Trial By Fury

Epilogue

The next few weeks were a blur. I camped out in Kirkland with the kids and Mrs. Edwards until school got out.

I took a leave of absence so I could look after the kids and run back and forth to the hospital. The girls kept wanting to go see their dad, but he was far too sick for visitors. Peters' health remained precarious, and the doctors told us it would be months before he was entirely out of the woods.

Before Ames returned to Phoenix, we spent hours trying to second-guess what the long-term implications were, but other than sorting out the custody arrangement, we decided to hide and watch and not make any other plans until we had some clear direction from the doctors. Mostly, they weren't very informative, but they did hint that the fact that Peters had been unconscious at the time of the wreck was probably the only thing that kept him from being killed. The doctors vacillated between saying he'd never be able to live on his own again and voicing cautious hope that he might recover.

There were occasional times when Peters was fairly lucid. During one of those periods, I asked him if he remembered anything about his time with Candace Wynn. He said no. The doctors tell me that it's not unusual for a person who has suffered a traumatic injury to totally forget the events surrounding the injury.

Considering what I discovered, his amnesia was probably a good thing. Joanna let me read Candace Wynn's letters. In the last one, one written the Thursday before Darwin Ridley died, she raged about Bambi Barker. She had somehow gotten hold of Molly Blackburn's negative. Alternately threatening Darwin and pleading with him to run away with her, she ended the letter with the impassioned statement that if she couldn't have him, nobody would.

She must have gone over the edge then. From what the homicide detectives were able to piece together, she somehow convinced Darwin Ridley to come home with her, slipped him some of her mother's morphine, put a noose around his neck, and pushed him off the second-floor landing over her truck. All she had to do then was cut him down, hose him off, cover him up, and haul him away. The crime lab found bits of trace evidence in the truck that indicated she had used it to transport Ridley back to the dumpster where he was found. No one ever figured out for sure why she went to the trouble of stripping him, unless she used his clothes in a futile attempt to frame Joanna.

Eventually, Maxwell Cole came forward with the envelope and his copy of the Ridley / Bambi photo. The typeface on his envelope matched that on Joanna Ridley's envelope. It was also the same typeface on Candace Wynn's love letters to Darwin Ridley. The remains of the typewriter were found crushed in the wreckage of the van, along with a suitcase of small bills and Molly Blackburn's missing negatives. Peters'.38 was there, too.

Candace must have sent the pictures to the Barkers, Joanna, and the press, just as she had planted the evidence in Joanna Ridley's trunk in hopes of throwing us off the track.

She and Peters hit it off like a couple of star-struck kids. Maybe she was on the rebound. Maybe she liked playing with fire. Somehow, while he was at her apartment, Peters must have discovered something that alerted him, something that told him Candace was behind Ridley's death. Since she went to the trouble of painting the rail, he may have discovered the chafed place on the upright where the noose was tied off.

Whatever it was, when she overheard him trying to call me, she stopped him. That explained the cryptic message on my machine.

Ned Browning resigned on the first of April under a cloud of Chief Marilyn Sykes' making. His case won't come up for several months, but when it does, I doubt he'll be involved in the educational system anymore.

As for me, I'm beginning to get used to being a parent again. According to Ames, who just called from Phoenix, it's just like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget.

He could be right about that.