“Did he have any idea who the killer was?” I asked.

Ruby focused on me with her wild eyes. “We both figured it had to be Sandra. I mean, you know what she’s like. You hit her, she hits back twice as hard. Ajax assumed Kip and Racer took her to the trailer to whack her, and she managed to take them out instead. And when Brink came back to town, she finished the job. But Ajax and I weren’t going to say anything about it.”

Darrell leaned across the table. “You said that someone else was there. What did you mean?”

Ruby drummed her painted fingernails nervously on the table, and then she pushed back the chair and got up. We heard her go to another room, and when she came back, she had a white number ten envelope in her hand. She pushed it across the table to us, and Darrell picked it up.

“I found this taped to my front door this morning,” Ruby told us. “I don’t know who did it, but to me, it felt like a threat. When I saw it, I figured I couldn’t keep any of this secret anymore. I’ve got my kids to think about. I was going to call you, but then you showed up before I had the chance.”

Darrell opened the envelope.

Inside was a black-and-white photograph. I leaned close to Darrell to examine it, and when I did, I couldn’t help the stunned gasp that escaped my lips. I don’t know what I expected, but the sight of that photograph felt like Mount St. Helens leveling forests in its path.

The picture had been taken among the dense trees, but I saw a glint of sunshine reflecting off a silver bullet. It was Norm’s Airstream trailer. There were three men standing near it, arranged close to each other in a half circle, and although the shot was slightly out of focus, I knew each of those faces well.

Kip Wells. Racer Moritz. Gordon Brink.

Together, seven years earlier. Together, before the murders happened.

“There was a witness,” Darrell murmured with a kind of wonder. “Someone saw them at the trailer.”

Yes. And that changed everything.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

You’ll have to forgive me, Shelby, if the next few hours of that day are foggy in my memory. I was struggling to focus, and I’ve blocked out many of the details. I recall only bits and pieces, and the rest is just driftwood on a sea of pain and joy. But I’ll tell you what I can.

Darrell and I returned to his cruiser, but we didn’t go anywhere, not at first. We sat in the driveway outside Ruby’s house, and he stared at the photograph in his hand with a fixed concentration.

“Who took this picture?” he murmured, more to himself than to me.