“I told you how,” Brother Eustice replied. “Because he was sent by Lucifer.”
Robert guided his car down the lonely dirt road, lost in his thoughts. The meeting with Deputy Barber and the church group had gone exactly as he’d planned. He’d waited patiently until he could catch them all together, and they didn’t disappoint. They’d even led him to the likely scene of the crime. Unfortunately, it appeared that they’d done a rather thorough job of cleaning it up. It would be extremely beneficial if he could find some physical evidence to link the girls to Cooter Yates’ property. Robert wondered if the heads were buried there.
As Stallworth pondered his predicament, a strange glint coming from an unknown object off to the side of the road caught his eye. It was as if a divine answer to his prayers had suddenly appeared. He stopped the car and walked over to the nearby ditch. He shifted through the dirt until he found the item. Robert stood up and examined the unusual object before slipping it into his pocket and resuming his journey. It was time to meet Claire at Dr. Hall’s office. He couldn’t wait to show her his latest work of art.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Robert arrived at the medical examiner’s office to find Claire and Dr. Hall already in the adjoining room admiring his handiwork.
“Well, darlin’, it looks like you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” said Claire. “The Bone Puzzle.”
Robert nodded in appreciation, and the three returned their collective gaze to the pile of bones on the floor. Robert and Dr. Hall had painstakingly positioned the skeletal remains, side by side, as they’d collected them. By the time Claire had arrived, they were nearly complete. The result was two identical sets of miniature skeletons without the skulls. As detached as they tried to be, the three struggled to hold their feelings of sadness and disgust in check as they looked down.
“It makes me want to cry,” noted Claire.
“It should,” said Dr. Hall.
“And you haven’t been able to identify them?” she asked.
“No, not that we haven’t tried,” said the doctor. “We know they’re twins, or we are pretty sure, anyway. We know they were girls. We know they were anywhere from eleven or twelve years old to maybe sixteen tops. We know they were murdered and dismembered separately anywhere from four to six months ago—we’re going with late April, early May, for now—by person or persons unknown and unfamiliar with anatomy. We know that no one has reported them missing as far as we can determine. We know they weren’t from around here because of the previous fact, but that the killer or killers were familiar with the area in which they were dumped. So he, she, or they either reside here at the present time, or has resided here in the past. We don’t know how they died, or who killed them.”
“Do we?” Claire asked Robert.
“Do we what?”
“Do we know who killed them?” she asked again. He’d been up to something in the weeks before she’d arrived, other than to construct the macabre exhibit on the floor, and she was curious as to what that was.
“Possibly,” he replied.
“Is that so?” asked Dr. Hall, clearly surprised by the revelation. “Do tell.”
“I’m keeping that to myself for the moment,” said Robert. “It’s only a theory at this juncture. I don’t want us to do this backwards. Let’s let the evidence, or lack thereof, guide our hands for now. If we’re unable to find success once Miss Montgomery does her thing, then I’ll proceed with plan B.”
“Plan B?” asked Dr. Hall.
“Pressure,” replied Robert.
“What kind of pressure?”
“The kind that makes diamonds from lumps of coal, darlin’,” Claire said. She’d tangled enough with Robert over trivial matters, like whose turn it was to walk the dog or who left the top off the toothpaste tube, to question his skills at interrogation. If they couldn’t find out what they wanted to know one way, she had little doubt he’d get it another way.
Robert knew it, too, but he preferred it didn’t come to that. If pushed hard enough, some people confessed to things they had no part in. They could be convicted and executed for crimes they hadn’t committed, leaving the guilty party free to kill again. If exonerated, it left enough reasonable doubt to allow the correct suspect to walk.
“I see,” said Dr. Hall.
No one said anything for a moment, but Claire could sense that there was something on Robert’s mind. She watched him out of the corner of her eye until she noticed him subconsciously fiddle with an unseen object in his jacket pocket.
“What do you have there, darlin’?”
“What? Oh, nothing,” he responded.
“It’s not nothing. It’s something, so what is it?”
“Just something I found in the dirt,” Robert replied, pulling the object out of his pocket and holding it in the palm of his hand for Claire to see.
“That is unusual,” said Claire as she examined the item.
“Where did you find that?” asked Dr. Hall.
“On the side of the road,” said Robert, preferring to keep its exact location to himself for the moment.
“It doesn’t look like it’s from around here,” noted Dr. Hall. “At lease, I’ve never seen anything like it around these parts.”
“My thinking precisely,” Robert agreed.
“It looks familiar,” said Claire.
“Does it?” asked Robert.
Claire racked her brain. She couldn’t remember where she’d seen it before, but was sure that she had. It was frustrating, and she let it go for the moment. “Yeah, but I’m drawing a blank.”
“It’s obviously fake,” said the doctor.
“Yet unusual, all the same,” Robert added. “I know one thing. It didn’t belong where I found it.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with the murdered girls?” asked Claire.
“It’s hard to say, but I have a hunch.” Robert was almost certain that it did, but he had no idea how, or in what manner.
“It looks like a ruby,” said Claire. “Costume jewelry, for certain. Given its size and uncommon shape, I can’t think of a piece of jewelry that it would adorn. What are you calling it?”
“Calling it?” asked Robert.
“Yeah, what are you calling it?” she answered. Claire glanced at the pile of bones meticulously placed on the tarp in the middle of the floor. “We have The Bone Puzzle here. What creative moniker are you going to subscribe to your phony ruby?”
Robert smiled. Claire knew him too well. He had a habit of giving things names, some sarcastic, some exaggerated, some comical, and, most of them, inappropriate. He already had one picked out for this one, but had yet to admit it.
“I call it The Holy Relic.”
“The Holy Relic?” asked Dr. Hall. “Why The Holy Relic?”
“It’s a sign from God.”
THE END OF
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