The Night Killer

by Beverly Connor

  Diane heard another call coming in on her phone, so she told Travis she’d be in touch and switched to the other call. It was Brian McEarnest, Christine’s husband.

  “Roy Jr.’s in critical condition,” Brian said. “He’s got head injuries, broken bones, and some internal injuries. The doctors couldn’t tell us much. He’s in intensive care. At least he’s alive, and we’re real thankful for that.” Brian paused a beat. “The patrolman told us he was run off the road by another car.”

  Chapter 25

  “This certainly sheds a little different light on things,” said Izzy.

  David shook his head. Diane imagined that he had already suspected something was not right. His paranoid mind railed at coincidences as tragic as what was happening to the Barre family.

  “At least the family can deal with White County authorities and not Sheriff Conrad,” said David.

  “That’s something,” agreed Diane.

  “Who you think did it?” asked Izzy. “The same perp who did the Barres?”

  “If it is the same killer,” said Diane, “it suggests that the killings were personal to the Barres. Then what about the Watson family?”

  “Maybe Roy Jr. knew something?” said David. “You said he was supposed to go through the house again today. Perhaps there was something the killer didn’t want him to see. Something that was missing that would point to him, maybe.”

  “What about the Watsons?” said Izzy.

  “The Watsons and the Barres knew one another. They went to the same church. That could be the connection. We need to talk to some of the other church members,” said David.

  “Either the Watson or the Barre murders could be a ruse to hide the real motive,” said Diane.

  “Or it could be a serial killer, and Roy Jr. just had a run-in with road rage,” said Izzy.

  David had taken a notepad from his pocket and was scribbling on it. Diane knew he was making a list of people to talk to. So many people—an entire church full, neighbors, the people at the Waffle House that Travis said Roy Barre frequented. It would be difficult with her restricted from going into the county. On the other hand, the sheriff couldn’t make that stick. He could cause her trouble, but he couldn’t legally keep her out.

  “He can’t keep me or Izzy out at all,” said David. “And he doesn’t know us.”

  Diane narrowed her eyes and looked over at him. “So, you can read minds now?” she said.

  “Don’t ever play poker. You have the worst face for hiding what you’re thinking. It was the small crease between your eyes and the set of your mouth that told me you were going to thumb your nose at the sheriff,” said David.

  “He’s right,” said Izzy. “It was pretty plain what you were thinking, and though normally I’m on the side of running people out of town, I don’t really trust those people up there. They’re a little squirrelly, if you ask me. He might throw you in jail and apologize later.”

  “I agree,” said David. “He has no idea you will come back and hand him his ass if he does anything. He would go ahead and hold you.”

  “I was thinking that Frank and I could be invited to be guests at the First Baptist Church where the Barres and the Watsons attended. Frank goes to Rosewood First Baptist. He could probably get Reverend Springhaven to speak to their minister. I think it would be harder in that circumstance for the sheriff to do whatever it is he planned if he caught me in his county. And most of the people I need to speak with will probably be in church. It sounds like a good plan.”

  “It could work,” said David. “It still scares me.”

  “Really, what do you expect him to do, except give me a hard time? He’s parochial in his attitudes, but he’s not a maniac,” said Diane.

  “Well, your mouth to God’s ear, lady,” said Izzy, with more vehemence than she’d heard from him in a while. “I’m with David. I’ve known about Sheriff Conrad for a long time. And maybe he means well, but he is hard-nosed and stubborn—and he thinks he’s right. I don’t think he’ll kill you, or beat you up, but . . .” He shook his head and looked from David to Diane. “I don’t know; there’s something about this whole thing that I don’t like. Reminds me of Hamlet.”

  Both David and Diane stared at Izzy in surprise. She never thought he was the type of person to read Shakespeare. Then she remembered Izzy saying he liked to read things his son had read so he could have ideas and words in his own head that his son had in his. Daniel Wallace, Izzy’s son and a Bartrum University student, was killed in one of Rosewood’s worst tragedies. A meth lab in the basement of a house blew up, taking with it over thirty young partygoers who hadn’t a clue what was in the basement. She also remembered the discussion she and Izzy had not long after Daniel died regarding Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide. Izzy had related to Shakespeare then. She guessed he continued reading. It surprised her, and she felt just a little ashamed of herself.

  “Actually, I’ve found ol’ Shakespeare often knew what he was talking about. Now, if you will wipe that look of utter astonishment off your faces, I’ll proceed with my analogy. And . . .” He glanced over at Diane. “I’ve been informed how you hate bad analogies, so I will speak with care.”

  Diane had to laugh. She’d never heard Izzy like this. “Sorry, Izzy. Please, what were you saying?”

  “I was talking about something being ‘rotten in the state of Denmark.’ And it strikes me as . . . What is that word you used the other day, David? Apropos? See, I’m learning your highfalutin ways.” He grinned at the two of them. “There’re too many little things going wrong in the county—two double murders, the skeleton in the tree, that Massey guy and his girlfriend, the threats against Diane. Now, even given the sheriff’s xenophobia—see, that’s another word I learned from you, David. You are just a walking university.”

  David smirked and rolled his eyes. “I’m shocked you ever listen to me,” he said.

  Izzy laughed at them. “As I was saying, even given the sheriff’s dislike of everything outside his county, why in the world would he forbid Diane to set foot in the county like that? What’s he afraid of? And what’s with the stranger Diane saw in the woods? Who the heck was he? See, there’re just too many weird things in Rendell County that need explaining. Something’s going on, and it’s rotten.”

  “I agree,” said David, looking over his list. “Any idea what it is?”

  “Not a clue,” said Izzy. “But I’m thinking that me and Evie might go to church with Diane and Frank. You know, make you look legit.”

  Diane smiled. “I would appreciate that.”

  “So, it looks like you have a plan,” David said to Diane. “Just be careful. I’m really into Izzy’s analogy.”

  “I’ll be careful. I really don’t think there is anything to worry about from him,” she said.

  Diane walked back to her museum office. Andie had gotten the secretary to fill in for her. Like many of her employees, Sierra wanted to expand her job skills at the museum. She had jumped at the chance to fill in as Diane’s assistant. In the past, Andie had gotten one of the docents or someone who worked in Archives to fill in as Diane’s assistant when she was on vacation, because they knew the museum so well. Sierra volunteered, and because it was only a day, it was a good time to let her try out new skills.

  “Hello, Sierra, anything I need to know about?” asked Diane. Sierra had smooth black hair, dark eyes, and a small, compact figure. She usually wore her hair long, but today it was tied in a low ponytail. She wore a crisp navy suit and white blouse and looked very efficient.

  “It’s been very quiet. Mostly routine calls. I’ve put the notes on your desk. I’ve been going through the e-mails and sorting them. Andie didn’t want me to answer them.”

  “That’s fine. If any look urgent, send them to me,” she said. “Or if there’s anything routine you know the answer to, go ahead and respond.”

  “Okay, Dr. Fallon,” she said.

  Diane went to her office and sat down. She considered calling Frank’s minis
ter. She thought of him as Frank’s minister even though she sometimes attended with Frank, but she wasn’t a member of the church. She decided to ask Frank to speak with him. She would discuss her plan with him this evening.

  It would be good if she could speak with Christine and Spence before she went to the church—get a little advance information on whom to talk to. She hadn’t asked them when the funeral was going to be. She didn’t even know if the sheriff had released the bodies. Going to the funeral and talking to people might be a better idea. How could the man possibly object to her going to the funeral of friends? But the funeral would be a hard time for everyone, and she hated the idea of going around asking questions.

  Diane tried to put all of that out of her mind and answer some letters she’d been putting off. She had finished three of them when her phone rang. It was her private number that only a handful of people knew. She picked it up.

  “Fallon,” she said.

  “Diane, this is Ben Florian. How are you? I was shocked to hear about your experience up in the mountains.”

  “I’m fine, Ben. Thanks for asking,” said Diane.

  This was unusual. She didn’t think Ben had ever called her, except once, when Frank was shot a few years ago.

  “Frank and I’ve been canvassing the free clinics around the area and some of the homeless shelters, and I told him I wanted to call and tell you what we’ve found out.”

  Diane’s heart quickened. They had found something.

  “You won’t believe this, but our gal’s known in about every place we visited. We were thinking we’d be real lucky to find anyone in the area who had seen her. After all, even if we were right about her, she didn’t have to do her hunting in Atlanta. There are any number of places she could have gone—Augusta, Columbus, Savannah, Chattanooga even. But Atlanta’s closer to Rendell County, so it wasn’t a bad bet.”

  “You’re kidding,” Diane said when he paused for a breath. “You found people who know Tammy Taylor?”

  “They knew her under different names, but they knew her. Most had a real good opinion of her. She made out to do volunteer work—a regular girl Friday with a heart, she was. Had access to files and everything. Yeah, the gal had a good racket going. She befriended several ladies. But nobody we talked with knew she took people home with her.”

  “That’s all too much to be simply innocent coincidence. Where do we go from here?” asked Diane.

  “Well, we do have one definite crime, for certain,” he said. “That’s the unreported death and the improper disposal of the person whose skeleton you found cemented in the tree. Tammy is a common factor linking the skeleton with the old folks here in the Atlanta senior centers. Frank and I are going to talk to the GBI—see if there’s enough grounds for them to set up an investigation. I think we can make the case that the crime started here in Atlanta and extended across county lines. Really, the discovery of one pension check being deposited to an account with Tammy’s or Slick’s name on it ought to be enough. That would get it out of Conrad’s jurisdiction.”

  That’s going to piss Sheriff Conrad off, thought Diane. She told Florian that Tammy and Slick might have fled.

  “That so? Well . . . Wait a minute,” he said.

  He left the phone and Diane waited. It was a relief to know what the whole Slick- Tammy-skeleton thing was about—or probably about. Ben came back on the phone.

  “That was a call from one of the shelters. A woman showed up today and told them she’d been brought back to Atlanta by a woman named Tammy Taylor who was supposed to take care of her. They said the woman was pretty upset about it too. Frank and I are going to talk with her right now. Looks like maybe our gal got scared. Frank’ll fill you in this evening.”

  “Thanks for calling, Ben. It’s a relief to know what the heck’s going on,” said Diane.

  “We don’t know yet, but I’m betting that I’m right.”

  Diane hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment, thinking she needed to try to get in touch with Jonas Briggs again.

  Chapter 26

  Jonas Briggs, the museum’s archaeologist, came to Diane after retiring from Rosewood’s Bartrum University. When the museum first opened, Diane offered office space and lab space to Bartrum faculty members if they would curate collections in their field of expertise. In the beginning, the department heads and faculty were resistant to the idea, thinking that RiverTrail would be a dinky nonacademic museum. They sent nontenured and retired faculty to her in order to clear space in their own buildings for tenured professors.

  The resources at the museum and the quality of the collections proved that the department heads and tenured professors had miscalculated, and curatorship at RiverTrail became a prime posting. Discovering its initial mistake, the archaeology department at Bartrum tried to replace Jonas with a tenured faculty member, but Diane diplomatically explained to them that it wouldn’t be possible. Jonas had become critically involved in too many important exhibits and research projects. To cut off further forays from the Bartrum archaeology department, she hired Jonas as permanent curator for the museum’s archaeology collection. Since then, Diane and Jonas had become good friends and occasional chess partners.

  Jonas was currently in Arizona with Marcella Payden, a fellow archaeologist, surveying newly discovered Anasazi sites. Diane dialed his cell number, expecting that he was probably still out of range, and was surprised and disappointed when he answered. She was dreading telling him the news.

  “Diane, nice to hear from you. I see on my phone that I have several missed calls from you. We just now got back to a place with service. It’s a little shack of a diner out in the middle of nowhere, but they have a tower out back. Did you get the projectile points from Roy Barre?”

  “Yes,” she said, “we have them.”

  “I hope it wasn’t any trouble for you to go fetch them,” he said.

  Diane almost laughed.

  “I have some . . .” Diane hardly knew what to call it—bad, sad, tragic, horrific—it was all of those and more. “I have some bad news,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Has something happened?”

  “Roy and Ozella Barre were murdered in their home,” she said.

  There was only silence on the other end. It went on for so long that Diane thought perhaps the signal disappeared somewhere between Georgia and Arizona and she was going to have to deliver the dreadful message again.

  “Murdered?” he whispered. “Oh, no, not the Barres. That can’t be. Who would do such a thing?”

  “We don’t know. About forty-eight hours later another older couple in Rendell County was murdered the same way,” she told him.

  “A serial killer?” he said.

  “It seems like it,” Diane said.

  “But you don’t believe it,” he said.

  “I don’t believe anything. I don’t have enough evidence,” she said.

  “Just a minute. Here’s Marcella with a cold drink,” he said.

  Diane could hear him telling Marcella the news, and her startled reaction. “I don’t know,” Diane heard him say to Marcella. “She hasn’t said yet.

  “Do you know when the services will be?” he asked Diane.

  “No. I don’t even know if the sheriff has released the bodies,” said Diane.

  “Are you investigating?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I’m not supposed to be,” she said.

  “Not supposed to be? What does that mean?” said Jonas.

  “I’ve been run out of Rendell County,” she said.

  “What? By whom?” he asked.

  “The sheriff,” she said.

  “Leland Conrad.”

  Diane heard a derisive harrumph.

  “What has he got against you?” he asked.

  “There is a very long story that goes with this and no time to tell it,” said Diane. “Let’s just say I irritate him.”

  “Good. Someone should. But you are looking into it?” he asked.

  “The Barr
e children have asked me to investigate, and I will. But it has to be done carefully. It is an open investigation and the sheriff is the lawful authority,” she said. “However much I wish he were not.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” he said.

  “In your visits with Roy Barre, is there anything he said . . . anything about someone he was afraid of, someone who didn’t like him? Did he allude to any secrets he possessed? Did he have any valuables? Is there anything that you can think back on that now looks suspicious?”

  “Well,” he said, “let me think.” He paused. “I saw him several times while we were negotiating. I call it negotiating. He mainly wanted someone who was an expert on points to talk to. He’d already decided he wanted to donate the points to the museum. He and his wife are—were—real nice people. Ozella’s a great cook.” He paused again. “Damn, this isn’t helping you one bit.”

  “I’m sorry I had to dump this on you,” said Diane.

  “What else could you do? It’s a hard thing to be the bearer of bad news,” he said.

  “Did Roy or Ozella strike you as having secrets? The kind that people would kill for?” asked Diane.

  “I didn’t get that impression at all. Rendell County is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody and their secrets,” Jonas said.

  “I got that impression too,” said Diane.

  “Roy and his wife didn’t like Leland Conrad. I do know that. There was a lot of dustup between their churches. A lot of animosity about Roy deciding to let a phone company put a tower on his land. Silly stuff, I thought. I guess you heard about Conrad’s church. They call it Baptist, but Roy and Ozella said it seemed more like a cult to them. The Barres didn’t like Conrad’s group calling themselves Baptists.”

  “Was there a lot of anger from Sheriff Conrad’s church toward them?” asked Diane.

  “You mean, would they kill over their differences? There’s a lot of historical precedent for such things, but I wouldn’t think that would be true here. I didn’t get the feeling it was that bad,” he said.