Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [68]
“Who?” she asked.
“Mr. Folger.”
“The agronomist.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s blackmailing you?”
“I guess.”
“What does he want?”
“He said that if I told him about what’s going on in this investigation about the stolen pesticides and everything—anything that I could get out of my dad he wants to know—that he wouldn’t tell my father about what I did with Tiffany.”
As he spoke, Ray couldn’t help remembering what he and Tiffany had done. She had wanted to do it like the animals, she said. Being in with the feed and all, she wanted him to take her like a horse, from behind. She had dropped her jeans and offered her white buttocks to him. He had been unable to resist. He hated to be thinking about it with this woman deputy in the car with him. He felt like she, in her quiet way, would be able to read his thoughts.
Claire sat for a moment, then asked, “Why is he so interested in all of this?”
“He’s got an obsession with the Schulers.”
Claire turned and looked at him. “Really? How do you know that?”
“It’s gone on forever with him. He’s shown me the newspaper clippings. He has a whole file on the murders. I think it was the most important thing that happened in his life.”
“That’s interesting.”
“What am I going to do?”
“I think you’ve already done it. You’ve come and talked to me, reported Folger. What he’s doing is against the law. I’ll take it from here.”
“Are you going to let my dad know?”
“No, but I think you should. You don’t need to lay it all out for him. But I think you should let him know that you did something inappropriate with Tiffany at work and that you’re really sorry. Assure him it won’t happen again. That way if Folger does tell him, it won’t be as big a shock. But I think I’ll take care of Folger for you. I don’t think he’ll be divulging anything to anybody.”
“Tell my dad?” It was the last thing in the world Ray wanted to do. The thought of having his dad know anything about Tiffany made him want to gag. Maybe it would have been better to let Folger tell him. Then he wouldn’t need to see his father’s face when he heard the news of his son’s bad behavior.
“Give him a heads-up. Don’t go into gory detail. He was young once, too. He might even understand.”
“Oh, God.”
Claire touched him on the shoulder and made him look at her. “You need to pull in the reins on this young woman you’re seeing.”
Wearing plastic gloves, Claire lined up and counted the ivory-colored objects. Eight. Then she counted them again. Still only eight. The number didn’t seem right to her. There were seven people killed at the Schulers’—two adults and five children. Seven baby fingers cut off. There were three bones in each finger. That should make twenty-one bones. They had found seven bones when the pesticides were stolen, one by the dead flowers, one by the chickens, and one with the lemonade. That made ten bones they had found. That left eleven, but all she had was eight.
There was one whole finger still missing.
“You need to get those ready to send off to the crime lab,” Tyrone told her when he walked into the back room.
“I know. I want to take some pictures of them. Some close-ups. They are like pieces of a puzzle. I think one of the fingers is missing.”
“What do you mean?”
Claire explained to him what she had realized. “I’d like to figure out whose finger is missing.”
“How can you do that?”
“By trying to match up the bones we have found and see what size they are. We might be able to figure out whose finger isn’t there.” She pointed out two very small bones. “These are obviously the baby’s. However, even if we puzzle this out, it might not tell us much. Maybe some of the bones were lost. Maybe the pesticide guy still has some. But it’s worth a try.”
“Do you have pictures of the other bones?”
“Yes, but they’re not exactly to size. It might be hard to match them up.”
“What about the pipe tobacco can?”
“That’s ready to go.” She lifted up a Polaroid. “I have a picture of that. I talked to an antique dealer in town, and she said this particular tin was being made