Page 63 of A Future To Remember

“And see right here?” I said, pointing to the outline of a parking space next to the one where Cash Sr.’s patrol car was parked.

“What am I looking at?”

“Your dad had walked around the hood of his car to then step off the curb into the space between the two vehicles. The way he’s lying and the way his body is facing says that he wasn’t ambushed from behind. The first bullet caused him to jerk backward. The second lifted him off his feet, throwing him half onto the curb. The third was obviously execution style, when the killer stood over your dad. Whoever it was then took the time to locate the bullet that exited your dad’s skull, then got back into their vehicle and drove away.”

“No. That’s not possible. The killer didn’t drive away.”

“How could you know that?”

“Because there was a witness.”

“A witness to the murder?”

“Almost.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Doug Maydole was out walking his dog when he saw my dad’s patrol car pull up and park on the street. He waved, Dad waved back, then Doug turned the corner, walked maybe six hundred meters before he got to the end of the street, and that’s when he heard gunshots. He hustled back and saw my dad dead in the street. Norris questioned him repeatedly, and the old man swore he didn’t see or hear another car.”

My brow furrowed. I’d been so certain that Cash’s dad had gone around the hood of his own patrol car to greet another car that’d pulled up to park next to him. The crime-scene photo showed him lying near the passenger-side door of his patrol car. Why would he go around his hood if his intention was to do anything other than greet the driver of a car that’d pulled up next to him?

“You think it was someone on foot?”

Cash shrugged. “That’s the working theory.”

But I was unconvinced. “Can you show me a map of the street where the witness was?”

Cash pulled out his cell phone and tapped at the map app. Zeroing in on our location, he pointed to Wanda’s Diner, then moved his finger to the right, indicating an intersecting road across from the diner but farther down to the right. His finger then traveled the length of that street, which I could already see ended in a cul-de-sac. He double-tapped the screen at the cul-de-sac. “Doug got to about right here when he heard the shots.”

“Is Doug someone I can talk to?”

Cash grimaced and shook his head. “The poor guy had early-onset Parkinson’s. He was only in his fifties at the time. He took his life two months after my dad was murdered.”

Something shifted in my mind. I couldn’t readily explain it, except that I felt like Doug Maydole was the key to everything. Which is why I pressed the topic a bit with Cash. “I’m assuming he made an official statement before he died?”

Cash nodded and pointed to the binder. “It’s in there.”

I pulled the binder closer and flipped several pages in, finally landing on a witness statement form with a neatly typed out description of what Doug Maydole had seen and heard that night, and at the bottom of the second page, he’d scribbled his signature. Or something perhaps slightly resembling his signature. The scrawl was completely illegible; the letters were riddled with jagged bumps, like they’d been infected with a pox.

No doubt about it, a shaky hand had definitely scribbled a name on the signature line.

Still, there was something that felt like it didn’t add up to me, but I realized that Cash had only the information available to him that was in the binder, so I chose not to continue to push him on it.

“So, you believe your dad’s killer was on foot.”

He nodded. “I do.”

Again, I checked in with the visceral feelings swirling just below my belly button. My gut didn’t buy it. “Okay, walk me through it then. How did the killer know where your dad would stop and park his car?”

“Must’ve arranged a meeting,” Cash said, like he’d had it worked out for years.

“Cell phone records show any unusual numbers?”

“It was the year 2000, Maddy. My dad didn’t even own a cell phone.”

I smirked. “Fine, did landline records show any unusual numbers?”

Cash shook his head. “Norris ran down every incoming call to the sheriff’s office. Only six were for my dad in the days leading up to the time he got shot. Three were from my mom, one was from my granddad, and the other two were from a mechanic’s shop that used to be in business around here.”