The Night Killer

decided how to approach the diaries.”
    “I’m wondering if there is anything in them that would shed light on what happened to Roy and his wife,” said Diane.
    “I don’t see how,” said Jonas. “They were written years ago by his grandfather. But you were asking about secrets. People tend to keep their secrets in a diary—which strikes me as a strange place to expect to keep a secret. I suppose there could be some dark secret that has suddenly come to the fore.”
    It did seem unlikely, thought Diane. “Are they legible?” she asked.
    “I’ve thumbed through only a couple of them. I think the later ones are more legible. When he became a surveyor he used that neat engineer’s print. When he was younger, it was a combination of printing and writing, like most of us do. I’ve never kept a journal myself,” said Jonas, “unless field notes count.”
    “Before I let you go, do you remember a cigar box Roy kept in a cabinet in the living room?” Diane asked.
    “Full of his grandfather’s trinkets. I remember it,” he said.
    “The killer apparently took it, and I was wondering what was in it,” said Diane.
    “The killer took it? That’s odd. Let’s see . . . There were a few broken quartz points from the Old Quartz Culture—Archaic Period. Several marbles of different colors—one looked kind of like confetti—several cat’s-eyes. A couple of shiny metallic gold-colored marbles that looked like shooters. You know what that is?” he said.
    “I do. It’s the marble you scatter the others with,” said Diane.
    Jonas chuckled slightly. “His shooters looked a little worse for wear—lots of nicks in them. What else? Let me think. . . . There were several rocks of different sizes and colors. A couple of seashells, bottle caps, and a Scout knife—it was pretty old. Several gumball or Cracker Jack charms—old too, from a time when they put good prizes in boxes and candy machines. I think there was a blimp . . . you know . . . a dirigible. There was an airplane, a baseball, a horse head, a cowboy boot. . . . That’s all I can remember.”
    Diane listed the items on a notepad on her desk as Jonas ticked them off.
    “Jonas, I’m amazed you can remember so much of it. His kids, who’d seen that cigar box all their lives, could barely give me any description at all of what was in it.”
    “You know us archaeologists; we like old stuff,” he said.
    “I appreciate the things you’ve been able to tell me,” she said. “I have another piece of bad news. I debated whether to tell you—it just seems like too much,” she said.
    “Oh, no. Nothing’s happened to Kendel, Mike, and little Neva in Africa, I hope,” he said.
    “No. It’s still about the Barres. Their oldest son, Roy Jr., was in a car accident. He’s alive, but in critical condition. It looks like someone ran him off the road,” said Diane.
    “Horror just keeps coming to that family, doesn’t it?” said Jonas.
    “Yes, it does,” said Diane. And it offends me , she thought.
    Diane was relieved to have that discussion over. She had dreaded telling Jonas the terrible news. But she had learned more from Jonas—who until recently was a stranger to the Barres—than she had from anyone else.
    On her notebook Diane started writing motives for the Barres’ murders. She started with religion, only because that was what everyone else started with. Even though religion was a recurring reason throughout the centuries for various conflicts, it just wasn’t tracking for her. What would be the details of such a motive—fear of progress, scorn for dancing? No, Diane just couldn’t see religion as the basis for a homicidal motive in this case.
    Maybe she could ask Frank; he was more religious than she was. Diane hadn’t lied to Sheriff Conrad when she said she believed in God, but she wasn’t particularly religious and found God to be very remote. She occasionally went with Frank or one of her friends to their church, mainly because she liked the people.
    Judging from the people she had met so far in this case, it didn’t seem likely that members of one of these congregations could whip themselves up into a homicidal frenzy over a minor point of theology. But perhaps it was fear that another person’s religion would change their own way of life. She shook her head. That still didn’t sound like a realistic motive. She put a question mark beside it.
    She wrote down, Land . That seemed like a more reasonable motive. Land