Killer Amnesia: Faith In The Face 0f Crime

by Sherri Shackelford

  Liam’s world transformed, and he struggled to bring it back into focus. He’d never had the luxury of being authentic. Every home he’d lived in as a child had been a never-ending audition to stay another day. Any slip he made he risked getting bumped to another home.

  Revealing his injury to Emma had been the closest he’d ever come to admitting weakness.

  It had never once occurred to him that someone might love him in spite of his weakness, yet examples abounded all around him. He’d been taught love and forgiveness in the Bible, the one constant he’d had in his life.

  He’d practiced forgiveness with everyone but himself.

  Jordan stood and slapped him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow we talk to this deputy. Tonight, we rest. If I don’t get some shut-eye, I’m not going to be any use to anyone.”

  Liam spent the next half hour in contemplative silence. He’d lived his whole life by a rigid set of rules.

  What if those rules no longer served him?

  * * *

  “Why did you want Liam to look into Missy’s case?” Emma asked Deputy Bishop with a reassuring smile. “Have you discovered new evidence?”

  They’d talked Bishop into meeting at the sheriff’s station during the lunch hour, when the place would be empty. Jordan and Liam had come at the poor man like battering rams, and he’d immediately clammed up. Sometimes a softer approach was needed.

  The station occupied the second floor of a brick building on Main Street, with a bank of windows facing the town square. The sheriff had his own office decorated with stuffed deer heads and pelts scattered over the wood floors, while Liam and Bishop had facing desks outside the lockup. The two opposite walls were exposed brick, while the outside walls had been insulated and covered in light paneling. The effect was rustic and charming.

  Bishop scratched his ear. “I always get assigned the cases no one wants. The low priority stuff. Except some things shouldn’t be low priority, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure that I do.”

  “I’ve been working here more than twenty years, and between the two neighboring counties, at least a dozen women have gone missing in that time.”

  “Wait a second.” Emma gaped. “A dozen women? How can that be? Someone would raise an alarm if that many women disappeared.”

  “Not these women.” Bishop lifted his shoulder in a careless shrug. “They’re undocumented. When someone like that goes missing, no one looks real hard. Everyone figures they went back across the border or something.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Nope. I’ve been following up on these cases for years,” Bishop said, his fist bouncing against his knee. “Around here, we open a case, we ask a few questions, we let some time pass, then we close it out. I think there’s more to it. Take that girl they found next town over. Everyone said she overdosed, but she had ligature marks on her wrists. Doesn’t sound like drugs to me unless it’s a cartel killing, and those bodies don’t get found.”

  “Why are you bringing this up now?” Emma asked. “After all this time?”

  The deputy glanced at Liam. “Because you’re good at what you do. I used to be. I’m not anymore. I wanted to see if maybe you could look into it. Because only young, pretty girls without documentation seem to go missing. That can’t be a coincidence. I brought it up to the sheriff when you said we might have a serial killer living around here. What if someone has been targeting these girls because he knows we aren’t looking for them?”

  Liam leaned against a desk, his ankles crossed. “What did the sheriff say?”

  “He told me to keep digging.”

  “You mentioned the Missy Johnson case.” Liam straightened and set his jaw. “Why?”

  “Couple years back, a rancher found some bones on his property,” Bishop said. “The crime lab identified the remains as a woman. Spanish descent. We get a tip that one of the cartel leaders, Reynosa, ordered the hit. Case closed. Except something always bothered me.”

  “What was that?” Emma prodded.

  “The blue twine,” he said. “The remains of the woman that was found on the ranch had traces of blue twine. Missy’s hands were tied with blue twine. That detail stuck with me.”

  Liam and Emma exchanged a look.

  “Did Artie ever ask you about Missy’s case?” she asked.

  “Nah. No one ever asks me about police work.”

  Emma kept her expression carefully neutral.

  “You were around for Missy’s case,” Liam said. “What did you think? Did they get the right guy?”

  “I thought so at the time. Now I’m not so sure. The guy who confessed got a lot of the details wrong. I brought it up at the time, but Sheriff Phillips was sure we had the right guy.” Bishop slid his palms over his thinning hair. “Sheriff Phillips was on duty that night, but he stopped at a party over at the Eagle’s Club. People were more openminded about a fellow having a drink on the job back then. But after they found Missy, he didn’t want anybody to know he’d been out boozing. He didn’t want the papers back East painting him like some sort of drunk yokel.”

  Liam jotted down a note. “That was Ruth Garner’s sixtieth birthday party, right?”

  Bishop flicked his chin. “Let me see now. That sounds right. Yep. The sheriff’s brother organized the party. Must have burned the sheriff when he did that. Those two were always fighting to see who was going to be their ma’s favorite. They almost came to blows that night. Phillips had to drag them off each other.”

  Emma patted his slender knee. “You’ve been very helpful. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.”

  “Things are going to be different from now on. I want you to know that. These past two years, all I’ve been doing is speed traps and delivering warrants. I got bored, I guess. My mama always said that boredom kills more men than all the plagues and famines combined. A bored man finds trouble, she said. I guess I found me some trouble. I’m changing, though.”

  Emma looked at the deputy, really looked at him. He was thin to the point of emaciated, and his skin was sallow. Understanding finally dawned on her. Bishop was fighting an addiction. The deputy had been hiding his affliction well, but the physical strain was starting to show.

  “Does the sheriff know?” she asked quietly.

  Bishop grunted. “’Course the sheriff knows. He knows everything around here. He’s helping me, though. Got me on the waiting list for a rehab center in Austin.’

  Her heart went out to him. “Things might get harder before they get easier. If you need any help, you let me know. I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

  “You do that. Prayers.” His bark of laughter turned into a coughing fit. “I’m gonna need ’em.”

  * * *

  Liam paced the distance between the holding cell and his desk. “All right. Let’s think this through. Emma comes to town and stirs up interest in a cold case. Then Artie goes digging around and finds something. What if Bishop is right? What if it’s all connected to the missing women in the area?”

  Jordan braced one hand on the corner of Liam’s polished oak desk. “Yeah, but if Emma knew the killer’s identity, why did he let her live?”

  “Because she didn’t know his identity.”

  Emma threw up her hands. “I don’t understand.”

  “You only had to rattle the guy,” Liam said. “If he’d gotten away with murder for this long, he probably wasn’t worried at first. I think whatever Artie found pushed him over the edge.”

  Jordan nodded. “Which meant Artie had to be silenced. But since Emma had amnesia, he could continue to toy with her. This guy is sick.”

  “I’ve felt that since the beginning,” Emma cried. “That this was a game to him.”

  “Wait a second.” Jordan reached for a pencil. “The two obvious suspects are the brothers of the sheriff and the town deputy. That’s a
tangled mess.”

  “Don’t forget the sheriff himself,” Emma added. “Bishop said he was in town for the party. What if he’s hiding evidence to protect his brother?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jordan said. “Bishop claims they hate each other.”

  Something had been nagging Liam all week. A puzzle piece that was out of place. He took a seat before his computer and clicked through a few screens.

  “Do you remember that first day at the hospital?” he asked Emma. “The sheriff said he’d given you a speeding ticket. Only the sheriff never runs speed traps.”

  He clicked through a few more screens and pushed back from his desk. “Nothing. He never gave you a speeding ticket.”

  “Why would he lie about that?” Jordan asked.

  Emma leaned over him and grasped his shoulder. Her hair fell like a curtain, brushing against his cheek.

  “If Artie was digitizing the articles,” she said, “then there must a website someplace.”

  Liam clicked through a few more screens. “Got it. The Redbird Gazette. It’s digitized through January 2015.”

  “That should be enough,” Emma said, tapping her chin. “Run a search for Sheriff Garner.”

  A growing suspicion curdling his stomach, Liam typed in his first and last name. “There are over twenty hits.”

  Emma pointed at the screen. “Start here.” He clicked on the link, and she read the headline out loud. “‘Former Redbird resident loses wife in tragic boating accident.’”

  “We thought he’d only been married twice but look at this. There’s another death in his history.” Liam toggled to another window. “It’s an obituary from the Fort Worth newspaper. “‘Former Redbird resident widowed after tragic accident.’ That makes three wives. One disappeared, and two had tragic accidents.”

  His blood grew sluggish in his veins.

  Emma shook her head. “That’s a lot of tragic accidents for one guy. Blanche said his first wife ran off. What if she didn’t?”

  Liam didn’t want to believe the sheriff was guilty because that made him a gullible idiot.

  Emma had pulled out her phone and stared at the screen. “Sheriff Phillips died in a car accident. Garner became sheriff after a special election. That’s a lot of dead bodies surrounding Garner’s rise to power in the county.”

  Liam’s head was spinning, and his vision collapsed inward. Everything fell into place. The sheriff had been playing them all along. He’d been working undercover right beneath their noses, using all the tricks of law enforcement at his disposal.

  “Jordan,” Liam said, catching the other man’s attention, “check and see if Juan Reynosa is listed in the Department of Defense database.”

  All the evidence from the sheriff was suspect now.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the three of them gathered articles from the Redbird Gazette. Sheriff Garner was a pillar of the community. He’d also benefited from a number of untimely deaths. On a hunch, Liam started searching for missing women in the neighboring towns. There were several requests for “welfare checks” over the years, many of them for women with Spanish names.

  His heart pounded painfully against his chest. He’d taken a vow to protect and defend the people of his community. The sheriff had taken the same vow. This whole time he’d been dropping false clues, leading them in circles while he watched them chase their tails. He’d questioned Liam’s relationship with Emma to throw him off balance. He’d degraded Bishop, calling him “Hopalong” to discredit the deputy.

  Jordan disconnected his phone call with a shake of his head. “Juan Reynosa isn’t in the system.”

  “Then Garner lied about the DNA.”

  “That’s not all,” Jordan said, his face grim. “There was a DNA hit on the bullets left at the hospital. Remember when I decided to run a second check on all the evidence in the case? There was a DNA match, all right.”

  Liam swiveled around. “Don’t keep us in suspense. Who is it?”

  “You.”

  THIRTEEN

  The room descended into hushed silence.

  Liam’s breathing instantly became a painful experience. “Me?”

  “Yep.”

  He forced his pulse to slow. He hadn’t done anything. The evidence was planted. They were building a case against the sheriff.

  Emma’s hand touched his shoulder. She lingered there, then slid her fingers to the nape of his neck and gave a gentle squeeze. “Everyone here knows the truth.”

  The shock waves flowing through him eased at her words. He stretched his arm across his body and gently gripped her wrist. He understood now how she must have felt when her memories came rushing back. Sorting through the roller coaster of revelations was exhausting.

  Once more frustration rode him. All the clues had been laid out neatly before them. All they’d had to do was look.

  Jordan splayed his arms. “We have to proceed with caution. We don’t have proof of anything yet. Let’s all remember that.”

  “He’s right.” Emma’s hand slipped from Liam’s shoulder. “All of this is just coincidences and conjecture. The sheriff has a stellar reputation in this community. If we go around telling everyone he’s a killer, there’s going to be a backlash. He’s smart. He’s gotten away with murder for this long already. We have to build a rock-solid case before we go forward. How on earth are we going to manage that?”

  Liam nodded his agreement. “We have to find proof.”

  “He’s been one step ahead of us all along,” Emma added. “We have to be careful.”

  He appreciated her concern. The task was destined to be overwhelming. “We start with Missy Johnson. That case had the highest profile, which means it had the most evidence. Let’s run everything again.”

  Jordan grunted. “I doubt Garner has any DNA in the database. He’s too smart for that.”

  “What about those online DNA kits?” Emma said, rapidly pinching her fingers together as she formed her thoughts. “You know the ones. You swab your cheek and the next thing you know, you have a brother in Poughkeepsie and your parents aren’t talking. If someone in his family tree ran a search, we can trace the DNA from there.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Liam said. “It’d have to be a close match. A cousin. Maybe his brother is in the system.”

  Emma hung her head. “I doubt he’s alive. They didn’t like each other. How long before Garner decided his brother needed to meet a tragic end? With his closest relative gone, Garner inherited the property. There’d be no family squabbles over the teacups or the silver. He’s murdered to clear his path for years. His wives die when he meets someone new. The previous sheriff dies when he needs a job. His brother is conveniently absent when the family property is being divvied up. He’s been doing this for a long time.”

  She had a valid point. Garner had friends. Who knew what evidence he’d tampered with, even before he had official access as sheriff. He knew the town and he knew the systems.

  “Agreed,” Liam said.

  Without evidence, they were dead in the water. In order to catch Garner, they needed something airtight. The guy had survived this long without getting caught; he wasn’t an idiot.

  “Wait a second.” Emma paled. “Where is Sheriff Garner now?”

  “I’ll find out,” Liam said.

  That’s just what they needed—the sheriff interrupting their evidence discovery session when he was their prime suspect.

  Since everyone was at lunch, Liam called Rose on his phone rather than broadcasting his interest over the police radio and risk tipping off Garner.

  “Have you seen the sheriff today?” he asked.

  “It’s his day off,” Rose said. “He had a truckload of mulch delivered to his ranch yesterday, so I’m guessing he’ll be busy all day.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was a part of Liam
that wanted to believe everything was simply a coincidence. The sheriff had taken him in and treated him like a son. The other part of him knew his suspicions were true. The sheriff had been dumping the throwaway cases on Bishop for years, all the while knowing they’d languish unsolved. He’d lied about the DNA evidence. He’d balked at relying on outside agencies.

  Not to mention all the convenient deaths surrounding the man. One missing wife was unfortunate. A missing wife and two “tragic” accidents was a sociopath at work.

  On a hunch, Liam searched the database for missing persons in Fort Worth during the time the sheriff worked there, except the list was too long. He had no doubt, though, that a fine-tuned search would turn up additional victims.

  The realization sickened him.

  He’d placed Emma in the sheriff’s care. He’d endangered her because he was too blind to see the truth.

  In hindsight, the evidence was shockingly clear. The sheriff had been playing all of them, a skill he’d perfected over the past twenty—maybe even thirty—years.

  “Take Emma back to Blanche’s,” Jordan said. “I’m going to make a few calls and get us some help out here. We can’t trust anyone local. For all we know, someone’s been helping him cover his crimes all these years.”

  “No.” Liam shook his head. “Not Blanche’s. He knows she’s been staying there.”

  Jordan gathered his keys. “If this guy is off duty, then stay here. It’s the last place he’ll look.”

  His head reeling, Liam turned to Emma. “I’ve suspected Bishop all along. Garner wanted me to.”

  “The best camouflage is misdirection.”

  Jordan paused at the head of the stairs. “Give me three hours and I can have a team here. We’ll tell the sheriff they’re here about Emma’s case, and we need his input. While he’s here, we’ll search Garner’s ranch. My guess, we’re going to find those missing girls buried on the property. He wouldn’t risk burying the bodies off-site if one of them had already been discovered.”