“Hell, yes. I poked through what was left of that ole boy.”
“Which was?”
“I've seen my share of bear bait, but Tramper was the worst. Those little bastards tore the bejeezus out of him. Carried his head clean off.”
“The skull was not recovered?”
“No.”
“How did you ID him?”
“Wife recognized the rifle and clothing.”
I found the Reverend Luke Bowman gathering fallen branches in his shadowy front yard. Save for the substitution of a black windbreaker, he was dressed exactly as on our previous meetings.
Bowman watched me pull next to his pickup, added his armful to a pile beside the drive, and approached my car. We spoke through the open window.
“Good morning, Miss Temperance.”
“Good morning. Beautiful day for yard work.”
“Yes, ma'am, it is.” Fragments of bark and dry leaves clung to his jacket.
“Could I ask you something, Reverend Mr. Bowman?”
“Of course.”
“How old was Edna Farrell when she died?”
“I believe Sister Farrell was just shy of eighty.”
“Do you remember a man named Tucker Adams?”
His eyes narrowed, and the tip of his tongue slid across his upper lip.
“Adams was elderly, died in 1943,” I prompted.
The tongue disappeared and a gnarled finger sighted on me. “I surely do. I was ten years old when that old fellow wandered off from his farm. I helped search for him. Brother Adams was blind and half deaf, so the whole community pitched in.”
“How did Adams die?”
“Everyone assumed he just died in the woods. We never found him.”
“But his grave is in the cemetery on Schoolhouse Hill.”
“No one's buried there. Sister Adams put the headstone up a couple years after her husband went missing.”
“Thank you. You've been very helpful.”
“I see the boys got your car to running.”
“Yes.”
“Hope they didn't charge too much.”
“No, sir. It seemed fair.”
I pulled into the sheriff 's department lot directly behind Lucy Crowe. She parked her cruiser, then waited with hands on hips as I turned off the engine and retrieved my briefcase. Her face looked drawn and cheerless.
“Rough morning?”
“Some morons stole a golf cart from the country club, left it a mile up Conleys Creek Road. Two seven-year- olds found the thing and ran it into a tree. One's got a broken collarbone, the other a concussion.”
“Teenagers?”
“Probably.”
We spoke as we walked.
“Anything new on the Hobbs murder?”
“One of my deputies was working security Sunday morning. He remembers seeing Hobbs enter the morgue around eight, remembers you. The computer shows she checked the foot out at nine-fifteen, back in at two.”
“She kept it that long after talking to me?”
“Apparently.”
We climbed the steps and were buzzed through the outside door, then again through a barred prison gate. I followed Crowe down a corridor and across an outer workroom to her office.
“Hobbs signed out of the morgue at three-ten. A guy from Bryson City PD was working the afternoon shift. He doesn't recall seeing her leave.”
“What about the surveillance camera?”
“This is beautiful.”
Crowe unclipped a radio from her belt, placed it on a cabinet, and dropped into her chair. I took one of those opposite the desk.
“The thing went out around two Sunday afternoon, stayed down until eleven Monday morning.”
