Chapter Twelve

The return of Ben Malloy reheated the cold investigation into Gordon Brink’s murder. That was mostly because Sheriff Jackson began to get dozens of media calls from around the country asking if the Ursulina was back and whether we were any closer to trapping the killer beast.

“We look like idiots!” Jerry shouted at us in his office behind the closed door. “Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Andy Rooney did his whole piece on the Ursulina. He rattled off all the unsolved crimes we could put to bed now. He had a photo of the Ursulina on the grassy knoll in Dallas. The Ursulina burying Jimmy Hoffa. The Ursulina parachuting out of a 727 with D. B. Cooper’s ransom money.”

“Ben knows how to get publicity,” Darrell replied.

“Well, it was bad enough when he made laughingstocks of us six years ago. I was in that documentary, do you remember? The sheriff with the monster in his backyard. I’m not going through that again! Got it? I want to know who killed Gordon Brink, and I want an arrest.”

“I want that, too.”

“Next time People magazine calls me, we better have a human being behind bars, and if you can’t do that, then you can start sleeping in the woods until you find me a seven-foot-tall ape.”

Darrell didn’t smile. None of this was funny to him.

“The thing is, Jerry, I wish I could tell you we’re close to figuring this out, but right now, the investigation is dead in its tracks.”

The sheriff got up from behind his desk and paced. Physically, he was an older, grayer version of Ajax, tall, lean, and handsome, but his personality was like a lit fuse, always one spark away from a blowup. Jerry was in his midfifties, which made him several years younger than Darrell. Back when the previous sheriff had retired, a lot of people around the county assumed that Darrell would run for the job. But Darrell had no patience for politics. He let Jerry do the county fair and the Chamber of Commerce dinner and the 4-H picnic. Jerry had charisma, just like his nephew, and he ran unopposed. He’d been sheriff for more than a decade, and he would probably stay in the job until he was buried in the ground.

“There’s no such thing as a dead investigation,” Jerry snapped. “Just cops who need to get off their butts and get the job done.”

“I can’t make up evidence out of thin air, Jerry.”

“No, but you can shake things up.” The sheriff sat down at his desk again. I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t looked at me once since Darrell and I had come into his office. I might as well have been invisible.

“What do you suggest?” Darrell asked.

“You’ve got one legitimate suspect in this murder, and you’ve been treating him with kid gloves. Go in there and rattle his cage.”

Darrell sighed. “Jay.”

“Exactly. Come on, Darrell, a crime like this is personal. You don’t carve up somebody like that unless you’ve got a hell of a motive. More often than not, that means we’re looking at a family member. If you ask me, a wife is always the likeliest person to carve up her husband, but you confirmed that Gordon’s wife didn’t come back from Minnesota until after Gordon was killed. Right? So who does that leave us with? The son. Jay.”

“Except there’s no evidence the boy was involved.”

“No evidence? I’ve seen your notes, Darrell. Jay and Gordon hated each other. The kid showed no emotion about his father being killed. He called Gordon a monster—I mean, shit, does he have to spell it out for you? Plus, Jay admits he was home Sunday night. His room overlooks the front of the house, but he claims he didn’t hear or see anything. What are the odds of that?”

“Slim,” Darrell admitted. “If Jay was in his bedroom, he should have seen something.”

“So either he did, and he’s lying to protect someone, or he killed Gordon himself. Either way, you need to find out.”

I listened to the back-and-forth between the two men, and then I jumped in. “Bad relationship or not, Jay doesn’t strike me as a teenager who’d kill his father, Sheriff. I talked to his friend Will, who said the same thing.”

Jerry looked at me for the first time, and his mouth curled with rage. Just like that, I knew he had it in for me. “Do killers wear name tags, Rebecca? Or maybe they have special tattoos? You can read violence in someone’s eyes just by looking at them? That’s quite a talent. You must have acquired it in your grand total of two years on the job.”

I tried to hold my tongue. I was used to being condescended to, and propositioned, and ignored, but I’d had enough. I didn’t really care if I had to quit or if Jerry fired me. I opened my mouth to shoot back, but Darrell smoothly interrupted before I could make a job-ending mistake.

“Look, Jerry, you can be as sarcastic as you want to be, but that’s not getting us any closer to an answer. For what it’s worth, Rebecca’s right. I talked to Jay, too. The kid isn’t a killer.”

“Really?” Jerry asked, putting poison into the word.

“Really.”

The sheriff eased back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He half smiled, half sneered, and when he did that, he looked exactly like Ajax. “Tell me about Gordon Brink’s office.”

Darrell looked puzzled. “What do you mean? What do you want to know?”

“Who had access to it?”

“Gordon,” Darrell replied. “Nobody else.”

“Nobody?”

“According to Erica, he kept it locked up tight.”

Jerry looked at me again, and the acid in his expression told me that he knew something we didn’t. “Is that right, Rebecca? Does Darrell have it right?”

“Yes. Erica told me she never went inside. She was even reluctant to have me go in there when Gordon was missing. That was where he kept all the privileged materials in the lawsuit.”

“What about Jay?” Jerry asked.

“He told us the same thing.”

“Yes, he did. I read the summary of your interview with him. I wasn’t allowed inside. Nobody was. It doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it?”

“What are you getting at, Sheriff?” Darrell asked.

Jerry reached into a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope, which he slapped on the desk. He jabbed at it with his finger. “Ajax gave me the results of the fingerprint analysis today. He dusted Gordon’s whole office, and guess what?”

Darrell and I stared at the envelope. We could guess what was in it.

“Jay Brink’s prints are all over the office,” Jerry went on. “He was there. He lied.”

I frowned. “Maybe Jay was in there when they first moved in. Before Gordon set up his office.”

“In the bedroom?” Jerry asked.

I stared at him. “What?”

“The bedroom. The bed. Right where Gordon was murdered. Jay’s prints are there, too.”

Darrell stood up, and I knew he was angry. Angry at Jay lying to us. Angry at being embarrassed in front of his boss. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Do that. But enough of the pussyfooting around, Darrell. Put the fear of God in this kid. Let him know we mean business. Like I said, either he butchered his father or he knows who did. Get him to admit it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Darrell headed for the office door, but as I stood up to follow him, Jerry held up his hand. “Deputy Todd, stay here a minute. I need to talk to you.”

From the doorway, Darrell gave me a look to see if I wanted him to stay. I signaled no, even though I figured my head was on the chopping block. Darrell went outside and closed the door behind him, and I sat down in the chair again. The sheriff’s anger had dissolved into a cold, calm formality, and in my experience, that was worse than when he blew up at you.

“Deputy Todd,” he said.

“Actually, it’s Deputy Colder from now on, sir. Ricky and I are splitting up.”

“Rebecca, I don’t care if you want to call yourself Deputy Dawg.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ajax has filed a complaint against you.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“He says you assaulted him at the 126 on Sunday night. You slapped him and gave him a deep gash on his cheek.”

“I—well, I did, but he—”

“He says you needed to use the bathroom facilities after drinking too much beer, and he offered to let you use the men’s room because the line for the women’s bathroom was too long. After you came out of the stall, you began making sexual advances toward him. When he declined, you persisted. At that time, your husband entered the bathroom, and you covered your inappropriate behavior by striking a fellow deputy.”

I shot to my feet. “That is not what happened. Ajax came on to me. You of all people know what he’s like. You know how he’s treated me from the day I set foot in this office.”

“If you can’t handle the working conditions of this department, you never should have gone after the job,” Jerry replied. “Let’s face facts. You’re not cut out for it. You never were.”

“Because I’m a woman? Or because I won’t sleep with your nephew?”

The sheriff took a sealed number ten envelope from his desk and pushed it toward me. I could see my name where his secretary had typed it in capital letters. deputy rebecca todd.

“This is a copy of the complaint,” Jerry told me. “It includes Ajax’s statement. There will be a formal inquiry. If the complaint is sustained, you’ll be subject to punishment up to and including dismissal.”

I shook my head. “You’re going to fire me because Ajax stuck his hand up my dress?”

“You should know that I discussed the facts of this matter with your husband, too.”

“My husband?”

“Ricky confirmed Ajax’s version of the events.”

“He wasn’t even there to see it! He’s just saying that because I kicked him out. Sheriff, this isn’t fair.”

Jerry wasn’t even listening to me anymore. He shuffled his papers, put on his reading glasses, and glanced at me as if he couldn’t understand why I was still in the room. “That’ll be all, Rebecca.”