The Price of Redemption

“Ma’am?” It was one of the two deputies. “Sheriff said to show this to you.” He had a Ziploc baggy in his hand. “See if the number belonged to your husband.”

Ruth took what he offered and almost dropped it. Then, she grasped it so tightly that the edges dug into her palm leaving red indentations. When she finally opened her hand and stared at the badge, she felt almost surprised by how ordinary it looked. It hadn’t tarnished; Dustin would be pleased. He shone the thing every morning. And it was Dustin’s badge. It bore his number and traces of his blood.

Sam jumped up, pushed past the deputy and ran across the yard. Numbly, Ruth followed, stood on the porch, suddenly afraid to go any farther, and listened. Rosa and Eric soon joined her. Rosa took her hand and squeezed. “I’m so, so sorry. So sorry.”

Numb, Ruth swallowed back the tears and squeezed in return. The Santellises had been responsible for the death of Rosa’s parents and brother. If anyone understood Ruth’s pain, her sorrow, it would be her best friend, Rosa.

A loud confrontation began inside the shed. Ruth recognized Sam’s shouts. Words like proper procedure, common sense and idiot punctuated the air. Then, it got quiet. Next, those waiting on the porch were privy to a higher-pitched shout. Ruth guessed it to be Sheriff Mallery—a man she’d bugged off and on for the last two years, always trying to find out some info on her husband. He delivered the final blow. “…last one to see her alive.”

The deputy who’d delivered the badge looked relieved not to be part of the shed’s crowd. The door to the shed opened, and the other deputy hurried toward the porch. Sam was on his heels.

“Ma’am?” the deputy said.

Ruth gripped a porch rail, but the cop wasn’t talking to her. He was addressing Rosa.

“Yes.”

“Sheriff wants you to come to the shed. He thinks you can help with the other body.”

Rosa’s eyebrows drew together. One hand dropped to her stomach. “Me? Are you sure he meant me?”

“I’m sure.”

“Honey—” Sam’s teeth were clinched “—don’t worry, there’s no way they can tie you to this crime.”

Rosa blanched. One hand dropped to her stomach. “Sam, we overhead some of what the sheriff said. What’s going on?”

“Yes, Sam, what’s going on?” Ruth looked from the deputy to Sam to Rosa and took a step back.

FIVE

It was the preliminary identification of the pink-clad woman as Lucille Damaris Straus that ended any hope Eric had of settling in quietly at Broken Bones. The same identification moved Rosa to first place on the list of suspects. The sheriff made the necessary phone calls and government intervention arrived in the form of state agencies and the FBI.

Rosa and Sam were hustled off to who knows where. Eric, Ricky, the minister and Ruth were ordered to stay in the cabin. At first, they’d all headed for the porch, curiosity so tangible it almost pushed them. After a few stern looks, they retreated inside. Then, carefully, Eric headed for the porch and a rocker. Ruth followed, taking the second rocker.

For Eric, sitting still and simply observing was not a hardship. He’d spent a lifetime learning how to be seen and not heard. It had saved his hide more than once both growing up in the Santellis family and later while surviving in prison. If what he was observing now was true, Ruth didn’t know how to sit still. White-knuckled hands clutched the armrests of the rocking chair. Impatient feet tapped a beat that threatened to dance off the porch. Tenaciously balanced on the edge of the seat, she was poised for flight but shackled by her belief in the system.

A belief he didn’t share. “You do know that Rosa couldn’t possibly be involved in this?”

She looked at him, blinked and finally settled into the chair. “I—I—I don’t know what to think. I’ll wait—”

“Did you ever meet Lucy?”

She stared at him, as if surprised everyday conversation was possible. Her feet slowed their dance and her knuckles relaxed. “No, I think Rosa had already gotten her off the street by the time I joined the force. And, if I ran across her before that, I’d not have thought twice.”

Gila City and Broken Bones had their quota of the homeless, thanks to the lack of winter. Eric knew Ruth to be an Arizona native, which meant acclimated to the sight of men and women pushing shopping carts loaded with an odd assortment of belongings. “If I remember correctly,” Eric said, “she was mentally ill.”

Ruth nodded, but didn’t respond.

“I wonder how she wound up in my shed. Rosa said something about Lucy having a rough childhood….”

A man wearing a suit much too dignified for the middle of a desert crime scene walked toward the porch and called, “Mrs. Atkins. We’d like to show you something.”

And she was gone, before Eric could convince her of Rosa’s innocence, of his innocence.

Funny, she was the only doubter he wanted to convince.

He certainly felt no need to convince the barrage of officials who crowded into his living room. The minister was escorted home. Who knew where Ricky, the reporter, disappeared to? And the officials, convinced Eric not only knew how the bodies came to be in his shed but also who put them there, let him know that his contributions, or lack thereof, only angered them.

It didn’t matter to them that Eric hadn’t been to the cabin in a decade. It didn’t matter to them that he had alibis. And, it didn’t matter to them that other than serving time and later being exonerated, he had no criminal record.

All he could do was tell them the history of his family’s cabin. His great-great-great-grandfather had built the cabin in the 1800s. His grandfather had left it to Eric. His sister and her husband had lived in it a decade ago. Yes, Rosa knew about the cabin. Yes, Rosa had been his sister’s childhood friend. She’d been his teenage crush. His oldest brother was responsible for her brother’s death. He’d hooked up with her during an undercover sting operation four years ago. They both worked on the side of good. Ten months ago, she, her husband, Ruth and a man named Mitch Williams proved Eric innocent of murder of the police officer he’d been working with. That’s when he heard about Lucy Straus. He’d never met the woman. His story never changed. It couldn’t. It was the truth.

A truth that didn’t make the authorities any happier. They wanted to solve this case. It would be so much easier if they could tighten the noose around a Santellis neck.

They were willing to work all night to tie the knot. Eric’s last thought, as he stretched out on the couch in his living room, his bed for now, was about how the local authorities were making it perfectly clear they’d settle for Rosa’s neck instead of his.

The alarm rang at six. Eric didn’t remember setting it, and for a moment, he contemplated getting a few more minutes shut-eye. That’s when he heard the voices outside and the memory of yesterday’s mess catapulted him off the couch and back to his front porch.

The door to the shed was open. Eric started toward it. The sheriff, looking as though he hadn’t been to bed at all, stepped out and shook his head. Eric interpreted the look: I ask questions; I seldom answer them, and I don’t know how to share.

After downing a bowl of cereal and brushing crumbs off the low-slung jeans he’d slept in, Eric decided to act as if this Saturday morning was like any other. He’d start checking for exterior and interior damage, start doing with the cabin what he’d be doing if the authorities weren’t here. It’s not as if they were including him in the investigation. Plus, maybe if he blended into the scenery, didn’t appear so much an observer, they’d forget he was here, talk a bit more freely, and then he could figure out what they were doing with Rosa.

Before he could begin, James Winters’s white Cadillac pulled up and the elderly doctor stepped out. Wisely, he avoided the shed and came toward Eric instead.

“Curiosity is a poor bedfellow,” he said. “I didn’t sleep all night. Feel like company?”

“Think they’ll let you stay?”

“Sheriff owes me.”

The doctor sat in the second rocker and tossed Eric a newspaper. “Thought you’d find this interesting.”

Eric settled back into his chair and cringed. Friday’s Gila City Gazette’s front-page headline screamed Mafia Hit! The first few paragraphs focused on Lucille Damaris Straus, the pink-clad woman.

Ricky the reporter had gotten it right. Lucy had first come to the nation’s attention last year when the truth about Cliff Handley, a Gila City native and a beloved police officer who lived a double life, was made public. Lucy, a homeless woman, had assisted in his arrest rather unwittingly. She’d loaned, for a price, her identity to Rosa. Using Lucy’s name and social-security number, Rosa made a place for herself in Gila City and hunted down every person, every place, every move from Cliff’s past. Her goal: to prove Eric innocent. She’d ferreted out details about Cliff Handley that not even he realized. Then Rosa had been arrested and her true identity revealed. She was a mere civilian determined to see justice done. But her arrest exposed the truth about both Cliff and Eric.

Cliff was a murderer; Eric was not.

Unfortunately, Lucy hadn’t been around last year for Rosa to ceremoniously return her identification. And even more unfortunate was the general consensus that Rosa, who claimed not to have seen Lucy in all that time, most likely was the last person to see Lucy alive. Add to that the fact that Rosa’s fingerprints were on some of Lucy’s belongings and, for the authorities and press, the consensus easily turned into the questions Did Rosa kill Lucy? And if so, why?

Dustin Atkins got equal coverage. Pictures of his deserted squad car, found just a mile from Eric’s cabin, looked sinister. A family photo of Dustin, Ruth and a little girl looked prime-time perfect. The piece on Dustin began with his dedication to keeping Gila City’s youth off drugs; it ended with Ruth’s new position on the police force and her dedication to not only ridding the streets of killers but also keeping her husband’s case open.

Finally Eric turned the page and was treated to his own history—that of the Santellis crime family. He didn’t need to read a word. They dealt drugs. Most had the word Killer tattooed on their forearms.

In Eric’s opinion, the press needed to spend more time on the verifiable truth. Rosa was a cop, married to a cop and about to have a little cop. Nowadays, everything she did was by the book. Eric was a Santellis trying to start a new life. It didn’t seem to matter to the press that innocents were intruded upon. It didn’t matter to curious locals, either. Like the minivan of retirees who were slowly driving past his cabin. The couples, families and even the occasional single female who slowed down for a look felt like paparazzi. And every hour it got worse. Eric, and everyone else trying to keep the crime site intact, watched as a little-traveled road on Prospector’s Way turned into a traffic jam. Only Doc seemed able to handle the deluge of people. He knew most of them. He returned greetings, asked one driver about the year of his BMW, claimed not to know anything about the bodies, yet, and advised the drivers to leave the policing to the police and go home.

A few brave souls yelled for Eric to sign their newspaper, which pretty much acted like a road map to the stars. Eric’s home was becoming one of Arizona’s seven wonders, a landmark destination ranked right up there with the Grand Canyon.