The Night Killer

indeed, and they wouldn’t be ossified—hardened into bone.”
    “Why would anyone put a body in a tree?” he asked.
    “They probably thought that sealing it up in a hollow tree was a clever way to hide the body. It worked for a while,” said Diane.
    She directed her attention back to the bones in the box, pointing out the significant properties.
    “The bones show marked deterioration at the joints. The distal end of the third distal phalanx is almost eroded away. It could be for a number of reasons—diabetes or arthritis, for starters. There are other diseases that erode the bone in that way. I’d have to examine it more closely to know.”
    She told him the details she had observed about the skull. She backed up a couple of steps.
    “I doubt that Miss Taylor and Mr. Massey could have gotten all the bones out of the mud. There are two hundred and six bones in the human body, give or take. A hundred and six of them are the small bones in the hands and feet. You might want to send someone out to look for more bones. They will need a wire mesh to wash the mud and dirt through.”
    “I’ll go myself and get Slick to tell me what he did with them and who they belong to,” he said with a moderate amount of vehemence.
    Now , thought Diane, the first tricky part . She walked back to her desk and sat down. She picked up one of the reports and handed it across her desk to the sheriff. She started with what she figured would offend him the least—her clothes.
    “I had the lab process the clothes I was wearing at the time,” said Diane.
    “Says here there was no blood on them. Could have washed off in the rain, I suppose,” he said.
    “No, it’s more stubborn than that. It would take bleach or kerosene to get blood out,” said Diane. “I came directly here to the museum and changed clothes in my office. There were half a dozen people here. I didn’t have the time or the facilities to wash them.”
    He nodded and waited, apparently suspecting that she had more.
    Instead of giving him another of the reports created by her team, she continued her story of what happened that night, beginning with her getting out of her SUV to look at the skeleton, the tree lying across her hood, and having Slick grab her by the arm. She showed him her forearm with the scratches from his nails.
    “Slick has some explaining to do. Said he was trying to help you after the accident,” said the sheriff. “Said you pulled away, poked him in the eye, and ran.”
    “Not exactly,” said Diane. “I did hit him and run, but only after he tried to detain me, following his denial that there was a skeleton stretched across the hood of my Explorer.”
    Diane took a detour from her story to tell him about Slick following her back to the museum and returning the things he and Tammy had taken out of her vehicle. The sheriff just shook his head, reminiscent of the gesture made by his son, Travis, when he heard the story of Slick and Tammy.
    She told the sheriff about hearing Slick call for the dogs when she ran, about constantly listening to the barking for hours, wondering how near the dogs were and if they were vicious. She tried to convey how frightening it was, running from some maniac in a downpour, with lightning flashing all around.
    Then she got to the next tricky part—the man in the woods, and why she didn’t turn the things he gave her over to Travis.
    “I don’t know how long I’d been in the woods, but I met a man who said he was camping in the park and taking nature photographs. I never got a good look at his face and couldn’t recognize him, but there’s a chance I might recognize his voice. I could see that he wore a beard. He told me he had heard the dogs and saw my light and was curious,” she said.
    “You believe him?” the sheriff asked.
    “At the time, I thought he might be with Slick. I was trusting no one. He did tell me the dogs sounded like Walker hounds and that he was familiar with the breed of dog. He seemed to think the chances were pretty slim that they were vicious. I asked him to call your office when he could get to a phone, and apparently he did. He took my jacket to lay a false trail for the dogs away from me, and he gave me some rain gear and a knife.”
    There it was. A man running around the woods with a knife when, practically within spitting distance from where he was, the Barres had their throats cut. The sheriff sat up straight, but Diane didn’t pause. She handed him another