I felt relieved. Something from a neighbor, then—an American Cancer Society fund-raising packet? A sheaf of petitions protesting my lackadaisical lawn care? It wasn’t even sealed; simply held closed by the two thin tabs of the metal clasp, like the delicate wings of a damsel fly. I folded them upward, side by side—wing to wing—and raised the envelope’s flap.
Inside was a quarter-inch sheaf of papers. Photographs. I smiled as soon as I saw the first one: Tyler on the soccer field, his right leg extended in a powerful kick, the ball—distorted by the kick and blurred by speed—streaking out of one corner of the frame. The second one, of Walker, was fun but not remarkable; it showed him behind the wheel of their minivan, leaning out the open window, checking the half inch of clearance between the vehicle and the mailbox. The third one showed Jenny, kneeling in the yard, her face intent as she planted pansies along their front sidewalk.
I took out my cell phone and called Jeff. “Hey, thanks for the pictures,” I said when he answered. “But who was the delivery boy?”
“What pictures?”
“This packet of pictures in my mailbox,” I said. “The boys and Jenny. They’re from you, right?” His silence spoke volumes, and every page of every volume terrified me. “They’re not from you,” I said, needlessly. Cradling the phone with my shoulder, I began leafing through the pictures, and with each picture—each increasingly intimate, invasive, voyeuristic image—I felt my revulsion and panic rising. As I neared the bottom of the sheaf, I came to a series that showed each member of my family in close-up, and on each face was superimposed the crosshairs of a rifle scope. The final four images were identical, with one addition: each face was smeared with what appeared to be blood.
“Dad? Dad!” Faintly, from far away, I heard Jeff shouting, his voice tinny and distorted by the cell phone’s minuscule speaker.
“Y’all keep together, Jeff,” I told him. “Stay close to home. Tell your security detail that Satterfield’s circling. I’ll call Price, tell her we need reinforcements.”
“Shit,” he said. “Shit shit shit.”
My sentiments exactly.
CHAPTER 33
WHEN IT RAINS, SOMETIMES IT ONLY POURS. SOMETIMES, though, you need an ark.
“Doc, it’s Bubba,” Meffert’s voice drawled in my ear. “How’s it going?”
“Been better, Bubba. I just found out that Satterfield’s stalking my family.”
A pause. “Damn, Doc. I’m sorry to hear that. Really, really sorry. You got security?”
“Some. Not enough. I just got off the phone with Agent Price, at the FBI. I’ve asked her to assign more agents to us, but I’m not sure she can. Meanwhile, it feels like we’re swimming around in a fishbowl while a hungry tiger circles, planning his menu.” I desperately wanted to change the subject. “How’re you doing? Better news on your end, I hope?”
“It’s been an interesting twenty-four hours,” he said. “But ‘better’? I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way.”
“Crap,” I said. “Spill it, Bubba. What’s happening?”
“Tilden Stubbs is dead. Single gunshot to the head. Could be suicide, could be homicide.”
“Christ. Time of death?”
“Judging by the stink and the bugs, it’s been a while. The M.E. called in an entomologist to look at the maggots, figure out how long ago they hatched.”
“What’d he say?”
“She, actually. She took some samples back to her lab—some alive and wiggling, some that she put in a kill jar—”
“Sounds like she knows what she’s doing,” I said. “She’ll study the dead ones under a microscope to get a better idea how developed they are, and she’ll let the live ones complete their life cycle and pupate into adult flies. That helps pin down how long ago they hatched from eggs. Generally, it takes about fourteen days to go from egg to fly.”
“Yeah, that’s just about how she explained it, too,” he said. “Based on her first look, she thinks he was killed five to seven days ago.”
I did some quick math. “Right about the time Shiflett was killed. That doesn’t shed much light.”