When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(58)

“Hydroponics,” Walt explains. “Makes for faster growth.”

I get it, the watering system. While hanging from the ceiling above are huge banks of lights, emitting a whitish glow.

“LED lighting,” Walt volunteers again, clearly proud. “Provides the best balance of light and heat. I got ’em digitally programmed. Different growth stages have different needs. You don’t gotta be too fancy about it, but I take care of my own. Best damn microgreens in Georgia,” he boasts again.

“How long have you been doing this?” Keith asks. Like me, he has started wandering the aisles.

“Three years.”

“How did you learn all this?” I ask, waving my hand around. Because digital lights, the automated watering system . . . With his unkempt hair, tattered jeans, and stained flannel, Walt doesn’t exactly look like an advertisement for sophistication, and yet this is clearly a high-tech operation.

He shrugs. “Here and there. I’ve always been good with my hands. Running a farm, fixin’ buildings, maintainin’ equipment, takes more know-how than people think.”

“Clearly.”

“Plus,” he adds matter-of-factly, “I grew dope for years. This is easier. More profitable and I don’t gotta worry about being arrested.”

“Of course.”

“I wasn’t always a good person,” Walt says abruptly. He’s standing near the door. For the first time, I realize I don’t know where the shotgun is anymore. Still leaning against the outside of the barn? Or tucked somewhere behind him? For that matter, is there a second egress to this place? Or if he wanted to, could Walt take three steps back, jerk closed the heavy sliding door, and lock us in with his precious microgreens?

I don’t know why he’d want to do such a thing. And yet, the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. Farther down the aisle, Keith turns and I can tell he feels it, too. A certain wrongness. A change in the air that doesn’t bode well.

Maybe a guy like Walt doesn’t need a reason. Maybe Keith and I have allowed ourselves to be lulled by trays of tiny green shoots while forgetting the obvious—crazy is crazy, and Walt Davies has spent decades earning a reputation as the town lunatic.

“I drank,” Walt whispers now.

Has he moved? I shift slightly, trying to calculate my distance to the open door. If I bolt now, maybe I could cut him off.

“I doped and drugged and drank my way through life. If there was an illicit chemical around, I injected it. If there was a fight to be had, I picked it. I hit my girl. Smacked around my kid. Then beat them more for making me feel bad about it. I was a mean son of a bitch.”

Keith and I don’t say a word. Walt doesn’t seem to be paying attention to us anymore. He’s telling his story, and the confessional air once again makes me shiver.

“Then, I got lost. In the mountains. These very hills where I had lived my whole life. I’d gone hunting, and ’course, packed more booze than common sense. I was on a trail. Then I wasn’t. Night came and it grew cold.

“I don’t know how long I staggered about. Day after day. Till my beer was gone, my flask dry. I’d packed a sandwich. Ate that the first afternoon. Then, with no booze, I started to get the shakes. Can’t exactly hunt when you’re too weak to hold a rifle. Hell, I couldn’t even manage to light a match for a fire. But the night sweats, hunger pangs, bone-deep thirst, they weren’t the worst part.”

“What was the worst part?” I drift toward the open door.

“The woods.” Walt speaks in an almost reverent tone. “They came alive. The trees whipped at me. The bushes clawed at my feet. And the night screamed. Of every wrong I’d ever done. And there were so many.

“I screamed back, that first night. I shook my fists at the moon. I howled like a goddamn animal. The mountains wanted a piece of me? I was angry and mean and I wasn’t going down without a fight. But then, every time I closed my eyes, I saw them. All the people I’d hurt. The wrongs I’d done. My boy’s bruised eyes. My woman’s shattered cheek. The woods, they showed me the darkness of my soul.”

Walt pauses, he looks at us for the first time, and his eyes are not completely sane, and yet, the pain in them feels real. I know something about the darkness of a person’s soul. Of spending long nights facing your sins.

“By the third night, I had no rage left in me. I was a broken man, destroyed by my own evil ways. I dug a hole with my bare hands. Long, deep. Tremblin’ and sweatin’ and out of my mind with the fucking pain. I prepared my grave and readied myself to die alone, with only the screaming trees for company. I deserved it. Lord, I deserved it.

“I prayed that final night. No atheists in a foxhole, right? I laid myself down in the earth, folded my arms over my chest, and out of my mind with the need for booze, I begged and cried like the fool I was. One more chance. Lord, give me one more chance.” Walt raised his gaze heavenward. “And you know what happened?”

Keith and I shake our heads.

“Nothin’. I sweat it out. The withdrawal, the pain. I lay in the earth and shook till I thought my bones would break.

“Then . . . I slept. When I woke up, I was thirsty. Parched down to the core. But not for beer or whiskey. For water. Good, plain, clean water. So I climbed out of my grave and I staggered my way forward till eventually, I came to a stream where I drank my fill. Then I followed that stream till it led me to a trail and I finally found my way home. I’d been gone six days, with nights that dropped below freezing conditions. But I lived.”