Dark Water by Sharon Sala

from the setting sun colored her dark hair with fiery tints and gave her complexion an exotic glow. He wanted to touch her hair, to see if it was as hot as it looked. Instead, he lifted his glass.
    â€œTo the sunset,” he said softly, and touched his glass to hers.
    The clear tinkle of fine crystal echoed between them. Sarah nodded.
    â€œTo the sunset,” she repeated, and lifted the glass to her lips. “Mmm, good stuff.”
    â€œThat’s my motto…nothing but the best,” he said, watching the sunset in the reflection in her eyes.
    Â 
    Ron Gallagher sat at his desk, looking at the plastic evidence bag that held the personal belongings they’d found on Franklin Whitman’s body. There wasn’t much left of the man’s life—a body’s worth of bones that now resided in the coroner’s office, a water-damaged wallet, a ring of keys, a wedding ring, and a watch that had stopped at twenty minutes after one.
    Most of the time Ron Gallagher liked being sheriff. In the entire twenty-three years of his career in law enforcement, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d wished he’d gone into another occupation. This was one of them. Just thinking about how cold the trail was on this crime made him sigh with frustration. It had taken his secretary a day and a half just to find the old file on the twenty-year-old bank robbery. To say it had been lacking in evidence would have been putting it mildly. The fact that Franklin Whitman had disappeared the same day as the money was the only fact the authorities had at the time to tie him to the theft. Obviously their theory had been sadly lacking.
    Of course, Ron could afford to be generous in not criticizing the procedures of that day and time, because he had something they hadn’t—namely, Whitman’s body. He couldn’t say for certain that Whitman had been completely innocent with regard to the theft, but it was obvious that even if he had been involved, there had been an accomplice, maybe two. Certainly someone had killed Franklin Whitman and locked him in the trunk. Unfortunately, the pitiful remnants in the evidence bag yielded nothing in telling him who that might be. Shoving aside a stack of files, he dumped the contents of the bag onto his desk.
    Whitman’s wallet was cracked and coming apart, although the leather had survived much better than the stitching that had held it together. The only things that had survived twenty years in the lake were plastic—an American Express credit card, his driver’s license, and a card with Whitman’s name and blood type. Whatever else had been in there had deteriorated and disappeared.
    His gaze moved to the watch. The hands on the face had stopped at twenty minutes after one—indicating either the time of Whitman’s death or, more likely, the time he was dumped into the lake. Until he got a report back from the coroner, they couldn’t be entirely sure of the cause of death. It was possible that he had drowned, but there was that big crack in his skull. And in the long run, it didn’t matter. The fact was that he’d been murdered, by whatever means.
    There was only one useful item left that had been with the body—a set of keys on a ring with a red plastic fob with a “Number One Dad” logo. He sighed as he picked up the keys, thinking of the little girl Sarah Whitman had once been. How low her hero had fallen. Or had he? She seemed positive that her father had been a scapegoat for the real thief. Gallagher didn’t know what to think except that, as an officer of the law, he had to keep an open mind. Despite public opinion, which was leaning toward the theory that Whitman had been double-crossed by his cronies, Gallagher knew he owed it to Sarah Whitman to be more thorough with the investigation this time around.
    He fingered the keys, grimacing at the mud and rust that came away on his fingers. Two of the