Page 204 of The Woman Left Behind

I thought I should feel badly for him or at least feel something.

I just didn’t.

Surprising everyone, the Monday after Karl Abernathy was gunned down on Main Street, Albert Tremblay came into the station and confessed to shooting his neighbor, Terence Dinklage.

Harry told me he suspected Tremblay got antsy, knowing there’d been a case audit, and after Sean started asking questions, then the Dietrichs were arrested, and Karl was shot dead, Harry deduced Tremblay saw the writing on the wall, and he was next.

Tremblay had no idea they didn’t have enough to pursue.

Time in the pokey before he got bail, and perhaps his attorney sharing his fees, made Tremblay rethink things and he recanted.

It was too late.

They had his confession. They had his gun. They had the ongoing dispute and argument earlier that day, which was witnessed by Dinklage’s wife and was reportedly heated. And they had witness after witness testifying about Tremblay’s animosity to Dinklage, with two of them sharing Tremblay had stated, “I should just shoot the sumabitch and be done with it.”

He was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

His wife sold the house.

And word was, the Dinklages got on with their new neighbors splendidly.

Leland Dern didn’t fare too well in the courts either.

After two of his former deputies testified he’d ordered them to harass women (and one woman’s ex-husband) who were not accepting his advances, he was found guilty of three counts of criminal stalking, fined fifteen thousand dollars, and he did another three months in prison.

Lamentably, these deputies testified so they could avoid their own charges, and as they were the only two who were Dern’s go-tos for this kind of thing, outside Abernathy, those were the only consequences they faced.

Though, both of them moved out of Fret County pretty damned quickly after Dern’s trial was over.

When Dern got out, he sold his A-frame and moved to Florida.

With Abernathy dead, we would never know if Dern was involved in what happened to my parents. If he chose them, or if it was just Abernathy thinking that Dad had seen him at the Dietrich’s.

I would admit, part of me would like to know.

But I never would.

So I let it go.

The situation with the Dietrichs became known to citizens of MP as The Infernal Dietrich Folly.

Yes, they vamoosed the second they heard Harry was doing an audit of Dern’s files. They’d lived mostly in Seattle for a year, doing it keeping a low profile, and doing it living in the rental of another friend of their son, paying cash so there was no record of where they were staying.

The low profile was a thing for them, after they got their hands slapped by Abernathy proving they weren’t omnipotent. They’d genuinely lived in fear of being found out since their insurance scheme took a turn for the very worst, and not just Abernathy maybe blabbing, but my parents being found, or someone like Harry taking an interest and reopening the case.

One could say, Gerald Deitrich Senior was beside himself with fury his wife screwed the pooch so deeply by talking to police without counsel to the point she inadvertently wrote out and signed her own confession, implicating both her husband and son.

At first, she attempted a united front.

But apparently, Gerald kept writing her letters (when they were both incarcerated) and then saying it to her face (after they were bailed out, though they both had to wear ankle monitors seeing as they were definitely a flight risk), telling her what a fool she was and placing their current predicament squarely on her shoulders.

As such, she stopped feeling the unity.

She also got smart and hired her own attorney.

In the end, she gave testimony against her husband in return for a reduced sentence. She was fined a thousand dollars and would serve one year and be on probation for another one.

Gerald pushed it, claiming his innocence to the bitter end, which was probably why he was also fined a thousand dollars and given the maximum of five years.

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