“Please remember my background,” he finally replied. “I was in business, and the order of the day was to keep a cool head at all times. Don’t give too much away, and always maintain a polite and professional demeanor. To their faces, anyway.”
“You’re good at it.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said. “My sister Lulu was the dramatic one in the family. Chase was the youngest, and Iwas the oldest. I was supposed to be responsible and calm. My parents say I was born that way. The most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done is…well…this trip, to be honest.”
In a way, that was kind of sad, if it was true. But then, she couldn’t say that she was pushing life’s boundaries much herself.
“Lulu? That’s an interesting name. I’d like to hear about her, too. She’s now the sheriff of your hometown?”
“She is, and she had her first murder case on her second day on the job. Caught them, too. I’m proud of her.”
She wondered what that was like, having a family that was openly proud of her. The closest she came was Celia, who didn’t openly criticize Kelly’s life.
“How many murders are there in your town?”
“Hardly any. The killer decided to try and take advantage of a new and untested sheriff. They calculated wrong and ended up behind bars.”
“Good for her.”
“You’ll get to meet her and my brother, hell, my whole family and friends when we go to my mom’s birthday party. In fact, that is something that we need to talk about. My family and their friends.”
“I’m intrigued, Ben Reilly.”
“In the meantime, let’s get back to the case.”
Getting any personal information out of this man was downright impossible. He spoke a lot, but didn’t reveal much.
Probably another advantage in business.
Kelly flipped through the autopsy pages until she found what she was looking for.
"Cause of death was strangulation, but she had other injuries that they never explained. There was a hairline fracture to the skull, bruising on the neck and wrists that looked like fingers."
Ben took the report from her hands and examined the photographs with careful attention.
“As far as I know, they didn’t scrape underneath her fingernails. She may have fought with her attacker, but that evidence is lost,” she continued. “And there's something else, the report specifically states 'no evidence of sexual assault.' But as far as I know, a rape kit was never performed. I specifically asked about DNA evidence and was told they had none."
"That's not standard procedure,” Ben said, his tone sharp.
"No," Kelly agreed bitterly. "It's not. But Bergen's coroner at the time was Mason Whitfield. He played golf with Robert Powell every Sunday for twenty years. They were friends from elementary school."
"You think a coroner would lie for the Powell family?"
"Yes, and not blink an eye," Kelly responded firmly, the certainty in her voice born from years of observation and frustration. "The Powells didn't want their daughter's death turned into something even more horrible than it already was. If there was evidence of sexual assault, it would have meant an even more intense investigation, more publicity, more trauma for the family to endure publicly."
"You're talking about a cover-up," Ben said, his tone neutral.
"Yes, I am," Kelly confirmed, meeting his gaze steadily. She’d had more than a decade to think about this. "I think the whole town buried this incident because it didn't want to deal with it. Not in a conscious,they're guiltysort of way. But as a protection measure, as to how they felt about their home having a killer running around. In a way, it was self-protection. They couldn’t deal with the truth."
She gestured widely, encompassing the peaceful field, the distant houses, the blue sky above them.
"Bergen sees itself as this perfect small town, this safe haven in the midst of a changing world. Acknowledging that someone in their town was capable of not just murder, but possibly sexual assault and torture? That would shatter the illusion. Sothey settled on a sanitized version. It’s tragic, but simple. A moment of violence from someone not from this town. It’s not premeditated horror from a local."
Ben was silent for a long moment, his gaze returning to the drainage ditch. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight with controlled anger.
"The autopsy is incomplete at best, deliberately misleading at worst,” Ben replied, handing the report back to Kelly. “The crime scene photos are inconsistent. The witness statements read like they were coordinated. While true conspiracies are rare, the possibility should be looked into. Along with others, of course."
The simple acknowledgment that she might be right nearly undid her. Kelly swallowed hard against the sudden thickness in her throat, blinking rapidly to dispel the threat of tears.
