Page 52 of A Future To Remember

“Like who might’ve pulled the trigger?” he asked softly, but there was an urgent note to it.

I inhaled and closed my eyes, knowing the poor guy needed something—any clue about the killer I could tweeze out to offer him.

As I focused, I didn’t see an image, but there was a sense of knowing something about the murderer from Cash’s dad’s point of view. I couldn’t explain how I knew it, but it was so certain a truth to me as to feel like a fact.

“I’m getting the feeling that your dad knew and, maybe, even trusted his killer,” I said. And then another emotion washed over me, and I noted that it was tinged with anger. “I think he felt this acute sense of betrayal—”

“Betrayal?”

I opened my eyes. “Yeah. Your dad felt betrayed by the killer, and it was more than just knowing in the moments before he died that he was about to be murdered…there was something else. The reason for the murder. Your dad knew why.”

Cash relaxed his grip on the coffee mug, tapping the sides while he thought through what I’d said. “Can you see who the murderer was, Maddy? I mean, can you describe him?”

I frowned. “No. I can only feel the emotion leading up to the moment your dad was killed.”

Cash blinked, then sat back and stared down into his coffee, like he could see the event itself within the black liquid. “I was fifteen,” he began. “My dad was the sheriff back then, and he loved being a lawman. He was a great dad. The best. We were really close.”

Poor Cash. His gaze was far away, but the present expression on his face was so sad. It was clear to me that he didn’t simply miss all the years he had spent with his father; he missed all the years he could’ve spent with him too.

The sheriff looked up at me again. “The whole town loved him. He kept the peace with a calm and steady hand. He was respected. He used to say, ‘You can’t wait for trouble to come find you. You gotta meet it in its infancy and turn it around.’”

“What’d he mean by that?”

“He meant that it was his responsibility to check on the townsfolk and make sure any gripes or grievances that might be stewing were nipped in the bud. He treated the county like a paper route, making it a thing to regularly drop in on folks, just to see how they were. And if they needed help of any kind, he’d do his best to get it to them. He was the glue in our community.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Cash. He sounds like he was a wonderful man. I bet you loved just hanging out with him.”

“I did, even though he worked long hours, which was hard not to complain about because I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted to with him, but I understood that he felt like being a lawman wasn’t just a job, it was a calling, and he treated it with the same reverence and loyalty as he did his own faith in God.”

“Impressive.”

“He was. And then some.”

“He’s the reason you became a sheriff, I’m assuming?”

To my surprise, Cash shook his head. “No. I wanted to be an engineer. Math always came easy to me, but when my dad died, I decided to follow in his footsteps because I wanted to solve his murder. It shook up my family, Maddy. My mom died young, and I swear it was from a broken heart.”

By then I’d eaten half of the burger and fries, and I pushed the plate to the side. I’d take it back to the washroom myself and hand the leftovers to Levi. It was our secret that we were sharing my allotted meals. It was the only way I could make sure he’d get enough to eat, plus, I didn’t need all of the three meals a day plus snacks that Wanda had allotted me.

“I’m assuming you worked the case and ran down every lead,” I said to the sheriff.

“Me and a few others. Lonnie Norris, the deputy who found Dad, became sheriff after him, and he and another deputy, Kevin McQuade, did a thorough job of investigating the case. They interviewed over two-hundred people, had the crime scene processed by experts from the state police, and combed over the timeline for months.”

“Any findings or theories?”

Cash shook his head. “The best anyone can speculate is that it was a random act of violence. Maybe Dad walked up on somebody about to do something illegal. That person panicked, had a weapon, and shot him. Who that person is, and what illegal act they might’ve been ready to commit, is a mystery that I’ve been trying to solve ever since I became a deputy—twenty years on my own. I’ll never give up looking for who took him from us. At this point, I don’t even care if they’re alive or dead. I just want to know who it was, and why.”

A thought came to my mind—not an intuitive one…okay, maybe not an overly intuitive one, but it occurred to me in that moment that I could give Cash the closure he so desperately sought. I didn’t know why I felt so certain about it, but the knowing of it was there, and there was also that same sense of familiarity—like I’d had some experience solving crimes.

It was the need to chase that familiarity that compelled me to want to help. If I could keep connecting to that familiar feeling that came with amateur sleuthing, then maybe the memory of a time and a place where I’d actually done something like that would bubble up from my amnesia-laden mind. “Can I see the file?” I asked Cash, after thinking it through.

“The murder file?”

I nodded.

Cash cocked his head, eyeing me curiously. “It’s not just a file, Maddy. It’s whole binder full of info and photos—some of those are disturbing.”

“I can take it.”