Now, as she walked down the polished wooden hallway, the heels of her boots reverberating in the empty hall, she rehearsed her strategy. Although she was angry with Justin, it was important not to let emotion show. Like it or not, she needed him. She took a breath and shook herself, trying to focus, trying to be strong. With her knuckle she rapped on the glass pane stenciled with a golden star and the words SHERIFF’S OFFICE in black letters.
Justin opened the door, not all the way, just a few inches. He looked rumpled, tired. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
“Our office doesn’t officially open for twenty minutes.”
“Len opened the courthouse early and I followed him inside,” she said. “I told him I was meeting you. Were you here all night?”
“I had to be,” he answered. “It’s against the law to leave a prisoner unattended. I semi-slept in the chair.”
“Can I come in?”
Justin sighed. “You can’t see her, Cammie. She’s in a holding cell. No visitors.”
“That’s okay.” Cameryn wedged her foot between the door and the door frame. “I want to talk to you.”
He studied her a moment. The stubble on his chin had grown, his hair was tousled, and his lids were hooded from lack of sleep. Reluctant, he opened the door and allowed her inside. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I’m taking a day off.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he croaked. “You’re cutting school?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“You never cut school.”
"Right.” Cameryn felt a pang of guilt. In all her years of education, she’d never once skipped school. But there was a first time for everything. Her mother needed her.
“You’re already in trouble with the sheriff, Cammie. Guess you’re going all the way. Have a seat.” The room was so crowded with filing cabinets and plants and Sheriff Jacobs’s big wooden desk, there was room only for two folding chairs for visitors. To the left, beside a painted radiator, was Justin’s chair, half the size of Jacobs’s. Everything for Justin seemed miniaturized-stacks of papers towered on a surface barely wide enough for his computer. He grabbed one of the folding chairs and placed it across from his desk, pointing for Cameryn to sit.
His own chair squeaked as he leaned forward. “So what’s up?”
“You seem tense,” she began.
“Well, you called me just about every name in the book last night. Maybe my ‘tenseness’”-he made quotation marks with his fingers-“has something to do with that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. I was just upset.”
“Obviously.” Justin picked up a pen and hit the black plastic cap onto a clear spot on his desk, flipped it, then hit the pen again. “How did your pop and your grandma handle the news?”
“They said I should wait and see where your investigation leads before I panic. My dad’s really mad at me for withholding evidence. Really mad. But he said he understood why I did it. My mammaw went to church and said a rosary. She thinks I’m going to have a long stay in Purgatory if I don’t get my act together.”
Justin put down his pen and knit his fingers together. He leaned forward and spoke softly. “We’re holding her for seventy-two hours and she’s back on her meds, which is a very good thing. The district attorney will review the facts of the case. He’ll make the decision on whether to file charges or not.”
“Yeah, I know how it works.”
“I had to take her in, Cammie. I wish you’d understand.”
“I do,” she lied. Today she’d worn her hair in a ponytail and had on a blue Fort Lewis sweatshirt, along with her heavy winter parka. Unzipping her coat, she slipped it off and asked, choosing the words carefully, “But there are other leads, aren’t there? Like my theory about polygamy?”
He pulled back again. The wheels screeched against the tile. “What about it?”
“Are you going to research it or not?”
“There is nothing to research. The Childs family is from Arizona. Their hometown sheriff says they’re not polygamists and the entire family was there the day Esther was killed. The sheriff personally saw them.”
“But-but-” Cameryn stammered, “the ring…”
“Our vic could have picked it up anywhere.”
She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “We saw polygamists.”
“There are polygamists all over,” Justin said, his voice rising.
“Well, what about the name Gilbert, the name I found written in the backpack? I looked it up on the Internet, and there’s a Gilbert two doors down from the Loaf ‘N Jug, where that phone tip came from. Don’t you think that’s strange? That’s a lead.”
“Which I checked out yesterday. The woman’s name is Ruth Gilbert. She didn’t make the phone call and she didn’t know a thing about Esther. It’s a dead end.”
Cameryn tried to keep the panic from her voice. “But the backpack had the name Gilbert printed on it-”
“And Ruth said she gave a load to Goodwill. Esther could have picked it up there. It doesn’t prove anything. Cameryn, I know how hard this is for you, but you’ve got to let us handle it from here. We’re the law. You’re the slice-and-dice.”
Inside, there was a tremor, but like a magician perfecting the slight of hand she would not let him see it. “Can I take a look at the file?” she asked. “That one, right there.” A manila folder lay open on his desk and she could see it had her mother’s name on it. “I want to see it.”
“Cammie, this is police business.”
“Please. Justin, no one’ll know.”
Slowly, he turned the folder her way and pushed it toward her across his desk. She could feel him watch her as she scanned the pages, one after the other until she saw what she was looking for. Closing her eyes briefly, she committed the number to memory: 928- 555-6823.
“Hannah is my friend, too,” he told her as he pulled the folder back. Slowly, he closed it and set his hands on top, folded, as if in prayer. “I’ve called in Dr. Kearney and he’s going to do an evaluation. I got her to take her meds. She made me a list of books she’d like and I’m going to the library to pick them up. We’re doing the best we can.”
“But you still arrested her,” Cameryn stated, rising to her feet. Then, shrugging on her coat, she walked to the door, past the sheriff’s gun rack and his filing cabinet and his belt full of bullets curled on top. Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard Justin call out, “I could have lost my job.”
Cameryn turned to look at him, at his tousled hair and blue-green eyes and the way he was pleading with her to forgive him. “I get that, Justin. I really do. It’s just-it’s worse to lose a mother.”
She was barely inside her car before she fished out a pen and wrote the phone number onto her palm in ink. 928-555-6823. The sun struggled to break over the mountains as she sat, shivering, in the frosted light. The parking lot was already beginning to fill up with county workers. In an effort to be discreet, she had parked beneath a stand of bare aspens, hoping the sheriff wouldn’t recognize her car. Branches shifted in the winter breeze, creating an intricate, dancing pattern on the dashboard of her car. For a moment she watched the shadows, thinking.
There was no one to help her mother. Not the sheriff or Justin or her father or her mammaw-she, Cameryn, was the only one Hannah could count on. The wallet, the ring-it didn’t mean anything. Her mother stayed locked away, yet innocent, as only Cameryn believed. But belief was not enough. It was action she needed.
One tenuous thread remained for her to follow, a silver strand of chance that might connect the Gilbert family to Esther. Maybe. If God was with her.
With her BlackBerry freshly recharged, she crossed herself. First, she entered *67 in order to block her number in case the Childs home had caller ID. Then she punched in the digits, holding her breath, waiting.
“Hello?” a gruff man’s voice answered.