Chapter 27
“You know, Todd’s a good guy.” Sheriff Adams glanced across, the sinking sun making ravines in the lines on his face.
Craggy. Fatherly. Concerned. God, she was so tired of people being concerned about her.
“You shouldn’t take it out on him. He was a kid too when Lila was killed.
Whatever anger Jamie had with the police over that, it was nothing to do with Todd. ”
“But it was to do with you, right?”
“It was, I’m sorry to say. And Bonnie too. Both on my watch. Not what you expect in a small town like this. But we did our best, you need to know that. This case damn near finished me.”
“Seems it broke a lot of people.” She stared out at the passing countryside, this quiet and alien land she was slowly getting used to.
“Todd says you’re writing something about it?”
“How come you’re so convinced it was that Michael Cairns guy?” She ignored his question. “He was shot and killed, right? So he couldn’t answer any questions.”
“No, he couldn’t, and I sure was pissed about that.
As for certainty? Am I a hundred percent sure he was guilty?
No one can be. But there was enough evidence, and that along with the snooping pictures we found and the fact that he was in the act of committing a felony to get money to get as far away from Harper’s Creek as he could when he was shot makes me around ninety percent.
Most times in this job, the obvious solution is the right one.
” He shrugged. “But you didn’t answer my question. ”
“I’m writing something,” she said quietly, not elaborating.
“But it’s early stages.” What she’d been thinking about writing was changing shape in her mind as she mulled the sheriff’s words.
Most times, the obvious solution is the right one.
Jamie had said that someone might try to kill him, and now Jamie was dead.
Perhaps the obvious was the right solution here too.
Maybe Sheriff Adams could read her thoughts, because he said, “As for Jamie, the autopsy will show what was in that syringe, and obviously we’ll check out if anyone else was seen going into the motel or in the vicinity who shouldn’t have been.
Whether he bought any drugs today.” He looked at her again.
“I’m going to do my best by him, Anna. And not just because his dad is a royal pain in the ass.
But because it’s my job. I love this town.
It’s in my blood. I was born and bred here and when my time comes I’ll be buried right over there.
” He nodded to the window as the cemetery came into view.
“Got a plot picked out right next to my daddy, who was also a sheriff of Harper’s Creek.
Small-town life gets under your skin. There’s a whole world here when you look closely. ”
Anna gazed out over the barren fields. It was a hard land. Unforgiving. “I’ll take your word for it.”
As they drove past the cemetery, she looked through the chain-link fence to the headstones beyond. Jamie would be in that earth soon, forever underground. A thought struck her. How sweet Jamie had been about Lila. How he’d still loved her.
“Jamie wouldn’t have meant to kill himself,” she said. “Not today.”
Sheriff Adams frowned. “How can you be so sure?”
“He’d do it on the anniversary of Lila’s death. The fifteenth, right? To die then would be symbolic. Romantic.”
“Or,” Sheriff Adams countered as the house came into view, “like so many other tragic addicts, he simply misjudged his dose.”