The Night Killer

mess,” he said.
    “How do you know what kind of mess was left?” said Diane.
    “I know their throats were cut, and that leaves a mess. Look,” he said, moving his chair forward and leaning toward Diane, “in the interest of disclosure, I could have killed them any number of clean ways. In the woods you told me I might be able to overpower you, but you could hurt me in the process. You couldn’t have. It’s not bragging. It’s just a fact. I can kill, but I didn’t. And like you said, I did try to help. And for the record, you made the right decision to refuse it. Not because I would have harmed you, but on general principles.”
    “What were you doing in the woods? Why are you interested in a bunch of arrowheads?” asked Diane.
    “I’m not interested in the arrowheads. I’m interested in the diaries,” he said, settling back in the chair.
    Diane cocked an eyebrow. “Indeed? Had you approached the Barres?” she asked.
    “I spoke with them at the Waffle House in Renfrew. I was working up to it. You don’t just start off asking if you can see their grandfather’s diaries,” he said.
    “You do if you are an honest person,” she said.
    “I couldn’t be honest. I had to be discreet,” he said.
    “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me your story?” said Diane.
    “I will, but also for the record, it wasn’t my intention to approach Andie and use her. My intention was to feign an interest in the Indian artifacts in relation to courses I was interested in taking, and see if I could get a look at the diaries. This is a research museum, or so I was told. I was going to speak to the archaeology collections manager. I was going to use what I figured were proper channels. I needed directions to the manager’s office and Andie was there to give them—and she was your assistant. She was charming and helpful and was interested in me. We had instant chemistry. My asking her out wasn’t completely about getting information.”
    “What is your interest in me?” asked Diane.
    “You discovered the Barres’ bodies. Their deaths are of interest to me,” he said.
    “Tell me your story,” she repeated.
    Diane leaned back in her seat. She still wasn’t sure what to make of Liam Dugal. His straightforwardness was less comforting than she thought it would be. Too much mystery.
    He nodded as if he were relieved to be getting down to business.
    “As you must know, I run a detective agency with a partner. We’re relatively new and take on anything that is legal—or on the edge. We get a lot of divorce work and such. I don’t like it, but we need the work and it pays the bills. Things started looking up several weeks ago when we were hired for a missing-persons case. A wealthy Atlanta couple had lost track of a daughter—and her boyfriend. The daughter is twenty-three and a rather free spirit who makes unwise choices in boyfriends.”
    “Why all the cloak-and-dagger?” asked Diane. “Finding someone’s lost daughter is legitimate work.”
    “The man who hired me is hypersensitive to publicity. I don’t know why. It seems like some kind of phobia to me, but he insists it’s all about personal privacy and business. At any rate, he’s writing the check, so I’m playing it his way. He wants me to be discreet.”
    “But if it’s his daughter . . .” said Diane.
    “He doesn’t think she is really missing. He just doesn’t know where she is at the moment. The parents are estranged from the daughter and she has a habit of just going off without telling them. It was her sister who finally insisted. The sisters are fairly close. Apparently they talked at least once or twice a week, but the sister hadn’t heard from her in over three weeks at the time they came to us,” he said.
    “What about her boyfriend’s family?” said Diane.
    “He has a worse record than she does of falling out of sight, under the radar. They’ve had him show up after a year of hearing nothing from him. He’s a free spirit too—taking jobs on merchant ships, research ships, that kind of thing.”
    “Perhaps that’s where they are—at sea?” said Diane. “What brought you to the mountains?”
    “The boyfriend is an avid treasure hunter. The sister considers him a step up from the dope heads her sister has tried to rescue, thinking they were tortured souls—she’s rather naive,” said Liam. “His family says he’s been interested in treasure stories all his life. But he caught the bug big-time