I know you’re busy. But our daughter’s kind of falling apart. Can you come home?
THIRTY-TWO
CARA
“Sometimes they get away.” Is that the kind of sheriff you want, Madera County?
—@Troy4MadSheriff
“If you really didn’t kill your husband, then who did?”
They had climbed over the scree-covered ridge and down the other side before Fisk finally said it was safe to eat a meal “like civilized people.” This, apparently, meant stopping to sit on flat rocks for a meal of salami and cheddar cheese which Fisk sliced and handed to her while he ate his portion off the blade of his pocketknife.
Maybe it was sheer exhaustion, or maybe it was the fact that a hermit survivalist who looked like an extra fromGame of Throneswas the only person besides her lawyer who’d bothered to ask the one question that mattered. Whatever the reason, the tears she’d managed to hold back all afternoon began pouring down her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she said, sniffling, as she wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand.
He pulled a tattered blue bandanna from his back pocket and gave it to her. It didn’t look exactly clean, but she didn’t care. His kindness only made her cry harder.
Fisk stood, raised his arms above his head, and stretched. “Let’s talk while we walk. We aren’t all that far from where we need to be.”
Cara nodded and forced herself upright. Her legs felt like concrete and her back was so sore it was nearly numb. But somehow she put on her backpack, helped Fisk collect the animals, and fell in step beside him. There was no smoke on this side, and the fresh air felt good in her lungs.
It did feel easier talking to his back as they trudged along the rugged game trail.
“All I know for sure is the person who attacked me and killed my husband had a slim build, was dressed in black, and had straight, shoulder-length blond hair. According to the police, the killer was approximately five-nine.”
Fisk raised an eyebrow.
“I fit the description, I know, but I didn’t do it. And I didn’t steal the watch off Karl’s wrist. The prosecution claims I tossed it into the bushes to make it look like a robbery.”
“Hmm.”
“If I was trying to make it look like a robbery, I’d have gotten rid of my own jewelry too. It was even more valuable.”
“Who else could be a suspect?”
She was glad he didn’t make fun of her for wearing expensive jewelry to glamp. “He had a patient, Sherri Babbitt, who sued him and then stalked him after her case was dismissed as frivolous.” The procedure had been a nose job she insisted wasn’t upturned enough. “There was also Ezra Threlkeld, who checked us in at the resort and testified against me. He seemed to be everywhere that night and was the first person I foundwhen I finally made my way down the trail. He had blond dreadlocks.”
“I guess Sherri at least had a motive. What about this Ezra?”
“That’s why they ruled him out—no motive. And Sherri had an alibi.”
“The suspect could have been wearing a wig,” Fisk observed, scanning the route ahead.
“Which certainly deepens the pool of possible suspects, but the authorities were only focused on me. I held my dead husband in my arms, so I was covered in his blood. And in my panic, I apparently trampled the real killer’s footprints. The emergency responders corrupted the entire crime scene, ruining any evidence that I hadn’t already. And because the coroner got pulled out of a charity gala and was wearing dress shoes, he didn’t want to make the one-mile hike.”
Fisk stopped and looked back, surprised. “The coroner didn’t look at the scene of the crime?”
“Not until the next day.”
“I wish I could say I was shocked,” Fisk said.
“I was the only viable suspect, so the media—and social media—went crazy. Especially with my stepdaughter Taylor and Karl’s ex-wife Barbara saying things like I killed him because he wouldn’t reverse his vasectomy, and I wasn’t influencing enough people and was looking to rebrand. At the trial, I found myself in front of a jury who had already heard more opinions about the case from the media than they ever would in the courtroom. And that was before a forensic accountant testified that Karl was having money problems. Which I knew nothing about.”
“You got fucked all right,” Fisk said.
They trudged onward in a silence broken only by their own footfalls, clomping hooves, the occasional hoot or snort, and as Karl would have said, the divine chirp and hum of the outdoors.
