“Yeah,” Gus said, taking a slow sip of bourbon. I joined him, but truly hated the stuff. Gus finished his, then put his glass on the table beside him. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope.
“It’s good that you’re here too,” Gus said. “It’ll save me the trip over to your office.”
Sam frowned as he took the envelope. He tore it open and read the piece of paper inside of it. It only deepened his frown. Sam handed it to me.
I read quickly, not really believing what I was seeing. It was a resignation letter.
“Gus,” I started.
“Nice try,” Sam said. I handed him back the letter. “But I don’t accept this. You’re not leaving me, buddy. Not like this.”
“I’ve been eligible to retire for two years,” Gus said. “It’s time.”
“Nope,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you when it’s time. For months now, I’ve watched you carry the weight of this thing. Blaming yourself. And I’ve given you space to do it. Enough. The bad guy’s going to jail. Ellie Luke can rest in peace.”
“Peace?” Gus said. “I’ve ruined that family.”
“Jamie Simmons ruined that family,” I said. “You keep wanting to forget that. He killed Ellie. He wormed his way into the Luke family. Brainwashed them. And don’t you dare start talking about Dane Fischer. He was innocent of this. But he wasn’t innocentinthis. He gave you every reason to think he was guilty. If I had been around twenty-two years ago, I would have thought he did this too. As for the Lukes, God … you know … I should take my own advice. I’ve been sitting here feeling so guilty about what they’ve gone through. But it’s Jamie. Let’s not forget who the villain is. It isn’t you, Gus. So forget it. I don’t accept your resignation either. And Kenya’s coming back. She told me. She’ll kill you before she lets you bail on her.”
Gus buried his face in his hands. Sam and I went to him, each of us putting our arms around our dear friend. He let us.
“Sheriff?” Deputy Jaffee stood in the doorway, unsure of whether he should come in. Gus immediately straightened.
“What’s the word, Nick?” Sam asked.
Deputy Jaffee had been the one to interview Erin Simmons at her request. I’d almost forgotten about it.
“I’ve got Erin Simmons’s statement,” he said. “I wanted to come straight here. Detective Ritter, I was actually looking for you.”
Gus’s face changed. Whatever emotions he’d been having melted away. He was all business.
“Mrs. Simmons’s house was torn up,” Jaffee said.
“We heard that,” I said. “That it looked ransacked.”
“It was,” he said. “By Mrs. Simmons. She kinda lost her mind. But she said she found something taped under one of the register grates on the floor.”
“The house was searched,” Sam said. “After Jamie was arrested.”
“It was hidden pretty good,” Jaffee said. “Wasn’t something you could have seen if you didn’t know it was there.”
“How didshe?” Gus asked.
Jaffee pulled his phone out of his pocket. “She said she saw her husband messing around with this particular grate a few times. She didn’t think much of it. I don’t know what made her look there yesterday. I suppose that part doesn’t matter. But she found something. She took pictures of it on her phone. The paramedics brought her purse when they loaded her into the ambulance. She had some pill bottles in it. They always think that might help the doctors ...”
“Jaffee, what is it?” Gus said, impatient.
“Right,” Jaffee said. “I took some pictures of what she showed me with my own phone. You’re gonna want to send a crew out to collect it. She said she put it back under the grate. As you can imagine, it shook her up pretty good. I think this is why she tried to take her own life.”
Gus took Jaffee’s phone. Sam and I crowded over his shoulder to see. They were pictures of pictures of pictures. Erin Simmons had carefully documented seven Polaroid pictures on her phone.
“My God,” Sam whispered. Gus’s hand shook. I grabbed Jaffee’s phone from him before he dropped it. I scrolled each image.
It was Ellie Luke. She lay in a pile of leaves, her head at an unnatural angle, eyes open, staring vacantly at the spring sky. She was dead. Blood poured down one side of her face. Her hair was caked with it. I knew she would have had a massive head wound on the back of her skull.
The next image had been taken further away, so you could see the full length of her body. She was partially clothed, her pants off.
In the next image, she’d been moved and leaned against the base of the tree where I knew she was later found. She was wearing both earrings in this one, blood caking the one in her right ear. Another image showed her driver’s license. It had been in her purse that the police had never found.
