Burke’s jaw tightened.
“So somebody wanted that case to go away.”
“That’s the way it looked,” Burton said.
He leaned back, the chair creaking.
“What about the kid?” Burke asked.
Burton’s voice softened.
“That boy was the center of it all. David Mercer Jr. Davie. Caroline’s little boy.”
“He was what, a year old when she disappeared?”
“’Bout twelve months,” Burton said. “Could barely walk. Her parents wanted him. Mercer and his folks wanted him. Courts trying to decide where to put a baby with a missing mother and no answers.”
Burke rubbed the back of his neck.
“Messy.”
“Very,” Burton said. “And now that boy’s eight or nine, growing up with half the county’s old secrets tied to his name, whether he knows it or not.”
Burke let that hang.
“You think it was Mercer?” he asked finally.
Burton was quiet for a long moment.
“I looked hard at him,” he said.
“He had opportunity. He had access. And he had a reason to keep things… quiet.”
“You couldn’t prove it.”
“No,” Burton said. “And I don’t hang a man on what I can’t prove.”
“David Mercer didn’t just build houses, Burke. He built the town. Hard to arrest a man when half the jury is living under a roof he framed.”
“But I never cleared him in my mind either.”
He looked toward the tree line, shadows stretching long.
“Mercer had money. Connections. Crews all over the county,” Burton said. “And plenty of enemies.”
Burke felt that familiar split open in his chest—son on one side, sheriff on the other. Reopening his father’s work wasn’t about proving Burton wrong, but the line still felt thin some days.
“Enemies don’t usually take down flyers and flowers,” Burke said. “They add more.”
Burton’s mouth twitched in something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“True enough.”
Burke’s mind shifted back to the podcasts—the tight narration, old clips of Burton’s voice, strangers already spinning theories about his town.
“What do you think about them doing this?” he asked. “The media wannabes.”
Burton was silent for a beat.
