Beautiful Villain

Not anymore.

“Lots of kids would sneak into the woods and fire their dad’s hunting rifles,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t let them think that was what had happened.”

“So you let me go to jail instead.”

“Someone had to pay!” The sheriff looks up at Neil. “Someone had to!”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Then who was it?” The sheriff asks, and for the first time in the years I’ve known him, he looks like he genuinely wants to know.

“Sheriff, we went looking around where the mine carts were, and we found something strange.”

“What?”

I pull the earring out of my pocket and hand it to him. He holds it in his hands for a long minute and then looks up at me. I know from the recognition on his face that he knows perfectly well who this earring belongs to. He knows, and he never saw it coming.

Just like we didn’t.

“Fuck,” he says.

“We think she was hiding behind some trees,” Neil says carefully. “Waiting for the right moment.”

“Maybe she planned to kill Sammy and Neil. Maybe she wanted just Sammy to die. Either way, she took her shot.”

Neil has his hands resting on his knees. He looks innocent like this.

Harmless.

Gentle, almost.

“She might have been planning to shoot him before I arrived or maybe she wanted to get both of us. I don’t think she planned for you to be there, but she went for it, anyway.”

“She wanted Sammy out of the way,” the sheriff says, shaking his head. “I should have questioned her. I never even questioned her. Hell, I went to her damn wedding.”

Tears are in his eyes now, and I feel like complete shit for shattering this guy’s flimsy amount of closure. That’s what he thought he had. He thought he had closure after his kid’s death, but he never really did.

To my surprise, Neil looks up at the sheriff and speaks.

“There was no way for you to know,” he says. “Nobody could have predicted this.”

The sheriff shakes his head.

“I pushed so hard for it to be you.”

“You did, and I was convicted without anyone batting an eye. I get it. I was wandering around in the woods without an alibi. I hung out with Sammy

all of the time. The two of us did a lot together. It made sense that people would assume we had a lover’s quarrel or that I was jealous of him somehow.”

“We had it all wrong,” the sheriff says.

He doesn’t apologize, but I don’t really think Neil expects him to. If anything, Neil is probably just relieved that the sheriff hasn’t called for backup to try to have him arrested again.

“What do we do?” I ask. “I’m not an expert in investigating, but I have read a lot of detective novels in my line of work, and I don’t think an earring dropped at a murder site five years ago is enough to have someone arrested.”

“Maybe not,” the sheriff says. “But it’s enough to start asking questions again, and sometimes, asking questions is more than enough.”

He stares at the earring in his hand, and I wonder what’s going through his mind. He must have so much pain stirring around inside of him right now, and I wish I could stop it. I hate seeing anyone hurting.