a shit if it does leave the office empty. Call Shirley and tell her to get her fat ass out of bed and come answer the phone. Get over here, now. Both of you, and I mean now.” There was another short pause. “No, it’s not about the skeleton in the tree. It’s something else. Now get over here.”
He came back to the steps and sat down next to Diane. “We’ll have to wait for them to come. I don’t want to leave the house unguarded. When they get here, I’ll take you to get your car. While we wait, you want to tell me the story about the skeleton?”
Diane explained about the tree falling in the rain and the human skeleton slamming against her windshield. She told him about the man grabbing her.
“That sounds like Slick Massey,” he said. “He’s usually harmless. Lives in that run-down house with his girlfriend. Raises huntin’ dogs. Walker hounds, I think.”
Diane showed him her scratched arm. “This happened when I was trying to get out of his grasp,” she said.
“Damn, that looks sore. I’ll have a talk with him. But I have to tell you, I don’t know about a skeleton in a tree. That just sounds crazy. Are you sure?”
“I’m a forensic anthropologist,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, but. . Anyway, we’ll see what ol’ Slick has to say for himself.”
Diane told him about the trek through the woods and about meeting the stranger. Deputy Conrad’s attention perked up.
“There’s some stranger running around in the woods, taking pictures, you say?”
“He said he was camping in the national forest. I think he was the one who called you. I asked him to. He offered to take me to the sheriff, but I declined.”
“That was probably wise. So, do you think this guy could have been the killer?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He was helpful. Gave me this rain gear,” she said, indicating the poncho. “He took my jacket to try to fool the dogs. He knew they were Walker hounds. He said his uncle raised them. He said he recognized the voices.”
“They do have a twang to their bark, that’s for sure,” he said.
When the other deputies drove up, Deputy Conrad stood up to meet them. Two men got out of a Jeep that looked much like Conrad’s. He introduced them as Jason and Bob. Jason was a slender man and, although he looked to be in his mid-twenties, had severely thinning hair. Bob, older by ten or fifteen years, had a thick head of dark hair, was cadaverously thin, and had a slight kyphosis of the spine that gave him a permanent slouch. Diane wondered if his hair was a wig.
“What’s this about, Travis?” asked Jason.
“Roy and his wife’s been murdered,” said Conrad.
“What? Murdered? No. We just saw him. You and me, at the Waffle House, yesterday.”
Bob looked over at the house. “Murdered? Here? The two of them?”
“Look, I want the two of you to guard the house until I get back. I’m taking Miss Fallon to get her car and find out what’s up with Slick Massey,” said Deputy Conrad.
“You want us to guard the house?” said Bob. “From what?”
“Trespassers, murderers, raccoons-anything. We don’t want anybody coming in. We especially don’t want Roy Jr. to decide to pay his folks a midnight visit and find them. Now do what I say. And don’t you go sitting in their den watching TV while they’re sitting at the dining room table with their throats cut,” said Conrad.
“We wouldn’t do that,” said Jason, looking hurt.
“Throats cut?” said Bob. “Somebody’s done cut their throats? I don’t know, Travis. What if they come back?” Bob put a hand to his own throat.
“Then you arrest the son of a bitch. It’s what you get paid for. I’ll be back in a little bit.” Travis Conrad turned to Diane. “Now let’s go see Slick Massey.”
Chapter 6
Diane shuddered at the thought of facing Slick Massey again. She tried to calm herself as she and Deputy Conrad walked to his Jeep and climbed in. Diane looked back at the Barre house. She saw the deputies sitting on the porch with flashlights trained out to the front yard. She wanted to ask Conrad if his deputies would be okay there by themselves, but thought better of it. Instead, she approached another, more controversial topic.
“You know,” she began, “this is the kind of crime the Georgia Bureau of Investigation can be a big help with.”
“We’re gonna have to call the GBI. Daddy’s gonna balk, but we ain’t had no killings like this. We’ve had wife killings and bar killings-the kind of homicide you don’t have to work up a sweat to solve-the kind where we know the guy who did it and where to find him.” He shook his head. “But this is the kind of thing you see on crime shows. We just ain’t had nothing like this here. You saw Jason and Bob. They’re good guys and they mean well, but. .” He shook his head. “Bob mainly does the paperwork, and Jason, well, he’s Jason.”
He paused and Diane didn’t say anything-relieved that he was open to getting outside help. She wanted the Barres’ murderer caught, and she didn’t think the current constabulary here in Rendell County had the know-how to go about finding the killer, unless he left a trail of blood they could follow.
“Daddy won’t go to the Rosewood Crime Lab,” he continued. “He’d go to Tennessee for help before he’d ask Rosewood or Atlanta for any. Daddy thinks Atlanta is Satan and Rosewood is one of its disciples.”
“I’m sorry we’ve made such a bad impression,” said Diane.
Deputy Conrad chuckled. “Don’t take it personally. It’s just the way people think here.” He sighed. “Daddy thinks he knows everybody in the county-knows what they’re like. He knows his generation, but he don’t know young people or people that’s moved into the county. None of them older folks do. Brother Sam-he’s the preacher over at Golgotha Baptist-he’s dead set against getting a cell phone tower in the county, and he keeps his congregation all riled up about it, so we got no cell service. Lots of them deacons from the churches got theirselves elected to the county board, and they do their earnest best to tell the rest of us what to do. Lucky for us, a lot of the Baptists, Primitive Baptists, and the Pentecostals don’t agree among themselves, so the county board don’t get much done but arguing.” He laughed again. “If the county’s ever going to get any businesses moving in, we’re gonna have to get ourselves a cell tower, for starters, and do something about these roads. Can’t nobody have a decent car around here.”
“They are hard to drive on in the rain,” said Diane, remembering her trip down the road earlier. She appreciated that when Deputy Conrad talked, he kept his eyes on the road.
“One of the cell phone companies offered Roy Barre a lot of money to put a tower up on one of his mountains.”
“Was he considering it?” asked Diane.
“I think he was. He talked like he was. Roy wasn’t as against some of the modern stuff like the rest of the older folks around here. I swear, if they weren’t addicted to
“Would any of them be angry enough at Roy Barre over the cell phone tower to kill him and his wife?” asked Diane.
“You mean, thinking they figured they were killing the devil’s disciple and doing a good deed? I don’t think so,” he said. “They aren’t crazy or anything-just trying to keep the sins of Atlanta out of our little mountains. Most people here like to fuss, but they don’t carry it beyond that. Our families have known each other forever around here-at least the old families. My great-granddaddy and Roy’s granddaddy were good friends. Same with a lot of families. We’ve all been friends and enemies and friends again a long time, but we’ve never killed nobody over anything.”
Diane looked out the window at the dark silhouettes of trees as the Jeep slid and swerved its way down the muddy mountain road. She felt as if she were riding in a stagecoach. She wondered about a place that had insulated itself the way this one had-families who knew one another for generations, with boundaries to the outside world maintained by mountains, family ties, and inhospitable dirt roads. Of course, there were changes over the years.
