The Bones She Buried

Fifty-Nine

They photographed the list of names of the murdered so the District Attorney could use them to charge Sutton for murder. Josie took the sheets into the interrogation room where Sutton and his attorney waited. Chitwood, Mettner and Gretchen stood behind her while she placed him under arrest for the murder of fifteen people in 1974 and conspiracy to commit murder and arson for the more recent crimes that Ivan had committed at his behest. With each charge she read off, Josie felt like a small weight lifted from her shoulders even as Sutton’s attorney became more and more enraged. But as he reviewed the Affidavits of Probable Cause accompanying the arrest charges, his face grew pale and pinched.

“I’ll need a few minutes alone with my client,” said the attorney.

Sutton raised a hand in the air, as if to silence the attorney. A strange little smile played on his lips. His eyes found Josie. “Clever girl,” he said. “Did you unearth all of this yourself?”

“No,” Josie said. “My team did. Also, I’m a grown woman and a detective, and you’ll address me as such.”

She expected pushback but Sutton merely nodded. His attorney said, “Mr. Sutton, I cannot recommend that you say another word in front of these officers.”

“Quiet now, please,” Sutton told his lawyer. He looked again at Josie, the smile still in place. “Detective, I knew a girl once. She looked a lot like you.” He used his thumb and index finger to lift one of the lapels of his suit jacket. “May I?” He mimed reaching inside the lapel.

Josie nodded.

He took out his wallet and riffled through it, finally peeling an old, square color photograph from the back of one of its compartments. He turned it so they could see the face of a young woman. She did bear a bit of a resemblance to Josie with her dark hair and pale skin, rosy lips and bright blue eyes. “No one would mistake you for sisters,” Sutton said, pulling the photo back and staring at it. “It was more of a quality she had that you have as well… a sort of indomitable spirit. I know that sounds corny. She was quick as a whip, too. So smart. So clever.”

“What was her name?” Josie asked, going along with him even though she could sense the confusion among her colleagues and Sutton’s own lawyer.

“Ellie Grace,” Sutton said.

Sadness pricked at her. “The woman in the woods with the gunshot to the back of her head. She wasn’t an employee. What was she doing there?”

Sutton’s attorney piped up again. “Zachary, really. Please don’t say another word.”

But Sutton didn’t listen. “She was whoring around with the laborers,” he answered, his demeanor turning bitter and mean so quickly it nearly gave Josie whiplash. Now she saw what Ivan must have seen. Perhaps the only side of the man that Ivan had ever seen.

“I proposed to Ellie twice, you know,” Sutton said. “Twice she turned me down. I thought it was some kind of game that she was playing. Teasing me. Maybe waiting for a bigger ring. Making me work for her affection. But then I saw her in town with one of the workers and again on a Friday night at a bar with him. I started following her. She would go to the encampment in the evenings, disappear into one of the trailers. Then I saw her with another worker having a picnic by the river together. She was so brazen. It was disgusting.”

“Did you ask her whether she was dating any of your workers?”

As he spoke, his face flushed. “She said they were better men than me—all of them—and that she’d rather have… have relations with every single one of them than settle down with me for a lifetime. She would rather live in squalor, opening her legs for any worthless man who looked her way than become my wife and live a life of luxury.”

His eyes were vacant and glassy, staring right through Josie as if he were watching a movie on the wall behind her. “I hated her,” he said. “I tried to bring her to her senses, but she was so defiant. I was only going to teach her a lesson. That’s all I meant to do. I dragged her out of the trailer, and I—I hit her. One of those bastards came out and stopped me. I was so angry. I wanted them to pay for how they’d disrespected me.”

“Disrespected you?” Josie echoed.

“Those workers knew that Ellie was my girlfriend. They should have kept their grubby hands off her.”

“Was she your girlfriend?” Josie asked. “Hadn’t she turned down your proposal of marriage twice?”

His eyes snapped back into focus. He pointed at his own chest with his index finger. “She was mine, and they defiled her.”

“You started with the crane,” Josie said, wanting to keep his confession moving along.

“It was close. We hadn’t finished installing all of the trailers on that ridge. There was a lot of equipment around. It was positioned perfectly so all I’d have to do is move it around and lower it onto the trailer. Of course, then I had to worry about the rest of the camp and if anyone had seen anything. Ellie begged me to stop. The fear in her eyes—finally, she respected me—it was everything. I felt alive like I never had before. She got on her knees and begged me to stop. I told her that all of it was her fault. That she should have considered her words and actions more carefully.”

“Where did you get the rifle?” Josie asked softly.

Sutton’s attorney hung his head in his hands.

Sutton answered, “It was in the cab of my truck. I always kept it in there with extra ammunition in case I came across a coyote or a bear on the quarry property.”

“You let Bridges live. Did you know he had seen you?”

“Of course not. Not until after. My dad’s security man found him. He was the one who insisted we pay him off. He hadn’t actually seen any of the shots or the crane come down. He’d only seen me getting out of the crane and walking around with a rifle. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but back then whatever my father and his head of security decided was gospel. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the company and get rid of that bastard—hire my own security person who would do whatever I said. It was a shame my father’s head of security fell into the quarry one day. Went splat all over the stone at the bottom. Took weeks to get him off the rock so we could use it.”

Behind her, Josie could feel her colleagues shrinking back, but she kept her face and posture neutral. She’d been up against worse than this monster before. He was powerless now. Her officers would cuff him and put him in a holding cell, and he’d never breathe free air again. She only had a couple of questions left for him.

“Did you kill Colette Fraley?”

“No.”

“Did you order someone to kill Colette Fraley?”

“No.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

He met her eyes one last time. “No, my dear—Detective, I do not. But as I said, you’re a clever gir—woman. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”