Beverly Connor - The Night Killer

“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 report.

“There was no blood on any of the things he gave me. I asked my people to take the knife apart and check every part of it. Had there been blood, they would have found it. Even if it had been washed, the blood still would have seeped through the cracks in the handle.”

“Don’t recollect Travis telling me about the knife. Told him he should of taken the raincoat,” he said.

“I told him about the rain gear. The knife was tucked away in my jeans. I was quite frightened when Travis found me-seeing the Barres like that. I had just had a meal with them a few hours before. They were good people,” said Diane.

Sheriff Conrad watched Diane for several moments. “Should have mentioned the knife,” he said.

“I agree. If I had been thinking like I should, I would have,” she said. “I was near the point of collapse from fatigue and dehydration.”

He didn’t like it that she had kept the things the mysterious man gave her. But he was also displeased with his son for not taking the poncho-and probably for not taking her in for questioning.

Diane continued her story before he decided whether he wanted to pursue another conversation-one she would prefer he not.

“I thought if I could find the large creek I had crossed the previous afternoon on the way to the Barres’ house, I could follow it and find the road. I found the creek-a creek-and eventually I found the Barres’ house. I thought I was safe, until I went inside.”

Another tricky part. How was he going to feel about her taking photographs of the crime scene and not telling Travis about that either? She wanted to keep outright lying to him to a minimum, but she also didn’t want to tell him that everything she did was governed by her belief that he didn’t know what he was doing. She knew that wouldn’t go over well. He’d probably try to haul her back to Rendell County with him.

“The telephone was out of order. I assumed the wires leading into the house were cut. I had to go for help, but I was very concerned about the security of the crime scene,” she said.

Diane pulled out an envelope marked Photographs , and took them out.

“So before I left, I snapped some photographs,” she said, handing them to him.

He took them, not taking his eyes off her. He wasn’t pleased, she saw.

“You had a camera with you? Get that from the man in the woods too-he give you his camera?”

“No. I used my cell phone,” she said.

“What?” His frown deepened.

“My cell phone. I used it to take the photographs,” she repeated.

“Your cell phone?” He looked puzzled. “You took pictures with your cell phone?”

Now Diane was surprised. He might not like cell phones, but surely he knew about them. He sat looking at her for a moment, then down at the photographs.

“You have the negatives for these,” he said.

Diane hesitated. “It’s a digital camera. There are no negatives,” she said. Okay, surely they have digital cameras in Rendell County. They’re only about an hour away from Rosewood, two hours from Atlanta, for heaven’s sake. They don’t have a wall built around the county. They have television.

“Travis knows about these things,” he muttered, going through the photographs. “They’re not real sharp,” he said.

“You don’t get the best resolution with the camera in a cell phone,” she said.

“Why did you take them?” He looked up at her.

She thought to herself that if his gaze had been a spear, she’d have been impaled.

“I had to leave and go for help. I didn’t know if the killer might come back and move the bodies, burn the house, or otherwise disturb the crime scene. Or someone else might stumble into it. I thought there should be a record of it as it was, undisturbed,” said Diane.

“You telling me you didn’t have the presence of mind to tell Travis about the knife, but you were clear-thinking enough to take pictures?” he said.

“That describes my entire night. Going from hours of panic to moments of clarity. I was terrified running from Slick. I tried to get my wits about me enough to figure a plan to find the Barres’ house and get help. When I did, well. . this is what I found.” She gestured to the photographs.

“I was panicked all over again. I tried to get control of myself enough to do the right thing. I took the pictures, because that’s what I do-preserve crime scenes. I meant no offense. I didn’t mean to overstep authority. I wanted to make sure there was a record in case anything happened to the scene before I found help. When Travis and I got back to the house, it was undisturbed. I knew official photos would be made of the crime scene, and I knew mine were of limited quality. They just didn’t seem important at the time.”

He leaned forward in the chair and glared at Diane. His face was flushed, but his voice was quiet. “What’s done is done. But I don’t want you in my county investigating on your own. I don’t want you coming into my county for any reason until I solve this. And if I find that you’ve lied to me or kept things from me again, you’ll find yourself in my jail. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand you. I hope you understand that I, like you, am a sworn officer of the court. I have my authority and responsibilities, and you have yours.”

They stared at each other for a moment without either of them speaking or breaking eye contact.

Here I am in a pissing contest with the sheriff. Just where I did not want to be , she thought to herself. Better ease back.

“If I remember anything that might be helpful from my conversation with the Barres or my trek through the woods, I assume you would want me to call you,” she said.

“Make sure you do.”

With that, he gathered up all the evidence, including Diane’s clothes, and turned to go. Protocol would require that the sheriff sign out any evidence he took from the crime lab, but Diane decided not to impede his exit. It was his case; he had the evidence in his possession; he was now responsible for it.

She showed him the way out of the building. As she watched him drive away, she breathed a sigh of relief, deciding it had gone better than she had expected.

Despite his warning, she fully intended to pursue the matter. She couldn’t drop it, not after she had seen the Barres sitting there in their dining room. She wouldn’t go into his county, as he phrased it, but she had the photographs. She could do a lot with those. She wondered whether Travis was amenable to sharing information.

Diane knew David would have sent copies of the crime scene photographs to her computer. So after she watched the sheriff drive away from the museum, she walked back to her osteology lab, went straight to the vault, and keyed in the security code.

The vault was an environmentally controlled room where she stored skeletal remains sent to her for analysis. Diane had some pretty fancy equipment there too. It was where she kept the jazzed-up computer with the forensic software. And where she also kept 3-D facial-reconstruction equipment-a laser scanner for scanning skulls and a different dedicated computer with software for reconstructing a face from the scan.