The Night Killer

What if they come back?” Bob put a hand to his own throat.
    “Then you arrest the son of a bitch. It’s what you get paid for. I’ll be back in a little bit.” Travis Conrad turned to Diane. “Now let’s go see Slick Massey.”

Chapter 6
    Diane shuddered at the thought of facing Slick Massey again. She tried to calm herself as she and Deputy Conrad walked to his Jeep and climbed in. Diane looked back at the Barre house. She saw the deputies sitting on the porch with flashlights trained out to the front yard. She wanted to ask Conrad if his deputies would be okay there by themselves, but thought better of it. Instead, she approached another, more controversial topic.
    “You know,” she began, “this is the kind of crime the Georgia Bureau of Investigation can be a big help with.”
    “We’re gonna have to call the GBI. Daddy’s gonna balk, but we ain’t had no killings like this. We’ve had wife killings and bar killings—the kind of homicide you don’t have to work up a sweat to solve—the kind where we know the guy who did it and where to find him.” He shook his head. “But this is the kind of thing you see on crime shows. We just ain’t had nothing like this here. You saw Jason and Bob. They’re good guys and they mean well, but . . .” He shook his head. “Bob mainly does the paperwork, and Jason, well, he’s Jason.”
    He paused and Diane didn’t say anything—relieved that he was open to getting outside help. She wanted the Barres’ murderer caught, and she didn’t think the current constabulary here in Rendell County had the know-how to go about finding the killer, unless he left a trail of blood they could follow.
    “Daddy won’t go to the Rosewood Crime Lab,” he continued. “He’d go to Tennessee for help before he’d ask Rosewood or Atlanta for any. Daddy thinks Atlanta is Satan and Rosewood is one of its disciples.”
    “I’m sorry we’ve made such a bad impression,” said Diane.
    Deputy Conrad chuckled. “Don’t take it personally. It’s just the way people think here.” He sighed. “Daddy thinks he knows everybody in the county—knows what they’re like. He knows his generation, but he don’t know young people or people that’s moved into the county. None of them older folks do. Brother Sam—he’s the preacher over at Golgotha Baptist—he’s dead set against getting a cell phone tower in the county, and he keeps his congregation all riled up about it, so we got no cell service. Lots of them deacons from the churches got theirselves elected to the county board, and they do their earnest best to tell the rest of us what to do. Lucky for us, a lot of the Baptists, Primitive Baptists, and the Pentecostals don’t agree among themselves, so the county board don’t get much done but arguing.” He laughed again. “If the county’s ever going to get any businesses moving in, we’re gonna have to get ourselves a cell tower, for starters, and do something about these roads. Can’t nobody have a decent car around here.”
    “They are hard to drive on in the rain,” said Diane, remembering her trip down the road earlier. She appreciated that when Deputy Conrad talked, he kept his eyes on the road.
    “One of the cell phone companies offered Roy Barre a lot of money to put a tower up on one of his mountains.”
    “Was he considering it?” asked Diane.
    “I think he was. He talked like he was. Roy wasn’t as against some of the modern stuff like the rest of the older folks around here. I swear, if they weren’t addicted to WrestleMania and the cowboy channels, they’d be fighting over whether we should even have television. Not that they could stop people, but they could sure fuss about it.”
    “Would any of them be angry enough at Roy Barre over the cell phone tower to kill him and his wife?” asked Diane.
    “You mean, thinking they figured they were killing the devil’s disciple and doing a good deed? I don’t think so,” he said. “They aren’t crazy or anything—just trying to keep the sins of Atlanta out of our little mountains. Most people here like to fuss, but they don’t carry it beyond that. Our families have known each other forever around here—at least the old families. My great-granddaddy and Roy’s granddaddy were good friends. Same with a lot of families. We’ve all been friends and enemies and friends again a long time, but we’ve never killed nobody over anything.”
    Diane looked out the window at the dark