Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

understand Joe’s position. Living in a peaceful, beautiful place, untouched by the conflict that went hand-in-hand with human society, was seductive. She’d enjoyed that peace for years. Maybe someday Joe would get lonely and understand why she wanted something more.
    “Cyril makes me feel good. Not just because he’s some hotshot politician. He looks at me and listens to me as if I’m important, maybe even special.”
    “ Thwump ,” said the arrow.
    “This is why people vote for him,” Joe said, showing marvelous political insight for someone who had never cast a vote.
    “He seems to enjoy our time together,” Faye babbled on. “He must, because there’s nothing in it for him. He hasn’t pressed me for my phone number or my address. He hasn’t asked for sex. He hasn’t even kissed me yet, though it’s way past time. I wish he would.” A “thwump” and silence. “He’s older than me, but it’s okay. I’ve never dated a grown-up before, Joe. Yet he still has the smile of a thirteen-year-old boy.”
    “He spends too much time at the tanning salon.”
    Joe turned and launched an arrow into the underbrush. Faye flinched at the ensuing squeal.
    Joe stomped through the undergrowth to collect his kill. “No fish tonight,” he said. “Rabbit.”

    It was Friday morning and public servants everywhere were trying to tidy up their work for the weekend. The sheriff knew Kelly had been at her lab since the sun had finished whiting out the stars. He knew she worked conscientiously, every day, trying to generate the kind of forensics data that solved crimes. He thought of calling her, but there was nothing to say. The data were all in and they told him nothing.
    His investigators had uncovered nothing, no fingerprints and no witnesses. The few material clues to the murderer’s identity were investigative victories for his staff and Kelly’s, but they signified nothing. The shoe print, the hairs, the fibers, the bullet that had destroyed the boy’s right ear before plowing into a pine tree. He could match it to a gun, if he had one, but in his gut, he knew that the gun, the cheap shoes, the rubber gloves, were all resting with the stolen equipment on the bottom of the Gulf.
    His technicians had found the other bullet deep in another pine tree, where it had burrowed after passing through the base of the girl’s skull. From its trajectory, they’d estimated where she had been standing at the time she was shot and the location of the shooter. Big deal. It was just another piece of data that told him nothing about why she was killed or who did it.
    Nothing. He had no suspect. No one who wanted the two kids dead. No motive other than theft or drugs, which he personally found weak. And surely not even the biggest environmental nut would kill two innocent kids to stop the development of an island, no matter how pretty that island.
    He himself hated the thought of constructing a winter playground for Yankees too dumb to move out of the cold. In his opinion, the Last Isles were some of the prettiest places left on Earth, but the resort people thought they could be improved by the addition of a couple of man-made beaches. He and his investigation had slowed that inevitable process, but he couldn’t stop it. Nobody could. It was time to let the project go forward. There was no reason to let a couple of unsolved murders slow the progress of humanity.

    Faye had been told she didn’t have sense enough to know when to quit. She’d been told that more than once, and here she was demonstrating it again. It was a crystal-clear morning and she had a frenzied need for money, but had she done anything that might raise that money?
    No. She had spent gasoline money by driving her car to Sopchoppy.
    She wanted to find Cedrick Kirby, wanted it bad. What would she do if she found him? She didn’t know. Turn him in and ruin Cyril? No. Hold his location in reserve in case she ever needed to protect Douglass? Maybe. Probably. Yes. That was what she would do.
    Nobody could hide from the World Wide Web, not even Cedrick the murderer. Given a computer and time, he could be found, or at least that’s what Faye had thought. Even now, she could hear the click-whirr-beep of a computer mating with the Internet and, Lord, she loved the Internet with all the passion of a lonely island dweller. If she could hook up with the Web from the comfort of her bedroom, she’d hardly want to come ashore at all.
    Faye had learned a lot at the