Page 115 of Kill Your Darlings

My heart began to skip unpleasantly at memories I thought I’d forgotten.

“Hello?”Finn called, and I jumped.He patted my shoulder encouragingly.

Sheriff Rankin filled the doorway of his office.“Howdy.Can I help you folks?”

His voice was deeper, rougher.He was probably in his late fifties now.My father’s most trusted deputy—and the nearest thing he had to a close friend.Up until my father had been recalled and Rankin was elected in his place.

Anyway, when I’d known him, Deputy Rankin had been tall, whip-thin, and brown.Brown hair, brown eyes, and sun-browned skin.He’d had a wide smile that reached his eyes and an easy, lowkey manner.He was thicker through the middle now; his face was more lined.He still wore scuffed cowboy boots and a stiff-brimmed hat, like he’d been hoping to join the Texas Rangers but had ended up in Steeple Hill instead.

I remembered that he’d told me to call him ‘Jim,’ which had flabbergasted my childhood self.He’d seemed genuinely kind though, not someone who was being nice because I was his boss’s son.

I said, “Hi.You probably don’t remember me.I’m Keiran Chandler.”

He actually sort of rocked back on his heels.“Keiran Chandler?Now that’s a funny thing.I was thinking about you today.”

That answered the first question: would he even remember me?

“This is my friend Phineas Scott.I was wondering if I—we—could speak to you in private.”

Rankin smiled that wide, genial smile I remembered.“Sundays are about as private as it gets around here.Step on in.”

We stepped on in to his crowded office.I didn’t think I’d been in that little room since my father had been sheriff.Rankin had a framed photo of his wife and daughters on his desk and an actual live potted plant on the file cabinet.

“Take a seat, boys.Keiran, I was real sorry about your daddy.Sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at the funeral.”

I murmured something.Had he been at the funeral?I hadn’t noticed.I remembered almost nothing of that day except my desperation to leave.

Finn and I took the two wooden chairs in front of his tidy desk.Rankin sat down, too, and closed the file on the blotter pad.He studied me with his shrewd brown eyes.

“I saw you put the house up for sale, lock, stock and barrel.Would you folks like some coffee?”

We declined coffee.I leaned forward and said, “Sheriff Rankin, I want to talk to you about something that happened twenty-three years ago.The night Dominic Baldwin…disappeared.”

Rankin’s unruly brows rose.He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair.“I’d be very interested to hear that, Keiran.”

I couldn’t help thinking he didn’t seem as surprised as I’d have expected.I glanced at Finn.Finn gazed back, calm and serious.He gave a little nod likelet’s do this.

So, I did.I told Sheriff Rankin the whole story.

Everything.

Everything that had happened back then.

Everything that had happened in the last five days.

I relived the horror of that first sight of Dominic’s face in the cemetery, the realization that he really was dead, that there was no going back.Milo’s hysteria.The horror of dragging Dom’s sodden, lifeless weight through the reeds, the wet fabric catching on every sharp rock and splintered root, of standing in the sucking mud of Pescadero Marsh, my shoes mired to the ankle, watching his body sink slowly into the muck, the dark water lapping over his legs, his face disappearing beneath a slick of green algae.Remembered my breath sobbing in my chest, praying that he would hurry up and sink.

I told Rankin about the shock of Milo’s disappearance, the hurt that gradually gave way to the conviction someone must have done something to him.The grief and fear that followed.

And after years of…nothing, the bewilderment and alarm of receiving the implicit threat of the manuscript,I Know What You Did, with all that it had gotten wrong—and all that it had gotten right.I handed over the plastic bound binder.Rankin took it automatically, laid it on top of the closed file.

I detailed the drive to Steeple Hill, my effort to track down Troy Colby, and the harrowing trip back to Monterey, reliving again the blowout in the middle of nowhere, the night pressing in, the trees, thick with the hum of insects, the sharp scent of pine and hot metal.The doubt that turned to panic as headlights appeared.The sinister rumble of a V8 engine, the creak of the opening door, the blinding, glaring certainty that this wasn’t a coincidence.

I talked about confronting Colby, of confronting Milo, of Geo’s suggestion to throw me off the balcony.

I talked for three hours.

I talked until I was hoarse.

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