I grabbed Tony’s coat sleeve, making sure he didn’t tag along with the Lincoln County boys. The Sheriff’s body heat was almost tangible, and I wanted no part of a trek into the woods with him. 

Tony shook his head at me, but acquiesced.

“Gerulis,” the Sheriff said over his shoulder. 

Ollie stood still, rooted in stasis. 

De Lude didn’t seem to notice. “Get the forensics kit and start going through Spiesz’s vehicle. There’s got to be some fresh fingerprints. Maybe something the perp dropped. Go ahead and bag everything loose that you find.”

“Uh-huh.” Ollie shuffled to his vehicle with the mechanical motion of a video game avatar. 

My dumbfounded gaze followed him. The optimistic face of solidarity for Eureka law enforcement had been hamstrung by this undignified death.

Sheriff de Lude hesitated long enough to be certain Eureka’s only policeman followed his direction before he said, “Deputy Springstep and I are going to follow these tracks as far as we can. When Officer Grohl gets here from Libby, have him take impressions of this footprint.” 

Ollie nodded. “Got it, Sheriff,” he said in a flat staccato. 

That was good enough for de Lude. He bounced off with the new number two man, pursuing fairy footsteps.

As I watched de Lude traipse into the magical forest after a unicorn, a troubling notion cracked open. Renée remained in jail, and the Sheriff was the only one who could liberate her. My thigh muscles trembled for chase as his hat bobbed further into the woods. 

“Is this really happening?” I asked Tony, knowing he didn’t have an answer. “It’s a single track in the dirt for shit’s sake.”

Tony grabbed my arm. “Let him go. She’ll be okay one more night.”

“Dammit.” I clenched and unclenched my fingers, scanning the scene for leverage.

Doc Gibbons was busy proving Deputy Dead really was as lifeless as he appeared. It wouldn’t help to interrupt, and standing around only meant more opportunity to contaminate her crime scene.

“Let’s roll.”

Tony didn’t question me. We climbed into the Tacoma and I fired her up.

“The Sheriff can search the woods for a killer all he wants. It’s a waste of time and Renée is sitting alone in jail. I’ve got a better plan.”

Tony groaned.

It took twenty minutes to get to the Jenkins house. The last five were spent winding the serpentine maze of abandoned logging and farm equipment. That saber-toothed LeTourneau remained on guard at the yard’s inlet.

Windows down and eyes pealed, every shadow and misaligned twig implied detection. Forest creatures scurried to announce our arrival. Metal and wood creaked and groaned. We whispered evidence of potential threats.

“I don’t know, Connor.” Tony smoothed the handlebars of his mustache as we got out of the pickup. “Seems like a bad idea based on a bad idea. What are we supposed to find?”

“The man is long gone,” I said, arrhythmia questioning my words. The taste of adrenaline practically drooled out of the corner of my mouth as I thought about what we may discover inside. “We both know the Sheriff isn’t going to find him in the woods eating bark off a tree.” I said it despite trepidation tickling my solar plexus. All meant to fool my lawman friend into going along with this harebrained plan. “No no, compadre. The answers are in that house. The journal I found was something, but there’s got to be more.”

Tony wasn’t giving in so easy. He kept his eyes on the dangers lurking among those abandoned log and farming rigs, but spoke as if he was staring me right in the eyes. “Spiesz surely would have scoured this place for more evidence.”

“He was primary on the scene, without a doubt involved in trafficking with Jenkins. It’s doubtful he wanted a full on search. Unlikely he had time to return since then.” My head suddenly throbbed with the memory of this place. “And I got distracted by a conk on the head. Let’s find the rest of the story.”  

Tony kept at it. “We don’t actually know he’s taken off. Could be hiding among the bizarre collection of logger implements. Better just ask his wife. Isn’t that diner queen Mrs. Jenkins? Probably knows precisely where he’s holed up.”

Rusted metal of the abandoned equipment creaked and groaned in the tranquil breeze. A bird screech echoed from the trees. 

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “You’d make a good deputy. I think we should head over there and talk to her.” I paused to peer at a shadowy movement, my estimation concluding it was only an innocent rodent, before I finished the thought. “Right after we’re done collecting evidence from this house.” 

I knew my plan was backwards. A bit stupid, as well. But my brain was still running on anger from my last encounter with Sheriff de Lude. It needed physical engagement to assuage it, not verbal debates. 

I released my tight grip on the steering wheel and waggled my fingers independently to increase blood flow. 

“Damn, Connor,” Tony said. “It would go a long way to your legal argument for Renée if you didn’t insist on breaking the law to find a secret killer.”

I ignored his wisdom and let farcical zeal control my decision, bounding up the steps and through the door. Tiny electrical shocks zapped my feet as I entered without caution, poking my flashlight at the blank walls and into harsh corners. Profoundly foolish after the last encounter here. 

Shadows from worn furnishings deepened the ethos of desertion.

Tony followed me with his objections. “Getting arrested for a B-and-E will not make your case stronger, pardner. Let’s turn back around and get the Libby cops involved.”

Mustiness had grown stale in the day and a half since I’d last been inside. A flick of the wall switch blasted the living room with incandescence. The yellow kind that subdues the appearance of age. It certainly didn’t freshen the bouquet. I recalled an article on sense of smell being controlled more by expectation and environment than objective reality.

“Things get old before their time, my friend,” I said. “You know this better than I. We can’t waste a minute driving seventy miles to Libby in the middle of the night to wake one more cop who won’t believe us.”

Tony grunted in defeat. He took the study and I checked the bedroom.

The dust-covered ceiling fan held a single bulb. Its poor effort to illuminate the space kept secrets where none were hiding. Rumpled sheets on the queen sized bed gave the impression a man lived here alone. 

My skin tingled with invisible filth at the perverted ideas that lulled Hugh Jenkins to sleep. Did the misses become aware of these thoughts and decide to sleep elsewhere? And when did she realize this?

I reigned in my focus. Reasons why were less important right now than incriminating details. 

Pupils dilated, I could identify a stray sock half under the bed, a battered pair of overworked boots tossed in the corner, and rumpled shirts piled beneath a row of empty hangars. This was the habitat of a male with little genuine discipline. 

People hide things in places they learn on the movies. Unless they read. I got the impression from the absence of books that Hugh got his criminal education over the airwaves.

Aversion to the pointless exposure of touching unclean bed coverings or clothing caused me to search wooden furnishings first. Then on to rummaging drawers. I’d check between the mattresses and under pillows as a last resort. 

Most of the flat, smooth surfaces had become home to dissident literature of varying types. A brochure to an upcoming anarchist rally occupied the center of the pile. Several trinkets from past events, keychains and bottle openers, littered the gaps in between cheesy newsletters and inflammatory propaganda. 

Maybe Hugh could read if the material was trashy enough.

Attention on the bureau’s internals revealed a secret compartment beneath the contents of the middle drawer on the left. Most right-handers place their hiding spots on the left side. 

I log “secret compartment” with generosity. A wispy piece of degraded cardboard separated socks and underwear from a concealed recess. The cardboard felt thin and flimsy, barely strong enough to hold the weight of the clothing. My fingers pressed against its tenuous surface, wondering at the arrogance of someone who put so little energy into designing a hidden chamber. More than laziness, this conveyed a belief that no one dared search their belongings. 

The resulting tingle in my spine prompted a check of my surroundings. With no sign of Hugh Jenkins or any other menacing riffraff, I continued the disregard for Hugh’s privacy.

Underneath this false bottom, I found a stack of papers and photographs. A sifting of the photos revealed a picture of two young men, standing in front of a much smaller pile of the junk outside of this very house. 

The photograph was smooth and glossy, covered with a greasy layer of dust. Its edges, worn and frayed, showed evidence of being handled often over the years. Deputy Spiesz, long before he wore a tan shirt, with a bowler hat cocked back on his head, had a wide, genuine smile on his face. Hugh Jenkins, probably 16 or 17 at the time, smirked with a mischievous glint in his eye. 

The image intensified the musty odor in the room, like old books and forgotten memories. A faint scent of cologne wafted up from the t-shirts, hinting at a presence that was not long gone. 

“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath. Then I hollered for Tony.

He came jogging in and said, “I’ve got something!” waving a parchment above his head with jubilation. “You are not going to believe what I found in the other bedroom under the mattress.”

I stared at him, holding the picture out. “I might have you beat,” I said.

Tony dropped his hand to his side, prize momentarily forgotten. He moved in to peer at the photo in my hand.

“Look familiar?” I asked.

“Holy mother of pearl. Is that Deputy Spiesz and a teenage Hugh Jenkins? Damn. They’ve got to be no older than high school. Maybe you do win.” 

“We’re already thinking that Hugh Jenkins was involved in a child’s abduction with intent to traffic her. Makes sense that he had a partner in crime.”

Tony bobbed his head, brown eyes narrowed in concentration. “It’s hard to wrap my mind around Deputy Spiesz working with an antigovernment bozo like Jenkins.” He gripped his chin with a hand, as if  visualizing the duo chatting over a beer.

I shrugged. “We can’t rule out the possibility that Spiesz didn’t know about Hugh’s darker side. It wouldn’t be easy getting a child across the border. Not without help. Maybe he got caught up in the money, then Hugh turned it around and blackmailed him.”

“This shit pile just keeps getting deeper,” Tony said. “This means Spiesz had strong reasons to eliminate Jenkins, so surely Jenkins had reasons to kill Spiesz.”

“My head is spinning on this one, Tony. I expected a connection but this is out of the box.”

“Well, then what I have is going to turn it into a tornado.” Tony lifted the parchment.

I took the creased and slightly yellowed paper from Tony’s hand. The soft rustling sounded of secrets and hidden truths being revealed. Its ornate title read, “Certificate of Birth, Lincoln County.”  Typed letters didn’t match up evenly with the lines. Pen scratches for dates and signatures were scuffed. 

“Is this for real?” I asked.

“My guess is it was altered,” Tony said. “I’ve seen them before.” 

“Definitely looks to be a legitimate birth certificate. Only my knowledge of Kayla Peele’s family makes me disbelieve.” 

“We can have it checked, but I’m sure it’s a fake.”

Kayla’s name was at the top, but in the block labeled, Name of Mother, someone had typed, “Vicky Peale.”