jaw clench. He had hoped to find Martha, but LeDonne would do. He hobbled out of the car, slamming the door until the window rattled. He managed to walk up the front steps without much hesitation, and by the time he reached the front door, he had filled his lungs with a deep breath to ward off any expressions of pain. He must be careful not to seem ill. He intended to take over the investigation, and he wanted to give his deputies no chance to use his injuries as an excuse to exclude him from the case. If he showed any weakness, LeDonne, with the best of intentions, was likely to summon Martha and then Alton Banner, and the pair of them would insist upon escorting the sheriff back home until he had recovered more completely from his wound. There was no time for that.
“What are you doing out?” Joe LeDonne had never got the hang of social amenities. Picturing the deputy at a press conference or a meeting of the board of supervisors made the sheriff wince even more than the pain in his gut.
“I feel fine,” Spencer told him. “Consider me back on duty. Begin with telling me why the hell I wasn’t informed about the homicides.”
LeDonne was sitting at his usual desk, with the Pepsi that was probably his dinner sitting to the left of the computer monitor. On the screen was a list of addresses and phone numbers. He was doing phone interviews, tracking witnesses. He didn’t look so great either, Spencer thought. Long hours and no days off were beginning to wear him down.
“We’re doing all we can,” said LeDonne. “The TBI is on it, and we’re doing interviews. That’s about it.”
Spencer nodded. “It was Martha’s call, wasn’t it?
The deputy shrugged. “Something like that. She may be right, you know.”
With a sigh of resignation, LeDonne picked up the case file and handed it to the sheriff. “At least sit down,” he said. “You look awful.”
“I’m fine.” He sat down, though. “Tell me what is being done.”
Step by step, LeDonne took him through the stages of the investigation, from the call reporting the discovery of the bodies to the several lists of possible witnesses being questioned by telephone or in door-to-door canvasing. Spencer nodded as the case began to take shape.
LeDonne paused for breath. After a moment he said, “Is there anything else you would have done?”
The sheriff shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it. I wouldn’t have ignored the possible link between this crime and the Harkryder case, though.”
“We didn’t ignore it. We questioned all of those witnesses we could find-Harmon, the two firemen from Alabama, even poor Willis Blaine’s widow. We came up empty.”
“Don’t you see what you’ve done? A man is set to die this week, and you’ve failed to follow up on new evidence that might save him.”
The deputy was silent for a few moments. Confrontations were all part of a day’s work in law enforcement, but LeDonne hated to have to quarrel with his boss, who was also his friend. They had known each other a long time now. LeDonne had spent his teenage years in Vietnam with an infantry line company. For a dozen years after that, he had drifted from one job to another, missing the excitement of combat and never succeeding in outrunning the rest of the memories. This little county on the shoulder of a Tennessee mountain was as close as he ever got to coming home. Spencer was obviously in no shape to handle the present situation. At last he said, “We don’t see a connection between the two cases. The TBI doesn’t see it, either.”
“You haven’t ruled it out.”
“It’s a coincidence, that’s all.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“Let it go, Spencer,” said Martha from the doorway. She came in, looking more tired than both of them, and perched on the edge of LeDonne’s desk. “I saw your car here,” she told the sheriff. “I was afraid you’d find out about this, but I kept hoping we’d solve it first. You’re in no shape to handle an investigation, and I knew you’d try, because of this Harkryder connection.”
“So there is a connection!”
Martha sighed. “Only in your mind, Spencer. Look, you need to trust us. I just finished the academy course, remember? Things have changed in the twenty years since you arrested Fate Harkryder. Back then the film
“You’re betting a man’s life on this,” said Spencer.
“We’re following a good lead right now, and there’s no connection to the Harkryder case. This case isn’t your answer, Sheriff,” said Martha. She so seldom called him by his title that he looked up in surprise. “Why don’t you let me drive you home now?”
“No!” He was too forceful. The urgency that he had taken such trouble to conceal was now apparent, and he realized that his emotions were too close to the surface, a sign of his tenuous health. “I won’t get any rest anyhow, if I have to worry about this. I know you’ve checked over the Harkryder case, but let me double-check. For my own peace of mind. You go home. I’ll stay here and pull some records.”
“You’re in no shape to be working,” said Martha.
“I can’t help thinking.”
“It’s that damned execution, isn’t it?” said LeDonne.
“Yes.”
“Stay home then. The state wants a county witness, tell them I’ll go.”
“It has to be me. Fate Harkryder is on death row because I put him there-and I may have been wrong.”
“I doubt it,” said LeDonne, as calmly as if they were talking about a bet on an old baseball game.
“Nelse Miller was never happy about this conviction, but I was so sure of myself back then. It was my first big case, and I thought his doubts about it were just sour grapes because he hadn’t been here to solve it.”
“So why didn’t he prove you wrong?”
Spencer shrugged. “I gathered the evidence, that’s all. The district attorney and the jury were the ones who decided Fate Harkryder was guilty. And all the evidence was against him. Blood type, lack of alibi. He even had the dead girl’s jewelry on him when he was arrested.”
“You’ve got me convinced,” said LeDonne. “That’s as good as cases get, except on television.”
“I know. But it feels wrong.”
The deputy smiled. “Well, that’s bound to impress the Supreme Court,” he said.
“I know. I need something besides twenty years’ experience and a hunch. I thought the Trail Murders had the earmarks of serial killings. And they stopped after I arrested the suspect, right? If I had the right man, the killings should have stopped. But now we have this case.”
“Martha told you. Serial killers don’t take twenty-year breaks. More like twenty days. Most of them are under forty anyhow.”
“I know. I said it was a feeling. It doesn’t make sense yet, and I don’t have much to go on. But I want to look at some criminal records.” Spencer handed LeDonne a slip of paper from his telephone scratch pad. “Can we contact the TBI and get them to run these names through their computers?”
“Sure,” said LeDonne. “What are you looking for?”
“I’ll know when I see it. Get me everything they’ve got.”
The deputy handed Spencer the telephone. “You might as well go out to dinner with Martha, then, because this will take a while. I take it you want to check more states than just
