The Night Killer

a grenade in their location. Liam was already shot in the side. He jumped on the grenade, covering it with his body—and it didn’t go off. One-in-a-million chance. After a few seconds he got up and tossed the grenade back. It went off and gave him a chance to drag several of his men to a safer location. He fended off the attackers until help arrived. His friend Louis Ruben was critically injured but survived. A sad and inspiring story that Diane guessed he didn’t want to talk about. She didn’t push it.
    “We’ve mainly done a lot of divorce work, which pays the bills. But frankly, I think what consenting adults do is their own business. This case for MacAlister was something different. We thought it would make our agency. I don’t think MacAlister is going to be pleased,” he said.
    “There’s a good chance the couple was already dead when you got the case,” said Diane.
    “Maybe, but a failure is still a failure. His daughter is dead. So is her boyfriend,” he said. “I’ll get Andie to take me to Archives and introduce me to Beth. It looks like I’ll have to cancel the date I just made with Andie.”
    “You don’t have to get the Social Security number tonight. You can wait until tomorrow,” said Diane.
    “The woman who likes me works at night,” he said. He paused. “You know, you have a strange place here.”
    “How’s that?” asked Diane.
    He shook his head. “Just a feeling. I get the idea you have access to a lot of information.”
    “We do. This is a museum,” she said.
    “More than that. You know about me. I’m not sure how much. But most of my record is classified. My branch of service, rank, and medal are the only things that’re in the public record. I get the feeling you know more.”
    “Not much more,” said Diane.
    She was saved from saying anything else by the ringing of her phone.

Chapter 51
    “Diane, this is Gil Mathews. I thought you would like to know—Leland Conrad is no longer sheriff. We’ve arrested him for the murders and for what he did to you.”
    “The murders?”
    Diane hadn’t seen that coming, though in the back of her mind he had been floating around as a possibility—but only a possibility, along with others of his point of view.
    “Has he confessed? Did you find something?”
    “Not exactly,” said Mathews. “He said if he was the murderer, they deserved what they got. Then he said he wanted a lawyer. He knew where the cave is. It turns out he had warned the two kids away from Rendell County when they were hanging around asking questions about lost mines. You know how he feels about people not getting out of town when he tells them to. He had vocal public disagreements with the Barres and the Watsons. It’s all very circumstantial, but sometimes circumstances are more convincing to a jury.”
    “I don’t know what to say,” said Diane.
    “He’s also in a world of trouble for what he did to you—and for the condition of the men he put you in the cell with. I don’t want you to get upset, but the big one may lose his leg. He’s diabetic and they aren’t sure they can save it. As I said, don’t get upset. This is on Conrad and the man himself.”
    But Diane was disturbed by that. She didn’t like hurting people, even lowlifes, even if there was no choice.
    “Did you find the bodies Slick and Tammy buried?” she asked.
    “Yes, we did. Most were decomposed down to the bones. We’re sending the remains to a forensic anthropologist in Athens, since you are personally involved in the case,” he said. “The defense attorney would have a field day if you analyzed the bones and brought the evidence to court.”
    “No problem,” said Diane.
    “I don’t have much hope we’ll ever find a cause of death for them anyway,” he said.
    Diane agreed. “I think Tammy severely compromised their health by feeding them a totally inadequate diet and by giving them over-the-counter supplements that either interfered with their medication or were completely contraindicated by their condition. I’m sure she convinced herself, and Slick too, that she didn’t kill her patients—that they died of natural causes,” said Diane. “I can see where a case could be built for homicide, but it would be tricky to prove.”
    “I agree,” Mathews said. “That’s why we made the deal. I think she believed we could prove a lot more than we can. Frank’s prestidigitation with the computers turning up Tammy’s bank accounts put the fear of God