The Hidden

“Yeah, and a bagel and cereal or something. I missed the breakfast part of our bed-and-breakfast stay, and I work much better when I’m well fed.”


“I can make omelets if you want. Pancakes, French toast—whatever.”

“Something quick and easy,” Meg said.

“Okay, bagels,” Scarlet agreed, heading into the kitchen. “We can eat, then head downstairs. I read the journals when I first started here, but I wasn’t looking for anything specific, and I did some skimming. It will be interesting to go back and try to really understand what was going on before he was killed.” She reached into the bread box for the bagels and popped a couple into the toaster.

Meg poured coffee for them and asked, “What do you think happened to the statue of Jillian?”

Scarlet shrugged. “Who knows? Over the years, things have been lost, broken, even stolen. If Jillian’s statue was even half as well done as Nathan’s, someone might have decided it was worth real money and taken it. I asked Ben and he said he knew her father had it made, but he’d never seen it. It was already gone the first time he came out here years ago.”

“I’m going to keep going with Nathan’s Civil War diary. Maybe something in it will spark an idea with something you’re reading.”

The bagels popped.

“Coffee, bagels and the Civil War. Agent Murray, you do know how to lead an exciting life.”

“Not to worry, Scarlet. I’ve come to love the quiet. Trust me. I don’t mind leaving the dead to others.”

Scarlet winced. She hadn’t meant to sound callous.

Another woman was dead.

“Let’s hope we can find something in those journals,” she said.

“I won’t be at all surprised,” Meg said. “The dead speak in many ways.”

*

Lieutenant Gray met them outside the crime-scene tape. “Just to warn you,” he said, “some victims look almost as if they’re asleep. Not this one. Caught her in the face—right in the face—as well as in the gut, just like he shot Candace Parker. We can’t find any shells or cartridges, so he picked up after himself.”

“My gut says she’ll turn out to be local and that it’s the same killer,” Diego said. “The killer didn’t know Candace Parker, so he didn’t care whether we saw her face or not. I think not only did he know this woman, so he didn’t want to see her face after she was dead, lots of people around here know her, so he didn’t want her recognized right away, in case that led us right to him.”

“What are you, one of those profiler guys? Gotta tell you, I don’t put a lot of stock in that,” Gray said.

The man really did look like a tired hound dog, Diego thought. It was hard to imagine that he and Scarlet were related, even as distantly as a hundred and fifty years ago.

“I’m not a profiler, but every agent studies psychology at the academy,” Diego said. “And I’m not saying I know everything about our killer, much less his victim. But I do think we’ll discover that this woman is local.”

He ducked under the crime-scene tape. The medical examiner was by the body, hunched down with his back to them and his kit at his side, swabbing blood.

Dried leaves crunched under Diego’s feet as he approached, and the ME looked up. Diego was pleased to see it was Dr. Robert E. Fuller.

“Hey,” Fuller said. “Gray told me you were coming. I couldn’t tell how he felt about it. The man’s mind seemed to be in something of a gray zone.”