Page 89 of The Woman Left Behind

“Weird how Roy Farrell developed a migraine to take him home from work today, then he didn’t actually go home. But just so you know, we discovered the ME’s report on Clifford Ballard was falsified. Theresa ruled it a homicide, not a suicide. You’re the investigator on record, Leland. You signed off on a doctored file. Farrell fucked you. He positioned you real good, then he fucked you hard. Good for you that you’d take your boys’ backs, but they’re leaving you swinging. Think on that.”

He ended the call, and carrying the last bag from his house, the one with his pups’ water and food bowls, Harry headed out to his truck.

He was halfway back to town when his dash told him he had a call from Jesse.

He found a place to swing in so he could give it the attention it deserved, parked in a spot at the back of the lot at the grocery store, and he took the call.

“Jesse,” he greeted.

“Harry, you got time?”

Never.

For this, though, absolutely.

“Yeah.”

“Right. We did our thing in LA. Jace said he briefed you on that?”

“Briefly,” Harry said.

“Well, nothing strange. They had reasons to find the quiet life. All we got on them there was all we’d get if we asked around MP. Good folk. Solid folk. Likeable folk. They were remembered and there was worry they seemed to drop off the face of the earth, since they’d been keeping in touch. Particularly Avery. Apparently, the woman wrote a helluvan entertaining Christmas letter.”

Everything…absolutely everything he’d learned about the Rainiers stated clear they were good, kind, loving, hardworking, decent people.

And they ended up in an unmarked grave on the side of a mountain a state away.

Fuck him.

“They had valid concerns,” Harry muttered what they now knew too well.

“When we got to Idaho,” Jesse continued, “we worked on the idea that it was Sonny and Avery’s destination. That they were going to report what they knew here, out of Washington State, to law enforcement that was enough removed, Leland Dern might not brush shoulders with them at a local convention.”

“Safe assumption,” Harry murmured.

“So we figured they got a hotel room.”

“Right.”

“Fortunately, not only was Avery a knockout, Sonny wasn’t tough to look at either. Found a woman who remembered Sonny.”

Fucking hell.

“No shit?” Harry asked.

“Part was he was good-looking. Part was, her dad remembered both of them. They run a mom-and-pop motel, a lot like our Blue Mountain. Clean, the proprietors give a shit, but not expensive. The woman we talked to was next gen, but she worked there back then, remembered her father talking about it. Had to wait until she could get in touch with him. They retired. Went down to New Mexico.”

“Okay,” Harry said.

“She got in touch with him, he got in touch with us. And this dude still remembered Sonny and Avery.”

Fuck, these guys were good.

“What’d he say?” Harry asked.

“We hit the mother lode, Harry.”

Harry closed his eyes as relief, and the first flicker of hope surged through him.

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