The Night Killer

Jonas as permanent curator for the museum’s archaeology collection. Since then, Diane and Jonas had become good friends and occasional chess partners.
    Jonas was currently in Arizona with Marcella Payden, a fellow archaeologist, surveying newly discovered Anasazi sites. Diane dialed his cell number, expecting that he was probably still out of range, and was surprised and disappointed when he answered. She was dreading telling him the news.
    “Diane, nice to hear from you. I see on my phone that I have several missed calls from you. We just now got back to a place with service. It’s a little shack of a diner out in the middle of nowhere, but they have a tower out back. Did you get the projectile points from Roy Barre?”
    “Yes,” she said, “we have them.”
    “I hope it wasn’t any trouble for you to go fetch them,” he said.
    Diane almost laughed.
    “I have some . . .” Diane hardly knew what to call it—bad, sad, tragic, horrific—it was all of those and more. “I have some bad news,” she said.
    “Oh, no,” he said. “Has something happened?”
    “Roy and Ozella Barre were murdered in their home,” she said.
    There was only silence on the other end. It went on for so long that Diane thought perhaps the signal disappeared somewhere between Georgia and Arizona and she was going to have to deliver the dreadful message again.
    “Murdered?” he whispered. “Oh, no, not the Barres. That can’t be. Who would do such a thing?”
    “We don’t know. About forty-eight hours later another older couple in Rendell County was murdered the same way,” she told him.
    “A serial killer?” he said.
    “It seems like it,” Diane said.
    “But you don’t believe it,” he said.
    “I don’t believe anything. I don’t have enough evidence,” she said.
    “Just a minute. Here’s Marcella with a cold drink,” he said.
    Diane could hear him telling Marcella the news, and her startled reaction. “I don’t know,” Diane heard him say to Marcella. “She hasn’t said yet.
    “Do you know when the services will be?” he asked Diane.
    “No. I don’t even know if the sheriff has released the bodies,” said Diane.
    “Are you investigating?” he asked.
    “Yes, but I’m not supposed to be,” she said.
    “Not supposed to be? What does that mean?” said Jonas.
    “I’ve been run out of Rendell County,” she said.
    “What? By whom?” he asked.
    “The sheriff,” she said.
    “Leland Conrad.”
    Diane heard a derisive harrumph.
    “What has he got against you?” he asked.
    “There is a very long story that goes with this and no time to tell it,” said Diane. “Let’s just say I irritate him.”
    “Good. Someone should. But you are looking into it?” he asked.
    “The Barre children have asked me to investigate, and I will. But it has to be done carefully. It is an open investigation and the sheriff is the lawful authority,” she said. “However much I wish he were not.”
    “Is there anything I can do?” he said.
    “In your visits with Roy Barre, is there anything he said . . . anything about someone he was afraid of, someone who didn’t like him? Did he allude to any secrets he possessed? Did he have any valuables? Is there anything that you can think back on that now looks suspicious?”
    “Well,” he said, “let me think.” He paused. “I saw him several times while we were negotiating. I call it negotiating. He mainly wanted someone who was an expert on points to talk to. He’d already decided he wanted to donate the points to the museum. He and his wife are—were—real nice people. Ozella’s a great cook.” He paused again. “Damn, this isn’t helping you one bit.”
    “I’m sorry I had to dump this on you,” said Diane.
    “What else could you do? It’s a hard thing to be the bearer of bad news,” he said.
    “Did Roy or Ozella strike you as having secrets? The kind that people would kill for?” asked Diane.
    “I didn’t get that impression at all. Rendell County is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody and their secrets,” Jonas said.
    “I got that impression too,” said Diane.
    “Roy and his wife didn’t like Leland Conrad. I do know that. There was a lot of dustup between their churches. A lot of animosity about Roy deciding to let a phone company put a tower on his land. Silly stuff, I thought. I guess you heard about Conrad’s church. They call it Baptist, but Roy and Ozella said it seemed more like a cult to them. The Barres