“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll come by as soon as I’m done here. Probably shouldn’t be more than another couple of hours.”
“Okay,” he said. “You know the gate code.”
“See you in a few.”
That two hours had turned to more like three after dealing with problem after problem with the call we were on, but eventually we got the new utility pole up, and the power restored to our cold customers.
That didn’t mean that my fingers weren’t overly fuckin’ frozen by the time I arrived at Gentry’s place.
He opened the door as I made it to his front porch.
“You look rough,” he said.
“Spent nine hours fixing a fuckin’ utility pole that some dumbass hit with his Tesla. Why the fuck he is even driving a Tesla in snow, I don’t know. Now I can’t feel my damn fingers.”
I was from Miami, for Christ’s sake.
We didn’t get snow in Miami.
The coldest it ever got there was sixty-five.
Needless to say, I wasn’t a happy camper by the time the door to Gentry’s place closed behind me.
“Sorry to call you here and not explain,” he grumbled as he walked to the kitchen where there was an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on his counter. “Come over here and drink a shot. You’re going to need it.”
This was starting to make me nervous.
I walked up to him and said, “What is it?”
He jerked his chin at the shot he’d just poured, and I drank it, feeling the fire start to line my throat and belly almost instantly.
“I’m working a case with Sheriff Black.”
I placed the glass gently on the counter, but the hard clack of it meeting the stone countertop still rang through the otherwise quiet room.
“Okay.” I waited.
He scrubbed his hands over his face roughly before he started in on the story.
“You know the big super church in town, right?”
I nodded once.
“As of right now, we don’t know that this is the church. It might just be the parents, Minnie and Barton Wheeler.”
I didn’t reply.
“The Wheelers’ daughter came in four months ago because of something she saw at her parents’ place. She took a video and shared it with us.” He took a seat on the closest stool.
“What was on the video?” I asked. “What did she see?”
“I have permission to show you,” he said. “Sit down.”
I sat, and he opened up his laptop before twisting it my way.
At first, the video was black, and you could see nothing.
Then there was so much shaking that at first, nothing could be made out.
