Page 30 of Hunting the Crossbow Killer

Grace laughed. “Except for that.”

They were close to where the woods ended and the town began. Grace tapped her hand impatiently on her thigh. “I hope the lab gets back to me soon. I really need to know what they’ve found, whether the evidence we sent matches the evidence from our previous crime scenes. It will help us cull all these theories and ideas of ours if we know whether we’re looking for the Crossbow Killer or someone else entirely.”

Fletcher turned onto Main Street, then slowed to a stop. “What the ever loving…the dang media’s here. Look at that news truck parked a few spots down from the station. They wouldn’t have driven all this way for a story about a random arrow shot during our festival, especially since no one was hurt. And, honestly, that’s not exactly unusual around here compared to other things that go on. I’m betting one of those Polk County deputies sprang a leak. He probably has a friend at the news desk and told them we were searching for a potential serial killer out here.”

She glanced at Grace. “Seeing an FBI agent, or even knowing you’re here if the deputies shared that information, too, is going to make the reporter rabid. It could spread like a disease and we’ll have even more of them here tomorrow. Let’s enter the station through the back door. There’s a service alley behind all the shops we can use.”

She parked on the far side of the main parking lot. As soon as the two of them sneaked into the station, Collier looked up with a relieved expression on his face. “I was just about to call you two and warn you that—”

“The news media’s outside,” Fletcher interrupted. “We saw the van.”

“A cameraman and reporter got here about fifteen minutes ago demanding to see the chief about the search being done for a serial killer. I did what I could to laugh that off and said we were actually after some kid playing pranks. They asked me if that was the case why was there an FBI agent in town. I toldthem we take the security of our citizens very seriously and when the kid almost hurt someone at the festival we called in the FBI to help us nip this thing as quickly as possible. But as you can see, they’re still here. I don’t think they believed anything I told them.”

Grace groaned. “My boss will love this. He wanted to keep everything quiet until I determined if our killer is really here or not. Does Dawson know the media is waiting to pounce on him?”

“I warned him right before you came in. He should be here soon. They called the search off half an hour ago and the deputies are on their way back home.”

“Good riddance,” Fletcher said as she hung her jacket on the back of her chair.

“Agreed. They did find signs of our suspect and that he was there recently. But he’s a slippery devil. No one actually saw him in spite of all those searchers. Justin’s scent dog pulled up lame, so he wasn’t any help today or they might have had better luck.”

“What kinds of signs did they find?” Grace asked. “Is there more evidence for our lab to process?”

The squeak of the back door followed by footsteps had all of them turning. Chief Dawson entered, followed by Ortiz and Aidan.

“Lock the front door,” Dawson told Collier. “Quickly, before that reporter notices I’m here. I’m not in the mood to be civil at the moment. The search was a bust.”

Collier hurried to lock the door while Ortiz set a large paper evidence bag on his desk.

“Not a total bust,” Ortiz said. “We have a plastic bag from a costume store in Chattanooga and half a dozen white feathers, painted with the same red stripe as the earlier ones, ready to be attached to more arrows.”

Grace hurried over and looked in the bag while Ortiz held it open. “This is great. I’ll arrange for another courier in themorning to get this to the lab. But I’d like to follow up with the store you mentioned. I don’t see a name on the bag.”

“I’ll give you the info,” Ortiz said. “That sparkly bag is unique. Even without a store name on it, I recognized it immediately.”

Grace glanced at Aidan. “O’Brien, did everything go well? Any close calls?”

Ortiz shot Aidan a look as if in warning and answered for him. “No close calls. Nothing happened except that we got lucky and found that evidence. Like the chief said, it was a waste of time. I don’t know how this guy keeps managing to give us the slip. At this point it’s embarrassing.”

“Dang right it is,” Dawson said. “Which is why I have no interest in speaking to the media. We can deal with them tomorrow. Everyone head home—the back way, of course. If you do get cornered by a reporter the answer is no comment. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” all three officers chimed in at the same time.

Dawson crossed the room toward his office.

“I’ll let dispatch know we’re transferring the phones to them now,” Collier said.

At Grace’s questioning look, he explained, “As long as one of us is at the station, we take any emergency calls. When no one is here we transfer emergency calls to a call center, basically the same 911 operators who support the sheriff’s office. If there is an emergency call at night, which is rare for us, the operators do what they can to talk the caller through whatever emergency is going on. And, of course, they contact whichever one of us is on point.”

Fletcher bumped his shoulder. “Lucky you. You’re on call tonight.”

He made a face at her.

Dawson came out of his office carrying a small satchel, perhaps paperwork he wanted to take home, and motioned toGrace. “Make sure you keep your jacket covering your vest. You, too, O’Brien, unless you want the reporter to hit you up with questions thinking you’re a cop. If everyone’s ready to go, we’ll head out the back together. As soon as we hit the lights, that reporter is going to realize they’ve been tricked and I’m not giving them an interview. They’ll figure out pretty quickly that there must be a back door. We’ll have to hustle if we’re going to get in our cars before they find us. O’Brien and Malone, I’ll give you a ride to the B and B to run interference, just in case. Hopefully you can get upstairs before being ambushed.”

No sooner did the chief drop off Grace and Aidan than the news van pulled up behind his Jeep. Luckily for them, the reporter ran up to the driver’s door to talk to Dawson. Grace and Aidan ducked down and hurried into the B and B and upstairs without having to deal with the media.

When they reached the landing at the top of the stairs, Aidan nodded goodbye and turned toward his room.

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