Page 54 of The Woman Left Behind

“Right, so after my ex had a word with him, things got really bad,” she relayed. “Both me and Darrin would have deputies following us, pulling us over for the slightest infractions, like, they said Darrin had a broken taillight, when he didn’t. They said I was supposedly going over the speed limit, when I swear I wasn’t. Stuff like that.”

Harry felt a muscle in his jaw jump, but he just nodded.

“And he was still coming to my office. My boss got sick of it, and she waded in. She went to Dern herself. I don’t know what she did or said, but after she talked to him, all of it stopped.”

“Can I ask your boss’s name and if I can talk to her?” Harry requested.

The color ran out of her face, and she shook her head.

“He doesn’t have that power anymore,” Harry said quietly.

“You don’t know. You’re a guy. You’re a cop. But all that lasted months. It was really scary, sheriff. Utterly terrifying.”

That muscle jumped in his jaw again.

“I got back together with Darrin,” she shared. “I mean, it wasn’t like I did it because I had to because of what Dern was doing. Dern messing with us reminded us of the connection we’d lost. Who we used to be. And Darrin is super protective. But that’s beside the point. I hope we’d find our way back to each other anyway. It’s just…Dern is not the kind of man you get on his bad side. And now Darrin and I also have a daughter, and it was just… Sheriff, it was just very, very scary.”

“Leland Dern was tried for his abuses of office, and he served a year sentence and is now living somewhere else, so we can’t try him again,” Harry informed her. “If you’d go on record, it would just be more we’d have on him if something else springs up with this case audit. You absolutely do not have to make an official statement or lodge a complaint. It’s your choice. But I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

“Lodge a complaint?”

“It’s up to you, totally up to you, but we can investigate this, Dern and the former deputies who were involved in it, and we can press charges if there’s evidence to support them.”

“Now?” she asked. When he nodded, she noted, “But that was years ago.”

“If a victim is too afraid to come forward to report a crime, the clock starts when the crime is reported.”

“Whoa,” she mumbled.

“I can promise you, I will investigate this to its fullest if that’s what you want. It might not lead to anything, but I have a feeling there are a number of former deputies that are more than a little concerned about what our audit will bring, and it’s a little bit of poetic justice when they used their position to terrify a woman and her husband, that they get some of that back. And I can assure you, if anyone did anything to you, you’d have the full force of this department at your back.”

She rolled her lips together, but her eyes lit.

“Think about it,” he urged.

She nodded. “I will. I’ll think about it, and I’ll talk to Darrin about it.”

“I’m here, whatever you decide.”

She studied him a beat before she declared, “You’re so not him, it’s not funny.”

“Best compliment I could get,” he replied.

A hesitant smile formed on her face before she stood. Harry stood with her, and he escorted her to the front door.

Once she was out, he prowled to Polly’s office, entered and closed the door behind him.

“You know who she was?” he demanded.

Polly shook her head. “But I can guess.”

Harry was thinking about that woman, who was still scared even though Dern no longer lived in their county, or any of the ones bordering it.

He was also thinking about Avery Rainier.

“How often did he pull that shit?” Harry asked.

“There were things he hid from me, Harry, and the boys did too. Just like he hid them from you. So I don’t know. He scared them so bad, they wouldn’t come to me. They’d not even go to Pete so Pete could come to me, and no one’s afraid of talking to Pete.”

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