Chapter 4 - Caleb Timmons
Caleb Timmons died in 1998.
Pickup truck.
Icy road.
Ravine.
Vehicle burned.
Remains identified through personal effects because DNA testing wasn't routinely used in our county then.
Brock had been twenty-six.
Caleb thirty-one.
Their father, Sheriff Warren Timmons, identified the watch and belt buckle.
Case closed.
Except Daniel had seen Caleb three days earlier.
Alive.
Older.
Scarred.
But unmistakable.
Caleb had been a security supervisor for North Range Mineral Holdings in 1994.
He was one of the men Rebecca feared.
Suddenly Brock's eagerness to minimize Cassidy's case made sense.
Maybe.
But I had learned not to confuse suspicion with proof.
State investigators searched Brock's SUV.
They found Daniel's fingerprints.
Trent's.
And a third adult male's.
Not Brock's.
DNA processing would take time.
Brock insisted his SUV had been stolen from his property the previous evening.
He hadn't reported it because he didn't notice until midnight.
Convenient.
But security footage from a convenience store showed Brock arriving for night duty in his patrol vehicle at 10:11 p.m.
His SUV could genuinely have been taken afterward.
Then Brock admitted something.
Caleb might be alive.
He had suspected it for years.
“You let your family bury an empty coffin?”
“I was twenty-six.”
“You're fifty-four now.”
Brock looked exhausted.
“After Dad died, I found letters.”
From Caleb.
Postmarked from Idaho, Utah, Canada.
Never signed.
But Brock recognized his brother's handwriting.
Caleb warned him not to look.
Brock obeyed.
“Why?”
“Because my father told me to.”
Sheriff Warren Timmons had known Caleb survived.
Why fake his death?
Daniel answered.
Because Rebecca wasn't the only person who stole North Range records.
Caleb did too.
At first he was helping the company hide evidence.
Then he realized executives planned to blame him if regulators discovered the missing royalties.
So Caleb copied everything.
Rebecca and Caleb became enemies holding different halves of the same evidence.
Rebecca disappeared in 1994.
Caleb in 1998.
Then Brock said something that surprised us.
“My brother wasn't protecting North Range.”
Daniel scoffed.
“He threatened Rebecca.”
“At first.”
Brock had found one letter from Caleb saying:
I did things for those men I can't undo. Rebecca was right.
Maybe Caleb changed sides.
Maybe that was another convenient story.
Then state police received preliminary fingerprint results.
The unknown prints from Brock's SUV matched a print preserved from Caleb's juvenile arrest record.
Caleb Timmons was alive.
And he had been at Cassidy's house.
The question became why.
Daniel believed Caleb wanted Rebecca's hidden records.
Trent apparently believed Cassidy had inherited them.
Cassidy was finally awake enough to speak.
I sat beside her hospital bed.
Her newborn son was in neonatal intensive care.
Lydia was sleeping with my sister.
Cassidy looked smaller than I'd ever seen her.
“Dad…”
“I’m here.”
“Trent came because of Mom.”
“I know.”
Her eyes widened.
“You know Rebecca?”
“Daniel told me.”
Cassidy started crying.
“You knew?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes.
“Mom made me promise.”
My heart stopped.
“Promise what?”
Cassidy looked at me.
“Not to tell you she was Rebecca.”
“You knew?”
“Since I was sixteen.”
Twenty-two years.
My daughter had carried my wife's secret.
“Why?”
“Mom said knowing would put you in danger.”
I wanted to be angry.
Instead I saw a frightened thirty-two-year-old woman lying in a hospital after emergency surgery.
Anger could wait.
“What did Elaine give you?”
Cassidy whispered:
“A key.”
“To what?”
“I don't know.”
“Where is it?”
May you like
She stared at me.
“Inside Lydia's elephant.”
