“Slick tried to find her with the dogs,” said Tammy. “I told him not to bother. If the bitch was so stupid as to run into the woods in a thunderstorm, then she deserves to get her ass drowned.” She waved her hand in the air, holding the cigarette between her fingers. “But you know Slick—what a tender heart he has. He had to go out in the rain and try to find her. Got soakin’ wet. I’ll bet he catches his death.”
“What’s goin’ on? Is somethin’ goin’ on?” A high-pitched, plaintive voice came from the porch.
Diane looked over and saw a woman with a walker standing backlit in the doorway of the run-down house.
“Nothing you need to worry about, Norma, honey. You just go back in and I’ll make you some hot cocoa when I come in. Go back in. You don’t need to be out here after a storm. The air’s too wet.”
They all watched as the woman disappeared from the doorway. Tammy stood with one arm across her midriff and the other holding her cigarette up near her face. She flicked ashes off the end of the cigarette and resumed her stance.
“That’s my cousin Norma, visiting from Indiana. Poor thing’s not in good health. She came down here to try and recuperate. She don’t need this kind of excitement.” Tammy took another puff on her cigarette. This time she blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth.
“Miss Fallon says a skeleton landed on the hood of her vehicle,” said Deputy Conrad. He was leaning against the fender of Diane’s SUV, touching the top where it had been bent by the falling tree. “What do you have to say ’bout that?”
“Ain’t true,” said Slick. “Sho’ ’nuff ain’t true.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” answered Tammy. “I’ll show you what she saw.”
Tammy marched them over to the side of the road where they had pulled the tree. Among the branches was a crude plastic skeleton.
“We hung it in that old tree last Halloween. Forgot about it. That’s what she saw. That’s what she got hysterical over,” said Tammy, grinning.
“I don’t get hysterical over skeletons,” said Diane. “I’m fascinated by them. I’m a forensic anthropologist. I analyze skeletons for a living. I can tell bones from plastic.”
“Well, ain’t you fuckin’ special,” said Tammy. “Looky here, Slick, we got ourselves a fuckin’ forensic anthropologist. Well, I’ll bet you’re real embarrassed about thinking ol’ bloody bones here was real. Yeah, real embarrassed.” She took a puff on her cigarette and smirked at Diane. “Your word against ours, doll. Out here you don’t mean squat.”
“Tammy,” said Deputy Conrad, shaking his head.
“It’s true,” Tammy said. “Do you see real bones here?”
“Unfortunately,” said Travis Conrad, “with no body, so to speak, there’s nothing I can do.”
Tammy’s smirk grew broader. Diane focused on the memory of the skull. Well-closed sutures, angular orbits, narrowish face, small triangular nasal opening, slight jawline, graceful brow ridge, bad teeth. Diane looked at the tree and detritus around it. Of course, it was hollow and had been cemented up. The body was inside the tree. Completely skeletonized. This was Georgia. Even in the mountains, bodies could skeletonize quickly. It was held together when it fell, but broke apart easily. Held together by what tendons it had left. Then there was the healed fracture. Diane was surprised her memory was so good at this point. Must have been the water and candy bar that Travis gave her.
“Of course,” Diane said to the deputy. “I understand. However, if a report comes across your desk of a white adult woman who’s been missing from about three to twelve months ago, who has bad teeth, and has been beaten about the face or been in a car accident that broke her cheek and nasal area—then you need to come back and take a look around.”
Diane watched Tammy and Slick as she spoke. Slick kept his face still, too still. There was a flash of something in Tammy’s face as she dropped her smirk and picked it up again.
“Well, aren’t you something?” said Tammy. “You need to go into storytelling, the way you can spin a yarn at the spur of the moment like that.”
“You’re right on, Tammy,” said Slick. “The woman’s pure entertaining.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” said Deputy Conrad, looking at the two of them and shaking his head. “I sure will.”
“I don’t suppose I can get my things back,” said Diane. “From my purse and glove compartment?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tammy. “Accusing us of stealin’, when all we ever did to you was try to help you. People come down this road all the time and steal stuff. You didn’t have your car locked, did you?”
“What about Roy’s arrowheads?” said Travis. “If you guys took his arrowheads, I’ll have the National Guard out here combing your land.”
“What the fuck do we want with a bunch of arrowheads?” said Slick. “Like Tammy said, people come and steal stuff all the time. We can’t keep nothing out what it don’t get stole. Alls we did was look in her purse to find out her name. Here this strange woman drives by and the tree falls on her. We was trying to help. Had no idea who she was. She didn’t say before she run off.”
“I need to look in the back of my SUV,” said Diane.
Deputy Travis nodded and they walked back over to Diane’s vehicle. Diane opened the rear door and looked at the boxes strewn across the back.
“Well, shit,” she said.
Chapter 8
The boxes of artifacts were open in the back of Diane’s vehicle. Their contents were in disarray. Some were overturned and the arrowheads had spilled out on the floor.
“Well, hell,” she muttered, and climbed in the back. “I need to sort this out.”
“Damn it, Slick, Tammy, can’t you keep your hands off other people’s things?” said the deputy. Travis Conrad stood at the back of the vehicle with a hand on the open hatch.
“Now you’re accusin’ us,” said Slick. “We was out lookin’ for her. When was it we had time to rifle through her stuff?”
“You had time to move that dead tree,” said Conrad. “I doubt Tammy was out looking for her. Were you the one who went through her things, Tammy?”
“You watch your mouth, Travis Conrad,” said Tammy. “I could say some things about you.”
“A lot of people could, I’m sure. Did you take any of these arrowheads? I mean it. You got yourself in a heap of trouble if you did.”
“You gone crazy, Travis? You wasn’t this pissed about the notion of a skeleton,” said Slick.
“Just empty your pockets,” said Deputy Conrad.
“Them arrowheads belong to Roy Barre. Now empty your pockets.”
“The hell I will,” said Slick.
“You want me to take you in?” said Conrad.
Diane listened from her vantage point in the back of her SUV. She was a little surprised at the deputy’s anger, but then again, after seeing Roy’s and his wife’s murdered bodies, she understood. While they spoke, she took the knife wrapped up in the rain hat and put it between the front seats. She put the flashlight she took from Slick with it. It felt good not to have them sticking her in the ribs. She felt only mildly guilty not giving them to the deputy. But technically, the knife wasn’t part of the crime scene. Nor was the poncho the stranger had given her, and so far Deputy Conrad hadn’t asked her for it.
“I won’t forget this, Travis,” said Slick.
“If you didn’t have such a reputation for pilfering people’s things and siphoning their gas, you wouldn’t be having this problem, Slick. Empty out your pockets, or so help me, I’ll run you in.”
“If I had an arrowhead in my pocket, it would be mine, and you’d think I stole it,” Slick said.
He sounds like a kid, Diane thought as she looked at the boxes of arrowheads. Most of them they hadn’t opened, thank heaven. They had pulled the smaller boxes out of the larger one. She supposed when they discovered they were arrowheads, they pretty much lost interest.
“Just hand it over,” sa
id Deputy Conrad.
Slick pulled a three-inch, black flint arrowhead out of his pocket.
“It’s mine,” he said. “Roy ain’t the only one who collects arrowheads.”
Diane watched Deputy Conrad take the arrowhead and turn it over in his hand.
“You know, Slick, I can imagine you picking up arrowheads and collecting them. But for the life of me, I can’t picture you sitting at a desk and putting numbers on all of them.” Conrad handed the point to Diane. “Does this belong with Roy’s?” he asked, eyeing Slick.
Diane looked at the projectile point, as Jonas Briggs, the museum’s archaeologist, called them. She had no idea what kind it was, but it was pretty. Long and jet-black. Near the base on a flake scar was a small rectangle of white paint with neat, tiny black numbers. Roy said he had numbered each of the items in his grandfather’s collections—all according to the carefully penned outline his grandfather did of each point he found, along with a rather charming description of where he found it and what he was doing that day. It must have taken Roy months to find which point matched what outline in his father’s diary. A real labor of love for him.
“Yes, this is one of Roy’s,” said Diane.
“You lying bitch,” said Tammy. “This is the last time we ever try to help anybody out. They can just lie out in the mud for all we care, can’t they, honey?”
Diane ignored her and carefully put the point away, grateful that it hadn’t gotten broken in Slick’s pocket.
“Tammy, why don’t you and Slick go in the house and fix yourselves some of that cocoa you were talking about,” said Conrad.
“Travis, I never would have suspected what a little piece of shit you are,” said Tammy. “No wonder Carol steps out on you. I saw her getting it on with Pryce Moody the other day out by the lake.”
“Tammy, how would you even know what that looks like?” said Deputy Conrad.
“Why, you pig, I ought to scratch your eyes out,” she said, making clawlike movements with her hands.
“Slick,” said Conrad, “why don’t the two of you go inside, like I suggested. And if, on the way, you find anything that belongs to Miss Fallon, just toss it over here.”
Slick and his girlfriend, Tammy, turned and walked inside, hurling a few more insults that Diane didn’t quite hear. She shook her head. What a pair.
Travis climbed in the back with Diane and looked over the boxes she was repacking.
“Roy was so proud that the museum was interested in his arrowhead collection. He said he might get a plaque with his and his grandfather’s name on it hanging in the museum. He was worried that you might not accept the collection, ’cause he didn’t have an exact location where they were found.”
“His grandfather left a detailed diary telling generally where he found things in the woods,” said Diane. “We don’t have an exact location, but our archaeologist assures me that the collection will be useful—at the very least, to catalog the types of points found in the area.”
“So Roy’ll get his plaque?” asked Deputy Conrad.
“Yes,” said Diane. “This is going to be a nice collection for the museum.”
Travis Conrad nodded. “Good. I’d like to put that in his obituary, that he’s getting a plaque. He’d be proud.”
“Yes, he would,” said Diane. “I’m glad Mr. Massey didn’t get into the boxes with the really large points,” said Diane.
“He’d of taken them for sure,” said Deputy Conrad. “I was thinking about Dances with Wolves, ’bout them soldiers wiping their butts with John Dunbar’s diary. Slick didn’t get Ray’s grandfather’s diary, I hope?”
“No. Fortunately, we have that. Our archaeologist has been studying it,” said Diane.
Travis nodded. “Tell me, were you bullshitting about the details of that skeleton?” he asked.
“No. All the information I mentioned I got from the skull. It’s pretty standard observation in my business. Although I didn’t see it for very long, I did get a reasonably good look at it. I may be wrong on some of the details, but I wasn’t making it up. They got rid of a human skeleton somewhere,” said Diane. “It had been cemented up in that hollow tree for no longer than a year. I’m fairly certain of that.”
Diane got out of the vehicle and walked across the road to the ditch, where Slick had dumped the pieces of the rotten tree. Deputy Conrad followed her. She looked through the pile and picked up a curved piece of wood and a piece of concrete.
“Souvenirs?” asked Conrad.
“I thought this would make a nice bowl,” she said, smiling.
“This . . . this thing . . . that happened to Roy and Ozella will take all our time,” he said. “We don’t have the manpower to investigate this right now.”
“I understand. You don’t mind if I take some souvenirs, do you?” she said.
“No, just let me know if they are interesting,” he said.
“Sure. Listen, try to convince your father to call in the GBI,” said Diane.
Travis nodded. “I’ll have the coroner on my side. He’s the local large- animal veterinarian, and he’ll be just as out of his depth as I am. I know how to lift fingerprints, but that’s the end of my expertise. I think Daddy will see it our way.”
“Who will do the autopsies?” asked Diane.
“That’s a good question. That will be the coroner’s choice,” he said.
“You might think about Lynn Webber. She’s in Rosewood,” said Diane.
“For Daddy’s part, that’s two strikes against her. She’s from Rosewood, and she’s a she. Sheriff Conrad is kind of traditional about women.”
“Lynn is very charming,” said Diane.
Travis grinned at Diane. “It’d take a lot to charm Daddy.”
“Like you said, it’s the coroner’s choice,” she said. She walked back to her vehicle and put the wood and concrete in the back.
“That it is,” he said. “You know, I’m afraid we’ve left you with a real bad impression of us here in Rendell County. There’s good people here. They’re very conservative and traditional, but they are hardworking, God-fearing people who want to keep their kids safe from a lot of the bad stuff that goes on in the big cities.”
“I know. I liked the Barres a lot. I’m sure there are many others like them here,” said Diane. “I hope there’re not too many like Slick and Tammy.”
“They are fairly unique,” he said. “Listen, Daddy’s going to want to talk to you. He’ll probably give me hell for letting you go home, but I figure you’ve been through enough for one night. And it’s not like we don’t know where to find you.”
“Call me when you need me to give a statement,” said Diane. She looked over at the Massey house. The lights were still on. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I know you have to get back, but could you lead me to the main road to Rosewood?”
He grinned. “Sure. That won’t be no problem. I got to get to a phone and call Daddy anyway. Get in and follow me.”
Diane was relieved. She fully believed that Slick would follow her if she were alone. She shouldn’t have been such a show-off about the bones. It alerted them that she knew too much. She got in the SUV and followed Deputy Conrad as he pulled out and drove down the muddy road toward civilization.
Chapter 9
When Diane was well on her way to Rosewood on the paved road, Deputy Conrad turned around and drove back, tapping his horn and waving as he passed. Diane stopped at a service station to fill up. As the pump filled the tank, she pulled out her cell and called Frank. He must be frantic, she thought.
Frank Duncan was Diane’s friend, lover, confidant, adviser, the person she most trusted, and the person she lived with—and the person who was probably out looking for her. Frank wasn’t someone who monitored her time, or worried over the time she spent at her jobs, but she was hours late.
Frank was a detective in the Metro-Atlanta Fraud & Computer Forensics Unit. Though he lived in Rosewood, he worked in Atlanta, about ninety miles away from his
quiet home. He was good at his job. And he was good for her.
“Diane,” he said. “God, Diane, where are you?”
Diane heard the worry in his voice and felt guilty that she had caused it. Not that she had been given a choice.
“Frank, you don’t know how good it is to hear your voice. I’m filling up the gas tank on the way back. I’ll be in Rosewood in about forty-five minutes. Can you meet me at the museum?” she said.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Where have you been?”
“I’m fine, now. It’s a really long story, Frank. There was no cell service and no working landlines up in the mountains. I’m sorry to have worried you. Let me tell it to you face-to-face,” she said.
“Something’s happened.” It sounded more like a statement than a question.
“Yes, a lot of things happened. I’ll tell you all about it when I get to the museum,” she said. “Call David and Jin, please, and ask them to meet me there too. Apologize for me. I know they’ll be in bed asleep, but I need them,” she said.
“I’ll call both of them. Izzy’s here with me. We’ll meet you at the museum parking lot.”
David was Diane’s assistant director of the crime lab. He had worked with her when she investigated human rights abuses around the world. They both quit that work after a tragic massacre aimed at intimidating them. It hadn’t made them afraid, but it did make them grief-stricken. Diane took the job as director of the museum and hired David when the city wanted her to house a crime lab in the museum’s building. Jin and Izzy were two of her crime scene crew. Jin, a transplant from New York, worked in the DNA lab, and Izzy was a Rosewood police officer who wanted a change after his own personal tragedy. He was also Frank’s best friend.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You don’t seem fine,” he said.
“I’m not injured,” she amended. “I am very tired.”
She wasn’t sure about mental injury. She was exhausted—her adrenaline seemed to be running out again. She’d explored caves and climbed rock faces for a longer period of time than she was lost in the woods. Why was she so exhausted?
The Night Killer Page 5