Page 41 of Colorado Christmas Carol
“Let’s get in the car,” he said gently.
When they were situated, he started to speak, but a sheriff’s car pulled off the highway onto the dirt road and stopped beside them at the dig site. Jeff Ralston, somber and quiet, got out of his car and came to Duke’s window, which was powered down.
“You were right,” Jeff said. “I’m going to write a letter to your former boss and tell him what a damned fool he is!”
“Former boss?” Mellie asked, her eyes lighting up.
“Right about what?” Essa asked.
Jeff produced a crumpled, stained note and a pin in a plastic envelope. “I’ll transfer this into a paper bag when my deputy gets back, but you can handle it this way without damaging the evidence.”
Duke took the bag and read the note. He ground his teeth together. “Dear God,” he whispered, and his eyes closed.
Essa and Mellie were very quiet, both consumed with unanswered questions.
Duke turned to Essa and handed her the bag. It contained a karate pin like the one Dean wore on his collar, and a note written hastily on the back of an envelope.
She read the scribbled note locked inside the bag.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” the note read. “She killed my little brother when I was in grammar school. My father said they’d take me away if I told, that it was an accident, my stepmother hit him accidentally. So I said nothing. She treated my father so badly. I hated to see it. He loved her. He wouldn’t leave her. But I came home for Thanksgiving, and I found him. His body was still warm. She laughed. She said she was finally free of him, she could go out and get a real man to marry. I just lost it. There was a bat close by. I picked it up and . . . I can’t live with what I’ve done! Essa and Mellie, they’re both so kind. I never had kindness. Not from anybody. My computer is in my room. It will explain everything. I spoke to my attorney last night and signed a document online. You’ll see why. Hug the girls for me. Tell them . . . I’m so sorry. So very sorry. I loved them both. I can’t live with what I’ve done. This is what’s best for everybody. Take good care of them.”
It was signed Dean.
Essa was frowning, oblivious to Mellie in the back seat asking to read the note.
She looked at Duke for an explanation.
He took a deep breath and glanced at Jeff Ralston for help. He was too choked up to speak, the first time he was so affected by a perpetrator.
Jeff looked at Essa. “Dean Sutter’s car went over the side of the mountain at a high rate of speed. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so he was thrown from the car before the gas tank exploded.” He swallowed. “They’re taking him to the morgue at the hospital pending autopsy.”
Essa felt the blood drain from her face. “He’s . . . dead?”
Jeff nodded.
Tears ran down her cheeks. They ran down Mellie’s, too. Essa reached over the console and gripped Mellie’s little hand tight in wordless sympathy.
“Why?” Essa choked on the word.
“I’ll tell you when we get back to the hotel,” Duke said.
* * *
It was a long story. They pieced it together from what was written on Dean’s computer, and there was a lot of information there.
His father had remarried when he was ten years old. His stepmother had been a martial arts expert. She worked at a convenience store part time. She hated her two stepsons. She hadn’t wanted children, and she would have insisted that Dean’s father give them back to his mother. But his mother had died.
There had been another child, a little boy, Dean’s brother. She’d killed him and threatened to tell the police that his father did it if he didn’t help her conceal the crime.
Dean’s extremely wealthy father was cowardly. He agreed and helped her bury the child. The story went out that he’d wandered off into the woods when his stepmother and father weren’t looking. There was suspicion of foul play, but nothing could be proven.
Dean’s father, a mousy little man, did whatever his wife told him to. When he wasn’t home, she tortured Dean in ways that he only insinuated on his computer. She made fun of him when he wanted to play sports in grammar school, ridiculed him day and night. His father was afraid of her because she did crazy things. The murder of his youngest son cowed him even more. He didn’t want to go to prison. She’d threatened to make sure he did if he ever talked. So Dean had no respite from her.
Despite all she did, Dean put up with her until he came home the day after he graduated from college. His father hadn’t been at the ceremony, but he’d promised he would be. When he got home, he found his father in a shallow grave next to the place she’d put Dean’s little brother the day she killed him. Dean loved his father.
They went back in the house, and she bragged about what she’d done, said she’d have a new life now, one with a real man. While she was talking, Dean’s eyes fell on the baseball bat he’d had from playing in Little League, before the evil woman snared his father. He walked toward it like a sleepwalker, picked it up and . . .
He didn’t bury his stepmother. He left her for the forensics people to go over, to hunt him. But nobody had contacted him, not since the day they’d found her, when the investigating officer asked where he’d been at the time of the crime. Why, in his dormitory, getting ready to come home.
