‘I have information,’ she says, ‘about a murder.’ As she speaks, he listens attentively. She sees his face grow more serious. Finally, when she’s told him all of it – the affair, the pregnancy, the look Patrick gave her, the insurance payout – she waits for his reaction. She’s told her story well. And she’s confident that her actions since – staying away from Patrick, giving their baby up for adoption, coming forward now – will assure him that she had nothing to do with it. That it’s only her conscience that’s making her do this now.
‘This is a serious allegation,’ the sheriff says pensively, sitting back in his chair. He studies her for a moment. ‘This case was before my time,’ he says finally. ‘Let me get the file.’ He steps out of the room and she can hear him talking to someone in the corridor. He comes back and sits down and soon after someone drops a file on his desk and leaves. He reviews the sparse-looking file silently, while she watches. She knows there’s not much to it.
‘It looks like there wasn’t much of an investigation,’ he says, echoing her thoughts. He looks up at her, considering. ‘Leave it with me,’ he says.
Once Erica Voss departs, Sheriff Bastedo looks at the file again. Notes the name of the coroner, George Yancik. Yancik has been the coroner in Grant County for almost twenty years. It seems that Yancik and the previous sheriff, Michael Bewdly, quickly agreed that this was simply a tragic accident. On the face of it, that’s certainly what it appeared to be. But Bastedo’s curiosity is aroused, and he’d found the woman who just left to be compelling. She spoke clearly and persuasively, and what she said had the ring of truth.
But is there anything to what she’s saying? It obviously looked like an accident at the time. On the other hand – if it was murder, he’d got away with it. The perfect murder. If you had to get rid of your wife and unborn child, it was an easy way to do it. Brilliant, really.
He picks up the phone and calls George Yancik. When he answers the phone, Bastedo asks, ‘Mind if I pay a visit?’
‘Sure, when?’
‘Now,’ Bastedo says. ‘I’ll be right over.’
He hangs up, grabs the file, goes outside and gets in his black-and-white truck with SHERIFF emblazoned across the door and drives the short distance to the coroner’s office. When he arrives, he’s met by Yancik, and they go to his office. ‘What’s this about?’ Yancik asks when they are seated.
Bastedo places the slim file on the other man’s desk. ‘This case. Nine and a half years ago. A woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning sitting in a running car on Dupont Street while the husband shovelled it out of a snowbank. She was eight months pregnant.’
Yancik’s eyes sharpen. ‘Yes, I remember. It was tragic.’
‘I have some questions.’
‘Okay,’ Yancik says, ‘but it was a very straightforward case.’
‘Tell me what you remember.’
The coroner settles back in his chair. ‘There was a big snowstorm. Record snowfall – everybody was digging out. The ploughs were running. If I remember correctly, they were going on a trip and the wife waited in the running car. She fell asleep. End of story. An autopsy confirmed she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Very open and shut.’
‘And the husband? No one seems to have investigated him very thoroughly.’
Yancik’s eyes sharpen and he leans forward. ‘Sheriff Bewdly questioned him, and we spoke afterwards. I found, based on what I had before me, that the death was accidental.’ He sits back again in his chair and asks, ‘Why?’
Bastedo tells him about the new information. As he talks, he sees Yancik’s brow cloud over.
‘We didn’t know about any of this at the time,’ the coroner says. ‘Why didn’t this woman say anything then?’
‘She says she was afraid of being implicated,’ Bastedo answers, ‘and that now she wants to do the right thing. In any event,’ he continues, ‘we know about it now. The question is, what do we do about it?’
Yancik sits back in his chair, thinking about the case. He feels uneasy. What the sheriff has just told him is disturbing. If what this woman said was true – if she was having an affair with the husband, if he told her that he wanted out of the marriage, if there was insurance money – they really should take another look. Just to be sure.
It will look bad to bring this up again, as if he hadn’t done his job the first time around. There’s been a lot of flak, recently, about the fact that coroners in Colorado are elected officials. Colorado is one of only sixteen US states that still elect coroners, the others having moved over to a system of qualified medical examiners. This will stir the pot, cause further scrutiny. It’s the coroner’s job to investigate deaths, to determine the cause of death and the manner of death – whether it be from natural causes, suicide, accident or homicide. People will complain that he wasn’t qualified for the job. The press will give him a hounding. He feels a bit indignant. He relied on the Sheriff’s Office to investigate properly. The autopsy itself was performed by a qualified forensic pathologist. He didn’t have any of this information at the time to help him in his determination.
There’s a new sheriff now, sitting right across from him, and he’s not afraid of past mistakes – he wasn’t there. He’s likely to want to fix them, to make his mark. Yancik needs to get out ahead of this.
He knows the sheriff can undertake his own investigation, but the coroner can also decide to call an inquest, even this many years after the death. He can call witnesses, listen to evidence.
‘Maybe I should call an inquest,’ Yancik says.
‘I think that’s a good idea,’ the sheriff agrees. ‘Hear what people have to say under oath.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ERICA HAS BOOKED a hotel room in downtown Denver for the night. After her visit to the sheriff in Creemore, she drives back to Denver and checks in. She’s tired after a long day of travelling coming off a night working, but she has one more thing she has to do before she flies back to New York in the morning.
It’s not sentimentality that sends her to Washington Park, one of the nicest residential areas of Denver. This is where families with money live. Erica parks her car directly across from a beautifully remodelled brick home. She knows this house, although she’s never been inside. When she gave up her baby for adoption, the Mannings lived in another house, not quite as impressive as this one, in a less prosperous neighbourhood. She’s kept tabs on them over the years; they moved into this house when Devin was a toddler.
They’ve obviously done well for themselves. Erica is happy about that.
She sits in her rental car and waits. She’d got a convertible for a reason; fortunately, it’s a nice day and she’s got the top down. It doesn’t look like anybody’s home – there’s no car in the driveway – but it’s nearly dinnertime, and she hopes to see someone soon.
After almost an hour, a shiny white SUV pulls into the driveway. She watches Cheryl Manning get out of the driver’s side while Devin jumps out of the passenger side and sprints to the front door. It’s not the boy who holds Erica’s interest; she barely gives him a passing glance. No, she stares at Cheryl, willing her to look over at her. She’s rewarded – Cheryl glances up towards the street as she closes the car door, and freezes. She stares at Erica sitting in the open convertible. She gets a good look, while Devin calls to her impatiently to hurry up.
Erica waves casually at Cheryl, starts the car and drives away.
Cheryl feels like she can’t breathe. There’s no doubt this time. That was Erica Voss, Devin’s birth mother. Sitting outside their house, wanting to be seen.
‘Mom,’ Devin calls again, sounding frustrated.
‘I’m coming,’ she says, so flustered that she’s dropped her keys into the depths of her large handbag and has to search for them again as she walks to the front door. She finally finds them and puts the key in the lock. Her hands are unsteady.
‘Are you all right?’ her son asks, looking at her curiously.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, smiling at him.
‘You look weird,’ he says.
She turns away from him and heads for the kitchen. ‘Shall we order a pizza tonight?’ she says with false cheerfulness. ‘Dad’ll be late.’
‘Sure.’ He heads up to his room, leaving her alone in the kitchen with her disturbing thoughts.
Cheryl lets herself collapse into one of the kitchen chairs. Her heart is beating furiously. So she wasn’t wrong. It probably was Erica that she’d seen at the park not that long ago, with a camera around her neck. Gary thought she’d imagined it, had soothed away her nerves.
Why? Why is she here, after all this time?
Her first thought is that Erica needs money. Soon she’ll be dropping by, like she did before, putting them in an uncomfortable position, giving them a choice. What will it be this time? And what will they do? Gary won’t like it, not one bit. But really, what can she do to them? She’s already given up all her legal rights to Devin.
Then her thoughts turn darker. What if it isn’t money she wants? What if she wants a bigger role in Devin’s life? They have an open adoption; Erica had terminated all parental rights, and then had said she wanted no contact after all. But what if she’s changed her mind about the contact part? She knows who they are and where they live. They haven’t even told him he’s adopted yet.