Page 6 of Shadow of Justice
“Yearbook photos. But also all these candid shots of my aunt with her friends. It was this one in particular that just … got me. I felt hollowed out when I saw it.”
Hayden reached into her satchel and pulled out an 8x10 grainy picture reprinted from the internet. I recognized Ellie Luke at the center of it from the photo I’d found online after that ten-second search. Ellie was pretty. Thick, long dark hair and ice-blue eyes. She had a stunner of a smile with dimples in her cheeks. She looked fun. Young. Full of energy. She sat with a group of friends, a mixture of men and women.
“Why this picture?” Sam asked, leaning in close to see it.
“Because of him,” Hayden said, tapping the face of a skinny blond guy sitting next to Ellie.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Jamie Simmons,” Hayden answered.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Sam said.
“Then you’re having the same reaction I am,” Hayden said. “Confusion. See, I’ve talked to my dad and my mom so many times since I found out about Aunt Ellie. Mom would only talk about things that happened when they were growing up. Never about the murder itself. Which was understandable. And my dad would just kind of support her. Tell me how tough it had all been on Mom. He never ever told me that he knew Ellie. That they were friends. That’s how he met my mom in the first place.”
“Your Aunt Ellie introduced them?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “That’s what was so wrong about all of it. I found this stuff out from strangers online. My dad was a classmate of Aunt Ellie’s. They were in nursing school together. They hung out. They were close. I never knew that.”
“You think your dad killed Ellie Luke?” Sam asked.
“No,” she said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I know it.”
Gus looked like he was about to erupt. He grabbed the photo and put on his readers. “I don’t see him anywhere in this picture,” he muttered. I’m not even sure if he meant for the rest of us to hear it.
“See who?” Sam asked.
“Who the hell is your dad, Hayden?” Gus asked.
“Jamie Simmons,” she said, growing exasperated.
Gus took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“Walk me through it, honey,” Gus asked.
“He has a workshop in the basement,” Hayden said, her tone filled with distress. “I never go down there. He gets single-minded. He works on these models. Ships in bottles. I always know when he’s upset or angry. Because he’ll go down there for hours. But it just all kind of built up. Two weeks ago, I went down there. I wanted to talk to him about Ellie. I couldn’t find him at first. He wasn’t at the bench. Our house is older. There’s this room off to the side that used to be a coal bin in the 1930s or something. He was there. The door was cracked and I could see the light on. He was sitting on a stool and he had this box in his hands. I was going to knock. I tripped over a pair of shoes near the boiler. He heard me. He shoved the box under these blankets and he came out. He was enraged. Accusing me of spying on him. Just … completely flipped out. I’d never seen him like that.”
Hayden reached down and lifted her satchel onto the table. She rested her hands on top of it.
“My dad didn’t finish nursing school. Instead, he works at the hospital as a respiratory therapist. He’s been on midnights for the last month. Last week, I went down to the basement. My mom took this trip to Shipshewana with some friends. It was just me alone in the house. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. I don’t know what made me go back down there. But I knew. I just knew.”
She slid a large cardboard box out of her bag. It had a pink lid and flowers painted on the sides.
“I found this,” she said. “I didn’t want to believe it. But I think on some level, maybe I’ve always known.”
Hayden Simmons rose to her feet. She lifted the lid off the box. At once, Sam, Gus, and I leaned in, our foreheads practically touching each other’s.
Gus spoke first. “Son of a bitch!” The shock of it overcame him. He reached out. I grabbed his wrist.
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t. Just freeze. Don’t touch it. Hayden, for the love of God, please close that back up.”
3
“Do you see anything I missed?”
I read Gus’s search warrant for the third time, looking for anything that might cause problems down the road. But he’d written an airtight legal masterpiece. As usual.
“This is good,” I said. “I just got off the phone with Judge Saul’s clerk. She’s waiting for it. I expect she’ll sign it right away.”
