Snow Creek(30)

He smiles at the reference.

“There,” I point, “that’s the Torrance place. Pull in there.”

“You sure?”

I look at the plat map. “Yes. And by the looks of it, this driveway is about a mile long.”

“More like a road, than driveway,” he says.

“Apparently that’s the way they like it out here.”

The road, or whatever it is, is deeply rutted. No effort has been made to stabilize its surface. Sheriff expertly navigates the deep dips. He slows to cross a pool of mud and water.

“Shouldn’t have had my car washed yesterday,” he says.

I see a potato chip bag stuffed next to the console.

Shouldn’t be eating chips, I think.

“Well looky here,” he says as the barn and house come into view. “A real house.”

I’m surprised too. The sight of the Torrance farm is unexpected and makes me think of a bias that I have about Snow Creek. Yes, they are off the grid. Yes, they want to be by themselves. Dan, Maxine, the Wheatons, and now Regina and Amy Torrance… they carved out their own lives in the woods. They weren’t living in squalor—with the exception of Maxine’s herd of cats—like a bunch of tweakers or head and neck tatted white supremacists.

We get out and go to the door where we find a note referencing an RV trip and someone named Jared, who was watching the animals.

“No one on the county property rolls around here with that name,” I say.

“He must be from town,” Sheriff says, peering through the window on the door. “A caretaker, I guess. Someone has to be taking care of the animals around here.”

A hint of smoke from the barely burning embers of a firepit across the yard between the house and the goat barn fills my lungs.

“Must have just missed ’em,” I say. “I’ll leave a note for Jared to call me.”

I tuck my card with a message into the door jamb next to the note.

“No one’s in trouble,” I write. “Just trying to find out if anyone knows anything about the Wheatons. Please call me.”



Just as we hit the highway off Snow Creek Road, my phone pings. I feel an adrenalin surge even before I play the voice message from the crime lab on speaker.

It’s the call that I’ve been waiting for.

“Hey, Detective Carpenter,” lab tech supervisor, Marley Yang, says, “we got a match. It’s mother and son. This is no guess. Real thing. No doubts. Your victim is Ida Wheaton. Good luck with the case. Find the son of a bitch who killed her. There, I said it. Bye now.”

“Let’s go get a warrant,” Sheriff says.

My phone pings again. It’s from a number I don’t know. This time I put the phone to my ear and listen.

It’s Dan Miller.

“A… Detective, I saw you admiring some of my work. Would like to give you a carving. No charge. OK? Unless that’s against some county government policy. If it is, it’s a dumb one. Let me know. Okay? Bye. It’s Dan. Dan Anderson.”

“Everything okay?” Sheriff says. “You’re suddenly very quiet. That’s a trait I’d never ascribe to you, Megan.”

I look at him, then out the window. “Nothing. Landlord’s going to fix the broken window in the basement.”

It’s a lie. I suspect he knows it. He doesn’t pry. I like Dan Anderson. Though I don’t like relationships; I know most people would chide me for even thinking that’s his intention. Egotistical. Narcissistic. Whatever. If anything, I know people and the way they think. My mother taught me that. She might not have known it at the time, but she did.

This time Sheriff has his ear pressed to the phone. I watch him as he drives. I know he cares about me. He’s the closest thing I have to family. Or a friend. A relationship. A lifeline. Hayden is off in the desert and I wonder if he ever thinks about me.

“Warrant tomorrow,” he says looking over at me.

“We need to notify Joshua and Sarah and Ruth that Ida was murdered. I’ve tried Ruth’s husband’s phone multiple times and no one picks up. I want to be the one to notify.”

“Not my favorite thing to do,” he says. “But it does come with the job every now and then.”

I’m thankful that murder in Jefferson County is a rare occurrence. There has only been one since Sheriff Gray gave me the job I was meant to do. It was the wife of a tourist from Indiana. Her body had been found at low tide off the ferry dock. She’d been strangled. He’d been found in his hotel room, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

We pull into the parking lot and I tell him that tomorrow will be the first step in getting justice for Ida Wheaton.

“It won’t be easy telling those kids their mom is dead,” he says.

Understatement, I think.

“It’ll be even harder to tell them that we think the killer is their father,” I say.





Twenty-One





After trying every Jared in Jefferson County and reaching six of the seven, I call it a day and head for home without knowing who he is. The seventh is on a cruise, so I think he’s likely another no. Who would leave a note for someone who was gone for four weeks? It has to be a Jared from outside the county.

Persistence sometimes feels like disappointment.