“Who’s there?” the sheriff said.
Footsteps approached and seemed to stop.
“Who are you?”
There was a laugh. It wasn’t the sound of someone having agood time, but rather had a maniacal tone to it. Finally, the person walked into the light in front of the sheriff.
“You have no idea why you’re here, do you?” said the man in black.
“Who are you?” the sheriff said again. He did look familiar. It had to be the man everyone was looking for. “You’re who they call Junior?”
“Very good. You win a prize.”
“Why am I here?”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff, but your orders and jurisdiction as a police officer don’t mean a thing here. Your time has come.”
The sheriff wasn’t sure how to respond.
Junior smiled. “You really don’t remember me?”
Sheriff Scott kept quiet.
“Okay then. I’ll tell you. You must’ve been just a patrol deputy at the time—not all important like you are now.”
Scott grimaced. His arms felt like they were on fire.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? I think it’s a fair trade,” said Junior.
“For what?”
“Four boys came to you and said there was a bad man and something terrible was going to happen.”
The sheriff vaguely remembered an incident involving four boys in his past, but he couldn’t recall the details.
“Two brothers and two other boys—good friends. You see, each one of us had been abused and no one believed us, so we went to the police like we’re supposed to. That’s what we were told to do—we were to trust the police and they were going to help us.”
Wayne remembered now. He remembered the boys who had said bad things were happening and they needed help. He also remembered that his report was sent to the detective division. He did follow up twice, but had been told there was nothing concrete to investigate.
“I can see you have some memory of that,” Junior said.
“I took a report and sent it to the proper channels to investigate. I followed up.”
“I see. Passing the buck for your sins.”
“What do you want?”
“I want payback.”
“After all these years? What happened or didn’t happen with your report made you a killer?”
“There’s more to it, but that’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“You don’t want to brag about killing your dad and your friend…? I guess I made you do that. Or what about the so-called fortune buried somewhere on the Collins property?”
That made Junior stop and stare down the sheriff. “You know nothing.”
“Apparently, a lot more than you realized. The detectives are closing in on you.”
