A/N: Those familiar with my other D/E fanfics will note the return of a favorite Easter egg of mine. ;)

Chapter 30: Dead Man's Switch

In blood stained sod, the poppies grow;
A bird plucks one and takes it home
A place of peace, a place of rest
a place of safety for her nest
Behind the hole, the secret lies
A poppy for the day she dies.
-the author

Wednesday, December 1, 1988

Two weeks had passed since Jake had been rushed to the hospital, and while he was no longer knocking on death's door, Enos was concerned he was still loitering around its porch. Gone was the talkative young man he had met at the Antelope with bright eyes and eager aspirations, and in his place resided a beaten and broken spirit. Three days ago he had been discharged, and since then he had eaten only when Joy had watched him and uttered less than a dozen words.

Technically, he wasn't under arrest, so Enos couldn't keep him locked up. Pete, Joy, Daisy, and himself were the only ones who knew about his confession, and the longer Enos thought it over, the less convinced he became of its truth. Murderers had tells, and unless Jake was a psychopathical genius, he wasn't seeing it. The whole set of circumstances was just too bizarre.

One way or another, today he had to get some answers. Either the kid had evidence of committing the murders, or he would have to let him go. He unlocked the cell door and motioned for Jake to follow him out into the lobby where he directed him to the chair opposite his desk.

"Joy's gonna pick up some lunch at Julie's, you want anything?"

He shook his head without looking up and mumbled a polite 'no sir'. Enos sighed, and met Joy's eyes in shared resignation.

"Bring some burgers," he told her. "and a couple of Cokes, too. We'll work through them while we talk." Enos waited until the door closed behind her before turning back to Jake. "How're your ribs feeling?"

He shrugged. "Better, I guess," he answered, his voice hollow and quiet. "You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble, sir."

Enos wasn't sure whether he meant about the food or sending him to the hospital. Probably either would fit. He shifted a stack of papers to a different spot on his desk and grabbed a yellow legal pad from the top drawer, wishing they had a separate uncluttered interrogation room.

"Did you get to talk to your mom? She was awful worried when she called the other day."

At the mention of his mother, Jake finally raised his head, and Enos could see the grief and guilt behind his eyes. Jake wouldn't authorize the hospital to release his medical records to his parents, and they would have been clueless, except their insurance called to verify his home address. Enos assumed Jake hadn't wanted to explain it to them. Like any good 'Mama bear', Myra Dawson had plenty of questions, but Enos couldn't give her many answers.

"Yes sir, I talked to her for a minute."

"So, how did an Iowa kid get all the way up to Lake Superior?" he asked, wanting to dig a little deeper into his past. "I don't think many people in inland states know about the freighter jobs."

"I used to spend summers with my aunt down in Bailey's Harbor, Wisconsin," he explained. "She knows everybody in town." His voice was scratchy from disuse, and he cleared his throat. "She asked around, and a guy gave her the number for the Elcid Barrett."

"This was your first season?"

"Yes, sir." He fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve. "I figured if I came up and worked on the Lake, there'd be one less mouth to feed at home, and I was trying to save up a little for college next fall."

Money was a cruel taskmaster, and Enos had seen it make people do things they otherwise would never do. "Your parents worry about money a lot?"

He shrugged. "My dad keeps getting screwed over for a raise, even though he's worked there the longest. My mom tells him he needs to stand up for himself, but he never does."

"I'm sure they're awfully proud of you Jake. There ain't a lot of 19 year olds who would take on such a hard job to make it easier on their family."

He pulled out a clipboard out of his bottom drawer. "Before I forget, I need to make sure you understand your rights. Even if we don't talk about anything more important than the weather, it protects both of us from anyone telling stories about what we did or didn't say.."

Jake nodded. "Sure, okay."

Enos made reading him his Miranda rights sound as routine as he could, worried that Jake might clam up if he made the interview too formal. He passed the clipboard to him, and Jake scribbled his name at the bottom while Enos sighed inwardly at having gotten it out of the way. "So, do you have any brothers and sisters?"

"Three sisters: 5, 8, and 14." He started to say something else, but stopped.

Enos leaned closer. "I'm not the only one who can ask questions here. What were you gonna say?"

"It's nothing, sir," shaking his head. "Not my business."

His interest piqued. "I don't mind, ask me anyway."

"Well, sir... to be honest, I took the freighter job, cause I didn't want to end up in the same rut as my dad," he explained. "I was just wondering...was your dad a sheriff, too?"

"My dad?" Enos laughed and tapped his pen on the table, surprised by the question.

He studied Jake, a young man far removed from the world of backwoods Appalachia, and yet life had a way of revealing the same fears no matter the surroundings. Only Enos had wanted to be a ridgerunner. It was his father who hadn't allowed it.

"My dad was a moonshiner."

Jake snapped to attention, his eyes wide. "What!? But...then how'd you get to be a Sheriff?"

"That's a long story. I'll tell you what... How about you tell me what really happened to you and where you've been, then I'll tell you how a moonshiner's kid from the Georgia stix ended up Sheriff of Whitefish County, Michigan."

The kid looked away, his mouth set in a hard line, and Enos could see the wall go up between the two of them. This is where the lies begin, he thought.

"I told you, Sheriff, I got lost camping out in Tahquamenon Falls, lost my pack and nearly starved to death."

"I thought you said you couldn't find your campsite, and that's how come you were in such a bad way."

"Well...that, too."

Outside the county snow plow rumbled across the pavement with a loud grating sound, and Enos waited for it to pass. "Look, here's the deal," he said finally, dismissing the obvious fib. "I'm not interested in what did or didn't happen at the Falls. I want to know what happened after you talked to me outside the Antelope. Who talked to you when you went back in?"

"Nobody."

"So, you ran out after me, and then you just waltzed back in without anyone asking where you'd been?

His shoulders hunched between a cringe and a shrug. "Maybe? I don't remember. I told them I was going to the bathroom."

This wasn't Enos' first trip around the block as far as interrogations were concerned. Obviously his presence had been noticed, and someone had called him out on it, but he let it go for now. "So, what time did the Barrett leave the next morning?"

"It's always early, still dark." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I didn't get back on the boat, though. I told you, I went camping in -"

Both men turned towards the door as Joy came in with a bag of food and two drinks. Enos took them from her and cracked open one, handing it to Jake who guzzled the Coke like a man dying of thirst before setting it down on the table, stifling a belch, and murmuring a 'thanks' to Joy.

She responded by fishing a foil wrapped package from the bag. "I got you a burger," she said, holding it out to him. "Take two bites."

Reluctantly, he unwrapped it and took a small bite.

"So how'd you get from the St Mary's River all the way to Tahquamenon Falls?" Enos asked him. "That's an awful long way, and don't tell me you walked."

"Hitchhiked," he explained around the bite of burger. "A white Dodge Ram picked me up just down from the Locks and dropped me off above the Falls."

"What kind of camping supplies did you have?"

"Huh?"

"Camping stuff."

"Oh. You know," Jake said, setting down the burger and sliding it away, "tent, sleeping bag, food...things."

While Jake's explanation might have been plausible in the southern United States, the conditions they had had in the upper peninsula the week before he was found we're not survivable without supplies, and Jake didn't strike as Enos as an outdoorsman.

"See, I'm confused where you got all that stuff," he explained. "There ain't no outfitters between here and Soo. You would've had to have your camping supplies with you on the Barrett, and I know you didn't. Plus, it's been down in the twenties at night for the last couple of weeks, but you managed not to freeze to death with no sleeping bag and no coat."

Jake frowned and picked at his ragged nails. The silence between them dragged out until he finally answered with a shrug.

Enos felt for the kid. Whatever had happened had been traumatic enough to break him. His eyes fell on the small, round scars scattered across his arms and hands. Most were the white of healed scar tissue, but a few were still raw and blistered. They told a story of torture and abuse he had seen both in LA and occasionally in Hazzard with new kids brought to the orphanage.

"Look at me, Jake," he said, gently. The young man dragged his eyes away from his hands and back up to Enos, who continued carefully, "I know you're a good kid 'cause you're a terrible liar. We both know you weren't camping. I'm worried that what happened to you is gonna happen to someone else. I need to know the truth about where you've been and who hurt you."

Jake took a deep breath and sat up straighter, a new look of resolve in his eyes. "You're right, Sheriff. I wasn't camping for fun. After you came to the bar asking about Gino and John, I got spooked and ran. I hitchhiked to Shelldrake and hid out in the shed at the junkyard."

Enos stared at Jake through narrowed eyes, trying to divine what was really going on and second guessing his instincts. Could he be wrong? He supposed the cigarette burns could be self-inflicted, but he found the idea of him being a killer about as far-fetched as Rosco becoming the next Nashville singing sensation.

He decided to switch tactics and see how much he really knew about the murders to which he had confessed..

"Let's talk about John Allendale for a minute. Last week, you said he was one of the ones you killed. Is that right?"

Jake nodded, solemnly. "John was easy," he said. "He kept a bottle of Jack Daniels in his bunk, and everyone knew the guy couldn't go more than a few hours without a drink. I put the anti-freeze into his bottle before we offloaded, but he went to visit his family in Bay Mills, and didn't drink any of it until the next night."

Enos set his burger down and scribbled down a note to check it out. They had never been able to link any of the bars John had visited to his poisoning. Putting it in his personal stash made more sense. They hadn't found any liquor bottles with him, but he could have tossed the bottle if it was empty.

"Why'd you kill him?"

"He told the others I made a pass at him when he was drunk."

"Did you?"

"No!" Jake shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

Enos believed him. The story he'd told at the Antelope with John being a snitch was more plausible. "You told me before that he was running his mouth about the ship being empty when it went through the Locks."

Jake, caught in his mistake, flushed crimson. "That was a lie. Sorry, Sheriff."

"Well, I hear what you're saying, Jake, except that you were right about the Elcid Barrett running without cargo."

"I must've heard it somewhere, I guess."

John's death struck Enos as more a murder of convenience than the gruesomely psychotic display of Gino's murder. Almost as if two different people had committed them - or the killer had had a personal score to settle with Gino. That was the murder he wanted to focus on. It was the one where he had the best grasp of the situation and timeline. He also knew it wasn't Jake's fingerprint on Gino's boot.

"Let's talk about Gino," he said. "Why don't you explain to me how you killed him."

"How I killed him?"

"Did you shoot him before or after you stabbed him?"

"Afterwards," he boasted. "I wanted to make sure he suffered first."

"Right."

Enos gathered their lunch trash and walked over to the garbage, collecting his thoughts instead of yelling at the kid to knock off the lies. Why would an innocent person insist he had committed murder? Maybe he was in some other kind of trouble. He sat back down and tossed Jake's folder into the tray to get filed.

"Listen, I don't know who you're protecting or why, but either way, I can't let you live in jail while you think up better lies. If you need a place to stay, I'll get you a couple of days at the motel in Paradise until your parents can pick you up."

The blood drained from the young man's face as he stared at Enos, incredulous. "But...but, I killed two people, Sheriff! You can't just let me go!"

"Jake, Gino was never shot, and I've sat face to face with plenty of people who could carve up a guy like they did him. You ain't one of them."

Jake's eyes darted nervously around the room. "Do you have a piece of paper?"

"Sure." Enos tore a clean sheet from the legal pad and slid it and a pen across the table. Jake scribbled on it for a moment and then passed it back.

"Please, I can't leave here They'll know you didn't believe me"

Enos glanced up from the note into a face white with fear, and he knew he was either close to learning the truth or the poor kid was squirrely. He glanced towards the hallway where he knew Joy must be listening and decided to play along.

"Who?", he wrote, and slid it back to Jake who shook his head. Enos added, "Do you know who killed John and Gino?"

He gestured impotently with his hands and shrugged, and Enos took it to mean that he wasn't sure. Remembering the superstitions among the crew, he wondered if he knew the murderer by another name.

"Was it the person they call 'Alice'?"

Jake nodded.

"Was that who do this to you?"

Jake read the note and stared at it a long minute before taking the paper from Enos. "I don't know who it is I can't tell you any more please put me in jail. It doesn't matter anymore"

Enos sighed, realizing Jake was about to clam up. "Did they threaten you if you told me?"

Jake merely stared at him, and Enos wondered if they answer lay a bit closer to home. Jake had no money, and the fact that he was willing to throw his life away for a murder he didn't commit suggested that threats against his personal safety hadn't worked. However, there was one thing that Jake had that would have given them leverage.

"Did they threaten your family?"

His lips trembled as though holding back a sob, and Enos knew he'd guessed correctly. Jake jabbed the last line he'd written: 'It doesn't matter anymore.'

"Jake, I know you're scared," Enos sympathized, "and I can work with the police in Iowa to keep your family safe, but if you can't tell me anything, I can't keep you in jail. You ain't done nothing wrong."

He stood and gathered his notes from the desk, figuring Jake would take a hint that the interview was over and start thinking about either telling him something he could use or where he wanted Enos to drop him off. Instead, Jake walked around the desk towards him.

"So, you're saying I have to have committed a crime to stay in jail?"

"It's not up to me," Enos explained. "I've already kept you here longer than the law allows, and I have to report expenses to the State every month. I can still get you a room in Paradise until your parents can pick you up. If you could give me something...anything... that I could use to identify the real killer, I can try and set you up with Witness Protection."

"No," said Jake. "That won't work. I'm really sorry about this, Sheriff."

Before he could sus out what Jake meant, the young man hauled off and punched him. Enos staggered back against the wall, more surprised than hurt.

Jake threw his hands up, and Enos didn't need to turn around to know that Joy had her gun drawn on him. "It's alright, Joy," he assured her, rubbing his jaw. "He's just scared."

"I assaulted a police officer," Jake announced. "I'll put myself back in my cell."

Enos nodded dismally for Joy to follow him, and the two disappeared down the hallway. He glanced up at the clock and groaned in frustration. All this trouble and it wasn't even noon, yet. A moment later, Joy reappeared, her expression as grim as he had ever seen it.

"Well that went to hell fast," she muttered at him. "What now? You'll have to press charges to keep him here."

He sighed and pushed himself off from the wall. "I'll figure out something." He grabbed his coat and hat. "I'm gonna go drive around. Check and see if Scott Jamison cut that rotten deer carcass down from his tree before we get another dozen calls."

"Yes, do that. I'm sick of hearing about it."

Saturday, December 3rd, 1988

Saturday morning dawned with the coldest weather Daisy had ever seen, and though she knew it was coming, waking up to -3 degrees after a week of mid-30s was like plunging headfirst into a bucket of ice water. The wind was brutal, buffeting against the cabin and pelting snow against the living room window.

She huddled in a blanket beside the hearth with a wool ski cap jammed on her head, but there was a frostiness in the dry air that even the fire couldn't assuage.

Enos, unaffected, sat on the other couch tying trout flies on the coffee table and looking far too cozy in jeans and a black and red checked flannel shirt. He glanced up at her as she a added another log to the fire.

"You ain't still cold, are you?" he asked. "It's already hotter than a $20 Rolex in here."

"You've had three years to adjust," she reminded him. "I can't believe y'all didn't cancel your game tonight."

"Ain't nothing but a little snow and wind," he scoffed, "and it's powder, so the roads'll be fine. The only time we canceled a game was when we got three and a half feet in four hours, and the Cedarville Gulls chickened out."

"Y'all are crazy."

He grinned but kept focus on his hands as he slowly and meticulously wrapped wire around a piece of fluff, binding it onto a hook. Daisy stared longingly at the spot next to him on the couch.

"Can I sit by you?" she whined. "I'm cold."

"I reckon," he murmured, absently. "Just don't knock into me."

Grinning, she grabbed her book from the arm of the other couch and settled into the corner next to him, curling her legs up under the blanket. She watched as he carefully added a tiny feather to the fly with tweezers, tied it, then unwrapped it to move the feather a fraction of an inch before tying it again.

She shook her head. "The fish in Hazzard Pond like Velveeta cheese and worms."

He laughed. "These are for river trout, not catfish and bass." He snipped the wire and looked at her. "Daisy, if you wear all that get-up in here, you'll be twice as cold when you go outside." He snatched the hat off her head and tossed it on the other couch.

"Hey!" she yelled, smoothing down her static charged hair. "You lose all your warmth through your head!"

"You've been sitting by the fire so long your face's as red as a beet."

She scowled as he turned away. Opening her book to its previous marker, she tried to concentrate on the story. After several minutes, she tossed The Hobbit down on the coffee table with a dismal sigh.

"What's wrong?"

"It's boring," she complained. "The only thing worse than being stuck inside is being stuck inside with a boring book. It shouldn't take three pages to describe trees."

He sat his tools down and turned towards her. "Say, Daisy. Would you like your birthday present early?"

"You got me something for my birthday!?" she chirped, sure her face was even redder now than before.

"Well, not exactly," he admitted. "And don't worry, it didn't cost me anything. If you don't want it..."

"Hey! I didn't say no!"

"Alright," he laughed. "Hold on a minute."

He disappeared up the stairway into his room, then returned a moment later with a old cigar box. Her cold forgotten in the excitement of the moment, she discarded her blanket and scooted closer as he sat down beside her and held out her hands for the box, but he didn't give it to her.

The humor in his face was replaced by the fatigue of sleepless nights as he studied her. She wondered if he was remembering her doppelganger - that long, lost Daisy who everyone seemed to need but she could never be again. The one who was family to him and not a stranger. His focus shifted away from her as he spoke.

"That day I visited you in the hospital, I went back to the farm afterwards, but nobody was home. Your things were all boxed up, ready to get thrown out or burned... like you might as well have been dead," he whispered, unaware how callous the truth sounded aloud.

Tears sprang to her eyes and a lump to her throat, as though she were there again through his eyes. Instead of a sanctuary, she had come home to find everything gone and changed. Even her room was sterile and impersonal. The loss had been a different kind of dying - as though she had never existed at all. Inside that box was something of hers. Something that he had saved from destruction.

"To tell you the truth, I hadn't decided on giving it to you," he continued, unknowingly twisting the knife deeper into her heart. "I reckon that's awful selfish, since it's yours by right." He passed the box to her. "Sorry, I didn't have time to wrap it."

She held it for a moment - seeing it not as a gift but a bridge between her past and present, before carefully removing the rubber bands holding the lid on. Inside was a dog-eared paperback, and she laughed to find it was Jane Eyre - the one Bronte novel conspicuously missing from Tamarack's library. She knew because she had wanted to read it.

"It's falling apart," he apologized, "but a new one just wouldn't be the same." He reached over and flipped open the front cover. On the inside were a bunch of hash marks in groups of five. "I didn't know you'd kept track of how many times you'd read it until I brought it home. Don't ask me why, but this was.. is... your favorite book."

Daisy stared down at the yellowed page as a tear slipped down her cheek and dropped onto one of the twenty-four hash marks - part of herself once lost and now found again.

"Oh, Enos...". She wasn't sure what to say. How she could ever leave him? Surely, the moment she did, her soul would be cleaved in half.

He started to fidget. "I know it ain't much and it was yours to begin with but -"

For the second time in as many weeks, she threw her arms around him. "It's perfect," she said in a voice thick with emotion. "Thank you." His arms tightened around her for an instant before she drew herself out of his personal space. "Enos?"

His brows gathered in a worried expression. "What?"

"I..." She stopped, bit her lip and tried again. "We're friends now, ain't we? Cause when I first came here, we didn't seem to be anymore." The last part she said in a rush, not sure she should have said it but it was too late now - the thought was begun and must be finished.

"Friends?" His voice sounded funny, high and strained. He cleared his throat and looked down as he picked at his nails. "Well sure, Daisy," he continued, normally, "you caught me on a bad day, is all."

She wondered if he knew how bad a liar he was. "Well, still...I just wanted to apologize. In case it was my fault."

She had become convinced that they must have had a falling out sometime in the past. It was the only thing that explained his coldness when she'd arrived and his semi-avoidance of her ever since. At times, he treated her like a house guest who had overstayed her welcome, and other times, he would confide in her like she was his best friend, as though a remnant of the past that bound them in the long ago was still there.

The snow which had been pelting against the window suddenly stopped, as though it too was curious how he would answer.

He gave her a sad smile. "No," he sighed. "It wasn't your fault. It was mine. I forgot we were family, and that family is more important than anything else."

She smiled back at him, grateful to put whatever the past had been behind them, but her heart broke just a little knowing that he had never felt anything different for her. "There's just one more thing I need to know."

"What's that?"

"Did you steal Jane Eyre outta the library so I wouldn't read it? I wanted to, but they said they couldn't find it."

He grinned and pointed at the novel she still held in her hands. "Stop talking and read your book."