signs advertising the upcoming festival, this event was far more important than any dead kid.

Hand in hand, they walked the streets, peering into shops. No longer wearing their work outfits and with the crowd building around them, they didn’t stand out.

The farmer-chic attire that most of the other people on the streets wore suggested that they were locals.

Chase tried to picture this area flooded with thousands of tourists.

The man who had put up the main banner, Joseph Bell, had told them that the streets were jammed during the festival.

Chase believed it.

Teenagers getting drunk, disorderly, easy pickings for a killer.

“What’s going on up there?” Tate asked, indicating a line that was forming in front of one of the stores.

“Don’t know.”

They moved closer.

It wasn’t a shop but a bar. The words CRAZY HORSE, illuminated by three large floodlights, hung above the front windows.

“Wanna go in for a drink?” Tate asked.

“Sure.”

Tate squeezed her hand, and they walked together toward the growing line. Chase noticed that many of the people trying to get in were in large groups.

Good—maybe because it was just the two of them, they wouldn’t have to wait long.

Not paying attention, Chase nearly tripped on the leash wrapped around the neck of a young Golden Retriever.

She bent down and pet the dog.

“C’mon, Clay let’s go.”

The owner, a man with a sunburn on his face, tugged the leash and walked off.

“So, friendly, these Maple Hollow people.”

When Chase looked up again, she saw someone across the street she recognized. It was Ella, the secretary from Maple Hollow High School.

She was standing alone in front of a bookstore. Her back was to them, but Chase could see the woman’s face reflected in the window.

It was blotchy, her eyes red.

“Hey, Tate, gimme a sec?”

Tate followed her eyes.

“Sure. I’ll try to work my way inside, get us a table.”

“Grab me a beer, I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Tate gave her hand one final squeeze then let go.

Chase weaved across the street and approached the woman who still hadn’t moved.

“Ella?”

The woman turned. When she saw who it was, she wiped her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Ella didn’t answer.

“Ella?” Chase was concerned now.

The woman let loose a shuddering sigh.

“I was fired today.”

“What?” Chase was aghast. “What do you mean?”

The woman glanced around nervously.

With a huff, she said, “When the sheriff heard that I let you guys into the school, into Levine’s office, and allowed you to speak to the kids, he told Levine. I was let go. Two weeks’ pay. Just like that. I’ve worked—I’ve worked at Maple Hollow High School for eleven years. Eleven. And they just cut me loose…”

“That’s ridiculous,” Chase said, not quite believing what she was hearing. “They can’t fire you for that. Did you tell them that it was the FBI that took over the office?”

“Yes! I told them. I even… I even said that you forced me to do it. I think—I think that’s what pissed him off most.”

Chase bit her lip.

“I’ll speak with the sheriff. I’ll—”

Ella aggressively shook her head.

“It won’t do any good.”

“I can be persuasive.”

“No,” she said angrily. “You don’t understand. The sheriff runs everything here. Everything. If I were you, I’d pack up and leave.”

“Ella, Archie’s dead. We’re not going anywhere.”

Ella sniffed.

“Well, I’m just saying, you should leave.”

“We’re not—”

“Agent… Adams, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Something bad is going to happen in Maple Hollow. You need to get out while you still can.”

Chase was shocked by the woman’s words.

Something bad is going to happen here? Something bad has already happened.

Ella started to walk away, and Chase grabbed her arm.

“I’ll do everything I can to get your job back, okay?”

Ella looked down.

“Sheriff Thomas runs everything in Maple Hollow,” she repeated solemnly. “Everything.”

Chapter 12

It was far busier outside the Crazy Horse than inside. Despite the line, Tate signaled to the bouncer and, probably because he was alone, he was ushered inside.

Crazy Horse was also more mule than horse. The outside facade was probably the nicest part of the place, adding more to the idea that the ‘spaghetti western town’, as Chase described it, was all fake.

For show.

Still, Tate didn’t mind. He found a table away from the mostly young people lingering around the bar. A waiter came by, and he ordered a beer.

Like his partner, he was disturbed by the seemingly normalness of everything. He saw laughing faces. Smiles.

People getting drunk.

The waiter returned with his beer but when he tried to pay, he was informed, for the second time that day, that it was taken care of.

Tate immediately felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Who paid?”

The waiter, just a young kid, nervously pointed over his shoulder. Tate moved his chair to get a better look.

It was Sheriff Thomas.

No real surprise there.

The man’s big face was red and sweaty. On his table, which was occupied by men who, unlike most of the townsfolk, wore expensive threads, suggesting that they were part of the Maple Hollow upper crust, was a half-empty bottle of bourbon.

Tate tried to look away before the sheriff noticed him, pretending to be engrossed in his bottle of beer, but their eyes met.

Shit.

He heard rather than saw the big man get up from his table.

Tate continued to stare in another direction, hoping that the sheriff didn’t come over to him.

Wishful thinking.

Meaty hands slapped down on his table.

“Where’s your lady?” Sheriff Thomas’ voice was hoarse, his words slurred.

Tate finally looked at him.

“I’ve told you before, you need to call her Agent.”

The man licked his lips.

“You mean wife?”

Tate tensed.

“Yeah, see I can do research, too. Us rednecks can use computers, you know?”

“Why don’t you just go back to your table and finish your bottle,” Tate snapped.

Sheriff Thomas’ palms were still on the table but now he curled his fingers.

The half-smile that been painted on his lips quickly transitioned into a sneer.

“This is my town. You don’t tell me what to do in my town.”

“You’re drunk. Go back to your table,” Tate warned.

Shit-face or not, Sheriff Thomas moved quickly. He gripped the sides of the table and flipped the entire thing in Tate’s direction.

Tate jumped to his feet, avoiding the round piece of wood as it crashed loudly to the floor. He wasn’t quick enough, however, to avoid being hit in the chest by his own beer bottle. Sudsy liquid soaked the front of his shirt, and the bottle smashed on the floor.

“I warned you, suit, you don’t tell me what to do in my fucking town.”

A big man in a black T-shirt came forward.

“Sheriff, maybe—”

Sheriff Thomas aimed an angry finger at the man who Tate recognized as the bouncer out front.

“Stay the fuck out of this.”

The bouncer winced, looked as if he wanted to intervene, but then backed away.

For all of Sheriff Thomas’ bravado, he really did seem to run this town.

That was okay because Tate wasn’t from here.

“Oh, you wanna go, tough guy? You wanna go with me?”

Tate balled his hands into fists, circled the fallen table. The crowd around them grew larger still.

Sheriff Thomas did something unexpected then. He tore the t-shirt he’d been wearing right off his body and threw it to the ground.

The man was bulky, thick through the shoulders and chest.

“C’mon, tough guy, let’s dance.”

Nobody tried to stop them. Nobody even said a word.

Even if they’d been so inclined, it wouldn’t have mattered.

In the end, the build-up took far longer than the actual fight.

One punch.

One punch thrown, one punch landed.

One man falling to the ground, knocked out cold.

***

There was something happening inside the Crazy Horse. Chase could tell even though her view of the interior was blocked by a throng of people waiting in line to get in.

The energy in the air was off.

“Excuse me,” Chase said as she elbowed her way to the front of the line.

Several drunk men told her to wait her turn, which Chase promptly ignored. She approached a bouncer who stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Sorry, we’re at capacity,” the man informed her.

“I—”

“Hey, the sheriff’s in a fight,” Chase heard someone murmur.

Shit.

She pushed forward.

“You deaf? We’re full.”

Chase whipped out her badge.

“FBI. Move out of my way.”

The bouncer must have heard that the FBI was in town because he couldn’t have gotten a good look at the badge before Chase was already moving by him.

The lights had been switched on and music was no longer playing. Even if it had been dark and loud, Chase would have spotted the Sheriff immediately. For some reason, the man was shirtless.

The real question was, where the hell is Tate?

The nervous energy she’d felt outside was amplified in the Crazy Horse.

“Move,” Chase said to a drunk girl in cowboy boots. The woman spun, stumbled, bumped into a man, presumably her boyfriend.

A table had been overturned, a bottle smashed.

And then she saw her husband.

Tate was lying on the ground, propped up on his elbows. Someone was trying to help him to his feet, but they were struggling.

She ran to him, shoved the man who was gripping Tate beneath the arms away.

“Tate? Tate, what the fuck happened?”

But Chase already knew.

Tate blinked and groaned. There was a welt on the left side of his face, near his jaw.

Blood trickled from a small cut on his lip.

“Jesus… anyone have any ice?” Chase lifted Tate’s head in her hands. “Ice?”

A barback scurried off to fetch some.

Sheriff Thomas noticed her, scooped his shirt off the floor, and threw it over his head.

“He took the first punch,” the man said with a shrug. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

Chase pieced together the scene. Behind the sheriff were a few well-dressed cronies. One of them passed Thomas a bottle of Bourbon and he drank directly from it, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm when he was done.

Sheriff Thomas had been sitting at that table with his friends. Tate, alone, waiting for her.

Her husband’s table had been overturned. One beer bottle, likely Tate’s, had been smashed.

Chase knew that Tate had a temper and could be protective of her.

But he wouldn’t instigate.

No, Sheriff Thomas had been looking for a fight the moment they’d come into town.

And he’d found one.

“He took the first shot,” Sheriff Thomas reiterated, slightly less confidently now. “Right? Right?”

The sheriff’s yes men nodded, mumbled something affirmative.

Tate finally managed to sit up.

“Tate? What happened?”

Tate winced and his eyes pinched closed. Then he opened them again, he leveled a hundred-yard stare at Sheriff Thomas.

“Nothing. Help me up.”

The barback returned with a bag full of ice, handed it to Chase. Together, they hoisted Tate to his feet. As Tate pressed the bag of ice to his jaw, he leaned on her for support.

“Let’s go,” he said.

On their way to the door, with everyone in the establishment and everyone lined up outside looking on and muttering, Chase still managed to overhear the sheriff say, “My town… this is my town…”

Chapter 13

Gill Cromwell hated the Thanksgiving Festival. He knew that he was in the minority when it came to his opinion of the vaunted Maple Hollow annual tradition.

It was just too much. And he hated how everyone was so fake. Antoine Mills, the guy who owned the grocery store, was a real prick. Once, he’d claimed that Gill had stolen an apple. A fucking apple. What teenager steals an apple?

A couple of energy drinks, a pack of cigarettes, maybe.

But an apple?

Antoine had called the sheriff and everything. And if the store owner was an asshole, Sheriff Aiden Thomas was the fucking devil.

They didn’t even look at the security footage, despite Gill’s claims that it would clearly show him taking the apple out of his bag, which his mother had put in there for his lunch.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to do this in a grocery store, but he didn’t fucking steal the apple.

Sheriff Thomas had made Gill clean the entire grocery store for a month after that.

But during the Festival?

Antoine was a saint. A goddamn bald-headed, smiling saint who gave away more than apples to the douchy tourists who came in and shot their zero-budget documentaries.

Everyone in town put on a fake face, pretended to be so nice. Maple Hollow, the perfect place to live.

Not enough money in the coffers to afford a goddamn school bus for the kids in the division, but enough for hundreds of those Festival advertisements he saw online and in the Albany Post that his father, for reasons Gill would never understand, got delivered every weekday.

The only thing that never changed was Sheriff Thomas.

Once an asshole, always an asshole.

And the rumors about what happened to Archie?

This place was horrible.

And Gill wanted out.

Two more years, he thought to himself. Two more years and I’ll be off to college. And then I’ll never come back.

Gill kept his head down as he hurried across the field. It was Sheriff Thomas’ field and, in a few days, it would be so jammed with tents that you wouldn’t even think of trying to cross it.

And the people in those tents? Teenagers from Albany or Syracuse or God knows where? They’d all be smoking pot and drinking.

Sheriff Thomas wouldn’t bat an eye at this. But if he caught you or any of the other high school students drinking on any other weekend?

You were fucked.

Maybe the Sheriff did change, after all. Only, not with him.

Not wanting to be seen trespassing on the Sheriff’s property—despite the fact that it was the quickest way to the division without getting lost in the dreaded maze for hours—Gill moved even more quickly.

He made it to the dirt road and finally slowed down. Just in case, Gill kept his head down.

A shadow loomed up ahead forcing him to raise his eyes. A yellow tractor was stopped at the side of the road, its lights off.

Curious, Gill walked up to the vehicle, stepped on the ledge, and stood tall to get a look inside.

The cabin was empty.

Gill dropped back down, was about to continue his trek, when he heard a sound from the other side of yellow monstrosity.

“Hello?” he asked the darkness. “Hello?”

Gill walked around the tractor. If the man who owned it was just taking a piss or something, maybe he would be able to give Gill a ride home.

Save him another twenty or thirty minutes of walking.

But there was nobody.

Thinking that he’d just imagined the sound, Gill turned.

And then he froze.

Something cold and hard pressed up against the side of his head.

“Wha—”

Gill was interrupted by a strange hissing sound.

Then… nothing.

The boy’s body crumpled to the ground and he lay there, completely motionless.

PART II – The People

Chapter 14

Tate’s jaw ached.

Throbbed.

Even his teeth on the left side of his face hurt.

He toweled himself off and finally did what he’d been avoiding ever since waking: look in the mirror.

Tate inhaled sharply.

Even though Sheriff Thomas had hit him just last night, a dark shadow encompassed everything from the corner of his jaw to his cheekbone.

In a day or two, it would become a nasty bruise.

Nasty.

Tate gently probed the area with his fingers and winced. Then he opened his mouth wide. He heard a clicking sound.

The only good news was that he didn’t think his jaw was broken. Didn’t think he had a concussion, either.

He did have a headache, but his vision was clear, his mind relatively focused.

Tate was no rookie when it came to fighting. He’d roughed up his fair share of perps back in the day.

But… man, the sheriff hit hard, and he was fast.

“Fuck.”

“You okay in there?” Chase asked from the other side of the door.

Stubble had formed on his cheeks and chin and Tate knew that he needed a shave. But there was no fucking way he was going to put a razor against his skin.

He resigned himself to using a brush to straighten his mustache as if that helped the situation.

“Tate?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “A little sore but I’ll survive.”

He finished drying himself off, tousled his hair, and then wrapped a towel around his waist.

When he opened the door, Chase was standing in his path. She looked him up and down and he casually turned his face away so that she wouldn’t have a direct view of his injured jaw.

It didn’t work; Chase simply ducked down and bent her head to one side.

Then she straightened.

“We going to talk about what happened last night?”

Tate shook his head, which proved to be a mistake.

Pain spread across his face, and he grimaced.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Tate walked around his wife and grabbed an outfit from his open suitcase on the bed. His first choice was what Chase, and their kids referred to as his uniform.

He opted for a pair of jeans and a polo shirt instead of his usual khakis.

“Tate…”

He sighed, started to dress.

“Got into a fight with the Sheriff.”

“I know that. But why?”

Why? Because he’s an asshole. He knows we’re married, and he pushed all the right buttons. Oh, to be fair, it wasn’t really a fight. It was just one punch.

Thinking about this made Tate realize just how stupid the interaction had been. The Sheriff, wasted, egging him on, him trying to defend his woman’s honor like some medieval knight.

Fuck.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, I do.” Chase placed her hands on her hips. “Tate, he knocked you out. The sheriff hit you and knocked you out.”

Tate’s pride was wounded nearly as badly as his face.

“Not much I can do about it. Everyone at the Crazy Horse will back him up, say that I instigated, that I made the first move.”

“And did you?”

Tate’s eyes narrowed.

“Did I what?”

“Did you start it?”

Tate felt himself growing annoyed.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, that’s why I’m asking.”

Tate stared at Chase. Her approach might be a little abrasive, but he knew that these questions were coming from a place of caring.

At least, he hoped they were.

Tate relaxed a little.

“It doesn’t matter who started it. They’ll back him.”

Chase looked like she wanted to say more but gave up.

“Okay, well, I think it’s probably best if we stay as far as possible from Sheriff Thomas for the foreseeable future.”

“That is something I won’t argue.”

***

“Linus? Where have you been?” Chase asked. She was on edge. The town, the sheriff, even Tate, were grinding her gears.

“Sorry about that. Had to go to Orange County, help out the field office there with something.”

Chase screwed up her face.

“CVU should take priority. There’s a fucking shitstorm going on here.”

“I know, I know. If it had just been a random request, I would have passed it onto someone else. But it was Agent Constantine Striker who called.”

Chase’s eyes flicked to Tate, who was staring straight ahead, eyes on the road.

His jaw was swollen, looked painful.

“Fine, fine.” She sighed. “Did you manage to look into the sheriff and the coroner?”

Chase heard typing on the other end of the line.

“I did. Sheriff Aiden Thomas, married to Moira Thomas. Has one son, Lee Thomas.”

She ground her teeth.

That would have been nice to know yesterday.

“Prior to being the sheriff, the man worked as a farmer and at the slaughterhouse—the abattoir—in town. He was elected about four years ago. Been the Maple Hollow Sheriff ever since.”

“Elected? Not appointed?”

“Elected,” Linus confirmed, and Chase straightened.

“They have a mayor? City council?” Tate looked over at her and she switched the phone to speaker. “Where’s the mayor been?” she continued sharply. “I’d assume that he’d want to show his face all around town during the festival.”

“There is no mayor,” Linus’ tinny voice came out of the phone speaker.

“Really?”

“There was a city council and there was a mayor.”

Chase thought she knew where this was going.

“But not anymore?”

“Not anymore. The mayor stepped down shortly after Sheriff Thomas was elected. The weird thing is, he actually supported Aiden Thomas in his campaign.”

That was strange.

“And the council?”

“Disbanded a month or two later.”

“You’re telling us,” Tate said, “that the sheriff runs the entire town with no oversight?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“How the fuck does a cow farmer who works at an abattoir become the sheriff and then gets rid of the mayor and the city council?” Chase asked angrily.

“No idea.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“What about the coroner?”

“Antoine Mills has no wife or kids. Owns the grocery store in town. Used to be a part-time vet.”

“When did he become coroner?”

“Guess,” Linus said.

“I’m not gue—”

Tate cut her off.

“Right after Sheriff Thomas was elected.”

“That’s right. He wasn’t appointed though. Antoine was also elected. Except, no one ran against him.”

“Essentially appointed,” Chase remarked.

“Yep.”

Chase fell silent, mulled this information over.

“Linus, you think you can look into Angus Peterson? The drifter who was convicted of killing those kids a couple of years back?” she asked.

“Can do. Anything else?”

“No, that’s good for now. Thanks.”

“Hey, last time we spoke you said you might need some support up there. You want me to hop on a plane and join you?”

Chase looked at Tate’s jaw again.

Support would be nice. Shutting this entire town down would be even better.

When they’d first met Sheriff Thomas, Chase knew that he was an asshole. Domineering, alpha male, God complex, you name it. But it wasn’t until she’d seen Tate lying on the floor of the Crazy Horse did she believe that the man was actually dangerous.

“No, not right, now. Stay put but be ready. Let us know when you have something.”

“Okay.”

Chase clicked end.

“So,” Tate said after a pregnant pause, “What the sheriff said last night is true.”

“Which is?”

“That Maple Hollow is his town. He runs this place, Chase, and everyone is scared shitless of him.”

Chase once more observed her husband’s injured jaw.

And with good reason.

Chapter 15

The town had changed overnight. The streets weren’t exactly packed, but the number of people wandering around had tripled from the day prior, and a good portion of them were in their early teens, obvious tourists.

Tate was forced to park a good three blocks from the main drag by the side of the road. Even then, despite being so far away from the spaghetti western town, he had to parallel park between vehicles, nabbing a spot that had just been vacated.

“This is going to get ugly,” Chase muttered to herself.

“It’s already ugly.”

They got out and started to walk. No plan this time, other than to stay the fuck out of Sheriff Thomas’ way.

Chase thought about the case, about how their only hint of a suspect came from an off-hand comment made by the sheriff’s son.

More banners and adverts for the upcoming festival had been raised. So had a booth that sold tickets for the haunted hayride and the corn maze.

The maze where Archie Beaumont’s organs had been found.

Chase wasn’t sure what was more alarming, that the town intended to still have people enter the maze or the price of entry.

One hundred dollars per person.

She blinked, thinking that this couldn’t be right.

“A hundred bucks a head?” she said out loud. “What did that Joseph Bell guy say? They got about two thousand tourists over the course of the weekend?”

“Something like that,” Tate said.

“Let’s imagine that just half of them enter the maze. That’s a hundred thousand dollars.” She gestured toward the people milling about the shops. “And that doesn’t include all the revenue from the jacked-up store prices either, or the hotels, which are booked solid.”

“Don’t forget about Sheriff Thomas letting people camp out on his lawn.”

“Shit, that’s right.”

Chase avoided a woman pushing a stroller down the sidewalk.

“No wonder the sheriff doesn’t want anything to jeopardize the festivities.”

“No kidding.”

They made their way to the grocery store and spotted Antoine Mills smiling and laughing with two teenage girls. They had their cell phones out and appeared to be giving an interview of some sort.

When the girls walked off, Chase and Tate approached.

Antoine was shaking his head, still chuckling to himself, but when he noticed them, his expression changed.

“Mr. Mills,” Chase said without preamble. They were beyond the point of niceties now. “Did you get a DNA profile from the evidence we found in the maze?”

She selected her words wisely, aware that they were within earshot of several tourists. They were supposed to obtain something from Archie’s house to compare the DNA profile too, but the sheriff had put a wrench in their plans.

Chase had a strong suspicion that this was irrelevant.

“Well…” Antoine scratched the top of his bald head and sighed. “Sheriff Thomas, uhh, said it wasn’t necessary.”

Chase frowned.

Her suspicions were confirmed.

“We asked you to run the DNA.”

Antoine looked as if he was in physical pain. Now, he scratched the back of his hands.

“But the sheriff, I mean, he said…”

Tate saved him from this awkwardness.

“What about the scarecrow? Did you find any evidence on it?”

The way Antoine’s eyes immediately went to Tate’s jaw suggested that he knew what happened last night.

Chase suspected the entire town knew.

Sheriff Thomas’ versions of the events, anyway.

Initially, Chase had considered what the sheriff had done at the Crazy Horse careless, an act of unadulterated rage.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

The man was in control of everything in Maple Hollow, including the narrative.

She imagined the sheriff telling a crowd of onlookers how Big Brother had come into his town and tried to bully him, tried to shut down their prized money-making event. Not only that, but one of the agents attacked him—attacked him.

No, striking Tate wasn’t careless. It was by design.

They were outcasts when they’d arrived in their suits and now, they were infidels.

“I went over it. Didn’t find anything else.”

I bet you looked real hard, too.

Chase felt the arteries in her throat pulse.

“Where is the sheriff now?” she demanded.

Antoine’s eyes finally moved away from Tate’s bruised jaw. He looked around, then shrugged.

“Last I saw him he was heading to the maze.”

“Gee, thanks. Really helpful, Antoine.”

Chase grabbed Tate’s hand and pulled him away from the store.

Despite their desire to stay the hell away from the sheriff, they found themselves heading toward the maze.

What else were they supposed to do?

They couldn’t interview the townsfolk about Archie’s disappearance—Sheriff Thomas had seen to that.

The coroner had basically closed the case, without a single suspect.

Hell, Chase wouldn’t be shocked if Antoine Mills’ official report marked Archie Beaumont’s death as an accident.

A tough sell considering that the boy’s fucking organs had been removed, but who was going to complain?

Not the sheriff, not the store owners who were dependent on the tourists for their livelihood.

Not even the boy’s mother, who Sheriff Thomas had clearly threatened.

Chase casually double-checked that her service pistol was still in its holster as they wrapped around the back of the church.

There, they spotted Deputy Biffle rushing toward the maze in a state of panic.

“Deputy Biffle?”

The man skidded to a stop. He didn’t turn, though, and for a split second, Chase thought that the man intended to ignore them and just keep on running.

“Mikey!” Tate barked.

Now the man spun.

“I can’t… you need to speak to the sheriff,” he said preemptively. Like the grocer/coroner, the deputy also looked frightened.

“About what?” Tate asked, making a face.

“Just… I… I can’t talk to you right now.”

Tate didn’t let Biffle off the hook like he had Antoine.

“Right now, or ever?”

“I, uhh, I…”

Chase stepped forward, softened her features. It was her turn to play the chameleon—the bruising on Tate’s face made his transformation a little less believable.

“I get it, you guys don’t want us here. We’re outsiders, visitors. But we have no desire to shut your festival down. All we want to do is figure out who killed Archie Beaumont. That’s it. Then we’ll be gone. But we can’t do that if nobody in Maple Hollow talks to us.”

Biffle chewed the inside of his cheek.

“Please? Just talk to us,” Chase implored. “Help us.”

The deputy’s narrow shoulders drooped a little.

“I want to help, I do. But the sheriff…” the deputy huffed and looked skyward.

“I know. I know. But please.”

Biffle finally crumbled.

“Last night, another—”

“Biffle!” Deputy Diaz appeared, hiking up his pants. Probably taking a piss behind the church.

Pure class, that one.

Biffle’s eyes widened.

“Yeah?”

“Sheriff wants to see you.”

Diaz openly scowled at Chase and Tate.

“Right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

Chase knew, at that moment, that they’d lost him. Still, she had to try.

“Biffle? What happened last night?”

Biffle looked at them, then back at Diaz.

“Now, deputy.”

“I… I have to go.”

Diaz and Biffle ran off, leaving Tate and Chase just standing there with their dicks in their hands.

“We need to go to the maze, Tate,” Chase told her partner. “If it’s another kid—”

“No,” Tate said strongly.

Chase was inclined to argue.

He wasn’t scared, even after getting knocked out.

He was protecting her.

She didn’t need protection. She wasn’t this precious little China doll that had to be handled with kid gloves.

Chase was an FBI Agent. Not just any FBI Agent, either. By Christ, she’d been through the wringer.

A small-town sheriff, no matter how big of an asshole he was, wasn’t going to intimidate her, prevent her from doing her job.

“Tate, I’m going to the—”

“Think about it, Chase.”

“I have. I—”

“I’m betting they’re all there—the sheriff and deputies are all in the maze.”

It clicked.

Archie’s remains may have been discovered in the maze, but if there was additional evidence there, what were the chances that she and Tate would find it? They’d be looking for hours.

Hell, they might even get lost. A square mile was a huge area of land to cover.

And it wasn’t as if they could depend on anyone to come find them.

Chase pictured herself and Tate as skeletons, holding hands, corn growing through their rib cages.

“You have an idea?” she asked.

Tate offered her a weak smile.

“I do. Let’s get back to the car.”

Chapter 16

“Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable.” Tate reared back and kicked the yellow boot that had been locked on the front tire of their rental.

Chase shook her head in disbelief as Tate kicked the boot again.

“Look at all these fucking cars! Look at them!”

It was ridiculous, of course; the sheriff had singled them out. There was a sign by the side of the road, worn and akimbo, that said no parking at any time. There were two, maybe three dozen vehicles parked in a row and yet theirs was the only one with the boot.

“I see them, Tate.”

He threw his hands in the air.

“Well, what the fuck are we going to do?”

“Can you open the trunk?”

Tate pressed the button on the key fob and the trunk latch released.

Chase reached inside and grabbed a black case.

Tate, still fuming, gave her the side eye.

“What’s that?”

“My drone.”

“Your—” Tate hesitated.

“Yep,” Chase said with a nod. “I’m going to fly it up over the maze, see if I can find out what the fuck is going on. Why don’t you head back to town, grab some tools from the hardware store? Pop that thing off.”

“Yeah, unless that asshole Aiden Thomas locked those up.”

Chase did something unexpected then. She walked over to her husband and gave him a hug. At first, the man tensed but, eventually, he pressed her head up against his chest.

They both took a deep breath.

“I needed that.”

Chase smiled.

“I know.”

***

Chase didn’t go through the town this time. Instead, she went around it. It wasn’t all that difficult—the town itself had just been plopped in the middle of what had probably once been a corn field.

And it was surrounded by much of the same.

Heading east first, she took the path of least resistance—a newly harvested field—and then went north.

She found a small, grassy mound and decided to set up shop there. Chase was reminded a little of Washington when she’d used the drone to scope out one of the Duffy Group’s parties.

Only, that had been at night, and she was spying on a mansion nestled in a caldera.

This was different.

It was the middle of the day, and she was scouting a corn maze.

Chase took the drone, the controller, and the goggles out of the box. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used it, but she always kept everything charged just in case.

It took her a few seconds to re-familiarize herself with the controls, then the drone was in the air.

Flying, living vicariously through a mechanical quad copter’s video camera that she controlled with goggles on her face.

It was liberating. No other way to describe it. Like flying through the air without a plane.

Chase took the drone straight up, wanting to get out of earshot and view.

Twenty feet, thirty, forty.

Effortless.

Chase directed the drone forward. She passed over the town, and the aerial view reaffirmed just how ridiculously artificial it was.

And how busy.

She swore that there were more people there now than there had been just a half hour ago when she and Tate had run into Deputy Biffle.

Chase wasn’t sure what the master plan was. Should they call in backup? Shut down Maple Hollow?

She thought she would.

If it came to that, she would.

What other choice did she have?

Chase continued to fly the drone, directing it toward the maze.

Despite loathing Sheriff Thomas and everything that his hands touched, she couldn’t help but be in awe of the maze.

It was massive. So much bigger than she thought. The place she used to own in upstate New York had about thirty acres of land. Half of that was a pond and forest but the rest was open fields filled with wild daisies.

She thought she knew what a square mile was—she did, at least conceptually. But a square mile of corn maze was a different beast entirely.

It was incredible. Dozens of different paths cut through the stalks. Dead end after dead end. Bifurcations, three-way forks, even a concentric square that led to nowhere.

So enthralled by this sight was Chase that she almost didn’t notice the flurry of activity not twenty feet inside the entrance.

She made sure to snap dozens of aerial photos that included both the entrance and the single exit on the other side.

Chase lowered the drone, and she directed her attention at the men in the dark blue uniforms.

A few of the deputies had fanned out through the maze, moving slowly, heads low. Every few steps they crouched down and spread the thick corn stalk walls.

It didn’t take a genius to know that they were looking for something.

Or someone.

And then Chase saw him.

Sheriff Aiden Thomas. It was hard to mistake his thick build and stupid hat but if that wasn’t enough, the way he was gesticulating aggressively with his arms confirmed that he was the man in charge.

He was barking orders, too. The drone didn’t pick up audio but that didn’t matter.

Chase could tell what he was saying just by the way he was moving.

“Find him! Find him!”

Find who?

Biffle was there, so were Diaz and Ozeil. While the sheriff wasn’t directing his anger toward Biffle specifically, the deputy appeared to cringe every time the man swung his arms about, which was nearly constant.

Chase continued to observe the men, wondering what the hell they were looking for.

Whatever it was, they didn’t seem to find it. Although, to be fair, from her aerial vantage point, she could see that they hadn’t searched even a quarter of the maze yet.

Curious, Chase scanned the entire maze with the drone, noting nothing extraordinary.

She pulled up and sent the drone north. Beyond the maze was a wide open field, which Chase assumed would be filled with tents by the end of the weekend.

On the northern edge of this property line, Chase spotted two buildings. One, a typical farmhouse, nice, white siding, two stories. The sheriff’s house, most likely. Not far from this was what appeared to be a barn. Unlike the house proper, it was neglected, the siding sun-bleached and peeling. It may have once held cattle or horses, but the sheriff had other priorities now.

Further west lay a compound, enclosed on three sides by a tall chain-link fence. The only entrance, at the end of a dirt road, was guarded by a booth and one of those red-and-white striped arms that could be raised and lowered.

There was a single long, narrow building, its roof dotted with half a dozen industrial fans.

Parked along the fence were a handful of open-topped cargo containers, the kind you’d see hitched to the back of a truck.

Chase was inclined to investigate further, but her goggles beeped, and a low battery warning flashed in front of her eyes.

“Shit.”

Chase was continually recording video from the drone but snapped a few still photographs, as well.

Rather than fly over the maze again, she took an alternate route back, flying east to the dirt road that led toward the subdivision. The alarm beeped again, and Chase pressed the return to home button on the controller. She was about to take the goggles off—the drone was fully automated now—when she spotted something.

A yellow tractor by the side of the road.

Chase squinted, zoomed in.

The hood was popped and there was a man in overalls leaning into it.

A yellow tractor…

Lee Thomas had mentioned seeing a yellow tractor the night that Archie Beaumont went missing.

The drone returned, landed on the grass in almost the exact spot it had taken off.

Chase packed everything into the black case.

Before leaving Tate, she’d promised him that she would do some recon and come back immediately afterward.

But with Sheriff Thomas and his deputies all searching the maze, what harm was there in speaking to the farmer in the yellow tractor?

Chapter 17

Normally, interviewing a lone farmer during the middle of the day posed little risk to an FBI Agent.

But this wasn’t a normal town and there was a killer on the loose.

Chase unsnapped the thumb break on her gun holster as she approached. The man was still buried in the hood of his massive tractor, and she set the drone case down on the gravel road to ensure that her hands were free.

“Excuse me,” she said, announcing her presence.

The man pulled back and glanced in her direction.

He looked a lot like Joseph Bell, the first Maple Hollow native they’d come across. Same overalls, same freckled and weathered face. His head was buzzed, and what little hair he had was bleached from the sun.

He appeared to be in his late forties but given the hard manual labor that his thick arms and forearms alluded to, Chase guessed that he could be much younger.

The man didn’t seem happy to see her. He wiped his greasy palms on the thighs of his overalls.

“Who are you?”

Chase considered lying, saying something along the lines of, I’m a lost and lonely tourist, but she didn’t know how much time she had to develop a false persona before Sheriff Thomas and his men completed their search.

Although the road wasn’t a direct route to town from the maze, she had to assume that at least one of the deputies would come this way.

“Chase Adams, FBI.”

The man squinted and cleared sweat from his forehead with the back of a bare arm. It amazed her how everyone in the town seemed to be perspiring despite the low temperatures. She, herself, was sporting a fall jacket today and still felt the chill.

“Don’t got nothin’ to say to you.”

The man returned to fiddling with the tractor’s engine.

Why am I not surprised?

“Well, I’ve got a few questions for you.”

The man said nothing, just continued to work on his tractor.

“What’s your name?”

No answer.

“Hey.”

Still nothing.

“Hey!”

The man glared at her now.

“You’re gearing up for the festival, right? Like everyone else in Maple Hollow?” The farmer’s lips became a thin line. “Well, I’ll tell you what, I can drag you down to the Albany office for questioning, which is a couple hours from here.” She mock-checked her watch. “Maybe even longer with the traffic building the way it is. Keep you there for a while. When I’m finally done with you, you’re going to have to find your own way back. That’ll put a major dent in your preparation, don’t you think?”

The man bared his teeth.

“But I don’t want to do that,” Chase continued. “I just want to ask you a few questions, starting with your name.”

It looked as if the man was going to call her bluff, but he didn’t.

“Ed Barton.”

“Good. Good. Okay, Ed, why don’t you tell me where you were the night that Archie Beaumont went missing.”

“Here.”

“Here, as in, in Maple Hollow?”

“No. Here, as in right here. Fucking tractor breaks down in this spot almost on a nightly basis.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like Archie or one of his friends?”

Chase hated that she had to do this, three nights now after the boy’s disappearance. It was basic investigative work, something that the sheriff or one of his deputies should have done the day after someone reported that Archie hadn’t shown up at school.

The man wiped his forehead again. This time his arm came back dry.

“I seen the sheriff’s kid with Archie, yeah. They was walking together—naw, not really together; Archie was ahead of him.”

Chase pictured the aerial view of Sheriff Thomas’ place.

“Where?”

The man made a non-specific gesture in the direction of the sheriff’s farm.

“When you saw Lee Thomas, was he already on this side of his property?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure you saw Lee Thomas coming in this direction? Could it be that Archie was walking toward you and Lee back the other way?” Chase pressed.

Ed shook his head.

“Naw. They was both coming this way.”

This wasn’t different from the story that Lee had told her. He’d said that the three of them had gone east to drink a beer—smoke a joint—and then they’d separated. Timmy going one way, Archie walking toward the subdivision, Lee going home.

What Ed was saying now suggested that Lee had already passed his house and was following Archie.

Chase desperately wanted to speak to Lee again, get him to confirm that he’d gone straight home, but that was out of the question.

“What about last night?”

“What about it?”

Chase frowned.

This was like pulling teeth.

“Did your tractor break down last night?”

“Lady, that’s why I’m here.”

Lady… at least he didn’t say ma’am.

“What time did it break down?”

“Around eight. Tried to fix it for about an hour, but no luck. Walked home. Came back today, hit up the hardware store first.”

“Did you see anything unusual last night?”

“Naw.”

Chase didn’t think that she would be able to get any more out of Ed.

“Thanks for your help.”

“Hmm.”

The man ducked beneath his hood and Chase walked away. As she bent to pick up her drone case, she froze.

Most of the dirt on the main road had been compacted by tractors like Ed’s. But when it broke down last night, he had pulled off to the side. Two wheels sat on the grass. Toward the edge, the gravel road was looser, less compact—except for one spot right next to her drone. The gravel there was unnaturally smooth as if it had been swept aside.

Or compressed by a falling body.

The cleared area was roughly the size of a teenage kid.

Chase noticed something else, as well.

She pinched a little of the sand and rolled it with her fingers.

It was thick, dark.

Congealed.

It could be oil or some other tractor fluid—there was only a small amount of it.

But it could also be something else.

Chase lifted her eyes, saw Ed peering at her from around the side of the tractor.

Not sure what else to do, she gave the man a nod, and then stood and made her way back to her husband and partner.

Chapter 18

“Piece of fucking shit!” Tate yelled. He picked up the mangled yellow boot and launched it into the tall grass by the side of the road.

Chase watched in bemusement.

Then he balled his fists and just screamed, long and loud.

Several tourists who were walking toward their parked cars, sans boot, quickly got into their vehicles.

Chase’s phone started to ring and, wanting to give Tate another few moments to vent, answered without coming forward.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Chase, it’s Linus. I did some research into Angus Peterson, as you asked. He’s in Albany Regional Prison, maximum security. Got twenty-five years for each of the two kids he confessed to killing. Serving his sentences concurrently.”

None of this was new to Chase. The next part, however, was.

“The weird thing is that Angus has a daughter. Don’t know where she was living before, but now she’s living in Maple Hollow.”

“What? I thought Angus was from Albany?”

“He is.”

“Let me get this straight, Angus, a drifter from Albany, is convicted of murdering two Maple Hollow kids and his daughter is now living in Maple Hollow? The location of these murders”

“Yep. Amy Peterson lives at 8 Pine Dr.”

“Pine drive… that wouldn’t happen to be near Westwood Way, would it?”

“No clue. But it’s in the new subdivision.”

Chase was confused by all of this.

“How does the daughter of a convicted killer, who was a drifter, afford a house in the new subdivision?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“When did she move in?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“Linus—”

“The real estate records for that entire subdivision are locked.”

Another surprise.

“What do you mean ‘locked’?” Chase asked. “Isn’t the sale of homes public information?”

“Typically, but apparently not in Maple Hollow. I can do some more digging… some, uhh, less than, uhh, official—”

“Do it.”

“Done. You guys still okay out there?”

“For now. Thanks, Linus.”

Tate had calmed down by the time Chase approached him.

She lowered her eyes to the rental’s tire. It looked rough, the rim warped in at least two places.

“Got it off?”

“Yeah,” Tate said dryly. He picked up the tools—a set of bolt cutters, a wrench, and some other piece of equipment that Chase didn’t recognize—and angrily tossed them in the trunk. “You find anything?”

“I did. Come on, let’s go for a drive. I’ll tell you on the way.”

Tate started the car and cranked the steering wheel to get out from between the vehicles he’d paralleled parked between.

A grinding sound came from the front right tire and even when the car straightened it started to click with every revolution.

“I’m not paying for that. The rental company can sue Maple Hollow for all I care.” Tate gripped the wheel tightly. He sighed, shook his head. “Where are we going, Chase?”

“To pay Angus Peterson a little visit.”

***

During the hour and a half drive to Albany Regional Prison, Chase went over everything she could access about Angus Peterson’s arrest, confession, and subsequent trial.

Several things immediately stood out to her.

First, was the fact that Sheriff Aiden Thomas had both arrested the man and been present during the confession, which had taken place in an Albany police precinct.

“The remains of two Maple Hollow residents, Paul Lane and Keith Inkwell, fifteen and sixteen years of age, respectively, were found in a cornfield north of the downtown core,” Chase read out loud. “They don’t mention what they mean by remains, specifically, but that sure sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

“Who was the coroner?”

“Guess,” Chase said reflexively. She hated Linus’ guessing games but had to admit that there was an allure to them.

“Antoine Mills.”

“Yep.”

She scanned more of the pages on her phone, started reading again when she came across Angus’ confession.

“I was wandering through Maple Hollow, trying to find somewhere to rob. Was told to stop loitering by a bald man in the grocery store.”

“Antoine Mills again?”

“Doesn’t say, but probably. Get this, ‘I was sleeping in a field when I heard two kids approach. I saw that they had backpacks on. I snuck up behind them, told them to hand over their bags. One of the kids did, but the other was apprehensive. He attacked me, so I stabbed him. The other boy tried to run but he’d seen my face, so I caught him and stabbed him, too. Then I found a rock and used it to bash their skulls in.”

Tate whistled.

“Jesus.”

Chase lowered the phone, stared through the windshield.

Something was off here, and it had nothing to do with the bluntness of the man’s confession.

She turned her attention back to her phone and performed a quick search for Angus Peterson’s name. There was a brief Wikipedia entry on him, outlining his childhood and then listing his early crimes, most of which were just petty misdemeanors. The largest section of the article, scant as it was on details, outlined Angus’ arrest and confession in Maple Hollow.

“Angus dropped out of school when he was only twelve,” she told her partner. “But in his written confession, he uses the word ‘apprehensive’.” Chase read the relevant section again. “One of the kids did, but the other was apprehensive.” She paused. “Tate, let’s say you only have a grade five education, lived the rest of your life on the streets, addicted to meth. Would you say that a kid you asked to hand over their backpack and then murdered was ‘apprehensive’?”

“No.”

“What word would you use?”

“What word would I use?” Tate shrugged. “I dunno. Reluctant. Resistant.”

“And if you only had a grade five education?”

“I’d probably say the kid just didn’t wanna give it up.”

“Exactly. Another thing: Angus says that he was in Maple Hollow to rob a store. Did he really think that two kids walking through a field with back packs had a lot of cash on them?”

“Maybe he was desperate, wanted food.”

“What food does a teenager have in their backpack at night? Especially boys? I remember Louisa’s kids. They were younger than Paul and Keith, but they finished everything she packed for them before lunch. Snacks and all.”

An idea started to form in her head.

“No mention of Angus’ daughter anywhere. Did she come with him to Maple Hollow?” she mused out loud.

When Tate had no answers for her, she went back to reading.

Then her jaw fell open.

“Shit, the guy I talked to today, the guy with the tractor?” Chase had already gone over what Ed Barton had told her with Tate but felt the need to reiterate.

“What about him?”

“He was a witness. It says here that Ed Barton saw Angus Peterson in the field around the time the kids were murdered.”

“And he was hanging about when Archie went missing.”

“Yeah. I wonder… if Ed saw Angus, did Angus see Ed? And if so, why didn’t he go after Ed like he did the kids?”

Another shrug from Tate.

“I don’t know.” They arrived at the Albany Regional Prison and Tate pulled into a vacant visitor spot. “Why don’t we ask him?”

Chapter 19

“Angus? No, he’s quiet. Keeps to himself,” the guard said as he led Chase and Tate down a well-lit hall. “I mean, at first, yeah, he was a bit of a target. Inmates who kill kids usually are. But nothing over the past two years or so.”

The guard stopped in front of a heavy metal door. He removed a key from his belt and slid it into the lock. Before turning it, he paused.

“Sheriff Thomas didn’t send you, did he?”

Chase wasn’t sure how to interpret the man’s tone.

“Definitely not,” Tate said with a scoff.

“Ah, okay.”

Again, ambiguous.

The guard turned the key and started to open the door.

“Just a sec,” Chase said. “You know Sheriff Thomas?”

“Do I know him? Everybody knows him.”

That response was much easier to understand.

“I’m guessing he’s not all that popular around here.”

The guard grimaced.

“We don’t really like to talk shit about other members of law enforcement.”

“I get it. It’s not something I enjoy doing, either,” Chase admitted. “But I’ll share my opinion of the sheriff, just so that you know where I stand.”

The guard nodded.

“He’s a fucking asshole. A narcissist, God complex. I’ve been in the FBI for a while now, Tate even longer. We’ve come across some real sick bastards. Things that would make what Angus Peterson confessed to look like baby games. Honestly? If he wasn’t a sheriff, I wouldn’t be surprised if Aiden Thomas was the one in chains.”

This speech hadn’t been planned but now that she’d said these words, Chase realized that they rang true.

“Yeah, that’s Sheriff Thomas, all right. We tend to stay clear of him and Maple Hollow. And by we, I mean Albany cops.”

The man appeared pensive, then finally opened the door.

“You’ve got as long as you need. I’ll be right here. Just holler or knock when you’re done.”

Angus Peterson was already in the interview room. He was wearing a dark green shirt and matching pants, with DOC written in bold black letters on his right breast.

In the Wikipedia article of the man, Chase had come across a photo of Angus from his mugshot. His face had been long and narrow, and his skin was covered in pimples. He’d also had a patchy gray beard.

She was hard-pressed to believe that this was the same man.

His face had filled out, his skin had cleared, and he was clean-shaven.

“Mr. Peterson,” Tate said as they entered the room. “We’re with the FBI out of Virginia. Thanks for accepting to meet with us.”

“Nice to meet you.” Angus’ voice was soft, a little on the high-pitched side.

Whoever had put Angus in the room had set up two chairs across from him.

Chase sat in one, Tate in the other.

“We don’t want to take up too much of your time, just have a few questions for you.”

“Okay.”

“This is about the Maple Hollow murders,” Chase said, trying to get a reaction out of the man.

It did; but not the one she’d expected.

The man’s eyes moistened.

“Okay.”

“You can have a lawyer present if you want.”

“No, I don’t need one.”

“Right. Well, why don’t you tell us a little about why you went to Maple Hollow in the first place? I mean, you were homeless, right?”

“Yes. I was in a bad spot. Addicted to drugs. No job, no home.”

“Why Maple Hollow? You were planning on robbing a store, right?”

“That was my plan.”

“And you got chased off, that’s why you were in the field that night?”

“Yes.”

“So… I’ll ask again, why Maple Hollow? Why not stay in Albany? Surely, there are more potential targets there.”

Angus leaned forward.

“Why are you asking me this? I admitted to the murders. I hate what I did, but I’m at peace with it.”

“I understand. I just have to ask. The man who saw you in the field that day, Ed Barton, did you happen to see him, too?”

Angus sat back and his lips twitched.

“I saw him,” the man admitted.

“Why didn’t you go after him? I mean, after you killed the first kid you said that you killed the second because he’d seen your face. If you saw Ed and thought he saw you, why didn’t you hunt him down, too?”

Angus remained silent for a good thirty seconds. He seemed conflicted.

“He was… too far.”

“But did you try? Did you run—”

“No,” Angus said flatly. “Why are you asking me this?”

You didn’t chase him because you didn’t see him. And I don’t think Ed saw you, either.

“What did he look like? Ed, I mean?”

“He… he… he was a farmer.”

“Long hair? Short? Tall? Fat?” Chase pressed.

Angus grew increasingly agitated.

“I dunno—a fucking farmer. It was dark…”

If someone had seen her murder two kids, Chase would have committed the witness’ face to memory.

No, she was convinced that Angus never saw Ed.

She let this rest.

“Was your… was your daughter with you when you went to Maple Hollow? Amy, that’s her name, right?”

Up until this point, Angus had been a model prisoner. Responsive, if a little anxious. No hint of a man capable of stabbing two kids and then bashing their skulls in with a stone. Now, however, the man’s eyes darkened and he tilted the top of his head forward. Despite the interview room being lit by harsh incandescent lighting, this movement caused the lower half of Angus’ face to become shrouded in shadows.

“My daughter was not involved.”

“Oh, I know. I’m only asking if she went to Maple Hollow with you.”

“Leave. Amy. Out. Of. This.” Each word was said as if it was their own complete sentence.

“Mr. Peterson,” Tate said, taking over. “Just tell us if your daughter came to Maple Hollow with you. We know she lives there now.”

“Guard!” Angus shouted. He faced the door. “Guard!”

“Touched a nerve?” Chase asked.

“Guard!”

The guard opened the door and entered the interview room.

“I want out of here,” Angus said desperately.

The guard gave them a look as he began unshackling Angus’ cuffs from the table.

“Just one more question, Angus,” Chase called as the inmate shuffled to the door. “Not about your daughter, okay?”

The man looked over his shoulder at her.

“What does ‘apprehensive’ mean?”

Angus snarled.

“How the fuck should I know?”

Chapter 20

The idea that had begun to incubate in Chase’s mind since reading Angus’ file had grown. Spread.

Proliferated and metastasized.

“We need to visit Amy Peterson,” she said once they were back in the rental.

“Agreed.”

The drive from Albany Regional back to Maple Hollow took just under two hours. Chase surmised that they’d spent more time driving to and from Albany than they had actually investigating the case.

Annoying, frustrating, and just the way that Sheriff Thomas wanted it.

The main drag was completely blocked now. A barricade had been set up, preventing cars from entering, turning it into a pedestrian-only street.

And it was busy. Two large buses had shipped in tourists, probably from Albany, maybe as far as New York City.

All oblivious to the fact that there was a killer on the loose.

Tate avoided most of the traffic and took the side road, the one that Chase had confronted Ed Barton, to the new subdivision.

She noted that the tractor had been repaired, or towed because it was no longer there.

And while the town might be busy, the subdivision was a ghost town.

Again, Chase wondered what the hell all these people did for work to be able to afford these houses. Unlike when they’d gone to see Brenda Focci, there was no Sheriff’s department vehicle following them. Chase assumed that the action in the town’s main strip was keeping the sheriff and his deputies busy.

Good, keep it that way.

The address that Linus had given them for Amy Peterson led them to a house that was indistinguishable from all of the others in the subdivision.

There was no car in the driveway, but Chase noticed a light on inside.

Neither she nor Tate expected Amy to talk to them—they didn’t even expect Amy to open the door for them—but they had to try.

This was one time that Chase was glad she was wrong.

After just the first knock, a woman answered. She had narrow features like her father and the same almost demure way of speaking that Angus had used when they’d first entered the interview room.

“Amy? Amy Peterson?” Chase asked.

“Yes?” The woman gripped the door frame as if ready to close it again at a moment’s notice.

“We’re with the FBI. I was wondering if we could come in and half a little chat?”

Amy grew suspicious and she swept a few strands of thin dark hair behind her ear.

“Did… did the sheriff send you?”

Chase hesitated, unsure of what the right approach was here.

Tate stepped up.

“Fuck the sheriff,” he said boldly, and Chase cringed.

She was tempted to intervene but stopped herself, let her partner work.

He was always better at interpreting subtle cues to take their investigation from where it was—essentially, nowhere—to where they needed to go.

Finding and stopping a killer before they struck again.

Amy eyed them suspiciously and Tate doubled-down.

“We’re with the FBI, flew in from Virginia. There’s a killer on the loose, Amy. We want to catch them, and Sheriff Thomas is doing everything he can to get in our way. So, yeah; fuck the Sheriff.”

The woman’s hand tightened on the door and Chase was almost certain that she was going to slam it in their faces. Instead, she peered out, looked up and down the sleepy street, then ushered them inside.

Amy quickly shut the door behind them and locked it.

“You want a coffee or something?”

“No, we’re fine, thank you.”

Amy nodded, led them to the kitchen table instead of the front sitting room, likely because the latter was visible from the street.

Unlike Brenda Focci’s place, there were no photos on the fridge. No photos anywhere, in fact.

Made sense.

The daughter of a drifter, Amy likely shared her father’s mentality, fancy new house or not.

Old habits died hard.

Ingrained patterns were nearly impossible to break.

Chase would know.

The unpredictable nature of Amy and her father’s previous lives would make her suspicious, and she would want to be flexible enough to just up and leave at a moment’s notice.

She might live here, but she wasn’t comfortable.

Might never be.

“Amy, we visited your father today,” Chase said softly after all three of them were seated. There was an uncomfortable symmetry between this and the interview from which they’d just come.

No shackles, no bars, no guard, but similar, none-the-less.

“How… how is he?”

“Actually, pretty good. Looks healthy. The guard says that he keeps to himself. Do you ever get to go see him?”

Amy lowered her eyes and shook her head.

“I used to, but Sheriff Thomas asked me to stop.”

Asked?

More like told.

“Did he say why?”

Another head shake.

“No. But… I know why.” Amy paused, appeared pensive. “I was trying to convince my dad to appeal.”

“You don’t think he killed those kids?”

Amy’s eyes darkened.

“I know he didn’t.”

Tate leaned forward.

“Look, neither my partner nor I want to open old wounds, but, as you can imagine, details about your father’s case, about everything that happens in Maple Hollow, is hidden under a veil of mystery. We’re just trying to understand. Trying to get to the bottom of this. Amy, your father… he confessed.”

“I know that. But it’s bullshit.” Her voice was stronger now, similar to how Angus had changed when Chase had brought up his daughter. “I’m not going to sit here and say that my father was a great man or even a good man. He wasn’t, isn’t, I guess. He was an addict, cared more about getting high than anything else.”

This was something that Chase could relate to. When she’d been hooked on heroin, the only way to assuage the anxiety of not knowing when or where your next fix would come from was to get high. A vicious, destructive, and often deadly cycle.

“But he isn’t a killer.”

Amy said this with such authority that Chase surmised someone without her experience would be inclined to agree with the statement. But she’d seen killers do the same thing, claim innocence with ultimate conviction, even when she knew with absolute certainty that they were lying.

“Forgive us, Amy, but—”

“I was with him.”

Chase was taken aback by the statement.

“You were… with him?” Tate repeated, encouraging the woman to expound.

“Yes.” A strong nod. “That night, when those kids died? I was with my father. He managed to score in town, smoked up. Passed out in a farmer’s field. I stayed with him for a while, but then I got hungry. I told you already, all my dad cared about back then was getting high. Anyway, I walked back into town to get something to eat. When I returned, the sheriff had my dad in cuffs.”

“I don’t mean to challenge you but, couldn’t your dad have woken up while you were gone?” Tate asked.

“No way. My dad was a heavy user. Heavy. When he got high, he got really high. There’s no way he could’ve tied his shoes let alone chased and killed two high school kids. The Sheriff had to basically put him on his shoulder just to get him to the squad car. My dad… he’s a lot of things, but he’s not a killer.”

Chase looked at Tate, and he looked back. She cocked her head just a little.

Message received.

“I want to believe you, Amy, but he confessed. I read it. We both did.”

Amy pursed her lips.

“I know. But my dad didn’t kill those kids.”

“Then why confess?”

For a long time, Amy said nothing. Rather than answering, she posed a question of her own.

“Do you think it’s weird that even with my dad in prison, three more kids go missing? And that one of them has their guts torn out, just like the sheriff said that my dad did to those other two?”

“I thought they were stabbed,” Tate remarked.

“They were, but their guts were also—”

“Wait,” Chase interrupted. “What do you mean three kids? I thought only Ian and Archie went missing.”

“You… you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Gill Cromwell, another high school student, didn’t show up to class today. Everyone’s talking about it in town.”

Not to us, Chase thought glumly. Then her mind turned to what she’d seen with the drone.

Jesus, that’s what the sheriff and his deputies were doing. They were looking for another kid.

She stiffened.

“Amy, why do you think your dad confessed?” Tate repeated, asking the woman more directly this time.

Amy lowered her head and took a breath.

“I think you should go.”

“But we’re—”

Amy’s eyes shot up.

“Please. You need to go.”

“Don’t shut us out like everyone else in this town, Amy. We’re trying to help,” Chase said, finding her tongue.

“Oh, like you helped Archie?” Amy snapped. “And Gill?”

“We’re—”

“Please leave. Now. Or I will call the sheriff.”

Tate put his hand on Chase’s.

She took the hint and they both rose to their feet.

“Thank you,” Tate said.

Amy closed the door behind them and Chase heard the lock immediately engage.

Chapter 21

“Another fucking kid, Tate? We’re dicking around, driving back and forth to Albany, while the killer takes another victim?” Chase was incensed.

“I know, this is fucked up. But…” he trailed off.

“But what, Tate? But fucking what?”

Tate paused as he started the car.

“But maybe we’re going about this all wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we keep looking into the sheriff, his deputies, even the coroner.”

“With good reason.”

“Agreed, but we keep saying that the entire town is strange.”

Chase wasn’t sure where her partner was going with this.

And it annoyed her to no end.

“It is. New downtown, new expensive subdivision. Daughter of a convicted killer living in a brand new house.”

Tate smiled a knowing smile.

“Exactly. Give Linus a call.”

Chase was still in the dark, but she dialed the man’s number, anyway.

“Hey, Chase, was just about to reach out. Did some digging into Amy Peterson. You’re not going to believe how much she paid for her house.”

“What?” she snapped, sick of these games.

“A buck. She bought the house for a dollar.”

Chase’s eyes widened.

“A dollar?”

“Yep,” Linus confirmed.

“Who sold the place? The sheriff?”

“You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to figure that out. The number of shell companies, the rerouting, the way this information was hidden? It was close to as bad as the Duffy Group stuff.”

“And?” Chase couldn’t keep her frustration from creeping into her voice.

“You’re right—kind of. Sheriff Thomas sold her the house.”

Chase looked at Tate.

“How? He owned the house? I thought he lived on a farm.”

“Oh, he does. But here’s the thing, Chase: Sheriff Aiden Thomas didn’t just own the house that he sold to Amy Peterson, he owned all of them.”

Chase had been skeptical before but now she was downright dubious.

“Linus, what are you talking about?”

“It’s complicated, but Sheriff Thomas took out a loan against everything. Against his house, farm, the abattoir that he is the majority owner of, and the town itself. I’m talking the downtown core, the buildings, everything in the buildings, the roads, infrastructure, everything.”

“Jesus, how is that possible?”

“He abolished the city council, the mayor. Sheriff Thomas truly is the dictator of Maple Hollow.”

Chase tried to wrap her head around this.

“But… the people who bought the houses, they own them, right?”

“They do, but they all signed their mortgages with the same bank that Sheriff Thomas used to build them. If they default, the bank will take them over, along with all of Maple Hollow.”

“I don’t… get it. The sheriff leverages the town to build the subdivision. Then he sells the houses to the people living there, who I assume didn’t all just win the lottery, and have to take out mortgages. If the town doesn’t do well, the home owners can’t pay. They can’t pay, the banks repo the homes. The banks then come after the Sheriff and his home and when that’s not enough, they take everything else.”

Chase thought about Sheriff Thomas, his personality, his ‘profile’ if you will.

She didn’t think he was above just making a quick buck and then heading north to Canada, but that wasn’t Sheriff Thomas. The man got off on being in power. On the run in Canada, pockets flush or not, he would be forced into a life of anonymity.

“Was Sheriff Thomas just out for a quick buck?” she asked dubiously.

“No. He sold the houses to the residents dirt cheap.”

“Then I don’t understand any of this shit.”

“I do,” Tate said, eyes locked on the road.

“Enlighten me.”

“Sheriff Thomas wasn’t trying to make money off the sale of the homes. He was trying to build this place up.” Tate rubbed his jaw, winced. “You’ve seen him, his ego is bigger than his fucking gut. He wants to turn Maple Hollow into a metropolis, to be the fucking king.”

The depth of Sheriff Thomas’ egomania finally came to the fore.

“That’s why he’ll do anything to make sure this festival goes down without a hitch. He needs the town to make money.”

“He needs the residents to make money, too,” Linus added. “So, they can pay the bank. Otherwise, the bank will take everything back.”

“That’s why he’ll do anything to keep this festival going without a hitch. And I mean anything. Like putting an innocent man behind bars for murders that he didn’t commit. Convince him to confess in return for a home for his daughter to live in.”

Linus and Tate went quiet.

This was bad. But it got worse.

“Angus Peterson didn’t kill those kids. Which means that for the past four years, there’s been a killer on the loose. First Paul, then Keith. Then Ian. Now Archie and… what did Amy say the kid who went missing last night’s name is?”

“Gill,” Tate replied.

“And Gill. Linus, I need you to go through all of the reports from the missing kids. Everything you can find. There has to be something there that points at a suspect, one that isn’t Angus Peterson.”

“On it.”

Chase thought of something else.

“Look into the sheriff’s son, Lee. Ed Barton said that he saw the boy walking toward Archie when he went missing, not the other way. In fact, look into Ed Barton while you’re at it. He said that he saw Angus Peterson in the field near those kids, never mentioned anything about Amy but she claims to have been there. You got all that?”

“Yep. I’ll need a couple of hours, but if there’s something, I’ll find it.”

“I know you will. Good.”

She hung up.

“Chase?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s something happening in town,” Tate said.

Chase looked up.

There was a commotion on the edge of the downtown core. She spotted three of the deputies pushing several tourists back, making room for the sheriff. Most of them had their cell phones out, taking videos.

Sheriff Thomas was making a scene. He was shouting something that Chase couldn’t quite make out above the crowd noise and the tire of their rental car making that stupid clicking, whining sound.

But she didn’t need to hear him.

Seeing was enough.

In front of the sheriff was a small man with greasy hair. His face was red and although Chase couldn’t be sure, it appeared as if his nose was swollen.

It’s another Angus Peterson, she thought. It’s another man that the Sheriff is going to force a confession out of for crimes he didn’t commit.

Chapter 22

Chase wanted to get out of the car to talk to the sheriff or one of the deputies, or, at the very least, get close enough to listen, but knew that she’d only be sandbagged.

Or worse.

She didn’t have to, though.

There were dozens of people taking videos. Within ten minutes, they’d all be uploaded online.

Chase was tempted to call Linus back but didn’t want to overload the man.

There was, however, someone else who would be perfect for this job.

Chase called Georgina.

“Hey, Aunt Chase, how’s it going in the boonies?”

“Oh, just great. Lovely weather. Listen, I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“You know your podcaster friend?”

“Raven.”

“Yeah, Raven. I’m thinking she should do a special episode on Maple Hollow.”

Chase heard Georgina take a deep breath.

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad. There should be dozens…” Chase looked out the window. Sheriff Thomas was roughly shoving the perp into the back of a car. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t not smiling, either. “Make that hundreds of videos online about this place. Just tell her that if she finds anything to let me know first before she does her podcast. Anything about the sheriff or the town.”

Chase figured that with Raven’s experience in podcasting—her niece had gushed about how popular her friend’s show had become—she’d know what to look for.

“Okay. Be safe, Chase.”

“I will. Thanks, Georgina.”

The scene outside grew even more ridiculous. Before getting behind the wheel, the not-unsmiling sheriff waved to the onlookers.

Waved.

Like he was some sort of hero honoring his guests.

“What an asshole,” Tate muttered. Then to Chase, “What do you want to do?”

Chase wasn’t sure. They were stuck in a sort of stasis until they figured out what the hell was going on in Maple Hollow.

They couldn’t just wait around, though.

The sheriff may have arrested a new scapegoat, but they had no idea if Gill had been found.

Or if he was alive.

Hell, they didn’t even know if the rest of Archie Beaumont had been discovered.

“Chase?”

“Give me a second.”

Chase scanned the crowd, not really sure what she was looking for. She let her instincts take over, thought about her voodoo.

Should she have touched Archie’s remains?

The thought revolted her.

Should she have touched Brenda Focci? Angus or Amy Peterson?

She felt useless.

She felt guilty.

“There,” she said, extending a finger. Tate followed where she was pointing with his eyes.

“Where?”

“There.” Standing away from the tourists was Ella Sacker. Her eyes were still red, her cheeks raw.

Tate turned the wheel—chunk, chunk, chunk—and made a wide berth around the barricades blocking cars from entering the main drag.

He opened the window, gestured for the few stragglers trying to catch the best-angled shot of the sheriff to move out of the way. Tate was avoiding sending them scattering by honking his horn, not wanting to draw the sheriff or his deputies’ attention.

It was slow going and before they even got close to Ella Sacker, the woman turned and started to walk away.

“Stop the car,” Chase said.

“What?”

“Stop the car, Tate.”

He did and Chase hopped out. She ran up to Ella, startling the woman.

“I’m sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

Ella licked her lips, wiped her nose.

“I can’t be seen talking to you.”

“Then let’s not be seen.”

Before the woman could argue, Chase draped a hand over her shoulder and forced her head down. Then she hurried back to Tate’s car, put her in the back.

“Drive, Tate. Let’s get the fuck out of this town.”

***

There weren’t many places that Chase thought they could go that were beyond the sheriff’s influence, other than heading to Albany or their hotel.

But she didn’t want to do that.

They needed to stay close.

Tate took them just outside the city limits, found a side road, and parked.

Ella had said nothing during the drive.

Chase put her arm on the seat and turned around to face the woman.

“You okay?” Admittedly, not the greatest opener.

“Not really. I told you, I was fired. They gave me two weeks’ pay. After that, I’m going to lose my house.”

“You live in a new build?”

“Yes. The deal was too good to be true, but I could afford it, you know? When I had a job.”

“I’m sorry, Ella. I am. Can’t you find work somewhere else in town?”

The woman scoffed.

“There is no work in town. Everything’s taken. Even if there was, the sheriff wouldn’t let anyone hire me. I’m done. I’m cooked.”

Chase felt for the woman. It was their fault that she’d lost her job. But as bad as Ella Sacker’s life being turned upside-down from them coming to Maple Hollow is, there were more important fish to fry.

“We will do what we can to get your job back, Ella,” Tate said. His words sounded empty, and Ella frowned, wiped her nose again.

“Thanks.”

Hollow as the town’s name.

“How long have you lived in Maple Hollow, Ella?” Chase asked gently.

“Eleven years. I was here before the sheriff arrived.”

“What was it like back then?”

Ella’s shoulders rose and fell.

“Different. I mean, it wasn’t great. Just a farming town.”

“But you had a mayor, right?”

“Yes. Phil Katz. Had a different sheriff, too. Manny… Manny something. Can’t remember now.”

“And Aiden Thomas worked at the abattoir? He wasn’t a deputy or anything like that?”

“I didn’t know him well, then. I guess not too many people did. But, yeah, sounds about right. He kinda kept to himself.”

This did not sound like the Aiden Thomas Chase knew.

“The year that Aiden threw his hat in the ring to become the sheriff was the same year all our cattle in Maple Hollow got wiped out. Some sort of fungus or disease. I dunno. Health Department came in, made us put them all down.”

“Aiden Thomas went up against the incumbent?” When Ella didn’t appear to understand, Chase clarified, “the existing sheriff?”

“Yes.”

She’d heard most of this already from Linus but wanted to get a firsthand account.

“Did people like the old sheriff?”

“I guess. He wasn’t bad. Not like Aiden. People here in Maple Hollow, they don’t really like change.” Ella’s eyes flicked upward. “Didn’t like change, I guess.”

“Had the old sheriff and the mayor worked together long?”

“Years. Long before I came to town.”

Chase was trying to understand. A town that didn’t like change, a mayor and sheriff working together for an extended period of time. Sure, the cattle disease threw a spanner in the mix, but…

“Ella, do you remember what Sherrif Thomas’ platform was? I’m just trying to wrap my brain around how he managed to become the sheriff in the first place.”

“Sure. He was all about change, about bigger and better things for Maple Hollow. I mean, we didn’t really take him seriously. Everyone knew that the cattle disease or whatever happened to the cows hurt him pretty bad what with the abattoir having no business. We were all hurting but Aiden had it worse than most. He was desperate. We had one other election for the sheriff before Aiden. I don’t remember his name, but he used to own the grocery store. Not Mills General, but the one before that—we didn’t have this new downtown back then. Anyways, everyone liked him, and he had some pretty good ideas about how to improve the town’s infrastructure. If I’m being honest, people liked him better than Manny. But even so, he didn’t get more than a third of the votes. The thing is, everyone trusted the mayor and the mayor always sided with the… what did you call it?”

“Incumbent,” Tate said.

“Right. The incumbent. The mayor sided with the incumbent, and they got elected. That’s just how things worked.”

“But the mayor didn’t side with the incumbent when Aiden ran,” Tate said.

“That’s the weird thing. Everyone expected him to. But then he said, no, I’m not supporting Manny this time. I’m going with the new guy, with Aiden Thomas.”

“Any idea why he would do that?”

“I’m not sure. There were some rumors about the mayor taking some of the town’s money and hiring this, like, PR firm or whatever? Trying to boost Maple Hollow’s tourism? But they just stole the money and ran.”

Or the mayor, Phil Katz, took the money for himself and Aiden found out.

Used it as leverage.

“So—”

Ella interrupted Chase.

“But even then, even with the mayor’s support, I don’t think that Aiden would’ve gotten in. If it weren’t for his…”

Chase raised an eyebrow, waited for Ella to continue.

“Except for what?”

The woman shifted her weight in her seat and glanced out the window.

“If his son hadn’t died.”

Chase balked at this, thought that perhaps Ella losing her job and the inevitability of losing her home next had affected the woman much more than she’d first thought.

“Ella, I met Sheriff Thomas’ son. I met Lee in his office, remember?”

Ella winced.

Of course she remembered, it was the reason she’d lost her job.

“Not Lee,” the woman said softly. “But Ira.”

Who the fuck is Ira?

Tate appeared as confused as she was.

“… Ira?”

“Yeah,” Ella swallowed hard. “Sheriff Thomas had another son. A year or so younger than Lee. He was… I guess we can’t say retarded anymore.”

“On the spectrum?” Chase offered.

“Yeah, that’s what they call it. Had to drop out of school and his dad had him work in the abattoir.”

“What happened to him?”

Ella took a deep, shuddering breath.

“He was climbing a tree on the sheriff’s property. Fell, broke both legs, hit his head. Was in a coma for about a week but he didn’t make it. This was right before the election and… well, I guess the townsfolk had sympathy for him. That combined with the mayor’s blessing was enough to help him win.”

Chase was flabbergasted. She had no idea that Sheriff Thomas had another son, no knowledge of the boy’s untimely death. Or timely death, depending on how you looked at it.

There was something rotten in Maple Hollow, all right. It may have started with the cows, but it had quickly spread to the people.

“Ella, who started the Thanksgiving Festival?”

“Oh, we’ve always had a Thanksgiving Festival. Everyone gets together and brings their final harvest, and we have a big feast.”

“But I’m guessing that it was never like the way it is now, not when the old mayor and sheriff were in charge?”

“Nothing like it. Sheriff Thomas said he’d make the festival huge, get tourists to come from all around.”

Chase detected a hint of nostalgia in the woman’s tone.

“Ella, what was Ira like?”

“I mean… Maple Hollow’s a small town. He didn’t have too many friends.”

For so little words, Ella had said a lot.

“Thank you, Ella. And, I promise, I’m going to get your job back.”

Chase meant these words but they both knew that this would never be possible if Sheriff Thomas was still in charge.

Chase made another promise, then.

One to herself.

To get rid of Sheriff Thomas and the poison that he’d crop-dusted the town with.

Chapter 23

To avoid being seen by any of the sheriff’s men, Tate dropped Ella off at the edge of town.

And then they just sat in the car, considering everything that Ella had told them.

It was the first time that anybody in this godforsaken town had actually been open to them. And they’d learned more in the past half hour than they had during the two days that they had been in and around Maple Hollow.

“How long do you think that it’s gonna take Sheriff Thomas to get a confession out of that poor guy he arrested?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Chase said.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d love to have another chat with the sheriff’s kid.”

Chase was of the same mind and yet, she was hesitant. The last time they’d spoken to Lee, even though they hadn’t known at the time that he was the sheriff’s son, it had cost Ella her job, Tate nearly ended up with a broken jaw, and their car had been booted.

At least now they knew why he was so protective of the boy, given what happened to Ira.

What would the sheriff do if he found out they went to talk to Lee in his home?

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Chase asked.

“No. Not at all.” Tate cranked the wheel. “Which is probably why we should do it.”

***

On the drive to the Thomas farm, Tate opened up a little.

“Let me just throw something out at you, tell me what you think.”

“Sure.”

“Aiden Thomas finds some dirt on the mayor, gets him to back his bid to become sheriff, then his son dies and he gets the sympathy vote, too. Then, on the anniversary of this son’s death, he decides that what happened to Ira isn’t fair. He wants to make others suffer for what happened to his son. Starts to take out his immense anger on other kids. To mitigate his risk of being caught, he gets some drifter to cop to the crimes and, in return, basically gives the man’s daughter a house, something he was incapable of doing. How does that sound?”

The exact same theory had crossed Chase’s mind, simplistic as it may be. But in real life, serial killers weren’t evil geniuses, orchestrating Grand Master chess-level moves. They were just animals with an itch that they needed to scratch.

Except…

“Doesn’t make sense, Tate,” Chase said softly. “Everything we know about the sheriff suggests that he wants this town to become huge. And to do that, they need to keep growing this festival.”

“Right, but you saw all those tourists with cameras. I bet a lot of them come here because of the murders.”

That made more sense.

“Okay, I’ll bite. He kills those first two kids and Maple Hollow gets a rep. But why kill again? Ian, Archie, maybe Gill. Angus Peterson was already in jail; Sheriff Thomas couldn’t exactly blame him for their deaths. He’s an asshole, but he can’t be so stupid that he wouldn’t realize that more deaths would mean more investigations.”

“You heard the prison guard. Albany cops stay away from Sheriff Thomas and Maple Hollow,” Tate said with a shrug.

“But we didn’t.”

They fell silent as they pulled up to the Thomas farm, said nothing as they walked to the front door.

Chase took a deep breath, readying herself for a fight.

This quickly proved unnecessary.

After just a few words, Moira Thomas, a diminutive woman with dark hair, invited them into her home.

Given Sheriff Thomas’ personality, Chase had expected to see crushed beer cans everywhere, empty bottles of bourbon lining the counter.

Maybe the severed heads of the old sheriff and mayor displayed on the mantle.

But the Thomas’ residence rivaled Brenda Focci’s and Amy Peterson’s when it came to cleanliness.

“Please, sit down,” Moira instructed.

Chase and Tate sat at a long, wooden table.

“I was just making some tea. Would you like some?”

Chase, still a little shaken by this polite, mild-mannered woman, agreed even though she was more of a coffee drinker.

She just didn’t want to do anything that might be considered rude.

Tate did the same.

The tea arrived in cute porcelain cups on saucers.

“So, you said you’re with the FBI?” Moira asked, warming her hands with her own cup.

“That’s right,” Tate said.

“And you’re here about that poor boy? Archie?”

“Yes.”

Evidently, while Aiden had told everyone in town about them, and instructed them not to talk to the FBI, he’d neglected to say anything to his wife.

“It’s awful, isn’t it? With the boy going missing?”

Missing?

No, Moira’s husband really didn’t keep her in the loop.

“Terrible,” Chase agreed. “That’s why we’re here, to try to figure out what happened to him.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure that I can help. Lee is friends with Archie, but I barely knew him. And… Lee… he’s been having a difficult time dealing with his missing friend.”

Chase recalled how the boy had acted when they’d spoken at the high school. Timmy had seemed distraught, but Lee? Lee was like a toned-down version of his father.

Was it just a front?

“They were close, Lee and Archie?”

“Yes. Very close. Do you… do you think maybe he ran away? Like that other boy? Archie’s parents are divorced, after all.”

No, I think he was disemboweled and put on display.

“We’re… not really sure,” Tate said hesitantly. Like Chase, he too was trying to get a read on the situation.

“I have some photos of Lee with Archie in them. If you want,” Moira started to stand, “I can get them for you.”

“No, that’s quite alright, Mrs. Thomas.”

Moira sat back down.

“Please call me Moira. You know, my husband would be the better person to talk to—” if you want to talk about the case, my husband isn’t here right now.”

“Actually, we wanted to ask you about something else. Moira,” Chase lowered her voice a little, leaned over her steaming cup of tea which she hadn’t touched yet, “I was hoping you could tell us about your son.”
Chase expected the woman’s face to fall, for her to become reserved, reticent. But the Thomas clan was full of surprises.

“Oh, he’s doing great. Apart from his friend going missing, he’s at the top of his class. And he’s an excellent ball player. Starting pitcher for the Maple Hollow Hawks.”

“No, no—not Lee. Your other son.”

Now, Moira’s expression changed.

“My… other son?”

Uh-oh.

“Yes. Ira. I just want to know a little about him.”

“Ira?”

Chase saw one of Tate’s eyebrows rise high on his forehead.

What the hell is going on? Did Ella lie to them? Make that whole bit about Sheriff Thomas having another son and using his death to garner sympathy from the townsfolk up?

“Moira, I apologize if we’ve been misinformed. You didn’t have another son named Ira?”

“No. Only Lee.”

The front door suddenly opened with a loud bang and Chase rocketed to her feet.

Oh, shit.

She expected to see Sheriff Thomas’ large shadow, his hands balled into fists. Tate also got up and moved in front of her.

He was breathing heavily.

The figure tossed a bag on the ground.

“Hey, Ma.”

It wasn’t the Sheriff, but Lee.

The boy took two steps and then noticed them.

“You can’t be here,” he said sharply.

“Lee,” Tate said, coming forward. “We’re just asking your mother a few questions.”

“You can’t be here. My dad said so.”

Tate put a hand out as the boy approached.

“We were just leaving.” Then, over his shoulder, he added, “Thank you for the tea, Moira. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

Lee stood in place, forcing Tate and Chase to walk around him to reach the door.

Chase knew that it was in their best interests just to leave.

Now.

But, fuck it, they were already here.

“If you have any questions, you can ask my dad. You’re not welcome here,” Lee said.

“We were just asking your mother about your brother. About Ira.”

Lee’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open.

“He died, didn’t he? About four years ago?”

Lee came forward so quickly that Chase barely had an opportunity to brace herself.

But Lee, unlike his father, didn’t strike.

He did, however, reach for Chase’s arm.

Tate stopped him from grabbing her.

“Come with me. Now.”

Chapter 24

“She doesn’t remember Ira.” As he spoke, Lee looked back at his house. “PTSD, I think. I don’t know.”

The simple mention of the teenager’s brother was enough to transform his attitude completely. Inside, he’d been ordering them around like his father But outside? He was a different person.

Calm, quiet, maybe even a little demure.

Chase mirrored this attitude.

“What happened, Lee? What happened to your brother?”

A hitching breath.

“He… he liked to play in the forest.” Lee’s eyes moved to an area behind the barn. “Didn’t have many friends, you know? Anyways, he climbed trees. He did it all the time.” A heavy exhale now. “It was dinner but when my Ma called him, he didn’t come in. Told me to go look for him. I… I… shit… I found him. I guess he’d fallen from a tree. He was in bad shape. Legs were all… fucked up, going the wrong way. I panicked. Screamed and ran. My dad was just gettin’ off work and he saw me, asked me what happened. I couldn’t even speak. Just pointed.” Lee wiped the tears from his cheeks. “He told me to go inside and call Antoine, so I did.”

Chase and Tate waited patiently for him to collect himself enough to continue.

“We brought Ira to a hospital in Albany. I thought the doctors could fix him, you know? Get him to wake up? But he wouldn’t. After a few days, my dad said we were taking him home. I was younger, thought that meant he was getting better. Didn’t know that we were bringing him home to die.”

Lee choked back a sob.

“I’m sorry, Lee,” Chase said.

“Yeah.”

Lee cleared his throat. It looked as if he was about to say more, but his cell phone rang. He took it out.

“It’s my dad. You should… you should probably get out of here.”

“One more thing: Lee, when you left Archie that night, the last time you saw him, you said you went straight home.”

Lee had his cell phone out and was itching to answer it. Chase suspected that if he didn’t, his father would get angry with him.

“That’s right.”

“And you came from over there?” Chase asked, pointing toward the open field.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!” Lee was exasperated. “Timmy went the other way, I walked with Archie to my house. Then he kept going.”

“Okay, thanks again.”

Lee turned and started to walk away. He was limping.

“What happened to your leg?”

The boy was just about to answer the call.

He looked more nervous now than ever.

“Hit by a pitch at baseball. You gotta go.”

Lee answered his phone as he hurried back inside.

“Hey, Tate?” Chase said.

“Yeah?” her partner appeared pensive.

“If you disemboweled someone, cut their heart out, what would be the perfect place to do it where no one would ask any questions?”

Chase knew she was doing it again, playing little games.

Couldn’t help it.

“The abattoir?”

“Yeah, the abattoir. Which Sheriff Thomas just happens to own.”

***

They drove toward the abattoir. There was only one road in, one road out.

“There something fucked up about this town,” Tate said absently. A guard booth and barricade blocked their path and Tate started to turn around.

“There’s something fucked up about that family,” Chase remarked.

“Yeah, no kidding. Sheriff, wife, even Lee… there’s something off about him, right?”

“He’s terrified of his father, but that’s no surprise.”

“Yeah…”

They’d hoped that the slaughterhouse would be shut down for the festival but that didn’t appear to be the case.

But they had to get inside.

The sun had started to set, and nightfall would be upon them in an hour or so. Maybe a little sooner.

“I bet once the festivities really start in town, this place will be empty.”

Chase cocked an eyebrow.

“What are you thinking?”

Tate smiled.

“I’m thinking that while the sheriff and all his men are in town, we come back and take a look inside? What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”

Tate’s smile grew.

While they waited for nightfall, they headed back toward town.

The line of cars—all illegally parked, Chase noticed—had grown. Not only that, but two commercial buses had joined the fray.

They were taking no chances this time. The last thing they wanted was for Sheriff Thomas to have their car impounded, stranding them on foot.

They found a spot far from the other cars, triple-checked for no parking signs and, not seeing any, finally got out.

Joseph Bell’s words rang true.

The place was crammed.

Tourists were wedged into the town, making movement next to impossible.

It didn’t help that someone had erected a wooden stage near the entrance, and people were concentrated around it.

Given how short she was, Chase had a difficult time seeing much of anything.

She pictured herself climbing onto Tate’s shoulders like a little kid with tired legs at an amusement park.

A grin formed on her lips.

“What are you smiling about?” Tate asked, looking down at her.

“Nothing,” she said. The bruising on the side of Tate’s face had gotten worse. It was no longer just a dark shadow but had the first hints of deep purple. “How’s your—”

Her words were swallowed by the sudden eruption of a guitar solo.

Tate leaned close to hear her better, but Chase just shook her head.

A band began playing generic country music. This went on for about a minute before everyone around Chase took their cameras out and the music came to a rather abrupt halt.

The fact that she was 5’5 and had a petite frame usually played to Chase’s advantage. Others tended to underestimate her.

But now, she wished she was three or four inches taller.

She couldn’t see shit.

Tate, realizing this, leaned close to her ear.

Even though the music had stopped, the crowd noise was such that she couldn’t make out a single word.

“What?”

“I said, the sheriff—”

“Welcome, welcome, welcome!” Sheriff Thomas’ voice boomed from hidden loudspeakers. The crowd hushed. “Welcome to the fourth annual Maple Hollow Thanksgiving Festival!”

Cheers followed. The sheriff waited for these to die down before continuing. “This year will be our biggest and best year ever!” This time, it took a solid thirty seconds for Aiden Thomas to be able to be heard over the noise.

It made Chase sick that he was up there grandstanding with everything else going on in Maple Hollow.

Chase spotted two teenagers with their phones out speaking closely to one another not far from where they stood.

Chase put a hand on Tate’s arm, letting him know that she’d be right back.

Another good thing about her small stature was that people often thought she was younger than her thirty-plus years. Her white hair usually threw them for a loop, but Chase thought she could still pass as someone in their early- to mid-twenties.

Pulling out her own phone, she nudged her way toward the girls.

“Hey,” she said. Neither girl noticed her. “Hey, this your first time here?”

Chase cringed, thinking that her words sounded like the start of a terrible pick-up line. The two girls looked at her and the one with pouty lips opened her mouth to speak.

“This year,” Sheriff Thomas’ blared, “We’ve completely redone our world-famous corn maze!”

“More haunted than ever, too,” Chase heard one of the girls say. At least, that’s what she thought the girl said. It was still difficult to hear even though she was standing right next to them.

“You guys have a YouTube channel, too?” Chase said, making sure her phone was visible.

This got her strange looks.

“YouTube?” one of the girls said with a chuckle. “Naw, we’re just getting stories for our Snap.”

Chase nodded, pretending to know what the hell she was talking about.

They seemed disinterested in her and Chase knew that she had to say something to keep their minute attention spans.

“You guys hear about the kid who went missing?”

She was hesitant to reveal anything about the case but Chase figured with all the other people she’d seen with their phones out earlier, that the news would have already gotten out.

Chase was right.

“Yeah, two kids.”

They knew more than she’d expected.

“They arrested somebody earlier today,” Pouty Girl said.

“Oh, yeah?” the other one replied.

“Yeah, some homeless dude.”

Pouty Girl rolled her eyes.

“Just like Angus Peterson.”

“You guys… you guys don’t think that Angus did it?” Chase said, trying to worm her way back into the conversation.

“Oh, he did it. Confessed ‘n’ everything. But I just think—”

“It’s gotta be The Scarecrow, right?”

“Scarecrow?” Chase deliberately furrowed her brow.

“Yeah,” Pouty Girl exclaimed. “You’ve never heard of The Scarecrow?”

Chase shrugged.

“Really?”

Another shrug.

“The ghost of one of the murdered kids haunts Maple Hollow, inhabiting a scarecrow each year. Grabs those who can’t find their way out of the maze. Takes out their guts, makes these gruesome displays.”

“Like cornucopias but with body parts.”

The girls almost seemed excited about this and Chase, thinking back to the grotesque display of Archie Beaumont’s organs, cringed.

“Hey,” Pouty Girl said, raising her phone. “You wanna be in our Snap? We’re doing interviews of everyone—”

Chase offered the girl a tired smile, reached out, and forced the phone down.

“No, thanks. Be safe, girls.”

Chase was trying to get back to Tate when her phone buzzed.

It was Linus.

She whistled and waved, got Tate’s attention.

Then she pointed away from the crowd.

Let’s get the fuck out of here, she mouthed.

Chapter 25

“Linus, I can barely hear you,” Chase said, jamming a finger in her ear to block out the noise. Sheriff Thomas had finished his speech, and the band was playing again.

She continued to put distance between herself and the town.

Tate followed closely behind.

“I said, I think I found something.”

Chase still couldn’t hear him properly.

“Hold on. Hold on.”

She hurried down the dirt road. When she was halfway to their car, she said, “Okay, go ahead. What’ve you got?”

Chase put the phone on speaker so that Tate could listen, as well.

“There a party going on there or what?”

“Something like that.” Chase did a poor job of hiding her annoyance. “What did you find?”

Linus grunted.

“So, not all of the missing kid cases, but in at least three of them, plus what you told me about Archie Beaumont, there was someone spotted in the vicinity. To be honest, the reports are hot garbage. I’m talking about real shoddy police work. Just a handful of people were questioned and even these interviews are like—”

“We know that, Linus. Sheriff Thomas doesn’t give a shit about solving these crimes. All he cares about his is stupid festival. Do we have a suspect?”

“Not really a suspect, I guess. But someone was spotted—”

“What do they look like? Old? Young? Black? White?”

“I’m getting to that.” Now Linus was the one who sounded annoyed. “It’s a kid. Teenager, maybe. Dark hair. Some say short, some tall. Always seems to be hiding his face.”

Chase didn’t say anything.

“I… I told you the details were—”

Chase hushed him, looked at Tate. Like hers, the man’s eyes were also wide.

“Lee Thomas,” she said.

“Lee?” Linus questioned.

“Hold on!” Chase put the phone on mute.

“You think that Lee Thomas could be the one behind this? Killing his own friends?” Tate asked.

“I mean, his brother dies, he’s pissed. His mom is all fucked up, dad is an asshole…” Chase let her sentence trail off.

Tate appeared pensive. She knew he didn’t like it, didn’t want to like it. Neither of them enjoyed the fact that they spent their days hunting down kid killers. It only made things worse when their potential unsub was also a minor.

“What about Lee’s brother, Ira?” Tate said.

Chase recalled what the girls had told her back in town.

The Scarecrow… the ghost of one of the murdered kids haunts Maple Hollow, inhabiting a scarecrow each year.

“He’s dead.”

As soon as Chase opened her mouth, she wished she hadn’t.

Tate gave her that look, and she unmuted her phone.

“Linus, apparently, the sheriff had another son. Ira Thomas. Died maybe four years ago? Think you could find the death certificate?”

“That I can do. I’ll send it to you when I find it.”

“Thank you.”

Chase hung up.

The sun was setting and the lights back in town had come on.

It was also getting louder.

Sheriff Thomas had turned the music up to eleven.

“Our friend is not going to be leaving anytime soon. Wants everyone to know that he’s the one in charge of the festival. I’m thinking that if you want to check out the abattoir,” Tate said, “now’s our chance. Could be our only one.”

***

Even though they were almost certain that everyone who worked at the abattoir would be at the festival now, they weren’t taking any chances.

Tate had to do a little off-roading to approach the building from the rear, which was rough going but... who cares?

Their rental was already fucked.

The slaughterhouse was surrounded by a chain-link fence. It was twelve feet high, and Chase didn’t feel in the mood to climb it.

Tate neither, as he promptly went to the trunk and pulled out a set of bolt cutters.

“Would you look at that?” he said, snapping the jaws together dramatically, “I guess Sheriff Thomas booting our car backfired, huh?”

“Guess so.”

Tate was a pro at using the things, probably because the obnoxious yellow boot was much harder to remove than snipping out a small section of fence.

He made a makeshift door, cutting one side and the top, and then set the snips down and pulled it back.

“After you, my dear.”

Chase made a face and ducked inside.

It smelled here—smelled bad.

To her immediate right were the large open-air trailers that she’d seen with the drone. At the height she’d flown the quadcopter, she hadn’t been able to make out exactly what was inside.

She’d guessed, and the reek coming from them in waves left no doubt.

They were full of animal parts. Probably organs.

“Jesus.”

Tate’s words were muffled.

He was covering the lower half of his face with the sleeve of his jacket.

What were the chances that the rest of Archie Beaumont was in there, somewhere?

High.

It was the perfect place to dispose of a body. And if whoever was behind these murders was smart about it? Ground up the body first and then spread them in all of the bins?

It would be impossible to separate Archie from the animals’ remains.

Chase and Tate stayed low as they hurried toward the main building. They found the rear entrance—two thick, double doors.

Red.

Locked with a chain and padlock.

“You want to try and find another way in?” Chase asked, taking a step back and turning her gaze upward.

There was some sort of scaffolding off to her right and a series of windows, most of which were partially open.

“Fuck that. Wait here.”

Tate turned and bolted.

“Tate!” Chase hissed under her breath. “Tate!”

Her partner didn’t slow.

While she was waiting, Chase pressed her back up against the doors.

Music and crowd noise filled the night air. It was chilly, and she wrapped her jacket more tightly around her.

The interior of the abattoir remained quiet.

Tate returned.

He looked ridiculous, hunched over, bolt cutters in his hands. Like some sort of gold-hungry gremlin.

“We break in,” Chase said. “Sheriff Thomas is going to know it was us.”

Tate mockingly massaged his chin. He’d apparently forgotten about his sore face and immediately stopped.

“Fuck him,” her partner said. Then he snapped the chain in half and opened the door.

Chapter 26

Chase had never been inside a slaughterhouse before, but it was exactly how she pictured it. The smell, though, was a surprise.

Unlike outside, the interior reeked of bleach and other chemicals. On its own, this would be fine.

But there was a deeper, muddy funk underlying these odors.

Within seconds of entering, Chase had her arm pulled into the sleeve of her coat and used the opening to cover her nose and mouth.

The floors were all linoleum or some other cheap but hard material. The walls white. Incandescent tubes lined the ceiling, but these were all dark. There were emergency spotlights above most doors, and they were unusually harsh. The areas directly in the path of these lights were bright but they almost seemed to darken the shadows by contrast.

Tate came up beside her and together they walked down the hall. They made a conscious effort to tread lightly, but this didn’t seem to matter.

Even the soft soles of their running shoes seemed to echo.

They passed in front of a heavy door with an inlaid window. Shielding her eyes against the light above it, Chase reluctantly pulled her sleeve away from her face and cupped her face against the glass. It looked like a holding pen of some sort. Metal cages were pushed up against one wall, an empty trough lining the floor beneath it. Industrial hoses with thick nozzles were looped and hanging from hooks on the wall.

It was otherwise empty.

No livestock here.

No humans.

She shook her head at Tate and continued to the next room.

“What are we looking for?” Tate asked, his voice muffled by his jacket sleeve.

Chase didn’t answer.

She had no idea.

Archie Beaumont’s body?

Idiotic.

This was an active slaughterhouse, and it had been busy earlier. Sheriff Thomas was the boss of Maple Hollow, but Chase was hard-pressed to believe that even he could keep all of the employees quiet should they come across a teenager strung up by the ankles.

They moved onto the next room.

This one reminded Chase of a butcher shop. Large metal tables, various color-coded cutting boards. Knives on the wall, clinging to magnetic metal bars.

Unlike the first door, this one had heavy rubber seals all the way around.

Chase suspected that it was refrigerated.

She continued walking. The third door opened to a much larger room than the first two.

Inside, she saw a large pulley track running near the ceiling. It was similar to what you might see in a large laundromat, used to move clothes from the front to the back of the store.

Only, she doubted that clothes ever hung here.

Like the first room, there was a trough on the floor, but this was inlaid, much larger, and the polished aluminum gleamed. It ran directly beneath the track and disappeared into a massive holding tank.

Without thinking, she pushed the swinging door open and stepped inside.

“Chase?”

She ignored her partner and slowly walked the length of the room.

Took it in.

She pictured cattle hanging upside down, bound by their ankles. Pigs, too.

Saw workers in white lab coats coming by with knives and slitting the animals’ throats.

Blood poured out of them, collected in the trough. Flowed to the lowest point, which was the tank.

A series of pumps forced it upward, where internal blades mixed it to avoid clotting. Or maybe something was added to it to keep it fresh.

Then it was heated, pasteurized, and ready for… what?

Blood sausage?

She pulled her arm away from her face and approached one of the chains that dangled from the rack above.

And then Chase saw him.

Archie Beaumont.

Hanging like an animal for slaughter.

The image was vivid, startling.

Not as realistic as when she used to touch victims’ cold flesh, but close.

His eyes were wide, pleading. Tears dripped into the trough, mixing with pig blood.

The flash of a knife.

Chase staggered backward, bumped into Tate.

“Chase?”

She cleared her throat and blinked the vision away.

“Yeah. He was here, Tate. Archie was here.”

Tate nodded.

He had been her partner, and lover, for long enough to trust her when she made a bold statement such as this one.

The question was, what could they do about it?

Judging by the smell, the place was cleaned on a daily basis. Perhaps even more frequently.

“What do you—”

Chase put her hand on Tate’s mouth, silencing him.

She’d heard something.

A shuffling sound.

She pointed at the door and, without waiting for Tate, made a b-line for it.

The door flapped loudly when she burst into the hallway. Chase initially looked back the way they’d entered but, upon seeing nothing, turned the other way.

“Hey!”

There was a hooded figure standing no more than thirty paces from her. Not directly beneath an emergency light, they were bathed in shadows.

“Hey!” Chase shouted again.

The figure froze.

Then he dropped something.

The sound the metal cylinder made when it banged on the hard floor was absurdly loud. It echoed, built-in amplitude, hit Chase’s ears like a minor explosion. It was even more intense because of how quiet they’d been up until this point.

She cried out and covered her ears with both hands.

Tate did the same.

The figure had no such reaction, however.

He turned and started to run even before the strange metal canister came to a full stop.

“Fuck!” Chase pulled her hands away from her head and started to run.

Whoever it was had a good head start, but his gait was uncoordinated. Almost as if he was limping.

“Tate!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Ta—”

Her foot struck something. Not the canister, which was obvious enough, but a black rubber tube that had been invisible in the dark.

It tangled in her feet, and something hard attached to the end opposite of the metal canister struck her in the shins.

Chase slammed into the wall with her shoulder. Tate reached her seconds later, bent to help her up.

“Just go!” she ordered through clenched teeth. Her shoulder flared with pain. “Get him!”

Tate, who was looping his arms beneath her armpits, effortlessly hoisted her to her feet before breaking into a run again.

Chase followed, aware that her shambling movements on account of the pain in her shin and shoulder weren’t all that different from that of the figure they were chasing.

The hall was arrow-straight, and the hooded man reached the door first. He pushed and they flung open.

Then he fled into the night.

Chapter 27

The door banged loudly behind them and Chase saw that it had a chain and lock like the back, only this one hadn’t been snipped.

She scanned the parking lot.

“There!”

A shadow ducked beneath the guardhouse barricade. When they were almost clear, they looked back. The lights in the parking lot were nothing like those inside the slaughterhouse, they were dull, a cirrhotic yellow.

But she saw enough to get the general idea of the man.

No, not man.

Not woman, either.

But teenager.

It was Lee.

Chase pumped her arms and legs, gained on him, quickly caught up to Tate.

“He’s going for the forest!”

Lee shambled down the dirt road.

The light from the abattoir faded the further they got from the building and the illumination from the festival was in the opposite direction.

They had to catch him before he made it to the forest.

They had to.

Chase was closing the ground between them, the pain in her shins and shoulder completely forgotten now.

The gravel gave way to tall grass. Lee was forty feet from the edge of the forest, thirty-five from Sheriff Thomas’ barn.

Chase was only twenty feet from him.

Fifteen.

Ten.

“Stop!” she tried to yell, but the word was squeezed from her lungs in a breathy gasp. “Stop!”

But it was Chase who stopped.

A car—no, three cars, one of which was dark just like the Sheriff’s Department vehicles—pulled into the driveway in front of the Thomas’ residence. For a second, when one of the cars was pulling in, both she and Tate were directly in the path of their headlights.

Like a deer, Chase froze, but Tate kept on running.

“C’mon,” he said. She thought that he was going to drag her after Lee who had just now made it to the edge of the woods, but he didn’t.

He hooked his arm through hers and pulled her toward the barn. Chase and Tate, both struggling to catch their breath, heard the sheriff’s distinct voice float to them.

“A hundred bucks a night. No bathroom. No going into the house or barn.”

Murmurs. Reluctant acceptance.

“If you want tickets to the maze, I’ll give you twenty bucks off.”

Fucking Sheriff Thomas.

The tourists began dragging their equipment, probably tents, out of their trunks.

“What do we do?” Chase mouthed at Tate.

They could also duck into the forest, hide out there until the sheriff went back to the festival. But if Lee was still in there, and if he was armed, they’d be sitting ducks. If the kid didn’t have a weapon but the sheriff found them?

As insane as it sounded, Chase was fairly certain that the man wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

Cite some archaic Castle Doctrine or Stand Your Ground Law.

Would probably get away with it, too.

They both pressed their backs against the barn, keeping out of sight.

The alternative was to run back to the slaughterhouse and hope they weren’t seen.

Or just wait it out.

But that posed another set of risks.

In the forest at least, they might have cover. Here?

Nothing.

There was also the fact that Chase hated waiting.

She didn’t realize it, but Chase was starting to lean toward the edge of the barn and into the open.

Tate grabbed her and yanked her back.

Her shoulder smarted and she grimaced, stumbling a little to ease the pain and go with the motion.

Chase’s foot struck something in the dirt.

A Yankees ball cap.

Curious, she bent down and picked it up. Using the moonlight, Chase turned it over in her hands, inspected it.

The cap was well worn, sun faded, brim edge frayed.

But it was what she saw inside that gave her pause. Chase brought it even closer to her face.

“What?” Tate whispered in her ear.

Chase plucked an auburn hair out of the hat.

Tate squinted, leaned close.

Nodded.

Chase tucked the hair back under the band that wrapped around the head, then flipped the flap down again.

“Ready?” Tate said.

“For what?”

“To run.”

Chase peered around the corner of the barn. People were already setting up tents and she didn’t notice the sheriff anywhere.

Decision made, I guess.

“Yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They stuck close to the edge of the forest, casting glances into the trees every few paces just to make sure Lee wasn’t taking aim with one, of what they suspected was many, of his father’s guns.

Chase’s legs ached but she kept on going, knowing that, like the man in the abattoir with the forest, if they could only make it to the gate, they’d probably be in the clear.

And they nearly did.

A high-powered light suddenly illuminated them from behind.

“Hey!” Sheriff Thomas yelled. “Hey!”

Tate cursed.

They continued to run.

Do not turn, a voice inside Chase’s head instructed her.

And, for once, she listened.

Chapter 28

Gill Cromwell heard someone, multiple people, maybe, approaching. Breathing hard, running.

Yes! Thank God—yes!

He tried to stand but the chains that secured his ankles together had been pulled taut and looped around a metal post that ran from floor to ceiling.

Gill attempted to turn toward the sound next, but his wrists were also wrapped in chains.

He could barely move.

For about a day now, judging only by the sun he’d seen peeking through the slats in the walls, he’d been completely immobilized.

Waiting for whoever had put him here to come back.

To finish him off like they had with the other kids from Maple Hollow High.

Screaming was also out of the question. When he’d woken up in this place, chained, his mouth had been covered in some sort of thick tape.

He’d cried, cried a lot, and his nose had started to run.

Gill almost suffocated because of this.

He was out of tears now.

They were so close… so close. He could hear them, almost make out their words spoken in hushed tones.

C’mon, get me the fuck out of here!

Gill tried with any remaining strength he had left to move. To do something.

Now was his chance.

He might not get another one.

Gill pulled his wrists to his chest. Pulled as hard as he could.

The metal chain links dug into his skin deep enough to draw blood.

He did the same with his ankles.

Nothing.

Not even close.

Whoever had done this knew exactly what they were doing.

He wasn’t supposed to move, let alone break free.

He was going to end up like Archie or Ian or Paul or Keith or who knows how many other kids had gone missing from Maple Hollow over the years.

Please! Please!

Footsteps, moving away… away.

No, no, no…

Gill rocked his entire body, tried throwing his head back, bashing it into the wall. Anything to get their attention.

Nothing worked.

Gill had thought he was out of tears.

He wasn’t.

When everything fell silent again, Gill began to sob.

PART III – The Maze

Chapter 29

Chase had difficulty sleeping. This was nothing new for her, but it was new for her recently. There had been a time when the idea of sleeping soundly was a laughable concept. When Chase wasn’t working herself to the bone or throwing herself at any man who so much as looked in her direction, and she tried to sleep?

The moment she closed her eyes, she would think of using.

The itching would start, and she’d become manic.

This wasn’t like that—Chase’s desire to numb her mind and her body was, thankfully, a distant memory.

Still, sleep proved to be a fickle beast.

And tonight, it was as elusive as a nocturnal hunter on the prowl.

They’d come here, to Maple Hollow, with little or no information about the case. Just a missing kid and a history of brutal slayings of other students, which had supposedly been solved.

Only to be greeted by a macabre display in a corn maze. Anywhere else, something like this would have been enough to shut down the entire town. Every law enforcement agent within two hundred miles would be called in. Albany PD, FBI, Sheriff’s Department, maybe even the New York Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

Everyone.

Townsfolk would be interviewed, a suspect list made. Cell phone data analyzed, traffic cams, satellite footage of the area, all reviewed by technical analysts.

Everything would come to a standstill and a fucking Thanksgiving Festival of all things would definitely not be taking place.

But Maple Hollow wasn’t just any other place.

Maple Hollow was run by an egomaniac with a gun and the ability to control everything within the town lines.

A man who had ousted the mayor, the city council, controlled the main farming industry, the housing, the entire economy.

A man who had lost one of his sons. A man with a wife who was still in disbelief even four years after the boy had died.

And another son who wasn’t just their most likely suspect, but perhaps their only one.

Chase sighed and rolled over. She was startled to see that Tate was wide awake, as well.

“Can’t sleep either?”

“No,” Chase said.

They stared at each other.

“I think it’s time, Chase,” Tate said.

She nodded.

She didn’t need her partner to elaborate. As much as they loved their autonomy at the CVU, they’d been in Maple Hollow for three days and the only thing they had to show for themselves was a sore jaw and bruised shins and shoulders.

“When Linus calls us back in the morning, I’ll tell him to bring the cavalry,” Chase said, nodding to herself. “Shut this fucking town down.”

***

Someone did call in the early, pre-dawn hours, but it wasn’t Linus. Chase was in the shower, letting cold water wash over her in an attempt to rinse away her fatigue when Tate entered the bathroom.

“Hey, it’s Georgina. Want me to answer?”

Chase peered around the thin plastic curtain.

“Yeah.”

She turned off the water as Tate accepted the call, wrapped a towel around her body, tucked it beneath her armpits.

Chase let them speak for a few minutes as she tousled her hair dry. She looked like shit. Dark circles beneath her eyes, lines on her face that she would have sworn hadn’t been there before arriving in Maple Hollow.

Tate handed the phone to Chase, and she got right to business.

“Hi, Georgina. What’ve you got for me?”

“Raven looked into Sheriff Thomas. Found some videos of way back when he was campaigning.”

“Great. Send them to me.”

“Oh, and she also found hundreds of vlogs about the place. About the maze in particular.”

Chase thought of the two girls with cell phones, talking about their Snaps.

“Anything stand out?”

“A lot of them were similar,” Georgina informed her. “Talking about how the maze is haunted. The soul of a murdered boy possessing a scarecrow or some other nonsense.”

Chase cringed. The way that her niece spoke of things with such nonchalance was unnerving.

No sixteen-year-old should be investigating missing and murdered kids.

Chase suddenly felt guilty about giving Georgina this task. How hard had she worked over the past years trying to insulate her niece from her work? From what she and few others knew when it came to the depravity of man?

“Raven selected some of the better-quality ones. I’ll send those your way, too.”

“Thanks,” Chase said, her voice empty.

“Need anything else? I can—”

“No,” she said sharply.

“Oookay.”

“Georgina, why don’t you go out with Rachel? Do something fun?”

Her words sounded more hollow than this fake ass town.

“Sure. I’m gonna… I’m gonna go now.”

Chase couldn’t tell if Georgina sounded disappointed or relieved.

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

After hanging up, Chase stared at herself in the mirror again.

What are you doing, Chase?

What are you doing to yourself?

What are you doing to Georgina?

Chapter 30

Aiden Thomas was a very different man in the video that Georgina sent Chase via Raven than he was today. There were shades, hints, of who he was to become, however.

It was in the way he spoke. His tone, his mannerisms.

In the video, Moira Thomas stood behind him, Lee Thomas to his left.

Both of them were staring at their feet.

“As many of you have probably heard, I tragically lost my youngest son to a terrible accident.” Unlike yesterday, the crowd remained silent for Sheriff Thomas as he delivered his speech. “My wife and son and I are in mourning, and we will be for some time. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m dedicated to becoming the Sheriff of Maple Hollow. Dedicated to this town, to the people of this town that I’ve grown up in. The outpouring of support during this difficult time has been immense and very, very appreciated.”

Now, Aiden, who appeared a good ten or fifteen pounds lighter in the video, lowered his head and gripped the sides of the wooden microphone stand. “I know some of you will be upset by my decision not to pull out of this election. And I understand.” The man looked up. Even green as he was at this, he was an excellent public speaker. There was no denying that. “But I look at things a little differently now. I look at this time, Thanksgiving, as a time of sacrifice. I’m willing to make this sacrifice, to postpone my grief, because I believe that I’m the person that Maple Hollow needs to bring us out of this recession. A rebirth, if you will. To bring us to a better place.”

Now, the crowd cheered. Subdued, but still.

Aiden smiled forlornly.

“I have great plans for Maple Hollow. Plans for expansion. And it starts here, this weekend, with the Thanksgiving Festival. Yes, it will go on. Not only that, but it will be better than ever. And my promise to you is that each subsequent year the Festival will be bigger than the last. When I’m elected Sheriff, I will make our Thanksgiving Festival not just the largest in the state, but the largest in the entire country!”

The crowd erupted and the video ended with Aiden looking directly at the camera.

Chase took a breath.

“His son just died and he’s grandstanding.” This was more of a statement than a question.

Knowing what she did about Sheriff Thomas, Chase wasn’t really surprised. But thinking that it was possible and seeing it put things into perspective.

“Yep.” Tate wasn’t shocked by this either. “Did you see Lee?”

Chase brought the phone closer to her eyes.

Moira was still looking down, the part of her face that was visible was red and puffy. She didn’t raise her eyes at all during the speech. Lee, on the other, like his father, was looking straight ahead.

His face was red, but judging by his expression, this wasn’t grief related.

It was anger.

Chase pictured the hooded figure’s face that she’d glimpsed from across the abattoir parking lot as he ducked beneath the gate.

“It’s him, Tate,” she said. “And the limp? It has to be him.”

“I didn’t get a good look.”

“Well, I did.”

Chase let her comment simmer and pulled up the other videos.

They all featured young women who were interchangeable with those she’d met at the Thanksgiving Festival opening ceremony. They looked the same, spoke the same language.

Dead kids, a haunted scarecrow.

The videos that Raven had compiled were from three different years, but that didn’t matter.

Chase sighed.

“If Lee is behind this?” Chase’s eyes fell on the Yankees cap she’d found outside the Thomas’ barn. “Sheriff Thomas is going down with him.”

There were multiple meanings to this comment, none of which went over her partner’s head.

“Give Linus a call,” Tate said flatly.

Chase nodded, dialed his number.

“Hey, Chase.”

“Linus, you know how I told you to be ready? Well, the time has come. We need back-up. Serious back-up.”

Linus went quiet for a moment, then, “Got it. I can get my stuff packed up and be on a flight in a couple of hours.”

“No.”

“I’m fine. I can—”

“I know you’re fine. But it can’t be just you. Things are going to go down here. We need more agents, not just the CVU.”

“Jesus, it’s that bad?”

Chase looked at Tate’s face. The entire right side was a kaleidoscope of blues, purples, and reds.

“Yeah, it’s that bad. And it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll speak to Stitts. It’s going to take a little more time to organize something like this.”

“As soon as you can.”

“Done.”

“What about Ira Thomas’ death certificate?”

“Got it. Got a copy of his hospital records, too—from Albany General.”

“Good. Get out here as soon as you can.”

Chase hung up.

Waited.

True to his word, Linus sent the documents less than a minute later.

Chase opened the death certificate first.

Immediate cause of death

Primary cause: Blunt force trauma as a result of a fall from height. Skull fracture.

Interval between onset and death: Four days.

Manner of death: Accident.

There were other details, too, specifics regarding the brain trauma from the fall. A broken leg. Shattered scapula. Three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

“Must have been one hell of a fall,” Tate remarked.

“Yeah.”

Accompanying the death certificate were X-rays and bills related to Ira’s hospital stay.

“How would you feel about paying this…” Chase read the name off of one of the hospital forms. “… Dr. Pierce Hagan a visit?”

Like with their break-in at the abattoir, Chase wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish with this, but she’d long ago learned to trust her instincts.

And her instincts told her that they were missing something important.

“If it means we don’t have to go back to Maple Hollow, then I’m all for it.”

Chapter 31

Dr. Pierce Hagan was still working at the Albany General Hospital, only now he was in the long-term care wing and not in the ER.

Chase and Tate, conditioned by their time in Maple Hollow, prepared for a fight.

Like with Moira, though, this proved unnecessary. The middle-aged bespectacled man was open and forthcoming.

Dr. Hagan did ask, however, if their questions were related to a criminal investigation. Chase said they were. This wasn’t a lie, but wasn’t exactly true, either. They were investigating a criminal case, Archie Beaumont’s murder, but Ira Thomas’ death wasn’t directly related.

This wasn’t the first time that Chase had skirted the rules to get someone to open up about a case and it definitely wouldn’t be the last.

The doctor was even more receptive when Chase showed him Ira’s hospital reports, again, conveniently omitting how they’d been obtained.

Knowing Linus, he’d probably skirted the law.

Or, in law enforcement parlance, worked in the ‘gray area’.

“Yes, I remember the case well. Poor kid. Fell out of a tree. When he got here the boy’s injuries were life threatening. We did everything we could, but he showed minimal brain activity.”

“And the injuries were consistent with a fall?” Tate asked.

“Yes.” No hint of ego, which was good. No, ‘isn’t that what the documents say?’

Chase pulled up the photo of the skull fracture. It was circular, which had struck her as odd.

“I pulled debris from that wound. Bark. I suspect that Ira fell on a recently cut sapling.”

Made sense to Chase.

With this out of the way, she got to some of the more complex questions about the case that had been plaguing her.

“I’m curious, how was Moira during the time that Ira was hospitalized? He was in a coma, wasn’t he?”

Dr. Hagan grabbed a clipboard from a nurses' station, said something brief to one of the attendants.

“He was. The boy’s mother was in denial. Said that her child couldn’t be gone. I explained it to her as best I could. The chance of Ira ever regaining brain function was exceedingly low—I don’t really believe in miracles, but that was the only way he’d survive,” Dr. Hagan suddenly pushed his chin to his chest. “But it was the other boy…”

He searched for the name and when it didn’t come to him, Chase offered it up.

“Lee Thomas.”

“Right, Lee. He was completely distraught. Beside himself. Had to prescribe him medication to get him to calm down.”

Chase and Tate shared a look.

Lee had been upset when he’d spoken to them about his brother, but the teenager was far from despondent.

Perhaps he’d had to get over his grief quickly to look after his mother? Especially with his father ensconced in a campaign to become sheriff?

“Thank you, doctor. You’ve been a great help.”

The man nodded, started scanning the clipboard again.

“Doc?” Tate said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know where Ira Thomas is buried? What cemetery?”

Dr. Hagan didn’t look up.

“No, sir.”

“You don’t remember?” There was a hint of disdain in Tate’s voice, likely brought on by frustration. “You don’t have a regular funeral service provider that you recommend?”

Dr. Hagan lowered the clipboard.

“I—we—do. But Ira Thomas didn’t die in the hospital.”

“Right, you sent him home with the family?” Chase said, recalling what Lee had told them.

Only now did Dr. Hagan get his back up.

“Agent Adams, Ira was brain dead. As I’ve already mentioned, Lee and his mother were particularly distraught. We granted their request to bring their son home with them.”

“Did you follow up?”

Dr. Hagan’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

“Of course. Ira passed about a day after returning home.”

“Who did you follow up with?”

“Uhhh…” Again, Dr. Hagan searched his memory. This time, Chase was of no help and the man shrugged. “I don’t know. He was the Maple Hollow coroner. Saw the death certificate myself. Can probably pull it up, if you want.”

Chase recoiled.

She hadn’t thought to look at who had signed Ira’s death certificate, didn’t think it pertinent.

But was it ever.

Antoine Mills… the Maple Hollow coroner.

Everything was connected.

“That won’t be necessary,” Tate was saying as Chase scrolled through her phone. The death certificate was indeed signed by a one Antoine Mills. “We’ve got a copy.”

When they left the hospital, Chase’s head was still in a fog.

“Tate? I think we need to speak with Antoine again.”

Chapter 32

Wanting to speak to Antoine was one thing, actually doing it was a different story.

They couldn’t just walk into town. It wasn’t just Sheriff Aiden and his deputies that they had to avoid, but the crowd alone would make getting anywhere close to the downtown strip, let alone the general store, difficult.

“Holy shit,” Tate remarked. “That farmer guy wasn’t lying when he said that in a few days, you wouldn’t even be able to walk here.”

“How the fuck are we going to get to Antoine?” Chase asked. They were twice as far as they’d been when they’d parked yesterday and there were still no available spots.

Idling the car, Tate said, “You want to try and go in? Antoine’s probably at the store.”

Chase made a face.

She definitely did not feel like being in a crowd right now.

“Not really.”

“Well, I’m not going in.”

Made sense. Tate didn’t have a big ego, but he was a man. The fact that he’d been knocked out by the sheriff was probably still eating at him. If the two confronted one another again, Chase wasn’t sure if her husband would be able to swallow his pride and back down.

Based on what happened last time, she suspected the result might be more of the same.

Perhaps even worse.

“Well, if we don’t want to go in, then we have to figure out a way for Antoine to come to us.”

“Right. But how?”

Chase stared out her open window at the city people dressed like farmers, heading toward the town center. They were laughing, sipping drinks even at this early hour.

Fuck.

“I have no idea.”

One of the kids, a tall frat-looking kid in his early twenties, finished his beer and then tossed the can over the cars lining the side of a farmer’s field.

“Alcohol,” she said simply.

“Well, I could use a drink, too, but I don’t think now’s the right time.”

Chase couldn’t tell if Tate was joking or not.

“Antoine runs the general store, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And we have a couple thousand young people rolling in for haunted hayrides and the corn maze.” She indicated the litterer who reached into a cooler that his girlfriend was holding, for another beer.

Tate smiled. Just a little. Barely visible beneath his mustache.

“A delivery, huh?”

“Yep.”

“That might work.”

Chase found the number for the Mills General Store and handed the phone to Tate.

He was better at these things than she was.

It took four calls before anybody picked up.

“Hi, is the Mills General Store?” Tate said.

“Yes.”

The woman who was speaking on the other end had to shout to be heard over the noise. It sounded as if she was standing in the middle of a busy club.

Maybe the Crazy Horse.

“Yeah, listen, I have a delivery here for an… uhh… Antoine Mills?”

The woman yelled Antoine’s name before returning to the phone.

“He’s kinda busy at the moment.”

“Right, but I have two cases of American whiskey, a case of premium vodka, and four kegs of beer.”

“Antoine!” the woman shouted again. Her voice was so loud that the speaker on Tate’s cell phone crackled.

“I can’t get in there. Too many people. Someone’s going to have to—”

“Ant—”

“Hello?” Chase recognized Antoine’s voice on the other end.

“Is this Antoine?” Tate asked.

“Yes. Dakota, can you help these people please?” Then to Tate, “What do you need?”

“I have an alcohol delivery for the Mills General Store but there is no way for me to actually get in there.”

“A delivery?”

“Yes, two cases of—”

“Shit, okay, uhh, I’ll have someone come out to you.”

Chase nudged Tate.

“Sorry, but I need Antoine Mills to sign for it.”

Chase nudged Tate again.

“I’m gonna need ID, too.”

“ID? What the—this is our busiest weekend of the year. I can’t just get up and leave. Who did you say you were with?”

Tate ignored the question.

“I know it’s busy. Like I said, I can’t get into town—the road is completely blocked.”

“Well, you’re going to have to find a way.”

Chase was amazed at how much Tate sounded like an annoyed liquor delivery boy.

“I can’t! It’s impossible. Look, man, if I have to drive back to Albany with this load, my boss is going to lose his shit.”

Antoine yelled at someone else in the store.

“I’ll tell you what, you come out here, sign for the booze,” Tate continued, “And I’ll help you haul it all into the town. I’ve got dollies in the truck. I’m not supposed to, but—”

“Fine. Fine.” Antoine was pissed. “I’ll get there when I can. Where did you say you were again?”

Tate smiled.

“Out on the main road. About a half mile back.”

“A half mile? Jesus… okay. Just wait there.”

Tate hung up.

“You know,” Chase said, “You’re scary good at that. If you weren’t so old, you might have a career in acting if this whole FBI thing doesn’t work out for you.”

“Too old? Have you been paying attention? Old is the new young, dear. Keanu Reeves is sixty and he plays John Wick. Bob Odenkirk is sixty-one and he was in that movie Nobody. And, get this, Jeff Bridges is 74—74—and he stars in The Old Man.”

Chase cocked one eyebrow.

“Yeah, but there’s a big difference between you and all those guys, Tate.”

“Which is?”

“They can take a punch.”

Tate cringed.

“Ouch.”

Chase leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek.

“But I still love you anyway.”

Chapter 33

“Hey, any idea what that thing was that I tripped over yesterday?” Chase asked.

They’d been waiting for nearly an hour for Antoine to show up. After getting sick of sitting in the car, they’d gotten out, found a clear patch of grass, and sat down.

“The thing you tripped over?”

“Yeah. It was like a silver canister with a weird tube coming from it? The guy dropped it when he ran.”

Lee dropped it.

“I have no idea.”

“It looked like some sort of oxygen tank, didn’t it? A little smaller, but—”

“Wait.” Tate straightened, peered between the rows of parked cars. “That’s him.”

Chase stood up.

It was indeed the bald man with the strangely long arms. He was walking toward them, his head turning this way and that as he searched for a delivery truck.

Chase started toward the road, but Tate stopped her.

“It’s probably best if you stay here,” he said.

“Tate, c’mon. It’s one—”

“I’m serious.” He tossed her the keys to their car which was double-parked nearby. “I’m not going to do anything.”

Chase wasn’t thinking that at all, but she let him have this one.

“I’ll be listening.”

“Good.”

Tate hurried to the road, while Chase moved forward and ducked behind a car.

“Mr. Mills?” Tate said, a big smile on his face. He waved his hand in the air.

Antoine spotted him and the man’s frown deepened.

“I’m sorry Agent Abernathy, but I don’t have time for this. I’m just here to collect a delivery.”

“Really?” Tate continued his approach. “Let me guess… two cases of American whiskey, a case of premium vodka, and four kegs of beer?”

The man didn’t appear to clue into the situation.

“Please, man, my boss is going to lose his shit if I drive back to Albany with this load.”

Antoine finally got it.

“That was you?” The man looked skyward. “I don’t have time for this.”

“I think you do.”

“No, I don’t,” Antoine protested. “My store is packed with people, and I have these two, stupid Gen Z’ers who are so lazy that—”

“I went to speak to Dr. Hagan today at Albany General.”

Chase studied Antoine’s face closely.

The man’s sunburned cheeks went ashen.

“I don’t know… who that is.”

She wasn’t certain of a lot of things these days, but she was absolutely positive that the man was lying.

Why?

“Well, he sure knew who you were,” Tate said flippantly.

“Agent Abernathy—”

“Antoine.” Tate’s tone was no longer jovial. It was firm. “I want to explain to you what’s going on here. A sixteen-year-old kid was murdered. Not only that but he was disemboweled. Another kid went missing and—”

“They caught the guy who did that. Sheriff Thomas told us so.”

“Sheriff Thomas is a liar. Now, the thing that bothers me most about this isn’t that your precious festival is still going on despite these tragedies. It’s that no one in this entire town seems to give a fuck.”

The curse word made Antoine recoil as if Tate had spat in his face.

“I care,” the man said softly.

“Yeah, you care so much that you came out here for alcohol instead of searching for the missing kid?”

Antoine shook his head dejectedly.

“The sheriff told me—”

“I don’t care what the sheriff told you. Antoine, I want to know what happened to Ira.”

Now, it was as if the man had been punched in the solar plexus.

“I don’t know anything about Ira.”

Tate got right in Antoine’s face. It was clear by his reaction that the town coroner was used to being intimidated.

He cowered.

“You signed the death certificate.”

Even from her vantage point, Chase could see the man’s Adam’s apple rise.

Antoine did an about-face.

“Y-yeah. Ira… he died. Fell out of a tree.”

“That I know. But the one thing I don’t understand is why you signed the death certificate.”

“B-b-because I’m the town coroner. And Ira died here, in the Thomas’ home.”

Tate leaned back.

“Both of those are true.”

Antoine nodded, licked his lips.

“Right. So, now you—”

“Sorry,” Tate interrupted. “Both of those are true now.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Antoine, Antoine, Antoine… you know what I mean.”

“I—I don’t.”

“Timeline check here. Ira Thomas died before Sheriff Thomas was elected. And he was the one who appointed you, right? Well, I mean, you did run, but not a single person opposed you, which, I imagine, was Sheriff Thomas’ intention.”

Chase hadn’t even thought of this. She wondered if Tate had been holding onto this information all along or if it had only occurred to him now.

“It’s—”

“Antoine!”

“It’s not what you think!” the man hollered, his face regaining some of its previous color.

“I don’t know what to think. Other than—”

Tate suddenly stopped speaking and raised his eyes above Antoine’s head.

Chase followed her partner’s gaze.

Oh, shit.

A dark blue sedan was racing up the road, leaving a thick trail of dust in its wake.

Oh, shit.

Chase stood and Tate, knowing that she would do this, gestured behind his back for her to stay down.

She bit her lip.

The car came very close to striking Antoine from behind, skidding to a stop only about six feet from him.

The sheriff leaped out; gun drawn. He stood behind his open door and aimed over the window.

Two more cars followed. Deputies Ozeil and Diaz got out and assumed identical positions to the sheriff.

Chase drew her own pistol, took aim.

It looked as if Tate was going to do the same and she had a horrible vision of a shootout going terribly wrong.

“Tate Abernathy, put your hands in the air,” the sheriff hollered.

Please, don’t do it, Tate, Chase silently pleaded. Please.

Tate’s fingers fell on the butt of his still-holstered weapon.

“Tate, put your fucking hands in the air!”

Do as he says! Chase almost shouted.

Tate slowly raised his hands and Sheriff Aiden Thomas smiled.

Deputies Diaz and Ozeil came forward, guns still at the ready.

“Agent Abernathy, you are under arrest for breaking and entering.”

Chapter 34

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Tate demanded. Diaz grabbed his wrists, wrenched them roughly behind his back, and applied handcuffs.

“We have you and an accomplice on video breaking into my slaughterhouse last night.”

“What?” Antoine asked.

Everyone ignored the coroner, and Tate was smart enough not to say anything.

“I have a feeling I know who your accomplice is. Where’s your partner, Tate?”

Tate remained silent.

“No matter, she’ll turn up. And when she does, she’s going to join you behind bars.”

This caused him to break.

“If you go anywhere near her—”

Sheriff Thomas laughed.

“You’ll what?”

Tate worked his sore jaw.

“Riiiiight,” the Sheriff taunted. “You tried that before, didn’t ya?” he pointed at his own jaw. “How’d that work out?”

The man was good. Sheriff Aiden Thomas was such a savant at being an asshole that he knew exactly what buttons to push.

Tate almost took the bait. Chase could see it in his face. If Diaz had waited just another minute before putting her partner in cuffs, this might have gone a very different way.

Instead of lashing out with his feet—his hands were incapacitated—Tate decided to use his mouth.

“Who else was at the abattoir last night?”

Diaz shoved Tate toward the sheriff’s car.

“Your partner. Both of you broke in.” Sheriff Thomas grew suspicious. “You were caught on camera,”

“So you say. But was anyone else there?”

The sheriff’s eyes narrowed.

“Shut your mouth.”

“Let me guess; I have the right to remain silent? Well, I’ll gladly waive that right.”

“Just shut your fucking mouth,” Sheriff Thomas warned.

But Tate wasn’t done yet.

“I mean, I’m not saying I was there. But, hypothetically, if I was present, would I have seen a third party? Someone who looks like a smaller, younger version—”

Tate was right in front of Sheriff Thomas. The bigger man snarled and flipped his gun around, holding it by the barrel now.

He was about to pistol whip Tate across the face and his two deputies were just going to watch. In fact, judging by the apparent glee in their eyes, they were going to enjoy it, too.

What the fuck is wrong with this town?

Again, Chase was inclined to do something. But if she stood up, made her presence known, it would only end in one of two ways: bloodshed—and she didn’t like her odds against three armed men—or with her in cuffs beside her husband.

Antoine of all people came to the rescue.

He coughed. Maybe from the dust or maybe just to let the sheriff know that he was standing there watching.

The sheriff made eye contact with the coroner and holstered his gun.

“Take his weapon and throw him in the back of my car. If he says anything, gag him.”

Tate had made his point. If the sheriff wanted to go anywhere with these charges against her partner, he’d have to explain why his son Lee was also there.

Considering that Lee was their main suspect, they might even be able to justify their presence in the slaughterhouse, breaking in or not.

Diaz put Tate in the sheriff’s car and slammed the door.

The men nodded to each other, then Ozeil. In seconds, they were gone again, leaving that trail of dust in their wake.

Antoine coughed again, waved a hand in front of his face.

He appeared shell-shocked.

Hands on his hips, the coroner watched the Sheriff’s Department leave, once again forgetting all about him.

Chase observed Antoine closely. She expected the man, as disturbed as he clearly was, to hurry back into town.

Serve all those desperate college kids and rake in a year’s worth of income in a single weekend.

But the man didn’t hurry. Antoine Mills just slowly started to walk back toward town.

Chase followed, staying low, staying hidden.

Just on the edge of the downtown core, Antoine stopped and pressed something in his hand.

A car chirped.

A nice car.

A new Acura.

He looked around briefly and then got in.

Antoine wasn’t going back to the store. All that talk about needing to help out those Gen Z’ers had suddenly taken a back seat in the man’s mind.

He struggled to turn his Acura around given how close it had been parked to other, cheaper vehicles.

And then he sped off in the opposite direction.

Chase waited for him to pass and then broke into a sprint, heading toward Tate’s car.

By the time she reached it, Antoine was gone.

But that didn’t matter.

She had a pretty good idea of where the man was headed.

***

And she was right.

Antoine Mills, Maple Hollow coroner, one-time vet, and proprietor of Mills General Store, drove straight to Sheriff Thomas’ residence.

There were dozens of cars lining the road and the field behind the farm was dotted with tents.

Antoine Mills ignored all of this and met Lee Thomas outside the home—clearly, the coroner had called ahead.

Chase left her car idling and got out.

Antoine was gesticulating madly with his hands and Lee looked concerned.

There were a bunch of people just waking up, rising from their tents, stretching. Appeared hungover.

Like when Tate was being arrested, Chase once more found herself hiding behind a car, just close enough to listen.

“They know, Lee. I’m telling you, they know,” Antoine was saying. “They went to go see Dr. Hagan.”

Lee shook his head.

“They don’t know anything. And my dad… he’s going to force them out of Maple Hollow.”

“But… they’re the FBI.”

The entire nature of the discussion was odd. Lee, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old kid, was the one acting like an adult, forceful, aggressive similar to his father. Antoine was acting like a nervous child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

But what the hell were they talking about?

One of the campers began walking toward their car and Lee grabbed Antoine by the arm and pulled him down the side of the house.

Chase was in a tough spot. She couldn’t move for fear of being seen by the camper or the two having the discussion.

She struggled to hear.

“How… they know… about Ira?”

Lee shook his head. Said something that Chase thought was along the lines of ‘I don’t know’.

“Remember…” Lee was saying. “…got you… job… can take it away…”

“…FBI! Don’t… arrested.”

“Hey, there’s a Porto-Potty over there if you need to use the bathroom.”

Chase jumped.

She hadn’t seen the kid who had come out of the tent approach.

“I don’t…”

She stopped. Squatting the way she was, Chase realized that it must have looked like she was relieving herself by the row of cars.

Pretending to adjust her pants, Chase thanked the man and promptly got back into her car.

They’d seen her, impossible not to.

Both Lee and Antoine were staring in Chase’s direction as she slid behind the wheel, identical looks on their very different faces.

Good, she thought. Let them sweat.

Chase kept her eyes locked on theirs as she dialed Linus’ number.

“We need you out here, Linus. The sheriff just put Tate in cuffs and threw him behind bars.”

“He what?”

Chase didn’t have the energy to repeat herself.

“How long before you guys arrive?”

“I spoke to Stitts. He’s making some calls. A couple of hours to get things in motion then we’ll be on a flight.”

Chase bent down, looked at the sun.

It was starting to set.

They had maybe an hour, at tops two, before Maple Hollow went dark.

From what Joseph Bell had told them, that was when the maze would really get busy.

“Tell Stitts to move his ass. Things are about to get nasty in Maple Hollow.”

Chapter 35

The Maple Hollow jail was located between the old and new parts of town. It was a small, dusty square building, suggesting that it was rarely used.

Made sense.

Prior to Sheriff Thomas coming to power, Tate didn’t expect that it was occupied often.

Inside, there was a desk and two, side-by-side, iron-barred cells. One of them was already occupied by a thin man with a mangy beard. Tate recognized him from earlier.

It was the vagrant that Sheriff Thomas had arrested for Archie’s murder.

Deputy Diaz plunked Tate’s service weapon and cell phone down on the desk.

“Sheriff, I didn’t—” the vagrant started, but Sheriff Thomas, who guided Tate roughly inside the jail by his cuffed wrists, cut him off.

“Shut up.”

The accused, who had been gripping the bars in both hands, pulled back and went silent as Diaz unlocked the empty cell.

Sheriff Thomas thrust Tate inside and then instructed him to turn around and push his wrists through the bars.

“You know, I’m going to get copies of those tapes on discovery,” Tate said.

“Hmm,” the sheriff said, unperturbed.

Free of the cuffs now, Tate massaged his sore wrists.

“Diaz,” Thomas said, “I want someone in here watching him at all times.”

“But, the festi—” Deputy Diaz started to complain.

A scathing look from the sheriff shut the man up real quick.

“If his partner shows up, throw her ass in the cell, too.”

Tate realized then that the sheriff had no intention of charging him with breaking into the abattoir. This was just a stall tactic. He would keep Tate locked up, and Chase, too, if she tried to get him out, until after the festival.

Sheriff Thomas waited for Diaz to lock Tate’s cell door before heading out.

“You got a lot of nerve comin’ to Maple Hollow to stir shit up, you know that?” Diaz said with a snarl.

“Stir shit up?” Tate repeated. “There’s a fucking killer out there and you guys are wasting your time with me.”

“Ain’t no killer out there no more. And we don’t need the FBI. We take care of our own here in Maple Hollow.”

“I didn’t kill nobody!” the man in the adjacent cell protested. “I—”

“Shut up.” Deputy Diaz pointed an angry finger at the man with the beard.

How much does he know? Tate wondered. Does the deputy know just how bad a financial situation that Maple Hollow is in because of Sheriff Thomas’ real estate bullshit?

Tate thought not.

Sheriff Thomas had too much pride to let anybody in on just how fucked up Maple Hollow was.

Diaz grabbed his walkie-talkie and clicked the button several times.

“Yeah?” the voice through the device was crackly, but Tate was fairly sure it belonged to Deputy Biffle.

Diaz, not wanting to be overheard, opened the door to the building and stood half in and half out as he spoke.

Tate strained to listen but couldn’t make out much.

“Hey.”

He turned to see that the vagrant had since migrated to the bars between the cells.

“You’re… you’re…” he licked his sore-riddled lips. “You’re FBI? Yeah? Yeah?”

Tate nodded.

“Good… good.” The man’s eyes were manic. “Then you can get me out?”

I can’t even get myself out.

“I didn’t do nothin’. Just found the wallet. That’s it. That ain’t no crime, right? I was even gonna give it back. But that Sheriff… he wants me to confess, yeah? Confess! Like I didn’t do nothin’. He—”

“Did he offer you anything?” Tate interjected.

The man’s rheumy eyes widened.

“Yeah! He said—”

“Shut the fuck up, both of you!” Diaz roared.

The vagrant cowered in the corner of his cell. He sat on the floor, tucked his knees to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them.

Then he started to rock back and forth.

“I didn’t do it,” he muttered. “I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it…”

***

Chase drove straight to the Maple Hollow Funeral Home and Cemetery. It wasn’t difficult to find, being the only one in town. It was also located in the old, forgotten section. The original Maple Hollow before Sheriff Aiden Thomas got his hooks in.

This part of town was busier than when Tate and Chase had gone to eat on that first day and were told that it would be their first and last meal, but it was nothing compared to the downtown center.

Still, the funeral home, located on a large, nondescript plot of farmland, was practically deserted. She hoped that Sheriff Thomas hadn’t come here after they’d arrived and spoken to the director and his staff, informing them by exerting his influence, like everyone else in Maple Hollow, not to speak to the FBI Agents.

Chase wasn’t in to praying, but if there was ever a place…

She parked in the empty lot and walked to the building.

In a lot of ways, it was like every other funeral home she’d, unfortunately, had to visit over the years. Gray brick, nice, but not gaudy.

It was paid for by the dead, after all, and the dead don’t care.

Calming music greeted her in the lobby. The place was deserted, which brought to mind another potential issue. If everyone who worked here was at the festival, it would be near impossible to find out the information that she needed.

The last thing she wanted to do was spend the next few hours going row by row through the tombstones, looking for one in particular.

“Hello?” she said softly. Chase cringed when the sound bounced off the high ceilings and echoed for eternity.

Moving through the entrance, she thought of Archie Beaumont, of the kid’s mother, Brenda Focci.

What had the Sheriff said to her that day?

Not to speak with them, obviously.

But what else?

Don’t make a fuss about Archie’s death? Insane words, but Chase wouldn’t put it by the Sheriff.

Stay quiet until after the festival and I’ll make it right for you.

That was more like it.

Bribery, just like with Angus Peterson.

“Hellloo?” Chase called, a little louder now.

There was a church to the left, an area for non-partisan funerals to the right. The hallway in front of her extended beyond these rooms and she was forced to choose a direction.

Who would have thought that the next maze I’d find myself in was in a funeral home?

“Excuse me?”

A man in a dark suit backed out of a room, closing the door behind him. Hearing her voice, he looked in her direction.

He was elderly, with thin gray hair and a wrinkled face.

“Good day,” the man said with a nod. He came toward her. “Is there something I can help you with?”

He was suspicious and Chase quickly realized why. Not necessarily because of a warning from the sheriff, but because she looked like a tourist. And while the place may be empty now, considering the number of eager, ghost-hunting vloggers in town, she suspected that the man got a lot of visitors this time of year.

Asking about Paul Lane, Keith Inkwell, maybe even Ian Morrison.

It was unlikely that many came seeking the kid that she did now, however.

Still, Chase was on the fence about whether she should risk revealing that she was with the FBI. If Sheriff Thomas had come here first and she told this man who she was, she’d most likely be shown the door.

What, then? Pretend she was just another exploitive would-be podcaster? A long-lost aunt?

Fuck it.

Chase whipped out her badge.

“My name’s Chase Adams and I’m with the FBI. I’m looking for Ira Thomas’ grave.”

The funeral director’s pale eyes bore into her, and she was fairly certain that the man was going to tell her to get lost.

But then his expression softened.

“I’m sorry but Ira Thomas doesn’t have a grave in this cemetery.”

This came as a shock.

“What do you… what do you mean?”

“Ira Thomas’ remains are in the columbarium. Come with me.”

The what?

Chase had no idea what a columbarium was but followed the man anyway.

He led her toward another room, this one about half the size of the funeral reception area.

The walls were lined with square lockers, like safety deposit boxes in a bank vault.

The same sad, slow music emanated from speakers embedded in the ceiling.

“Over here.”

The man led her to a small box on the right wall, stopping in front of one with a gold plaque affixed to it.

Ira Thomas 2007-2020, the plaque read.

Now, Chase understood.

She stared at the name, resisted the urge to run her fingers across the engraved letters.

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“Yes, actually,” she said, not taking her eyes off the name. “Was Ira cremated here?”

“He was not. The family of the deceased brought the remains with them.”

Another surprise.

But one that fit, if what she was now thinking, unbelievable as it may be, was true.

“And does this require any special paperwork?”

“We require a certified certificate of death and a cremation certificate.”

Chase had seen the former, but not the latter.

“Would you happen to have a copy of the cremation certificate?”

“Of course. We keep copies of everything on site.”

When the director remained in place, Chase added, “Can you show me?”

A curt nod, and they left the columbarium. Across the hall was another room, this one secured with a lock. The man used a key to unlock the door, and they entered. The inside wasn’t that different than the columbarium, only the boxes on the wall were much smaller. The man ran a finger along the boxes, each of which had a capital letter clearly displayed on the front.

He found the Ts and unlocked the box, pulling out a long tray reminiscent of an antiquated filing method.

After flipping through a series of yellow tabs, he found what he was looking for.

The man presented Chase with two pieces of paper. The first, she recognized as the death certificate. The second was new: the cremation certificate.

Chase scanned the details, noting that Antoine Mills’ name was once again listed as the coroner on record despite the fact that he wasn’t yet the coroner when Ira died.

No surprise there.

Her eyes stopped moving when she read the name of the local registrar who’d signed and validated the cremation certificate.

Moira Thomas.

Chase numbly handed the man back the forms.

“Anything else…” Chase was already on the move. “…I can do for you?”

She was gone before he finished the sentence.

Chapter 36

“Stitts has chartered a private plane, arranged for eighteen agents to fly out in an hour. Expected arrival in Albany at just after ten o’clock. We’ll have cars ready to drive to Maple Hollow. Stitts is coming, too.”

Chase knew that she should be relieved. But if they landed at ten, it would still be nearly midnight by the time the FBI took control of Maple Hollow and relinquished Sheriff Thomas of his power.

Too late. Too late for the missing kid, whoever he was, and maybe even too late for Tate.

She had to take things into her own hands.

Chase remembered telling Georgina, long ago, that you couldn’t just sit around and expect someone else to save you.

You had to act.

“Thanks, Linus. I need you to do something else for me. I need to know about cremation laws in New York State.”

“What?”

“I need to know if you can cremate someone in a private residence or… or anything else.”

“O-okay.”

Linus began typing and Chase was grateful that the man never strayed far from a computer.

Less than a minute later, he said, “To cremate someone you need a death certificate, and a cremation permit signed by the local registrar.”

This, Chase already knew.

“But to do the actual cremation? Does it need to—”

“The cremation itself must be performed in a licensed crematorium.”

“That’s what I thought. Can you look through all cremation records in the State of New York? See if there’s a record of Ira Thomas ever being cremated? We’re talking about four years ago.”

“Ira Thomas? Is he related to the—”

“Please, Linus, hurry.”

Chase had been sitting in her car outside the funeral home but now she pulled out of the parking lot.

She raced in the direction of downtown.

“I’ve got twenty-two Ira Thomas’ death certificates issued in New York, three of which were cremated. The last one was… sixteen years ago in New York City.”

“You’re sure that no Ira Thomas was cremated in the past five years?”

“Positive.”

“Fuck. Okay, hurry, Linus. We need you here.”

Chase hung up and pumped the gas.

Sheriff Aiden Thomas had warned both her and Tate about stirring shit up in Maple Hollow.

What he didn’t know was that Chase Adams was a giant fucking spoon.

***

It took longer than Chase had hoped to make it to the front of the maze, unseen by sheriff and deputy alike. And that was with parking in the middle of the road directly in front of the barricade that made downtown a pedestrian-only street.

Chase pushed her way through the crowd, which garnered a bunch of lewd comments from drunk college kids.

Her progress slowed further when she made it to the lineup for the maze.

It was clearly the main attraction, although Chase couldn’t fathom why people would want to be trapped in a square mile of corn fields with hundreds of other people.

“Wait in line!” someone shouted.

Chase ignored the kid and kept on pushing. Shoving.

Elbowing.

She didn’t have a plan, operated better without one.

Usually.

This posed a unique challenge, however.

The entrance to the maze was cordoned off with a ceremonial ribbon.

It should be crime scene tape, Chase thought.

Two deputies stood guard.

Someone had placed a giant digital clock on top of the wooden archway.

The numbers were counting down from twenty minutes.

Not enough time… not nearly enough time.

Small as she was, Chase managed to get within ten feet of the entrance before one of the deputies noticed her.

Thankfully, that happened to be Deputy Biffle. If it had been one of the other ones, Deputy Ozeil for example, things may have gone differently.

Biffle eyed her, leaned forward, and Chase put a finger to her lips. With her other hand, she unclipped the latch on her holster and drew her gun.

Now, Biffle’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, trying to warn her away.

Chase ignored him.

She was right next to Biffle when a smiling Deputy Ozeil finally saw her.

“You need to wait—shit.”

He went for his gun.

“Don’t even think about it,” Chase warned, flashing her own weapon. The man’s hand froze. Some of the tourists at the front of the line noticed the interaction and started murmuring amongst themselves.

She glared at Ozeil, locked eyes with him.

The man’s face turned red.

He didn’t know what to do. Chase wasn’t sure, either.

She just went with her gut.

“FBI!” Chase yelled at the top of her lungs. Cell phones raised, a sign that she was at least being heard. “This is a crime scene! The maze is closed!”

An uproar.

Someone shouted that they paid a hundred bucks for the maze.

Asserted that they were going in no matter what.

A cheer erupted.

“If anyone enters the maze, you will be arrested for obstruction!”

This time, Chase wasn’t sure they could hear her.

She moved forward.

“Do not enter the maze! You will be arrested!”

She looked at Biffle, who was just standing there, looking confused.

Then she glanced at Ozeil.

Shit.

The man was on the move, pressing into the crowd. There was something in his hand and Chase feared it was his gun. But the man brought the black object to his lips and started shouting.

It was his radio.

More angry comments from the mob.

This was going to go sideways fast.

“Biffle, in two hours, the FBI is going to swarm Maple Hollow,” she said desperately. “Everyone in the sheriff’s department is going to be arrested. You want to be in cuffs? Huh? You want your name to be on the indictment for letting a fucking child killer go free?”

Biffle’s eyes were like wet saucers.

Poor kid, Chase thought. Poor kid probably had dreams of being a cop or sheriff only to be ordered around by a dictator.

“Biffle? You have only one choice here. Go get Tate. Go—”

Someone pushed toward them. A large man.

A large man with freckles on his face.

“Fuck,” Chase cursed.

She grabbed Biffle by the arm.

“Go get Tate!” she screamed in his face.

Ozeil met with Sheriff Thomas, the latter barked something and pointed in Chase’s direction.

It seemed impossible that Sheriff Thomas would shoot her here in front of all these people, with all of it being recorded by dozens of cell phones.

He was capable of manipulating, extorting, and blackmailing the townsfolk.

Perhaps that was the true reason behind him selling them their homes so cheap. To have leverage over them, just as he’d had with the mayor, Peter Katz.

But not even Sheriff Thomas could do that to more than a thousand tourists.

Except, when Chase saw the sheriff’s gun, she faltered.

A normal man would try to control the crowd, explain away Chase’s comments as the ramblings of someone who was mentally ill.

It might work, too. After all, she was dressed like a tourist and all they wanted was to get lost in the maze.

Maybe he could say that she was a distraught relative of one of the missing or dead kids.

But when she saw Sheriff Aiden Thomas’ eyes, Chase saw something familiar in them.

Had seen it before in the eyes of killers.

The man exuded hatred.

There was only one thing for her to do.

“Biffle, go now. Please.”

Chase let go of the distraught deputy and spun around.

And then she ran into the maze.

Chapter 37

Something was happening. Deputy Diaz once more stepped outside, only this time he closed the door behind him.

Someone was shouting into his radio, barking orders. Diaz replied in curt, one-word sentences, but Tate couldn’t hear exactly what was being exchanged.

He did, however, hear Chase’s name being mentioned.

Fuck.

The drifter was still moaning that he didn’t do it, and Tate told him to shut up.

His reaction was the opposite of when the sheriff and deputy had made the same order: the man got louder.

“Hey, what’s happening?” Tate demanded once Diaz came back into the jail.

“Looks like your little partner is causing some trouble down by the maze,” Diaz said scornfully.

“You better not—”

Diaz left without a word, slamming the door behind him.

Tate cursed under his breath and rattled his cage. He knew that this would accomplish a whole lot of nothing, but he felt completely useless.

He shook his cell door even harder, and the old metal hinge screeched loudly.

I have to get out of here.

A cold sweat broke out on his lower back and palms, making his grip slick.

“I have to get out of here.”

“I have to get out of here!” the man in the cell next to him parroted.

Tate recalled the look in Sheriff Thomas’ eyes when he’d pulled up with his gun drawn. He’d been daring—no he wanted Tate to go for his weapon.

Would the sheriff have actually shot him?

Punching Tate in the face was one thing but shooting him?

Killing him?

He thought the man might have.

Nothing meant more to people like Sheriff Thomas, people in power, than keeping said power. And if Tate thought that Sheriff Thomas would shoot him, then he had to assume that the man would be willing to do the same to Chase.

Grinding his teeth, Tate used all of his strength to shake the cell.

More squeaking, but he knew that there was no way he’d actually be able to tear the thing from the bolts in the ceiling.

“I have to get out of here!” Tate shouted at the top of his lungs. “Diaz! Let me the fuck out of here!”

“Let me out! Let me out!” The drifter assumed an identical position to Tate, began shaking his cell door, too.

The small, holding cell jail was filled with a cacophony of metal squeals and yells.

Tate forced himself to stop and took a step back.

There was no way out of here. No amount of screaming or yanking.

He was stuck.

But while this was evident to him, it wasn’t so to the drifter.

Or maybe the drifter didn’t care.

He continued to hoot and holler and rattle the bars.

Chase was out there. Doing what Chase did.

Which mostly meant pissing people off.

Tate couldn’t really blame her. It was her tenacity that he’d initially fallen in love with.

Her no-nonsense attitude, the way that she spoke her mind to whomever, whenever, however.

But now, he wished she’d just remained quiet, gone back to the hotel, and locked herself in until Linus and the rest of the cavalry arrived.

Tate felt like pulling out his hair.

“Would you shut the fuck up!” he yelled. “Please, just shut the fuck up!”

It worked. Finally, the vagrant let go of the bars and resigned himself to sitting on the floor and rocking again.

He was still muttering, but this was muted, giving Tate time to think.

The Sheriff’s Department had taken his pistol and cell phone, he could see both of them lying on the desk, but they’d left him with his wallet.

No help there.

But there had to be a way out.

Tate felt like he was trapped in an incredibly realistic escape room. He walked over to the concrete bench and ran his hand beneath it searching for anything that he might use to pick the lock.

It was useless, he knew this, but it beat just standing there lamenting.

Nothing beneath the concrete bench.

The toilet, a simple aluminum bowl with a quarter inch of water in the bottom, proved equally as useless.

There had to be—

The door to the jail opened and a deputy strode in.

In the dim yellow lighting, Tate didn’t immediately recognize which deputy.

“Ozeil, you are—”

The man stepped beneath the single bulb in the center of the room.

It wasn’t Ozeil. It was Deputy Biffle.

“Mikey!” Tate cried. “Please, you need to get me out of here.”

Deputy Biffle’s head was down, his chin pressed against his chest.

If there was one Maple Hollow deputy who might have a shred of compassion in them, one who Sheriff Thomas hadn’t completely turned, it was him.

The man stepped forward.

“Where’s Chase?” Tate demanded.

At long last, the man lifted his eyes.

“She’s in the maze. Your partner drew her weapon, threatened the crowd of people with obstruction if they entered.” Biffle’s voice was quiet.

“No,” Tate whined.

“I’m sorry. The sheriff, he… he…”

“He what?”

“He went after her. I saw him grab a can of gasoline and run after her.”

Tate’s heart stopped pumping.

A can of gasoline?

That could only mean one thing.

The sheriff was going to burn her out.

Or worse.

Burn the entire maze down while she was still in it.

“Please, you have to let me out of here. Sheriff Thomas is going to kill her. Please.”

Tate’s heart finally contracted, flooding his system with oxygenated blood.

It made the entire surface of his skin break out into pins and needles.

“I just want to find who did this to those kids,” Biffle said absently.

“Me, too! But I can’t do anything while in here. Just unlock the door.”

“Those poor kids…”

Biffle was retreating into his head now.

“Let me the fuck out!” Tate roared. The drifter was back at the cage again, leering at the both of them with cracked lips.

“Let me out, too!”

Tate wasn’t sure if it was him or the drifter who finally got Deputy Biffle’s attention.

And then, to Tate’s surprise, the deputy retreated to the desk and rooted through the top drawer for a set of keys.

Yes. Yes!

Tate was tapping his foot impatiently as it took Biffle three tries to find the correct key to his cell and three more attempts to actually work the damn thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled the door open.

Worried that the deputy might change his mind, Tate was taking no chances. He shoved the door open, nearly knocking Biffle down in the process.

While the man was still recovering, Tate grabbed his gun and cell phone off the desk.

“Hey! What about me?” the drifter yelled. “I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’!”

Tate stepped into the Maple Hollow night and, with the drifter’s gravelly voice still filtering out to him, he started to run.

Chapter 38

Chase had foolishly thought that because she’d seen the maze from above with her drone that she would be able to navigate it without much issue.

Foolish and utterly wrong.

That had been during the day.

This was at night.

That had been from the air.

This was on the ground.

Within two minutes of sprinting into the maze, Chase was completely and utterly lost.

She tried to keep track of the turns that she took, the direction she was headed.

But with everything that had happened, even her trained mind and body were flooded with the flight response.

Chase stopped to catch her breath.

With her back pressed up against the thick corn stalk wall behind her, she took out her phone, hoping that Linus had left a message saying that they’d landed and that they’d be in Maple Hollow soon.

No such luck.

Grimacing, Chase pulled up the photo of the maze she’d taken from the drone and tried to orient herself.

Not wanting to give her own position away, she lowered the brightness of the screen.

It was… useless.

The path through the maze and out the other side was clear enough from the air, but she had no idea where she was currently.

Chase raised her eyes, looked around feverishly. Tried to find a corner or an intersection that she could use as a landmark.

Nothing. Just… stalks. Goddamn dead corn stalks.

“Hey, lady!”

Chase froze.

It was impossible to tell where Sheriff Thomas’ voice had come from. The sound bounced off the stalks, spread out, came back together again.

All she knew for certain was that the man was close.

“Why don’t you make yourself heard?”

Chase scanned the path to her right and the left, trying to determine where the man was.

She crouched even lower.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. I can let you and your husband go.” There was scorn in the sheriff’s voice.

Chase’s heart was racing, and she pulled out her gun.

“Lady! Laaaady!”

Haunting.

“I’ll be honest with you, Agent Adams. I don’t care about you or your partner. All I care about is this town!”

Anger, now. Lots of it.

But despite the raw emotion he exuded, Chase knew him to be a liar.

Aiden Thomas didn’t care about the town, he only cared about one thing: himself.

He used his son’s death as a launching pad for his own career.

Ira Thomas’ death…

A death that was certified by Antoine Mills at the behest of Lee Thomas. A cremation witnessed by Moira Thomas that likely never happened.

And a kid who maybe wasn’t even dead.

Chase’s thoughts were running wild with theories. She was certain that if she had more time, she’d be able to solve this mystery.

But there was no time.

A clock, like the one over the maze entrance, had started the moment they stepped into Maple Hollow and Chase feared that it had long since run to double zero.

They’d gone about this all wrong. She and Tate had been worried about the townspeople becoming ornery if they took over the case, shut them out completely.

What they should have done is take control immediately. Force a lockdown.

But they couldn’t have possibly known that things would get this bad.

“Laaaady!” Sheriff Thomas’ voice was closer now.

Should I run?

Chase was locked in place. If she ran, she might run right into the man’s arms.

Or his gun.

Chase heard something else now, some sort of sloshing sound, like water in a bucket.

Moments later, she smelled something, too.

Gasoline.

Jesus Christ, the man is dumping gasoline on the dried corn stalks.

He was planning on burning it down.

The moon was big and bright above her, and Chase was intensely grateful. If it had been a cloudy night, she would have been forced to use her phone’s flashlight to see anything.

And the sheriff would instantly know where she was hiding.

“I know you’re in here,” Sheriff Thomas said in a sing-song voice. His tone and demeanor changed so rapidly that Chase thought the man might be having an episode. “And I know you smell that. You guys thought you could come into my town, to my Maple Hollow, and ruin the festival? You don’t know Maple Hollow.”

Why is he starting a fire?

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Sheriff Thomas answered her unspoken question.

“I’m going to burn this place to the ground. Then I’ll rebuild it. Bigger. Better.”

Fuck.

Chase pushed herself to her feet. She thought that the Sheriff’s voice was coming from just ahead of her. She looked right, then left, using the weak glow from her phone screen to light the paths.

“Better!” Sheriff Thomas screamed.

A thin black tendril of smoke filtered up to the moon.

Sheriff Thomas was closer—much closer—than she’d even thought. Maybe twenty feet ahead of her.

The smoke quickly thickened, and she caught sight of the orange, red, and yellow hues of a fire.

Corn stalks started to sizzle and pop.

“Fuck this,” she whispered.

With her gun in one hand and her phone in the other, she started to run.

Sheriff Thomas had to be in front of her—that’s where the fire started—so she just arbitrarily sprinted right. When she made it to the first intersection, she picked the one that led away from the blaze that was growing larger by the second.

The menacing fire seemed to be chasing her.

She had to get out. The fire might be small now, but it would be an inferno in minutes.

Chase continued to move, always choosing the path opposite the fire.

This strategy wasn’t working. She couldn’t tell if she was getting any nearer to the exit, wherever the fuck that was.

She thought she might even be going in a big circle.

And the fire… it was gaining on her.

No matter where she went, it was always just… right there.

Her lungs were screaming, her legs were on the verge of buckling.

Chase had to stop.

She pressed back up against the corn and held her gun out in front of her. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest that it caused her body to rock.

The fire was immense now. It wasn’t possible to tell just how big with the wall of corn blocking her view, but if the height of the flames, a good four to six feet above the ten-foot corn, was any indication, it was massive.

Chase sucked in huge breaths of smoke-flavored air.

Just thirty seconds and then I’ll go again, she told herself. Thirty—

She froze.

Above the sound of the fire, she thought she heard something else.

Footsteps?

Yes, it was footsteps.

To her left, coming down the path that she’d just traversed.

Chase hunched low, aimed her gun.

Steadied her breathing as best she could.

A pair of black boots came into view. Just the toes, peeking out from around one of the hard, right-angled corners of the maze.

Chase squinted one eye, looked down the barrel.

“Come on, you motherfucker,” she whispered. There was a flash of something silver. “Come on, you—”

A flurry of movement erupted from behind her.

She started to turn, but it was too late.

A thick hand wrapped around her nose and mouth and Chase, taken completely by surprise, dropped her gun and phone as she was wrenched to her feet.

“I’m right here, lady,” Sheriff Aiden Thomas said in her ear. “I’m right fucking here.”

Chapter 39

It was chaos.

Tate saw three different fights break out as the massive crowd of people pressed up against one another like a human wave.

There was shouting, people complaining, stating that they paid for their tickets and goddamn it, they were going to go into the maze.

Tate bowled his way forward, knocking down a woman with a cell phone. Her boyfriend tried to grab Tate, but he was already twisting and turning his way away from them.

Four deputies blocked the entrance to the maze.

“Stay back! Everyone will get a refund,” Oziel bellowed. “But you need to stay back!”

The crowd pushed even harder.

The human barricade would break soon. The surge would be too great to contain and there was nothing that these four men, even with their weapons drawn, would be able to do to prevent the tourists from rushing into the maze.

In the ensuing pandemonium, Tate knew what would happen.

Chase would be killed.

Dead at the sheriff’s hand, but he’d make it look like an accident.

Say that she was trampled and, wow, isn’t that a sad, sad story?

The real sad part would be what happened next year.

More people would show up. 

You’d have those who were interested in the legend of the missing and murdered kids.

Others would want to know about how the famous FBI agent died.

Somehow, Tate managed to make it to the front of the crowd. The deputies, now coloring their instructions to stay back with four-letter adjectives, didn’t notice him at first.

They would, though.

Right… now.

“Diaz!” Tate shouted.

None of the deputies heard him over the noise of the increasingly angry crowd.

He moved closer still.

“Diaz!”

Now, the man turned.

He squinted, then his eyes widened, sending a cascade of horizontal creases across his sun-weathered forehead.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Both Diaz and Ozeil stepped forward.

“Where’s Chase?” Tate said.

After leaving the jail, he’d tucked his gun into the back of his pants, and he reached around to touch the butt.

“How the fuck did you get out?” Diaz demanded.

The man strode forward, his hand going to his gun now, too.

“Where is she?”

“I’m going to throw your ass back in—”

“Fire! There’s a fire!” someone screamed. “The maze is on fire!”

Tate winced, recalling what Biffle had told him about the sheriff bringing a can of gas into the maze with him.

“Fire!” The claim was repeated by several other bystanders now. “Fire!”

Diaz craned his head, looked into the maze.

Tate seized his opportunity.

He rushed forward and sucker-punched the man in the side of the face.

It hurt, sent a lightning bolt of pain from his knuckles to his elbow.

But it also felt so damn good.

Diaz moaned, long and low, and his knees gave way.

Tate’s timing was perfect. The crowd, worried that the fire was going to spread to them, panicked. Started to push even more violently, not desperate to get into the maze anymore but to get away from it.

Someone knocked Ozeil to the ground and the man got stuck in the mud. He was on all fours when someone stomped on his back, forced his face into the thick muck.

With two of the four deputies no longer a threat, and the other two being battered by tourists, Tate took his leave and bolted into the maze.

Chapter 40

Chase bucked and kicked, but Sheriff Thomas was too strong. He managed to hoist her up with one hand on her face, while bringing his other hand down around her midsection, pinning her hands to her sides.

“You made a mistake coming here,” Sheriff Thomas hissed in her ear.

Fuck, he was strong.

Chase tried to bite his hand but couldn’t even bare her teeth, the man’s grip was so tight.

“I’m going to enjoy watching you burn.”

Chase’s eyes shot up, saw the blaze. It was getting closer.

And the heat… it was still a good twenty or so feet from them, but Chase could still feel intense warmth on her face.

Desperation seeping in, Chase redoubled her escape efforts, but Sheriff Thomas was like a Chinese finger trap.

The harder she struggled, the tighter his embrace became. In addition to the arm around her face, pulling her head uncomfortably backward, he was compressing her chest, making it even harder to breathe.

What was he doing? He wanted to see her burn, but that meant he would burn, too.

He couldn’t possibly be willing to sacrifice himself, could he?

Tate, her mind screamed. Tate, please!

“Maple Hollow is my town.” Sheriff Thomas’ words were punctuated by the pop of burning corn stalks.

Her only hope was that Deputy Biffle had listened to her plea, had gone and helped Tate.

But if he had, where was he? If Tate had been released, he should be here. He should—

A hooded figure suddenly emerged from the stalks directly in front of them.

At first, Chase thought that it was just a smoky mirage, either that or Sheriff Thomas was squeezing her more tightly than she’d thought, cutting off her air supply.

The fire was directly behind the person, making it difficult to see his face, especially with the hood pulled up as it was.

Chase was also distracted by the gleaming metal cylinder that he held in one hand.

It was the same one from the abattoir, only now it was dented in several spots.

“… the fuck?” she heard Sheriff Thomas say. “Lee?”

The figure took a step forward, and Chase saw that the black cable she’d tripped on back in the slaughterhouse ended in some sort of gun-shaped object.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Lee? Go back. Go back home.”

It is Lee, Chase thought. The man in the abattoir and Lee are one and the same.

Which also meant that the Sheriff’s son was more than likely the one who had killed Archie Beaumont.

Maybe the others.

“Lee!” Sheriff Thomas yelled so loudly that Chase’s ears started to ring. “Get the fuck out of here!”

Lee didn’t move. He just stood there.

Lee was closer to the fire than Chase and her cheeks had started to burn.

It must be sweltering for him, especially in that thick dark hoodie.

“Lee!”

The figure took one step toward them, then stopped again.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The figure cocked his head as if only hearing the sheriff now. Orange light from the flames finally hit his face, one side of it, anyway.

“I’m just doing what you started.”

Chase strained to hear the kid. His voice was different, slow, as if maybe Lee was high or something.

“What?” Sheriff Thomas balked. His grip loosened a little and Chase tensed, preparing to break free.

She waited, though, knowing that she’d only have one chance at this and didn’t want to try too soon.

“Lee, get the fuck out of here. This whole place—”

Sheriff Thomas stopped speaking as another figure stepped out of the corn.

Chase instantly realized her mistake.

The kid with the cylinder couldn’t be Lee Thomas.

Because Lee Thomas was now standing beside him.

Chapter 41

The heat from the fire was intense and Tate found himself moving with the crown of his head extended forward to avoid singeing his face.

The maze was huge, even with the fire having already consumed a good portion of it.

Chase could be anywhere.

Chase could already be dead.

Tate ran.

The way to the right was blocked by fire, so he went left.

After fifteen seconds, he came across one of the spotter towers, which Deputy Biffle had informed them what seemed like eons ago were no longer used because they detracted from the maze experience.

Well, fuck that.

Tate climbed and made his way to the top. From there, he had a clear view of at least a quarter of the maze.

The first thing he realized was that the fire was much larger than he’d first thought. At least half of the maze was already ablaze. Maybe more.

And the flames were hungry.

Like a wave, it was rolling forward, the line of fire advancing a foot every five or ten seconds.

Tate forced his eyes away from the hypnotic, dancing flames and resumed his search for Chase.

He had to believe that she was still alive.

“Where are you, Chase?” he said, desperately. “Where the fuck are you?”

And then he spotted her, or at least he spotted someone he thought was his wife and partner.

The smoke was making it difficult to make out any distinct details.

To his left, not far from the approaching fire, Tate saw three—no, four—figures.

His first thought was that at least one of them must be the scarecrows that dotted the field, especially because one of them appeared to be frozen.

He spotted Sheriff Thomas, not hard to identify his large frame and broad chest. The man had someone in his arms, a much smaller individual, pressed tightly against him.

Chase… that had to be Chase.

Tate’s relief of seeing her alive was short-lived.

Sheriff Thomas had her.

And Sheriff Thomas was going to kill her.

Tate took note of the path through the corn maze to his wife and then climbed back down the stairs.

***

“I’m continuing what you… nghh… started, Dad,” Ira Thomas said in his strange voice. He was struggling to put the words together in a coherent sentence.  “When you put… ngghh… nggghh… this—” he raised the handheld device, which looked like a snub-nosed pistol connected by a thick black tube to the silver canister, “—against my… nghh… head you said that I was a… a… nghh… sacrifice. That this… nghh… town needs-nggh sacrifices.”

Chase thought back to what she’d told Tate when they’d watched Lee on the video of his father preaching to the crowd during his campaign speech. How Lee had looked like the man they’d seen running from them in the abattoir.

They did, indeed, look similar, because that video was four years old, and Ira was Lee’s younger brother.

Ira reached up and flipped his hood back.

Chase sucked in a breath.

There was a thick dent in the center of the man’s forehead. Dr. Hagan had told them that Ira’s wounds were consistent with a fall from a great height, that there was tree bark in the head wound that had fractured the boy’s skull, but evidently had not killed him.

Only, it hadn’t been a branch, a severed stump that had caused the injury.

It had been the device Ira clutched in his hand.

And back then, it had been wielded by Aiden Thomas.

The man had tried to kill his own son.

“What the fuck is going on?” Sheriff Thomas asked breathlessly. His grip on Chase loosened even further as he became overwhelmed by shock.

“Ira?” Lee said. “Ira, please. Put that down, okay?”

The boy sounded so young, so scared. Not sixteen or seventeen, but twelve.

Ira either didn’t hear his brother or chose to ignore him.

“You said that this town needed sacrifices.”

Ira sounded like he was extremely congested.

Another thought occurred to Chase then, as she listened to Ira.

In the abattoir, when Ira had seen them and dropped the canister, the sound had been so intense that Chase had been forced to cover her ears. Ira, on the other hand, hadn’t been affected.

The kid was deaf, at least partially so.

“I-I-I sacrificed them, just like you… nghh… told me,” Ira continued. “Just like you said before you p-p-put… nnngg… this to my… nnggg… h-head.”

The kid raised the device, lining it up perfectly with the malformed section of his forehead. It was deep, an inch, maybe more. When he pulled it away, the flames illuminated his face, and Chase could see the area pulsate with his heartbeat.

“What the fuck?” Sheriff Thomas gasped. “You’re… you’re dead.”

Ira laughed and this sent a chill up Chase’s spine. It was a terrible, eye-watering, teeth-grinding sound.

“Ira, what… what are you talking about? Dad… Dad did that?” Lee moaned.

“Ngh… ngh… nggghhh…”

Ira nodded and tears spilled down Lee’s cheeks.

“Just… just put it down and come back to the barn with me,” Lee stammered.

“Lee!” Sheriff Thomas boomed. “What have you done?”

Lee’s eyes, filled with the same hatred as his father’s, whipped in his direction.

“What have I done? What have I done? You—you tried to kill him. Dad… you tried to kill your own son!”

Sheriff Thomas dropped Chase, and she fell to the dirt ground on all fours.

“He was a sacrifice! He needed to die for this town! It was the only way!”

“What… the… fuck…” Lee said breathlessly.

“You don’t understand! He had to die!”

The smoke mixed with the overwhelming emotions caused Lee to start hyperventilating.

“He… he didn’t die. Mom and I… we… we saved him.”

More of the pieces to this grotesque puzzle fell into place.

Chase thought of Moira Thomas, of how she’d claimed she didn’t have a son. PTSD, Lee had told them, and Chase and Tate had bought it.

Maybe the woman was suffering—no, not maybe—she was suffering, and yet she continued to tout the party line.

She had no son because Ira died. Antoine Mills had seen to that. Forged the death certificate in return for Lee convincing his dad to hire the man as the town coroner.

Oh, there was something rotten in Maple Hollow, all right.

Above and behind her, Chase was aware that Sheriff Thomas had drawn his weapon and was moving it back and forth between his two boys.

This reminded her of her own gun, which she’d dropped during the initial struggle.

Where was it?

Chase desperately searched the dirt path.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” Sheriff Thomas said. “But I’m not going to let either of you ruin this. This is my town! Maple Hollow is my fucking town!”

Chase turned.

“It’s over. The maze is burning and—”

Without looking down, Sheriff Thomas reared back and delivered a swift kick to Chase’s stomach.

She didn’t see it coming and it winded her.

Croaking, her diaphragm paralyzed, Chase gripped her midsection and collapsed onto her belly.

“It’s not over!”

“Dad! Ira’s your son! How could you try to kill your son!” Lee sobbed.

“Sacrifices needed to be made. And Ira was weak. Weak. I thought you were different, Lee. I guess I was wrong. The maze will burn, but I’ll rebuild it. And when everyone finds out that I lost another son? They will continue to support me.”

“Dad…”

Chase was crying now, too, although she wasn’t sure if this was because of the pain in Lee’s voice, just a teenager who had hidden his brother from his father for years, or because of her aching stomach.

Chase finally managed to draw a full breath and croaked.

She blinked, clearing smoke from her eyes.

Then she spotted it. Her gun and phone, lying next to each other. Knowing that she had little time to save either of the boys, Chase threw caution to the wind and scrambled.

She wrenched her gun from the dirt and rolled onto her back, took aim.

“This time,” Sheriff Thomas said, finally stopping swinging his gun back and forth like a deadly game of eenie meenie miney mo, and training the muzzle on Ira’s chest, “I’m going to make sure you’re dead.”

The roar of the fire was punctuated by a gunshot.

Chapter 42

Chase somehow managed to get off the first shot.

The sheriff, the second.

Chase didn’t know where Sheriff Thomas’ bullet went, but there was no question that hers hit its mark.

A blossom of red appeared near Sheriff Aiden Thomas’ right hip. The impact caused his body to twist in that direction, but he still held the gun firmly in his hand.

And he was taking aim again.

Chase quickly fired two more shots.

Two more direct hits. The first struck Aiden Thomas in the shoulder, and the gun flew from his hand as he howled in pain.

The next, dead center of his chest.

The sheriff’s eyes went wide, and he dropped to his knees.

“Dad!” Lee screamed. He ran toward his father and Chase scrambled to her feet. She grabbed the kid around the waist and yanked him back.

He fought her, kicking and screaming.

“It’s over, Lee. It’s over.”

Chase was aware that she was repeating the same words she’d told Sheriff Thomas.

Didn’t matter.

It was over.

Chase was dragging Lee from his father, who was still gasping for air, blood speckling his lips and chin with every failed attempt, and away from the fire that was quickly closing in on them.

Ira, on the other hand, had different ideas.

He shambled forward, still clutching that canister and the bolt gun.

Upon seeing his brother, Lee redoubled his efforts to break free from Chase’s grasp.

Ira, with a dark stain in the center of his black hoodie.

A stain that continued to spread.

Sheriff Thomas evidently hadn’t missed, either.

“Ira! Ira!”

Chase ground her teeth, squeezed the thin teenager even harder.

Ira didn’t hear Lee, couldn’t hear him. But Chase wasn’t sure that Ira would have done anything different if he’d registered his brother’s pleas.

When Ira was directly in front of his kneeling father, Sheriff Thomas raised his gaze and stared at the boy he believed to have died at his hand years ago.

“Sacrifices need to be made,” Ira said in his warbled voice. He raised the black gun-like object attached to the cylinder and pressed it to his father’s forehead.

“Ira! No! No!”

Chase covered Lee’s eyes, but she didn’t look away.

Couldn’t look away.

There was a distinct hiss of compressed air followed by a dull thunk.

Chase didn’t see the metal cylinder fire from the captive bolt gun before it retracted into the barrel.

But she heard it.

Sheriff Aiden Thomas’ eyes drifted even higher upward before crossing.

Then he collapsed on his face.

Ira turned and Chase let her hand slip from Lee’s eyes.

“Goodbye, Lee,” Ira said, a sad smile on his face.

No ngghs this time, no stutter.

Lee cried and gave up trying to escape.

The fire surrounded Ira, but he made no move to avoid it. The front of his sweatshirt was heavy with blood, sagging below his beltline.

“We have to go,” Chase said. She was so exhausted that she didn’t think that she would be able to drag Lee with her. But she wasn’t about to leave him. “Lee, we have to go.”

The hydraulic tank fell from Ira’s hand and landed in the dirt.

They really had to go.

“But—”

“Now, Lee. Now.”

Weeping, the boy took Chase’s hand in hers and together they ran. No real direction other than away.

They turned one corner, then another.

And then they ran directly into somebody.

All three of them went down like bowling pins.

“Chase?”

It was Tate.

He’d come for her.

“I was looking—”

“Get down!” Chase shouted. “Get down!”

She grabbed Lee and Tate, huddled them together, tried her best to protect them with her small frame.

Just in time, too, because an explosion rocked what was left of Sheriff Aiden Thomas’ prized corn maze.

Chapter 43

The cavalry arrived just as Chase, Tate, and Lee finally made their way out of the now scorched and flattened maze.

Their faces were covered in soot, and they were all completely drained.

Mentally and physically exhausted.

“Chase!” Linus came forward, rushing to their side.

“I’m okay.” Chase coughed. Like them, Linus also looked spent even though he’d just arrived. “We’re fine.”

Massive flood lights clicked on and Chase blinked tears from her eyes and took the scene in.

The crowd had dispersed and the FBI, most armed with automatic weapons, were barking instructions.

Chase spotted three deputies, Ozeil, Diaz, and Biffle, being spoken to by Agents.

“Chase, what the—

“Arrest them,” she said with another dry cough. “But not Mike Biffle.”

She’d made a promise, and she intended to keep it.

Linus snapped his fingers and relayed the message. The FBI Agents couldn’t possibly know who Mikey was, but that didn’t matter.

When he was done, Linus wrapped his arm around Chase, and she leaned against him.

Back in the maze, when the hydraulic tank had exploded, she’d heard something whistle by her ear and had felt a sharp pain.

She brought her hand up to her head now, probed the area.

Her fingers came back wet, but her ear was still there.

Intact.

“What the hell happened?” Linus said.

Before Chase could answer, her attention was drawn to a shrieking woman who was being held back by not two but four FBI Agents.

“Mom?” Lee straightened. “Mom!”

“Let her go,” Chase instructed. The four agents whom she didn’t recognize looked to a man leaning on a cane for confirmation.

He nodded and the men let Moira Thomas through.

She ran to Lee and hugged him tightly.

They both cried.

Chase, still using Linus as a crutch, forced her way to FBI Director Jeremy Stitts. Despite having clearly rushed here as quickly as possible, taking a private flight and driving from Albany, his chestnut brown hair, swept to one side, was perfect.

For some reason, this stuck in her mind. It happened sometimes, focusing on minute, irrelevant details during moments of extreme stress.

How the fuck is his hair always so perfect?

“Chase,” Stitts said, leaning on his cane. “We came as quickly—”

“Stitts, we need to get to Sheriff Thomas’ barn. There might be a kid in there.”

Tate appeared at her side. He, too, managed to avoid any of the shrapnel from the explosion.

Chase hugged him.

She was glad he’d come, late or not.

“Where’s the barn?” Stitts asked as the fire in the maze started to burn itself out before their eyes.

Such destruction, yet so fickle.

No fuel, no fire.

In a lot of ways, this reminded Chase of Sheriff Thomas.

He’d wreaked havoc on the town for years, intimidating and threatening everyone in Maple Hollow.

Scaring them so badly that even his own wife and son were petrified of him.

So scared that they kept the fact that Ira had, in Dr. Hagan’s own words, miraculously survived his injuries a secret.

The man had died with minimal fanfare. An explosion and a fire, sure, but in a year’s time, Chase suspected that people would remember the maze more than they would him.

There wasn’t even a body to bury, and she doubted that his ashes would come anywhere near a columbarium.

Fitting, Chase thought. Fitting for that fucking asshole.

***

Linus used bolt cutters to snap the chain that was wrapped through the handles of Sheriff Thomas’ barn.

Chase entered first, despite Stitts’ recommendation for her to stay behind and get checked out by paramedics. Using a flashlight that she’d borrowed from one of the other agents, she scanned the interior of the barn.

The first thing she noticed was a filthy mattress on the ground in one corner and a half-filled bucket of filth beside it.

She grimaced, realizing that this was where Ira Thomas had been sleeping for more than four years.

Alone.

Ella Sacker had told them that Ira had had issues before he’d fallen from the tree. Before his brain had been penetrated by the captive bolt gun.

Before being sequestered and living alone in a barn.

None of this excused what the disturbed teenager had done, but it did help to explain his actions.

Ngghhh… nghh…

Chase heard a whimper, swung the beam of intense light to her left.

“He’s here!” she yelled. “He’s here!”

Chase ran to Gill Cromwell.

He was naked, gagged, and chained to a pipe running from the floor to ceiling.

“Linus! The cutters!”

Gill was lying on his side, shivering. His pale flesh was covered in goosebumps.

Linus snapped the chains that bound his wrists and ankles. Paramedics stormed the barn, wrapped the kid in a reflective blanket. Checked his vitals.

“He’s alive,” one of them said.

Chase nodded and finally collapsed.

Chapter 44

Two hours later, the cornfield had been reduced to a pile of smoldering ash. It would be days before crews would be able to search for burnt remains, find the sheriff’s and his son’s bodies.

This time, though, there was no question that Ira Thomas was dead.

The boy might have spoken about sacrifice, fueled by his father’s drive to succeed. But Chase didn’t think of it that way.

She thought of it as a sort of rebirth, a common theme with Thanksgiving harvests.

Rebirth… something that Maple Hollow desperately needed. And perhaps they’d get it now, with Sheriff Thomas gone.

Maybe not.

They were still in dire straits, bankrupt, destitute, haunted by a horrific past.

The worst part was that next year, whoever was in charge, would probably host another Thanksgiving Festival. And after what had happened here tonight, it would likely be the biggest ever.

Sheriff Thomas was laughing from beyond the grave but at least he wouldn’t be around to see it.

Tate wrapped his arm around her and together they stared at what remained of the corn maze.

“I thought I lost you,” he said.

Chase leaned into him.

“You’ll never lose me, Tate.”

They stayed like this for several minutes before two others joined them.

“Antoine Mills ran,” Stitts said. “As soon as he heard about the fire, he grabbed his things and left. His employees said that he didn’t tell them where he was going, just packed up and high-tailed it out of Maple Hollow.”

Chase still wasn’t sure what to think of the coroner.

He’d lied, forged documents, committed countless acts of fraud.

But he’d also saved Ira Thomas.

Only… to what end?

He must have known that Ira was being locked in a barn, Lee and Moira too terrified of Aiden to let him be seen by anyone.

It was impossible to know if Antoine was aware of what Ira was doing when Lee let him out during the festival at night.

“A couple of cadaver dogs hit on the field behind the Thomas’ farm,” Stitts continued. “We’re going to start digging on the Thomas’ land in the morning, see if we can find any remains. You two want to stick around?”

Chase looked at Linus first, thought about how much the man hated being in the field, and yet loved him for the fact that he’d dropped everything and had come here. She glanced at Stitts next, who was still staring absently at the ashes.

Finally, Chase allowed her eyes to fall on Tate. The bruising was getting worse, now covering nearly half of his face.

“I just want to go home,” she said softly. “I want to be with our family.”

Stitts nodded.

“We’ve got a private plane on standby. Take it. Take some time off, too.”

Chase slipped her hand into Tate’s, and he gave it a squeeze.

“Oh, uhh, there is still a little issue with our rental car,” Chase’s husband said. Stitts extended his lower lip. “It’s been through a war. I’m thinking maybe the FBI is going to have to foot the bill for at least a new front axle.”

***

There was still one more thing that Chase wanted to do before leaving Maple Hollow. Tate borrowed one of the FBI rentals and drove to the subdivision. It was well past midnight but with everything that had happened tonight, Chase didn’t think that many of the townsfolk were sleeping just yet.

She was right.

Brenda Focci opened the door to her cookie-cutter home after three soft knocks.

“Yes?” the woman said, opening the door just a crack.

“Brenda? It’s Agent Adams.” The door opened wider. Brenda was wearing a paisley nightgown. Dark circles hung beneath tired eyes.

Chase held the Yankees cap out to the women. She looked at it and immediately started to cry.

“I think… I think this is Archie’s. I thought you might want to have it.”

The woman took the hat and massaged the brim.

“Thank you.”

Chase nodded and wrapped her arm around Tate’s waist.

On the way back to the car, she said, “I’m tired, Tate. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Let’s leave and never come back to Maple Hollow.”

Epilogue

It would be days before the stink of fire would leave her skin.

But that didn’t stop her from trying to expedite the process. She showered once in the hotel and now that they were finally home, she stood beneath the water for a good thirty minutes, scrubbing herself hard with a bar of soap.

She still smelled the fire.

Eventually, though, like the reek of Maple Hollow and its sadistic, corrupt, and murderous sheriff, she knew that it, too, would fade.

While Chase still smelled the fire, when she left the bathroom to slip into something comfortable another scent, far more pleasant, entered her nose.

The smell of a cooking turkey.

She intended on putting on a tracksuit but changed her mind and instead dressed in something a little nicer.

Chase made her way downstairs and was surprised to discover that the table had been set in a similar fashion to how she and Tate had done it before being called away on work.

Right down to the silver charges beneath the plates.

Tate was seated at the end of the table, a strange look on his face, which Chase suspected was a perfect fascicle of her own.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Tate shrugged.

“No idea. I was told to sit here and keep my mouth shut.”

“Georgina?” Chase hollered. She heard the sound of cutlery in the kitchen and her eyes shot in that direction. “Georgina? Everything okay in there?”

“Fine! Please sit down.”

“You need any—”

“No! Just sit down.”

Tate shrugged and Chase took up residence at the opposite end of the table. Moments later, Rachel appeared. She was wearing a gray skirt and a pale blue blouse. There was a white towel draped over one of her arms.

“Wine for you?” she said, with a partial curtsy.

Chase rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, and don’t be cheap about it.”

Rachel smiled and poured her a healthy serving and then did the same to her father’s glass.

Chase made eyes at Tate, air-cheered, and drank.

More ruckus from the kitchen, some minor bickering, and then both Georgina and Rachel appeared, both smiling, both of their hands occupied with trays of food.

Georgina held a massive turkey, the skin golden and crispy. Rachel carried the mashed potatoes and muffin stuffing.

“What the hell?” Chase said.

“Shush,” Georgina shot back.

They laid the food out and Chase marveled at it.

It looked better than the spread that she’d made, which was particularly surprising given that neither Georgina nor Rachel had experience cooking much of anything, save Ramen and hard-boiled eggs.

“Looks amazing, girls,” Tate said.

“No kidding. You guys did all of this yourself?”

The girls laid the food out in front of them.

“No, we got it from Uber Eats,” Georgina joked.

“Except I don’t… I don’t see my special Brussel Sprouts,” Chase remarked.

“Oh, yeah, well, you didn’t tell me the secret ingredient, so…” Georgina finished with a shrug.

Rachel poured herself some wine and then gave Georgina a little splash.

Chase didn’t object.

“We wanted to make a toast,” Rachel said, raising her glass. “To you guys. For all the sacrifices you’ve made for us over the years.”

Sheriff Thomas’ face immediately flashed in Chase’s mind, but she forced it away.

“Thank you,” Georgina said.

Chase and Tate smiled.

Then they ate. Ate too much.

They laughed.

They even cried a little.

When they were done, Chase and Tate offered to do the dishes and as much as the two girls were thankful, they were also relieved not to have to deal with the atomic bomb that had detonated in the kitchen.

Or exploding hydraulic cylinder, as it were.

It took them the better of two hours to get everything back into working order, but neither of them minded.

They found Georgina and Rachel in the family room seated on the couch when they were done.

“Scooch,” Tate said, and slid between them.

Chase took a seat at one end, and they all squished together.

“You guys want to watch something?” Tate asked.

Georgina fiddled with her cell phone; her eyes locked on it.

“Actually… Raven came out with another podcast.” She didn’t look up.

There was something odd about the way Georgina uttered the girl’s name. Her voice was tinted with something close to reverence.

“I’m game,” Tate said. “If you are, Chase.”

Georgina raised her eyes.

“The thing is, it’s about Maple Hollow. Are you sure you want to listen, Chase?”

END

Author’s Note

Hey, #thrillogans! I’ve got something special for you—Beyond the Crime Scene: A Chase Adams Podcast is live!

Hosted by Raven (who you first met in Frost Bite), Beyond the Crime Scene takes you deeper than ever, with character interviews, behind-the-scenes insights, and a closer look at those left standing when the crime scene fades.

Each episode dives into Chase’s latest or past cases. For new releases, we’ll focus on the latest thriller; otherwise, we’ll revisit a previous case. I’m thrilled to reconnect with some old characters—and villains. But remember, the podcast is packed with SPOILERS, so listen only after finishing the book, which will be clearly listed in each episode title.

Find the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Deezer—wherever you listen. Don’t forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode drop.

Now, back to the current book! Grim Harvest might take place on Thanksgiving, but I wrote it during Halloween season, so a haunting, Halloween vibe seemed only fitting. It’s my favorite holiday, so I had to do it justice.

As always, if you enjoyed this Chase Adams adventure, please leave a rating and review.

Until next time, you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.

Best,

Pat

Montreal, 2024

Other Books by Patrick Logan

Detective Damien Drake

Butterfly Kisses

Cause of Death

Download Murder

Skeleton King

Human Traffic

Drug Lord: Part I

Drug Lord: Part II

Prized Fight

Almost Infamous

Straw Man

Dangerous Company

Happy Face

Chase Adams FBI Thrillers

Frozen Stiff

Shadow Suspect

Drawing Dead

Amber Alert

Georgina’s Story

Dirty Money

Devil’s Den

Painted Ladies

Adverse Effects

Already Dead

Direct Evidence

Filthy Secrets

Tainted Blood

Deadly Cargo

Active Shooter

Frost Bite

Grim Harvest

Tidal Bones

Last Supper

Striker and Frost FBI Thrillers

Tell Me Where the Sandman Sleeps

Tell Me Where She’s Buried

Tell Me What You’ve Done

Tell Me Where They’ve Gone

Dr. Beckett Campbell, Medical Examiner

Bitter End

Organ Donor

Injecting Faith

Surgical Precision

Do Not Resuscitate

Extracting Evil

Residence Evil (AKA Beckett’s First Kill)

Tommy Wilde Thrillers

One Wilde Night

Two Wilde Weeks

Three Wilde Months

Four Wilde Families

Veronica Shade Thrillers

The Color of Murder

The Scent of Murder

The Sound of Murder

The Touch of Murder

The Taste of Murder

Don’t forget to drop by my Facebook group and say hi! https://www.facebook.com/groups/LogansInsatiableReaders/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or of places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Patrick Logan 2024

Interior design: © Patrick Logan 2024

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, cannot be reproduced, scanned, or disseminated in any print or electronic form.

First Edition: October 2024