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“Look, something like this would surely have stood out. I’m sure there wasn’t anything like it in the immediate area.”
Riley frowned. This thing that had been placed so carefully just had to be important. She felt sure that the cops had somehow overlooked another sand timer.
For that matter, so had she and Bill and Jenn when they’d been on the beach. Where could that one be?
“We’ve got to go back and look,” Riley said.
Bill carried the enormous timer over to the SUV. Jenn opened the back, and she and Bill put the object inside, making sure that it was braced and steadied against any sharp or sudden movement. They covered it with a blanket that was in the SUV.
Riley, Bill, and Jenn got into the SUV and followed the police chief’s car back toward the beach.
The number of reporters gathered in the parking area had increased, and they were getting more aggressive. As Riley and her colleagues made their way through them and past the yellow tape, she wondered how much longer they would be able to ignore their questions.
When they reached the beach, the body was no longer in the hole. The ME’s team had already loaded it into their van. The local cops were still combing the area for clues.
Belt called out to his men, who gathered around him.
“Has anybody seen a sand timer around here?” he asked. “It would look like a big hourglass, at least two feet tall.”
The cops looked perplexed by the question. They shook their heads and said no.
Riley was starting to feel impatient.
It must be around here somewhere, she thought. She walked to the top of a nearby grassy rise and looked around. But she could see no hourglass, not even disturbed sand that would indicate something freshly buried.
Or was her intuition playing tricks on her? It sometimes happened.
Not this time, she thought.
In her gut, she felt sure of it.
She walked back and stood looking down at the hole. It was very different from the one in the woods. It was shallower, more shapeless. The killer couldn’t have formed the dry beach sand into a pointer if he’d tried.
She turned all around and gazed in every direction.
All she saw was sand and the surf.
The tide was low. Of course the killer could have made some kind of wet sand-sculpture arrow, but it would have been seen right away. If it hadn’t been destroyed, it would still be visible.
She asked the others, “Have you seen anyone else anywhere near here – aside from the man with the dog who found the body?”
The cops shrugged and looked at each other.
One of them said, “Nobody except Rags Tucker.”
Riley’s eyes widened.
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“Just an eccentric old beachcomber,” Chief Belt said. “He lives in a little wigwam over there.”
Belt pointed farther along the beach where the shoreline curved away from the area where they stood.
Riley was getting a little angry now.
“Why didn’t anybody mention him before?” she snapped.
“There wasn’t much point,” Belt said. “We talked to him when we first got here. He didn’t see anything having to do with the murder. He said he’d been asleep when it happened.”
Riley let out a groan of irritation.
“We’re going to pay this guy a visit,” she said.
Followed by Bill, Jenn, and Chief Belt, she started walking along the sand.
As they walked, Riley said to Belt, “I thought you’d closed off the beach.”
“We did,” Belt said.
“Then what the hell is anybody still doing here?” Riley asked.
“Well, like I said, Rags sort of lives here,” Belt said. “There didn’t seem to be any point in kicking him out. Besides, he’s got no place else to go.”
After they rounded the curve, Belt led them up across the sand to a grassy rise. The group waded through the soft sand and tall grass to the top of the rise. From there Riley could see a little makeshift wigwam about a hundred yards away.
“That’s ol’ Rags’s house,” Belt said.
As they approached, Riley saw that it was covered with plastic bags and blankets. Here behind the rise, it was safely out of reach whenever the tide was high. The wigwam was surrounded by blankets covered with what looked like a crazy assortment of objects.
Riley said to Belt, “Tell me about this Rags Tucker character. Doesn’t Belle Terre have rules against vagrancy?”
Belt chuckled a little.
He said, “Well, yeah, but Rags isn’t exactly your typical vagrant. He’s colorful, and people like him, visitors especially. And he’s not a suspect, believe me. He’s the most harmless guy in the world.”
Belt pointed to the things out on the blanket.
“He’s got kind of a goofy business going with all that stuff he’s got. He picks up junk off the beach, and people come around to buy stuff, or to exchange stuff they don’t want anymore. Mostly it’s just an excuse for folks to hang around and talk to him. He does this all summer, for as long as the weather here is comfortable. He manages to put together enough money to rent a cheap little apartment in Sattler for the winter. Then when the weather’s good again, he comes back here.”
As they got nearer, Riley could see the objects more clearly. It really was a bizarre collection that included driftwood, conch shells, and other natural objects, but also old toasters, broken TVs, old lamps, and other items that visitors had undoubtedly brought for him.
When they got to the edge of the outstretched blankets, Belt called out, “Hey, Rags. I wonder if we could talk to you some more.”
A raspy voice answered from inside the wigwam.
“I told you before, I didn’t see anybody. Haven’t you caught the creep yet? I sure don’t like the idea of a killer on my beach. I’d have already told you if I knew anything.”
Riley stepped toward the wigwam and called out, “Rags, I need to talk to you.”
“Who’re you?”
“FBI. I’m wondering if maybe you’d run across a large sand timer. You know, like an hourglass.”
There was no reply for a few moments. Then a hand inside the wigwam pulled aside a sheet that covered the opening.
Inside was a scrawny man sitting cross-legged, his big eyes staring at her.
And sitting right in front of him was a huge sand timer.
Chapter Eight
The man in the wigwam just stared up at Riley with wide gray eyes. Riley’s attention snapped back and forth from the vagrant to the big sand timer in front of him. She found it hard to decide which was the most startling.
Rags Tucker had long grayish hair and a beard that hung down to his waist. His tattered, loosely fitting clothes suited his name.
Naturally she wondered…
Is this guy a suspect?
She found that hard to believe. His limbs were thin and spindly, and he seemed hardly robust enough to have carried out either one of these arduous murders. He fairly exuded a sense of harmlessness.
Riley also suspected that his scruffy appearance was something of a pose. He didn’t smell bad, at least from where she stood, and his clothes looked clean in spite of all their wear and tear.
As for the sand timer, it looked much like the one they’d found back near the path. It was more than