In a town that runs on secrets, bad coffee, and things better left buried.
Chapter One
“You can never trust the things you hear. Blowhards running around spreading rumors like it’s a national pastime—just behind baseball and dodging jury duty,” muttered Detective Maclan as he wrestled with an ancient copper kettle that had seen better days, probably during the Roosevelt administration. The first one.
He only ever called when things got weird — or when he needed the sheriff to show up before the press did.
Mac had the droopy eyes of a basset hound that knew Christmas wasn’t coming — and none of the charm to make you feel sorry for him. His face was a topographical map of poor life choices, sour mash, and too many late nights chasing leads that went nowhere.
He was from one of those big cities that think they’re God’s gift to civilization — Detroit, New York, Chicago, take your pick; I could never remember which one. You know the type: concrete jungles sold as dream factories by tourism boards and people who’ve never parallel parked there in winter. The kind of places that plaster themselves on postcards nobody sends anymore, where locals wear their area codes like dog tags and treat pizza preferences like religion.
I’d always wondered — if those big-city wonderlands were really paradise on Earth, why had Mac spent the last two decades in our little corner of nowhere? The most exciting thing to happen here was when someone stole the mayor’s garden gnome. Turned out it was the mayor’s wife — but that’s another story.
At least Mac had decent taste in music — Glenn Miller and Count Basie crooned from a dusty record player in the corner. The big band tunes did their best to soften a personality with all the warmth of a February morning in Minnesota. They didn’t quite succeed.
Mac finally gave up on the kettle, muttering something unprintable and defeated as it clanked back onto the stove like it had won a round. He rubbed his temple with the kind of weariness that made you think he’d been born tired and just never recovered.
“That thing’s got more rust than my first marriage,” he said. “But it still works. Like me.”
I wasn’t buying either claim, but it wasn’t worth the argument before noon.
Mac shuffled over to a dusty shelf, scooped a suspiciously generous heap of coffee grounds into two oversized Styrofoam cups, then poured hot water on top like he was trying to raise the dead. No filter, no stirring — just grit, steam, and blind confidence. He capped each one with another cup as a makeshift lid and brought them over like he’d just completed a sacred rite.
“Breakfast,” he said, handing one to me. “Give it a couple of minutes before drinking.”
I nodded, relieved — and quietly hoped he’d forget all about it once he started talking.
We were sitting in his office — a generous term for a room that smelled like wet paper and old cigars. Filing cabinets leaned like drunks at last call. Papers were scattered everywhere, like they’d tried to escape but given up halfway through. A battered coat rack in the corner held exactly one thing: a trench coat that looked like it had survived a bar fight — maybe even started it.
On the desk sat a half-empty bottle of bourbon Mac swore was “just for special occasions,” which apparently included Tuesdays, slow mornings, and the rare instance he found a clean ashtray. The record player in the corner was crooning something big band and brassy — Count Basie, maybe — the music doing its best to class up a room that had long since made peace with its own decline.
Mac dropped into his chair with a creak that sounded more like a threat than a complaint.
He lit a cigarette with a flick of the same Zippo he’d probably carried through at least one war — or at least a nasty divorce — then squinted at me through the smoke.
“You hear about the Franklin girl?”
I hadn’t. But judging from his tone, I was about to.
“Gone. Vanished. One minute she’s at choir practice, the next — nothing. No note, no witnesses, not even a damn shoe left behind.”
He blew smoke like punctuation.
“Folks are already talking. Devil cult. Alien abduction. Government cover-up. All the greatest hits.”
“And you think it’s just a runaway?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He grunted. “I think it’s a headache I didn’t need.”
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like it owed him money. But it was the weight of the situation. Mac was the kind of man you follow, but doesn’t lead the way. Mac’s dogged approach set the tone in ways words never could. The sort of man you need by your side when everything goes to shit. You know you can’t approach anything half-assed when dealing with Mac; he didn’t have time for it.
“Town’s getting twitchy,” he muttered. “Girl like that—straight-A type, polite, never missed a Sunday in her life—goes missing, people start looking for meaning. And when they can’t find meaning, they settle for someone to blame. She was one of those people God put on this Earth to show the rest of us how it’s done.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose like he was exorcising the pain, reached for the bourbon, thought better of it, and went for the coffee instead. Braver man than me.
I glanced at my cup. The grounds had settled into a thick, gritty layer at the bottom. It looked less like a drink and more like an autopsy sample.
“Go ahead, try it. Don’t be a pansy.”
Mac knew exactly what he was doing. Around here, that word was like tossing a lit match into a dry field. You either proved him wrong or lived with the smirk.
I took a gulp.
It hit like a shot of Kentucky bourbon — hot, dark, and mean. My eyes bulged. Strong didn’t cover it. It had weight, bite, a kind of smoky depth I didn’t expect from something brewed in a Styrofoam cup using chemistry that bordered on witchcraft. Against all odds, it was the best damn coffee I’d ever tasted.
Mac saw it in my face, took a long, smug sip of his own.
“Told you,” he said, grinning like he’d just won something small but sacred.
“I figure we’ve got two days before this turns into a circus,” he added, dragging on his cigarette. “Three, tops.”
“And what happens then?”
He stubbed out the cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“Then the press shows up. And if there’s one thing I hate more than missing kids, it’s reporters pretending they care.”
I nodded, the weight of it settling in.
“We have to do something, Kincaid. You get my meaning? I never brought up what happened to you while you were gone, but I need that guy.”
Mac’s face was unreadable, but his voice left no room for doubt.
“What guy?” I asked.
He looked at me hard, like he was searching a part of my soul. Then he handed me a cigarette.
I took it, lit it, and exhaled.
There wasn’t much to say. Just time to sift through whatever I had left and figure out how to be useful again.
Abstract as that sounded, Mac didn’t ask for explanations — he only ever asked for results.
“Okay.”
Pingback: Bourbon and Rust 2 – The Narrative Forge