Chapter Two
Sheriff’s quarters, Stevensville
That same evening
The entire surface of the simple wooden desk in the sheriff’s office was covered with high stacks of papers, notes, and newspaper clippings.
Some of the headlines read “Family of four dies in fire,” “The horse gang strikes again—killing four people,” and “Massacre at family farm—no survivors!” …
To create the desired shocking effect, most of them were printed in big bold black letters across the front pages of popular publications.
Some weren’t even local. The event had taken place a few years ago, around Christmas, but despite the time that had passed since then, it apparently hadn’t lost its relevance.
Luke got up from his chair and pushed his fingers through his unruly dark hair. A stray curl fell right back over his hazel eyes. He was tired. It had been a long day. His back ached from being bent over his desk, reading the same headlines over and over again in the dim light of a single candle.
When was the last time he’d eaten anything?
He couldn’t remember. Sometime in the morning, probably.
One glance at the loudly ticking clock on the mantel of the small fireplace told him that had been around ten hours ago.
He threw another log on the fire and held his hands out to warm them up a little, to get the blood flowing again. He felt too stiff.
When the door to the front lobby of the sheriff’s quarters creaked open, howling wind blew icy cold air into the entire space.
The open door created an updraft inside the chimney above the fireplace in the back office, and for a short moment, the extra oxygen fueled the flames into a blazing fire, which illuminated the entire space with a sudden blast of bright golden light.
Only then did Luke notice the somewhat dark dinginess he’d been sitting in for hours.
He walked toward the open doorway separating his office from the lobby and saw that his deputy, Caleb, had walked in with a flurry of white swirling snowflakes. He slammed the door with his boot, shutting out the wintery storm in an instant.
Caleb looked like a snowman. Despite his wide-rimmed Stetson, his blond beard and thick eyebrows, as well as his heavy buffalo coat, were covered in a thick white layer of snow.
He stomped his feet, dropped his saddlebags onto the floor, and tried to shake it all off before he shrugged off the coat and put it with his Stetson on the hooks near the door.
He combed his fingers through his short, blond hair.
“Brrrr! It’s absurdly cold out there!” He walked straight into the office toward the fireplace to rub his hands over the glowing warmth of the flames. “You’re still working?”
It sounded more like an accusation rather than a question.
Luke let his chin fall onto his chest. “Guilty as charged.”
“Did you find anything?” Caleb walked past Luke, who was almost a foot taller than him, and bent over the chaotic desk display.
Right in the center, among all the newspaper clippings, stood an almost empty bottle of whiskey, which he chose to ignore.
“How do you even find your way around in this mess?”
“Nothing yet.” Luke came to stand next to him.
“It’s a complicated case, and you know how important it is.
Four people died, and by all accounts, these killers are still roaming the region as free men.
They’re like ghosts. Everybody knows about them, but nobody has actually seen them.
Nobody lived to tell. It’s frustrating.”
Luke didn’t raise his voice. He never did. Luke’s self-control was unmatched. Most of the time, anyway.
Caleb raised his chin.
Luke didn’t like the way he looked at him.
Although he was aware of the fact that he looked a little disheveled right then.
Luke was well-built, with broad shoulders, strong arms, and thickly muscled legs, but he must have lost some weight lately, because his trousers had become a little loose.
He hadn’t groomed his longer beard in a while, and he had noticed the dark bags under his tired eyes.
The growling rumble coming from his stomach filled the room.
“You haven’t eaten,” Caleb said.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“Liar.” Caleb scoffed and went back to the front lobby, where he had dropped his saddlebags. He opened the flap on one, grabbed a few carefully wrapped items, and brought them back into the office.
“You can’t just live off of air and liquor! I brought you some supper,” he said sternly, putting several paper-wrapped parcels on the table. “And Evelyn made me bring you an extra-large piece of fresh apple pie as well.”
Luke swallowed hard. He felt utmost gratitude, but there was also some painful jealousy at the domestic side of it all.
Caleb and Evelyn, who was Luke’s cousin, were so happily married—they could give a grown man a toothache with how sweet they were to each other.
Luke had known that same sweetness once…
“Thank you, Caleb.” He put his big hand on Caleb’s shoulder and squeezed it. Regardless of his lack of appetite, his gratitude was genuine. “You truly are the best. And tell Evelyn that she is an angel. She knows how much I love her pies.”
“You need to eat. You can’t just waste away to nothing. Isabelle would not have wanted that…”
The second Caleb mentioned that name, Luke stiffened. His head shot up, and he fixed his deputy with a hard glare.
“I’m so sorry,” Caleb said apologetically. “I really am. Please forgive me. I overstepped...”
Catching himself, Luke closed his eyes, shook his head, and let his face soften.
“Don’t apologize. There’s no need. You’re right.
She wouldn’t want me to live like this.” He let his head hang.
Caleb put his hand on one of Luke’s broad shoulders and squeezed it just like Luke had done to him seconds earlier.
After all, they didn’t just work together; they were good friends.
More than that. They were family, and Caleb knew everything that had happened.
Then Caleb asked a question Luke had been dreading for quite some time.
“Are we still going to pretend that this case is someone else’s family? Or are we finally seeing it for what it is, and facing it head-on?”
Luke ground his teeth, trying not to lose his composure. The sudden pain slicing through him was like a knife straight to his heart, and it took everything in him not to break down right there and then. He was a strong man, but this was his one weakness. He cleared his throat.
“I am trying to keep levelheaded. I don’t want to get my emotions tangled up in this mess…”
Caleb interrupted him. “But she was your wife. They were your children,” he said quietly. “And you burying your head in these papers every single day for hours on end isn’t healthy. You haven’t even given yourself enough time to mourn your loss…”
“I will have plenty of time to do that when the case is solved!” Luke said firmly, turning away from Caleb. He walked over to the fireplace and began to stoke the flames aggressively.
“It’s been almost five years, Luke. You’re exhausted. You’re overworked. You aren’t functioning…”
“What are you saying?!” Luke turned around with a questioning look on his face.
He was angry at Caleb’s suggestion. “That I’m a bad sheriff because I’m using all my spare time trying to resolve a murder case?
! None of my other duties are being neglected.
None! I take my duty as sheriff very seriously!
” he spoke firmly with his authoritative voice, which usually reassured everybody that he was in charge.
However, this didn’t always work on Caleb.
“That is not what I am saying. But this is not just any murder case, Luke. It’s your family. Isabelle…”
Luke sighed a heavy sigh. “Stop mentioning her name!”
Caleb bravely shook his head. “No. Mention her name! Don’t turn her and your children into some nameless murder victims. She was your wife, Luke. And John and Elise were your children! They deserve to be remembered…”
“How dare you?” For a moment, Luke’s face pulled into an even angrier scowl than before, and his voice came out like a growl. He’d known this man for almost a decade, and he’d never lost his composure in front of Caleb. This was the first time he’d expressed his raw pain.
Silence fell between them, and it took a minute before Luke was able to rein his fury back in. When he did, he put on a stone-faced mask of indifference and forced his emotions back into the dark hole he kept them in.
Caleb seemingly took no offense and looked at him empathetically. “You can’t pretend it didn’t happen. You can’t walk around like a ghost, not acknowledging your grief for your own family. You cannot hide from your emotions forever. It’s been too long. You need to mourn, or it’s going to kill you.”
Luke scoffed, walked over to the desk, snatched the nearly empty bottle of whiskey, and drank the rest of it in one big gulp. “I don’t even care if it kills me.”
Caleb sighed in obvious exasperation.
Luke considered himself to be a rational man, prided himself to be down-to-earth and easy to talk to, but this tragedy had turned his heart to stone and numbed his mind.
“I should have been there,” Luke said quietly, barely managing to speak the words. “I shouldn’t have stayed here at work. It was Christmas! I should have gone home to them. I had promised to be there for them. For John. For Elise and Isabelle. I could have…”
“Stop it!” Caleb grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “It’s not your fault! Blaming yourself for what happened is the last thing you should do. You had no way of knowing that this would happen to them! It was in the middle of winter!”
“Exactly! I couldn’t know, but I could have prevented it!” Luke growled.
“Maybe. Or maybe they would have killed you, too! You don’t know how many men were there. It could’ve been a group of five or a gang of fifty.”
“I will not give up until I have found them!”
Caleb shook his head. “We won’t. But none of this is productive in any way, Luke. I’m sorry to say this, but you need to find a way out of this black hole. Do it for Isabelle and your children. They would hate to see you like this.”
“They are the ones I am doing it for! So their souls can rest in peace!” Luke was yelling now. He shoved Caleb’s hands away and slammed the empty whiskey bottle onto the desk.
His voice broke, and Caleb looked at him empathetically.
“I’m not saying that I can relate to such a loss, but I understand.
You have a lot of responsibilities, not just regarding this case, wanting to do right by your own family, but also everybody else in this town,” Caleb said quietly.
“All I’m asking is that you take better care of yourself.
You’re like a brother to me. I don’t want you to break down because you didn’t eat or sleep for weeks, which seems to worsen every year when Christmas comes around. I am genuinely worried about you.”
“I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself,” Luke said, using his firm sheriff’s voice again as he stared at the papers on the desk. “I appreciate your concern. I’ll be fine.”
Caleb seemed to wait for something more, but Luke didn’t say anything else.
“You need to forgive yourself,” he offered. “If you would talk to God, He would help you…”
“There is no God!” Luke said with a scathing tone. “If there was, he would have protected them! But they died! In a fire! Because your God wasn’t there to prevent it!”
“This is not how this works. The Lord is not responsible for the actions of men,” Caleb said calmly, but Luke didn’t want to hear it.
“Then what is He good for? Huh?! If not to protect the innocent? Children, no less? What use does your God have, if He betrays the ones most loyal to Him?” Luke was furious that Caleb had brought this topic up. Especially since he knew about his stance on it.
Caleb sighed. “He is still there. He is always there. He is just waiting for you to find your way back to Him.”
Luke didn’t want to entertain this conversation any longer and turned his back to him. “Thanks for the food,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”
Luke heard Caleb sigh again. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Caleb said, finally. “Why don’t you come over when you’re done here? Our door is always open,” Caleb said, but Luke was already too immersed in one of the articles. He heard footsteps as Caleb left, then the door fell shut.
He went to the cabinet behind his desk and took out another bottle of whiskey.
It had become a habit to have a constant stash of whiskey bottles around, hidden in different places, in various states of consumption.
He pulled the cork with his teeth and was once again completely immersed in his search for answers, shuffling through papers, letters, and newspaper clippings, mindlessly pushing aside the paper-wrapped parcels.
He didn’t touch the food until the clock struck midnight.