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Wendell sat.
Voss opened the folder. Inside were forms, statements, and several pages Wendell recognized in his own hand.
“The Thornquist matter is being closed as unresolved,” Voss said.
Wendell stared. “Closed?”
“Administratively.”
“That’s a word for burying.”
Voss’s eyes hardened. “Careful.”
“There are human teeth in evidence.”
“There are unidentified remains insufficient to support homicide charges.”
“There is a missing woman.”
“Yes. Missing. Not murdered.”
“And her husband’s boot.”
“Presumed related to prior disappearance.”
“Sheriff—”
Voss slapped the folder shut. “There is no suspect, no body, no actionable evidence, and no appetite in the county court for funding extended searches in impassable country because a widow wrote strange things in a diary.”
Wendell felt heat rise in his face. “You heard the knock.”
“I heard something in the rain.”
“You heard my mother’s voice.”
Voss looked at him for a long time.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “I heard my own.”
Wendell’s anger faltered.
The sheriff looked down at his hands. “She has been dead twenty-six years. She called me Aldie. No one has called me that since I was twelve.”
The room seemed to contract around them.
“Then why close it?” Wendell asked.
“Because I am responsible for living people.”
“So was Mabel.”
Voss flinched, barely.
For a moment, Wendell thought the older man might relent. Instead the sheriff took the folder, opened a drawer, and placed it inside.
“Listen to me,” Voss said. “There are cases a man solves, cases he fails to solve, and cases that solve him if he lets them. You are young enough to mistake obsession for duty. I am telling you to leave that mountain alone.”
Wendell stood. “What about the evidence?”
“Stored.”
“Where?”
“Properly.”
“Where?”
Voss’s expression closed. “Go home, Deputy.”
Wendell left Salem with a copy of Mabel’s final entry folded inside his boot.
That spring, he returned to Suther’s Draw.
He did not tell Voss. He did not tell Cornelius. He told himself he went because the snowmelt might uncover evidence, because a proper officer did not abandon a missing woman to weather and bureaucratic discomfort. That was true. It was not the whole truth.
He went because in March he found a tin button on his windowsill.
It was small, dull, old-fashioned. The kind that might have come from a man’s coat.
Wendell had stared at it until morning.
Now, in April, he climbed alone.