What the Fields Remember
(2027)(The third book in the Hadley Dawkins series)
A novel by Kennedy Layne
In Cane County, the quiet ones are the easiest to lose, and the easiest to forget.
After more than a year of wearing a badge she never wanted, Hadley Dawkins has finally started to believe she might belong in the town that raised her. Professionally, she's found her footing. It's the rest of her life that refuses to settle, though sorting that out will have to wait.
Word reaches her that Archie Keller hasn't come into town in over a week. Retired and widowed, living alone past the edge of town, Archie is the kind of man who can go a while without being missed. Concerned, Hadley drives out to do a welfare check.
Only the house is empty. His truck sits in the drive under a week of snow, his wallet and phone are on the counter, and a half-eaten meal waits on the kitchen table. It's as though he stepped outside for a moment and never came back. There's no sign of a struggle, and no reason a man would walk away from his entire life in the dead of winter.
The town has an explanation ready, the way it always does. This is Cane County, after all, where people have gone into the fields and never come out since before anyone can remember. But Hadley has never had the stomach for the easy answer, and a story about a harvest spirit does her no good with the corn long cut and the ground frozen hard as iron. Someone took Archie Keller, someone who understands how easily a disappearance out here gets buried under a hundred years of folklore. What they didn't count on is a chief who refuses to let the fields have the last word.
‘They say the Threshing Man sleeps through the winter, when the fields lie bare and the ground goes hard. But the fields don't sleep, and they don't forget. They merely wait for the thaw, and for him to collect.’
Genre: Mystery
After more than a year of wearing a badge she never wanted, Hadley Dawkins has finally started to believe she might belong in the town that raised her. Professionally, she's found her footing. It's the rest of her life that refuses to settle, though sorting that out will have to wait.
Word reaches her that Archie Keller hasn't come into town in over a week. Retired and widowed, living alone past the edge of town, Archie is the kind of man who can go a while without being missed. Concerned, Hadley drives out to do a welfare check.
Only the house is empty. His truck sits in the drive under a week of snow, his wallet and phone are on the counter, and a half-eaten meal waits on the kitchen table. It's as though he stepped outside for a moment and never came back. There's no sign of a struggle, and no reason a man would walk away from his entire life in the dead of winter.
The town has an explanation ready, the way it always does. This is Cane County, after all, where people have gone into the fields and never come out since before anyone can remember. But Hadley has never had the stomach for the easy answer, and a story about a harvest spirit does her no good with the corn long cut and the ground frozen hard as iron. Someone took Archie Keller, someone who understands how easily a disappearance out here gets buried under a hundred years of folklore. What they didn't count on is a chief who refuses to let the fields have the last word.
‘They say the Threshing Man sleeps through the winter, when the fields lie bare and the ground goes hard. But the fields don't sleep, and they don't forget. They merely wait for the thaw, and for him to collect.’
Genre: Mystery