The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  She stared at the screen. Mark Thresher wasn’t paranoid, she decided. Not about someone stealing from him. And that “someone” knew Piper was looking into the case.

  Piper called the salon and cancelled her hair appointment. Maybe she’d just hack it off herself tonight—after she figured out who sent her the threatening note.

  10

  Ten

  Piper stood in the doorway of the small library branch’s community room. It was packed, and she wouldn’t call all of them “old farts,” though the majority fit the category. Her father was in the group, and he was only fifty-five. There were teenagers, too, eight that she counted. Each hovered behind senior citizens at computers, pointing, talking, assisting with some task or other. After a few moments, the teenagers shifted to other targets and started pointing and talking again.

  Her father was right inside the entrance at a table stacked with books. She knew he didn’t need any lessons on surfing the Internet. Paul Blackwell was computer savvy, and he looked so absorbed in research that he didn’t notice her. Actually, everyone in the room seemed engrossed. Only the teenager in a bright red shirt had nodded an acknowledgment to her.

  “Dad?” Piper went to him first. She spoke in a polite hush. “I didn’t know you were in this club.”

  “I joined last year. Needed another hobby. What are you doing here, Punkin?” Paul sat back. “Did you come here looking for me?”

  “No, Dad, I—” Piper motioned toward Mark the Shark two tables over. He was being tutored by a short, round-faced teen with a side ponytail.

  “Ah, Mr. Conspiracy.” Paul’s voice dropped so she could barely hear him. “Can’t be crop circles. He sold the last piece of his farm three years ago after he thought aliens had visited him. Nothing left to cut circles in. What’s he got going on?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Later? Like you’ll tell me about the bones you tripped over in the park?”

  How had he heard?

  Paul kept his voice library-low. “Drew called me. Told me all about the bones and coins and the buckle and stuff. He likes to keep me up to date. How come I have to hear something like that from him when—”

  Piper let out a hissing breath. She was going to have a long chat with all of her dispatchers about their nose and lips problems. “I’ve been busy, Dad. I—”

  “Certainly don’t answer to me, I know that. But I hate to hear stuff from somebody else, Punkin, and—”

  Piper inwardly bristled. Yes, her father was with the sheriff’s department for more years than she’d been alive, and he remained interested in the goings on. He’d won four terms as sheriff, the final one cut short by his cancer diagnosis. But this was her department now. She didn’t answer to him. She answered to the county commissioners and council.

  “Nang is fixing dinner for us—”

  “—something fancy and foreign. I heard that from Drew, too. Six, right? Dinner is to be served in our kitchen at—”

  So Drew had read the card in the basket, and he no doubt told Teegan. She headed toward Mark. He was discussing something with the cherubic teenager in a t-shirt that read, Music + Cats Make Life Worth Living. A spreadsheet was displayed on the screen in front of them, color-coded and filled with names and numbers. Mark Henry Thresher was at the bottom, all alone like the cap of an inverted pyramid. Piper focused on it while she stood behind the pair, courteously waiting for their conversation to end. The people at nearby tables looked up at her curiously, whispered among themselves, and then went back to their projects.

  “They called her the monkey woman,” Mark was telling the girl. His long index finger touched a name on the screen. “Because she had this box of stuffed animals, most of them monkeys. She had a big stuffed orangutan, her favorite, called it Clementine, and she would dress it in different outfits and bring it to breakfast and place it on the chair next to her. She always sat alone, and she’d lean close and talk to that stuffed orangutan and try to feed it. The nursing home staff was always miffed because they had to pick up Cheerios and bits of scrambled eggs off the floor. She was never so ill-mannered as the fellow that had dementia and sat a few tables over and would shout ‘hello hello hello’ anytime you walked by. Got on my nerves, I tell you, that hello fellow did. Then there was this big guy with a bib who—”

  The teenager smiled as if she was interested, tapped the spreadsheet, and interrupted. “Mr. Thresher, this is how you can list all your ancestors, names, birthdates, this field here for important notes. I can email the file to you or put it on a jump drive or—” The girl’s eyes got wide when she finally noticed Piper. “Oh! Sheriff! Sheriff Blackwell!” Her squeaky voice cut through the surrounding conversations and the room quieted.

  Mark turned and looked up. “Why’d you come here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Piss. I called your dispatcher, said I wasn’t gonna wait for you any longer. I had my attorney appointment and then I had this club. Shouldn’t’ve told her about the club.” To the teenager, “Sheriff Piper Blackwell, she’s here working on an important matter with me. We can’t talk about it in public, you understand. All hush-hush.” To Piper, “Sheriff Blackwell, this is Cassandra Cassidy Blossom Keaton.”

  “Just Cassidy,” she said. “So nice to meet you. I would’ve voted for you, but I wasn’t old enough then. I am now, though.” The girl had a silver hoop in her pierced eyebrow and had a nametag on her shirt that read Cassandra K.

  Piper nodded to her.

  “Cassandra is teaching me how to put together Excel spreadsheets. They’re tricky beasts. See that little square? Looks like it’ll hold ten letters in small print. But you can keep typing in it. Fits a hundred or more, you just can’t see ‘em all unless you—”

  “Maybe we could get together tomorrow, Mr. Thresher.” Piper wanted to get back to the old records and the park—and the threatening email. She noticed that everyone was watching her, whatever projects they’d been working on put on hold. Whispered conversations reminded her of gnats buzzing.

  Mark made a harrumphing sound and added, “You were supposed to come by my house this morning. Called and said you were on your way and—”

  “Something came up.” Piper was about to repeat her suggestion about tomorrow when Mark pushed back from his chair and stood, knocking his twin canes to the floor with a clatter.

  “Was that ‘something’ the bones you found in the park last night?” He’d raised his voice, clearly intending for his comments to carry across the community room. “That skeleton?”

  Piper glanced her father’s way. Paul Blackwell immediately opened another book and avoided her stare. A game of telephone, she thought. From Drew to her father to the genealogy club—and no doubt from here to every suggestion of a town in the county. The bones would be discussed at every diner table.

  But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, she thought. Maybe that might lead to their identification.

  The man sitting next to Mark edged around. “We’ve been wondering about those bones, Sheriff, speculating a bit. Any idea who it is? Find any identification with it? A medical alert bracelet?” She noticed he had one of those medical alert bracelets. “A driver’s license or—”

  “Are you going to call in the FBI?” This came from one of the teenagers, a broad-shouldered boy in a blue t-shirt with the slogan NOSOCIALLIFE on it. He had a cell phone in his hand and was texting on it.

  “What about the Rockport cops?” A librarian standing in the doorway posed this question. “Are you helping Chief Hugh with the case?”

  “I listened to the scanner at lunch—not a word about them bones with the Rockport Police.” This came from an elderly woman with a blue tint to her tightly-curled hair. She tapped a finger on her computer monitor. “Nothing on Facebook either, and I’ve been looking ever since Paul Blackwell told us.”

  “Haven’t found anything about it on the blasted Internet. Maybe I’m not looking at the right sites.” The man wore a US Navy Veteran b
all cap backwards. “I emailed the fellow at the VFW and he didn’t know nothing.”

  “Seems like a tough case for you to handle,” the librarian said. Piper guessed her to be fifty, stern-looking, and with dark eyes that seemed too small for her wide face. “You’ve been sheriff, what, five months?”

  “Four,” Piper idly corrected.

  “I read true crime,” the librarian continued. “Cold cases are hard to solve.”

  Coming here to find Mark had been a bad idea, even if this was only a mile from his house.

  Piper looked toward the exit. She didn’t like that her visit here had turned into a community forum.

  This had been a very bad idea.

  “That serial killer—she solved that one.” The man in the Navy hat.

  “But she had Gretchen arrested!” The blue-haired woman. “Shame on her. Paul Blackwell would never have arrested Gretchen. Putting an old woman in jail just ‘cause she runs into—”

  Ah, Gretchen the Mailbox Mauler. Word had spread about that, too. Never again show up at the old fart’s club.

  “She pinched Sandy Schmidt today, too.” The white-bearded man. “I feel sorry for him. Having trouble with his wife.”

  “Heard that on the scanner about Sandy.” This from a reed-thin woman wearing a stocking cap. Her eyes looked sunken and Piper wondered if she was undergoing chemotherapy. “Pulled his drunken ass down off his brother-in-law’s tractor and then pushed the tractor into the ditch for good measure. Bet the brother-in-law sues Sheriff Blackwell. Tractors are damn expensive.”

  Oh. Dear. God.

  Piper felt her stomach twist.

  This wasn’t the old fart’s club. This was the Busybodies of Spencer County Club.

  She watched some of the members pull out cell phones and text. What the hell was she doing here? She saw her father lean closer to the pages.

  “The bones, Sheriff Blackwell. What about the bones?” This from Cassidy. The teenager locked her wide eyes with Piper. “Tell us about the bones! It’s exciting!”

  “Yeah, Sheriff. What do you know? You tripped over the skull, right?” This from NOSOCIALLIFE. He’d put his phone away.

  “How many bones?” Cassidy.

  NOSOCIALLIFE. “Did the skull have a bullet hole in it?”

  “It was an accident, finding the bones?” Blue-haired. “Really? An accident?”

  “Wasn’t no accident,” Mark said. “God was responsible. God tripped her.”

  “What did you do with the bones?” NOSOCIALLIFE.

  “Enough!” Piper felt a headache blossoming and swore she could hear her heart. Her stomach twisted tighter still. She would never seek a second term. She would never ever revisit the old fart’s club. Fort Campbell was looking like an oasis in the sea of sharp wagging tongues.

  “It’s big news, a skeleton on the bluff,” the librarian put in. “Hard not to talk about it.”

  “All right.” Piper decided to give in and provide a little information—which might, maybe, stop wild, incorrect stories from spreading throughout the entire county. Maybe she could turn this to her advantage. Maybe, with luck, it might indeed help identify the skeleton. “All right. Let’s talk about the bones.”

  The sudden resulting silence was eerie in comparison to the minutes before.

  “I found the bones late last night when I walked through the park. I’d been near the edge, looking down on the river. I turned and—”

  “Paul already told us that part.” The white-bearded man.

  “What were you doing in the park so late? Out in the rain?” This from the old man next to Mark. He had a name tag—Gary Frank. She realized most of the people in the room had name tags. But not her father. But then everyone knew Paul Blackwell. “What were you doing on the bluff—”

  That beautiful eerie silence felt so far away.

  Piper blew out a long breath and held up her hands as if in surrender. “I like the park. I like to walk in the park. I’m going back to the park when I leave here. I was in the park last night and found the bones.”

  “So, them bones, Sheriff?” The blue-haired woman again. Her name tag read Sylvia D. “Just how did you find them? Did you really trip on the skull? Or were you digging for—”

  “I wasn’t digging for anything. I found them by accident. The power went out in town while I was going for a walk—”

  “In the rain?” Gary Frank.

  “I like to walk in the rain.”

  “So do I.” Sylvia D. “But I don’t buy you walking in the rain late at night. From what your dad said, the park was closed.”

  “The department often patrols parks after hours.” That was true. It contributed to the alcohol-related arrests made. “I couldn’t see well,” Piper went on. That was also true. “I was headed back to my car when I tripped. I thought it was a root I’d caught my foot on. It turned out to be a bone. All the rain had washed away enough dirt to expose them. We got a crew out and started working.”

  “Wow. Just like an episode of Law & Order,” said Cassidy.

  “Where are you going to bury them?” Gary Frank. “You’re going to, right?”

  “Where are the bones now, Sheriff?” NOSOCIALLIFE. His nametag read Zeke the Geek.

  “The skeleton is in Evansville, with the coroner. We’re running tests to—”

  “—determine cause of death,” Sylvia D supplied. “I used to dispatch for Rockport police. I know stuff. That’s what they’re doing right? Gotta be a murder.”

  “Of course its murder,” a doughy-faced man in a flannel shirt said. “They found a gun under the bones. Paul told us about the gun.”

  “What gun?” Gary Frank. “I must not have been paying attention.”

  Piper felt dizzy and turned back to her father—where her father had been sitting. He was gone. Teegan had mentioned a few more things had been found, but the Goth dispatcher said she hadn’t yet looked at them. If Teegan had known about a gun, she would have told Piper. That meant Drew again. Drew had told her father a gun was found before she’d been told. She took a deep breath.

  “Maybe they’re really, really, really old bones, Sheriff,” Cassidy speculated. “I read in local history class about land grabbers purchasing plots a few hundred years ago. Daniel Grass was the first in 1807. He was a justice of the peace who built a cabin near Hanging Rock. That might be right near where the bones were on the bluff, I’d bet. I wrote an essay about him. And William Berry moved there a year later and started a settlement. It could be from that time. First settlers’ bones. That’d be four shades of awesome, wouldn’t it? Like something you’d watch on the History Channel. A first settler killed in a gunfight.”

  “Looking for a front page story again, the sheriff is.” Sylvia D.

  The voices became a confusing susurrus that swirled around her, and she could only pick out “bones,” “coins,” “big mystery,” “gun,” and several mentions of “Paul Blackwell.” Maybe the old farts thought her dad would do a better job working the cold case. He’d apparently keep them apprised of what was going on, regulations or no.

  She nearly walked out, but instead took charge. “Maybe your club could help me.” Piper more closely scanned the room. There were roughly two dozen computers—a mix of desktops and laptops, the latter probably belonging to the senior citizens sitting in front of them, the desktops likely the library’s. People sans computers had iPads and tablets. Only a few were going old school with just books and notebooks in front of them.

  “How could we help?” Gary Frank.

  “I’d do anything to help.” Zeke the Geek.

  “I’m in,” said Cassidy.

  “Me, too.” Man in the Navy cap.

  Spencer County covered a shade more than four hundred square miles. Four hundred and ten, actually, but roughly a dozen was water. There were seven hundred and thirty-eight miles of county roads and one hundred and forty-seven highway miles. And, somehow, despite the place being a rural as Hooterville, Piper realized that news traveled like quicksilv
er from one edge to the other. She figured since the old farts club was likely to learn everything she did about the bones anyway, maybe they could help.

  “We believe the bones belong to a boy roughly nine years old, who was right handed. He might not be from around here. It’s possible he was originally from Arizona. We have a piece of evidence with an Arizona link.”

  “The belt buckle,” Sylvia D said. “Your dad told us about the Arizona belt buckle.”

  “Yeah, there was a belt buckle. The boy might have come from Arizona. If instead the boy was from around here, he likely knew someone from Arizona, had been given the buckle.”

  “I’ll help you, Sheriff!” Sylvia D chirped.

  “I’ll lend a hand,” said a jug-faced man wearing a Colts cap. “I’ve been doing genealogy for twenty years. I know every family in the county.”

  Mark the Shark grumbled and sat again, bending down to retrieve his canes.

  The whispered conversations that ensued sounded like a strong breeze cutting through a gap in a doorway. But they ended when Piper nodded to NOSOCIALLIFE.

  “What would you like us to do?” Zeke the Geek asked. He’d had his hand raised. “You want us to use our genealogy resources, right?”

  “Right. Look through your own family’s backgrounds. You’re already researching ancestors because of this club. See if anyone was missing, say forty to sixty years ago. That range, roughly. A boy. You come across something like that, a missing relative, please contact the department.” She reached into her pocket, where she kept business cards. “I don’t have quite enough to go around.” Piper handed them to Cassidy, who started passing them out. “We also have a webpage, and you can email us there if you come up with any suggestions. That’s all I have on the bones right now. Honest.”

  Mark tugged on her sleeve. With the conversations buzzing again, she had to strain to hear him. “Why’d you have to come here looking for me? Now these folks are all gonna wonder what I’ve got going on and—”

  “They’re not all gonna wonder anything about you, Mr. Thresher.”