Rain 14

Rain 14

The two young deputies who were sent down to the bottom of the ravine to check on the identity and condition of the body laying there confirmed that the body was of Thomas Sutton and he was dead. The sheriff asked them to stay put and guard the scene until he figured out his next step. 

    Mrs. Anne Sutton had called 911. She said there was an accident involving her husband. When the first deputy arrived at the house, Mrs. Sutton had calmly explained to the deputy what had happened. 

    She and her husband had walked the trail headed to their neighbor’s BBQ. Their big dog was walking behind them. When they’d  got closer to the bridge, the dog suddenly charged toward something across the bridge, presumably a wild rabbit. The dog sudden and fast charge, had accidently knocked Thomas off balance. Thomas  had hit the top bar of the railing and his weight and the momentum of the impact when his body hit the wooden bar had forced force the bar to break loose from its wooden post. Whit the top bar gone, there was nothing to stop Thomas from falling into the ravine. That was how Thomas Sutton ended up laying broken and lifeless on the bottom of the thirty foot deep ravine. 

     Later, when another deputy had asked Mrs. Sutton to retell her story, she had told him the same thing. The sheriff had interviewed her too. Her story was very much the same. Mrs. Sutton was fully cooperating with the sheriff and his deputies. She even took off her super dark and large sunglasses when one of the deputies, following procedure, asked her to. The sheriff and the deputy saw how red and swollen her eyes were. Aside from answering their inquiries, Anne Sutton kept a low key attitude. 

    She quietly took a seat on one of the lounge chair on the patio behind her house. Sometime her hand would silently wiped her cheeks,  the only sign to show she was crying. Her big dog laid near her feet, content and protective toward her mistress. 

     Seeing Anne Sutton  the way she was, in her stylist, casual blue jean, a thin sweater the color of maple gold wrapped around her torso, with her large dark sunglasses, very composed, keeping whatever she felt tight to herself, giving the sheriff a sense of déjà vu. Mrs. Anne Sutton was a blonde, modern version of Jackie Kennedy when she, too, lost her husband all those years ago.

     The sheriff believed the death of Thomas Sutton was a simple unfortunate accident. But having two men plunged to their death in the same manner at the same ravine in two years period, forced him to carefully dotting all his ‘i’s and to cross all his ‘t’s. He placed a phone call to the CSI and the ME. 

    Anne quietly watched the sheriff work from behind her dark glasses. She couldn't stop crying. But she didn't cry for her husband, she cried for her Jack. 

    She never did see how Jack died. Never saw his dead body, for there was nothing left. But seeing how Thomas laid on the bottom of the ravine gave her a clear picture how her Jack had lain lifeless in almost the same place as her husband. Thomas body would be retrieve by the M.E. then properly burried in the family plot next to his parents, grandparents and series of Sutton ancestor . But Jack’s body had been left alone for wild animals to tear apart. He was so alone. The man who had loved her and all of her faults, had lain there in his last moment on earth all alone, orphaned to the world. The worst part was, she was the one that caused it.