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“Thanks, Doc. Seeing her partner brutally murdered in jail might be enough to get the truth out of Chris’s wife.”

“Hope it happens that way for you, Travis.”

“I hope it does too.”

I shook Doctor Olson’s hand and Tammy and I went home to the ranch.

Wild Stallion Ranch.

Glad to be home, I settled at the kitchen table with a beer while Tammy made sandwiches for lunch. “What are we going to do with all the leftover food when we leave for Texas?”

“Anything that will spoil, we’ll leave for Billy. Don’t worry about it. We might have most of it eaten in another week.”

“We can get a lot done today if you have the rest of the day off, Travis.” She pulled the list off the fridge and we started working on it right after we finished eating.

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek.

When we went back to the station to give the prisoners their dinner, I had to tell Maryanne at the diner that we were down to seven prisoners. She wanted all the details—she didn’t get all the details—but I told her enough to make her shiver.

The diner was a big source of gossip, like the bank and the feed store. Telling Maryanne was like telling the entire population of Coyote Creek.

I delivered the food to the seven remaining guests and Suzie was hanging onto the bars of her cell waiting for me. She whispered, “I want to give my confession, Sheriff. I can’t stay in here any longer.”

“Don’t you want to talk to a lawyer first?”

“No. He’ll tell me not to say anything and make me to go trial, and I’m not doing that. I want to plead guilty and let the judge decide. I think that’s the best way to go.”

“Okay, it’s your call, Suzie. Let me get rid of this food and I’ll take you into the squad room and we can get it done.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“Do you want to eat your dinner first?”

“Okay, I might be able to eat now that I’ve made my decision. I feel a lot better about it.”

When I handed out the coffee to the others, I took Suzie out of her cell and escorted her to the squad room where I was ready with the recorder and her cup of coffee.

Tammy sat at Molly’s desk with the dogs beside her, both of them listening to me talking to Suzie. Tammy didn’t stray far from me and I didn’t mind if it made her feel safer.

I turned on the recorder and gave the date, and the case number, and whose statement it was. “All ready when you are, Suzie.”

“I’m a bit nervous.” She took a couple of deep breaths and then started.

Chris was always gone on a survival mission every weekend if his work at the office was caught up. Sometimes he didn’t come back on Monday and he’d be gone for days at a time. He never called to let me know how long he’d be gone. Part of the game was not using his phone.

Carter started coming to stay with me while Chris was gone and he liked my house better than his trailer and enjoyed my lifestyle more than his own. We’d never had any money growing up.

As Chris got more and more obsessed with his survival thing, Carter began telling me how it would be perfectly natural for Chris to die in the bush, and I’d inherit the money in the insurance policy that Chris had taken out for me.

At first, I rejected Carter’s idea because killing someone was something I could never do. But Chris became more and more crazy and he stopped talking about normal everyday things and all he ever talked to me about was his survival skills.

Sex and our married life just disappeared into Chris’s quest to be the greatest survivalist who ever lived. I started to hate what Chris had become and I wanted to just shut him up and not hear any more about how he could eat a dead squirrel and enjoy it.

Carter came over a couple of weeks ago and he needed another loan from me to pay his rent, and by that time I was a nervous wreck and I told him I was ready to do it.

We talked about the easiest way and I didn’t want Chris to be in any pain or have any suffering because of me, so Carter said poison was the way we had to go.

I agreed and I put arsenic in several of his ration packages and we just waited until the inevitable happened. Chris had started eating that stuff not only when he was in the forest, but at home and at the office too. He took it to work for snacks because he was so addicted to it.