On Easter Sunday my daughter called and asked me to come and get her, and her mother-in-law put a hand on my chest in the doorway in front of thirty guests and told me to go home. My son-in-law told me to call the police, because the Chief was standing in his back yard eating food he’d paid for. He was right about that — and it is the reason he lost everything.
PART 5
It took nineteen months and it was almost entirely paperwork.
Harker was indicted in the following spring. He took an agreement in the autumn and gave up two other people, one of whom was a county planning officer and one of whom was not, and that second thread is still going and is not mine to write about.
The assault case went ahead in Ridley County exactly as Yvonne said it would — slowly, locally, and with a very good defence attorney.
Sutton was convicted on two counts and acquitted on the most serious one. He served fourteen months.
Fourteen months.
I have had two years to make my peace with that number and I have not managed it and I have stopped pretending to people that I have.
Yvonne warned me. She warned me in the first month, in the flattest possible voice, and I did not hear it because I did not want to.
