Page 61 of Counter Attack

“None,” Mark said, his tone clipped. “Turns out they don’t exist.”

Nathan frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Tom Weaver.”

Mark turned to him. “I know. When I asked him, his face got red and he stammered all over the place and finally said he hadn’t gotten around to checking them out.” Mark chuckled. “The Norman woman was nice-looking, and I figure she batted her eyelashes at him a time or two and he didn’t care if she had references.”

“Still doesn’t sound like him,” Nathan said.

“I heard Weaver and his wife were having problems,” Harvey said. Until now, he’d been quiet.

While Alex had known Tom Weaver and his wife before she left Pearl Springs, she’d never paid them much attention, nor was she looking at either of them as the murderer. She turned to her CSI team. “What do you have to report?”

“Basically nothing,” Dylan said. “The killer was like a ghost. Lots of fingerprints to identify. The ones I’ve processed belong to either Weaver or the kids who hung out there. I’m sure some of them will be the victim’s.”

“Any other prints? Shoe, palm...”

“No. Like I reported earlier, the victim had mopped the whole area so there wasn’t any dust to leave shoe prints. We did find a few tiny clumps of dirt, but they matched the mud on Mary Beth Meyers’s shoes.”

“Gina Norman appeared to be in the process of cleaning inside the kitchen cabinets to stock them,” Taylor said.

“No hairs or unusual fibers?” Nathan asked.

Taylor shook her head. “We vacuumed the whole house, and except for the little bit of mud on the porch and in the living room, nothing.”

Alex shifted her gaze to Mark. “Did any of the neighbors see anything?”

“Sorry, but no. The house where the crime occurred is the last house on that side of the dead-end street. The house next door is vacant, and the people across the street were at work. We even interviewed Mrs. Holcomb. Thank goodness her sitter was there.”

Alex looked from Mark to Nathan. “Who is Mrs. Holcomb?”

Mark grinned. “You can explain that one, Chief.”

Nathan scratched his jaw. “She’s a tiny little woman in her nineties who stays up most of the night watching for burglars. Most nights we get a call requesting we check out her house or the house next door or across the street. Never is anyone trying to break in, and once the officer assures Mrs. Holcomb of that, she always invites them in for hot tea and cookies and won’t take no for an answer.”

“And you send an officer every night?”

“Sure. Unless we have a hotspot somewhere. She’s lonely, and it’s good PR—she tells every person she knows how great we are, and that my officers are special.”

Alex made sure her mouth didn’t drop open again, but what Nathan just described would never happen in Chattanooga.Or any other city she’d lived in. But what amazed her even more was how the story touched her heart. “Does that ever happen here, at the sheriff’s department?”

Taylor laughed. “Oh yeah, we have our Mrs. Holcombs.”

“Pete Wooley,” Dylan chimed in.

“And don’t forget about Ms. Esther. She usually calls around four thirty. That’s when her husband normally came home from the hardware store every day,” Harvey said.

“Esther Jamison?” Alex asked. When all three of them nodded, she frowned. “I didn’t know her husband died. Who’s running Jamison Hardware now?”

“Their grandson,” Nathan said.

“Dickie Jamison?”

“You sound surprised.” Nathan cleared his throat. “Oh, and he goes by Richard now.”

Dickie, now Richard, was a classmate of theirs, and he’d been even more anxious to get out of Pearl Springs than Alex. “I just didn’t think he’d hang around Russell County after he finished college. What brought him back?”

“A pretty girl named Tess.”

“He married Tess?” Alex asked as a text buzzed on her phone. A quick glance told her it was Marge.

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