seem logical in the context of the confession I held in my gloved hands. How could Myles have gone to the ranch to claim Laurel and been rebuffed, killed her around midnight but then waited all those hours to murder the others? Why would he do that? It made no sense. But then, maybe, I just didn’t want to see it?
“Does this sound right to you?” I asked Max. “What do you think?”
Max’s frown stretched tight. “No way to tell for sure, but no… I’m thinking the same thing you probably are, that this scenario doesn’t fit the autopsy evidence.”
“Not that I can tell,” I said. “Maybe we’re misinterpreting something?”
Max thought for a minute, then said, “Keep reading. What does he write next?”
I did as Max requested, and the letter became even more alarming:
Although I understand that bequeathing him my money and property will not make up for all the harm I have done to Jeremy, all I have taken from him, it is all I have to leave him. I am unable to live with what I have done. I ask God’s forgiveness as I prepare to meet my end in the place where Laurel and I shared our happiest memories.
And then there was the strange document’s most suspect element—the typed “signature.”
Mueller took the paper from me and slipped it, along with the envelope, into an evidence folder. “We’ll work on the printer and do fingerprinting and trace evidence,” he suggested. “That might help.”
“Thanks, sure. Good idea,” I said. I thought about that phrase “as I prepare to meet my end.” I turned to Max. “What are you thinking? What’s he planning to do?”
“Suicide note,” Max said. “Plain and clear. Every indication.”
Mueller walked off to take the envelope with the letter to the CSI trailer, and a few of the others returned to examining the horse. I glanced over and saw Stef petting the animal, murmuring to it. We all felt the sadness, I figured. So many lives lost, so much tragedy.
“He says, ‘where Laurel and I shared our happiest memories,’” I pointed out.
“Are you thinking what I am?” Max asked.
I called over to Scotty, who was petting one of the dogs, just to be certain I hadn’t misunderstood. “One more time, where did you say you saw Myles and Laurel together?”
“Along the river, where the kids go to hide from their parents. The clearing where there’s a big boulder right on the bank,” he said. “Only saw them together there the one time, but, like I said, I saw Laurel off and on sitting next to the water.”
Max and I exchanged worried glances. “You finish up here,” I said to Mueller. “But don’t head back to your office until you check in with us. We may need you.”
Thirty-One
Driving back down the highway west of Alber, I turned off on the dirt road Naomi had taken days earlier. I thought about how she’d seen Laurel and Myles talking, and that she said Laurel seemed upset. Max and I got out of the SUV, and we walked down the dirt path that wound through the woods. Nineteen years earlier, we’d taken this path together. Now gray speckled Max’s hair and the stubble on his dimpled chin. All those years ago, his cheeks were soft and boyish, and I remembered the fluttering of my heart that accompanied our first kiss. I could almost hear my father emerging from the trees and shouting: “Stop!”
In the growing darkness, our flashlights lit the way as we trudged through the trees. Surrounded by the scents of pine and the river, I felt a stiff chill in the air. I wondered what we’d find. Perhaps Myles Thompkins’ dead body against a tree trunk, a gunshot wound to the head, his gun at his side. From the tone of his note, if it were genuine, that didn’t seem improbable.
The grass was winter yellow and brown, and dead leaves crunched beneath our feet as we scouted around the riverbank, wandering off in different directions into the forest, looking for Myles. I privately hoped we wouldn’t find him. I thought of the man who wrote the letters, the one who seemed to love Laurel more than he loved himself, who wanted her happiness above his, and I wished that in the midst of so much death, he’d survived. I wished that the confession wasn’t true.
An hour later, Max and I stood in the dark with our flashlights not far from where we did the day of our kiss, alongside