The Night Killer

I’ll help, but I’m not sure what you want me to do. I can’t very well work the crime scene without your father knowing about it. You could share with me what the GBI has found and we could go over it.”
    “That’s another thing. He changed his mind about calling in the GBI. His commissioner friends talked him out of it. They think, and Daddy agrees with them, that if we call in outside help, we’ll look like we can’t manage our own business. And Daddy . . . well, he don’t want to admit that his method of solving crimes all these years is not good enough for something like what we got now. But, like I said, we haven’t ever had anything like this before.”
    He stopped for a moment and stared at the fountain on Diane’s desk. He looked up and chuckled. “I found this book on Amazon. Now, don’t laugh. Well, I guess you’ll have to laugh. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crime Scene Investigations. It seemed to call out my name. I think I’m going to need a little more, though.”
    Diane grinned broadly. “Okay. What I can do is give you a crime scene kit and show you how to use the items in it. But what about the crime scene now? Is someone looking after it?”
    “Daddy’s up there with Dr. Linden. He’s a friend Daddy called in to do the autopsy on Roy and Ozella. I’m sorry. I couldn’t convince him to get that woman you recommended for it. Dr. Linden’s been retired for about ten years, but him and Daddy’s good fishing buddies, and Daddy trusts his judgment. Linden was a family doctor for many years before he retired—he was our family doc. Before that, he had some experience with autopsies in the army. Like I said, Daddy trusts him.”
    “What exactly are they afraid of in your county?” asked Diane.
    “The whole county’s not like the county commissioners and my daddy. It’s just a few like them, but they happen to be in charge of the government. Lots of folks in the county have computers, iPods, and BlackBerrys. All that stuff. Especially the people that travel out of the county because of their jobs. Of course, we don’t have cell service, so some of their gadgets don’t work when they get back home to Rendell County. I hear lots of complaints about it, particularly from the younger folks.”
    Travis shifted his weight in his seat. “But as to why Daddy and them are so dead set against accepting help? I’m not sure. Progress, partly. But they also don’t trust that you folks know what you’re doing. Take those finger bones, for example.”
    “What about them?” said Diane. She knew she probably wouldn’t like what was coming.
    “Dr. Linden said they belonged to a child, that they were too small for an adult. He put them beside his own hand and showed Daddy. Besides that, he said, they are really old. He said the marks you showed Daddy on the bones came from weathering. He’d just been on a dig—you know, archaeology stuff. That’s what he’s been doing now that he’s retired. He said they found bones that looked just like that and they had been in the ground hundreds of years. He told Daddy you probably made a mistake about the skull, since it was raining and dark and all, that kids have large heads, and you probably thought it was an adult.”
    Diane was right: She didn’t like what she heard. She knitted her brow together and stared at Travis.
    “Hey, I’m with you,” Travis said. “That’s why I came here to get your help. Dr. Linden, he’s a good doctor; at least, he was. When he was still in practice, he wasn’t bashful about sending you to a specialist in Atlanta if he thought you needed one. But I don’t think he knows what he’s doing here.”
    “So, your father’s let Slick Massey off the hook?” said Diane.
    “Not completely. Daddy got Slick to tell him where he dumped the bones. He says he threw them in the river. Daddy put him in jail overnight for illegally disposing of a body—or something like that.”
    “Why did he dump the bones in the river, and why did he chase me?” asked Diane.
    “He’s holding to his story about why he chased you. He’s saying you were in an accident in front of his house and he was trying to help. He said he dumped the bones because he was scared,” said Travis.
    “Even if your father thinks the bones are from a child, what is he going to do about it?” asked Diane.
    “Well, because of what Doc Linden said, Daddy thinks they are so old that Slick couldn’t have had anything to do with it. So I guess