Lana’s Story Part 29: What the Sheriff Hid in His Glovebox

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 28 here to catch up on Sheriff Cole Pruitt’s car behind our barn, the still-warm sleeping bag in the hayloft, the notebook that tracked every step June took, and the text from Nadine’s number that changed everything.

Last time, we found out somebody had been living in our hayloft for two weeks. Royce chased a man in a ball cap out the creek-side loft door and came back holding his brown canvas jacket, with Nadine’s phone in the pocket. Cole admitted the jacket belonged to his nephew, Deke, and that Nadine Hollis, the woman from Land Records who had been sitting at June’s kitchen table all week, was his little sister.

Then, standing alone in the loft window at sunset, I got a text from Nadine. A photo of me, taken from the tree line less than a minute before. He is not the one you should be afraid of. It wasn’t me or Annie who stamped that twelfth page. Ask my brother where he was nine days ago.

And down in the yard, Sheriff Cole Pruitt slid something small and flat out of his glovebox, tucked it into his jacket, and looked straight up at me.

What Was in the Glovebox

I don’t remember climbing down the ladder. I just remember that my hands were shaking on the rungs and that by the time my boots hit the barn floor, I had already decided I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t seen it.

Cole was still standing by his car when I walked up. The light was almost gone, and the deputies’ flashlights were bobbing down along the creek like fireflies.

“What did you just take out of your glovebox?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He looked at me for a long time, and then past me, because June had come up on my other side. She didn’t say a word. She just folded her arms over her egg-basket apron and waited, the way she used to wait when I was nine and had a broken lamp to explain.

Cole reached into his jacket and held it out on his flat palm. A tiny black plastic case, no bigger than a postage stamp. Inside was a memory card, the kind that goes in a camera.

“It was tucked in the envelope with my registration,” he said. “It wasn’t there Friday. I keep a flashlight and my paperwork in that glovebox and nothing else.”

“So why’d you hide it?”

“Because that empty camera bag up in the loft is Deke’s,” he said. “And if there is something on this card that sends my nephew to prison, I wanted to be the one who saw it first.” He let out a breath. “That’s the truth, Lana. It isn’t a pretty one.”

“Give it to the girl, Cole,” June said quietly.

He held it out a second longer. Then he put it in my hand and closed my fingers over it with his own.

That’s when I made my second decision. Nadine had told me not to tell Cole where they were. I didn’t know where they were. So I took out my phone and handed it to him with the message open.

Where Cole Was Nine Days Ago

I watched him read it. I watched the color leave his face, starting at his forehead and going all the way down.

“Nadine is your little sister,” June said. “That’s what you told us this afternoon. But Deke Pruitt is your late brother’s boy, Cole. I went to that funeral.”

“She married my brother when she was eighteen,” Cole said, without looking up from the phone. “After he passed, she put the Hollis name on and I was the only Pruitt she had left. She’s been my little sister for twenty-five years. I don’t need a piece of paper to say so.”

Then he handed my phone back, and he told us.

“Nine days ago I was in Las Cruces, New Mexico.”

June actually took a step back.

“Rita Lane called my house,” he said. “First time in eleven years. She said if I came alone, she’d tell me what Nadine did to fix Deke’s trouble three years ago. So I took a personal day, and I drove my own pickup all night, and I sat in a diner off the highway from seven in the morning until dark. She never came.”

“Then how do you know it was her?” I asked.

“Because when I paid, the waitress handed me a paper napkin somebody had left for me.” He swallowed. “It said, Thanks for the drive, Sheriff.“

Nobody said anything for a moment. Out by the creek, one of the deputies’ dogs started barking and then went quiet again.

“She wanted you out of the county,” I said.

“And I left my unmarked unit sitting in the courthouse lot,” Cole said, “with Deke holding the only other key.” He pulled out his wallet and unfolded a gas receipt, soft from being folded and unfolded. Las Cruces. Nine days ago. “I kept it because I knew someday I’d have to prove where I was.”

“Why didn’t you tell anybody?” June asked.

“Because a sheriff who drives all night to meet the woman he’s supposed to be arresting doesn’t stay sheriff very long.”

I looked at that receipt in his hand. I wanted to believe it. But if this summer had taught our family one thing, it was how easy it is to make a piece of paper say anything you want.

So I asked him one more question. “The notebook in the loft. The neat printing. Do you know whose it is?”

He didn’t even have to think. “That’s Deke’s. Nadine taught him to print like a schoolteacher.” He paused. “It’s the same hand as that weigh ticket at the scale house.”

Which meant Deke had written down his own crossing at 5:52 this morning. And I couldn’t think of a single reason a man would keep a record against himself. Unless he was keeping it for somebody else.

The Pictures on the Card

Vera brought her laptop to June’s kitchen table and set it down between the sugar bowl and the salt shaker. Royce stood behind her with his scratched hand resting on the back of her chair.

Cole let me be the one to put the card in.

There were hundreds of pictures. June walking to the henhouse in her barn coat with the egg basket. June at the third nesting box. Me on Willow in the round pen. Vera and Annie on the porch swing, their hands side by side. Our whole life, from the hayloft window, one click at a time.

I felt sick. I kept clicking.

Then the pictures changed. No more farm. A parking lot at night under orange lights. The back of the county courthouse. The date in the corner was nine days ago, 11:14 PM.

One window was lit on the ground floor.

“That’s Land Records,” Cole said, very low.

The next picture was taken with a long lens, right through the glass. A woman stood at the counter with her back half-turned, holding a red stamp over a sheet of paper. Her hair was short and silver.

“Rita,” Vera whispered.

Rita Lane, who was supposed to be meeting the sheriff at a diner in New Mexico that night, was standing in our county courthouse stamping the twelfth page with the word Pulled.

Cole sat down hard in June’s chair. He didn’t say anything. He just put his face in his hands.

I had my finger on the button for the next picture when June put her hand over mine.

“Not yet,” she said. “Come outside with me a minute first.”

Hank’s Barn Coat

June and I sat down on the back steps in the cold. The deputies’ lights were still moving along the creek, and somewhere out in the dark Willow nickered once from her paddock.

June took Grandpa Hank’s old barn coat off the hook by the door and put it around my shoulders. It still smells like him, a little. Hay and pipe tobacco and peppermints.

“You were up in that loft by yourself,” she said. “With that man maybe still out there.”

“I know.”

“Your mama used to do that too. Climb up there whenever the world made her mad, and come down when she’d figured out what to do about it.” She smoothed the collar of the coat flat with her thumb. “Caroline would have climbed that ladder today, same as you. She’d have looked that sheriff in the eye, same as you.”

I didn’t trust my voice, so I just leaned against her.

“Whatever’s on the rest of that card,” June said, “you’re not going to look at it alone. You hear me? Not one more picture in this whole business without me sitting right beside you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She kissed the top of my head, the way she did when I was little, and stood up with her hand on the porch rail. “All right. Let’s go see what that boy saw.”

The Cardinal Key Chain

June sat down beside me at the table, and I clicked to the next picture.

It showed the courthouse back door, propped open about a foot. Somebody was holding it from inside the hallway. You couldn’t see a face. Just a woman’s hand on the edge of the door and a ring of keys hanging from her fingers. And on that ring, catching the light, was a little red enamel bird.

A cardinal.

Vera made a small sound, like somebody had pressed on a bruise.

“I gave her that,” she said. “At Christmas. It came in the same box as the card.”

The cardinal Christmas card. The one with Annie Kettering’s handwriting, the tall loop on her T and the tiny circle over the I.

Nadine’s text had been the truth, every word of it. It wasn’t Annie who stamped the twelfth page. Annie had just held the door.

Royce’s hand closed on Vera’s shoulder. Nobody looked at anybody.

Then Cole’s radio crackled on his belt. “Sheriff, the dog found a vehicle down in the creek bottom. White Ford pickup. Nobody in it. Driver’s door open, engine cold. There’s a big camera with a long lens on the passenger seat.” A pause. “The memory card slot is empty.”

Annie’s white Ford. Parked a quarter mile from our barn, where it could have been sitting all day.

Before any of us could move, my phone buzzed on the table.

It wasn’t Nadine’s number this time. It was Annie’s.

Lana, I know you have the card. The picture after the door is the one that matters. Please don’t let Cole see it. Come to the Kettering east pasture gate before sunrise. Come alone, and bring the blue folder.

I looked down at the laptop. There was one picture left on that card. I hadn’t opened it yet. And across the table, Sheriff Cole Pruitt was already standing up, reaching for the screen.

So now I’m asking you. Is Annie helping Rita, or is somebody making her do it? What is on that last picture that she’s so afraid Cole will see? And should I go to that pasture gate alone before sunrise, or is that exactly what someone wants?

Part 30 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what happens next.