The goat stumbled and plummeted more than a hundred feet to the bottom of the cliff, bouncing off protruding rocks the entire way down. Tom chuckled a...d thanked god he was Sheriff of a small Colorado town where no legitimate business required his full attention. The two young deputies under his command were more than capable of watching over Eagles Landing, leaving him to pursue the finer things in life.Sheriff Warner took a deep breath of chilled mountain air. He packed the rifle carefully. The weather made up his mind for him. Flakes of snow started settling on the trail and the surrounding vegetation, and if Alex was any judge, this was going to be a bad one on top of the Rim. Down below, he might still be able to pick up the killer's trail. He quickly went through the dead man's pockets, finding only a letter in a sealed envelope. On the outside of the envelope, written in a neat hand, was: Merrilee Dunstan, Flagstaff.Alex tucked the envelope inside his shirt for safekeeping. The Rice brothers were working at their consoles, but they didn't grace me with any eye contact. Abhati was working the communications console, talking into her headset. Wood and Rogers were having coffee with the Captain, standing in our path to the conference room. All three of them moved out of our way when they saw the tool kits in our hands and the cleaning bot tagging along at our heels.Both elderly yeomen winked at me while sipping their cups of java. The Captain smiled and welcomed us.. “Did I force you into it?”Tony’s question wrong-footed me for a moment. In all my night-time horrors, I had never once even pretended to myself that I had been a reluctant participant in the wicked deed. While it might have been a sop to my conscience for a moment, it would have been too great a lie even for a fallen wife to use.‘No Tony. I wanted it too,’ I replied clearly and unambiguously. “Couldn’t you tell?’Actually putting the truth in writing was almost cathartic. I didn’t even have to.