place of their own, a fresh start. His grandfather had sold his father’s house and put the money in an account for Joshua. That was what he used to buy the cabin and land where he now lived.
“Dragging all this out to muddle through is not getting me anywhere,” he muttered and glanced toward the swing as he had always done when figuring things out. He would talk to his dog Jack as if he was a person and could actually understand what he was saying, but Jack was not there. He missed his dog and wished the Dixon brothers had not killed him when they grabbed Emma from his porch.
Joshua decided to concentrate on what the heads were saying to him; however, he could not remember exactly what they said either. He thought it odd that only the oldest heads on the shelves were in his dreams, those the boy’s father murdered thirty years earlier. The heads of the younger women the brothers killed were not there in his dream. He knew they were not there because each of them had cropped dyed black hair and Egyptian painted eyes. He wondered why the brothers dyed and cropped the women’s hair and decorated their eyes with black make-up.
He closed his eyes envisioning the heads on the shelves. The third or forth from the left had short dark sprigs of hair probably five to six inches long. Was she the boy’s mother? Did they cut and dye the young women’s hair to make them look the way their mother looked, and what about the decoration of the eyes? Joshua doubted the boy’s mother wore her makeup the way the made up the girls… maybe they cannot remember what their mother looked like either…
It was some weird ass shit and he doubted he would ever learn the truth. He stood, stretched, took a leak, and after a moment, went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. He pumped water from the pitcher pump mounted over the sink and then plugged in the coffee pot. The electric coffee pot was one of the few modern conveniences besides the refrigerator and washing machine he had invested in; it perked a pot of coffee in just a few minutes and he did not have to build a fire in the woodstove.
Thinking of the woodstove automatically caused him to think of Francine when they first got married. He chuckled as he remembered her trying to learn to cook on it; however, that had not lasted long. Francine was not cut out to be a pioneer wife, any sort of wife for that matter. Joshua did not regret marrying her, just trusting her; but she was dead and gone. He had never felt a need to replace her. He poured a cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch. The ringing of the phone brought him right back in; it was John Metcalf. He wanted to let Joshua know what he had learned from the crime scene.
“You been at it all night” Joshua asked.
“Yep, been processing the latent prints from the knife and comparing them to the ones they faxed in here a couple of days ago. They’re a match for the one that killed the others. I wish we had a better way of tracking, well, a faster way of tracking fingerprints from state to state. It would make my job a lot easier.”
“What would make all our jobs easier is if folks quit killing one another,” Stokes replied seriously.
“Oh yeah, that’d make it real easy, Sheriff, but that’s not going to happen. If anything, the crime rate just keeps climbing higher and higher.”
“Yeah, it does, John. Every year it seems to get worse. Did you learn anything else from the crime scene?”
“Yes, Sir, The coroner says that Mrs. Vice was molested. He took a swabbing to compare, said something about being able to test the blood type of the perpetrator. We want to do that because I found two different blood types in the kitchen area. We believe one to be the killers. In his rage of stabbing Mrs. Vice, he may have cut himself. Ola’s blood type was O positive; the other type I found was very rare - it is AB negative. Only 1% of the population has that blood type.”
“What about Jesse’s blood type? It
“Dragging all this out to muddle through is not getting me anywhere,” he muttered and glanced toward the swing as he had always done when figuring things out. He would talk to his dog Jack as if he was a person and could actually understand what he was saying, but Jack was not there. He missed his dog and wished the Dixon brothers had not killed him when they grabbed Emma from his porch.
Joshua decided to concentrate on what the heads were saying to him; however, he could not remember exactly what they said either. He thought it odd that only the oldest heads on the shelves were in his dreams, those the boy’s father murdered thirty years earlier. The heads of the younger women the brothers killed were not there in his dream. He knew they were not there because each of them had cropped dyed black hair and Egyptian painted eyes. He wondered why the brothers dyed and cropped the women’s hair and decorated their eyes with black make-up.
He closed his eyes envisioning the heads on the shelves. The third or forth from the left had short dark sprigs of hair probably five to six inches long. Was she the boy’s mother? Did they cut and dye the young women’s hair to make them look the way their mother looked, and what about the decoration of the eyes? Joshua doubted the boy’s mother wore her makeup the way the made up the girls… maybe they cannot remember what their mother looked like either…
It was some weird ass shit and he doubted he would ever learn the truth. He stood, stretched, took a leak, and after a moment, went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. He pumped water from the pitcher pump mounted over the sink and then plugged in the coffee pot. The electric coffee pot was one of the few modern conveniences besides the refrigerator and washing machine he had invested in; it perked a pot of coffee in just a few minutes and he did not have to build a fire in the woodstove.
Thinking of the woodstove automatically caused him to think of Francine when they first got married. He chuckled as he remembered her trying to learn to cook on it; however, that had not lasted long. Francine was not cut out to be a pioneer wife, any sort of wife for that matter. Joshua did not regret marrying her, just trusting her; but she was dead and gone. He had never felt a need to replace her. He poured a cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch. The ringing of the phone brought him right back in; it was John Metcalf. He wanted to let Joshua know what he had learned from the crime scene.
“You been at it all night” Joshua asked.
“Yep, been processing the latent prints from the knife and comparing them to the ones they faxed in here a couple of days ago. They’re a match for the one that killed the others. I wish we had a better way of tracking, well, a faster way of tracking fingerprints from state to state. It would make my job a lot easier.”
“What would make all our jobs easier is if folks quit killing one another,” Stokes replied seriously.
“Oh yeah, that’d make it real easy, Sheriff, but that’s not going to happen. If anything, the crime rate just keeps climbing higher and higher.”
“Yeah, it does, John. Every year it seems to get worse. Did you learn anything else from the crime scene?”
“Yes, Sir, The coroner says that Mrs. Vice was molested. He took a swabbing to compare, said something about being able to test the blood type of the perpetrator. We want to do that because I found two different blood types in the kitchen area. We believe one to be the killers. In his rage of stabbing Mrs. Vice, he may have cut himself. Ola’s blood type was O positive; the other type I found was very rare - it is AB negative. Only 1% of the population has that blood type.”
“What about Jesse’s blood type? It
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