“I’m not sure she needs my help as much as I needed to come home. My daughter just finished her second year of college. I got divorced a few years ago. I guess you could say I’m at a crossroads.”
“Understandable. Logan Bend’s good for a soul.”
“I’m enjoying the weather and the clear skies.”
Ford put his elbows on the desk and folded his hands under his chin. “Talk to me. What have you found that you think might impact the case?”
I dipped my chin to stare at the purse in my lap. Expensive and pink, I’d bought it online in an attempt to cheer myself up last month after a particularly heinous online date. I pulled the journal from the pouch on the side. “I found this while cleaning out my sister’s room. It’s Beth’s journal, written in the months before her death. I found this in a hiding place. I haven’t finished reading it yet but what I’ve read so far—she had another boyfriend. Someone other than Luke Paisley.”
He sat forward. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Are you sure?”
“She talks about him quite a bit. Most of it hasn’t been particularly enlightening. She’s a wordy writer.” In fact, reading through the journal was taking longer than expected. Her terrible handwriting caused me to pause to decipher words, and she tended to ramble. “So far, there’s nothing that gives me any ideas about who he is.” I swallowed against the ache in my throat before telling him the next part. “She was having sex with him. Not with Luke but whoever Z is. It started me thinking…maybe he’s the killer. I mean, isn’t that why so many people thought Luke could be the killer? The boyfriend or husband is always looked at first, right?”
“Depends on the case, but yeah.”
I could tell by the sympathetic dip of his eyelids that he didn’t hold out hope of learning much from a teenage girl’s journal.
“Your dad never believed our theory,” Ford said. “He made sure I knew that.”
“I know.” Dad hadn’t believed their theory that Beth fell victim to the serial killer. During the span of a few years, six girls had been murdered in Colorado and Montana. The authorities had believed Beth was another one his victims. The killer had never been found. But my dad didn’t buy it. The other girls had been strangled. Dad felt strongly that the number of Beth’s stab wounds were indicative of a crime of a personal nature. She’d been stabbed seventeen times. One for each year of her life. “Why would a serial killer have dropped her off in my parents’ yard?”
“He killed her there. There were no gates or fences to keep him out. It’s plausible he followed her home and grabbed her when she got out of the car.”
Dad had thought their police work was lazy. Ford must have sensed my thoughts, given what he said next.
“None of us here have ever given up hope that we’ll find your sister’s killer. The detective and sheriff I worked with all those years ago have both passed away. But you should know, right up until their retirement they never stopped trying to solve what happened that night.”
“I know you all did your best.” As I sat there under the kind gaze of Ford, a vast emptiness seeped into me like ink on absorbent paper. We’d never know what really happened. There just wasn’t enough evidence.
What was I doing? Coming to the police station was ridiculous. They might have current cases, and my intrusion kept them from their real work. I gripped the straps of my purse. The hard leather hurt my sweaty palms. “I just wanted to tell you about the journal.”
“You be sure to let me know if you find anything. If you’re right and it was someone she knew, then we might be able to find him.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief. He was open to the idea. “I’ll do that.”
“I’m here if you ever want to just come by and talk, okay?”
“Thanks. I appreciate the offer.” Ford had brought me a cold soda the day I’d come in for questioning. They’d grilled me about the Paisley brothers. “You were nice to me,” I blurted out. “I never thanked you for that soda.” I tried to control myself, but I started to cry. “They kept grilling me about the Paisley brothers. I kept telling them they were with me all night. It seemed like they didn’t believe me.”
“I felt real bad about what they did to the Paisleys.”
“What do you mean? They who?” I wrapped both arms around my purse.
“The sheriff and the detective—Lancaster and Wright. Do you remember them?”
“Sure, yes.” I could remember every detail of their faces as they sat across from me that night. Lancaster had looked like a mountain man. A beard had covered most of his face, leaving only small green eyes that bored through me. Wright had been tall and sloop-shouldered with crooked brown teeth.
“They felt certain Luke Paisley had something to do with it. They’re the ones who told the editor at the paper to run with the story on him.”
“But why? Why would they do that to an innocent kid?”
“The Paisleys were outsiders,” Ford said. “You know how it was around here. Anyone who hadn’t had family here since the pioneer days was thought of as an outsider, not to be trusted. Kenneth Paisley had a reputation for being violent. I think they genuinely thought Luke did it until his alibi and what you claimed were substantiated by the gal at the grocery store. But by then it was too late. They’d already run the story.”
“And ruined the Paisleys’ lives.” I spit this out with surprising venom. After
