“Too many to identify the killer.”
About ten feet away, I see the depth of the ditch. “That is...what do you think...six feet deep? It’s still muddy down there.”
Keith shrugs. “In some places deeper. When I arrived here last week, all over the county, these swales were raging rivers. They’ve dried up considerably since then.”
I look in one direction and turn the other, following the road. “Raging?”
“Yes. I think that all the runoff from the fields flows this way. Periodically, the farmers set drainage tubes underground. It keeps the fields from flooding.”
“Craig was found here?” I point to the memorial.
“But he might not have started there,” Keith says, completing my thought. “He could have easily floated or the water pushed him. That would make sense about why he wasn’t found earlier. Manes swears up and down this area was searched.”
Again, I look up and down the long road. “Which way is south?”
Keith turns a complete circle, looking up at the sky before he points to the other side of the road. “That way.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I thought water flowed south.”
“No. That’s a common misconception. Water isn’t picky. It flows the direction of least resistance.” He points the direction we came. “That’s downhill.”
I turn the opposite way, looking uphill. “He could have fallen in the swale up that way, and if the water was strong enough, been transported down here.”
“Why bring Marty here?” Keith says as he looks all around.
“It’s remote.”
“But whoever did it, knows that people were coming out here for Craig.”
I feel the metaphoric wheels in my head spinning. “The guy who killed Marty, and probably the one who hurt Julie, wanted Marty found. He wanted her found and wanted the police to know he, not birds, removed her eyes, just in case she wasn’t found right away.”
“What does that tell you about this killer?” Keith asks.
“He wants recognition. He was probably in the gymnasium yesterday morning.”
“I would agree.”
I turn a complete circle. “This place is pretty open. Where did you want to put a camera?”
Keith points across the street. “Any one of those fence posts.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Let’s check the fence posts.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Riding in Keith’s truck, I look at the picture on my phone, the picture of what Keith found. He went in one direction and I the other, walking along the opposite side of the road from the memorials. From what we could determine online, the object he found secured to a fence post and pointed toward the memorials, is a solar-powered camera with 5G capability. That upgrade allows the camera to transmit without internet. The camera activates when it senses movement and then, instead of keeping the data on-site, it sends a transmission to an app. The million-dollar question is who has the app?
“Should we have taken it down?” I ask, looking up from the description of the camera I pulled up online.
“What if it belongs to the sheriff’s department?”
I nod as Keith drives us closer to Blue Gil. “You think that maybe Sheriff Manes listened to you but didn’t want to admit it?”
“I’m hoping because it sure as shit is the best option.”
