Hadley couldn’t help but wonder what secrets their shadows harbored over the years. Her attention was drawn away from the woods when Martin set a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. She wrapped her hands around the blue porcelain while he eased himself into the chair across from her.
“I don’t know what more I can add about Missy Claymont.” Martin took a long drink of his coffee, eyeing her over the rim. He finally lowered his mug to the table. “I wasn’t at the festival last year. Don’t plan to go this year, either. No reason to go.”
Martin had never been one for small talk. The tension in her shoulders lessened when he didn’t bring up her brother. Perhaps these types of interviews wouldn't be as difficult as she'd anticipated.
“So, you didn’t hear anything odd that night?”
“My hearing isn’t what it used to be,” Martin replied, tapping his right ear. “I turn the volume of the TV up to hear the voices, but it drowns out everything else. Not that it mattered much. TheThreshing Manis said to take his victims quietly.”
Hadley wasn’t going to get drawn into a conversation about whether or not there was any truth to theThreshing Man. She had accepted long ago that some of the locals truly believed in the disturbing tale. Martin was clearly one of those believers.
“When were you notified that Missy had gone missing?”
“The following morning, when the sheriff came knocking on my door,” Martin responded with a disapproving shake of his head. “Sheriff Turner had a search warrant for my property, not that he needed it. I left him and his deputies to it while joining Reed and the search party he put together.”
“You were the one who found her cell phone.” Hadley followed up her statement with a question that could potentially prompt Martin to ask her to leave. “Why did you pick up the phone when you were instructed not to touch anything found during the search?”
Martin lifted one side of his mouth, but fortunately, not in contempt.
He’d softened in his old age.
“I wasn’t on site for the initial instructions. You see, I joined an hour later. I called Reed, who instructed me to start canvassing the area from my side of the treeline.” Martin shrugged, as if he couldn’t fathom the problem. “I picked up the phone, brought it back to the house, and turned it over to Turner.”
It was no wonder that Sheriff Turner’s paperwork strongly suggested Martin Cox as his lead suspect. And while Hadley had her own doubts about Martin’s innocence, as she’d pointed out to Reed, she couldn’t fathom Martin voluntarily presenting evidence to a law enforcement officer.
“No one wants to talk about it, you know,” Martin said after taking another drink of his coffee. The angle of his chair allowed him to gaze out the door’s window. “Well, the media, but they just want to sensationalize him.”
“Himbeing theThreshing Man?” Hadley did her best to keep her skepticism from lacing her tone.
“Every harvest season, same thing happens,” Martin continued while still staring out the window. “About a week before the first frost, the air changes. Gets this smell to it—like something rotting in the soil. Sarah used to say it was just the natural cycle of things, plants dying back for winter. But it's more than that."
His belief in the folklore was practically etched into the lines around his eyes.
“Been on this land seventy-one years," Martin replied, his voice dropping slightly as if sharing a confidence. "Some things you just come to know. Like when the noises start. Not every night, mind you. But often enough. As if something is moving through the cornfields, but not quite touching the stalks. Like something gliding between them."
Martin's fingers tightened around his mug.
“Sarah kept journals of it all. Said it helped her make sense of things.” Martin shifted in his seat, finally turning his attention to Hadley. He studied her for a moment before lifting the corner of his thin mouth. “You think I’m an old fool, don’t you?”
“No, Mr. Cox,” Hadley replied gently, not wanting him to cut this discussion short. “I think sometimes it’s easier to believe something…anything…other than a human could be behind such evil deeds.”
“What I believe is that there are things in this world we aren't meant to understand fully. Did you ever consider the story about theThreshing Man—about him taking what's owed—well, maybe there's truth buried in there somewhere. This land remembers things we try to forget, Hadley.”
Hadley fought to maintain her professional composure. It was difficult not to think he was referencing her brother, and she wasn’t about to have that discussion with him.
“Mr. Cox, during your search for Missy, did you notice anything unusual about your property? Any signs that someone might have crossed through your land?”
“The sheriff's men had trampled everything pretty good during their search,” Martin replied with a slight shrug. “But no, nothing stood out to me. Kids go into those woods all the time. There’s no fence on the west side near the county land used for the festival. They never would pay to have one put in, and I sure as hell ain’t footing the bill.”
Hadley asked a few more standard questions until she brought the subject back around to something he’d revealed earlier in their talk.
“You mentioned that your wife wrote in journals. What did she write in them?”
“You know how you ladies like to write stuff down,” Martin said offhandedly, the statement landing somewhere between observation and dismissal. “My Sarah, she kept track of everything. It stemmed from when we tried to start a family. She had trouble conceiving in the first few years of our marriage. Of course, she began to mark everything down. From what she ate, drank…you name it. When the doctor finally told us it was never going to happen, she began to write down other things. Day-to-day life.”
“And that included weather patterns?” Hadley asked with genuine curiosity. Given that Martin hadn’t touched a single doily in the house, she was hoping the same could be said for his wife’s personal items. “Daily events that happened on the farm?”
“Every day after we decided to give up the idea of a large family and grow old together.” Martin’s gaze dropped to his left hand, and he stared at the gold wedding band in sadness. “She’d mark down when the air smelled wrong. The nights when the corn would rustle without wind. And all the times when the animals went quiet for no reason.”
