Charlie made it to Hailey State Prison a little before two, his stomach growling, his eyes tired, and his legs feeling as if the blood had stopped flowing sometime about an hour ago. He was getting too old to sit for three hours without moving.

He should have retired last year, when Brenda told him to, so he could spend his time doing something productive. Like fishing.

Tom Vernon met him at the gates.

Dressed in a suit, he looked more like a banker than the warden of one of the toughest prisons in the state. His hair was parted neatly on the side and streaked with gray. He stood ramrod straight, and when he extended his hand, Charlie couldn’t help but notice that his fingernails looked manicured.  Vernon led the way inside.

Like all prisons, it was drab, cold . . . concrete and steel everywhere, all bathed in fluorescent light. They made their way down a long hallway, past a small reception area, and finally into Vernon’s office.

At first glance, it was as cold and drab as the rest of the place. Everything was government issue, from the desk to the lamps to the file cabinets in the corner. A small, barred window overlooked the yard. Outside, Charlie could see the prisoners milling about; some were lifting weights, others were sitting around or clustered in groups. Every other person, it seemed, was smoking.  Why on earth would Vernon wear a suit to a place like this?

“I just need you to fill out some forms,” Vernon said. “You know how it is.” “Sure enough.” Charlie tapped his chest, feeling for a pen. Vernon handed him one before he found it.

“Did you tell Earl Getlin that I was coming?”

“I assumed you didn’t want me to.”

“Is he ready for me yet?”

“Once we have you set up in the room, we’ll bring him in.”

“Thanks.”

“I did want to talk to you for a second about the prisoner. Just so you’re not surprised.”

“Oh?”

“There’s something you should know.”

“And what’s that?”

“Earl was in a scuffle last spring. Couldn’t really get to the bottom of it—you know how things work in here. No one sees anything, no one knows anything.  Anyway . . .”

Charlie looked up when Vernon sighed.

“Earl Getlin lost an eye. Had it gouged out in a brawl down in the yard. He’s filed half a dozen lawsuits alleging that we were at fault somehow.” Vernon paused.

Why is he telling me this? Charlie wondered.

“The point is, he’s been saying all along that he didn’t belong here in the first place. That he was set up.” Vernon raised his hands. “I know, I know—everyone in here says they’re innocent. That’s an old song, and we’ve all heard it a million times. But the point is, if you’re here to get information from him, I wouldn’t get your hopes up, unless he thinks you can get him out of here. And even then, he might be lying.”

Charlie looked at Vernon in a new light. For such a natty dresser, he sure as hell seemed to know a lot about what went on in his prison. Vernon handed him the forms, and Charlie scanned them for a moment. Same ones as always.  “Any idea who he says set him up?” he asked.

“Hold on,” Vernon said, raising a finger. “I’ll get that for you.” He went to the phone on his desk, dialed a number, and waited until someone came on. He asked the question, listened, then thanked the person.

“From what we’ve heard, he says it was some guy named Otis Timson.”

Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Of course Earl blamed Otis.

That made one part of his job a whole lot easier.

But the other part suddenly became that much harder.

• • •

Even if he hadn’t lost an eye, prison had been less kind to Earl Getlin than most people. His hair looked hacked off in places, longer in others, as if he did it himself with a pair of rusty scissors, and his skin had taken on a sallow color. Always on the thin side, he’d lost weight and Charlie could see the bones under the skin of his hands.

But most of all, he noticed the patch. Black, like a pirate, like a bad guy in the old war movies.

Earl was manacled in the typical way, his wrists chained together and connected further to his ankles. He shuffled into the room, stopped for a moment as soon as he saw Charlie, then proceeded to take his seat. He sat across from him, a wooden table separating them.

After checking with Charlie, the guard backed quietly out of the room.  Earl stared with his one good eye. It seemed as if he had been practicing the stare, knowing that most people would be forced to look away. Charlie pretended not to notice the patch.

“Why are you here?” Earl growled. If his body looked weaker, his voice had lost none of its edge. He was wounded but wasn’t about to give up. Charlie would have to keep an eye on him after he was released.

“I came to talk to you,” Charlie said.

“About what?”

“About Otis Timson.”

Earl stiffened at the name. “What about Otis?” he asked warily.

“I need to know about a conversation you had with him a couple of years back.  You were waiting for him at the Rebel, and Otis and his brothers sat at your booth. Remember that?”

It wasn’t what Earl seemed to have been expecting. He took a few seconds to process Charlie’s words, then blinked.

“Refresh me,” he said. “That was a long time ago.”

“It concerned Missy Ryan. Does that help?”

Earl raised his chin slightly, looking down his nose. He glanced from one side to the other.

“That depends.”

“On what?” Charlie asked innocently.

“On what’s in it for me.”

“What do you want?”

“Come on, Sheriff—don’t play stupid. You know what I want.”

He didn’t have to say it. It was obvious to both of them.

“I can’t make any promises unless I’ve listened to what you have to say.” Earl leaned back in his chair, playing it cool. “Then I guess we’re in a bit of a bind, aren’t we?”

Charlie looked at him. “Maybe,” he said. “But I figure you’ll tell me in the end.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because Otis set you up, right? You tell me what was said back then, and I’ll listen to your side of events later. And when I get back to town, I promise to look into your story. If Otis set you up, we’ll find out. And in the end, you two just might find yourselves trading places.”

It was all Earl needed to talk.

• • •

“I owed him money,” Earl said. “But I was a little short, you know?”

“How short?” Charlie asked.

Earl sniffed. “A few thousand.”

Charlie knew the situation was illegal, most probably drug money. But he simply nodded, as if he knew this already and weren’t concerned about it.  “And the Timsons come in. All of ’em. And they start telling me that I gotta pay up, that it’s making ’em look bad, that they can’t keep carrying me. I kept telling them that I’d give them the money as soon as I got it. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Otis is real quiet, you know, like he’s really listening to what I have to say. He had this sort of cool expression, but he was the only one who seemed to care about anything I was saying. So I start kind of explaining the situation to him and he starts nodding and the others pipe down.  Right after I finished, I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t say anything for a long while. Then he leans forward and he says that if I don’t pay up, the same thing is gonna happen to me that happened to Missy Ryan. Except that this time, they’d run me over again.”

Bingo.

So Sims was telling the truth. Interesting.

Charlie’s face, though, showed nothing.

Either way, he knew that was the easy part. Getting him to talk about it wasn’t what he was worried about anyway. He knew the hard part was still coming.  “When was this?”

Earl thought about it. “January, I guess. It was cold out.” “So you’re there, sitting across from him, and he says this to you. How did you react when he said it?”

“I didn’t know what to think. I know I didn’t say anything.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Of course.” Big nod, as if emphasizing his point.

Too big?

Charlie glanced toward his hand, examining his nails. “Why?” Earl leaned forward, the chain clinking against the table. “Why else would he say something like that? Besides, you know what kind of guy he is. He’d do something like that in a heartbeat.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Again, why do you think that?”

“You’re the sheriff—you tell me.”

“What I think isn’t important. It’s what you think that matters.”

“I told you what I thought.”

“You believed him.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you thought he’d do the same to you?”

“He said it, didn’t he?”

“So you were frightened, right?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

Getting impatient?

“When did you get arrested? For stealing the car, I mean.”

The change of subject threw Earl for a moment.

“End of June.”

Charlie nodded as if this made sense, as if he’d checked it out beforehand.

“What do you like to drink? When you’re not in prison, I mean.”

“What does that matter?”

“Beer, wine, liquor. I’m just curious.”

“Beer mainly.”

“Were you drinking that night?”

“Just a couple. Not enough to be drunk.”

“Before you got there? Maybe you were a little buzzed. . . .”

Earl shook his head. “No, I had them while I was there.”

“How long did you stay at the table with the Timsons?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s an easy question. Were you there for five minutes? Ten? Half an hour?”

“I can’t remember.”

“But long enough for a couple beers.”

“Yeah.”

“Even though you were afraid.”

He finally saw what Charlie was getting at. Charlie waited patiently, his expression bland.

“Yeah,” Earl said. “They’re not the type of people you just walk away from.” “Oh,” Charlie said. He seemed to accept that, and he brought his fingers to his chin. “Okay . . . so let me make sure I understand. Otis told you—no, suggested—that they killed Missy, and you thought they’d do the same to you because you owed them a bunch of money. So far, so good?” Earl nodded warily. Charlie reminded him of that damn prosecutor who’d put him away.

“And you knew what they were talking about, right? With Missy, I mean. You knew she’d died, right?”

“Everyone knew.”

“Did you read about it in the papers?”

“Yeah.”

Charlie opened his palms. “So, why didn’t you tell the police about it?”

“Yeah, right,” he sneered. “Like you guys would have believed me.”

“But we should believe you now.”

“He said it. I was there. He said he killed Missy.”

“Will you testify to that?”

“Depends on the deal I get.”

Charlie cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s change gears for a second. You got caught stealing a car, right?”

Earl nodded again.

“And Otis was responsible—you say—for you getting caught.” “Yeah. They were supposed to meet me out by the old Falls Mill, but they never showed. I ended up taking the fall.”

Charlie nodded. He remembered that from the trial.

“Did you still owe him money?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

Earl shifted in his seat. “A couple thousand.”

“Isn’t that what you owed before?”

“About the same.”

“Were you still afraid they’d kill you? Even after six months?”

“It was all I could think about.”

“And you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them, right?”

“I told you that already.”

Charlie leaned forward. “Then why,” he asked, “didn’t you try to use this information to lighten your sentence? Or put Otis away? And why, in all this time here when you were complaining that Otis set you up, did you never mention that he’d killed Missy Ryan?”

Earl sniffed again and glanced toward the wall.

“No one would have believed me,” he finally answered.

I wonder why.

• • •

In the car, Charlie ran through the information again.

Sims was telling the truth about hearing what he’d heard. But Sims was a known alcoholic and was boozing that night.

He’d heard the words, but had he heard the tone?

Was Otis joking? Or serious?

Or lying?

And what had the Timsons talked about with Earl for the next thirty minutes?  Earl hadn’t really cleared any of that up. It was obvious he didn’t even remember the conversation until Charlie brought it up, and his account pretty much fell apart after that. He’d believed they would kill him, but he’d stayed for a few beers afterward. He’d been terrified for months, but not enough to scrounge up the money he owed, even though he stole cars and could have gotten the money. He’d said nothing when he’d been arrested. He blamed Otis for setting him up and blabbed to people in the prison about it, but he didn’t mention the fact that Otis had confessed to killing someone. He’d lost an eye and still had said nothing. The reward had meant nothing to him.

A boozing alcoholic, providing information to get off free. A convict with a grudge, suddenly remembering critical information, but with serious holes and flaws in the story.

Any defense lawyer worth his salt would have a field day with both Sims Addison and Earl Getlin. And Thurman Jones was good. Real good.  Charlie hadn’t stopped frowning since he’d been in the car.

He didn’t like it.

Not at all.

But the fact was that Otis had indeed said “the same thing is gonna happen to you that happened to Missy Ryan.” Two people had heard him, and that counted for something. Enough to hold him, maybe. At least for the time being.  But was it enough for a case?

And, most important, did any of it actually prove that Otis did it?