Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
There’s no one inside the office so I look around until I find one of those rugged, white mailers that Penny Rider uses to deliver things. I take it, get back in my truck, and go home.
There’s no one around, but when I get out, I can hear shooting from one end of the woods and dogs barking in the distance coming from the other. Range practice and tracking today, I guess.
I’ll go find them in a minute, but first I take a seat on my porch step and cut the envelope open with my pocketknife. There is a folder and inside the folder is a small stack of papers. Maybe twenty pages.
Ever-efficient Penny has written me a cover letter, so I read it because her summaries are always short and informative.
Dear Amon,
I ran the tests you asked for and did a complete background check for one Erol Cross, West Virginia. It’s not much to go on, and I found seven matches. Only three fit the profile, but only one was seventeen years old when you were a senior in high school. He’s listed below. But I won’t bury the lede, he’s dead. He died that same year in the springtime. All the details are inside. There’s a headstone in Pebble Falls if you care to check it out. I’ve included a map and directions from Edge Security.
Dead. I pause to consider this. Then who the hell is sending Rosie those creepy letters? I look back down at the paper and continue reading.
We did find prints on those letters, but unfortunately, none of them matched the set obtained from the West Virginia Motor Vehicle records for one Erol Cross. Which, of course, makes sense, because he is dead and dead people don’t write letters. The prints belonged to you and one Rosie Harlow, from Disciple, West Virginia, which I assume is not what you were looking for.
The ink analysis will take weeks to be conclusive, but preliminary results indicate it’s the most popular printshop ink on the market at the moment.
The paper is a little bit unusual as it is not standard copy paper, but a high-quality offset paper used in book printing. Which makes sense because it was a worksheet, but there are no ragged edges to indicate it was torn from a workbook.
Again, this paper is very common in printshops. Hundreds of millions of pages are probably printed every year. It comes up in almost every paper analysis I manage because all the military printshops use it.
My conclusion is that these papers were professionally printed, but as to where and when, there is no quick way to find that out.
Please let me know if you would like me to continue the analysis and I will do my best to get you the information you are looking for.
Thanks for your continued business and talk soon,
Penny
Well, shit. That didn’t get me anywhere. In fact, I’m in the hole because this man is dead. I flip through the paperwork, just giving it all a cursory glance, then shove it back in the envelope. I rub my hands over my face, taking a breath. Because Rosie doesn’t know he’s dead. And no matter how much she says she’s over him, this Erol guy is Cross’s father.
I take out my phone, ready to call her and get it over with, but just as I do that King and Mercy come bounding out of the woods, barking and nipping each other’s heels.
Both dogs stop what they are doing when I whistle. Then I give them the hand signal for sit—which they do—and walk over there. Because obviously people are coming back and these two got ahead of themselves.
Sure enough, a few seconds later Collin comes walking out of the woods, laughing and smiling. But I go tense and get hot. Because all that laughing and smiling is directed at that fuckin’ inspector, Sawyer Martin.
Collin looks up from his conversation, catching my eye, and the smile drops. “Amon. When did you get back?”
“Just now.” I glare at him. “Were you two out in the woods working the dogs?”
“Oh, yes,” Sawyer says. “I like dogs. And I needed to check off a few boxes about them for my inspection, so Collin here gave me a little demonstration this afternoon.”
I’m still lookin’ at Collin. “Did he now?”
“It was great.” Sawyer actually claps Collin on the back like they’re old buddies or something. “Thanks. I got what I needed. In fact”—Sawyer looks at me and I have no choice but to tear my glare away from Collin so I can direct it at him—“you’ll probably be happy to hear that I’m leaving tonight.”
“So soon?” I deadpan.
Sawyer just smiles. “It was nice to meet you both.” Then he nods his head a little, and walks off up the driveway, leaving Collin and I alone.