Atonement by Michael Kerr

road, angled into the darkness of the woods and vanished from sight.  Carl had brought the department into disrepute, and at very least was now unemployed.

    Kate stopped at the side of the road a couple of hundred yards from the Pinetop Motel at ten a.m. on Saturday morning.  She needed to discuss some fine points of the still open case with Clifton and Ray.  She had decided that if the perpetrator was not apprehended, and soon, then the sheriff might reconsider his position and arrest Ray again.
    Kate was thorough, took her work very seriously, and did all humanly possible to ensure that she covered everything and anything appertaining to whatever case she was working on.  She had graduated from the prestigious William and Mary College, worked summers for Cavendish and Palmer Associates, passed the bar exam and was offered a permanent post with the Chicago-based firm.  That had been back in two-thousand, before events seven years later had caused her to adjust her priorities and move to the back of beyond and start up in practice south of Denver, in Carson Creek.
    The main reason she had taken the Marshall boy on as a client was because of her own personal experience.  She opened the car window next to her, lit a cigarette and let her thoughts return to a breezy autumn evening on a sidewalk in the Windy City.
Kate was just fifty feet from the steps leading up to the entrance door of her apartment building.  She was looking forward to a shower, a bite to eat, and maybe a glass or two of white wine before hitting the sack.  It had been a long and hectic week, and she was ready for a lazy weekend, with no definite plans to do anything in particular.
The attack was fast and overwhelming.  Three men appeared from the mouth of an alley.  One struck her in the temple with his fist, and the others grasped her around the waist and the neck.  Within five seconds she had been dragged into the darkness, taken with frightening ease from the street into a world of physical pain and psychological trauma.
They were full of anger.  Called her a ‘fucking whore’ and said she was going to die.  And as they kicked her in the head and body, and took it in turn to rape her, she fully believed that her time had come.
A dog walker heard the commotion and phoned the police as her dog barked. The rapists took flight, leaving Kate for dead, lying in bloody disarray at the side of a stinking overfull dumpster.  But thanks to the intervention of the passing stranger, Kate had survived and regained consciousness thirty-six hours later.  Her jaw had been broken, and she had also suffered concussion, a ruptured spleen, several fractured ribs and a mass of deep bruising.  Her injuries healed, but her mental state remained fragile.  The incident left emotional scars as indelible as tattoos.  Fear, anger, and a mistrust of men took center stage in her mind.  From being outgoing and embracing the hustle and bustle of city life, she became insular and found it all but impossible for several weeks to leave the confines of her apartment.
Three months later she was offered a settlement from the firm on medical grounds, and a short time thereafter looked at a road atlas and decided that Colorado was as good a place as any to metaphorically reinvent herself and begin a new chapter in her life.  She knew that she would never live in a large city again.  They were in part dangerous warrens, peopled by many lowlifes’ that had no respect for any other person.  They took what they wanted, be it life, sex or property, with no compunction.
    Dispelling the past, Kate closed the window; put the car in drive and seconds later was parking in front of the Marshall household.
    This case meant a lot to her.  She fully believed that Ray was innocent, and that an as yet unidentified killer was walking free, and probably lived in town.  Her attackers had never been found.  She fervently hoped that this one would be.
    Clifton came out of the house to