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Sheila's heart rate picked up. The cross from Marcus's video. "Did he say anything else? About where he was from, what he did?"
"Not much. But..." Ray hesitated. "He mentioned something about his father being a miner. Said something about carrying on a legacy, but he was kind of cryptic about it." He looked from Sheila to Gabriel. "Does that help?"
"More than you know," Sheila said. She and Gabriel thanked Ray and walked away.
"Time to do some digging," Gabriel said. "We need to figure out who has motive for the killings, who lost someone in the mine. If we cross-reference that with the details Ray gave us, we might be able to nail this guy."
Sheila nodded and pulled out her phone.
"What are you doing?" her father asked.
"Digging," she said.
He chuckled. "No, no. If you want my help with this investigation, then we do this the old-fashioned way."
"What's that?"
"Paper and ink. Say all you want about the convenience of the internet, but there's nothing so reliable as a stack of dusty old documents."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The county records room smelled of dust and aging paper. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through high windows, illuminating dancing motes in the air as Sheila and Gabriel pored over mining accident reports from the 1960s.
"Here's another one," Gabriel said, his voice rough from the dust. "Cave-in at the Sterling shaft, 1963. Two fatalities." He squinted at the faded type. "Both men left families. The Mitchell boys—three of them. And Frank Watson's son."
Sheila added the names to their growing list. They'd found seventeen children who'd lost fathers to mining accidents between 1961 and 1965. Each one has a possible connection to their killer, who would be about the right age now to match Ray's description.
Sheila glanced at her father, who was hunched over another stack of reports. She thought about their conversation with Ray, which had only underscored how little she knew about her father. Sometimes, despite all the time they'd spent together over the years—not least of all in the kickboxing ring—he seemed like a stranger to her, a Cold War secret agent who lived two lives.
She didn't believe for a second that he could have been complicit in her mother's death. He had loved Mom too much for that. But when it came to money laundering… was it possible that the reason he hadn't pursued the case while working in I.A. was because he benefited from it? That he was getting paid to turn a blind eye?
She wanted to believe that Gabriel Stone, pillar of the Coldwater community, would never sully his conscience that way. But still, she wondered.
"Whatever it is," Gabriel said without looking up, "you might as well get it off your chest."
Sheila, caught by surprise, considered feigning ignorance but decided instead to be straight with him. Hopefully, he'd be straight with her in turn.
"When you came across that case in I.A.," she said, "were you really going to do anything about it? If Mom hadn't gotten involved… would you really have tried to put a stop to it?"
Gabriel's hands stilled on the papers. He looked up, and the pain in his eyes made her want to take back the question. But she couldn't. She needed to know.
"What are you suggesting?" he asked.
"I'm not suggesting anything."
Gabriel leaned back and tapped one finger on the desk, frowning. "I don't know how to win your trust back, Sheila. I really don't."
"Level with me. Why didn't you act on the information you had?"
"Because it wasn't enough. If you're going to expose a money laundering ring—one that's buried within a sheriff's department, no less—you've got to make sure you have all your facts right."
"And that's what you were doing? Getting your facts right?"
Gabriel nodded. "Carefully. Methodically. Whatever was going on, it wasn't limited to the department. The money trail implicated judges, prosecutors, prominent business people. I knew if I was going to expose it, I'd need an airtight case."
"But you never filed any reports. Never brought it to anyone's attention."
"Because I knew what would happen if I did." He pushed back from the table, running a hand through his silver hair. "Look what happened when your mother just asked questions about it. They killed her, Sheila. Killed her in our own home."