Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [65]
When Claire walked in, Judy told her that most of the deputies were still over at the Daniels farm, but that Sheriff Talbert and Stewy were back in the conference room with those two DCI guys.
Judy rolled her eyes, but Claire could tell she liked all the excitement. “They’ve still got their suits on today. And they’ve been tromping around in the fields. They’ve gotta be hot as the dickens in them.” Judy shook her head and pointed toward the conference room. “I just delivered lunch.”
When Claire walked into the room, Stewy held up a bag for her. She had been starving when she left the Lindstroms’, but had decided she needed to get back to the office to check in before eating. She thought she had had a piece of toast for breakfast, but couldn’t quite remember. Tyrone was talking about the new letter the paper had received.
“What strikes me about this letter is that it’s handwritten. That element tells us something very important about this man,” Tyrone was saying.
Not wanting to interrupt him midthought, Claire leaned against the wall by the door.
Singer saw her and nodded. Tyrone was in full sermon and didn’t notice her. The sheriff and chief deputy were listening, but looking into their lunch bags at the same time. Not much threw them off their feed.
Tyrone leaned over the table. “This guy wants us to catch him. Or maybe to put it more implicitly, he doesn’t care if we catch him, he doesn’t care if we find out who he is. One thing that’s in his favor, and he knows it, is time. He’s running the schedule and we’re just trying to catch up. Even though we have his handwriting, we have no way to trace it back to him, no database that we can plug it into. He might well realize that, but more probably he just doesn’t care.”
There was silence; then Claire spoke up. “It might also tell us that he doesn’t own a computer or for that matter a typewriter. This is a farming community. I’d guess that only about fifteen percent of the county is plugged into the Internet; maybe another twenty percent have computers. In fact, it’s hard to get service down here.”
Everyone turned around to look at her as she walked up to the table and slid in next to Tyrone. “What I noticed was that he didn’t just handwrite it; he used a pencil. My guess is he’s a farmer. They always have pencils on hand to mark things, to jot things down. They work better in dust and grease than an ink pen.”
Tyrone looked at Claire with some interest. With a nod in his direction, she added, “But I think you’re right that he doesn’t care if we find out who he is. Also obvious by the way he sauntered up to the Danielses’ house last night and dropped off the rest of the bones. He’s a man on a mission and he wants it done and figures it will be done before we can stop him. He’s wrong about that.”
Singer spoke up. “What I don’t understand is that if he really wants this information, the truth about these old murders, then why does he put such a tight time limit on it?”
Claire had given the deadline issue quite a bit of consideration over the last several days. “I think this date is very important to him. He probably has watched it roll around for many years. This year he wants everyone to remember what happened on the seventh of July. He’s never forgotten.”
Stewy slapped his sandwich down on the table. “I think it’s because he’s nuts. He just wants to raise hell. And he’s doing it. People in this community are scared. I’m getting calls from all sorts of people demanding that we catch this guy and make the county safe again. When this next letter is published today, I expect all-out panic to erupt. We’ve got to do something. But first let’s eat.” Swanson dug into his bag and everyone else followed suit.
Claire opened the bag lunch that was waiting for her. Tuna-salad sandwich. Not her favorite. She wrinkled her nose.
Tyrone noticed and looked over at her food and said, “I’ll trade you a half a turkey sandwich for part of that tuna.”
“That’s awfully kind of you.” She