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Nyles Fairchild was in a panic. His head was throbbing and still seeping blood from the cut on his forehead. When he got back to his hotel, he quickly shed his clothes and showered, then bandaged the cut and put on clean clothes. In a panic to get out of town, he was shaking profusely as he began throwing his things into his suitcase.
Once he was certain he’d left nothing behind, he headed for the elevator to go down to the lobby to check out but, once there, kept looking over his shoulder for fear he’d see cops coming in the door.
And then the desk clerk asked him a question that stopped him cold.
“Sir, do you want to leave your bill on this credit card or…?”
“No!” Nyles said, and then lowered his voice and made himself smile. “Sorry. That was a bit abrupt. I once had my identity stolen, so I don’t like to leave that kind of info behind me anymore. I’ll pay cash and ask you to erase that card number from your system, please.”
“Certainly, sir,” the desk clerk said, and handed him a printed copy of the bill.
Nyles dug through his backpack for the backup cash he’d brought with him, and counted out severalone-hundred-dollar bills. The clerk gave him his change, and he walked out of the lobby without looking back.
He drove away from Hotel Devon and out of Jubilee with only one thought in mind. To get home. He had a gun in his car that had killed a boy. It had once belonged to his grandfather, and to his knowledge, it had never been registered. Maybe he’d bury it somewhere along the way or throw it in a river. No one would ever know he’d had his hands on it.
Nobody had seen him. And Dirk Conrad didn’t exist. He was just one among thousands of tourists. He’d seen the sights, and now he was going home. With a little bit of luck, he might get away with this.
He didn’t breathe easy until he’d put a hundred miles between himself and Jubilee, and the farther he drove, the easier he felt.
Charlie Raines was in surgery, still hanging on to life by blood infusions and a surgeon’s skill. When the news began to spread on the mountain about what had happened and how dire Charlie’s chances of survival really were, every relative Charlie had headed to the hospital to donate blood.
Ray and Betty were in utter shock, and despite Sheriff Woodley’s questioning as to whether they or Charlie had enemies, they were adamant that it could not have been anyone they knew.
The first pieces of evidence the sheriff’s forensic team found at the scene was a cartridge casing from an old-style revolver and dozens of boot prints. Then they found a trail along the creek indicating someone had followed it up to the falls, and then more recent tracks showing the same footprints going back down. They found evidence of recent digging in several places, and the ground cover was trampled all around the area and far up into the brush. They found even more of the same prints inside a small nearby cave, took castings of the tracks, and bagged a wrapper from a protein bar.
Sheriff Woodley sent two of his officers to the creek to follow the footprints, which led them all the way into Jubilee, but from there, the trail went cold.
They couldn’t tell if the person took to the shallow water there and kept following the creek, or if he had a vehicle parked somewhere nearby. After checking all of the security cameras in that area, they discovered that none of them had been aimed toward the creek or the overflow parking lot. The only other security cameras were inside buildings, which didn’t help. Tracking was a bust.
Sheriff Woodley was still at the crime scene with his forensic team when he received the call from his menthat the trail had come to a dead end. Frustrated, he’d just hung up when his phone rang again.
“Sheriff Woodley.”
“Rance, this is Sonny Warren. I’m assuming you are still at the crime scene.”
“Yes, but there’s not much to go on. My men followed tracks all the way back to Jubilee and then lost him.”
“I may have a lead for you,” Sonny said, and told him about the woman who’d come into the PD, and what she’d witnessed.
Woodley’s pulse kicked.
“This is either a freakish coincidence, or we’ve just gotten our first break in this case. Is she a local or a tourist? Do you have her contact information?” he asked.
“She’s in the process of moving here, but she’s staying at the Serenity Inn for the time being. I’ll text you her phone number. You can go from there.”
“What about that book? Did it have the owner’s name in it? We’ll need it fingerprinted,” Rance said.
“Already on that for you,” Sonny said. “We also got some trace evidence at the scene. Blood drops and tissue samples from where his head hit the pavement. We sent it all to the lab here, with orders to send you copies of the results. But get this. The original owner of the journal was Brendan Pope. There’s a date on the flyleaf of 1833. This is the man who founded Jubilee.”
There was a moment of silence, then shock in the sheriff’s voice.
“Holy shit…but wait. It’s just a book someone wrote about the man, right?”
“No. It’s a personal journal, and old…very old. If we’re lucky, the man who dropped this will be in the system. If it’s okay with you, and since it was turned in here at the station, I’m going to visit with some of the Popes about it. They may have more information regarding the journal and who might have had possession of it.”
“Yes, sure. I appreciate the help. That way when the lab reports come back, I can focus on the shooter,” Woodley said. “I don’t suppose your witness took any pictures?”
“No. All I have right now is the description she gave. Is there any word on Charlie Raines?” Sonny asked.
