Chapter 2
STILL CARRYING THAT
“Ford,” Gale Ridgeway said. “None of this makes sense.”
“I’m not sure how I can help you,” her older brother said. “You’ve got the evidence and information that the detectives and the DA have provided. No one is hiding anything from you.”
“I’m not accusing anyone of that,” she said.
No one would hide anything from her because they all knew her brother was the Sheriff of Warren County.
“Then what is the problem?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, sitting in the chair by the window looking out toward the water. There was a building in front of hers, so she only had a tiny view of the lake from her window.
She glanced down and saw a man walking around, snapping pictures and looking at the ground.
Nothing out of the ordinary other than she’d seen him a few times already over the weekend. Now it was just about sunset. Couldn’t be someone for a business doing this at seven thirty on a Monday night. Even over the weekend, it could have been employees of the property owners.
“There has to be something, unless you just want to bounce stuff off of me.”
“Can I?” she asked, the grin filling her face. Ford couldn’t see it, but his laughter told her he knew exactly what she was hoping for.
She liked getting another set of eyes or ears on her cases so she missed nothing.
Not that she did often, but she wasn’t so cocky that she didn’t know her brother could be helpful most times.
“You know you can.”
“I’m not interrupting dinner or your time with Reenie?” she asked of Ford’s fiancée.
“Nope. She’s doing some work right now and I’m watching the news.”
“Cool. You know how I feel about these things. There is no evidence at all Dave had anything to do with this.”
“He was picked out of a lineup,” Ford said.
They were only talking about the facts that everyone had knowledge of.
“The wrong place at the wrong time. He was spotted in the area of the assault, and questioned, then thrown in the lineup. You and I both know the attacker’s description barely fits Dave. Brown hair, that’s all that is the same.”
Ford sighed. “It’s hard for someone to make those decisions during emotional times.”
Which she knew, but she didn’t want her client’s life ruined either.
“He has a record as a juvenile,” she argued. “He turned his life around. He’s working and it’s all in his past. He was out looking for his cat. I mean, let’s be real. Everyone I interviewed said that Dave’s cat got out all the time and he was always looking for it on the trail.”
“But this time he was doing it when someone was assaulted.”
A college student spending the weekend hiking with friends. Dave lived close to the trails. One girl was on a run early in the morning and was grabbed from behind, dragged into the bushes where she fought her attacker off and got away.
No way she got a good look at the person with a baseball hat on their head, the sun barely up, and the urgency of the situation.
On top of that, there wasn’t one human scratch on Dave’s body. Not one bruise. Nothing.
Sheryl Hinders fought off her attacker. If she didn’t draw blood, she at least left marks and bruises and had admitted to making contact on the other person’s body.
Dave had not one mark on him except a scratch from his cat, that he’d found in the bushes and retrieved. The cat was not happy to return home and left four claw marks on his forearm.
But the damn deputy saw that in connection with Sheryl’s descriptions and others saying Dave was in the area.
“You know as well as I do Dave doesn’t have it in him to attack anyone. The guy doesn’t even raise his voice at that dumb cat that jumps out of the second-story window to go for a walk.”
Ford laughed. “True. And now it’s your job to get a jury to believe it all. You know how. You do it all the time and you do it well.”
Her shoulders gave a little wiggle. Maybe she needed a pep talk over her frustration with this.
Too many times she’d witnessed people’s lives being ruined over false accusations.
It’s why she was an attorney in a small town.
To stop the crap if she could.
Mistakes happened. Sure. It was natural. But a person’s life shouldn’t be destroyed because of it.
“Thanks. He’s nervous that he’s going to lose his job. He’s in a good spot in life. You know how it is.”
Ford sighed. “I do. And you can’t change that, but he can sue if that happens. He’s got an attorney.”
“I’m just sick of lives being damaged over this shit.”
“I know,” Ford said.
“Cooper was never the same. It wrecked his family and his life. He had to move and that shattered Dad. You know how close they were.”
“I can’t believe you’re still carrying that,” Ford said.
“And you’re not? He was one of Dad’s closest friends. He was accused of murdering a girl the same age as his daughter. Cooper was one of the gentlest men we knew.”
“He was found not guilty. They had nothing on him and they were never going to. No way he did it.”
“Half the town who knew him believed it, but the other half found him guilty. They lost everything. Their home, their jobs, their dignity.”
Few would hire Cooper as a handyman after that. Their house had a lien on it for the legal fees. His children faced ridicule and torment and stopped going to class.
Months after the verdict, they paid off what debt they could and moved out of state.
It wasn’t only what happened to her father’s friend that she couldn’t move past, but the unsolved murder of a girl barely a year older than she’d been at the time.
A teen strangled, her neck snapped, the girl discarded like a piece of trash in the bushes. No effort to conceal her, one bare leg caught on a branch, her shorts littered with leaves that had broken off, and her sandals tossed aside as if even in death she was denied the dignity of having shoes on.
They most likely had fallen off during the rage-filled crime, then were picked up and tossed carelessly out of sight.
“You know I hate it as much as you,” Ford said. “But there are a lot of injustices in the world. He had an excellent attorney and that is what matters. Be that excellent attorney for Dave now.” She was still watching the guy walking around taking pictures as Ford talked. “Gale?”
“What? Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said be the attorney for Dave that Cooper had. Do your job and get him off. I know you can do it. What’s going on? I can hear you moving around.”
“Just watching some guy walking the grounds.”
She moved to another window, this one in her bedroom, pushed the blinds apart with her fingers and peered down.
“What’s he doing?”
“I’m not sure. I saw him here over the weekend taking pictures.
I just thought maybe he worked for the McGregors and was doing something for the property owners.
But he’s back now and taking more pictures.
Of all the buildings and the grounds. Even has a ruler out as if he’s measuring something like a crime scene. ”
“If you see him again, call the McGregors and see if they’ve sent anyone over. Or I can come down to visit you...in my uniform.”
She laughed. “Always my big brother to the rescue. I’m not worried about anything. You know me, I’m just people watching. Been doing that most of my life.”
“Looking for tells and clues for your next big win,” Ford said. “I know. I remember.”
“You’re just mad that I could always argue my case as a kid and get out of things that none of you boys could.”
“You got away with as much as you had because you were the only girl,” Ford said. “Don’t let anything else go to your head.”
She laughed. Being the fourth child of five, and the only girl, she got cut more slack.
But in other instances had it harder.
She wasn’t just watched over by her father, but her brothers too.
Did she have to work as hard on the farm as the boys? Not in terms of physical labor, but she put her time in the same as them, just in different forms.
“Don’t be jealous,” she said.
“Of you? Never,” Ford said. “Did I do a good enough job of pumping your ego and putting you in a good mood to go kick some ass?”
“Always,” she said. “Thanks.”
She hung up with her brother and followed the stranger moving along the grounds. Maybe she’d take a walk and see what he was up to.
You know, people watching and all. It’d be nice to go by the beach. She had access, but rarely used it. Who had time to suntan? Definitely not her.
What better excuse than curiosity to see what might be going on around her. If she wanted to stay on top of things, she had to get involved, even if from a distance.