“Let me see if I can find someone to assist you. What’s your name?”
“Jodi Taylor.”
She picked up the phone as I stepped away from the desk. I tried to listen, but she murmured something, and then another person came to the counter for help.
“Someone will be right out to help you, ma’am.”
I nodded and looked around, seeking out precisely who it was that would come out to help me. I didn’t have to wait too long.
“Ms. Taylor?”
I gave the deputy a smile.
“I’m Deputy Walcott. I was one of the deputies out on the scene of your grandfather’s death.”
“Were you the lead on the investigation into his death?”
His face scrunched up. “No, that would be one of our other investigators, but he’s out on a case right now. I’m aware that his death was ruled a suicide.”
I slumped my shoulders, feeling frustrated. “Can we speak about what you saw at the scene?”
“Sure. Come this way, please.”
I followed the deputy to his desk in the central area of the station.
“Let’s see here,” he said as he sat down and began moving the mouse to his computer.
I presumed he was pulling up my grandfather’s case file. For a second, I thought it might be easier to have Micah or one of his employees hack into this system. I’d asked him before, and he informed me that most times, they didn’t rely on hacking methods to get the information they sought. Legalities aside, it was best not to rely on essentially stealing information that was often available for free or at a low cost.
“Your grandfather died in March. His body located out in the woods by the Briarpatch trail. About a quarter of a mile off the trail.”
I nodded. “He knew that area well. He and my grandmother used to go there a lot to sit out by the river.”
The deputy looked at me and gave me a small smile. “Perhaps that was a good memory for him, which was why he chose to go out there.”
I shook my head. “No. He hadn’t been out there since she died. He said he couldn’t be there without her.”
The deputy looked at me with sympathetic eyes. Right then, I knew what he was thinking. My grandfather intentionally chose that place to take his last breath because he felt closer to my grandmother out there.
But that didn’t make sense.
“Were there photos taken of the scene?”
He nodded. “There were. That’s standard procedure.”
“Can I see them?”
“Ma’am, I don’t think—”
“Can I see them? I’m not asking to see any with his body in it, but there have to be some that don’t include him, right?”
“There are,” he said after a minute of silence. “Let me grab the actual file.”
I waited, looking at the time, seeing that it was ten on the dot. I kept shooting my gaze over to the main entrance into this part of the department, hoping Micah wouldn’t burst through the door at any moment.
“Here are some of the images,” Deputy Walcott announced as he came back over to his desk.
I took the pictures from his hand and stared at the top image. I recognized bits and pieces of the trail that I’d gone on multiple times with my grandparents as a kid. Some of the area looked different, but it was familiar.
