Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [31]
Claire closed her eyes for a moment. She wondered if they would ever know what had happened to that family. How was the murder linked with the pesticide incidents? Claire had come into work late that morning to check on the pesticides robbery. As an investigator, she had to put in more time when the cases called for it. Not a bad trade-off for a steadier lifestyle.
Claire didn’t think the sheriff was taking the whole matter seriously enough. He was hoping these recent incidents were merely pranks. She hoped so, too, but doubted it.
No new news. Nothing from Eau Claire about the forensic work that was being done on the bones. All she had heard was that, after a preliminary glance, the pathologist had said, “Human bones. Fingers.”
After looking through the Schuler file, she realized this was the link that might connect the pesticide attacks with the murders in 1952. It was not common knowledge because the sheriff’s department had kept it under wraps, but each member of the murdered family had had a finger cut off. The fingers had never been found. She wasn’t sure that Sheriff Talbert knew about the missing fingers. He hadn’t lived in the county at the time of the murders.
It drove her crazy that the forensic work was taking so long. She needed to talk to the sheriff about the possibility of digging up the Schulers’ bodies—if, in fact, this latest crime was related to those murders. They could get a DNA match on the bones. It would be a positive link between the two cases, and it might give them the lead they needed to solve the theft of the pesticides.
Claire decided to call the sheriff at home. She would keep her voice down so that Meg wouldn’t hear the conversation. Mrs. Talbert answered and said it would take her a minute or two to fetch her husband.
She glanced over at Meg, who was sitting in a chair at another deputy’s desk, reading a book. One of the Harry Potters. The ultimate child fantasy. Your cruel parents are not your real parents. What child doesn’t dream of that? And you are the only one who has the power to save the world. When kids fantasize, they do it big.
When Meg had first started reading the series, she had complained because the main character was a boy, but she was halfway through the third book and seemed totally lost in it, oblivious to the world around her.
When Sheriff Talbert came on the line, Claire told him what she had discovered. He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Wish it wasn’t a holiday.”
She decided she’d better push him on this. “Can you call the forensic lab and ask for a rush?”
“I think I’d better.”
“I’m taking the file home with me. I’d like to meet with you in the morning and go over anything else I discover.”
“Yeah, I think I need to study up on this one too. Good work, Claire.”
After she hung up, she looked back at the old photograph and felt tears well up in her eyes.
What broke her heart wasn’t at first obvious; it only showed slightly under the lip of the table: a small hand stretched out on the floor, tiny fingers curling up as if reaching. The baby had fallen under the table. Just one short year in the world. And one of the fingers was missing.
CHAPTER 10
He could not hide in this place, he thought as he walked down the gentle incline to the park by the river. Everyone knew him. That didn’t matter, he told himself. They didn’t really see him. People nodded and helloed him on either side, but no one stopped to talk. No one would ever think of him. They never did. He could come and go and no one would ever notice. That was the kind of man he was: insignificant.
He liked being insignificant. It was another way of being safe. He had studied being safe all his life.
Darkness would come soon. It would fall over the land, a sort of blanket of unseeing. Then he would really be invisible. That was how he had been saved. He walked slowly down toward the lake.