Bobby did not want the copy.
Marian gave it to him anyway.
She found him at an abandoned farmhouse outside town where his cousin had hidden him after Ray’s death. Bobby looked thinner than he had three days earlier, like fear was eating him from the inside. When Marian handed him the envelope, he stared at it as if it were a snake.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Keep it alive.”
“I can’t even keep myself alive.”
“That’s why I’m not giving you the original.”
He almost smiled, but not quite.
Marian told him Ray’s death was no longer being treated as an accident by the state. Bobby sat down on a broken crate and put his face in both hands.
“He was a thief,” Bobby said. “But he didn’t deserve that.”
“No.”
“He wanted to throw away the key.”
“He was scared.”
“So was I.”
Marian said nothing.
Bobby looked up.
“If I stayed with her, would she have lived?”
It was the question he had been bleeding around since Orchard Lane.
Marian could have given him comfort.
She did not.
“I don’t know.”
Bobby nodded as if he deserved that answer.
Then he said something that opened the case further.
“Ray knew the man from the tavern.”
Marian turned fully toward him.
“What man?”
“The one who gave us the tip. Ray said he didn’t know him, but he did.”
“How do you know?”
“He called him Deputy by accident.”
Marian went still.
“Deputy?”
“Not like a title. Like a nickname. Ray said, ‘Deputy said the house is empty,’ then he corrected himself.”
“Deputy who?”
Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Cedar Falls had four deputies under Danner.
Marian started with the youngest, Paul Briggs, the one who looked frightened at Orchard Lane. When she questioned him outside his mother’s house, he denied everything for eight minutes. Then she mentioned Ray Dugan’s death.
Briggs began to cry.
He had not killed anyone. That was the first thing he said. He had not touched Eleanor. He had not moved the body. He had only delivered the tip through a tavern informant because Sheriff Danner told him the Whitcomb house needed to look like a burglary.
“Why?” Marian asked.
Briggs wiped his face with both hands.
“He said Mrs. Whitcomb was stealing county money. He said we needed to catch her with hidden cash. He said burglars would make her open the cabinet.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know that now.”
“What happened when you got to the house?”
Briggs looked away.
“Sheriff was already there.”
“When?”
“Before midnight.”
Marian felt the whole case tilt.
“Was Eleanor alive?”
Briggs whispered, “I heard her inside the trunk.”
And that was when Marian understood Eleanor had not simply been moved.
She had been taken from her own house while still breathing.