Beautiful Villain

Not here.

I gesture to my living room, and the sheriff reluctantly comes in.

“What’s this all about, Finley?” He says.

“Have a seat,” I say. “The kettle is warming.”

At first, I think he’s going to refuse, but finally, Sheriff Peterson sits down. He’s wearing jeans and a worn-out sweatshirt that hugs the curve of his belly. He’s been behind a desk for awhile now, and that doesn’t do anyone any favors. Still, he’s a handsome man despite the pain behind his eyes. He has sleek bone structure and I’m guessing that when he was a teenager, women were lined up around the block for him.

“Neil showed up at my house the other day,” I tell him. I leave out the part about Neil breaking in because even though I like Neil, that part of the story is honestly pretty weird.

“I can see that.”

“He was just released.”

Nail appears in the doorway, and the sheriff’s eyes dart to him and narrow, but Peterson doesn’t say anything else. Not yet.

“Neil didn’t kill Sammy,” I say, making my voice gentle. “I’m not saying that because I’m romantically interested in him or because I’m trying to save him. I’m saying that because it’s the truth. Neil owns the mill, and we went there today to look for any sort of insight into what happened that night.”

Now’s the hard part.

This is where I have to summon all of my inner-librarian training to ask the difficult questions.

“Sheriff Peterson, did you move the mine carts?”

The silence that falls in the room is deafening. His jaw drops just a little before he quickly closes it again, and he looks away.

Fuck.

Okay, so that’s not just a yes.

That’s a hell yes.

All of this time has passed, and no one else managed to figure that out.

“Tell me why,” I say.

“He shouldn’t have died,” the sheriff whispers.

“I completely agree.”

“We were all alone,” the sheriff says. “Just me and Sammy, and we were fighting, but that wasn’t anything new. Sammy was gay,” he looks up at us. “And he loved a young man. I didn’t approve. I’ve changed my way of thinking since then. I’d do anything to have my Sammy back. I wouldn’t try to change who he loved.”

The sheriff looks at his hands and in this moment, my entire heart feels like it’s cracking in half. The kettle starts to whistle and Neil kindly goes to shut it off. That’s probably for the best. The sheriff and I aren’t close, but I’m also not the person he thinks killed his kid.

“Sheriff, did you do it to get the case closed quickly?”

“Absolutely,” he says. “If anyone knew the carts were outside of the mine and that Sammy had been shot standing in the woods, it would have been a cold case faster ‘n you can blink. It was the only way to make them believe someone had done this on purpose.”

“Someone did do it on purpose,” Neil says, coming back into the room with the mugs of tea. He sets one down on the coffee table in front of the sheriff and one in front of me. He didn’t grab one for himself. Instead, he sits down in one of the chairs and looks at the sheriff. “It just wasn’t me. Someone did go after Sammy. I understand why you did it. He was your kid. You wanted justice. No one was going to believe Sammy was murdered standing outside of the mines. They’d say it was a stray bullet.”

“There were problems with kids shooting in the woods back then,” the sheriff says. He speaks as though it happened a million years ago, but the reality is that it was only five. It was only five years ago, but it seems like a complete lifetime ago.

Back then, we were all innocent.

Naïve.

Hell, we were all completely brave.