The Police Chief's Lady

With a nod, Barry headed for the stairs. “Want to take some food with you?” Karen offered.

“No, thanks.” As usual, her brother was in a hurry.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Ethan strolled to the table, his powerful build inside the tailored suit drawing more than a few pairs of admiring eyes. As he claimed a cookie, he graced them all with a knowing wink that brought a round of smiles. Then he followed Barry up the stairs, leaving behind the sophisticated scent that had plagued Jenni’s senses all week.

Nobody spoke until, upstairs, a door closed. “That man,” Gwen said at last, “has charisma.”

Jenni didn’t bother to argue.

Chapter Five

For one inexplicable instant downstairs, the entire room had vanished except for Jenni Vine. Ethan didn’t understand it. He’d never been drawn to blondes, and he considered this one an ill fit to the community. Yet he’d battled the urge to stand there drinking her in, as if she cast a sunny spell over him.

She’d been perfectly aware of the effect she created. She’d stretched provocatively, while he, who made a point of keeping a friendly distance between himself and anything resembling male vulnerability, had stood there verging on meltdown.

This wasn’t entirely her fault, he conceded. As Gwen had said earlier, men all over town were scheduling their long-delayed physicals for a chance to be around her. Reducing adult males to the level of lusty adolescents had probably become second nature to her.

He almost wished he weren’t so scrupulous, or so cognizant of his position. If circumstances had been different, Ethan might have enjoyed a fling with the lady before she decamped for more interesting surroundings. Assuming she wanted a fling, of course.

No, he thought, he wasn’t the love ’em and leave ’em type, or the love ’em and be left by ’em type, either. When he’d fallen in love with Martha, he’d stayed in love. Heaven help him if he ever made that mistake with Jenni.

“What’ve you got for me?” he asked, following Barry into an upstairs rec room converted to a large office. Amid the file cabinets, desk and computer equipment was a bulletin board covered with old clippings and hand-drawn charts.

“Although nobody seems aware of it, Ethan, you’ve got an unsolved murder in this town,” Barry replied.

That caught his attention, all right. “Who’s the victim?”

“Norbert Anglin.”

Anglin was the farmer Barry had been convicted of killing. So this was about that case. “Go ahead.”

“The coroner said the killer struck him three times. I only hit him once,” Barry said.

“With a shovel,” Ethan reminded him dryly.

“He attacked me with a pitchfork.” Barry and his friend Chris McRay, Mae Anne’s grandson, had aroused Anglin’s wrath one night when he caught them freeing chickens at his farm. “Maybe I hit him harder than I thought, but I know I didn’t land more than one blow.”

“I’ve heard this before,” Ethan reminded him, studying the piles of papers in dismay. To see such a talented man unable to move beyond the past bothered him. “They said you might have lashed out two or three times without realizing it.”

“But I didn’t. And the cops were so quick to finger me they never tried to figure out who really killed him.” Barry selected a chart. “I’ve diagrammed his property and re-created the movements of everyone at the farm that night—Mrs. Anglin, the hired man, that transient who was supposedly sleeping in the barn—and, of course, Chris and me.”

Ethan resisted the urge to dismiss the matter. The editor had invested too much work and too much emotion to let go that easily. “I reviewed the case at your request last year, as you’ll recall. I can’t say the police did as thorough a job as they might have, but they had an eyewitness.”

“Chris.” Barry’s voice rang with resentment. “He’s the one who put me in prison.”

“He testified to the same thing you did—that you smacked Mr. Anglin with a shovel,” Ethan noted.

“No, he didn’t!” the editor replied. “He said I was yelling and flailing around, so he couldn’t be sure the shovel didn’t connect more than once.”

Ethan saw no point in debating. Better to go right to the point. “Are you telling me you’ve identified another suspect?”

“Yes, I have.”

That startled him. “Who? The transient?” He’d been ruled out because Chris had testified to seeing him some distance away as the two boys fled.

“Let me explain first so you’ll understand.” Barry selected a paper bearing a shaky signature. “I had to track Lou Bates—the transient—all the way to New Orleans, but I managed to interview him. I found the hired hand in Oklahoma six months ago.”

Barry had attended a newspaper conference in Louisiana the previous month, Ethan recalled. He supposed the Oklahoma trip had involved work, as well. “So that’s why you’ve been traveling so much.”

Barry forged ahead. “They both said the same thing. They spotted two figures running, and then a few minutes later they saw one of them sneak back.”

Ethan weighed the implications. “At the trial, the transient said he might have seen you head back.”

“And the DA implied that if I didn’t strike Norbert more than once the first time, I returned to finish the job,” Barry added. “But both told me they only made those statements because the police asked leading questions. They really didn’t think the man moved like me, only they were afraid to contradict the authorities.”

“After so many years, they probably don’t remember what happened.” Ethan had to play skeptic, no matter how much he sympathized with Barry. “Besides, Chris said he couldn’t find you afterward.”

“We split up while we were running, and I laid low for a while in case Anglin came after me. I was pretty scared.”

Ethan could envision a number of possibilities, including the witnesses conspiring to lie for some reason of their own. Since neither had profited from the farmer’s death and they’d had no criminal histories, however, such speculation couldn’t clear Barry. “You said you have a suspect.”

“It’s Chris. He must have done it.” The paper rattled in Barry’s hand. “He was the one who’d had an argument with the farmer the week before. That was why we were picking on him.”

“What did they quarrel about?” Ethan didn’t recall the subject appearing in the trial documents. Probably it hadn’t been relevant to the DA’s case, and Barry’s lawyer hadn’t introduced it, either.

“The old coot accused him of flirting with his wife. Which is ridiculous, considering she was twenty years older than we were, but he embarrassed Chris in front of other people.” Barry moved restlessly around the room.

“That explains the prank, but it’s hardly a motive for him to go back and kill the guy, then pin it on you,” Ethan observed.

“I don’t think he intended to frame me,” Barry conceded. “We focused on the fact that Anglin tried to stab us. But he also threatened to bring charges.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“It bothered me, but it must have upset Chris a lot more. I mean, he was planning to be a doctor. They’re held to high standards.” Barry pushed a wing of overgrown hair off his forehead. “An arrest record would have hurt his chances of getting into medical school. So I guess he wanted to shut Anglin up permanently.”

“Didn’t you have the same concern?” Ethan asked. “Or aren’t journalists held to high standards?”

The editor paused in front of his computer screen, glanced at a couple of flashing instant messages and then clicked them shut. “Being an ex-con has shut off certain avenues, but it doesn’t stop me from running the Gazette, because I inherited it. Chris wasn’t going to inherit a medical practice.”

“So he might have had a motive and opportunity,” Ethan said. “That isn’t evidence, Barry.”

“You could reopen the case and dig some up.” The editor’s movements grew more agitated. “How do you think it makes me feel that he’s gone on with his life, while mine has been torn apart? My dad never got over it. He died of a heart attack while I was in prison.”

“While Chris went on to become a pediatrician.” Ethan knew all about that, because McRay had applied for a position at the clinic. “But he left town. He must have felt bad.”

“Of course! He was ashamed to face me and my family,” Barry said. “Chief, he got away with murder. The evidence has to be there. The witnesses are still alive. Why not give it a chance?”

“Barry, this case is fifteen years old,” Ethan told him regretfully. “What you’ve found isn’t even close to enough evidence to persuade the DA to file charges. I’d be wasting the town’s resources to reopen the case. I respect the work you’ve done, but the truth is likely to stay buried. You’re only hurting yourself with this obsession.”