He snorts.

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Am I interrupting your whatever-the-hell-you’re-doing out here? The answer is nothing, sheriff. You’re doing nothing. You’re sitting on your ass and ordering me to read files when the best person to discuss this town is you. Tell me about Abbygail Kemp. Then I’ll read the file.”

He goes inside and I think he’s refusing. I start to follow, only to see he’s switching his coffee for a beer. He comes back, sits, and takes a long drink from the bottle. Then he sets it down and says, “Abbygail Kemp is my fucking biggest failure as sheriff, detective.”

I think I’ve misheard. Or this is some sarcastic faux confession. One look in his eyes says it’s not.

“She came here at nineteen. Youngest resident we’ve ever had, and I fought tooth and nail to keep her out. Didn’t want that kind of responsibility. Like taking a teenage girl and dropping her off in the middle of Las Vegas at midnight. I said hell no. I’m not a babysitter. It was Beth who talked me down. Said she’d take responsibility. And the girl’s story …” He shook his head. “I wasn’t arguing that she didn’t need help. I just didn’t think she needed Rockton.”

“Her story?”

“Ran away at sixteen. Drugs. Prostitution. The family situation …?” He shifted in his seat. “I won’t pretend to understand the family situation, detective. I know my limitations, living up here, and so I read up on stuff like that. I still don’t understand because, to me, it’s black and white. If your kid runs away and sells her body for money, you must be shitty parents.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “If she was into drugs before she left, that would explain a lot.”

“I guess so. Anyway, leaving didn’t mean she hated her parents. She got herself into trouble on the streets, though. Big trouble. She ran home. The trouble followed. Some gang guys set her house on fire. Her parents didn’t get out in time.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. She was a fucking mess when she got here. Strung out and hating herself and hating anyone who tried to help, including Beth. But Beth wouldn’t give up on her. No one did, detective, and that’s what you need to understand about this town. People here pull shit they never would down south. What’s that saying? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Same in Rockton. Except here, you can’t be an asshole and fly home the next day. You need to live here. So, as fucked up as it is, when things go really wrong, most people will pitch in to make it right. Someone like Abbygail shows up and folks do their best. Eventually, she understood we weren’t putting her on a flight home no matter how much shit she pulled. And she understood I wasn’t going to let her pull that shit. She spent nights in the cell. She spent days on logging duty. A year later, she was working for Beth, training as a nurse, making plans to go to college when she got out of here. And then …”

He trails off and takes a long draw on his beer, finishing it. “Mick saw her heading into the forest one night and gave her shit for it, and she turned around … but only long enough to make him walk away. Beth woke the next morning to find she’d never come home.”

“Why would she go into the woods?”

“She liked the peace and quiet of it. Her parents used to take her to the mountains every summer, and I guess those were good memories. I did everything I could— Fuck, no. That’s an excuse. If I’d really done everything to keep her out of those woods, she would never have gone in. I tried to manage the situation. Let her join the militia, come on patrols, gave her time in the forest under supervision.”

He looks at me. “You think I’m an asshole, detective. I am. I’m going to ride you and everyone in this town every chance I get, and I’m going to be very clear who’s in charge. This is why. Because just when I think maybe I’m too hard on people, something like this happens, and I realize I can’t be hard enough.”

I don’t tell him this wasn’t his fault. That no matter how harsh he is, people will find a way around the rules, and with a young woman barely out of her teens, that goes double. He knows that. He doesn’t want absolution.

He continues. “It was the biggest search this town has ever seen. Round-the-clock manhunts for the first week. I don’t think Will or Mick slept the whole time.”

Not Dalton, either, I bet.

“Daytime searches for another week,” he says. “By that time … by that time we knew we weren’t looking for a survivor. We kept at it, though. No one was happy when I finally called it quits. Had to, though. Time to accept that we’d failed.”

“You said this was two months ago?” I say.

“Seven weeks.”

He still counted it in weeks, probably only recently stopped counting it in days. That’s what you do with the cases that haunt you.

“So about four weeks before Irene was murdered,” I said. “Five or so weeks before Powys disappeared.”

“Yep.”

“You think there’s a connection,” I say. “That Abbygail didn’t just wander into the forest. No more than Irene Prosser nearly cut off her own hands.”

He reaches for his beer. Remembers it’s empty and makes a face.

“Could Abbygail have been murdered?” he says. “I am not the person to make that determination. Not me. Not Will or Beth or Mick or anyone else who feels responsible for what happened.”