Murphy’s farm was crawling with crime scene techs dusting for fingerprints, taking plaster tire impressions, probing the shallow grave from which they’d exhumed two decaying heads, and searching the grass at the bottom of the hill for ejected cartridges left by the warning shots Pender had fired to scare away the vultures yesterday.
Skip and Pender followed Laurel Baldinger, the sheriff’s crime scene analyst, out of the glaring daylight into the barn, where the dim light was pierced by glowing shafts of morning sunlight angling in through pinholes in the roof. Having been blindfolded during his entire stay, Skip had never actually seen the inside of the barn, but it felt eerily familiar to him all the same, as if he’d seen it in a dream.
“Do you have any idea how long Sweet might have been holed up in here?” Pender asked the CSA.
“We found a receipt from a Seven-Eleven near Marshall City dated April seventeenth.”
“That was the day the hospital blew up. He must have come directly here.”
“You mean they, plural,” she corrected him. “Almost everywhere we’re dusting, we’re finding two distinct sets of latents.”
“Couldn’t the second set have been the other victim’s, the one Skip here was tied to?”
Baldinger shook her head. “Both sets of prints are all over the barn and the van, inside and out. So whoever it was obviously had free run of the entire place. To me, that says accomplice, not victim.”
Pender turned to Skip. “Looks like we need to have another chat with Dr. Gallagher,” he said, then turned back to the analyst. “I was told you’d found something you wanted me to take a look at.”
“Yes, sir.” She handed Pender a small black pocket diary. “The reason I called you is, we found your name in it.”
Pender read the cover aloud. “1995 Pocket Pal, courtesy of your Pfizer Sales Representative, Robert F. Peterson, 2500 Mission Street, Santa Cruz, California.” He opened the book, squinted exaggeratedly, brought it up to within an inch of his nose, then held it out at arm’s length before giving up. “If you can read this, your eyes are better than mine.”
“Oh, sorry. Here.” Baldinger handed him her own round, thick-lensed magnifying glass, which had a raised rectangular inset of even higher magnifying power. It took a little experimenting, but after a few tries, he was able to make out the first sentence. “On the morning my father telephoned from Marshall City to announce that the FBI was closing in, I was in the trailer watching Teddy, my stepmother, getting dressed.…”