“No evidence? I’ve seen your notes, Darrell. Jay and Gordon hated each other. The kid showed no emotion about his father being killed. He called Gordon a monster—I mean, shit, does he have to spell it out for you? Plus, Jay admits he was home Sunday night. His room overlooks the front of the house, but he claims he didn’t hear or see anything. What are the odds of that?”

“Slim,” Darrell admitted. “If Jay was in his bedroom, he should have seen something.”

“So either he did, and he’s lying to protect someone, or he killed Gordon himself. Either way, you need to find out.”

I listened to the back-and-forth between the two men, and then I jumped in. “Bad relationship or not, Jay doesn’t strike me as a teenager who’d kill his father, Sheriff. I talked to his friend Will, who said the same thing.”

Jerry looked at me for the first time, and his mouth curled with rage. Just like that, I knew he had it in for me. “Do killers wear name tags, Rebecca? Or maybe they have special tattoos? You can read violence in someone’s eyes just by looking at them? That’s quite a talent. You must have acquired it in your grand total of two years on the job.”

I tried to hold my tongue. I was used to being condescended to, and propositioned, and ignored, but I’d had enough. I didn’t really care if I had to quit or if Jerry fired me. I opened my mouth to shoot back, but Darrell smoothly interrupted before I could make a job-ending mistake.

“Look, Jerry, you can be as sarcastic as you want to be, but that’s not getting us any closer to an answer. For what it’s worth, Rebecca’s right. I talked to Jay, too. The kid isn’t a killer.”

“Really?” Jerry asked, putting poison into the word.

“Really.”

The sheriff eased back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He half smiled, half sneered, and when he did that, he looked exactly like Ajax. “Tell me about Gordon Brink’s office.”

Darrell looked puzzled. “What do you mean? What do you want to know?”

“Who had access to it?”

“Gordon,” Darrell replied. “Nobody else.”

“Nobody?”

“According to Erica, he kept it locked up tight.”

Jerry looked at me again, and the acid in his expression told me that he knew something we didn’t. “Is that right, Rebecca? Does Darrell have it right?”

“Yes. Erica told me she never went inside. She was even reluctant to have me go in there when Gordon was missing. That was where he kept all the privileged materials in the lawsuit.”

“What about Jay?” Jerry asked.

“He told us the same thing.”