The contents were what you’d expect. Underneath the files of active cases in his drawer, he had copies of Penthouse and Hustler, many with dog-eared pages so he could find the photos he liked the most. He kept a flask-sized bottle of vodka, plus a carton of cigarettes, a tin of breath mints, and a strip of condoms. We found a pocket calendar, but most of the entries were blank, so we weren’t able to determine if he’d planned to meet someone while Ruby was gone for the weekend. There was also nothing in the calendar to tell us if he’d been seeing a woman other than his wife.

As we went through the desk, Jerry stopped by. The sheriff looked devastated by the murder of his nephew, and maybe that was why he raised no objections when Darrell said he wanted to deputize me to help on the case. Darrell pointed out that we were short-handed without Ajax and that I’d worked with him on the previous Ursulina murder. I expected an argument, but Jerry simply nodded his approval with barely a glance at me. We all knew it would be a short-term assignment anyway, given how far along I was.

After Jerry left, Darrell finally raised a topic that we’d avoided between us for months. Given that the Ursulina was back, we couldn’t dodge it any longer. “I know you wanted me to push back with Jerry about closing the Brink case,” he told me. “You didn’t agree with him blaming Jay.”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you don’t think Jay killed him,” Darrell said.

“You didn’t think so, either. But Jay confessed, so I get it.”

“It was better for Will,” Darrell admitted with a sigh. “Jay was dead, but Will still has to live in this town.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Except here we are with another body.”

“Yes. Here we are.”

“You’re right, you know,” Darrell went on. “I never thought Jay murdered his father. I was pretty sure that the same person did all three. Brink, Kip, Racer. If Will’s right about Brink being in town years ago, that makes it even more plausible that we’re only looking at one killer. There must be a connection that we’ve missed.”

He shut the drawer of the desk and shook his head. “There’s nothing here. Let’s go through the personal papers I brought back from his house.”

We went into the office conference room, where Darrell had stashed the box that contained the contents of the rolltop desk from Ajax’s rec room. He pulled out stacks of papers and spread them neatly across the table. There was a lot to review. Tax returns. Bank statements. Receipts. Credit card bills. I took one side of the table, and Darrell took the other, and we began to sift through the piles in silence.