Ding Dong Dead

41

Terry lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s his day off. He should sleep the morning away and spend the rest of the afternoon reading the Sunday paper and watching old movies, but he does his best problem solving through the night. This one has been no exception. He’s wide awake when his cell phone rings.

“We have a break in the case,” Matt Albright says from the other end. “Evidence recovered by the ME, found at the trauma site around Allison Thomasia’s head wound. Minute traces of anthropomorphized rock.” His friend is speaking in choppy sentences. He’s excited.

“What’s that?” Terry asks. Matt is relaying the medical examiner’s fancy words. She’ll never learn to bring her information down to human level.

“It’s residue from a rock indigenous to Israel. Now I have a pretty good idea what killed Allison Thomasia. It was the same weapon that probably killed Flora Berringer, too. A geologist’s hammer.”

A geologist’s hammer. Or a rock pick, to be exact. When Terry was a kid, he had a brief fascination with rocks. He knows about this particular tool. The square hitting end is used to break open rock samples, to look for fossils inside. The other end of the tool, used on hard rock, is shaped like a pick for maximum striking pressure.

Matt keeps talking. “A heavy hammer like that could crush a skull without much force behind it. In the case of our killer? Lots of force was exerted, much more than required.”

“Signifying uncontrolled rage,” Terry says.

“Who knows what goes on inside the mind of a killer?”

Matt is like an efficient machine, narrowing down the playing field. They are eliminating suspects as quickly as possible, moving others to the top of the list.

“It should be easy from here on in,” Terry says, knowing it won’t be.

“Right. All we have to do is find a geologist with a motive, the rock pick that was used to kill two women, and a few missing men.”

“Easy,” Terry says.

“Right,” Matt agrees.