The 24th Letter

EIGHTY-THREE

The yellow crime scene tape was still around the front porch of the old general store. O’Brien looked at the porch from a half dozen angles. He watched the windmill turn. He listened to the cluck of nearby chickens and tried to picture the scene the night Lyle Johnson died on the front porch.

Dan said, “They found his body sitting right there in that chair.” He pointed to a rocking chair on the porch.

O’Brien said nothing. He knelt down in the Bahia grass next to the porch and looked at the surface of the old cypress slats. He stood and slowly walked up the three timeworn steps leading to the porch. He looked at the bloodstain beneath the chair and then at the wooden barrel behind the chair.

“Place has been gone over by a team, Sean. Except for the blood, Johnson’s pistol lying next to the chair, they got nothing. I know you wanted to come here, but we might be wasting time we don’t have.”

O’Brien said nothing.

Dan said, “What do you do, man? Go into some kinda zone? Do you put yourself in the vic’s place or the perp’s. Because the expression on your face looks damn funky right now.”

O’Brien studied at the pitchfork and looked across the porch, staring at a spot in the knotty wood. He pulled a paper napkin out of his pocket and used it to move the pitchfork from the back of the barrel to the front. He stepped across the porch, knelt and looked at a small hole in the wood. “Look at the angle of this hole.”

“Lots of old wormholes in these planks. Some ought to be replaced.”

“This is new, Dan. Rain and mildew haven’t had time to set in, but there is rust in there. Wood doesn’t rust. And look at the angle. That could only have been made from something coming from a trajectory near the rocking chair.”

“What are you saying?”

O’Brien pointed to the far right prong on the pitchfork. “The rust on this point has been knocked off. The other three prongs all have a covering of rust on the tips. This one doesn’t, and like the hole in the porch, the elements haven’t discolored it.”

“You think Lyle Johnson picked up this pitchfork and threw it like some kind of javelin at the perp, right?”

“That’s exactly what I think. Maybe he made contact. Maybe not. But get a forensic team to check for any DNA that might be in the hole and on the pitchfork. Get this stuff to the lab quick as you can.”

Dan looked out toward the windmill. “O’Brien, you’re like a bird dog. Wish I could have worked with you in Miami. Where to…Sherlock?”

“To where Sam Spelling was shot.”