Page 92 of A Future To Remember

“What the hell were you two thinking?!” Cash shouted at us.

He looked pale too. And his hand was trembling, which was noticeable only because he was struggling to holster his weapon.

I pointed to the security camera. “I had my suspicions, especially when I saw that, and I needed to draw out Norris.” Pulling the ledger from my coat, I offered it to Cash, who took it and began to thumb through the pages.

“Norris and Red were running a scam,” I began. “My guess is that when he was your dad’s deputy, Norris would sit at the speed trap just outside of town, and he’d wait for a set of out-of-state plates to pass by. Didn’t matter if the driver was going the speed limit or not, he’d still pull them over, knock out their taillight, or find some other infraction, and then, instead of writing the driver a ticket, he’d let them off with a warning but insist they have Red from the garage drive out to fix the taillight, and charge the driver an obscene amount of money, which, I’m also guessing, he’d split with Norris.”

Cash said nothing. He simply continued to thumb through the pages, his lips pressed so tightly together, they formed a thin line.

I continued, “The times when Red charged the drivers amounts near a grand were the drivers, I’d be willing to bet, were the ones he suspected had been drinking. If he smelled alcohol on their breath, he knew they’d be thanking their lucky stars not to get charged with a DWI, then hauled to jail.

“I’m thinking your dad got suspicious when he noticed that Norris’s ticket writing wasn’t adding up. He had to have known there’d be out-of-state drivers passing through, yet no tickets bearing out-of-state plates were being written. My guess is that he quietly started his own investigation and was going to confront Norris the night of his murder.

“Norris probably got wind that your dad was gonna confront him, so he took him out. Then he covered up the crime by pretending to investigate it, appearing to leave no stone unturned. He then killed Doug Maydole, who he learned had witnessed not one, but two patrol cars across from Wanda’s that night.”

I paused to reach over and flip to the last taped receipt in the ledger. “Red scammed his last driver the day of your dad’s murder. I’m guessing he knew Norris had murdered him and told the deputy he was done. His insurance policy was the ledger, which he hid in the garage someplace he didn’t think Norris would ever look.”

For emphasis, I pointed to the horseshoe handle on the hatch door hanging open from the wall. “Red vastly underestimated what Norris was capable of, and Norris killed him, then sent you on that errand to the garage so that you’d find the body.”

Cash took a wobbly step back. It was all catching up to him now. Everything he’d missed, all the clues that’d been right in front of his face for two-and-a-half decades. The last person in the world he would’ve suspected was the one who’d murdered his father. The betrayal must be cutting him so deep.

Levi stepped over to Cash, took him by the elbow, and led him to the desk. “Lean against that, Sheriff,” he said gently. “And call your deputy.”

Cash nodded dully, then used his radio to call Deputy Joel Buchanon, the one who’d been saved from a grim fate after my prediction about a white pickup with red and blue stripes.

While we waited for the deputy, Levi asked me, “How’d Cash know we were here?”

I pointed to his pocket and his cell phone tucked inside. “I texted him while you were looking at the journal. I knew that Norris would get an alert from the security camera that we were here, and he’d come running. He probably saw us on his phone the second we broke in, so I was expecting him. I had no idea that he’d actually start shooting when Cash arrived.

“How did you know?” Cash asked me. “How did you know it was him, Maddy?”

I shrugged. “Once I figured out that Maydole was murdered, and suspected that Red was too, it all started to come together. Norris was the only one who benefited from your dad’s death. He got his instant promotion, and by leading the investigation, he was able to manipulate or destroy any evidence that might’ve led back to him.

“Red’s death was the one that kept niggling at me, though. My gut said that the lift dropping the car on him hadn’t been an accident, that it was like Maydole’s death—staged to look like something else. That got me wondering why Red was murdered at all. When I looked through the list of witnesses in the file, his was one of the few names left off the list. Every other business owner in town was questioned by Norris, but not Red. He was never interviewed or questioned, and then a couple of months later, he’s dead too?

“I couldn’t work out a reason other than Red must’ve had something on the killer. Something that could’ve also gotten Red in trouble. Concluding that the two were running some sort of illegal operation that your dad eventually caught on to was the next logical conclusion, and when Levi and I came here tonight and looked through the window to see all these holes in the garage walls,” I paused to point to the walls, “it made sense that what Red was hiding was never found by the killer.”

Levi pointed to the camera in the corner. “The clincher was the camera, Sheriff. Who’d put up an expensive security camera in an empty, abandoned garage?”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

Cash turned his gaze to the prone body lying in front of the door. “Wish I didn’t have to kill him. I would’ve liked him to stand trial for murdering Dad.”

I shrugged. “He still got the justice he deserved, Cash. If you go back through Norris’s old bank records, I’ll bet you’ll find a string of cash deposits that correlate to the dates on these receipts.”

Cash nodded just as the floor of the garage lit up with the pulsing red and blue flashes of a strobe light. A few moments later, from the view of the doorway, Buchanon appeared, tucked behind the safety of his car, with gun drawn and eyes wide.

“Sheriff?” he called, his gaze fixed on Norris’s body.

“Over here.”

Buchanon pulled his gaze away and stared at the three of us before holstering his weapon and walking out from around the car.

We waited for him to enter the garage. “What happened?”

Cash sighed, shaking his head, the weight and gravity of the situation sagging his shoulders. “It’s a long story…” he began.

It was indeed.