The Price of Redemption

Thumps came from outside. Then came the sound of a highly agitated sheriff. This investigation bordered on the archaic. The effort to keep the area clean encouraged one mishap after the other. Good thing he’d already accepted that he lived in a fixer-upper, otherwise he’d be hard-pressed to keep the Santellis temper in check.

The damages were to be expected. Tender loving care would not have been in the vocabulary of the grandfather who’d left Eric the cabin. The fact that the place was in any decent shape at all could be credited to his sister. Mary and Eddie had lived in the cabin just after they’d married, and Eddie drove the sixty miles to his job at the Santellis Used-Car Lot in Gila City. Four years later, once their son, Justin, turned two, Mary insisted on moving back to Phoenix. She wanted to be close to doctors, stores, etc.

For the last eight years, the cabin had been deserted. Well, deserted except for Jane Doe and what was probably Dustin Atkins.

“Tell me how he died?” Ruth’s words interrupted his thoughts.

He felt pathetically grateful to leave the images of the past, of his sister, his grandfather, his life, and focus on Ruth. She no longer bowed her head. Hair streamed in her face, obscuring most of her features but not hiding the fact that she’d been crying and hard. No woman he knew could cry that hard and keep silent.

His sister, Mary, wailed. Rosa was a gasper. He’d never seen his mother cry. Maybe she did it in secret, or maybe by the time he’d been old enough to notice, she’d forgotten how.

“I don’t know how he died. I was in prison.”

“Somebody would have told you.”

“Right, I had so many visitors. That came up in court, remember?”

“How do you think he wound up in your shed?”

“Just my bad luck,” Eric muttered.

“What?”

“It’s just my incredibly bad luck. If one of my brothers murdered your husband, of course, they’d leave him in my shed. It’s not like I can ever hope to break free of their doings.”

“Did he make one of them angry?”

“How should I know?”

“Were they dealing drugs out of this house?”

“I’m gonna say no.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The amount of dust and debris I’ve shoveled out. And if they had been dealing drugs from here, they’d have had a working stove and refrigerator. The windows would have been covered. Yes, even here in the middle of nowhere. Plus, there’d have been a chemical smell. There’d have been something tangible left behind, be it a broken propane canister, lithium batteries or rubber gloves.”

“Maybe they cleaned up?”

“Yeah, right. They’d leave dead bodies but carry away the drug paraphernalia. No, the dirt was two inches deep.”

“It’s Dustin. I know it’s him.”

“I think so, too,” Eric said.

“I think so three.” Ricky the reporter stood in the cabin’s doorway.

Eric almost stood up, almost shouted that now was not the time or place for any attempt at humor, but the look on Ruth’s face stopped him.

“Have they said anything?” she asked.

“Boy, they’ve bantered his name around enough, but no one’s willing to commit. They just kicked me out.” He sounded indignant.

Eric was pretty amazed they’d let Ricky stay for so long, but then again, Eric had watched as Ricky the ace reporter melted into the shadows of a crime scene.

Walking to the doorway and nudging Ricky aside, Eric stared at his very popular shed. “Why’d they finally kick you out?”

Eric turned in time to catch a look passing between his guests. Finally, Ricky came clean. “They’re saying the woman’s only been dead about two to three months. So, Eric, you are a suspect. And they’re saying Dustin didn’t die in the shed. Somebody moved him and fairly recently.”

FOUR

“Why would somebody move him?” Eric asked himself, a little too loudly. “And not move the female?”

“I don’t know,” Ruth answered. She stood up and paced. There was plenty of room since the only pieces of furniture in his living room were a lamp balanced on a crate in the corner, a couch with the stuffing coming out of one side and a coffee table made from an old door.

Eric thought the place perfect: secluded. He had everything he needed. More than the grandfather who’d left him the land. Eric even had electricity. He’d called and arranged to have it turned on before he arrived. But except for the lamp and the refrigerator, he didn’t need the voltage. Maybe he should get rid of the lamp. All it did was remind Eric of how much work there was to do.

Ruth muttered, “He died somewhere else, and they moved him? Why?”

Ricky managed to restore a shred of respect to his profession, at least in Eric’s opinion—and Eric despised reporters. He actually came up with a feasible supposition. “To frame you,” he said, looking at Eric.

“That’s pretty stupid since I was probably in jail when he bit the dust and travelling in Italy when she did.”

“Maybe whoever moved them didn’t know you’d been in prison,” Ricky said.

“Right,” Eric agreed. “Maybe whoever moved them has been buried under a rock for the last three years.”

“Maybe whoever moved them didn’t care which Santellis got blamed,” Ruth guessed.

“What do you mean by that?” Eric asked. “You think my sister, Mary, might have—”

“I’m thinking more of your younger brother Kenny.” Ruth stopped pacing and stared out the front door. The action by the shed reminded Eric of ants scurrying in and out of the nest.

Eric shook his head. “Kenny won’t set foot near this place. He has a bounty on his head.”

“I agree,” Ricky said. “Besides, why move them for Kenny to find. He’d never have called them in. He’d have torched the shed to get rid of the smell and the evidence.”

Ruth looked a little ill.

“You have the right to be sick at all this,” Ricky said gently, “but all we’re doing right now is supposing. We’re even supposing the body is Dustin’s.”

“It’s Dustin,” Ruth said.

“Who else could it be?” Eric agreed.

“No other cop is missing.” She started pacing again, this time with the quick, jerky motions of someone who was highly agitated. “But why was he in Broken Bones? It’s not our jurisdiction—”

“Why are you in Broken Bones?” Eric asked. “It’s not your jurisdiction.”