Page 62 of The Woman Left Behind

“Left you a note, was going to my desk to email,” Rus explained why he was in Harry’s office, even if Harry had an open-door policy.

The office wasn’t his anyway, it was owned by the county.

“What’s up?” Harry asked.

“Brief on Ballard…and the Dietrichs.”

He read Rus’s face, noting this detective dog had found a juicy bone, and Harry moved to the chair behind his desk.

Rus sat opposite him and waited for Harry to stow the bag before he launched in.

“Ballard’s mother gave me an earful. And his friends gave more. Apparently, this guy was a sad sack. If life didn’t bring him low on the regular, he made stupid decisions to get brought low. Kept losing jobs. His wife cheated on him. Then she left him and cleaned him out when she did. He’d regularly make shitty investments on dubious projects that didn’t pan out. The thing was, he didn’t let it get him down. He was well-liked. He was, according to more than one friend, ‘that guy.’ The one who’d help you move. The one who’d watch your dog while you were on vacation. The one who’d take you for a beer if your girlfriend dumped you.”

“So suicide didn’t jive with them,” Harry deduced.

“Not at all,” Rus replied. “It rarely does. People miss the signs loved ones are sending, or those loved ones do everything they can to mask the signs. But honest to God, Harry, that doesn’t sound like what this is. This guy had lived through a lot and kept on rolling. He didn’t hide any of it either. He was a talker. He shared. He bitched. When he had sorrows to drown, he did that publicly.”

“Does anyone know if he was going through anything around his death?”

Rus shook his head. “He wasn’t living the big life after his wife cleaned him out. One bedroom apartment. Job working for Stormy at the tire store. He wasn’t dating anyone. But he’d just been to a friend’s fortieth birthday party the day before, and several of the attendees remember he was what he usually was. The life of the party.”

“Was he banged up when he went to this party?”

Rus shook his head. “Nope.”

“Anyone have any idea about that?”

“All anyone could guess was that he was excited about some new scheme he said was going to make him rich, and it might have gone bad. They didn’t know what it was or who was involved, but he swore he’d be buying lakefront property and a boat. No one thought anything about it at the time, because this was Muggsy’s gig. He threw good money after bad constantly. Some even said this was why his wife strayed. He was so sure he was going to get rich quick, he got poor quicker and dragged her down with him.”

Harry left the truth unspoken. That the woman could have left him without kicking him when he was down by cheating on him. But Rus knew that better than him, seeing as Rus’s ex thought Rus needed a lesson about how little attention he was paying her, and she used fucking another man in their marital bed to teach it.

“The only thing that grabbed my attention from what they were saying,” Rus went on, “whatever this new scheme was, it was different. He wasn’t investing his own money. Whatever it was, he bragged he didn’t have to lift a finger or hand over a dime, and he was going to be rolling in it.”

He and Rus stared at each other then, because if something sounded too good to be true in that way, it was usually illegal.

“The statements Dern apparently took that said he was depressed?” Harry inquired.

“Every single person I talked to, outside Ballard’s mother, said they never spoke to a cop, Dern or anyone else. And Dern didn’t come to her, she went to Dern.”

Fuck.

“You talk to the ex?” Harry asked.

“Got a call in to her asking for some time. Waiting for a call back.”

Harry nodded. “What did the mother have to say about her visit to Dern?”

“That her son didn’t kill himself,” Rus answered. “Safe to say, she’s still pissed, but she’s relieved we’re looking into it. She told me she has nothing against suicide. She made that very clear. It isn’t like she’s got any erroneous ideas that’s some smear on their family or the job she did as a mother. She’s simply adamant Ballard didn’t take his own life. And only slightly less adamant that when Dern wasn’t being ‘infernally lazy,’ her words, he was playing favorites. Cozying up and doing favors for people who would donate to his re-election campaign or let him borrow their condo at a ski resort. She said he didn’t have time for someone he didn’t think mattered, like Muggsy.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Even so.

“That doesn’t explain why he took that case himself and closed it in a couple of days,” Harry pointed out. “He had two deputies who investigated crimes, and he could have punted it to either of us.”

“No, it doesn’t explain it,” Rus agreed.

“Talk to the medical examiner?” Harry asked.

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