A mannequin dressed as the Harvest Man.
“No. Jeremy was pushing for me to hang out, but you’ll be okay with your friends, right?” When she nodded, he went on. “I think I’ll walk in a different direction today. Or maybe I’ll go back to the cemetery. I won’t go off the deep end,” he promised. “When should I come back for you?”
“Say noon? We grab some lunch, or find out what Jeremy is up to and go from there.”
“Sounds good. You have my cell number, right?”
“I do. You just gave it to me at breakfast, remember? And you have mine.”
He smiled, waved to her and started off down the street, his hands shoved into the pockets of his suede jacket.
Rowenna headed on into the museum. An older couple was paying for admission, and two young women were already starting through. June Eagle was at the desk.
“Hey,” she said cheerfully to Rowenna after she had sent the couple on their way.
“Hey. If you don’t mind, may I have the key to the reading room?” Rowenna asked her.
June shook her head, grinning. “No need. Dan is already in there. He wanted to get an early start.”
“Thanks, June.”
June nodded and turned her attention back to the latest issue of People.
Rowenna quickly bypassed the people who were visiting the exhibits and kept going toward the section on the Harvest Man. Though she knew that they were only mannequins, she found herself pausing at the display dedicated to the four real-life murderers who had come after the legend.
They were just mannequins, but there was…something about all four of them….
They had been designed and manufactured by the same company, of course, but it was more than that. They were positioned differently, and dressed in the appropriate period clothing, so what was it…?
The faces, she thought.
They were all lean and narrow. It was as if they had been specifically designed to wear a look of cold, calculating ruthlessness.
She felt a chill just looking at them, and she hurried on, anxious to reach the reading room and another living, breathing human being.
Daniel was sitting back, fingers laced behind his head, books open in front of him. Anyone else, she thought, would have had his feet up on the desk.
“So what have you found?” she asked, after a quick hello.
He shoved one of the books toward her. “Read about our boy Hank Brisbin.”
She sat down across from him and looked at the page he had indicated, then leafed back. The book had been written in 1959, she saw, by Sam Jackman, professor of law, Harvard University.
“Impressive,” she said.
Daniel leaned forward. “Back then, it wasn’t as hard as it is now to convince a jury to see beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt. There was no physical evidence connecting the man to the murders that occurred. They found the girls’ bodies rotted down to nothing but bone, picked clean by crows, and lying in the fields near scarecrows. Brisbin lived out that way in a farmhouse that has since been demolished. The night he was hanged, the townspeople burned it to the ground.”
Rowenna glanced over the text. Jackman said that it had been difficult to piece the story together, because so many of the references to it in the records had been excised. Apparently Brisbin had been arrested because he’d been seen with the last of the three girls to die and because he had “behaved suspiciously.” He was indicted, and the case went to a jury. He was condemned, with a comment by the jury foreman that the verdict had been unanimous.
Still, if there had been any lingering question in anyone’s mind as to his innocence, it had been eliminated by his gallows speech.
Rowenna looked up at Daniel when she finished reading.
“Okay,” he said, and pushed two more books toward her. “Now check this guy out. Victor Milton. Once again, you’ve got bodies found in a cornfield. And look at this reference to the old records. ‘She was found by the stake where should have stood a scarecrow.’” He sat back again. “I think these guys were imitating the Harvest Man, and our guy is imitating them.”
“Dan, this can’t just be coincidence—the police need to know this,” Rowenna said.
“I’ve told Joe. He agrees that we have someone on our hands who’s imitating the past, bringing the legend to life. Whether it’s because he really thinks he’s the reincarnation of these men, the tool of the Devil and the Harvest Man reborn, or whether he’s just some clever psycho trying to hide his real motivations behind a historical mask, he doesn’t know yet. Anyway, I’ve marked what I found for you.”
“Thanks.”
He stood up. “I’m going to spell June so she can take a coffee break. If you need me, I’ll be at the desk.”
“Thanks.”