Chapter 21
I slide into the booth across from him. Vinyl squeaks under me like it knows my weight has increased in all the wrong places since this whole ordeal started, thanks to stress eating junk food. Now that I’m broke it won’t be an issue anymore.
“You look well,” he says, which is lawyer for you look alive.
“You look expensive,” I reply. “Still billing by the minute?”
He doesn’t smile. Instead, he reaches into his briefcase and slides a small padded package across the table. Brown paper with my name typed across the front, not written.
“What’s this?” I ask, already hating whatever answer he comes up with because anything from a lawyer is usually bad news and costly.
“Not here. Wait until you get home to open it. Don’t share with anyone the contents of this package unless you have to, and only with someone you trust.” He watches my hands, not my face. “Certain people would kill over what’s inside.”
“What the heck is in here? Plutonium?”
“No, but before I explain that, Shari, I’m requesting that they reopen the investigation into Stewart’s death.”
The café noise dips. Or maybe that’s just the blood leaving my ears.
“I filed a formal petition with the district attorney’s office and the coroner. They found my evidentiary basis for the request compelling enough to take another look at the facts surrounding the case, along with the autopsy results.”
“Simplify it for me, Bradley,” I say.
“The coroner doesn’t think it was a hunting accident anymore. He thinks it was murder.”
I laugh once. It comes out awkward and sharp-edged. “Congratulations. They’ve finally realized how hard it is to accidentally shoot yourself with your own hunting rifle.”
“I’m serious.”
“So was the coroner. So was the forensic technician. Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you’re involved. And because you’ve been involved since the beginning.” He pauses and glances up at the waitress carrying a tray of water glasses and coffee mugs.
“Good to see ya, Shari.” The waitress, Cindy, drifts by and drops a mug in front of me without asking. She fills it with black coffee, then places a pile of creamers and a full sugar bowl next to it. Cindy knows me so well.
“Good to see you too, Cin.”
Then she looks at me pityingly, says, “Hang in there, hon,” and leaves.
Word travels fast in small towns. I push the mug aside. My stomach is no longer in the mood for coffee today.
“Back to what I was saying,” Bradley picks right back up where he left off, “we need to gather all the evidence you have to prepare for this case. Shari, this is big. You’ll finally get justice for your husband.”
“I don’t know, Bradley.” I shake my head, uneasy about unearthing this.
“You already represented me in the embezzlement case Ramsey Shenk pinned on me, and you lost. No, correction—I lost. I did three years and have a Class C felony charge pinned to my name for the rest of my life because you dropped the ball. What makes you think you’ll win this time? ”
Bradley balks. I know I’m being harsh on him, but I can’t get those three years back and I’ll never clear my name.
“This time I have a suspect,” he pauses, then adds, “and a motive.”
“I’m listening.”
“Ramsey Shenk,” he proudly states, like I should be impressed.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Back before my conviction, before Stew was murdered, we both worked for Ramsey Shenk’s online newspaper In the Margins Media.
Stew was an accountant, I was a photojournalist. I don’t know what prompted my husband to go digging so deep into the financials of In the Margins Media, but his hunch turned out to be dead on when he discovered a million-dollar accounting error.
Stew subsequently followed the missing money directly to Ramsey Shenk’s personal bank account.
Before Stew could expose Ramsey, he was found dead after an alleged hunting accident.
How does one accidentally turn a rifle on himself and drive a bullet point-blank in the back of the skull while hunting?
After a too-brief investigation, officials declared it a “fatal hunting accident.” Case closed.
But—and this is a huge but—I had proof otherwise.
Trail cams were hidden all throughout our property where Stew had been hunting that morning.
Video evidence showed Ramsey Shenk killing my husband.
When I replayed the trail cam footage, I watched Ramsey wrestle the rifle from Stew, force my husband to his knees, then aim the barrel at Stew’s chest. I witnessed the bullet ripping through him, sickened by the blood coating the earth beneath my beloved husband’s fallen body. And I can never forget.
The day I found that footage and was about to present a copy of it to the police, I was arrested and charged for embezzlement.
My video evidence was subsequently buried, along with my husband.
I was already in jail by the time the funeral date was set.
I wore a prison jumpsuit to the funeral, where I was granted a supervised one-hour release to say goodbye to my husband’s grave.
“So you already know,” Bradley realizes, and his eyes soften behind his wire-rimmed bifocals, “that Ramsey killed your husband to shut him up about the embezzlement scheme.”
“Yes. It’s why he framed me—to discredit me before I could expose him for murder. So he got away with the stolen cash and murder.”
“How did you know?”
“I had trail cam footage.”
“You don’t happen to still have that footage, do you?” He squirms in his seat and rubs his hands together as if eager to touch it.
“Yep, and it’s saved on an SD card,” I confirm.
“Somewhere safe, I hope?”
“It’s hidden where no one will ever find it, I can assure you.”
Bradley slaps the table hard enough to rattle my mug. A couple at the counter turns. “Why am I only hearing about your evidence now?”
“Because Ramsey had no problem killing my husband. I wasn’t about to hand him a reason to go after my mother or my brother next while I’m sitting in a jail cell unable to protect them.”
His anger simmers, changes shape. “We could have built a case against Ramsey if you wouldn’t have kept that secret.”
“That’s assuming he hadn’t paid off everyone involved in my conviction, Bradley.
I was an easy target and Ramsey’s powerful and wealthy.
There was no way Ramsey would have been found guilty.
But it doesn’t matter anymore. Stew’s dead and I survived prison.
And in the end my husband’s killer got what he deserved. ”
Last year, In the Margins Media—and every other national news outlet—had reported that Ramsey Shenk’s yacht caught on fire and sunk while he was deep-sea fishing.
Although they never found a body, the charter log confirmed Ramsey had taken the boat out alone, and the harbor master at the marina had confirmed seeing Ramsey board the vessel.
GPS showed Ramsey’s last location out at sea in the same spot where deep divers located the sunken yacht.
There was no doubt that Ramsey would not have survived.
Bradley scrubs a hand over his face. “But what if Ramsey isn’t dead?”
I don’t like where this is going. “What makes you say that?”
“I know it’s a stretch, but there were some details about the case that didn’t sit right with me. For example, the lifeboat was missing when they recovered the yacht. And I know logically it probably burned up in the fire, along with Ramsey, but I can’t shake this hunch that he’s still out there.”
He’s going on a hunch? Everything pointed to Ramsey’s death, and it was a relief to have him gone from the face of the earth. I can’t go back to a world with my husband’s killer in it roaming free all because my attorney has a hunch.
“You know a hunch is what got my husband killed,” I remind him.
“That’s why I hired a private investigator to keep an eye on his girlfriend Gillian. I figured if Ramsey’s alive, she would know.”
“Wait—did you say girlfriend? Gillian and Ramsey aren’t married?”
Bradley shakes his head. “No, from what my PI discovered, he’d been married before and swore off ever marrying again.
I don’t know much more than that. But I think that’s why Gillian was so devastated by his death.
She inherited nothing from him, other than what he had already given her while he was alive. ”
Interesting. I wonder what happened to his wife. Divorce? Or death? My fingers tighten around the package I still haven’t opened yet. “And?”
“Anyway, now that Gillian’s bank account is drying up, she has suddenly made some interesting moves, in particular revisiting the details of the day Ramsey’s boat sunk. And the biggest twist?” He pauses for effect. “She’s moved here.”
I didn’t see that coming. Although I had never met Gillian in person while working at In the Margins Media, her reputation preceded her. You could hear her Manolo Blahnik heels tapping from a mile away. This is a martini and penthouse girl moving to a tequila shots and single-wide trailer world.
“Why do you think she’s in Doomwood Falls?”
“I think Ramsey is hiding out here. Planning how to get that trail cam evidence back so he can rejoin the living without a murder charge.”
A boat fire without a body means somewhere out there Ramsey could be among the living.
It’s not completely insane, I’ll give Bradley that much.
And I am the only person with the evidence that can put him where he belongs: behind bars for life.
I stare at the package in my hands. Proof small enough to fit in a bubble-wrapped envelope but dangerous enough to kill for.
“Can I speak to your private investigator in person?” I ask.
“Unfortunately I’ve been unable to get ahold of Vick for the past couple days. But when I do, I’ll set up a meeting.”
For the first time in four years since I was hauled away in handcuffs I have hope that justice will prevail.
“So what’s in the package?” I lift and shake it, listening for a hint at what’s inside.
Bradley places his wrinkled hand on mine and pats it tenderly. Maybe after all of these years he thinks of me like a daughter—a daughter who can’t seem to stay out of trouble and constantly needs saving.
“Let’s just say it’s a gift that might save your life… or ruin it. It all depends on how you use it.”