Page 107 of Defend Me

The sheriff turns to the twelve men and women in the jury box. “John Briggs. I’m the sheriff of Magnolia Bay County.”

“And how long have you held that position?”

“Twenty-one years.”

“Sheriff, at what time did you arrive at Everton Estate on the morning of June twenty-second?”

“We received a 911 call from Russell Everton at six forty-two am,” the sheriff says. “I immediately set out for the estate and dispatched several other officers and an ambulance to the scene, as well as calling in all reinforcements. I arrived around six fifty-five am.”

“That’s quite a prompt response time.”

The sheriff puffs out his chest. “At the MBSD, every call gets responded to as quickly as possible.”

“And what happened next?”

“We discovered Marion Everton, in her pottery shed in the backyard. She was deceased. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to her chest.”

“Did you make any other assessments?”

“We secured the crime scene and immediately interviewed the Everton family members. We discovered that Caden Everton was not on the premises. I knew Noah Patterson was close friends with him, so I called Noah to see if he could locate Caden and bring him back to the house.”

“And how did Noah sound when you called him?”

The sheriff’s eyes flicker to me briefly. “He sounded upset.”

I grit my teeth so hard I think they might crack. I didnotsound upset. I was confused as to why the sheriff was calling me so early on a Sunday.

“Upset how?”

“A little out of breath,” the sheriff says. “Alert. A little panicky. I remember because I thought it strange. Everyone had been at the anniversary gala the night before, but Noah seemed like he had been awake for some time.”

“Like maybe he had just been performing some activity that would cause him to be out of breath?”

“Yes.”

“Like murdering Marion Everton?”

“Objection,” Von calls.

“Sustained,” the judge says. I guess there’s only so much partisanship Judge Warner is willing to show. Wilbur walks the sheriff through the rest of that morning, the basics of the investigation, eliminating the family members until Caden was the only one left, but even he had an alibi. Then he gets into the way the investigation fizzled out quickly.

“We had no leads,” the sheriff says. “Nothing definitive to go on, except that we suspected the perpetrator had used the secret entrance in the garden to access the backyard. Of course, this made us suspect that it was someone close to the family, with knowledge of the house.”

I glance at Von, who’s scribbling on her notepad. We are both well aware that the sheriff had been insisting it was some random drifter at the time. But no mention is being made of that now.

“Let’s skip ahead,” Wilbur says. “To the day you received yet another call from the Everton mansion.”

“Yes, over the summer, Noah Patterson called me to tell me that Caden Everton had found letters in a desk drawer of a study in the house.”

“Noah called you? Caden didn’t call you himself?”

The sheriff shakes his head. “He trusted Noah. He was deceived by him, like we all were.”

I have to resist the urge to look behind me and see how Caden feels about the sheriff’s categorization.

“Objection,” Von says. “Your honor, please instruct the witness to stick to the facts. As a law enforcement officer, I would think he’d know the rules of testimony.”

The judge hesitates. “Sustained.”

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