Beverly Connor - The Night Killer

Andie smiled too. “I just want to make a good impression. With the other guys I’ve dated, it didn’t matter. They would just have to take me as I am.”

“Wanting people to take you for who you are is not a bad attitude to have,” said Diane.

“Maybe. I have to say, I’m glad Kendel isn’t here. She’s so much more worldly than I am,” said Andie.

Diane laughed. “You’re just fine. You get quite a bit of the taste of the world just working here. He obviously thinks you’re very interesting.”

“He likes to listen. A lot of guys aren’t like that. They are all about themselves. He enjoyed hearing about my webcam project with the schools,” said Andie. “We’re having lunch here in the restaurant today.”

“Perhaps I can meet him,” said Diane, getting up from the chair.

She patted Andie on the shoulder and went to her office. She worked on the budget for the upcoming board meeting in a few days. It was after noon when she finished. Andie came in and said she was going to lunch. She nervously smoothed her dress and fluffed her hair.

“You look great,” said Diane.

“Thanks, I hope so,” she said, fingering her curls again. “There’s a guy here to see you.”

“Who is it?” asked Diane.

“Deputy Travis Conrad,” said Andie. “Shall I tell him you can meet with him?”

“Yes, definitely,” said Diane. This might work out well , she thought.

Andie showed Travis into the office. He was in his deputy uniform and carried his hat in his hand. Diane gestured to a leather chair in front of her desk and he sat down, holding his hat in his lap.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard. We had another killing-just like the Barres.”

Diane sat stunned. “Another murder?” she said. “Like the Barres?” She leaned forward in her chair. “You mean. .”

“Joe and Ella Watson. Older couple, about the same age as the Barres. They lived alone,” Deputy Conrad said, nodding to her unfinished question. “They were found this morning, sitting in their dining room with their throats cut. It happened sometime last night.”

“Do you know the time of night?” Diane asked.

Travis rubbed his hands on his thighs in a nervous gesture. “No. We know very little. That’s why I’m here,” he said.

“Sheriff Conrad wants my help?” Diane had a hard time believing it.

“No. Daddy don’t know I’m here. See. .” He stopped and made a face, as if he had a sudden flash of pain. “I want to solve this,” he said, finally. “I’m talking about me solving it. I told you I want to run for sheriff. If I can solve this, Daddy and everyone else will see I’m the right man for the job. You see?”

Diane nodded. She could imagine his father still treating him like a kid. Travis had a good-looking, boyish face that he’d probably had since high school. The kind of face that aged slowly. She also imagined that the people in his county thought of him still as Sheriff Conrad’s boy.

“Trouble is,” Travis continued, “I don’t know how to collect evidence. I know, if we do manage to stumble across the killer, we’ll have to take him to court with evidence to convict him. I know how to interview folks-witnesses, you know. And I know how to collect fingerprints. But I know there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about, like trace evidence. I also know I can learn and I’m willing, which is a lot more than can be said for some folks who want to be sheriff.”

“How do you think your father will feel about my helping?” asked Diane.

“That’s the thing,” said Travis, making a face again. “I don’t plan on telling him.”

Diane raised her eyebrows, wondering how he was going to pull that off.

“I know this sounds downright selfish,” he said, “but I was hoping you would help me, but not take credit.”

“I personally don’t care who gets credit,” said Diane. “I just want the killer caught. 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.”