Карин Слотер: Cleaning the Gold

That was when Will's boss had dropped the file on his desk.

Will was not a fan of killers, but cop killers belonged in the Devil's favorite part of hell. He had spent every waking hour since the file had landed on his desk tracking back through the original case, even driving up to the GBI's secure warehouse in Dry Branch to search in deep storage for the only pieces of physical evidence that remained in the case, fragments from the two slugs taken out of Phillip Deacon's brain and a sealed plastic bag containing the Margrave library's copy of A Guide to Birds of the Southeastern United States .

There was no gun to match the fragments to.

The only identifiable fingerprints found on the book belonged to the librarian who, the morning of the shooting, had taken it brand-spanking-new out of the shipping box and placed it on the shelf.

The general public always thought of cold cases as impossible to solve. They weren't completely wrong, but oftentimes, Will found that the passage of time gave witnesses more perspective. Mostly, it came down to the simple fact that they weren't scared anymore. The bullies and thugs who'd intimidated them had either died young or ended up in prison. Marriages dissolved. Love ran out. Reputations were damaged or rebuilt. In short, a long stretch of time could lend more focus to past events.

Will had driven to the Florida panhandle and talked to the now-retired librarian who'd made the 9-1-1 call. He had tracked down the widow of the eyewitness to the shooting. He had talked to some of Deacon's fellow deputies and various patrons of the library. He had sat in countless living rooms sipping countless glasses of iced tea and listened to countless old ladies doling out the tiny pieces of information that would eventually help Will put together the puzzle.

First piece: One month after the attempted murder of Deputy Deacon outside of the library, a second stranger had shown up in Margrave.

Second piece: Stranger 2 was reportedly a white male. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Mid-thirties. Around six-foot-five and two hundred fifty pounds. Built like a linebacker, some said.

Third piece: Stranger 2 was immediately arrested for murder—not the library attempted-murder, but murder in the first of an unidentified male—by the Margrave sheriff, who also provided the only eyewitness testimony to the alleged murder. The alleged was thrown in there because Will could find no report or file that contained any mention of a murder during that time period.

Fourth piece: There was a prison transport record showing Stranger 2 en route to the Warburton penitentiary, but there was no record of him remaining there longer than two days.

Fifth piece: Instead of the sheriff calling in the Marshals Service and conducting a full-on manhunt for the presumed fugitive, the alleged murder charge was dropped, and Stranger 2 was allowed to disappear.

Until now.

“Last stop, ladies' lingerie.” Baldani angled the car across two spaces like he was parking a Lamborghini instead of a government-issued Chevy.

Will heard the click of a cigarette lighter as he got out of the car. He looked up at the imposing building. He saw guard towers, security cameras, slitted windows with rifles poking out, vast light arrays that could probably be seen from the surface of the moon.

The place was guarded like Fort Knox.

Baldani walked toward a side door, smoke trailing behind him. Will tried to keep downwind, wondering which would get Baldani first—lung cancer or skin cancer.

Not his problem.

Will ran his hand along the cool granite side of the building. He focused his mind on the heart of the case. Phillip Michael Deacon had never held his first grandchild. He had never watched his son play ball. He had never kissed his wife again or driven his car to the store or taken out the trash or scratched his own ass when it was itching because he'd rolled up on a loitering call and lost every meaningful part of his life.

Here was what Will knew about the Margrave sheriff: he was a corrupt son of a bitch.

And also very dead.

The sheriff's widow hadn't kept any of his files. His kids couldn't bear to say their father's name. The sheriff's initial eyewitness report to the alleged first-degree murder no longer existed. None of his former deputies would give up their boss, even as the man rotted in the ground. There had been no computers in the sheriff's office back in 1997. The only reason Will had any details on Stranger 1 was because the GBI had been called in immediately after the shooting. By order of the state legislature, the agency was in charge of investigating all officer-involved shootings.

The scant information Will had on Stranger 2 had been knotted together with strings of gossip that had eventually led him to a dusty old filing cabinet in the basement of Warburton penitentiary. The triplicate prisoner transport request on Stranger 2 had provided the requisite bullet points: The inmate's name, birthdate, physical details and mug shot. The charges filed. The sheriff's signature on the summary report that listed himself as an eyewitness.

It was some kind of crazy bad luck that Stranger 2 had arrived in Margrave, and within an hour managed to allegedly murder a guy in cold blood in front of only one witness, who happened to be a seasoned county sheriff.

Puzzle piece number six was a corner piece: During the period of time between Phillip Michael Deacon getting shot and Stranger 2's arrest, Will had found no proof of any murders in the tri-county area. No newspaper reports. No local gossip. No funeral home records. No death certificate registered with Georgia's Division of Public Health and Vital Records.

The only thing that made sense to Will was that the crooked sheriff had framed Stranger 2 for a murder that did not happen.

Which— why?

The most likely answer to this question helped Will see the picture that the individual pieces had started to form: Stranger 1 had to be Stranger 2, because

Seven: The two strangers' physical descriptions were identical.

Eight: Both strangers had coincidentally shown up in a Podunk town that never saw strangers.

Nine, another corner: Will had emailed the now-retired librarian in Florida a scan of the mug shot from Stranger 2's prison transport file. She had written back immediately, stating with absolute certainty that Stranger 2 was Stranger 1, the man she had reported for loitering back in 1997. The man that an eyewitness had identified as the man who had shot Phillip Michael Deacon twice in the head.

Ergo, Will had his man.

“Thissaway, Wolfe.” Baldani took one last hit on his cigarette before he opened the door.

The air inside the building was at least ten degrees cooler. Will followed Baldani down a steep flight of stairs. They hit the landing at a locked steel door, then walked up another flight of stairs. Then down again. Will was thinking this was another one of Baldani's pranks, but then they entered a large hall with polished white marble gleaming from every surface.

All of the sweat on Will's body turned to ice.

The room felt like money. Not tech money or hedge fund money, but real-deal J. D. Rockefeller “Puttin' on the Ritz” money. The ceiling was decorated in gold leaf. The mahogany benches had intricate designs hand-carved into the backs. Museum-level artwork hung on the walls. Will walked up to one of the glass display cases.

“Some kind of old book,” Baldani provided.

“Gutenberg Bible.” Will had never been to church, but he felt like he should whisper the words.

“Yeah,” Baldani said. “They kept a copy of the Magna Carta here during WWII. The original US Constitution. The Declaration of Independence. I heard they even stockpiled morphine during the Cold War.”