Simon, visibly relieved, stuck his nose out of his nest and regarded Harry with his bright eyes. Then he spoke to Mrs. Murphy.“I’m glad she’s not going to kill me.”
“Harry doesn’t kill animals.”
“She goes fox hunting,” came the stout reply.
As Harry returned to dropping the hay down to the horses, the cat and the possum discussed this.
“Simon, they only kill the old foxes or the sick ones. Healthy ones are too smart to get caught.”
“What about that fox last year that ran into Posy Dent’s garage? He was young.”
“And that exception proves the rule. He was dumb.” Mrs. Murphy laughed.“I feel about foxes the way you feel about raccoons. Well, Harry’s going back down, so I’ll follow her. Now that she knows where you live she’ll probably want to talk to you. She’s like that, so try and be nice to her. She’s a good egg. She put stuff on your scratches.”
Simon thought about it.“I’ll try.”
“Good.” Mrs. Murphy scampered down the ladder.
As she and Tucker trotted back to the house for breakfast the cat told the dog about the earring. The more they talked, the more questions they raised. Neither animal was sure the earring was important to the case but if Simon found it in a suspicious place, its value couldn’t be overlooked. All this time they’d assumed the killer was a man but it could be a woman. The body was cut up and stashed in different places. The parts weren’t heavy by themselves. As to dragging Ben Seifert into the tunnel, that would be hard, but maybe the two deaths weren’t connected.
Mrs. Murphy stopped.“Tucker, maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the killer is a man but he’s killing for a woman.”
“Getting rid of competitors?”
“Could be. Or maybe she’s directing him—maybe she’s the brains behind the brawn. I wish we could get Mom to see how important that earring is, but she doesn’t know where it came from and we can’t tell her.”
“Murphy, what if we took it from Simon and put it where he found it?”
“Even if he’d part with it, how are we going to get her over there?”
Inside now, they waited for their breakfasts.
Tucker thought of something:“What if a man is killing for a woman, killing to keep her? What if he knows something she doesn’t?”
Mrs. Murphy leaned her head on Tucker’s shoulder for a moment.“I hope we can find out, because I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
37
Not only had Larry Johnson taken the precaution of sending tissue samples to Richmond, he wisely kept the head of the unidentified corpse rather than turning it over to the sheriff. After contacting a forensics expert, the elderly doctor sent the head to a reconstruction team in Washington, D.C. Since Crozet did not have a potter’s field, a burial ground for the indigent, the Reverend Jones secured a burial plot in a commercial cemetery on Route 29 in Charlottesville. When he asked his congregation for contributions they were forthcoming, and to his pleasant surprise, the Sanburnes, the Hamiltons, and Blair Bainbridge made up the balance. So the unknown man was put to rest under a nameless but numbered brass marker.
Larry never dreamed he would have a second corpse on his hands. Ben’s family arranged for interment in the Seifert vault, but Cabell Hall handled all the funeral details, which was a tremendous help to the distraught couple. Larry’s examination determined that Ben had been strangled with a rope and that death had occurred approximately three days before discovery. The temperature fluctuated so much between day and night, he felt he could not pinpoint the exact time of death based on the condition of the corpse. Also, the animal damage added to the difficulty. Larry insisted on sparing Ben’s mother and father the ordeal of identifying the corpse. He knew Ben; that was identification enough. For once, Rick Shaw agreed with him and relented.
Rick did put up a fight about shipping off the head of the original victim. He was loath to part with this one piece of evidence. Damaged as the head was, it was his only hope. Someone had to have known the victim. Larry patiently showed him the work of the reconstructive artists. Cynthia Cooper helped, too, as she was impressed with what could be done.
After carefully studying the head in its present condition, the team would strip the skull of the remaining flesh and then build a new face, teeth, hair, everything. Drawings would be made to assist in the rebuilding. Once complete, drawings and photographs of the head would be sent to Rick Shaw. They would also be sent to other police stations and sheriff’s offices. Long shots do come in. Someone, somewhere, might identify the face.
Since a second murder had followed closely on the heels of the first, Larry Johnson called Washington and asked them to hurry.
This they did. Rick Shaw walked into the post office with a large white envelope in his hand.
“Sheriff, want me to weigh that?” Harry offered.
“No. This just arrived Federal Express.” Rick pulled out the photograph and slid it over the counter to Harry. “This is a reconstruction of the head of the dismembered victim. Looks like an all right guy, wouldn’t you say?”
Harry stared at the photograph. The face was pleasant, not handsome but attractive. Sandy hair, combed to one side, gave the face a clean-cut appearance. The man had a prominent, jutting chin.“He could be anybody.”
“Put it on the wall. Let’s hope somebody here recognizes him. Triggers a memory.”
“Or a mistake.”
“Harry, you’ll know before I do.” Rick tapped the counter twice. It was his way of saying “Be careful.”
She pinned the photograph by the counter. No one could miss it. Mrs. Murphy stared at it. The man was no one she knew, and she saw people from a vastly different angle than did Harry.
Brookie and Danny Tucker stopped by after school. Harry explained to them who the photograph was. Danny couldn’t believe that it was a likeness of the head he’d plucked out of his pumpkin. The photographed head lacked a beard, which made the man appear younger.
Mim came in later. She also studied the photograph.“Don’t you think this will upset people?”
“Better upset than dead.”
Those ice-blue eyes peered into Harry’s own. “You think we’ve got a serial killer on the loose? That’s jumping to conclusions.Anything could have happened to this man.” A long, frosted fingernail pointed at the bland face. “How do we know he wasn’t killed in some sort of bizarre sexual episode? A homeless person, no one to care, he’s offered a meal and a shower. Who’s to know?”
How interesting that a sliver of Mim’s fantasies was showing. Harry replied, “I can’t think of one woman who would go to bed with a man and then kill him and cut him up.”
“Insects do it all the time.”
“We’re mammals.”
“And poor excuses at that.” Tucker chuckled.
Mim went on.“Maybe it was a group of people.”
“In my wildest imaginings I can’t think of any group here in town that would do that. Wife swapping, yes. Sex murders, no.”
Mim’s eyes brightened. “Wife swapping? What do you know that I don’t?”
“The postmistress knows everything in a small town,” Harry teased.
“Not everything or you’d know who the killer is. I still think it’s some group thing and Ben was in on it. Or it was about money. But I spoke with Cabell Hall today and he’s had a team scouring the books, just going over them with a fine-tooth comb, and everything is in order. Very, very strange.”
BoomBoom, Fair, Fitz-Gilbert, and Little Marilyn crowded in at once. They, too, examined the photo.
“Makes me nauseated to think about that.” BoomBoom held her stomach. “I wasn’t right for days. I thought I’d seen everything when my husband was killed.”
Fair put his arm around her.“I wonder what Kelly would have made of this?”
“He would have found humor in it somewhere.” Little Marilyn had liked BoomBoom’s deceased husband.
Fitz-Gilbert nearly put his nose on the photograph.“Isn’t it something what these guys can do? Imagine putting together a face, given the condition of that head. It’s just amazing. He looks better than he did in life, I bet.”